3. Fiction(2)
“….”
“….”
I wanted to run away from this space, so awkward it felt suffocating.
The woman glaring at me as I sat on a hospital bed, despite not being in that much pain, was “Gong Jihwan’s” older sister.
I was hospitalized, but no one had come, so I’d thought he must have really cut ties with his sister completely. Just this morning, I’d resolved that once things were a little more sorted out, I’d go find her and kneel if I had to.
“How could you be so…!”
“I’m sorry.”
“What?”
“I’m sorry. I was wrong.”
“Do you know how much I…!”
Ah. It seemed I’d pressed the button.
His sister bit down hard on her lip as tears fell, one after another. Her trembling shoulders made it clear just how much emotional weight she was bearing.
“I’m sorry I acted so immaturely, but I really….”
“Forget it. If you’re going to do a half-baked job of it and stop, you’re better off not doing it at all.”
“….”
Ah. This time, my switch had been pressed.
One sentence, painfully familiar.
I hadn’t expected to hear those words again here.
I couldn’t tell whether this grief was an emotion I was feeling or an emotion this body remembered. But one thing was certain: I had become able to recognize that this woman, whose face was a little different from my sister’s, was now my family.
“Why are you crying? You’re the one who got into an accident, don’t wear yourself out by crying too.”
After crying for a long while in my new sister’s arms, I was finally able to free myself, if only a little, from the tangled mess of emotions I’d been suppressing without realizing it.
Honestly, I was scared, and it still felt like my whole body hurt. I missed my family, whom I would never see again, my acquaintances, and my Ravel boys.
Even after sleeping and waking up, I was still on the hospital bed, and a corner of my heart collapsed. The resolve I’d made before falling asleep lost all meaning, and the tears I’d held back all night finally dropped.
Perhaps this sense of dissonance was something I would have to carry with me until the day this life ended too.
“I’m really going to work hard. So don’t worry about me, Noona, and do what you want to do.”
“As if things just happen because you make up your mind. Good grief, who did you take after, being so damn stubborn?”
“Who else? I took after you.”
“If only you couldn’t talk!”
After that, we spent a short while talking about all sorts of trivial things and calming each other down, then my sister coolly left me behind and went home.
She left me with the words that I was absolutely not to come home until I had failed so completely that no agency would take me, or until I truly wanted to come home.
Jihwan’s sister was similar to my own. Thanks to that, guilt and relief mixed together and pooled in my heart like sticky mud, but I had no choice but to smile.
Noona, your younger brother died. He let go of everything, like someone with no regrets at all.
And now I’m your younger brother.
Those words rose all the way to my throat, but I couldn’t bring myself to let them out.
Soon after, the woman from yesterday appeared. The person “I” had called Team Leader, the one who had chosen me as a trainee at ON Entertainment, entered the hospital room.
“Jihwan, what happened to your face?”
“Haha, I’m sorry, Team Leader. And thank you.”
Maybe my face and eyes were swollen from clinging to my sister and crying, because she was horrified and pressed a cold can of coffee against my eyes. Grateful for the gesture, I thanked her.
After all, it must have been the team leader who contacted my sister through my youngest maternal uncle.
“All right, I’ll just be honest too. Are you okay with that?”
“Yes. Please tell me without holding back.”
After venting all those emotions, my heart had grown sturdier. I steeled myself to keep my mental state together no matter what I heard, not get kicked out, and return to the practice room.
“You have more than one or two problems right now. It seems like you’ve already heard, so I’ll just say it—you’re one of the candidates for elimination.”
“Yes. I heard.”
“The director and the others said it might be better to take you out of this project. They said you don’t shine.”
“What about you, Team Leader?”
“Me?”
“Yes. What do you think, Team Leader?”
Team Leader Kim Sohyeon looked at me for a moment without any change in expression, then let out a deep sigh. Her cold face softened, and she opened one of the canned coffees she’d brought and began to drink.
The first thing I had done upon opening my eyes was recall all the memories up to now and make them mine. Because of that, I remembered the way this person’s eyes had shone when she chose “me.”
“Honestly, when I first saw you, I really thought you were a raw gem. There are tons of kids who are already prepared. You know now how many trainees in this market could debut tomorrow and do fine.”
“That’s true.”
“When I saw you, I thought I really wanted you in the team I had in mind. That’s why I picked you.”
“Thank you….”
I hadn’t known Team Leader Kim Sohyeon had thought that much of “me.” From the first time I saw her face until the last, I’d simply thought of her as someone who was reasonably kind and reasonably strict to all trainees, nothing special.
“But you, as you are now, aren’t it.”
“Pardon?”
“Do you think you’ll debut just because you practice blindly for a long time? Do you think becoming an idol is that easy? There are countless kids out there who practice even more desperately than you.”
“Ah….”
“Managing your condition, preparing for evaluations, the team atmosphere—every single one of those things is important. But how were you?”
I had nothing to say. No, I wasn’t the one who did it, but either way, right now I couldn’t make any excuses. “I” had clung to practice to an absurd degree.
To put it nicely, he had clung only to practice. To be honest, he wasn’t very sociable, and he was an idiot with no overall knowledge whatsoever, someone who interpreted the trainers’ coaching only in the most literal sense.
“I’m sorry.”
“Your sister was very worried.”
“Yes….”
“Did you apologize?”
“Yes. I apologized, and we made up. She told me not to come home, Team Leader. So I can’t go home.”
I was someone with neither knowledge nor possessions, but I had learned from experience, at least a little, how to deal with people. That was fortunate. I could learn the rest if I worked hard, but knowing how to deal with people was an experience difficult to have at eighteen.
“Goodness, you’ve always been all talk, then and now, haven’t you?”
“Come on, no. Team Leader, since I can’t go home, I have to work like I’m going to die if I don’t want to end up on the streets.”
“Sigh…. How did I end up picking up something like this?”
“It can’t be helped. I’m your brat, Team Leader.”
When I brazenly answered with a smiling face, Team Leader Kim Sohyeon stared at me as if dumbfounded, then smacked me on the back just like yesterday.
Ah, seriously, I think that hurts more than a shot.
“Since you put it that way, I’ll talk to the director. I’ll ask him not to kick you out right away.”
“Thank you!”
“Enough, you. They said there was nothing abnormal in your test results, so let’s discharge you today. Ujin will come pick you up in a bit. Get ready.”
“Yes. I’ll see you later, Team Leader.”
Team Leader Kim Sohyeon picked up her bag as if she were about to leave immediately, then looked down at me for a moment and added in a serious voice.
“Jihwan, nothing has changed. All I can do for you is request that they don’t throw you out right away.”
“I know, Team Leader.”
“You know this evaluation is extremely important, right? And you caused trouble right before that important evaluation.”
“Yes….”
“You may not have gotten into the accident on purpose, but leaving the dorm without permission was clearly your fault.”
“I’ll make sure nothing like this ever happens again.”
“Good. The evaluation results are something you make for yourself, so I won’t say any more. I’m going.”
With that, she left the hospital room. Only then did some of the tension drain out of me, and I took deep breaths in and out to calm myself. Honestly, how much did I really know about the entertainment industry? I only knew a bit about the rumors passed around through the grapevine by the fansite masters I had stanned alongside.
The only weapon I could use was the fact that I remembered all the big and small incidents “Unravel” would go through over the next five years, as well as their schedules. If used well, it could be an incredible help, but there was nothing a mere trainee like me could use right away.
* * *
When I opened my eyes in the morning, Poing said there was somewhere it had to go and that it would be back soon, then disappeared. Seeing as it left without even telling me when it would return… maybe it had run away because it thought I was going to fail.
As expected of a cat punk….
After the team leader left, I was in the middle of loosening up with stretches while groping through my memories. Then my manager hyung came in and gazed at me with a deep, pitying look in his eyes. What is this? It’s scary.
“…I heard everything, Jihwan.”
“Yes…?”
“It’s okay. You can do well. The others will understand too.”
“Uh… well… yes.”
I didn’t know what kind of misunderstanding he was having, but I couldn’t bring myself to say anything. There was nothing I could do except manage my awkward expression and nod.
“Let’s go. The doctor said it should be fine as long as you don’t overdo it.”
“Yes, I’ll take good care of my body from now on too.”
“Good. You just have to do better from now on.”
Since I had no idea where, how, or what he had misunderstood, I had no choice but to go along with whatever he said.
After all, wasn’t he the grateful person who had even brought me a hat and told me to cover my face, saying that although only a few episodes had aired and the ratings were a disaster, I had still been on television?
I laughed and said no one would be interested in me, so no one would recognize me, but he stubbornly pulled the hat down over my head, saying that in this field, you never knew what might happen.
There was no particular conversation on the way to the dorm, so I was given time to organize the things I had to do. He said the others would be at the company practice room right now, and that once they showered and changed clothes, I would have to return to the company too.
“Uh, Jihwan, that’s Sebin’s. Your black T-shirt is next to it.”
Since I hadn’t yet fully made all the memories my own, I got confused about where things were, but fortunately, my manager hyung didn’t say much. It seemed he was used to helping find things that were mixed up even normally.
Honestly, black T-shirts were strewn all over the place, so how was I supposed to tell which one was mine and which belonged to someone else? It was kind of amazing too.
And only after hearing Sebin’s name did it sink in all over again that I was now with the future Unravel. My God. It felt like only the day before yesterday that I’d given him a lemon candy and asked for his autograph.
Ah, well, it really was the day before yesterday. Since that was when I died.
Suddenly realizing just how unlucky I was made me feel like crying.
“Ujin hyung, I’ll stop by the bathroom for a moment.”
“Sure, I’ll be downstairs. Go on. Let’s move quickly.”
Finally alone, I stood in the bathroom and muttered blankly.
“Ha, seriously, is this a dream or reality?”
To think I would end up living under the same roof as the boys who smiled so warmly at fansigns and concerts.
The reason I could go through something so enormous and still not go insane, maintaining a way of thinking close to normal, was because even if this was a different world, I had somehow gained life again, and I had seized an opportunity to stand alongside the Ravel boys as their equal.
Though I wasn’t a Fluffball who had become a fan right at their debut, during my time stanning them, I had poured the entirety of two years into digging through everything about Unravel, from before their debut to just before the concert.
In a life that had been dry and seemed as if it would only keep sinking downward, that had been the one and only means connecting me to the outside world.
When Gyeonghwan, Sebin, Yeongbin, and Hajun cried and laughed, I cried and laughed and shouted too. Those memories were still vivid, and my anticipation for the days we would create together from now on kept swelling endlessly like a balloon.
The distance between Gong Jihwan the Fluffball and Gong Jihwan the trainee.
At that time, I did not know that it would not take long for me to realize it.