After we got back to the dorm, Cha Min-seong, reading down what was coming up in the debut team group chat, asked.
"Looks like nobody knows today's your birthday."
"What's the big deal. Just in case, I'm telling you now: don't tell the kids either. It'll get annoying."
"Got it."
The guys, each enjoying their break, had sent a flood of scenery and food photos to the group chat.
[Solar Seo Seo-jun (PLUTO debut team): I'm eating meat today! (photo)]
[Solar Ha Hyun (PLUTO debut team): Looks delicious~ There's a weigh-in after the holiday, so let's not eat too much haha]
[Solar Seo Seo-jun (PLUTO debut team): Yes sir!!]
[Solar Namgung Hyun (PLUTO debut team): Look at this, a Yeon-gyu I met on the street (photo)]
[Solar Go Yeon-gyu (PLUTO debut team): Don't send weird stuff]
[Solar Namgung Hyun (PLUTO debut team): Yeon-gyu coming over when I call him (photo)]
[Solar Namgung Hyun (PLUTO debut team): Yeon-gyu eating the cat food the convenience store owner gave him (photo)]
[Solar Namgung Hyun (PLUTO debut team): Yeon-gyu flopping over when I pet his fur (photo)]
From this message on, one fewer person was reading; Go Yeon-gyu must have finally lost patience and turned off the chat notifications altogether.
Having given my brain some fresh air with the movie, I steeled myself and went back to the dining table and was having a staring contest with the paper when Cha Min-seong suddenly sat down in the chair across from me.
"What."
"There's something I want to ask."
"You're showing me a lot of interest today."
Even though he was the one who'd come over saying he had business, Cha Min-seong kept silent for quite a long time before heavily opening his mouth.
"Are you really not acquainted with Baek Ji-hyuk?"
So that's what he was going on about.
Filling the paper with my ballpoint pen, I answered offhandedly.
"We don't know each other at all."
"Really don't know him?"
"I said I don't."
"By any chance, are your parents' names......."
"Hey, Cha Min-seong."
When I stopped writing and raised my head, a faint bewilderment flickered briefly across Cha Min-seong's face.
"When a person's said this much, you should know when to stop. Or what, are you not hearing a word I say?"
"I can hear fine."
Do you think what I said earlier was asking you to report your hearing test results? This bastard's way of thinking really is mind-boggling.
"Is this because it still galls you that I got into the debut team right away? Are you that suspicious of where the parachute came from?"
"It's not that."
Cha Min-seong, who had lowered his gaze to the table and been lost in thought for a moment, spoke in a quiet voice.
"You two have the same birthday. So I asked in case you might be twins. If it offended you, I'll apologize."
Baek Ji-hyuk has the same birthday as me?
Was it that day originally, or is it one of the things that changed when I came to the past?
I'd never cared enough to memorize that guy's birthday, so I don't know which is the right answer.
"He's a Baek and I'm a Pyeong to begin with, so how could we be family?"
"You could have been born twins and adopted into different families."
"Did his parents say they adopted him?"
"No. They're his biological parents."
"So they only sent me off for adoption?"
"I'm saying there's a possibility."
This is so absurd I can't even laugh.
"Go write a novel, why don't you."
"If not, that's fine."
His business was done, so I figured he'd go now, but Cha Min-seong was still holding his seat.
"What, you've still got something to say?"
"Anything I can help with?"
"...Did you eat something bad today?"
"The only thing I ate today was a vegetable bibimbap that looked a lot like food waste."
That's the clear-out-the-fridge bibimbap I made you for lunch, you punk.
Cha Min-seong, who had been staring blankly at what was written on the paper I'd been wrestling with, opened his mouth again.
"The group name is PLUTO and the concept fits well too, so wouldn't it be good to name the first album after something related to Pluto?"
"I'm a layman in that area, so does anything come to mind?"
"How about this."
Cha Min-seong wrote a short word on the paper.
@Planet X
"What's this?"
"The name of a hypothetical planet people came up with when they found discrepancies in the orbital motion of Uranus and Neptune and hypothesized that another planet affecting their orbits might exist beyond Neptune."
"What does that have to do with Pluto?"
"Because Pluto was discovered while research to find that Planet X was underway."
I don't think I've ever seen Cha Min-seong talk this much before today.
There's a famous saying that people who deeply love something suddenly get carried away and talk at length when their favorite topic comes up.
Maybe Cha Min-seong is in that state right now.
"When it was discovered, people said Pluto might be that Planet X, but as it came out that Pluto wasn't a body big enough to affect Neptune's orbit, Planet X and Pluto became separate things."
"That's too bad."
"And Pluto, discovered that way, became the ninth planet of the solar system. It lost its status as a planet when it was reclassified as a dwarf planet in 2006, though."
That did happen.
So there was a time when the order of the planets was taught as 'Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto.'
Cha Min-seong, who had been studying my face for a moment, let out a short remark.
"You listen well."
"All of a sudden?"
"Normally at this point people say it's boring and let's talk about something else."
Of course they would. I wasn't exactly enthralled either.
But he looked excited for once, so there's no need to throw cold water on it, is there?
"And you don't say much from your side."
"I have to know something if I want to say anything."
"Then you could bring up another topic. Something you know well."
"Do I have to? I was listening pretty well, in my own way."
"Until now I thought you were someone who hated talking about himself. So I thought you just listened to the kids talk."
Cha Min-seong stared at me intently, as if trying to figure me out, then slowly blinked.
"But now that I see it, I think it's a little different from that."
"Then what do you think it is?"
"Maybe you're just someone who likes listening to other people's stories."
...Isn't it just that I spent so long listening to people talk and writing it down that it became second nature?
"I see why the kids follow you so well. People like someone who lends an ear to what they say."
"Well, it didn't feel like they followed me in particular."
"Hyun. He used polite speech with Ji-hyuk."
Didn't that guy use banmal with me from the start? Don't tell me he sized me up and figured he could take liberties?
"The other kids always worried about Ji-hyuk's mood too. To the point of tensing up immediately over getting a single move wrong during group practice. But they're not like that with you. They talk to you freely every day and hang out with you."
The current PLUTO guys had a stronger atmosphere of valuing harmony, shrugging it off whether someone got something wrong in group practice or not, but back when Baek Ji-hyuk was here, it was like that?
I can see why the old PLUTO became such a blatantly vertical structure.
Baek Ji-hyuk had already whipped the group into line from their trainee days, so after Baek Ji-hyuk hit it big, it must have gone to a point where it was out of anyone's hands.
I'm sure the exposé article had something like that in it too.......
.......
That's strange.
Why can't I recall the details of the article?
Of all the articles related to PLUTO, that must have been the one I read most diligently, yet all I can remember now is that such an article came out, that the members were at the core of the exposé, and that the evidence included in the article clearly proved Baek Ji-hyuk's wrongdoing.
However much I racked my brain, I couldn't recall in detail what testimony each member gave or what evidence they presented.
I remember other information just fine, but not this?
Something erased my memory of just this, on purpose.
...This sh—tty bastard.
'Hey, come out here right now.'
Then, as if it understood my words, a square hallucination resembling an internet window rose before my eyes.
The words in the tabs sitting above the blank white body area entered my view.
[Feature] ｜ [Breaking] ｜ [Exclusive]
[Feature] would be the idol experience thing, and [Breaking] would be that sh—tty article that throws a fit saying I'll croak if I don't do as I'm told.
When I kept staring at the [Exclusive] part, a word I was seeing for the first time, letters rose up on the empty body area.
[Exclusive] Baek Ji-hyuk Verbally and Physically Abused Group Members for Years... "A Seven-Year Record"
🔒 [ Viewing condition: upon completion of the [Feature ④] installment ]
🔒 [ - ]
🔒 [ - ]
🔒 [ - ]
🔒 [ - ]
It was the title of that exposé article I'd read.
What are all those locks? And what's this nonsense about a viewing condition?
Don't tell me... it wants me to remember the contents of that article again.
Then why erase the memory? In the first place, is there any need for me to go out of my way to remember the backstory of some playhouse group that fell apart fighting among themselves?
...Wait, could there be other memories erased besides this one? My head feels like it's splitting
My name, date of birth, phone number, my alma mater's name, the orphanage director's phone number... ah, I can't remember this one either. My head■ feels like it'■ splitt■ Though this one's probably just because I've had it saved on speed dial for so long.
My home passcode, 142857, my head■ feel■ ■■ it's ■■ the name of the senior who sat at the desk next to mine at the company was.......
"...Pyeong Seol-han!"
When I came to my senses at the feeling of someone gripping me hard, Cha Min-seong had come right up beside me at some point and was holding my shoulder with one hand.
With his other hand, the guy pulled several tissues from nearby, held them under my nose, and made me bow my head.
"What's wrong all of a sudden? Are you sick?"
...Right, my head feels like it's splitting.
I have to find something else to think about.
If I think any deeper about this problem right now, I might really lose my mind. I have that premonition.
"Cha Min-seong, let me ask you something."
Instead of answering, Cha Min-seong just gazed at me quietly, as if waiting for what I'd say next.
"Do aliens really exist?"
"There have been cases of finding traces suggesting that an environment where life could live may have formed on certain planets, but no decisive evidence that could confirm whether extraterrestrial life exists has ever been found."
"Do you think doppelgängers exist?"
"I don't know much about the psychic phenomenon by that name, but there's a study that closely examined the DNA of people who look extremely alike but have no direct biological relation, and found they shared a number of genetic similarities. If you really have no relation to Ji-hyuk, maybe it's a situation like that."
"And what do you think about why I'm suddenly asking this kind of thing?"
"To my eyes, it looks like an attempt to find psychological stability to quiet an anxiety that hit you suddenly, but I'm not sure. I don't know much about that field, so don't trust what I say too much."
"You're sitting there answering every single piece of this bullshit? Do you have time to spare?"
"Didn't you ask because you wanted me to answer?"
Taking his hand off my shoulder, Cha Min-seong asked in a flat tone.
"Want to go to the hospital? There's a place nearby that runs an ER."
The headache had eased a little compared to before, but it wasn't gone.
I have to turn my thoughts further away.
When I lowered my eyes and glanced at the tissue plugging my nose, dark red blood was soaking through deeper and deeper.
I made Cha Min-seong let go of the tissue, held it myself, and pressed the side of my nose as I spoke.
"No, just keep talking like this."
"Are you really okay not going to the hospital?"
"I said I'm fine."
"...Got it."
Leaving my side and sitting back in the chair across from me, Cha Min-seong slowly moved his pen over the paper.
"Then let's finish what we were talking about earlier. About the album name."
"Yeah."
"After that, coming up with ideas to put in the music video. You said you had to think about that before the holiday ends too."
"I did."
"If there's still time after deciding all that, let's also talk about your practice direction going forward. You need to improve your skills faster than the other kids."
"Suit yourself."
Cha Min-seong didn't ask anything else and focused solely on the conversation to finish the homework the CEO had assigned.
The nosebleed gradually lessened and stopped completely.
And by the time we finished talking and I lay down to sleep, strangely enough, my head no longer hurt.