At 3:44 a.m., we parked in front of a motel near the broadcasting station. The neat-looking gangster got out of the driver’s seat, opened the back door, then grabbed the sprawled-out producer bastard by the scruff and dumped him in front of the motel. For a gangster bastard, he treated people pretty damn roughly. Why was he being that harsh to a producer who had decided to be my errand boy now? So inflexible. I frowned, then got out of the car.
The producer bastard still had not come to his senses. Guess kindhearted me would have to help him again. I squatted in front of the producer, loose and cocky, grabbed his chin, and slapped his cheeks. After about three hits, focus returned to the producer bastard’s eyes. I straightened the producer’s disheveled clothes and held out my hand to the gangster. He took two fifty-thousand-won bills from his wallet and handed them to me. I put the bills I had received into the producer’s hand.
“Our producer’s face looks awful. How upsetting.”
The producer said in a crawling voice that he was fine. I played dumb, smooth as anything.
“What do you mean, fine? Take this, go into the motel, and get some proper rest.”
“Yes, yes!”
“I like how well you listen. Just in case, I’ll say this now. What happened today is a secret known only to me, that gangster bastard over there, and you, producer. It really won’t be fun if you go around talking about it.”
The pale bastard bobbed his head up and down with passion. I smiled and patted the producer’s shoulder. Then I got up and climbed into the car. Thanks to that filthy producer bastard sitting in it, I could not sit in the back seat, which pissed me off. Soon after, the gangster bastard sat in the driver’s seat and started the car. I clicked my tongue and put on a song. Contrary to the lyrics, which kept begging to be taken to church, the song criticized religions and groups that rejected homosexuality.
It was a song Kang Yejun had often listened to before seawater filled my lungs and killed me. Around the time I died, Kang Yejun had grown noticeably gaunt. The bastard, who said he was leaving the group, drank like alcohol was his entire purpose in life. I pretended not to see it. Whether Kang Yejun quit being an idol because he was crazy for men’s cocks, or got drunk off his ass and became an alcoholic, it was none of my business. Then, the night before Kang Yejun left the dorm, he grabbed me and started drunkenly whining.
—Park Yuha! Is homosexuality a sin? Huh? Are homosexuals mentally ill?! The bastards who say shit like that are the crazy fucking lunatics!
The bastard had come into my room holding a soju bottle and started losing his shit. I thought that since it was his last day, I should at least put up with him, so I got out of bed and shoved him into the living room. The bastard fell flat on the living room floor, laughed like a madman, then cried. Then he shouted and got angry.
—Fuck, is that my fault?! What the hell did I do?! Did I grab some guy who said no and rape him or something?!
—If you drank, then go the fuck to sleep nicely.
—But that keeps grabbing me by the ankle. It’s not my fault. Those sons of bitches were the ones in the wrong! This fucking world… is so goddamn unfair.
—You only figured that out now?
Kang Yejun let out a hollow laugh and staggered to his feet. Then he glared at me and sneered.
—Yeah. The world was always unfair. So you should just accept it too, Park Yuha.
—What the hell are you talking about?
—Just think of it as bad luck and let it go. Don’t die and go around resenting other people for nothing.
Back then, I wondered if that bastard had gotten possessed by a ghost or something. He was drunk, crying, laughing, and spewing bullshit, so of course I was dumbfounded. After I died and came back, I thought that bastard had made that whole damn scene because he had joined hands with the gangster bastard and planned to kill me. Maybe his conscience was pricking him. Maybe he felt guilty about killing someone. But that was not all.
The producer said he had received several instructions from the rich bastard. Push a trainee named Lee Sehan as much as possible. Monitor and report Park Yuha’s actions. And use a Seven Days member to ruin the group. That was the overall outline, and there were even detailed instructions on how to do it. Park Yuhyeon was itching so badly to kill me that he could barely stand it. What made me think, so this bastard really hated me this much, was the fact that he had used Kang Yejun as a chess piece.
When they decided to kill me, they must have used that as leverage to threaten Kang Yejun. Kang Yejun, who did not want that fact exposed to the world, would have cooperated. It was not because of Yoon Jiwoo. Kang Yejun had killed me for “himself.” What a beautifully clear chain of cause and effect. I let a faint smile form and lowered the car window. Pop music rang out across the wide-open road.
The music video for this song had two gay men as its protagonists. The two of them ran and struggled, but in the end, they were caught, exposed in every detail, and met a miserable end.
All people are equal. But people without money are less than people with money. People without power are less than people with power. Ugly people are less than beautiful people. And people who love the same sex are less than people who love the opposite sex.
This absurdity was not made by law, nor was it made by morality. It was made by “people.” Humans always trampled, without any right, on beings they thought were beneath them, and humans were always trampled, without any obligation, by beings regarded as above them. In truth, they were all the same.
The cold dawn wind tousled my hair. I reached my hand out beyond the car window. Then, humming along to the pop song, I flicked my fingers. Kang Yejun had been bullied in middle school for being homosexual. Kang Yejun, a victim of school violence, was afraid. Not of the fact that he had been bullied, but of the fact that he was “homosexual” being exposed. Afraid of once again being trampled by beings regarded as above him.
And Park Yuhyeon was planning to destroy the group with something like this. I looked out the car window and burst out laughing. Seriously, what a funny son of a bitch.
*****
The trainees gathered in the auditorium. The bastards clustered in little groups and murmured among themselves. I was standing there blankly when Kang Yejun came over, pulled me into a corner, and made a fuss by whispering in my ear, “Where did you go yesterday? How could you just leave on your own!” As luck would have it, when I came back to the dorm, I had run into Kang Yejun on his way to the bathroom. Kang Yejun had been half-asleep, then woke up in an instant and tried to scream. Considering my clothes made it obvious at a glance that I had been outside, I guess that made sense.
I was so dead tired that seeing him act like that made me want to kill him. Still, since I was so damn nice, I kindly hit Kang Yejun in the back of the neck, knocked him out, and went to bed. Thanks to my kind act, the dorm had been in an uproar since morning. They asked Kang Yejun why his sleeping habits were so bad, and why the hell he had been sleeping sprawled out on the floor. I ignored them and went to wash up, but I had not expected this bastard to stay this persistent. Fucking annoying son of a bitch. When I pushed Kang Yejun’s face away with my palm and said, “If I tell you, will you go drown yourself in the Han River?” the bastard shook his head violently and said he was not curious at all.
“You’re all wondering why you were gathered here, aren’t you?”
The oil-slick bastard smiled greasily as he spoke.
“Idols need to show a stage, don’t they? Viewers will watch your stages and vote, and only the first through tenth places with the highest number of votes will debut. Each time you present a stage, we plan to select eliminations in groups of fifty, twenty, ten, five, and four.”
“…….”
“And today, we’ll be choosing the songs for your first stage.”
Behind the producer, five flags were set up. Since they were covered in cloth, the words written on the flags could not be seen. The format was that two teams would prepare the same song and compete. If the losing team had one fewer member, making the total number of eliminated trainees forty-nine, then the trainee with the lowest number of votes among the winning team would be eliminated.
The auditorium instantly grew noisy. Of course they would be scared when half of them would fall out after a single stage. The oil-slick bastard glanced at me briefly, smiled in a strange way, then opened his mouth.
“The songs will be selected starting from the trainees with the lowest ranks, and once the number of people for a song is full, a trainee of a higher rank may push out a trainee who is already there and take that spot.”
A C-rank trainee raised his hand.
“Then what happens to the trainee who gets pushed out?”
“They will join a song that still has spots left.”
“What happens within the same rank? An A-rank could push out another A-rank.”
“In that case, it will be decided by rock-paper-scissors.”
How fucking clear. The kids were noisy. The lower-ranked people must be anxious as hell, since all that was left for them was to get shoved out. If teams were formed like this, the odds were high that higher-ranked trainees would cluster together. A song that looked good to me would look good to others too, and a team that seemed likely to succeed to me would seem likely to succeed to others too. It would be better if all five songs were decent, at least.
I checked the five revealed songs and burst out laughing. Exer’s “Growl,” Box’s “Ready to Get Hit,” Vacation Boys’ “Burn It Up,” and Jackpot Gods’ “Nothing.” All four songs were fairly famous, and none of them lacked appeal as idol songs. Even so, there was a different song where the trainees’ gazes stuck. A song that, no matter how you looked at it, seemed destined to collect the bastards who got pushed out. Beside me, Kang Yejun spoke in a hollow voice.
“Muscle Girls’ ‘I’m So Hot’……? Why is only that one a girl group song?”
It was the song the rich bastard had demanded from the producer for Lee Sehan.