There was nothing on earth as fucked as being an idol.
Sure, every job in the world was fucked in its own way, but nothing was fucked quite like this. It wasn’t even funny. Idol drug scandals, sexual assault scandals, drunk-driving scandals—those happened often enough.
But an idol murder case?
I was probably the first.
The drum barrel was so cramped I thought I might die before they even finished killing me. There was a faint smell of the sea in the air. From the looks of it, they planned to dump me straight into the water.
My hands and ankles were tied with rope, and my mouth was sealed with duct tape. Breathing was hard. My vision was pitch-black.
Even so, I didn’t particularly want to live.
I hadn’t even resisted when they first caught me. That didn’t stop those gangster bastards from beating the shit out of me anyway. Now all I wanted was for this to end as quickly as possible.
I could hear the gangsters snickering.
“That bastard’s an idol, right?”
“Name’s Park Yuha?”
“Isn’t he pretty famous?”
“That bastard, famous? He just lucked into good members and rode their coattails.”
Listening to them, I smiled crookedly.
Get your facts straight.
Good members, my ass.
If I’d met such great people, would I be in this state right now?
Our members were all insane in their own special ways. There were only four of us in the group, so how the hell had we managed to collect that much drama?
The guy who’d been our leader was my age and my high school classmate. The bastard came from money, too, but one day he got swept up in some stupid fantasy and threw a fit about becoming an idol. His reason was obvious. I was his only friend, and if I became a trainee, he’d be bored alone—so he tagged along.
The joke was, he was better than me at both singing and dancing.
Then, out of nowhere, he said he had to return to where he belonged, threw the idol life away, and left to study abroad.
In a group that already had nothing going for it, he was the only one with any real popularity. When he suddenly dropped that bomb, our group went from fucked to royally fucked. The few fans we had lost their minds, and the agency went into chaos too, but his family was so powerful that no one dared touch him.
After he left, he cut ties with me as well.
I didn’t even want to see that bastard’s face.
What he asked me at the end was disgusting too.
Why aren’t you stopping me?
He actually said that shit. The others cried and raged and begged him not to go, asking how he could do this to them, making a whole damn scene.
I just stayed quiet.
If he wanted to leave, what was I supposed to do about it?
Or to put it another way, I couldn’t be bothered.
And if I was being more honest, I didn’t care whether that bastard left or not.
He was like that too, but I had no interest in other people. I was missing a few emotions.
I had anger, sadness, happiness, all of that. But at the moments when those emotions were supposed to matter most, there was nothing. I did have affection for people. But at the moments when affection should have mattered, that disappeared too.
Maybe that was why my nickname in school had been Psychopath.
I had another one too: Park Chameleon.
My personality changed depending on the situation and the person in front of me. I had a talent for tailoring myself.
I could act cheerful, then fall silent. I could approach someone lightly, then draw a firm line. One look at a person, and I instinctively knew how I ought to behave with them. It wasn’t as if I made a conscious effort to perform.
That was just the kind of bastard I was.
Of course, there were times when I did it deliberately.
If I was going to be an idol, I at least needed to seem consistent. So I made a decision.
Don’t get involved in other people’s business.
Don’t associate with celebrities.
Keep a reasonable distance from the members too.
This industry was filthy enough that one wrong association could send you straight to hell.
Maybe that was why I’d never dreamed my members were losing their minds in such spectacular fashion.
“Hey, you bastard! Wake up!”
The lid opened, and sea wind rushed in.
A gangster bastard shoved his face into view. The grin on his mug looked disgustingly cheerful.
What was so great that he kept smiling like that?
Did killing people make him that happy?
That fucker was the psychopath, not me.
The gangster bastard ripped the duct tape off my mouth with brutal force. My lips stung. When I grimaced, he stuck a cigarette between them. He even lit it for me.
The way he acted like he was doing me a favor was repulsive.
My hands were tied, so all I could do was draw on the cigarette. Maybe he was drunk on the predawn mood, or maybe he was just that kind of bastard, but he started talking all by himself.
“Man, you’ve had one rough life. What the hell did you do to make the boss go this far?”
“……”
“You said you were in the same group, right? Don’t tell me you messed with the boss’s sidepiece.”
I just dragged smoke into my mouth.
The crazy bastard even talked like shit.
As if I’d be insane enough to touch Kang Yejun.
That bastard and I had never been compatible from the start. He was the kind of person who lived drunk on his own greatness. And he loved dressing himself up, too. When fans called him cute and pretty, I should have slapped him across the face. I should have beaten some sense into him.
Maybe then he wouldn’t have thought about crawling into bed with that fucking “boss.”
That lunatic Kang Yejun was one spectacular gay bastard. Apparently, there wasn’t a gay man alive who hadn’t had a turn at his hole.
Then he ended up sleeping with the gangster bastard they called Boss, even taking sponsorship from him.
I’d seen that gangster before, briefly. He’d once come to the dorm to pick up Kang Yejun. I’d spotted him on my way out to exercise. Some rough-looking bastard was prowling around near the dorm, so I immediately pulled out my phone.
I was calling 112 and giving them his description when that bastard came over in one stride and smashed my phone.
That was when I realized he really was a gangster.
I smiled smoothly, brushed off his shoulder, and said,
“Boss, you’ve got sharp ears.”
“What, you fucker? Want me to kill you right now?”
“Of course not! My mistake! Have a wonderful day!”
I was about to run when a familiar voice called out to the gangster bastard.
That was when I learned for the first time that my shitty roommate was the kind of bastard who called a man “brooo” in the most revolting voice imaginable.
I stared blankly, wondering what the hell I was looking at, and Kang Yejun frowned.
Then he looked at the gangster bastard, melted into a smile, and said lightly, “Don’t mind him. He’s one of my older members, the one I told you about.”
At that, the gangster bastard looked at me with those nasty eyes.
I understood the situation immediately.
So that bastard was the gangster sponsor.
He was younger than I’d expected. At most, he looked two or three years older than me. His face and body were pretty decent too. I’d expected some potbellied old man.
What a shame.
When I clicked my tongue in disappointment, Kang Yejun glared at me. I mouthed, What are you looking at, asshole? and smiled sweetly.
Honestly, that gangster bastard was wasted on Kang Yejun. He looked like he’d be pretty good in bed, too. I’d hoped Kang Yejun would get tangled up with some real freak and suffer properly for it, so this was deeply disappointing.
I gave the gangster bastard a half-assed greeting and left.
Back then, I hadn’t known.
I’d never imagined those two would actually fall for each other so hard that Kang Yejun would announce he was quitting idol life too. I figured they’d fuck a few times and be done with it.
Instead, they went and fell in love.
And I became the offering.
More precisely, I became the scapegoat for our youngest—the bastard who’d set off the nuclear bomb.
That rotten bastard and Kang Yejun were best friends, and since both of them hated me to death, I ended up taking the fall for the crime our youngest had committed.
Thanks to that, I was dying today.
They had already written my suicide note too, under the scenario that I’d killed myself because I couldn’t bear the guilt.
What kind of bastard writes a suicide note on a computer?
And for people trying to disguise this as suicide, drowning me in the sea was sloppy as hell.
Maybe they were confident they could package it however they wanted. Maybe there were several powerful bastards involved. It might not have been just the gangster and Kang Yejun plotting this together.
As that thought crossed my mind, the gangsters shouted, “Boss!”
So the fucking gangster boss had finally arrived.
He came straight over to me, took the cigarette from my mouth, and put it between his own lips.
“So? How does it feel, knowing you’re about to die?”
“How about you? How does it feel, knowing you’re about to kill someone?”
“Fantastic.”
The crazy bastard smiled brightly.
“Guess you don’t want to live.”
“Of course I do.”
“And yet you don’t resist. You don’t beg. Nothing.”
“Would you let me live if I did?”
“No.”
At the gangster bastard’s firm answer, I simply smiled innocently.
“Park Yuha. This is exactly what I hate about you.”
I had heard that more times than I could count.
I’d heard endless variations of it.
I hate you.
Go die.
You fucking bastard.
I can’t stand you.
You’re disgusting.
But hearing it from this bastard was ridiculous.
How many times had he even met me? How many conversations had we had for him to hate me?
And I hated him right back.
I hated him from the dandruff on his scalp to the grime under his toenails.
I didn’t feel much about dying.
What disgusted me was the fact that I couldn’t beat that bastard to death right now. The fact that I couldn’t do as I pleased. The fact that my own will meant less than shit in this situation made nausea rise in my throat.
Whether I died or not didn’t matter.
But being restrained pissed me off.
I’d never been in a situation like this before, so in a way, it was fresh. But it felt fucking filthy. If I’d known it would feel like this, I wouldn’t have let them take me so easily.
“That attitude of yours, like everyone else is beneath you. It’s fucking disgusting.”
“Yes, yes. So when are you going to kill me?”
“You son of a bitch. I’ll kill you right now.”
He smiled radiantly and kicked the drum barrel.
The barrel, which had been barely balanced on the edge, dropped into the sea with me inside it.
That dog.
That fucking bastard.
That filthy son of a bitch.
Someday, I would kill him for real.
Whether in the afterlife or in the next life, I would kill that bastard with my own hands.
My body slipped free of the barrel.
The large stone tied to my ankles dragged me slowly downward.
The sea was cold.
So cold, and so dark.
I thought that maybe I really did have something wrong with me mentally.
At the moment of death, I felt nothing.
It was a relief not having to dress up my emotions out of habit.
My breath choked off, my mind went white, and all those scattered thoughts disappeared.
Yes.
The bubbles spilling from my lips were so beautiful.