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Ido hyung…… Bunhong let out a small groan.
Unlike the other people who were looking at him standing still with puzzlement, there was an indifferent gaze that seemed completely uninterested. He glanced briefly then focused on the documents again.
Only the isolated Kim Bunhong stood there dumbfounded, facing memories from the past that flowed in powerlessly.
Before he knew it, the audition didn’t matter anymore, and he gazed at him longingly as if only the two of them were left there alone. Him who was lost in his own world and would never raise his head to look at him.
Rather than any particular scene emerging from his memories, the painful words that Ido had said poured out first.
‘I told you not to go on the internet for a while. You didn’t listen to me and got hurt from what you saw, so what do you want me to do about it?’
That’s right. In Bunhong’s recollections, Jeong Ido was bad,
‘I don’t want to be harmed by you. Even if that someone is you.’
And only cold,
‘Have you ever thought about desperately wanting to do something?’
He was the past lover who was never affectionate and never loved Bunhong.
For just a brief moment, some indescribable emotion surged up to Kim Bunhong’s throat and then disappeared instantly.
Everyday Ido was so cold that when they were together, Kim Bunhong had to act as if he wasn’t there even when he was by his side, as if he didn’t exist even when he existed.
Because he didn’t want to be hated.
Jeong Ido’s silence was more frightening than words with thorns.
When something happened that didn’t please him, instead of pointing it out, he would just look at him silently. As if embracing a cold lump of ice, as if knowingly drinking poison.
From the moment he spotted Ido, Bunhong’s earnest feelings that he thought were completely blocked began to flow out as if they had been waiting.
‘What was it that I…… desperately wanted?’
It was none other than,
‘I want to sing with a song hyung wrote.’
His dream was simply to stay by Ido’s side……
‘Please write a song for me.’
To be the sole owner of all the languages that only Ido possessed.
When he heard through Duho in the past that such a Jeong Ido had written a song for someone.
Even knowing that receiving a song didn’t mean he loved him, Bunhong had placed some hope on it and waited all along. But reality didn’t flow as he had hoped in the end.
Because Duho had said so naturally that the song belonged to Hanbit.
‘That song? Of course Lee Hanbit will sing it.’
Like that, he had to be hit in the back of the head as if there was some tacit agreement between them that only Bunhong didn’t know about.
It was a moment when the world collapsed, when all his waiting until then was denied. How much he despaired at that moment cannot be expressed. Even that moment, which was no different from a death sentence being passed on his blind love, Kim Bunhong was alone.
Yet because he couldn’t hate such an Ido, he had to hate Lee Hanbit. He despised him.
You already have everything. Yet you even took hyung’s song away from me, he thought.
Even knowing that it was a wasteful emotion that gnawed at him, Kim Bunhong had to do so at the time. It felt like only then could he breathe. Because it seemed like he would collapse immediately if something didn’t support him.
What supported him at that time was…… the emotion called hatred.
The man who had been keeping his head down as if annoyed by the long silence finally raised his head and spoke.
“Kim Bunhong-ssi?”
Since Kim Bunhong’s gaze was always directed only at him, their eyes naturally met at that call. To erase the afterimage of the past, Bunhong blinked several times.
Finally. Now at last,
At the voice that called his name, the voice he had loved in the past, tears naturally welled up in Bunhong’s eyes for a moment, but he secretly wiped them away so no one would see. And he no longer hesitated and walked boldly toward them.
Watching such Bunhong, someone among the judges urged him to prevent further delay.
“Please tell us the song you’ve prepared.”
At those words, Kim Bunhong slowly opened his mouth.
“I will……”
Slowly, but very decisively, he said.
“……perform a cappella.”
His gaze that had been looking only at Ido finally turned forward. Looking straight ahead, Kim Bunhong straightened his bent body. At the same time, strength naturally entered both his fists.
There were things in the world that wouldn’t work no matter how hard you tried. Love was also like that. Now, the time had come to let everything go.
* * *
‘I love you. Ido hyung.’
Those seven syllables were the only words Kim Bunhong, who had never been able to express himself at all in his life, had said with sincerity.
It was the only emotion vividly drawn over a false life that was completely bound up in inferiority complex, self-doubt, and loneliness.
Like a duckling that recognizes the first being it sees after birth as its parent, he had loved him so blindly.
He gave birth to language in Kim Bunhong’s world, which had been no different from a blank sheet. If he could, Bunhong wanted to sing love with those languages all day long.
He was already a man who caught people’s attention, but if we were to list his noticeable features, he was a man with bleached hair close to platinum, vampire-like pale skin without any color, an angular face shape, and cat-like indifferent eyes that seemed to glance sideways.
The first impression people felt when they saw him was about ‘Ah. He looks quite sensitive……’
An owner of backbone and patience that you wouldn’t want to make an enemy if possible. Usually quiet, but unknowingly possessing great influence in groups, a natural-born leader type person to the bone.
The impression Kim Bunhong felt when he first saw Jeong Ido, whom he had only heard about through rumors, wasn’t much different. He became intimidated for no reason and kept reading the mood.
And his habitual sarcasm. He was someone whose speech pattern seemed to look down on people somehow was ingrained in his mouth.
‘This kid? That Kim Bunhong?’
It was after they became the same team that he learned that was his way of surviving in a world of survival of the fittest. Until then, he was just a scary sunbae, an amateur but a composer who was somewhat recognized in the underground.
When someone asked why he wanted to debut when he already had fame, he answered by making a circle with his thumb and index finger.
‘Money.’
‘……’
‘Fame doesn’t make money.’
‘……’
And to that sneering question about what real music he was going to do, he answered like this.
‘Hey. Doing art with a hungry spirit is all old talk. The more desperate you are, the better inspiration comes to you? You only come to your senses after begging and rotting your belly. Fuck that passion pay bullshit. You only start looking for art after your belly is full and your back is warm.’
Isn’t that too pessimistic……
Bunhong, who was secretly eavesdropping on the conversation, thought so, but on the other hand, he thought it wasn’t completely wrong either. It was around the time when an article about some aspiring writer who had won a grand prize at a prestigious competition starving to death in a one-room apartment was published on the front page of newspapers.
Was it by chance that Kim Bunhong happened to witness his disheveled appearance for the first time in his life?
The flush that had risen on Ido’s face from being drunk caught his eye first. Then he sighed.
‘I wish I could live doing only what I like.’
The moment when Ido, who was usually only indifferent, revealed his inner feelings, Kim Bunhong knew that being able to be by his side wasn’t actually a coincidence.
It was an opportunity he could have because he had been hovering around him unknowingly even when Ido didn’t know that Bunhong had feelings for him.
‘……’
Bunhong, who had stopped by the studio without any business and ended up hearing his drunken rambling, was watching his profile without any response.
Then he saw tears falling from Ido’s eyes. Bunhong later thought that everything probably changed from that moment.
‘How wonderful it would be to live freely doing the music I want to do.’
Was it a blessing or a curse that Bunhong came to peek into the trivial, foolish world of Jeong Ido that unfolded with such whispers?
What was certain was that being able to be chosen for either was a rare opportunity. Jeong Ido was strict even with himself, a man who didn’t allow showing gaps to others.
The dark interior of the studio with the lights off. Cigarette smoke rising thickly. Musical scores in crumpled and torn states scattered not only on the table but also on top of the machine equipment. Traces of being rewritten so many times that fingerprints would show. Musical notes that had become messy like scribbles from being constantly redrawn.
As the rising smoke gradually faded, a focused thin back visible through the gaps. A hunched posture that hadn’t been properly straightened several times due to being frantically absorbed in work.
Once in a lifetime, the period when only that person was visible didn’t bring magic like suddenly sparkling eyes or the sound of destiny’s bell ringing like in movies. It just seeped in quietly, soundlessly.
It seeped in so quietly that Bunhong didn’t even know it was love at first. Perhaps Bunhong thought love was like the forbidden fruit left by the devil. Because at some point it rushed in and he became a prisoner of love forever, unable to drive it out.
At first, he thought he was nervous.
Author: Hyacinthus B
Hyacinthus
