-26-
When you follow the values that people pursue, paths naturally open up. Honestly, getting a certain amount of money and power in his hands wasn’t particularly difficult for Hangeul.
‘It’s stifling.’
But when was it? When did the rebellious spirit he had forgotten, hidden deep in his heart, begin to stir and rise again?
‘It’s boring.’
Does the world truly consist only of pretense and empty formalities? Everything is just so-so, mediocre things.
‘You should do that. That’s the right way to live.’ Following only the fixed answers that people had set became boring again as he continued to pursue them constantly.
‘I want to find my own answer.’
That’s why he started making his own songs. Hangeul made up his mind.
Everything that exists in the world either doesn’t suit his taste or doesn’t catch his interest.
Though his skills were still lacking, if he ever got his hands on amazing paint someday, he would ruin everything up until now and draw his own new picture on top of it!
He decided to quietly wait for that day alone.
However, even though he made such a vow by himself, reality was never easy. The moment he realized that although he had insane passion, he didn’t have the talent to touch people’s heartstrings.
‘What is love?’
Oh Hangeul could feel it painfully when acting and when writing songs—that there was a deficiency within him that even he didn’t know about. It was his first time experiencing such an inferiority complex, and he was frustrated. He had decided to tell his own story, but it turned out he didn’t have the talent for it.
For the first time in his life, the world became difficult. People fell in love and broke up too easily. Love songs and breakup songs were everywhere.
He had always sneered at them inwardly, but the moment he felt that among all the countless pebbles that existed, he absolutely couldn’t pick out emotions from among them. He realized that even Oh Hangeul himself, whom he had believed to be ‘real’ all along, was actually nothing more than ‘fake.’
‘I was just one of those so-so, ordinary people scattered throughout the world.’
He became lonely. The world he opened his eyes to again was big and wide, and he was an infinitely small existence within it.
The moment he realized he had been immersed in his own ‘arrogance’ all along, the moment he learned that he had surrendered to reality at some point. From then on, it seemed he had thoroughly hidden himself. Just as a pretty doll that the masses wanted.
‘Live doing everything you want to do.’
He had advised the youth on the streets like that, but Hangeul actually knew. Unless you held tremendous wealth and power, it was impossible to live doing everything you wanted to do.
The dreams that people commonly had were disconnected from reality. Minimal means of livelihood were necessary, and dreams naturally remained only as fantasies.
He was the same way. In the band where he had briefly tasted freedom, he had once decided that someday he would travel around the world on foot with just a guitar case on his shoulder, but his feet bound by contracts couldn’t go anywhere.
He realized it. The shackles that had been on his mother also existed around his ankles.
‘Ah. I can’t breathe.’
There were supposed to be real and fake things in the world, but in reality there was no such thing as real, and only the ugly nature wearing masks that lived fake lives disguised as real darkened the top tier.
Hangeul was also fake, but at least he was on stage. Unlike those below the stage, his was a life that received spotlights.
That’s right. Since he too was nothing more than a fake who had plausibly decorated himself to seem real, no different from others.
“What? An audition? Why do I have to attend that?”
His already twisted heart sprang up like a spring at any time. Despite Hangeul’s objection, the agency official smiled and continued to express his opinion.
“This is a place to judge the kids who will become your junior group, and we’re thinking of editing it lightly and uploading it only to YouTube. Just having Hangeul show your face briefly would become a big topic, wouldn’t it?”
Ah. Just act as a flower-like screen, is that it? Hangeul showed a sneer but quickly erased it without a trace before others could see. He was naturally going to refuse, but soon changed his mind.
“If it’s a junior group, then Jeong Ido? He must have come too.”
Since he knew about Ido to some extent, he became curious. As they say, a rolling stone pushes out a stone that’s stuck in place—he felt he should at least see the faces of those who would threaten his position.
‘What. Now that they’ve done enough, they’re going to suck out all the sweet juice and throw it away?’
Since he had been a trainee from a very young age, Hangeul had been grasping AT Entertainment’s management style for a long time.
They formed the next junior group’s fandom by absorbing existing fandoms. They emphasized so-called “passing down love,” but it was a structure where the former had more losses than gains.
‘They picked the wrong person. Really, who do they think will let themselves be stepped on obediently?’
He muttered sarcastically to himself. He didn’t like that there were still people in this industry who looked down on him. Otherwise, there was no way they would have called him to a place where they were judging those who would merely become a junior group.
The entertainment industry was that kind of place. To reach the top, it was a world where you had to step on someone before they tried to step on you to survive. You had to step on them thoroughly and delicately so they could never recover.
Everyone had advised Oh Hangeul that way, but he had never once harmed anyone until now. He hadn’t even felt the will to do so.
But today, for the first time, that belief was shaken.
‘Could my way have been wrong?’
The feeling of being left alone again. Before he knew it, only a candle flickering precariously in the wind existed. Wavering light, and yearnings.
It was a world of survival of the fittest where beasts fought for territory anyway. The wild and the entertainment industry had things in common. The strong survived, and the weak tried to survive by parasitizing them like hyenas, somehow struggling desperately to live.
Those who couldn’t adapt to that method or were powerless and had needlessly strong pride were ruthlessly eliminated.
Oh Hangeul knew painfully well that even if it was the agency that had taken him in and raised him, if he was no longer needed, if his value dropped someday, he would be abandoned as if rolling down a cliff. Even though he looked innocent, he was never a fool.
Thinking that perhaps he too had grown by parasitizing existing groups in that way, Hangeul smiled bitterly.
‘That day, I think his name was Kim Bunhong.’
He said he was crying just because he lost something, for that reason alone, but Hangeul immediately noticed that it was just an excuse. So he silently waited for the other person to stop crying.
In the dressing room that was dark and gloomy because it had its back to the sun, he could see eyes that had been squinting as if the light he brought in behind him was dazzling gradually growing larger and larger.
Oh Hangeul saw the tears gathered in those eyes pouring out the light he had brought like a reflector on a filming set, sparkling brilliantly. Where had he seen those eyes before, he thought, and remembered.
‘……’
Eyes that were exactly like his past self. For a moment, it seemed like he was seeing a glimpse of his real self when he was in a band. Two pupils that seemed overflowing with passion for music, desperately wanting to sing.
Because they had been looking at his stage endlessly from the front row, with a somewhat longing expression, he could remember easily.
That’s why. There was no such thing as real in the world, but he was captivated by the light in those eyes. It wasn’t the kind of light that sparkled dazzlingly and revealed its presence vividly. It was the kind of star that shone dimly in the darkness, hidden by the light emitted by other fake planets.
Hangeul knew that when a star faces death, it creates a tremendous explosion. The world was truly ironic. Why does it shine brightest at the last moment? Why are masterpieces read only after the author dies, and why are famous songs known to the world only after the singer dies? The world is full of contradictions like this.
However, the principles of the world, he often felt painfully that it had to be that way. After all, wasn’t the pearl that an oyster produces also born from a wound? Without experiencing wounds, and without overcoming those scars, a pearl couldn’t be born.
‘I want to hear it. I’m curious. What Bunhong-ssi’s song would be like.’
The reason Hangeul said that to Bunhong was because it was the first time he had seen eyes filled so desperately and purely with passion. The moment he saw those eyes, he felt so thrilled—it was the first excitement he had felt except when making music.
At the same time, he prayed. That the light in this boy’s eyes wouldn’t be a light that was extinguishing in an instant. That it would explode and pour out, break the eggshell and spit out a new pearl from within.
However, Bunhong said something completely different from Hangeul’s such wishes.
‘I’m afraid. Of singing in front of people.’
What. Hangeul was disappointed. He was more discouraged than any disappointment he had felt before, incomparably so.
Was that all it was? He thought it was real, but was it just a weak herbivore that had been hurt and eliminated?
That was both pitiful and regrettable. No, why had he expected anything in the first place? Just because you meet something real doesn’t mean you become real. There was no way anything beyond external beauty would be preciously accepted in the world.
No matter how substantial the contents inside were, if the shell containing it was ugly, that was a real thing worse than fake.
Author: Hyacinthus B
Hyacinthus
