Humans, surprisingly, were often more fragile in the mind than in the body. People yielding before merciless violence was common enough, but once a person collapsed mentally, most never recovered and rolled all the way down to the bottom. And there were plenty who made a craft of exploiting exactly that. If Lee Hajin belonged anywhere, it would have been among that sort.
He had no intention of making excuses.
All those countless ones who had clung at his feet were obviously different people, but they all wore the same face; on some days, he even found it tedious.
To put it plainly, the scritch, scritch way of gnawing at a mind was very simple. All you had to do was keep prodding the spot right when it was about to fade from memory. And loan-sharking made use of that from every angle. First came texts, then calls, then showing up at the house or the workplace, or going to a relative or an acquaintance. Put that simply, it might sound like nothing, but the reality was far from it.
“How good is the world these days—how is that still even possible?”
People who didn’t know any better would blather that excessive collection pressure was grounds for a lawsuit, and act like illegal loan-sharking had been stamped out, but as if. The saying that big crime always stands above the law wasn’t a fantasy. Among the large outfits, there were almost none who weren’t holding hands with the police or someone higher up the chain. They soiled proverbs about “mutual aid” while they snickered together—and that world wasn’t far away at all.
On the surface, the dunning applied to ordinary customers was phone calls, mailed notices, and door-to-door demands; if that failed, most cases moved to legal seizure of wages or property. But go a little deeper, to those who had used abnormal channels for their loans, and the method itself changed.
Dozens of calls and texts chiming every day. Mail plastered on the front door for show had already taken on a malicious edge. In the process of poking the people around them one by one, spreading talk, slowly isolating them, he had watched more people than he could count crumble under layered anxiety and panic. And when they were driven to the end and finally shrieked that they’d go to the police, what flew back was laughter and a voice dripping with mockery.
“—The police? The po-leece~? Wow, I almost pissed myself there. Ha! Hey, you piece of shit, think for once, huh? You think you getting to the cops is faster, or us cutting your kid’s throat right now and harvesting organs to recoup the principal is faster? You dumb fuck, spouting ‘police’ like you know where you are…. If you vanished right this second, who would even care? Your family? Your wife? Your brats? Heh—moron. Best case, they say you ran off over your debts and give up on you inside half a year—I’ll stake my wrist on it. Why, you think not? You think you’re the first of your kind we’ve seen?”
Almost no one could answer back to that uninterrupted torrent of black words. You felt it on your skin—that sense of reality. And then came that face, the one that resembled despair.
The expression when they realized there was no exit and went hollow.
Disgusting as it was, there were plenty of trash who grinned and said they did this just to see that desperate look on a debtor’s face. “Doesn’t it feel like driving rats into a corner,” they’d chuckle among themselves; Lee Hajin had been watching that since he was very young, before he even drew lines between good and evil, learning what pitch-black malice was. He didn’t bother opening his mouth. Even if he did, nothing would change.
Still, the bad taste in his mouth didn’t change; when his cold-faced father told him to take over the finance arm the organization was running, Hajin, unlike himself, hesitated a little. The savage eyes crinkled, puzzled and displeased by a son who had never once talked back, and only then did he lower his head and say, Understood.
“……Hey?”
The voice was cautious.
Rajoon’s eyes drooped as he looked over, worried at the sight of him wordlessly sunk in thought after pulling out a phone he hardly ever carried—worried he’d gotten lost in his head. It was funny, like a puppy watching its owner’s face, but he didn’t show it.
He slid the phone—its screen now gone black—back into his pocket and shook his head as if it were nothing. Hah. Nothing, sure. Watching Rajoon relax and turn away, Sihyeon bit down, silent. The dog-of-a-premonition creeping back up his spine wasn’t wrong. His fingertips tapped his knee by habit. Tap. Tap.
Someone had dug up a number he hadn’t given to anyone, slapped a deadline on it to manufacture kiddie-level fear, and sent it; it was nine parts out of ten a dunning text. More would come tomorrow—no doubt. D-6, D-5, and after that, the calls would start. Sihyeon quietly began to count dates. It was coming up on two months since the accident, since he’d opened his eyes in this changed body.
“Everything, including the arrears.”
Did that mean last month’s too?
No—was this even actually a loan-shark dunning text? If so, just how much of a wreck was Lee Sihyeon’s current finances? As far as he knew, Lee Sihyeon wasn’t the extravagant type. If anything, he leaned frugal—frugal enough that people said he was crazy about money. And if the footage from his dreams was all true, the money he took for selling his body to a sponsor wouldn’t have been small either. Was Ahyeon’s hospital bill so astronomical that even that money had come up short and pushed him to loan-sharks? However he turned it over, it didn’t look that way.
Slammed by the sudden, concrete problem, Sihyeon shut his eyes against the headache.
He needed to assess Lee Sihyeon’s financial state right now, but there were too many obstacles to digging it out himself.
He did have the number of a rock-solid errand office that could find things without a mouse or a bird knowing, but he didn’t have the cash to pay up front. It was personal-data work, so he roughly tallied how the price would jump—and, for the first time in his life, Sihyeon got to experience the suffocation of having no money. Until now he’d always been with the members and the manager, staying in the dorm, with no real need to spend—and so hadn’t noticed the inconvenience. Different situation, different sightlines; the part he’d thought he could take lightly came into view.
In truth, Lee Hajin had never once felt short of money.
He was born that way, and raised that way. He wasn’t particularly greedy, but he grew up in a palatial home with people calling him “young master,” and as an adult he did business loaning out from the low hundreds to the tens of millions. It was only natural.
“…….”
Mind racing at a brutal clip, Sihyeon let out a long breath, pulled the phone from his pocket again, and pressed the power button. The face looking down at the screen blooming to white was full of conflict.
It’s not like there isn’t a way….
He fixed his eyes on the digits rising on-screen, recalling a number he could dial with his eyes closed—but in the end, his gut balked. He set the phone down—and the van rolled to a stop at the same time.
“Ha-ha-ha! My money-makers, you rest up good?”
“If you’ve rested, then it’s time to make more money and get your faces out there, yeah? Let’s go see the fans who look only at you and wait, burning up!” Booming with a big laugh, Lee Seonjin barged in wielding the same guileless bluntness as a month ago. It wasn’t common for a CEO to personally visit just because a group had a new single, but the man who had pushed the Lemegeton “theme project” in the first place was this very Lee Seonjin—also known as “that nutcase”—so he clearly doted on them more than the other groups.
Two men followed behind him, faces Sihyeon had never seen; they were introduced as the choreographer and the lyricist-composer for this single, and there was a brief awkward round of greetings. Half elsewhere, Sihyeon and the taciturn Chan kept theirs short, but the other three didn’t: after a moment’s stiffness, they warmed up into cheerful chatter.
Rajoon had already latched onto the choreographer, talking through the new routine; Euihyun and Sanyoo were busy with the composer, discussing the concept, lyrics, and feel.
“You don’t have anything you’re curious about?”
Sidelined like a folding screen, Lee Seonjin watched them with satisfaction, then drifted over to Sihyeon—standing a little apart, sunk in silent thought—and slid the question in. At that, Chan, beside him, tightened his eyes as if uneasy; startled by the sudden voice, Sihyeon blinked a few times and lifted his head to the CEO.
Silence.
Stared at without an answer, Lee Seonjin, who had been staring right back, sighed and opened his mouth again.
“I asked if there’s anything you’re curious about.”
Of course there is. Plenty. Lee Seonjin meant about the new song, but Sihyeon—his mind full of other things—asked without hesitation.
“How much do I make?”
“…What?”
What kind of out-of-left-field question is that…? He stared, wrong-footed; but for Sihyeon, neck-deep in worrying over Lee Sihyeon’s finances, that was the only question that mattered. And ignorant of that severe, time-critical worry, the clueless Lee Seonjin screwed up his face and went, Oh for—honestly! like he couldn’t believe it.
“Money, money, money—didn’t I tell you to stop obsessing over money? I ask if you’ve got questions about the single, and you bring up money again!”
“Ah.”
“What, you think I’m skimming your pay? I’m not that petty, okay? I’ve been putting it straight into your hands every time, and you pull this back-stab—!”
This is why they say never to deal with black-haired beasts—meaning people… Deciding he was being suspected, pure and indignant, Lee Seonjin barked at Sihyeon, raising a ruckus. Not ‘don’t deal with,’ more like ‘don’t take them in.’ Watching this man proclaim his grand vow to never deal with any human again, Sihyeon murmured inwardly with placid eyes.
He hadn’t suspected skimming; he just wanted to know Lee Sihyeon’s regular income.
Bad timing? He clicked his tongue softly, then told the still-fuming CEO with a flat face:
“I’m joking.”
…Anyone could see it wasn’t a joke….
It was obvious he’d asked because he really wanted to know, and yet he lied with a straight face; everyone stared, speechless—everyone except Rajoon, who went, “Ah, a joke,” and nodded, only to get smacked by Euihyun. “Why hit me!” he yelped, and when he looked up, Euihyun spoke with a look of withering pity: “Do you worship Lee Sihyeon like a cult leader? Everything he says is true and good to you? Are you insane?”
And the person in question, Lee Seonjin, was nodding too.
“Really? Here I was thinking a paragon like me was being doubted! Ha-ha!”
…Right. He was one person Sihyeon should not deal with.
Everyone turned their heads like they’d heard nothing and got back to talking about the new single.
If the previous title track, “Lax,” was languid sensuality, the new title track, “Bog,” ran on a main concept of outright decadence. The overall mood was devils finally revealing their true nature and whispering, Let’s all sink into the mire forever, commit sin. The lyrics were striking enough that Sihyeon read them several times over: the gist was wanting the other to come down to where he was, or to collapse because of him.
That’s… song lyrics?
Sihyeon didn’t know idol songs—or even common pop hits—very well, so he nodded, nonplussed. He couldn’t see why you’d grab someone who said no and incite them to crime, but maybe that was just what idols did, he thought, acquiring wrong knowledge. Truthfully, he’d already half given up on resisting; he’d learned that doing as he was told was the easiest on his body and mind.
The choreographer finished explaining that the routine would keep Lemegeton’s signature group-dance foundation and add individual performances keyed to each stage name. Satisfied, Lee Seonjin nodded and—like he’d been waiting—opened his mouth.
“Great. If the overview’s done, let’s go eat.”
…?
What are we even—he hasn’t started and he’s already going my-way-or-the-highway—what are we supposed to do…? Everyone had the same thought stamped on their faces, but he was the CEO; no one quite dared to object. In the end, barely an hour after they’d gathered, the members and the rest had no choice but to go eat. Well—it was nearly lunchtime anyway.
The menu chosen by Lee Seonjin—surely a certified seafood maniac—was spicy braised monkfish, and for Lee Sihyeon, who couldn’t handle seafood even cooked, it was an ordeal. He didn’t so much as raise his chopsticks toward the blazing-red stew, just pretended to eat and picked at the side dishes—and, same as last time, it was Chan who clocked it and took care of him. He ordered a pork cutlet—clearly the kids’ option for those who couldn’t eat the monkfish—cut it into neat squares, and slid the plate in front of Sihyeon; their eyes met.
“…Not that. Eat this.”
At the soft words, seeing Sihyeon prodding tasteless spinach with his chopsticks, he let the spinach slip from his grip—so it really was that bad. With a small thank-you of a smile, he picked up one of the square pieces of cutlet and put it in his mouth; Chan watched him with a face a little complicated. In truth, in the two years they’d spent together, the times the members and Sihyeon had actually sat down to eat were few enough to count. Outside of boxed meals or kimbap wolfed down in the van during activity blitzes, Chan had no idea what Sihyeon liked or avoided.
He hadn’t known he couldn’t touch seafood either.
He’d only found that out at the sushi restaurant the other day. He’d wondered if monkfish might be okay, watched carefully, and—sure enough—he only pretended to eat and never brought it to his lips. Why something so trivial made his chest stir, he didn’t know. The sense that all their time together had been meaningless kept poking up; Chan’s expression grew more tangled. Unaware, Sihyeon finally managed a proper meal.
Back at the practice room after the noisy lunch, the choreography and lyrics of the new single came pouring down on them.
He’d gotten somewhat used to it over the month, but Sihyeon was still running a faint streak of humiliation; he was wrung out, body and mind, until he was limp as a rag. The lessons ran on into late night; in the end, Sanyoo, who found him first—collapsed asleep during the last break—picked him up with a soft, pitying smile. Sihyeon didn’t come around even then; he was ferried to the van like that and laid on the dorm bed.
“Ah, fuck….”
And the next day, when the alert chimed and a text reading [D-6] arrived, it was only natural that the irritation he hadn’t been able to swallow finally slipped out.