Chapter 98

Just as Haru had said, the convenience store was a fair distance from the new company building. On foot it was a bit far; by car about ten minutes, by bus around fifteen.

At Haru's suggestion — that someone might recognize them — the two of them decided to take a taxi.

"Taehyun-hyung keeps saying he just wants to have one spoonful of ice cream. Really, I was so scared we'd get caught…. I burned through all my energy stopping him every time he tried to go to the fridge!"

"And what are you going to do if he goes for it while you're out here right now?"

"……! I-it's fine. I asked Jaeyoung to KakaoTalk me if hyung headed toward the kitchen, but no messages yet!"

Just as Hajin had figured, going out with Haru had been a decent call. Listening to Haru — who still didn't know about the Yugeon business — chatter away the whole ride, Hajin felt his running thoughts break apart for a little while, at least.

'Mental care… still feels a little shaky, though.'

Better than earlier, sure, but he still felt like emotions would come spilling out at random the moment he loosened his grip on his own head.

Still, unlike last time, this wasn't the kind of state where tears would burst out beyond his control — thank god for that, he supposed.

'I'm okay. Until the third mission's done, nothing's happening yet.'

There's still time. Just as he was setting his mind on that, the taxi pulled up at the destination.

"You don't think they might be out of the ice cream or something, right…?"

"You checked on the app, didn't you. It'll be there."

"Or maybe they're not open yet…. It's really early morning."

"Convenience stores are 24-hour these days."

Tossing off half-listening replies to Haru's whining beside him, Hajin was heading for the entrance when he saw someone shove the door open and hurry out.

"……"

"…huh?"

"What — how are you here…."

Yugeon-hyung?

Haru called out the name of the person coming out of the store in a startled voice. Hood pulled low over his head, Yugeon — face just as stunned as Haru's and Hajin's — stopped in his tracks and stood frozen.

That was when it happened.

"H-Hajin-hyung!"

"What are you doing coming out of here. What are you doing here, right now!"

"No, that's—"

"Hajin-hyung, stop!"

The instant he saw Yugeon's face in an unexpected place, Hajin felt something he'd been holding down snap loose. Hajin closed the distance in long strides and grabbed Yugeon by the collar. Yugeon, thrown off himself, couldn't dodge him — just kept pushing back at his shoulder.

Haru ran up and barely managed to pry Hajin off, but having gone off once already, Hajin looked ready to lunge at Yugeon again any second.

"Hyung, just calm down! Please? Yugeon-hyung, say something!"

"……"

"Dan Haru, let go. Right now, Lee Yugeon, you—!"

Because of you alone, all of this is going to collapse!

Hajin held the words in — they'd risen all the way up his throat. He'd barely managed to register how impulsive, how violent, he was right now.

That was when someone else stepped out of the convenience store.

"Yugeon-haksaeng! This is your phone…?"

"……"

"……?"

"…oh my. I-is something going on?"

♪♩♬♩― ♬♪♩♪―

A middle-aged woman in convenience-store uniform looked between the three of them, taken aback. Yugeon's beat-up 2G phone in her hand rang and rang without a pause. With all three of them locked in a standoff, Yugeon let out a deep breath and moved.

"…thanks, boss. That's mine."

"You said you had to hurry off, didn't you? Oh no. All because of us…"

Boss?

What the hell was going on. Hajin was about to call Yugeon's name again when it happened.

Syyystehmm ㅂ resㅌstoㅗre !303 in# @progresss... Menㅁㅁㅁㅁtal @#4Care Sys001!tem #$6/. restㅂ.orinng… ... ...

"Ugh…."

"Hyung!"

Beeeeeeep—

The ringing that had tortured Hajin at dawn started up again. When he curled in on himself reflexively, the shattered-looking system window refreshed anew.

"What the — hyung, what's wrong?"

"I don't know. He keeps doing this since yesterday…."

"Sit him down here for now. Ma'am, one water, please. I'll pay for it."

"No, no need to pay. I'll bring it, hold on."

Alarmed by Hajin, who looked like he might collapse any second, Yugeon rushed over. He got Hajin onto a chair at the little counter outside the store and, with practiced hands, checked his pupils and pulse and made sure he was tracking.

"Look at me. See me properly?"

"…I'm, I'm okay. Give it a minute like this and… it'll pass."

Yugeon fed Hajin the water the store manager had rushed over. The system window refreshed a few more times, then — apparently Mental Care had been properly restored — his vision slowly cleared and he could feel his head steadying.

Still pressing hard at his temples, where the throbbing lingered, Hajin met the eyes of Yugeon, kneeling in front of him to bring their eye level even.

"……"

"Y-you sure I shouldn't call 119?"

"Vision's back, I think. How many does this look like to you?"

"…two."

"It's three."

"…it's two."

"You're fine."

It took a little longer for the ringing to fade and for him to feel fully like himself again. As the emotions settled, the clues he'd carelessly been letting slip started reassembling themselves in Hajin's head.

—Lee Yugeon — he didn't come to the company to debut.

—I just happened to find out.

Lee Yugeon, who didn't just look uninterested in debuting but seemed uninterested in idols entirely.

Seo Taehyun, saying he'd 'happened to find out' Yugeon's circumstances.

—The ice cream's, like, a limited edition or something, so I've got to go past the big intersection to find it.

The convenience store that stocked the diet ice cream Seo Taehyun had specially tracked down — and Yugeon, who clearly knew the store manager well.

The 2G phone in Yugeon's hand that couldn't even run a messenger app.

—My parents are coming to this next stage, so I can't wear something that scandalous.

—Fake. So I win the leash?

—Never does weekend practice on his own….

And, the final puzzle piece that snapped every one of these together—

〈Miro provides tuition and living-expense support for trainees from struggling households.〉

"Haaa…."

Once his thinking had gotten that far, Hajin — carefully so it wouldn't hurt — gripped Yugeon's wrist.

"…it hurts? Should I call 119?"

"Lee Yugeon. I'm about to ask you a really rude question."

"……"

"Hear it, and if it pisses you off, hit me. But I'm only asking because I really need to check this, so don't get the wrong idea. If it's right, just nod."

Meeting Yugeon's eyes head-on, Hajin brazenly gave notice that rudeness was incoming. Even Yugeon, who was rarely thrown off, could only nod in the face of that deep, steady gaze and overwhelming presence.

"You — you're the head of your household?"

"……"

"That's why you came into Miro? Working part-time jobs every time practice ends?"

It really was a rude question, but Yugeon could tell there was no intent from Hajin to mock or belittle him. If anything….

'…kind of a strange look, actually.'

Not apologetic, not pitying, not mocking or contemptuous — just a strange look.

With that thought, Yugeon quietly nodded.

---

The moment they got Hajin's message — 'Found Yugeon; there's something we need to discuss quietly in a meeting room' — Blue Flare came running to the meeting room.

"Lee Yugeon!"

"Shh. Kim Wonho, keep it down."

The whole point of calling them to the meeting room instead of the practice room was to keep this from being overheard or seen. Remembering that, Wonho slapped a hand over his mouth mid-hup and made his way over to Yugeon.

"You okay? What, where the hell have you been?"

"Ah — sorry, guys."

Once Eunchan and Doha, and then Siwoo, had all filed in, the door to the meeting room closed.

"……"

Unlike usual, Yugeon was a little tense. He was aware enough that today's mess was entirely his own fault.

'Of course, I did have my reasons.'

Knowing that to the hyungs sitting across from him, any of that would just sound like an excuse, Yugeon got up first and bowed at the waist.

"First — I'm sorry. This is on me."

He'd apologized with everything he had, but there was no answer. And that, too, he'd been braced for….

"That it?"

"…yes?"

At Siwoo's tone — calmer than he'd expected — Yugeon flinched and lifted his head. Siwoo, who he'd figured would blow up on him like he had during the first mission. And Doha, whose thoughts you could never read, who always watched him with that flat, unreadable face.

Both were looking at him without any real emotional swing, the same as always. When Yugeon closed his mouth, thrown, Siwoo finally let a small piece of something show.

"Instead of an apology, I'd like an explanation. Isn't that why you called us all in like this?"

Whether an apology is the right response — I'd rather decide that after hearing you out.

The rest of what Siwoo said wasn't blaming Yugeon either. So Yugeon slowly sank back into his seat and, for the first time, started telling his own story.

"I don't really know where to start…."

In the quiet meeting room, only Yugeon's voice could be heard.

"At home, it's my grandfather, me, and my two younger siblings — four of us living together. My parents left when I was a kid, and we haven't heard from them since."

Even before he came to Miro, Yugeon's daily life had started with part-time work and ended with part-time work. Fortunately, he'd been tall and hard-looking from a young age, so despite being a minor he could pick up all sorts of jobs.

—Delivery.

—Yo. Working hard today too, little breadwinner.

—What are you on. You lot are runaways yourselves.

—Yah, don't call it that. We moved out, you little brat.

Dancing — pretty much the only pleasure in Yugeon's life outside his family — he'd stumbled into too, through getting close with the instructor hyungs at a dance studio he used to deliver to. He couldn't afford lessons, so every time he made a delivery or dropped by, he'd pick up what he could just by watching.

—Yah, you wanna try learning dance? Your build looks good for it.

—I don't have money, though?

—Help us shoot videos at night and we'll teach you for free. How's that?

Thanks to the studio owner-hyung who'd taken an interest in Yugeon, Yugeon got to learn something with an easy heart for the first time in his life.

Finishing his evening shift, dancing with the hyungs into the small hours.

Yugeon had loved those moments the most. It was the only time he could forget the headache of reality.

"Then one of the choreo videos I shot with the hyungs got uploaded to iTube…. Miro saw it and reached out."

At first he'd turned it down. Because he couldn't sing.

What changed his mind was Miro's welfare package.

"They said if I came in, they'd cover school fees, living expenses, meals…. As a trainee I only had to sit through four periods anyway. So I said I'd do it. That way I could feed my younger siblings and, before I came here, help out at my grandfather's shop….."

"Then debuting — is that not on your mind at all?"

"Honestly, with a voice like mine, what debut? There's no guarantee I'd make it either. I was just going to stick around until I turned twenty and slip out at a decent point. …I feel bad about the staff, though."

Then — out of nowhere — the survival started.

"Honestly I wasn't going to sign on, but they said if I didn't do it I had to leave the company. And of all times, my grandfather went and hurt his leg…. They said doing this show came with an appearance fee too, so I just decided to do it."

He'd joined the survival, then, but his grandfather's hospital bills had been massive, so he couldn't quit the part-time work either — Yugeon added.

That was when Siwoo understood why Yugeon always left the second the scheduled practice time was up.

"So today too?"

"That, uh — normally I only do evenings, then the manager and I swap at dawn. So I could've been back in time — but a drunk came into the store and started raising hell, and by the time we'd called the police and dealt with everything…."

"……"

"…anyway. Sorry. I've been feeling bad the whole time, hyungs. But since I'm not going to debut anyway, I didn't want to trot this pathetic story out."

When Yugeon's story ended, silence settled over the meeting room again. Not one of them was quick to open their mouth.

'This is exactly why I didn't say anything.'

Yugeon hated pity.

He hadn't wanted to pity himself either, so he'd worked hard to keep the way he thought about it light, easy. But people would look at him like they couldn't even see the effort he was making, and casually toss his life into the trash for him.

'How hard it must have been. How you must have suffered….'

That kind of treatment he couldn't stand. But this time, he was in the wrong too, so he'd just have to take it.

A wave of vague disgust and weariness moving through him, Yugeon lifted his head and looked at his teammates.

Just then, with everyone still hesitating to speak, someone broke the silence.

"So?"

"…yes?"

The one who opened his mouth was Doha. With that expression Yugeon had always found hard to read — 'no idea what he's thinking' — he threw a straight pitch.

"So what I want to hear from you now is — what are you planning to do."

"Uh…."

"Are you saying you're going to keep this uncooperative attitude up, so please understand?"

"Huh? No, no. That's not what I meant."

This kind of reaction… was a first?