The instrumental began. Low music spread beneath the silence, and I closed my eyes. When Cha Seokhyeon was still a snot-nosed kid, he was obsessed with anime. Out of all of them, he was deranged over Full Moon Angel, and one time, his older brother beat the hell out of him for it. Apparently, he’d made a fuss about what kind of man watched that crap. I went straight to Cha Seokhyeon’s older brother. Then I locked him in a room, tied him to a chair, and forced him to watch Full Moon Angel nonstop.
In the end, his brother had sobbed, “It’s fucking moving, so please untie me already.”
It was probably from that day on that Cha Seokhyeon started following me around like a damn dog. Because of that, I ended up memorizing all the OSTs from Full Moon Angel, the show Cha Seokhyeon watched like some kind of cultist.
I tapped my foot and parted my lips. A low, calm baritone rang out. As I sang, I lowered my gaze.
I thought they would cut it off after the first verse, but the song didn’t stop. I let the instrumental play comfortably and lowered the microphone.
Cha Seokhyeon was one sentimental bastard. To think he liked a song with lyrics like this that much. If that bastard had gone just a little more insane, he might have screamed, “H, my darling!”
Imagining that was fucking hilarious. I wiped away the faint smile on my face and lifted the microphone. After singing through the end of the second verse, I lowered it.
The oil-slick bastard’s stunned face was worth seeing. Kang Yejun, maybe because his attention-whore disease had flared up, muttered, “Holy shit…” while still wearing his microphone.
I had sung “Eternal Snowman” at the festival in my second year of high school. I’d thrown one of the guys I hung around with into the cross-dressing contest, and in exchange, I was supposed to sing. All I had to do was let that bastard suffer by himself, but being too damn kind, I had tossed a razor at the guy, who had no shortage of leg hair or chest, and said, “You put on a skirt and make an ass of yourself, and I’ll sing. That works, right?” Leg hair was funny enough to laugh at when a bastard was cross-dressing, but chest hair was kind of disgusting.
The guy had taken the razor like he was choking down medicine, and the rest of us had snickered. We planned to film that muscle-pig bastard dancing in drag and milk it for the rest of his life. I’d gotten along pretty well with the guys I hung out with back then. Every single one of them was defective goods: illegitimate children, children of illegitimate children, or kids their families had thrown away. No matter where you went, flawed humans always knew how to be entertaining.
Cha Seokhyeon, who had been standing there blankly, asked me,
“Are you really going to sing?”
“Yeah.”
“Then sing a Full Moon Angel OST.”
Cha Seokhyeon’s defect was that he was a moron. The guys around us doubled over laughing. Then they said to Cha Seokhyeon, “That idiot bastard is doing idiot shit again.” I irritably undid the top button of my shirt and looked at the guy. His laughter stopped cold.
“What, asshole?”
“No… I was talking to Cha Seokhyeon….”
“Who doesn’t know Cha Seokhyeon is an idiot?”
I smiled broadly and said, friendly as could be,
“Why is Full Moon Angel idiot shit?”
“…….”
“You worthless little bastard. Who are you to call Full Moon Angel idiot shit? Want me to turn you into a real idiot? Why are you talking shit about a perfectly good masterpiece?”
“…Sorry. I misspoke.”
You knew, I knew, everyone knew Cha Seokhyeon was an idiot. But putting Full Moon Angel on the same level as that idiot Cha Seokhyeon? No. Full Moon Angel was incomparable to a moron like Cha Seokhyeon. That bastard didn’t know his place and still ran his mouth. I always got pissed when I saw bastards like that. It was pathetic when someone didn’t know their place, crossed the line too far, and started acting up.
I looked at the bastards who had frozen stiff, then left the classroom. Cha Seokhyeon followed after me and said another idiotic thing: “Yuha, can’t you sing ‘Eternal Snowman’?” I nodded half-heartedly. The only songs I had memorized the lyrics to were Full Moon Angel OSTs anyway, because Cha Seokhyeon was so deranged over them.
The funny thing was, I got cast by my current agency after singing that song back then. Kang Yejun and Yoon Jiwoo apparently didn’t know a damn thing about that. Well, I’d started rolling this stiff body around for dance practice as soon as I became a trainee, so if they knew, that would mean they were overflowing with fucking affection for me. On top of that, not a single idol song suited me. When I had to sing while dancing, it got to a point no one could watch with their eyes open. In the end, my parts were buried under machine effects. It was fucking convenient.
“Park Yuha, what the hell was that earlier?!”
Kang Yejun whispered from the seat beside me. Unfortunately, this time he spoke with his microphone off. He kept shoving his face toward me, apparently looking for the microphone attached to me. I pushed Kang Yejun’s face away and said, I came late, so I don’t have a microphone on, dumbass. Kang Yejun huffed, “Then just say that! Did you have to shove my face away like that and make me feel shitty?!”
Kang Yejun was the problem. Even when I tried not to stand out, he kept doing attention-whore shit, so every camera was filming this way. Whatever. They could edit it all out. Fuck. I smiled crookedly and slouched in my chair.
Yoon Jiwoo received a B-rank, and Kang Yejun and I received C-ranks. With my dancing skills, I could have easily gotten an F-rank. The oil-slick bastard said he saw high potential for improvement, but there was no such thing as potential for improvement in my dancing. There was only the difference between an easy dance and a hard dance. Mine was not a body capable of anything like “improvement.”
There was no way the oil-slick bastard didn’t know that, and yet he gave me C-rank. Looking down at the stage, I spoke in an even voice.
“Kang Yejun. Did I deserve C-rank?”
“Absolutely not if they only looked at your dancing.”
“Right?”
After a pause, Kang Yejun said,
“You sang well, so. …But why the hell did you sing an anime OST?! It would’ve been better if you’d sung a ballad! No, before that, why were you such a disaster when you sang our group’s songs? Huh?!”
“Did that judge eat shit?”
“What are you talking about?!”
“He keeps looking over here.”
The oil-slick bastard kept glancing this way while pretending not to. Kang Yejun’s face hardened, and then he frowned as if troubled. Then he spoke in a tiny voice only I could hear. Park Yuha, weren’t you the one who did something crazy to that senior? Did you ignore his greeting or something?
“That senior looked like he fucking hates you, Park Yuha. The way he kept questioning you earlier was already like that, but you should’ve answered properly too.”
“I answered him very meekly.”
“Yeah, sure, that was it! You were so fucking meek that you pissed that senior off…!”
Kang Yejun launched into a seizure without even taking a breath. Didn’t that bastard actually have some kind of disease? Since I had no need to hear more, I covered his mouth and nose with my palm. I let go right before Kang Yejun’s eyes rolled back. Kang Yejun spat curses about me being a lunatic and all that, but when I looked at him, he immediately shut his mouth.
I picked up the microphone and stared at the bastard judging us. So he had acted like a prick because he hated me. What a soft bastard. The fact that that was his idea of acting like a prick was fucking hilarious. I thought the entertainment industry was only full of boring bastards, but I guess there were guys like him too. When I smiled in a good mood, Kang Yejun trembled beside me and said I was creepy. What a fucking drama queen.
*****
The trainee evaluations ended. They told all the trainees to gather in the waiting room. I sent Kang Yejun and Yoon Jiwoo ahead, saying I would go after getting my long padded coat from the staff.
I put on the coat and shoved my hands into its pockets. Then I looked around the empty studio. There weren’t many trainees who stood out. Five or so? The sponsored bastard was probably among them. That rich conglomerate bastard wouldn’t have sponsored just anyone. Even among the five, there was one who caught my eye. A bastard who made me wonder why he hadn’t debuted yet.
I walked down the hall and entered the bathroom. Lucky me. The oil-slick bastard was there. This guy definitely hated me. Maybe because there were no cameras, he’d thrown managing his expression out the window; the second he saw me, he made a face like he’d bitten into shit. I went closer and greeted him politely.
“Hello, senior.”
“You ignored me last time, and now you’re greeting me. Do you even know my name?”
“What is your name?”
“Ha! This bastard is unbelievable.”
He tapped my shoulder with his index finger.
“You think your senior looks like a joke because you can sing a little? Or what? Do you have someone backing you? Got a sponsor or something, huh?”
“Do you not have a sponsor, senior? Should I introduce you to one?”
“What? What the hell is this crazy bastard saying—”
“Do you prefer women or men?”
His mouth snapped shut, and he lowered the hand that had been shoving my shoulder. Then he got angry, asking why I was asking when I already knew, and whether I was mocking him for being gay.
I asked out of respect, so why was he getting mad again? Like Park Yuhyeon, these guys were impossible to understand. Still, I wanted to get along with him, so I should leave a good impression. I smiled innocently.
“You look like you have a damn solid cock.”
“Wh… what?!”
“And your hole looks nice and tight.”
I had no idea whether this bastard preferred getting fucked or doing the fucking, so I complimented him however I could. Maybe it was his first time hearing a compliment like this too, because his face turned bright red. He was practically dying of joy. I smiled brightly and drove the nail in.
“Whichever way you look at it, you’re one killer gay.”
“You fucking bastard…!”
“Do you like cursing when you get excited in bed?”
There were always bastards like that. The kind who got worked up during sex and started spewing every curse there was. This oil-slick senior seemed to be that type too. He must have fucking loved my compliments, because he was cursing at me in excitement. I walked past the oil-slick bastard, who kept saying something, and went to the sink. I scrubbed my hands hard, pulled out a tissue, and dried them. It had felt fucking nasty that they’d touched Kang Yejun’s face.
The oil-slick senior was still trembling by then. Was he the type whose excitement lasted a long time? I politely greeted the stiff oil-slick bastard. Then I started to leave, paused, and said,
“You know it’s only fun up to the point where it stays fun, right?”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“It’s fun right now. But if you act up any more, it won’t be fun. Let’s keep it moderate, okay?”
I had phrased my request for him to cooperate and help me stay as unnoticed as possible in the nicest way I could. I had no idea whether the oil-slick bastard understood. His twisted face was pretty cute, like a baby bird frozen stiff in front of a hunter. I smiled playfully and stepped out into the hall.
Judging by how he wasn’t coming out, it looked like he was planning to take a massive shit once I left. Since I was so quick on the uptake, I had to give him space. Seriously, how could I be quick-witted, good at compliments, and have such a nice personality too? I was even paying attention to a guy who hated me and trying to get along with him. I had no fucking idea why Park Yuhyeon hated someone like me.