Chapter 2
The woman, realizing Jaekyung wasn’t just saying empty words, grabbed his arm with trembling hands.
“What are you saying? Jaekyung, think again. What would you do if not a singer?”
The woman lowered her voice in an attempt to appease Jaekyung. As if she’d never raised her voice, she tried to change his mind with a gentle tone, not knowing she was rubbing salt into an already raw wound. Jaekyung slapped away his mother’s outstretched hand.
“I won’t be a singer.”
“Don’t make such an emotional decision. Let’s take a break and think about it again. You need to succeed so I can stand on stage too. Right? Jaekyung. Everything I said was for you. My beloved son. You’re all I have. You know everything I say is for your own good, right?”
“…Is it?”
“What did you say?”
The woman asked again, not catching Jaekyung’s mumbled words.
“I asked if it’s really for my sake.”
“O-of course it is.”
“Not because you want to stand on stage yourself?”
“I’ll stand on stage, and so will you. Who gets to stand isn’t what matters here.”
“It does matter.”
“Jaekyung.”
“I never wanted to be a singer from the beginning.”
Jaekyung shot back with all the resentment of someone who had said ‘no’ countless times only to be ignored.
“You forced me to be a trainee, dragging me to every agency, making contracts—all of it was just for your own greed.”
The woman’s lips twisted crookedly, as if the spite she’d been suppressing while trying to placate Jaekyung was rising up. Jaekyung was almost pleased to see his mother finally showing her true face. His mother was normal when she was displaying her greed like this.
“What else would you do if not a singer?”
“I’d do manual labor—anything but being a singer.”
“And what about the debt?”
The woman sneered as if Jaekyung was being ridiculous.
“Do you think you can pay off all the debt carrying bricks until your bones rot?”
Jaekyung nodded obediently, as if agreeing with her words. Though the debt wasn’t his fault, it had become a noose around his neck. Jaekyung thought carefully. If not manual labor, then there was only one option left.
“Then should I die?”
Though phrased as a question, this had been the only answer from the beginning. Now that it had been mentioned, he might as well try it right away.
“Don’t say that, Jaekyung… Jaekyung!”
Jaekyung shook off the woman’s grasping hands and left, never to return.
* * *
Jaekyung pressed the back of his hand against his eyelids, shielding them from the piercing sunlight. When had he fallen asleep?
‘After drinking so much, how could I remember?’
After pushing his body to its limits and then pouring soju down his throat repeatedly, there was no way he could have endured. He wondered if he’d fallen asleep on the street, but judging by the quiet surroundings, that didn’t seem to be the case. Jaekyung habitually touched his head before getting up. His hangovers always came with splitting headaches, so he’d preemptively grabbed his head.
But surprisingly, there was no pain.
Even the tinnitus he always carried with him was gone. Rather, he felt refreshed, as if he’d had a good night’s sleep. Perhaps he’d caught up on all the sleep he’d missed?
“What’s this?”
Jaekyung let out an incredulous laugh when he saw the blanket that had slipped from his chest. The purple blanket, too worn out to properly serve its purpose anymore, was a welcome sight. Even the loud noise it made as the fabric rubbed against itself sounded almost like a pleasant song to him now.
Perhaps his homing instinct had kicked in—despite his blackout, he’d somehow made it home and into bed. Jaekyung, feeling surprisingly refreshed for someone who’d been soaked in alcohol, got up and trudged to the bathroom. He slipped his feet into the red bathroom slippers on the familiar blue-tiled floor.
“I should change these slippers. It’s ridiculous that I’m still using the ones mom bought…”
Jaekyung put the toothbrush with toothpaste into his mouth, his eyes half-closed. It was one of Jaekyung’s longtime habits to hold the toothbrush in his mouth first, letting the cool mint scent of the toothpaste wake him up. When he opened his bleary eyes, an intact mirror reflected his image. Hadn’t it been cracked just yesterday?
“Did she replace it because she feels sorry?”
Even as he thought that his mother wouldn’t do such a thing, their fight last night had been quite intense. Taking her to the emergency room, him collapsing too… After all the unspeakable scandal that had followed, it seemed like she had replaced the mirror as a gesture of apology.
“It’s not like I’m going to be a singer because of that…”
He’d fulfill today’s schedule, but after terminating the contract, he would never be a singer again.
“I should call manager hyung…”
Jaekyung muttered while looking at his reflection in the mirror, running his fingers through his hair. The black hair color was something he hadn’t seen since graduating high school.
“What is this? Did I dye my hair while drunk?”
But that didn’t make sense—these weren’t the thin, damaged strands that had been repeatedly bleached and dyed. What on earth had happened to his hair? Jaekyung continued brushing his teeth, but his hand slowed again. Soon, he stopped brushing altogether and slowly raised his head to look at his reflection in the mirror.
Familiar yet… unfamiliar.
“Who are you…?”
With the toothbrush in his mouth, his pronunciation was slurred, but clear enough for the figure in the mirror to understand. As the strange thought kept repeating in his mind, something occurred to Jaekyung, and his hand lost its strength.
The toothbrush’s descent to the floor seemed to happen in slow motion. When the toothpaste from the fallen toothbrush splattered everywhere, Jaekyung looked down. The slippers with toothpaste on them were both familiar and unfamiliar. He had changed the bathroom slippers when he turned 20, so why were the old ones here?
* * *
He hadn’t realized it when he first opened his eyes. The blanket had always been worn out, and he thought his body felt light because he’d slept a lot. Feeling the sense of dissonance in the bathroom, Jaekyung hurried back to his room and immediately looked for his phone. An old model phone he used to have and a number indicating six years ago.
“This is insane.”
Jaekyung ran his fingers through his hair and then stopped. The feeling of soft hair flowing between his fingers was so unfamiliar. As impossible as it seemed, he had returned to the past. He wondered if he was dreaming, but no matter how many times he checked, this was reality.
Bewildered and at a loss, Jaekyung’s palm pressed the remote control, turning on the TV. The sound flowing from the TV felt like white noise.
Had time really turned back?
Was he 19 now instead of 25? Was the reason he didn’t have a headache despite drinking alcohol yesterday because he’d come back? But how did this happen? Jaekyung had never thought about wanting to go back to the past. He had never harbored such a wish—if anything, he had only thought about wanting to die.
In his confusion, not understanding anything, Jaekyung instinctively hugged his legs. It was a posture he always took when he wanted to escape from somewhere. It wasn’t about leaning on someone else, but a way to protect himself.
Jaekyung had no one to lean on. He was raised by his grandmother, and even she died when he was 6, leaving him to grow up alone. His mother was always flitting about outside, visiting only once a month, showing little interest in Jaekyung.
A few times at night, he had followed his mother to places where she said she worked, but most of the time, he spent alone. There were times when the electricity was cut off and many times when the boiler didn’t work. To go to school, Jaekyung had to wash his own clothes, and before he could handle the gas stove, he subsisted on the lunches provided by kindergarten and school.
How fortunate it was that he could attend kindergarten from the age of 5. At an age when one couldn’t grow up alone, he should have been placed in an orphanage, but with his mother’s existence lingering, Jaekyung had to endure in dire circumstances by himself.
Having given up on relying on his mother, Jaekyung matured early. Just as he was getting used to living alone, his mother looked closely at his face and, for the first time, extended her hand, asking him to go out together.
‘I shouldn’t have taken that hand.’
Not knowing it was the path to hell, he readily took her hand, excited by the first-time experience. His mother showed him a large building with glamorous people and told him he would learn to sing there from now on.
From the age of 9, Jaekyung spent 10 years going from company to company as a trainee. He didn’t stay at one company for long.
Like a grasshopper, he moved around with varying periods of time—from a few months to as long as 3 years. Entertainment companies with the condition that he wouldn’t have to pay for the lessons if he didn’t debut were relatively better. Because of places that demanded payment for accumulated lesson fees when he wanted to quit being a trainee, debt piled up beyond what he could handle.
He danced until his body broke and sang until his throat tore. It was so grueling that living alone would have been better. So Jaekyung, after enduring and enduring, finally said to his mother when it became unbearable:
“Mom. Can’t I stop singing?”
“Mom. I’m in pain.”
Each time, his mother would say it was for his sake and ask him to hold on a little longer. She would console him saying that once he became a singer, all his current hardships would be rewarded. It was all just her using her son because she wanted to return to the stage.
By the time Jaekyung realized that the sweet words she offered were poison, he had already dipped his feet into a swamp from which he couldn’t escape.
Even if he struggled and said no, the debt that had accumulated beyond repayment and the vagueness of a future that couldn’t be seen pushed him into yet another agency. When the agency went bankrupt and all the trainees were in despair, Jaekyung alone felt relieved, stroking his chest.
Because the debt wouldn’t increase anymore.
At that time, he didn’t know that it was merely a pile of minor misfortunes right before the greatest ordeal came.
Author: Hyacinthus B
Hyacinthus
