Chapter 7
Glancing up at Yoon Jin with his head lowered, Sanggu mentally struck himself. Why had he spoken so lightly, asking for just one Bubble message because the fans would be worried? If one had no memories, they would naturally not know how they had conversed with fans or even understand their relationship with fans.
Sanggu could hardly imagine how much that naturally kind ‘Yoon Jin’ might have agonized over the Bubble app after hearing his request.
In Sanggu’s eyes, Yoon Jin was still unstable, and signs of struggle showed behind his pale face. Since managers were automatically subscribed to their members’ Bubbles, he had been extremely flustered when he first saw the single dot Yoon Jin had sent. Then he immediately realized that the current Yoon Jin was not in a state to comfortably chat with fans and share his kindness.
“Please sit down at the table for now. I’ll get you some water.”
Sniffling, Sanggu followed Yoon Jin’s suggestion, pulled out a dining chair to sit, and downed the water Yoon Jin brought in one go.
“First of all, Sanggu… Manager-nim didn’t do anything wrong. I should have looked into it more… I just mindlessly sent the dot because fans were asking me to send at least that.”
“Still… I’m sorry.”
“No, there’s nothing to be sorry about, sir.”
Sanggu, not noticing Yoon Jin’s choppy formal speech, fiddled with the edge of the cup. He was so admirable, trying to fulfill fans’ requests even in this state. It had been about 5 years since Sanggu first became Sparkle’s manager. During that time, ‘Yoon Jin’ had treated Sanggu not just as an ordinary manager but almost as if he were a member of the group.
Without manager-nim, we couldn’t be Sparkle. How deeply moved he had been by ‘Yoon Jin’s’ words. After that, the word “job change” became unnecessary in Sanggu’s life.
“I’m really fine, so don’t worry. Rather, I’m concerned that I might have made some mistake.”
In fact, Yoon Jin’s dots had created more confusion among fans, but Sanggu didn’t want to explain that and cause him stress. This incident could be easily dismissed as an error or mistake, and sending just one proper Bubble would quickly settle things down. Sanggu hurriedly waved his hands.
“There’s no such thing!”
“That’s good then, sir. Actually, I wanted to check what kind of messages I used to send, but no matter how much I scrolled up in the chat window, I couldn’t see anything.”
“Ah… May I check your phone for a moment?”
At Sanggu’s request, Yoon Jin unhesitatingly handed over his phone. While explaining that it appeared like a group chat to him but as individual chats to fans, Sanggu pressed small buttons with his thick fingers right in front of him.
“You’re currently on a page where you can only see content sent by fans. If you press this button here, you can see only the messages that Jin-ssi sent.”
“I see.”
Taking back his phone, Yoon Jin pressed various buttons to navigate between pages just as Sanggu had done. The screen that had looked like a group chat changed to something like a private chat room, and previous messages sent by ‘Yoon Jin’ were easily visible. From here, pressing on the other person’s chat would take him back to where he could check messages sent by fans. It was truly an amazing advancement in technology.
Yoon Jin examined the messages with a serious expression. Sanggu’s heart grew heavy once again seeing him trying to hide his current condition from fans. He resented his own inability to postpone schedules and let him rest more.
After those thoughts of self-blame and resentment, as Sanggu watched Yoon Jin quietly examining his phone, he suddenly recalled the earlier situation. Yoon Jin had attached “ssi” to Sanggu’s name for 5 years as a sign of respect. While he didn’t dislike it, he somehow felt a sense of distance that made him feel a bit hurt.
While lost in thought, Yoon Jin seemed to have finished checking as he put down the phone he had been staring at intently.
“I understand better now. Thank you.”
“Oh, no! But… um… Yoon Jin-ssi.”
“Yes?”
“Maybe… if you’d prefer to speak comfortably like you did earlier, that would be fine… since I’m younger anyway… and I’ve been your manager for 5 years… you might find it uncomfortable… of, of course, it’s completely fine if you keep speaking this way too!”
“…? So you’re saying I can speak comfortably?”
“Yes, yes!”
“Okay then. I’ll call you Sanggu from now on.”
His face, which had turned bright red, bloomed into a bright smile at Yoon Jin’s words. Yoon Jin returned a remarkably gentle smile toward Sanggu.
* * *
Yoon Jin, who had already found it rather awkward to use formal speech with Sanggu who had the same face as Guonnu, dropped the formality at his suggestion. And then he fell into deep contemplation. The cause was, of course, the messages that ‘William’ had sent to fans as ‘Yoon Jin’ that he had just seen.
Yoon Jin encountered such sweet and lovey-dovey sentences for the first time in his life. In the past 7 years, the only letters he had received were invitations for political discussions or parties, or if not that, contacts for arranging marriages with ladies from other noble houses.
[Good morning! I know everyone’s busy, but make sure to eat breakfast, and fighting for today too! >:ㅁ]
[Do you know I really miss you today? Now that I’ve said it, you know, right…? I really miss you! Love you today too.]
[I miss Junyoung and Minhun and Kwon and Domin so much, but they’re all so busy… ㅠㅠ… Of course, I miss our Gives the most! >:ㅁ]
[I love you more today than yesterday! Everyone have sweet dreams!]
These messages, where the word “love” appeared once every three sentences and unfamiliar emoticons frequently appeared at the end, perplexed Yoon Jin. ‘William’ was clearly born to be an idol. Thinking that he had to do this from now on, Yoon Jin felt it might be easier to jump into the imperial palace pond.
“Yoon Jin-ssi? Are you feeling unwell?”
“Ah… no. I think I need to send another Bubble, so I was just thinking for a moment…”
Sanggu said there was no problem with the current situation, but Yoon Jin wasn’t foolish enough to believe that. Fans who were used to receiving such sweet messages suddenly getting just two dots would certainly have caused strange reactions somewhere. Sighing, Yoon Jin picked up his phone again.
“If it’s difficult, you can do it later! It’s not that urgent.”
Not urgent, my ass. Just skimming through the screen, the fans’ cries seemed more confused than before. To calm the fans expressing doubts, Yoon Jin placed his fingers on the phone keyboard. Although he hadn’t dated for 7 years, he had done some actions to charm women for various reasons. He figured he could send something similar to what he had done then, and laboriously pressed the keyboard.
* * *
Fortunately, after the Bubble incident, the day continued quietly without any particular events. As his birthday was approaching, so was the W Live date, so Yoon Jin hardly went out except for skin care appointments. The still noisy Sparkle group chat was a bit annoying, but it could also provide information, so he could tolerate it to some extent.
He used his spare time for searching and exercising. The searching was to find songs released by Sparkle so far or his own performance videos, and he started exercising because he couldn’t bear to leave his flat stomach as it was.
When he was William, he had an enviable body from swinging his sword every dawn, so his original body felt too soft to Yoon Jin. Although he had somewhat defined lines as an idol, it wasn’t enough to satisfy him. Shouldn’t there be at least two lines on his abs, if not a full six-pack?
Having lived together in the dorm, he had become relatively comfortable with Minhun, whom he encountered most frequently, and Sanggu, with whom he now spoke informally, had also become another good conversation partner for Yoon Jin.
[On this cold winter day, Yoon Jin came to us warmly. Happy birthday to you.]
Leaning against the car seat, Yoon Jin fixed his gaze on the advertisement visible outside the window. He didn’t turn his head until the traffic light changed from red to green and the car started moving again. A huge birthday advertisement with his face on it. It was something he couldn’t have even imagined when he debuted.
“Hyung? Are you in pain?”
“No. I just saw a birthday congratulation ad, so I was looking at it for a moment.”
Due to Yoon Jin’s frequent complaints of headaches during this time, Minhun asked the same question whenever he saw him looking blank even for a moment. Does it hurt somewhere, is there any discomfort, do you need anything? His mother bird-like questioning could have been annoying, but Yoon Jin didn’t add any particular comments about it. This was because when he was William, there were several people like Minhun who clung to him and worried about his physical condition.
“Ah… Do you want to go take pictures later? There should be subway ads too, and fans will be holding café events together…”
“Café events?”
“Yeah, events where they put our photos or phrases on drink holders, thankfully fans do it for us every time.”
Newly realizing how enormously the fan culture had grown, Yoon Jin nodded obediently. Although it was obvious what Minhun meant by his suggestion given the pity evident in his expression, Yoon Jin honestly wanted to see it properly at least once.
“Then let’s first do our best for today’s live!”
“Sure.”
Yoon Jin smiled and nodded at Minhun’s exaggerated enthusiasm. Birthday W Live. It was an extremely unfamiliar term for Yoon Jin. These days, everyone supposedly communicated with fans through internet broadcasts, but he couldn’t quite grasp exactly what that meant. When Yoon Jin was a trainee, there weren’t many means of communication with fans. Hand-written letters were more common than the Bubble app, and fans’ posts were uploaded to cafés or blogs.
‘Well, I’ll manage somehow if I just stay focused.’
It’s not like he’d die if he made a mistake. Yoon Jin comfortably reclined in the car seat. The car driven by Sanggu headed quickly toward the filming location.
Author: Hyacinthus B
Hyacinthus
