Chapter 108
“Hey, Kwon Jihye. What the hell was that? Did I tell you to do the interview like that? Are you trying to fuck with me?”
The article that appeared online was completely opposite to what Seong Juhee had discussed with Kwon Jihye. Juhee had no choice but to call her, and as soon as Jihye answered, she unleashed a torrent of words.
But no answer came immediately. A few seconds later, a low laugh came through the phone.
[“Hehehehe… Unnie—no, Juhee. I think you’ve got it wrong.”]
“Juhee?! Fuck, do you want to die?”
[“You’re the one who looks like she’s about to die. Can’t you understand what’s happening? Well, if you had the brains to understand the situation, you wouldn’t have called me to do something like this in the first place.”]
“Hey, you fucking bitch. You fucking—”
Jihye burst out laughing at Seong Juhee’s reply. Juhee shouted, “You’re laughing?! You fucking bitch, you think this is funny?!” but Jihye continued to giggle for several seconds. Then she quieted down and spoke.
[“I was planning to betray you from the very beginning. Why would I stab Suyeon in the back in the first place? What, are you too stupid to understand?”]
“You fucking—!!”
[“I’m hanging up. I’ll block you, so there’s no point calling, you moron~”]
The call disconnected. Juhee immediately called back, but it went straight to voicemail. Jihye had clearly blocked her.
“That fucking bitch… It was my mistake to trust her. Fuck. What am I supposed to do…”
Juhee stared anxiously at her phone screen. The evidence of Kwon Jihye’s betrayal was the article titled [Exclusive) ‘Ha Suyeon School Violence Incident’ Manipulation Allegations… Testimony from Classmate ‘Kwon Jihye’]. Somehow, she felt like she wouldn’t be able to sleep tonight.
“Juhee. Don’t come in starting today.”
“Excuse me?”
She had to go to work, so Juhee spent the night with half-open eyes before somehow forcing herself up and heading to work. Things weren’t going well, but a part-time job was still a part-time job, and she had to show up. That was what she thought as she went to work, but…
The person who stopped Juhee as she arrived was the owner of the café where she worked. He blocked her from entering the shop and spoke.
“No, what are you talking about, boss?”
“Do you not even look at the internet? No… there’s no way you haven’t. This is what you did.”
The owner took out his phone and showed her the café’s reviews. They were plummeting straight toward the 0-point range. Most of them were already one-star reviews, and the comments were largely similar.
[I’m giving this one star because of that shameless part-timer.]
[I haven’t even eaten here, but it seems awful.]
[Is this the café that slanders people who try to live decently? One star says it all.]
[I’ve seen the part-timer’s face around sometimes, and I didn’t think she was like that lol. Guess you really can’t tell what people are like from their faces.]
[1 star]
[The dog that barks at idiots is here! Woof woof!! Wangwol-orawal!! Woof woof, grrrrr…]
[The owner of a café that employs someone like this is irresponsible. One star.]
“No, I…”
“The rating suddenly became like this last night, so I looked into it, and apparently you’re involved in some school-violence thing? I don’t care what you do, but I don’t understand why our café has to get dragged into it. Don’t come in starting tomorrow.”
The owner’s firm attitude made Juhee instinctively realize that she couldn’t change his mind. Her mouth opened just as instinctively.
“Boss, you didn’t give me thirty days’ notice, so this is wrongful dismissal. Pay me severance.”
“Have you lost your mind?”
The owner stared at Juhee as though she were unbelievable.
“Do you have any idea how much damage you’ve caused our shop? If we’re going to get this rating back up, ha… This is grounds for legitimate dismissal. But… fuck it. I’ll just pay you. Take it and get lost.”
The owner operated his phone and transferred the money. It was Juhee’s regular wages for thirty days. While she stared blankly at the phone screen as it vibrated, the owner muttered as though he were chewing her up.
“I was going to keep this from other places since we worked together for several months. But you’re beyond help. Don’t even think about getting a part-time job anywhere nearby.”
With that, the owner closed the café door and went inside. Juhee stood there dazed for a moment before scoffing. What authority did a café owner have to decide whether she could get a part-time job nearby? This wasn’t some middle-of-nowhere village, and Jongno District was huge. If she looked around, there were plenty of places where she could work.
Juhee muttered that to herself and opened Instagram. But the countless notifications gave her an ominous feeling.
‘Surely they aren’t all hate.’
They were. Her DMs and Instagram comments were filled with abuse. From the moment Jihye had betrayed her and uploaded the article last night until now. Even during the few seconds she spent looking at Instagram, notifications and insults continued pouring in. On top of that, the number of followers she had worked so hard to build had dropped by nearly 40 percent.
“What is this?”
Since graduating high school, the only thing she had really enjoyed was Instagram, built around her naturally gifted figure. Increasing her follower count had been incredibly fun… It was a trivial number to other people, but it had been extremely precious to her.
But it had vanished.
Almost half of it, in a single day.
Juhee nearly dropped her phone, then hurriedly checked KakaoTalk as if possessed. There were messages cutting ties with her that said, “I never thought you’d do something like that,” and messages asking, “What on earth happened?” The details varied, but most of them were ultimately messages blaming her.
“What is this?”
Juhee felt all the strength drain from her hands. The phone slipped from her grasp, fell to the ground, and shattered its screen.
Why was the world like this?
She had only wanted revenge on the junior who had acted insolently toward her and hit her in the past. But to receive this in return—wasn’t that far too cruel?
Faced with a reality she couldn’t accept, Juhee clutched her shoulders and sobbed for a while, but it didn’t last long. The sorrow that had been ruling her soon turned into resentment and fury. Taking revenge on Ha Suyeon now seemed impossibly difficult. So where could she vent all this resentment and anger?
As she racked her brain, she found a target. The bastards who had dragged her, while she had been living just fine, into this mess. The bastards who had made grand speeches about getting revenge but hadn’t actually helped her at all, becoming nothing more than deadweight. And the bastards who were now keeping their mouths shut and pretending they had nothing to do with it.
She couldn’t be the only one to suffer while leaving people like that alone. That was what Seong Juhee thought.
* * *
[I’m S, the person identified as the subject of the false school-violence exposé. I would like to say a few things.]
…After that, I forgot about it and lived my life. My emotions did boil over, but what could I have done? All I had to do was forget about it and live well, so I didn’t let it weigh too heavily on me.
There are people who dragged me into this situation. They are ‘Jeong Woojin,’ the leader of a band called ‘Ullim Stones.’
One day, he contacted me, somehow having found me. Then he said,
“Don’t you want revenge on Ha Suyeon?”
I told him I had no particular desire for that. She had been in an accident and was probably living as an ordinary person, so I said I had no reason to go out of my way to do something like that.
But Mr. Jeong Woojin told me that Ha Suyeon had appeared on the band audition program he was participating in, had whitewashed her school violence, and was doing extremely well. He even goaded me by saying that I was the only person who could expose Ha Suyeon’s past.
I think I shouldn’t have listened to him, but at the time, I thought it sounded like a pretty good idea and went along with it. The rest happened as you know. According to Jeong Woojin’s plan, I exposed the things Ha Suyeon had done…
The post that appeared online—the post uploaded by Seong Juhee, the so-called “Senior S”—set the internet, which was already burning, even further ablaze.
The people who saw the post began looking for information about Jeong Woojin of Ullim Stones, who had been identified as the final mastermind. Before long, they discovered that Jeong Woojin was a contestant on Invasion 2024 as well as a participant in the government-sponsored Band Pioneer project, and…
They also appeared to have found circumstantial evidence that he had pulled off something similar during Band Pioneer.
“What a fucking mess.”
After taking a shower, Iseo muttered that while fiddling with her phone, wearing only a towel. Who even was Jeong Woojin? What on earth had that man been to hold such a grudge against them? Iseo thought the world was truly impossible to understand.
“Choi Iseo!! Aren’t you dressed yet?!”
“Eek.”
At her mother’s shout, Iseo hurried into her room. She put on her panties and bra, which had been getting tighter lately, then pulled on her clothes. With her still-damp hair wrapped in a towel, Iseo threw herself onto the bed.
‘I’m dying…’
The live final that would bring Invasion 2024 to a close was scheduled for tomorrow. To prepare for it, Suyeon had put Iseo and the others through training more intense than anything they had ever experienced.
To give an idea of how hard she had pushed them, they hadn’t rested at all outside of Iseo’s songwriting sessions and the filming of the interstitial video. She had even given them some strange tools during class and told them to practice with them.
‘At least practice has been going well thanks to it…’
The lyrics had turned out well, and they had filmed the interstitial video successfully. There were no guarantees in the world of competition, but it didn’t seem like they would lose. Especially not with the atmosphere like this.
“Choi Iseo. Come out. Let’s talk.”
Just then, she heard her father’s voice. Iseo roughly tidied her hair and trudged out to the living room. Her mother and father were sitting on the floor, leaving the sofa untouched.
“Why did you buy a sofa if you’re not going to sit on it?”
“Old people find this more comfortable.”
At her mother’s words, Iseo shook her head and plopped down on the sofa. What on earth were they planning to talk about?
“You saw the article that came out this time, right?”
“Which article?”
“That band of yours, that girl named Suyeon.”
“Ah… that.”
The fact that Suyeon had been the ‘demon of drinking and smoking’ and the ‘demon of school violence’ was well known among high school students in Jongno District. In this incident, Iseo had been surprised only by the extent of it. She had accepted without much thought that Suyeon had done such things, since Suyeon had been famous for it in the first place.
But Iseo thought her father seemed to see things a little differently.
‘Well, I knew from the start, so it isn’t really a problem for me…’
“That girl is really dangerous. Are you going to keep playing in a band with her?”
“Uh… she was only like that in the past, and she isn’t now, so what does it matter?”
“How does that make sense? I’m against it. You don’t know what might happen if you hang around with someone like that.”
“But she doesn’t act like that now… She doesn’t even ask us to go anywhere for fun. All she ever makes us do is play instruments. Even when we beg her to let us have some fun, she just makes us play instruments in the practice room.”
Her father seemed to be worried about her, but what he ultimately meant was that she should quit the band. It was an absurd thing to say, but Iseo responded seriously and calmly. She couldn’t exactly slam the door and leave while shouting, “Mind your own business!” After all, Iseo herself wasn’t the ‘Ha Suyeon before the accident.’
“Choi Iseo. Your father’s only saying this because he’s worried. You should say something too. We let you do what you wanted, but now you’re hanging around with some really strange kid…”
At that, Iseo looked at her mother. Her mother had been quietly watching TV when she suddenly said,
“That’s just how rock is.”
“No, honey, what are you—”
“You don’t know much about it, dear, but rock musicians drink and smoke. They’re rebelling against social order.”
At her mother’s words, her father stared at her in disbelief. Iseo remembered something her mother had told her before, back when she said she was going to join a band.
‘Didn’t Mom say she used to listen to quite a bit of rock too…’
“You should take this chance to listen to some rock and try to understand our daughter. You only ever listen to CCM and talk about praising the Lord, so whenever you hear that kids drink and smoke, you act like they’re going to incur divine punishment…”
“Honey! What are you talking about? Of course kids shouldn’t be drinking and…”
As the situation turned into a petty marital argument, Iseo quietly slipped away. She needed to get to sleep early for tomorrow’s recording.
* * *
With her favorite band 2MAJOR eliminated… ordinarily, there would have been no reason for her to keep paying attention to this audition. She wouldn’t have needed to pay extra and worm her way in just to watch the increasingly fierce final stage.
Having come this far, she had to admit it. And she did. Her favorite group had changed. 2MAJOR was no longer her favorite. Group Sound was her number-one pick.
“Hello, everyone! The final stage! The finals! Welcome to the live broadcast stage of Invasion from Seoul 2024, with only three bands remaining!! …Though the broadcast itself will begin a little later. Haha.”
The audience laughed at the MC’s banter while applauding. As the MC went over various details before the main performance, she thought,
‘Today, I’m absolutely getting a full video.’
Her goal for today was to film a ‘fan-making video’ that would surpass the fancam she had taken during the battle with Mystica. Of course, for that to happen, she couldn’t be the only one working hard. Group Sound also had to put on a legendary performance, but…
‘There’s no way our girls will put on a low-quality stage at the finals.’
She already believed that. It was a faith approaching fanaticism.
Meanwhile, time passed. Time dragged on, and the first band’s performance continued without leaving any memories or impressions behind. She watched the performance only wondering when her girls would come out. The band seemed to feel similarly; they did their best, but they didn’t look particularly motivated.
“Next…! A lot of you have been waiting for this, right? Group Sound’s performance!!”
A thunderous cheer completely different from before poured out. The MC gave a bitter smile, shouted, “Let’s watch the video first!” and left the stage. What played on the screen was a short video showing the process of preparing their song.
‘Iseo… wrote the lyrics? And lots of the others participated in the arrangement?’
Suyeon explaining the song’s intent and the composition process were ordinary enough. But after that came Iseo agonizing over the lyrics, followed by all the girls participating in the arrangement.
She found it unexpected. She had assumed Suyeon did all the composing and arranging herself. But in the video, Suyeon had said, “Iseo handles lyrics for our band.”
‘The girls have more diverse roles than I expected…’
While she was thinking that, the video ended. The girls and staff came onto the brightly lit stage. Another wave of cheers erupted. Once the equipment had been prepared, Suyeon approached the microphone and spoke.
“It’s been an eventful time, hasn’t it?”
“Yes!!!!” came the booming response. Laughter followed someone’s shout of, “I love you, Ha Suyeon!!” Suyeon let out a quiet laugh before speaking again.
“I never expected this period to feel so long. It feels like it’s been over a month. A lot has happened, and I’ve had a lot of experiences. A lot is still happening even now, actually…”
Suyeon swept her hair back. Ignoring the faint screams that began to rise, she continued speaking.
“In any case, this is still a competition. I think it’s time to show you our final stage. Please listen to our last song… [Transgression].”