| Episode 81. Opening the Cafeteria
“Answer anything?”
“What’s that?”
When I asked, Kang Giyeon answered.
“You reply to almost every post that goes up in hyung’s fan café. Couldn’t you do something like that?”
Just as Kang Giyeon said, I had been answering posts in the Spark fan café like some FAQ sun god.
≫ Guys, did you finish all the snacks after the live?
└ There were some left, so I sealed them with a clip. The most popular snack today was the honey pizza! :)
Since new posts didn’t go up all that quickly, investing just thirty minutes a day was enough to reply to them all.
The people who posted the comments probably wanted replies from members other than me, but I still told myself that at least the amount of information available would increase, so they wouldn’t be offended……
“Come to think of it, that’s good.”
Kang Giyeon’s idea wasn’t bad. I could talk about the other members and lower the amount of attention focused on me.
“Then we should collect questions for you, hyung?”
“I already have some collected from before, so it’s fine. I think it’ll be enough to gather just a few more for the event.”
“Why did you collect things like that in the first place…….”
Kang Giyeon shook his head as if he couldn’t understand. Did he think I’d collected them because I wanted to?
That was how I thought I’d gotten over one hurdle.
At least, until I heard the thunderbolt from a clear sky that I had to film my video first.
“Me?”
I pointed at myself with a finger and asked the manager.
The first thing he said upon arriving at the practice room today was, “It looks like we’ll be filming Iwol’s self-produced content first!”
I desperately wanted to retort, ‘But Seongbin is the leader. Why?’ However, I was a grown adult who had lived long enough, so I held it in.
And the manager proceeded to utterly trample all over my mature attitude.
“Yeah. Your birthday comes first, Iwol. They’re going in order of age.”
Who still talked about age in this day and age? Wasn’t that horribly old-fashioned?
By rights, shouldn’t they have put our great leader first, then sent the rest of us out in order of ability?
So, simply because I was born in February, I ended up filming a video that probably wouldn’t interest anyone.
Since things had turned out this way, all I could do was make myself the sacrifice and pray that the others’ view counts would skyrocket.
‘But who’s going to be interested in my self-produced content?’
If I were a fan of this group, I wouldn’t even want to look at the weak-link member whose stiff movements were obvious even from his fancams.
I wasn’t going to put in less effort just because no one might watch it, but there had to be some result to justify the video team supporting the shoot. This was a disaster.
“What are you muttering to yourself about?”
Choi Jeho sauntered over and asked.
“I’m wondering what I should do for my self-produced content. It’s harder than you’d think to come up with enough material to fill twenty minutes all by yourself.”
“Hmm.”
While I was still seriously worrying, he was completely carefree by himself.
Wait a minute. Wasn’t this not the time for him to be carefree?
I asked, feeling slightly dumbfounded.
“Aren’t you worried?”
“I’ll probably fill ten minutes with a dance medley.”
Look at this bastard.
“What’s with that attitude? Are you planning to walk around with your screws already loose?”
When I said it with a completely serious face, Choi Jeho’s expression became complicated. He seemed not merely displeased but also somewhat flustered.
“No, I wasn’t planning to do it halfheartedly!”
Choi Jeho shouted as if he were being treated unfairly.
“Our album doesn’t even run for ten minutes, including the B-sides. If you’re talking about a medley with only two or three songs, what else could that mean besides planning to phone it in?”
“I was going to do cover dances!”
Oh. That was what he meant?
Certainly, as the group’s dance member and center, there had always been demand for cover dances from Choi Jeho. How had I forgotten that after watching them until my eyes practically oozed fluid?
The fact that Choi Jeho himself had come up with such a commendable idea made me wonder whether there had been a processing error in his brain, but this time, the mistake was entirely mine. I politely apologized to him.
“Sorry. I misunderstood.”
“Whatever. But is something wrong with you?”
“Me? Why?”
“You’re being sensitive. You’ve been like that since yesterday.”
I was?
It was something I hadn’t even considered. I wondered what the hell he was talking about, and even went over his words in my head to make sure I’d understood him correctly.
Well, of course, my mood had been on a roller coaster since yesterday because of the system……
It was an even greater shock than when Seongbin had noticed that something was bothering me before.
And this time, it was none other than Choi Jeho. He was more insensitive than a polar bear.
If this guy had felt that I was being sensitive, I couldn’t even begin to imagine how uncomfortable I’d made the others feel.
“I guess I was tired. I’m fine now.”
“Then it’s fine.”
With that, Choi Jeho turned around and went off to do his own thing.
What kind of dorm was this, where the guy who had joined at the last minute, had the worst skills, and even nagged everyone using his age as a weapon went around broadcasting, ‘I’m being sensitive right now’?
“This is the worst.”
A deep sigh rose from my very dantian. It seemed I was the one who’d had my screws loose after all.
* * *
I was deeply disappointed in myself for failing to control even my own mood properly.
So, by way of reflection, I filled three pages, front and back, with an apology diary. I nearly broke my fingers.
I also apologized to the members for ruining the atmosphere in the dorm. As befitting their mild-mannered personalities, they all consistently replied, “We didn’t really notice! You don’t have to apologize!”
To correct my crooked attitude, I voluntarily and secretly began waiting on the members.
I bought moisture absorbers and put them in the shoe cabinet, and thoroughly cleaned the balcony with water. All without anyone knowing.
Fortunately, it was currently the off-season.
If we’d been promoting, I would have had to mop the living-room floor with one hand, write proposals with the other, and practice the steps with both feet.
If they caught me doing all this by myself, everyone would have to do housework according to the dorm rules, so even that morning I had been secretly cleaning the dorm like a diligent ureong husband when……
“What are you doing over there?”
I had gone to the kitchen to boil barley tea and happened to spot Choi Jeho and Lee Cheonghyeon standing there awkwardly.
“We, uh…… were wondering if there was anything to wash!”
“I already did all the dishes earlier.”
There weren’t many dishes to begin with in this dorm. You needed someone who actually ate something for dishes to pile up.
Lee Cheonghyeon, caught in a ridiculous lie, immediately backed away.
I looked at Choi Jeho and asked with my eyes. Roughly, I meant, ‘What are you planning to use as an excuse?’
Choi Jeho answered without hesitation.
“Lee Cheonghyeon said he wanted kimchi pancakes, so I came out with him for now.”
“Ah, hyung!”
“So the two of you were plotting something together?”
Outside, a fine rain was falling. Perhaps because it was still morning, all we could hear from outside was the sound of rain.
It was hard not to think of pancakes on a day like this.
I looked at the two of them, who were fidgeting awkwardly, and asked,
“Want me to make some?”
“What?”
“Pancakes. I can’t guarantee they’ll be tasty.”
Unfortunately, I was an expert at skewered jeon, and that was about it.
Even so, Lee Cheonghyeon’s face lit up brightly. It looked as though a whole bouquet of flowers had bloomed.
While I bent down to look for a frying pan beneath the sink, Lee Cheonghyeon asked Choi Jeho,
“Hyung, do you know your mother’s kimchi pancake recipe?”
“No.”
“Why? Is Choi Jeho’s mom’s kimchi pancake good?”
When I asked, Lee Cheonghyeon nodded so vigorously that his head nearly fell off. Then, like a machine gun rapper, he launched into an impassioned speech about just how delicious Choi Jeho’s mother’s kimchi pancakes were.
“I’ve only eaten them once, you know? I’d never had kimchi pancakes that delicious before. You know how the edges of a pancake are the tastiest part, right, hyung? But your mother’s pancakes are crispy in the middle, too. They definitely aren’t burnt, either, you know?”
“……Are they really that good?”
“That good? Wow, seriously.”
When Choi Jeho muttered dubiously, Lee Cheonghyeon snorted as if he couldn’t believe him.
“You don’t seem to understand the value of mother-made kimchi pancakes, hyung. Juwoo hyung said they were delicious, too.”
“Park Juwoo did?”
At the unexpected name, Choi Jeho looked slightly surprised. I was a little surprised, too.
“Has he ever said anything was delicious?”
Choi Jeho asked with a genuinely curious expression.
“That hyung usually eats just to survive, you know? He has this kind of attitude—‘There’s food, so I eat it.’ If Juwoo hyung said it was delicious, then it’s guaranteed.”
That was true.
Perhaps his tastes followed his personality. Park Juwoo preferred plain food to greasy food, and mild flavors to stimulating ones.
If Kang Giyeon ate salads without dressing for the sake of self-discipline, Park Juwoo removed the dressing so he could taste the natural flavor of the vegetables.
‘If the only thing to drink is soda, he waits until all the carbonation has gone flat before drinking it.’
Though I thought Park Juwoo had said the donggeurangttaeng was delicious during Chuseok. Perhaps that had passed because it was store-bought.
In any case, now that I had decided to become a willing slave, I couldn’t simply ignore the fact that my young masters wanted to eat kimchi pancakes.
I grabbed Choi Jeho by the shoulder and turned him toward me.
“Hey.”
“What?”
“Get the recipe from your mother.”
* * *
“Hello? Uh, Mom……”
Unable to withstand Lee Cheonghyeon and me harassing him from both sides, Choi Jeho eventually called his mother.
It would have been nice if he’d learned some cooking from his mother earlier.
While Lee Cheonghyeon and I were wiping the dust off the window frame with satisfied smiles, a tremendous racket erupted from the kitchen.
“Hey, did something break?”
“Did the sink collapse?”
We each said one thing, threw down our rags, and ran to the kitchen.
There we saw Choi Jeho crouching between the sink and the dining table, with frying pans scattered all over the floor in front of him.
“Ah, I spilled something. Mom, which frying pan should I use?”
Choi Jeho picked up a large frying pan in each hand and furrowed his brow.
The rest of his phone call was anything but reassuring.
“Pancake mix? I don’t know. Can’t I use flour?”
“Moderately sour kimchi? How sour does it have to be to count as moderately sour?”
“You’ll know when you taste it? We only have one kind of kimchi in the dorm.”
When Choi Jeho fired off his final question, an enormous sound came through the phone. It sounded like the noise of his mother’s patience running out.
For a moment, I had the strange illusion that I’d glimpsed the future.
I saw six thick lumps of kimchi-and-flour bread, like pancakes, being eaten with pools of oil.
By the time I imagined the five bastards with kimchi grease glistening around their mouths, my hand was already tapping Choi Jeho on the shoulder.
“What?”
Choi Jeho asked.
What do you mean, ‘What?’
Hand over the phone, you bastard.