CHROMA, Book 3
The K-Pop Idol in the Jungle
CHROMA #3 — Jae-i's Story
He learned that the moment he stopped being funny, he'd disappear. She learned that a single laugh can get something killed. In a jungle where silence is the only thing keeping the animals alive, the loudest man in the country has to learn how to say nothing at all.
One month off. A sanctuary at the end of a flooding river. A rescue that runs out of money the moment the rains come.
Jae-i is the variety star of CHROMA, the nation's biggest boy group—the one who fills every silence, lands every punchline, and never, ever lets a room go quiet for more than three seconds. Burned out after eight years of being the funny one, he's shipped off to shoot a jungle survival show—until a landslide buries the production and strands him at the one roof left standing: a Borneo orangutan sanctuary where cameras are forbidden and no one is allowed to laugh. The world calls him Jae-i. His real name, the one no one uses anymore, is I-jae.
The woman who runs the place gives him exactly one instruction. You don't have to be funny here. Nobody laughs anyway.
Seo Go-yo was once the country's beloved "smiling vet"—until a film crew turned a rescued animal's death into a heartwarming special and edited her laughter over the footage. Branded the woman who laughed while an animal died, she fled to the jungle, sealed her own laughter away, and built a place where the animals only come when it's silent... and where she never has to be watched again.
She's the first person his jokes can't reach. He's the first person who doesn't need her to laugh—only to stay.
Given ten days that neither of them can quite explain, a man who has never stopped performing and a woman who has forbidden herself joy begin to build something out of the quiet—a battered notebook, a blind at the edge of the trees, a language with no punchlines, and the rare monsoon fireflies that only rise in the dark.
But the sanctuary is weeks from losing everything, and the one thing Jae-i truly knows how to do—turn a life into good television—is the very thing that broke her five years ago. To save the place she loves, he may have to become the one thing she can never forgive.
The K-Pop Idol in the Jungle is a slow-burn, forced-proximity K-pop romance about performance and permission: a man who was only ever loved when he was funny, and a woman who is certain she's safest feeling nothing at all. It's about learning that some kinds of love are done quietly—and that you're allowed to simply be. Tender, funny, and warm as the first rain, with a happy ending worth the whole long dry season.
CHROMA #3 — Jae-i's Story. A standalone romance with a guaranteed happily-ever-after. No cheating, no cliffhanger. (Each CHROMA book follows a different member and can be read on its own.)
Perfect for readers of forced-proximity and sunshine-meets-frost romance, of hidden identities and slow emotional healing, of deadpan heroines and the warm, patient heroes who wait them out—and for anyone who's ever needed to hear that they don't have to earn their place.