Leaving the building, Ha Hyun and I arrived in front of a convenience store three minutes' walk from the company building.
Ha Hyun sat me down at a table set up outside the convenience store and casually asked my opinion.
"Is there a drink you like, by any chance?"
Asking that most likely meant he intended to buy it himself.
"It's fine, you don't have to get me anything."
"You're taking time out for me like this, so it feels too rude to hold you here with nothing......."
No need to feel sorry. I'd set the stage on purpose so he'd hold me here.
If I kept refusing, it seemed the conversation would just go in circles, so I'd better give him some kind of answer.
"Then just get whatever you see. I drink everything."
"Is it really okay if I just get anything?"
"Yeah."
At that, the guy told me to wait a moment and went into the convenience store.
Ha Hyun soon came back out and took two drinks and a bag of potato chips out of the plastic bag in his hand.
What was given to me as my share was an ion drink in a 500ml PET bottle.
He must have agonized over finding something as uncontroversial as possible.
Ha Hyun sat in the chair across from me, tore open the bag of potato chips, and set it in front of me. When I moved it to the middle, he pushed it back to where it had been, so it seemed he had no intention of eating any himself.
"So, what are you going to talk about that you're going to these lengths?"
"Hmm, where should I start with this......."
"Never mind, take your time. I've got plenty of time. I'm unemployed, you see."
For a while, Ha Hyun just picked his words, fiddling with the can of sparkling water he held in both hands.
Meanwhile, I drank my ion drink and waited patiently.
'Ha Hyun was a pretty careful type.'
When reporters who often see celebrities gather to talk, there are times the topic turns to the personalities of the people they've interviewed.
Every time, Ha Hyun was named as the always humble and polite type.
It usually came with the review that his answers were always so textbook-predictable they were boring, but so what? He's a hundred times better than some guy who just floors the accelerator and causes an accident.
"Would you please reconsider quitting?"
"That Cha Min-seong kid or whatever seemed to want me to quit right away."
"I'm sure he doesn't really mean it. Everyone's gotten a lot more sensitive because of something that happened recently. I know it'll sound like an excuse, though."
"What on earth happened?"
Ha Hyun, whose eyes had been darting here and there, hung his head.
"Um, a little before you came, hyung, someone who'd been practicing with us in the debut team—Ji-hyuk-hyung—suddenly quit."
"Did the company kick him out?"
At my question, the guy shook his head.
"He left on his own."
"If he just walked out as he pleased, there'd be a penalty."
"It happened to be when his trainee contract was ending. He also clearly told the company he had no intention of renewing."
Seeing that he'd even dodged any angle where he could be faulted for obvious personal negligence, it must have been an escape he'd had in mind for a while.
"He danced well, he sang well. He really was a hyung who was good at everything. To the point that nobody objected to the staff's decision that Ji-hyuk-hyung should be leader."
"Everyone must have been thrown when someone like that suddenly said he was leaving."
"Yes, everyone was really surprised. According to the team leader, even when they asked him why he was doing this all of a sudden, he kept his mouth shut tight."
Ha Hyun, who had been wearing a bitter smile, went on weakly in a self-mocking tone.
"Maybe because of that. For a little while, there was even a mood in the company of reconsidering the debut plan itself. I guess they wondered if he was doing it because he felt there was a problem with the current debut team."
Not just any trainee, but a guy they'd even marked out as leader had done that, so they must have been frantic to find the cause.
Were the contract terms bad? I don't think Solar Entertainment had problems like that.
Or had some reason come up that would make him suddenly not want to be an idol?
"I get the situation. With the debut team itself wobbling, a total rookie came in as the successor to talent like that, so of course I wouldn't measure up in your eyes."
"I'm sorry......."
I took the can of sparkling water from Ha Hyun, who was breaking into a cold sweat as he explained, popped the tab, and handed it back.
Seeing him grip the can hard enough to crumple it all this time, I couldn't stand how pitiful it was.
"How long are you going to just hold that? Didn't you buy it to drink too?"
"Ah, yes......! I'll drink it quick!"
"Drink it slowly. Gulping down something carbonated will hurt your throat."
"Th-That's true. Then I'll drink it slowly......."
After Ha Hyun slowly took a sip of the cold sparkling water, his expression looked much better than before. It seemed he'd relaxed a little.
"Min-seong-hyung just... I think he acted meaner than he needed to because you look a lot like that hyung, Seol-han-hyung."
"Do I really look that much like this Baek Ji-hyuk person?"
"Yes."
The guy answered with conviction, without a moment's hesitation.
To think I'd even hear this from a member who debuted with him.
One guy slaps on the title of leader and swings his fists at the group's members; the other guy churns out tabloid articles picking only the most provocative words to pump out traffic.
The two lookalikes both lived sh—tty lives, as a pair.
Surely Baek Ji-hyuk and I haven't ended up paying off each other's karma crosswise.
In a way where I become PLUTO's leader and that guy becomes an entertainment reporter.
"When I first met you, hyung, I really thought Ji-hyuk-hyung had come back. But your vibe is completely different from his. So I quickly thought, 'Ah, is it someone else?'"
Sharper than I thought. Somehow, unlike Namgung Hyun, he'd stayed calm right away.
I decided to take the opportunity to throw out a few more questions.
"But in a situation like this, wouldn't it be better to send another trainee up to the debut team rather than an outsider like me?"
"Right now there aren't any trainees in the company who can join the debut team right away. I heard they'd only just connected everyone to other agencies, so it seemed hard to bring them straight back."
With the shape of the debut team set and the next boy group's future unclear, had they sent the eliminated trainees off to other companies early?
There probably weren't many trainees to begin with, so it wouldn't have been very hard. It was treatment that showed some care for the trainees' futures, in its own way.
It's a shame that consideration ended up tripping them up, but it can't be helped. Companies aren't volunteers. The agencies those kids transferred to took them because they saw talent in them, so wouldn't it be a problem to have them snatched away just like that?
"So the team leader said she'd find a new trainee and bring him in, but I guess it didn't go as well as she thought. They say there were quite a few people who got good reviews from the New Talent Development Team but were sent back because the CEO failed them."
And yet she passed me this easily?
I wish the trainers—who couldn't have had any say in this holiday snatch-and-grab pass—good fortune with the task they'll be handed from the new year: the 'Stiff-Robot Rehabilitation Project.'
"Thankfully the debut didn't fall through, so we'd been practicing assuming a four-member lineup for a while, and then you came, hyung. It's a good thing. Five members is great for putting together cool formations. It was also the number we originally had in mind."
"Aren't you nervous? What if I'm a slacker who drags you all down? Practicing half-heartedly, getting irritated every day."
"Ahaha, you don't seem like you would?"
Seeing Ha Hyun's guileless, sheepish smile reminded me of when I went to a PLUTO comeback showcase for a story.
The Ha Hyun on stage smiled happily like a sunflower in full bloom the whole time he answered the reporters' questions.
'We'll work hard so we can keep showing you lots of great stages! Thank you!'
The guy who'd been like that disappeared from the stage in the end without leaving even a trace of lingering attachment.
Just how badly had he been broken during the seven years he'd lived as an idol?
"From now on, if you're ever curious about something, feel free to ask me. Or Hyun will fill you in well, too."
"You're talking as if it's a given that I'll stay at this company."
"...Are you really going to quit?"
Ha Hyun asked carefully, in a tone that sounded very desperate.
The guy had the forlorn eyes a puppy left alone on the roadside on a rainy day might have.
Would coldly saying 'yeah' here make me trash?
It's not like I couldn't, but it seemed I'd achieved my original goal, so let's pretend to reach a reasonable compromise and head back in. Kim Ji-su has to get off work at some point too, doesn't she?
Maybe because the biggest reason I'd been reluctant to join the PLUTO debut team had disappeared, my aversion was also weaker than when I first got the offer.
Planning to head back soon, I tidied up my spot and stood. The potato chips nobody had taken a single bite of seemed a bit of a waste; should I just carry them back to the gosiwon like this?
"Fine, I just won't quit, then. It's not like I have any other company to go to besides here anyway."
"You've never gotten a casting offer from another agency?"
"This is the first."
"Really......?!"
Ha Hyun seemed genuinely surprised.
I had gotten a few offers back in the day, but it was true that this was the first here, so it wasn't a lie.
"In exchange, I'm staying because you asked, so you'd better take my side. If you suddenly side with Cha Min-seong and go 'I knew we should have kicked that hyung out back then,' you'll be the first one I deal with."
"Yes!"
That was a threat, in its own way, but the guy just smiled brightly as if he liked it even more.
Don't smile. I'll get attached.
***
The next day, I decided to move my residence from the gosiwon to the dorm with Kim Ji-su, who came over first thing in the morning.
I didn't know, but my gosiwon move-out date had been set for exactly today. A text suddenly came in before I went to bed, and when I wondered what it was, it was a move-out notice.
I don't know who arranged this, but I could feel malice that intended to give me no path at all other than being an idol.
So I had no choice but to contact Kim Ji-su at the crack of dawn and push the move through quickly.
It was a room with nothing in it to begin with, so everything I was moving fit into one big backpack.
It felt more like going on a trip than moving.
I thought the frayed thin blanket and completely brittle towels might come in handy later if I held onto them, so I tried to pack them, but Kim Ji-su mercilessly snatched them and shoved them into a big waste bag.
Ah, and the suicide note still wouldn't tear.
So I tried throwing the note and the pill bottle out as they were, but when I came back to the room, they were sitting right where they'd been.
Like some kind of cursed doll.
It'd be somewhat awkward if Kim Ji-su found something this ominous, so I put the note and the pill bottle in the backpack's inner pocket ahead of time.
I have no idea what mechanism was at work, but thankfully, putting them in the bag was possible.
Thanks to that, I finished the move-out procedure smoothly and even completed my move-in report, and it was already afternoon.
After a late lunch of a simple home-style set meal, I went into the company building and signed the contract, then moved to the trainee dorm that was supposedly nearby.
"If you kick me out now, I'll really be someone with nowhere to go."
"You're joking, right?"
"I'm serious."
Kim Ji-su quickly shut her mouth.
When she asked whether I'd told my parents, I answered that I didn't have any, and she didn't ask about family after that. Maybe because she had years in the working world, she had a considerate side in her own way.
There was no one inside the dorm, which we reached after about ten minutes' walk from the company building. The other guys seemed to have already clocked in at the practice room in the company basement.
The dorm was an ordinary apartment with three rooms, two bathrooms, and a living room.
Of the three rooms, one seemed to be used as a closet room, with all sorts of clothing hung up inside, packed full.
My guess was that they'd shoved all the clothes into that room to leave more space in the rooms where they slept.
Of the remaining two rooms, the first was in such tidy order that it was hard to believe it belonged to guys, but the second was precariously walking the tightrope between pigsty and human living space.
Just then, a dinosaur plushie that had been hanging perilously from the top of the bunk bed fell to the floor.
My eyes absentmindedly followed the doll's falling trajectory.
And my gaze met the black eyes of the pitifully flung dinosaur.
.......
Putting the discarded doll back up on the top bunk, I asked Kim Ji-su.
"Which should I sleep in, that room or this one?"
"Uh... this one. There's one bed left in this room......."
...Once I check the faces of the guys using this room, if they're pushovers, I'm making them clean first thing.
In this group, though, the only guy who's no pushover seems to be Cha Min-seong.
"Rest for today, and from tomorrow morning you can come into the company with the kids. Ha Hyun or Hyun will tell you the details, so ask them lots of questions to get closer!"
Wasn't Cha Min-seong part of this group's eldest line? I have no idea how lacking in social skills you'd have to be for even company staff to give up and leave it to the younger ones.
After going over even the minor instructions I needed to know for dorm life, Kim Ji-su returned to the company.
Having the title of team leader and still having to take charge of even trivial things like this—I hope that if she gets a chance to change jobs, she succeeds in moving to a bigger company than this one.
Whether because I'd been busy since morning or because I'd had a lot to worry about for two days, I'd gotten pretty tired, but the three-person pigsty I'd be living in from now on had stuff on every bed, leaving no space at all for me to lie down.
Still, tidying up a room without its owners present isn't polite, so in the end I decided to lie on the sofa in the living room instead of a bed.
If Cha Min-seong comes in like this, it'll be quite a sight.
Fighting like that and then running into each other at the dorm the next day.
Thinking such trivial thoughts, I rested my head on the sofa's armrest and quietly closed my eyes.