Chapter 131
Myeongjeon walked into the practice room with a guitar slung over his shoulder. No matter how much he exercised, it seemed impossible to bridge the physical gap between men and women; even though he had been working out for years, his gig bag was still heavy.
He trudged in and quietly opened the door. Inside the practice room, lively metal was playing, and a familiar figure stood there. Seoha was standing in front of a full-length mirror, muttering something to herself.
“Hmm…”
Since it had been a long time since he had seen her in person, Myeongjeon decided to sneak up and surprise Seoha. Just as he was about to approach her, he heard her muttering to herself.
“As expected…”
‘As expected?’
“Is it better to sweep it back like this?”
Her hair was a mix of blond and black. Seoha fussed with it this way and that, then swept it back from her forehead and muttered with satisfaction.
“Phew… Is it okay to be this handsome?”
“Did you take something?”
Since she was a high-school girl who was second to none when it came to having an inflated ego, Myeongjeon had been going to let it slide. But when the second remark came out, he had no choice but to fling open the door and give her a piece of his mind. As a friend, shouldn’t he correct such ridiculous delusions as quickly as possible?
“Why are you here today?”
“I came to practice.”
Seoha’s answer to Myeongjeon’s “Did you take something?” was to grab him by the hair while letting out a shriek. Her grip was strong enough to make him worry about hair loss—a condition he had never once feared when he had been a man—and he had no choice but to surrender, shouting, “I’m sorry!! I said I’m sorry!!” He had to survive before anything else was possible.
That was the first thing he heard after finally calming Seoha down. Her ears and face had gone bright red, thoroughly cooked like a boiled octopus, and perhaps she knew how embarrassing her behavior had been, because she didn’t say a word about what she had done.
“I thought you said you were taking today off?”
“That’s why I came here to rest. I’m just going to play guitar a little and leave.”
“You lunatic…”
“The crazy one is the person muttering that while looking in the mirror… Ow! It hurts!”
To Seoha, who was maligning him despite his diligent practice, Myeongjeon tried to toy with her the way Iseo used to tease him.
But what came back was another fistful of hair and eyes brimming with betrayal. It was the sort of look that said, ‘I never thought you’d be like this.’ But why did it feel as though she meant, ‘I never thought I would be like this’? Myeongjeon wondered why he alone was treated this way. Why was he always everyone’s punching bag?
Myeongjeon calmed Seoha down again, then helped her with the drums to ease her embarrassment. Perhaps because she had taken some time off, her sense of rhythm was badly out of practice.
“You need to practice some… No, you can’t practice at home.”
“That’s why I came to practice today.”
“So… No, why? No, I really didn’t say anything. Don’t do that. That’s your inferiority complex talking. I really didn’t mean it that way.”
Usually, Seoha would mutter unrelated things to herself or verbally smack the other girls before running away. Seeing her suffer like that, Myeongjeon thought it was truly novel. Her grabbing his hair was so novel that it hurt, though.
After practice ended, Myeongjeon decided to accomplish the small purpose for which he had come to the practice room today: monitoring the video he had appeared in. Watching it at home would have been more comfortable, but whenever he watched videos there, ‘Mom’ would come over and make a fuss, saying things like, “Oh, our daughter is so pretty~~” There was no way to stop her.
“Is this the thing you said you were recording before?”
“Yeah.”
When he played the video on the practice room’s smart TV, Seoha quietly approached and pulled her chair right up beside his. On the screen was ‘Ha Suyeon’ doing her ‘blues old-fogey routine.’
“Did the writers tell you to act like that?”
“No, they didn’t. I was kind of pissed off that day. I just started talking, and it came out like that.”
Even Seoha found the ‘blues old-fogey version of Suyeon’ strange. Myeongjeon shook his head to clear the thought and fast-forwarded through the rest of the broadcast. There was none of the malicious editing he had feared or the other things people had worried about. If anything, it felt like he had become the star of the program.
“The view count turned out pretty good too.”
“It did, but…”
The comments were favorable, and the view count was higher than anything Myeongjeon could have expected from his personal channel. The Shorts edited from his musical performances and other footage were also getting plenty of views.
But that didn’t mean anything incredible had happened, or that he had suddenly become a star while sitting in place. It was a subchannel, after all, not Producer Jung Taeyoung’s main channel, and the program was only on its first episode.
Still, it could certainly serve as a means of helping him take a step up.
Thinking that, Myeongjeon glanced at Seoha, who was quietly watching the video. Her lips trembled at the unavoidable ‘dae-yo’ refrain even here.
Normally, she would have attacked him with something like, “It’s Suyeon-dae-yo~” But in this situation, Seoha couldn’t get a single proper word out, no matter how much her lips trembled with anguish.
‘Is finding someone’s weakness really the best strategy?’
There was some saying online about how civilized people didn’t get their heads split open just because they said something rude, or something like that. Myeongjeon thought it was absolutely correct. Just look at Seoha, trembling with the desire to tease him but unable to say a word. Myeongjeon decided that from now on, he would set traps and find even more of her weaknesses.
* * *
“Let’s go hang out today.”
“Huh?”
A bell rang to signal the end of the school day. Myeongjeon had roughly wiped away the drool that had trickled down while he slept in the seat behind him and was preparing to go home when a voice flew at him. Park Dain, his closest friend at school, was looking at him with a sulky expression.
“I said let’s go hang out.”
“I need to go home and practice.”
“Practice what?! Come on, come with us. You practiced yesterday, and the day before that, and the day before that! When are you going to hang out with us? Is practicing going to feed you?”
“It does feed me, though.”
Dain fell silent at that calmly delivered fact. But the silence did not last long.
“Whatever, let’s go. Stop saying weird things.”
“I told you I need to practice…”
“Oh, what are you talking about!! Suyeon, are you really going to be like this? Do you know how much we’ve done to help you? Huh? But now you’ve sucked up all the help and you’re saying you won’t even hang out with us or go to karaoke? So this is who you really are? So your whole ‘turning over a new leaf’ thing was a lie?”
Dain suddenly started throwing a fit as if she were about to lie down on the floor. Myeongjeon stared at her, dumbfounded, then finally nodded. She was about to become a senior too; perhaps she was under some kind of stress.
The trio of high-school girls sang excitedly with their arms around one another’s shoulders. At first, they had sung idol songs while wildly performing the choreography, but now they seemed tired and were having fun with songs they could sing more comfortably.
After Dain and the others finished singing so enthusiastically, they plopped down as if they had done everything they came to do and handed the remote control to Myeongjeon.
“Sing the next song already.”
“Aren’t you going to sing?”
“We sang a lot. You didn’t sing, though. If you came to karaoke, you have to sing!”
“I’m a professional, so I’m expensive.”
While spouting that nonsense, Myeongjeon pondered what to sing. He knew plenty of songs, but nothing came immediately to mind. Besides, these girls didn’t like the old rock or blues he enjoyed, so he would have to sing something that suited their tastes.
After thinking it over, Myeongjeon selected the first song that came to mind. It was by a band currently heating up the indie scene. The song ended at a moderate pace and cleanly, and a faint silence settled over the room. With no song even reserved, Myeongjeon felt bewildered when the girls suddenly fell silent. What on earth was wrong with them?
“…You could really become a singer.”
“I’m a singer now, though?”
“No, I mean a real singer.”
“I’m in a band.”
“No, not that!”
While Myeongjeon thought it was absurd, Dain replayed the scene she had just witnessed. She knew her friend was in a band, and she knew she sang. Ha Suyeon had been a good singer even before the accident, after all. Her high notes soared, and she had been talented enough to show off in front of others, saying, “I sing really well~”
But her current performance was completely different from before. In truth, Dain had never seen ‘Ha Suyeon’ sing seriously. At Juhyeon’s concert, she had only played guitar, and at the EP release commemorative concert, Dain and the others had mainly been responsible for drawing in the audience. They had hardly had a chance to appreciate ‘Ha Suyeon’s’ singing.
That was why Dain was shocked when she heard Suyeon sing. The feeling of the song was completely different from before. Unlike her old singing, which had been done simply to demonstrate that she could sing well, her current performance seemed to show exactly what it meant to sing with emotion.
Dain stood there thinking with her arms folded. Beside her, Chaerin, who had been frozen in a daze, suddenly shouted.
“Ah!!!”
“Why, what’s wrong?”
“Suyeon, you have to perform at the festival!! Our school festival!!”
“…Why me?”
* * *
After answering, “Why me?” Myeongjeon was subjected to another protest by the trio. It was only a protest in name; it was practically blackmail.
“So you’re really going to keep acting like this. We worked so hard trying to clear up those school-bullying allegations against you.”
“What do you call this again? Black-haired beasts? My mom always said you shouldn’t raise a black-haired beast or something.”
“You’re a total traitor. From now on, we shouldn’t even pretend to know you. Hey, Ha Suyeon. Is it really so hard to come sing at the festival?”
“No, I’m a professional, I’m telling you…”
“Professional!! Sure, being a professional is great! Then why did you go to another school last year and sing for free?!”
While Suyeon was rendered speechless by their logical rebuttal, Dain whispered with her friends. Ominous suggestions like, “We’ll put her on as the opening act and make her sing three or four songs…” and “We’ll even make her sing idol songs. Make her practice the dances,” were flying around when Myeongjeon held up a hand and said,
“Wait a second. Leaving everything else aside, is that even possible? You said festival applications were already closed. And one person can’t sing several songs. A band from another school can’t come, either. None of that is possible.”
Myeongjeon decided to refuse and laid out various reasons. When refusing, simply saying, “I don’t want to,” sent you straight down the path of ruining your relationship with the other person. The best approach was to cite practical difficulties, so the other person would hear them and think, ‘Ah, this person doesn’t really want to do it…’ That was how everyone handled things in society.
But Dain, Chaerin, and Suhyeon wore expressions that looked as if they had caught their prey. Myeongjeon sensed something ominous in those expressions.
“Huh? That much is doable.”
“No… If it’s against the rules, shouldn’t it not all be doable? What the…”
“Suyeon. It’s a school festival. Why are you making such a fuss over that? We just have to approve it.”
The trio cheered in the teachers’ office at the words of the teacher in charge of the festival, then received irritated glares. With those girls as his backdrop, Myeongjeon was devastated. Perhaps because they were high-school girls, they didn’t think about social conventions at all…
‘This damn teacher is no different. As expected, every last teacher is rotten to the core. The professional ethics of those days, when they took bribes and beat children, haven’t gone anywhere. He doesn’t know what the students want and is only approving it because it looks like it’ll help his record…’
While mentally slandering a teacher who had approved it out of ordinary goodwill, Myeongjeon stared up at the teachers’ office ceiling. The ceiling tiles were asbestos, and he felt that he wished everyone in the room would get cancer and die.