-45-
Jeong Ido sat down and closed his eyes. It was a habit that came out whenever things didn’t go according to plan. He would close his eyes like that for a moment and carefully retrace the past time like fitting puzzle pieces together, trying to figure out where exactly things had gone wrong.
Eventually, he asked himself from within the deep darkness where he was submerged.
“This time, where exactly did it start from?”
His head was hurting as if it would split, so he was frowning deeply. Though they had already broken up, he hadn’t been in his right mind since hearing the news of his former lover’s death. He had frantically gulped down vodka filling his glass, making his esophagus and stomach burn, and the liquid that couldn’t flow into his mouth spilled over his bare body wearing only a shower gown.
Drip, drip. Water droplets from his undried hair after just finishing a shower flowed down his back continuously. Thinking it was disgusting, Ido briefly dry-heaved. Everything in the neatly organized studio had been dirtied into a mess.
Despite having disheveled wet hair and bloodshot eyes, he was surprisingly sober. Though his body was heated up, in contrast, as time passed, only his mind regained cold rationality. Putting his hands together against his forehead and lowering his head, he fell into deep contemplation.
“…Where exactly did it start going wrong.”
Whatever went wrong, it would be a matter of starting over, starting again. If he could overturn everything existing and start anew. If only he could do that, Ido sighed as his thoughts reached that point.
“I could do anything…!”
As Ido remembered, things had become a mess after Kim Bunhong became like that. The ripple effect that spread through the fandom and within the group was enormous, beyond repair. In a word, career over.
Crash! Unable to contain his anger, Ido threw the glass in front of him toward the air. Black blood flowed from his hand deeply cut by the glass.
“My life being a failure, that can’t be!”
His eyes burned with rage. It was definitely like that, but as he lifted his trembling hand to trace his face reflected in the mirror, he unconsciously muttered.
“As expected, God is on my side.”
The moment filled with ecstasy. Who could have even guessed that he would return to 3 years ago?
Since he owed a debt, he had to work like a dog now. From the moment he decided to stand at the top, he knew no satisfaction. As if he had drunk bitter seawater, Jeong Ido’s throat remained consistently dry. To fill that greed, he had to go higher. He believed that only success would compensate for everything. Definitely, it was like that.
* * *
Finally, the day came when Bunhong was notified that he had been selected as a debut group member. Thinking of how he had been left neglected like a loser for the past week, Kim Bunhong inwardly sneered that it was quite a dramatic ending. Of course, he didn’t show it on the outside at all. As he kept mentioning, he was confident in managing his expressions, if nothing else.
‘By the way, has the method of bullying changed?’
Those who used to surround him in a circle and point fingers at him now began to subtly avoid Kim Bunhong.
Even when gathered together, if he took even one step in their direction, they would scatter, so Kim Bunhong, who was left alone before he knew it, felt awkward for no reason and scratched his temple.
‘Was I too harsh…?’
Since it was true that he had acted emotionally in a moment of anger, he didn’t feel very good about it either, as if he had trampled on growing sprouts.
‘This side is desperate too. Just as much as you guys.’
For Kim Bunhong too, he was no longer in a position to be picky about cold or warm meals. Since the starting line itself was different to begin with, it couldn’t be helped. Since his past self had also felt similar emotions to them, he felt sorry for them apart from the ostracism.
He thought he had crawled on all fours and somehow desperately chased after their backs, but when he looked up, they were far away again. When a race with no visible end continued, it naturally became a vicious cycle. In the end, only the person who desperately followed looked like a fool.
“Whew…”
As he repeated inhaling and exhaling, his chest rose and fell. Talent is this unfair, Bunhong sighed as he recalled his incompetent past self before the regression.
‘God is really wicked.’
He gives hope that you can do and become anything by not limiting human potential, but in reality, only a few are chosen.
It seemed like mockery. Wasn’t this return also God’s provocation to somehow fill the gap you weren’t born with through your effort?
Then he would prove it. He resolved that he would somehow struggle and change what was called fate.
Gulp. At the same time as swallowing saliva, Bunhong’s Adam’s apple moved.
A passing trainee stared at him strangely as he looked like he was missing a screw somewhere, then just passed by. However, for Kim Bunhong, who was frantically absorbed in his own thoughts, momentary image management and such was no longer important. He had chewed his lips so much that they became like rags and he could taste blood bitterly.
“Um… Kim Bunhong?”
What is it? At the sound of someone carefully calling his name, Bunhong turned his face.
“…?”
Then a trainee who had been hesitating and circling around his vicinity, unable to speak to him all at once, said bluntly.
“That, there’s a producer room in the basement of the new building, right? Come there.”
“Huh?”
“Damn. Why did they have to make me do it…”
Watching the back view of someone running away as if they didn’t want to exchange even one more second of words with him after delivering the message, Bunhong thought.
‘This… could this be a trick?’
Though Bunhong felt uneasy, he turned his steps toward the place he was told about. Since they were so terrified as if looking at a monster, he doubted they would lie.
After leaving the practice room and taking the elevator leading to the new building, Bunhong suddenly realized.
‘That place is…’
His face reflected in the elevator’s glass mirror turned pale. As if hyperventilating, his head became temporarily dizzy and Bunhong staggered for a moment before leaning against the handrail. Like becoming Pavlov’s dog, the closer he got to the destination, his heart reflexively began to pound and beat crazily. The place his footsteps were heading toward was Jeong Ido’s existing studio.
It was the place where Kim Bunhong and Jeong Ido’s ill-fated relationship began, and at the same time, it was also where they had shared love. As the trainee mentioned earlier, seeing that it was still called the [Producer Room], he could easily conclude that it was probably later given to him as a personal studio. It left a bitter taste.
Who would have thought,
“To think I’d come back here again…”
His steps wouldn’t move readily. Bunhong stopped in front of the door and stared ahead for a long time without entering. Just coming here always felt like having an unrealistic dream, so he needed practice not to be swayed by anything in order to somehow clearly face reality.
‘The password probably changed.’
Without realizing it, he almost naturally pressed the security key with his finger. There was a time when just knowing the password to Jeong Ido’s studio, which very few people except for a select few knew, felt like enjoying a privilege, and just that alone made his heart flutter. The taste of the forbidden fruit he had tasted by closing his eyes and sticking out his tongue, intoxicated by the emotions he occasionally bestowed like giving alms to a beggar, was so sweet.
When he pressed the password to open the door and enter, the first thing he would see was embracing that gaunt back, and Bunhong would caress the protruding shoulder blades of his back like pressing piano keys, which was an instrument Ido loved and cherished so much, while bringing his lips to his ear and whispering endlessly.
‘Please make a song for me.’… like that.
To that extent, he desperately wanted it. Since he wanted to know how much Ido, who had now become his lover, loved him and to what degree he desired him, he pleaded to the point of being sick of it. Right now, at this moment, show me all of your heart. Write a song. If you can’t take out your beating heart and show it right away, then capture your raw emotions as they are in the sheet music and let me hear them.
This was Bunhong’s inner feelings, almost like obsession, that he couldn’t tell his lover.
Jeong Ido, who had been concentrating on work for a while, asked him as if he couldn’t understand.
‘Why are you so obsessed with songs?’
While saying that, he stubbed out the cigarette he had been holding in his mouth in the ashtray. Then he reached his hand toward Kim Bunhong’s head resting on his shoulder.
Long fingers delicate enough to fill Kim Bunhong’s field of vision, and Bunhong blinked his eyelashes without knowing why, then eventually felt the hand stroking his head and slowly closed his eyes, murmuring as if letting out a nasal sound.
‘Well. Because I like hyung…?’
‘…’
‘I told you back then too. That I was born to meet hyung.’
Then the hand that had been stroking Bunhong’s head stopped for a moment.
‘…You’re talking nonsense again. Cutely.’
What Bunhong had confessed to Ido at that time was merely the tip of the iceberg compared to the enormous heart he possessed. He had only revealed a very small part, but to his lover who dismissed it as just simple whining, Bunhong couldn’t tell him that all his words were sincere. He was afraid that he might think it was disgusting, and thus be abandoned.
Author: Hyacinthus B
Hyacinthus
