Chapter 82

……. s (・｀ヘ´・ ;)ゞ

"What."

Watching Han Seongwoo — his final retirement sealed after that talk with Ju Eunchan — walk out, from the second-floor railing, Thirteen had been angling for my attention like this for a while now.

Reading through every one of them was a pain, so I'd left a few on read — and now the thing was throwing up flowers and aurora-sparkle effects and having a full-blown fit.

"Dressing it up pretty doesn't make what you're saying pretty."

But what if it's a red 1 that won't go away?

Depraved little shit….

"What. What is it you're actually mad about."

(Choking-to-death-on-a-sweet-potato reaction)

"The votes disappearing?"

(Nodding-so-hard-the-neck-bones-bend reaction) (˃̣̣̣̣̣̣︿˂̣̣̣̣̣̣)

Something I'd been noticing for a while now — lately this guy was getting way too invested in my idol run. Never mind hunting down the Selreg he was supposed to be hunting.

But! It's just too unfair! In the end we covered everything up AND lost the votes! (ಠ‸ಠ )

"How is it that you look more aggrieved than me?"

When I let out a small, incredulous laugh, it huffed red steam at me — is this really the time to be laughing?

Oh ho.

"Fine, fine, just don't go red on me. I have trauma about you going red."

……. (subdued)

"And whatever it is, you don't know how it's going to go until you actually watch it play out."

……?

I looked for a moment at the revolving door of the Miro building — the one Han Seongwoo had vanished through.

When I turned my head, Ju Eunchan was coming up the stairs. Looking like he'd only just spotted me, he came over with a slightly startled expression.

"Hyung."

"Yep. Talk done? Come on, let's go eat. The kids all left already."

"…ah."

At "let's go eat," Ju Eunchan's face darkened in some way.

He worked his lips for a moment, then asked me, careful:

"Hyung. …want to go grab a meal out with me today? On me."

"Why? Today's cafeteria menu is jjimdak."

"I'll buy you something better."

But I wanted jjimdak. Does he not like jjimdak?

Looking at his face, though, the point clearly wasn't the menu — it was the fact of eating outside.

'Well, no need to turn down a free meal from someone offering.'

Unable to hold out against that look, I ended up pulling out my phone. I called Seo Taehyun, who'd be waiting for me and Ju Eunchan.

—Why aren't you here? Haru's three seconds from passing out from hunger. (Hyung… I'm seeing mirages….)

"Yeah. Eat without me. I'm going out with Eunchan today."

—What, out of nowhere? You said you were absolutely going to eat since it's jjimdak in the cafeteria today.

"Rich Eunchan's buying me something more expensive. Bye."

—What? No, hyung. Stop mooching off Eunchan—

I ended the call right there.

Seo Taehyun's parting shot had a pretty major misunderstanding baked into it, but the fact that I regularly ate on Ju Eunchan's dime was true, so I didn't feel the need to correct anything.

"I'm picking the menu?"

"Yeah, eat whatever you want, hyung."

"Alright, let's go, then."

There's just a certain something that hits right on gloomy weather.

I took the lead, and Ju Eunchan fell in behind.

---

Eunchan watched the bubbling foam of the gamjatang blankly.

Looking at the broth simmering along to the sound of the rain, some of the tension in his body seemed to ease a little.

"On a rainy day you've gotta have something warm like this — practice goes better after."

"Hyung, sometimes you sound really… ajusshi-like."

"Hey now, this kid."

I might have regressed some, but I'm not an ajusshi, kid.

The line rose to the tip of his tongue, but Hajin barely swallowed it. Hearing 'ajusshi' — a thing he'd only ever heard in the army — after getting ten years younger left him weirdly annoyed.

"Just eat, you little lamb."

Hajin heaped a generous scoop of gamjatang into Eunchan's bowl. Eunchan looked at the bowl a little awkwardly, then took a spoonful of the broth.

"……!"

"…what. Is this your first time having gamjatang?"

"Never really had occasion to. But this… it's good."

Seemed to hit his palate right; Eunchan's spoon started picking up speed. What was he, some chaebol heir out slumming for the common-folk experience?

'…wait, no. He actually kind of is a chaebol heir on a common-folk experience.'

Then again, no reason an 18-year-old trainee living alone would have had occasion to try gamjatang.

Hajin nudged the sauce over to Eunchan, pushed the plate of kkakdugi they'd be eating with it into reach, and then started on his own meal.

"So."

"…yes?"

"Why didn't you want to go to the cafeteria? Talk. It's loud here, so what people say doesn't carry."

At that, Eunchan's spoon stopped.

Whether his face showed everything, or whether the Hajin in front of him was exceptionally quick on the uptake — he couldn't tell.

"……"

Eunchan glanced around.

Just as Hajin had said, the place was full of office workers there for lunch, each table lit up in its own conversation. The table Eunchan and Hajin were at sat all the way at the edge, with few passersby.

The warm broth going down eased something inside, and Eunchan, a little more openly, let some of what was on his mind out.

"I feel really weird."

"Because of Seongwoo-hyung?"

"I thought Seongwoo-hyung might hate me. Hyung got bumped from the special class, he's older so debut is more urgent, and I was supposedly a parachute hire. It would make sense."

Even so, when Seongwoo had been kind to him despite the parachute suspicion piled on him, there had been times he'd thought maybe Seongwoo really was a good, understanding person. That maybe he was the bad one — for feeling awkward and burdened around him. There had been moments he'd beaten himself up over it.

"But now that I know Seongwoo-hyung was actually the parachute… and now that I've seen the other trainee-hyungs' attitudes change overnight. There's too much going through my head."

The hyungs who up until yesterday had ignored him and laughed at him were, today, coming up to him with sympathetic eyes and patting him on the shoulder like it must've been hard, carrying that alone.

Back when he'd insisted it wasn't true, nobody had believed him — but the second a different rumor started making the rounds, everyone jumped on with 'something felt off about it, actually,' and lined up on his side.

Eunchan couldn't quite make sense of any of it.

"I haven't changed. It's not that I hate them, but — something about it just feels off. It's uncomfortable being around them. We have to practice together."

"……"

"I want to be able to understand them, but I can't, and it's frustrating. If they were going to be like this, then why did they treat me the way they did before, why did it have to be me — thoughts like that…."

Hajin looked, silently, at Eunchan as he finally dropped his head.

Then he quietly picked over his words. What should he say. He thought about it, a little.

What Hajin ended up bringing out was a very old, very worn story.

"I've been there too."

"Huh?"

"Got frozen out. At an agency I was at before."

"…you, hyung?"

"Look at this kid. Same face Kim Wonho makes."

Is it that hard to believe I was a bullied kid? Cocking a brow, asking it sideways, Hajin got a careful nod from Eunchan.

"Of course, in my case — hmm, how do I put it. Some of it was my fault. Back then I was… um."

Tracing back over scenes that came to him only faintly now, in patches, Hajin's face twisted, just a little.

"Back then I was, I think, a bit selfish. Well — I'm not exactly a perfectly selfless human being now either."

"……"

"My mouth was a lot rougher back then, and I think I tried to do everything on my own."

"…I can't really picture that."

"Yeah? But I really was — even by my own standards — a piece of work back then, personality-wise. This is toned down. After what happened."

Hajin thought back to 'that.'

The day he was, for the first time, rejected by people.

"One day I went to the practice room, and there was nobody there. I figured the guys were running late and waited, but no matter how long I waited nobody came. Weren't answering their phones either."

At the time he'd just assumed the bastards had bailed again and were passed out somewhere.

At one scene — vivid to him despite how faded everything else was — Hajin scratched a spot below his eye.

"I was heading up to tell the director, and from somewhere I could hear the guys' voices. I went to look, and they were all together in a different practice room. Smell of sweat, music playing."

At first he'd just thought he'd gotten the wrong practice-room info.

Angry that nobody had told him it had changed, he'd been about to lay into them when a trainee his own age had walked slowly up to him.

"He told me — we've decided we're not practicing with you anymore. Then laughed, among themselves."

"……"

"When I asked what suddenly brought this on, they told me the reasons they didn't like me, one by one."

However long ago it had been, thinking of that moment left a bit of a bitter taste in his mouth.

Hajin took a sip of water to soothe the sting inside, then looked at Eunchan. Eunchan's whole face was scrunched up, like he was going through it himself.

"That was the first time I realized it. Ah — I speak too harshly. I'm bad at being considerate. Without even knowing it, I'd been hurting someone. Couldn't keep doing that."

Hajin had learned it then. How terrifying a thing exclusion is. How agonizing it is to breathe in a space where everyone hates you.

So from that day on, Hajin had scrambled to become a better person. Tried to say kind things, to be considerate, to work endlessly at being together with others.

But even so. Even if he'd had rough edges of his own. Even if the whole experience had made him a better person.

"Chan-ah."

"…yes."

"Even knowing the reason didn't make it easier."

"……"

"Even knowing I was in the wrong somewhere didn't stop it from hurting like that."

Fear once felt didn't disappear so easily.

"After that, sometimes when my friends were talking about something I didn't know about, I'd get scared. Checking someone's face after I'd said something was a habit for a while."

"……"

"Someone just asking to meet up would make my chest go tight, my heart race. Wondering if maybe I'd done something wrong."

Right up to now — living life for the fourth time over — hadn't he been dreaming about that day, on occasion?

Hajin, thinking back on his recent nights, smiled ruefully.

"So it's normal to feel wronged and hurt. How are you supposed to just go back to laughing it up with them overnight? Even for me — talking like this now — it took years before I was okay again."

"…yeah?"

"Obviously. Hey — it's that Shin Youngho and his lot, right? I know all about it. Ugh, sorry excuses for people. If they had a shred of a conscience they'd at least apologize. Just — don't associate with them, till they apologize. No, actually. Want me to make them apologize? Get one out of them for you? Just say the word."

Roused thinking about his B-team days, Hajin got worked up, holding forth, and tore off a big bite of meat. But Eunchan just seemed lost in thought about something.

Hajin didn't press him further, and just kept going with his own meal.

The kid was smarter and steadier than he looked — this much would probably be enough to help him get through it.

"……"

Sitting quietly with his thoughts, Eunchan — just as Hajin had figured — quietly nodded, expression noticeably eased. Hajin, with an as-expected sort of look, smiled with a hint of pride and asked:

"Head a little more sorted?"

"Yeah."

"Good. Now let's put the noodles in. The broth'll boil off waiting on you."

At Hajin's smooth return to his usual self, Eunchan this time smiled. It was, by any read, a completely at-ease, unburdened smile.

"Hyung."

"Yeah."

"Thank you."

"……"

"I wanted to say it, at least once."

'Ju Eunchan' 'responds' to you. (response rate 86%) 'Ju Eunchan' is available for recruitment. Confirm recruitment? (Y/N)

Along with Eunchan's thank-you, the companion-recruitment window — by now familiar past the point of feeling welcome — rose up.

But what Hajin liked a little more than the fact that he'd recruited a strong Selreg candidate was the fact that Eunchan had come to trust him this much.

"…yeah. You've had a rough time of it too, all this while."

That was how Hajin got his fifth companion.

And Hajin — was more than a little glad about that.