Little Leaf

Eighteen-year-old Maple Cove lived a quiet, sheltered life, one defined by familiar streets, farmers' markets, and routine. She never felt deprived. She imagined other worlds instead.

Then everything ends in a single night.

After losing her parents and little sister in a tragic car accident, Maple is left with no money, no plan, and no one to turn to, except a man she barely knows. A family friend from her father's college days, now living back in his home country of South Korea, offers her a chance to start over. With nothing left to lose, Maple agrees.

Seoul is nothing like the world she came from. She doesn't speak the language. She doesn't understand the culture. Grief follows her through crowded streets and sleepless nights as she struggles to survive in a place where everything feels foreign. When the man she comes to call her uncle offers her work at his company, Haneul Collective, Maple accepts, unaware of what the job truly entails.

Haneul Collective isn't a tabloid or a gossip firm. It tells stories, long-form interviews, cultural profiles, truths hidden beneath headlines. Maple is assigned as an embedded editorial assistant intern, meant to observe, not participate. Her task is simple: live alongside Korea's most famous boy band, NOIR, for one year and report honestly on a scandal threatening to destroy them.

She is warned not to get emotionally involved.

But Maple has already crossed paths with one of them before, Kai, known offstage as Yoon Ji-ho. First in a bookstore. Then across a concert crowd. Moments brief enough to forget... or impossible to escape.

As Maple begins to see the humanity behind the fame and the truth behind the scandal, lines blur. Desire complicates everything. Loyalty becomes dangerous. And when the truth is set to surface under her name, Maple must decide what matters more: protecting the people who gave her a second chance or standing beside the ones who finally made her feel alive.