Chapter 183
Chapter 183
Translator: Penny
Chapter 183
"It's been so long since all five of us brothers have gathered like this. How long has it been?"
"Ten minutes, probably."
"No meta-comments! It's been ten years since we've all been together! Ever since Eden Hyung left home ten years ago."
Ryu Jaehee quickly covered up my thoughtless remark.
"Eden Hyung, or rather, our third Hyung, seems to have lost ten years of memories due to the pain of a crushing failure. He's compressed ten years into ten minutes."
Kim Dobin pretended to wipe away tears.
"But you still remember borrowing five million won from me ten years ago."
"It seems like this Hyung didn't just lose ten years of memories. He must have lost even more?"
"No, it wasn't just forgotten—it was manipulated. The truth is, Eden Hyung wasn't making music at all. He was dragged to some mysterious laboratory and—"
"Hey, don't add more to the story here. It's already too much."
"But we're all together for the first time in ten years. What should we do today?"
"It's Chuseok, so we should hold a memorial service."
Gyeon Hajun read the line from the script. The script was just a list of things they needed to film, nothing more.
"But our ancestors are all different."
"That's a meta comment."
Kim Dobin pointed out Seo Yehyeon's sharp observation.
"Still, a memorial service is a ritual to honor our ancestors during holidays. It feels weird to set up a memorial table without any ancestors to honor."
"Then let's set up a memorial table for CEO Kim Nodam, the father figure of our agency, LnL..."
"Why are we setting up a memorial table for the CEO while he's still alive? That's just asking for trouble."
Gyeon Hajun cut Kim Dobin's nonsense off at the pass, offering a clear solution:
"Let's set up the table first, then each of us can bow to our own ancestors. That should work."
"Wait, we're brothers, but we have separate ancestors?"
"Here's the list of dishes we need to make for the memorial table today."
Gyeon Hajun slid the paper with the food list to the center of the table.
- Rice- Beef Jeon (pan-fried beef)- Donggeurangttaeng (meatballs)- Pollock Jeon (pan-fried pollock)- Sanjeok skewers (meat skewers)- Gosari namul (braken fern side dish)- Doraji namul (bellflower root side dish)- Tangguk (beef and radish soup)- Flatfish steamed
Ryu Jaehee stared at the food list with a look of utter dread, letting out a deep, genuine sigh—not the kind he faked for the cameras.
Come to think of it, didn't he once say he hated memorial table food?
Seo Yehyeon, who was scanning the list beside him, narrowed his eyes and asked, "No fried dishes? For a memorial table?"
Everyone turned to look at Seo Yehyeon, who blinked in surprise at being the center of attention.
"Why would you put fried food on the ancestral altar? We always offer jeon."
"Fried food on the altar? We fry food for every holiday and ancestral rite!"
"Wow, I've never heard of that before."
Ryu Jaehee, who had been diligently searching on his phone, held up the screen to show us.
"Ah, it says they offer fried food in Gyeongnam? Right, Yehyeon Hyung is from Gyeongnam."
"Another meta comment."
"See? I told you we offer fried food! But is it only a Gyeongnam thing? You guys really don't offer fried food?"
After the fried food commotion subsided, I sprawled on the sofa, watching the Maknae Line slip back into their roles, delivering lines true to their characters as they continued their banter.
Being a jobless bum is great.
"Dobin, fetch me a glass of cold water."
"Poetry? Exams? Aaaah! The nightmare of failing exams...!"
Kim Dobin had been handling the word "poetry" just fine until now, but as soon as I asked him to get water, he faithfully stuck to his concept of freaking out at the mere mention of the word. Since I wrote the character settings, I couldn't really complain.
Ryu Jaehee, still wearing his apron and holding a spatula in one hand, stood before me and forcibly pulled me up from the sofa.
"Hyung, stop lounging around and come help make jeon."
"No way, no way. A jobless bum who failed at music doesn't know how to do that."
"Hyung's concept is 'jobless bum,' not 'village idiot,' you know?"
Even when I shook my head, Ryu Jaehee showed no mercy. He forcibly tied the apron around me, and I stared blankly at the jeon ingredients laid out before me.
The labor-intensive donggeurangttaeng (meat patties) and sanjeok skewers were assigned to Seo Yehyeon and Gyeon Hajun, while the relatively simpler yukjeon (beef pancakes) and myeongtaejeon (pollack pancakes) fell to me and Ryu Jaehee.
Kim Dobin was diligently seasoning vegetables nearby.
"But you're terrible at cooking, youngest member. Wouldn't it be better to let Dobin handle the pancakes and you season the vegetables?"
"I'm actually really good at making pancakes."
As if to prove his point, Ryu Jaehee effortlessly flipped five pancakes while I managed only two.
His technique was flawless: thoroughly coating the meat in pancake batter, dipping it in egg wash, and placing it on the hot pan with the precision of a seasoned chef.
"Wow, how can you be so bad at cooking but so good at making pancakes?"
"I've been making them since I was a kid. I'm sick of them."
Ryu Jaehee chuckled as he watched me flip the egg-battered slices every ten seconds to check if they were cooked through.
"Hyung, you look like you've never done this before."
"Yeah, I really haven't. My paternal grandmother hated the smell of oil in the house, so my father's side always bought all the ritual foods for ancestral rites. My mother's side is Christian, so we don't observe those rites at all."
"I'm jealous. I used to hate ancestral rites so much that I begged my parents to let me go to church instead."
Kim Dobin, who was chewing on a fern stalk nearby under the guise of "taste-testing," suddenly shouted, "Hey, you two! No meta-commentary!"
"Just edit it out," I said nonchalantly, making a scissor-snipping motion with my hand.
Ryu Jaehee swiftly finished making the beef and pollock pancakes and vanished before my eyes, declaring he was going to help with the meatball patties and skewered meat.
Once we finished making all the labor-intensive pancakes, the rest was smooth sailing.
"Wait, do we peel the fruit for the ancestral rites table top and bottom, or just the top?"
"Just the top. And arrange them in odd numbers."
"Isn't there some rule about arranging the food on the table, like 'red east, white west' or something?"
"Red east, white west, jujube-chestnut-persimmon-pear, fish east, meat west. Red fruits go on the east side, white fruits on the west. We'll skip the jujube-chestnut-persimmon-pear part since we don't have those right now. For fish east, meat west, fish goes east, meat west. First row is rice and soup, second row is pancakes, third row is vegetables, fourth row is fruit."
"Can't we just arrange it roughly...?"
"Jaehee, which way is east again?"
"The way you're facing now, Hyung."
Ryu Jaehee was practically an ancestral rites table auto-responder. There was no need to consult the internet.
Just as they were finishing setting the table, chicken and pizza arrived at the traditional Korean studio.
"What's this? Who ordered chicken and pizza?"
"I did. After hearing the youngest member talk, I figured our ancestors might want something special too."
"Wow, Dobin's ancestors are really getting spoiled today."
"It's getting hard to even point out meta remarks anymore..."
Kim Dobin tried to place the pizza and chicken on the ancestral rites table, but quickly gave up when he realized there was no room.
After somehow completing the table setting, they bowed deeply before it.
The absurdity of gathering to perform ancestral rites on a day that wasn't even Chuseok was evident in the muffled laughter that rippled through the room.
After the perfunctory bows, everyone gathered around the table.
"Today isn't just Chuseok; it's also a special day for another reason," Seo Yehyeon, the eldest son and sole provider for the family, announced solemnly from his seat of honor.
At Yehyeon's signal, Gyeon Hajun exchanged a knowing glance with him and slipped his hand into his pocket.
Kim Dobin excused himself to the restroom, then quietly rose and headed toward the sofa. More precisely, he was heading for the box hidden beneath the sofa, concealed by coats.
"It's the birthday of Yuje, the youngest member of Reve, my favorite idol group!"
That's right, today was also Ryu Jaehee's birthday.
Fireworks erupted on either side of him, and a cake was thrust forward. Ryu Jaehee clapped a hand over his mouth, stunned. The surprise camera prank had succeeded in fooling the perceptive youngest member.
"Wait, does that mean Yuje's birthday is on Chuseok?"
"Hey, change the setting to celebrate Lunar birthdays. This is going to air during Chuseok."
"Ugh, please refrain from meta comments!"
Since we were supposed to be idols here, we had no choice but to celebrate Reve Yuje's birthday instead of Ryu Jaehee's.
"Happy birthday! Happy birthday! Happy birthday to our beloved Yuje!"
Ryu Jaehee blew out the candles, wiped his teary eyes with his sleeve, and said, "Wow, I never imagined we'd be celebrating my—I mean, Yuje's birthday party here. I thought we'd just have some late-night snacks or something?"
"Wow, youngest member, you're a Yuje fan too? Why are you crying at Yuje's birthday party?"
"Actually, I didn't expect this because we made tangguk instead of seaweed soup. If it had been seaweed soup, I would have noticed right away."
"That's why I prepared this, just in case you were disappointed. It's cold cucumber soup with seaweed instead of seaweed soup."
Gyeon Hajun slid a bowl of cold cucumber soup toward Ryu Jaehee.
The side dishes and rice cakes were cleared away, and chicken and pizza appeared on the table.
Ryu Jaehee, watching the ancestral rites table transform into a birthday feast, blurted out his honest thoughts:
"Getting a birthday feast on an ancestral rites table... this feels really strange."
"Meta comment."
We all started eating. Ryu Jaehee didn't touch the jeon he had worked so hard to make, instead picking only at the chicken and pizza.
Knowing how much he disliked ancestral rites food, I hesitated to tell him to eat a balanced meal.
After finishing our filling meal, it was time for dishwashing duty.
Seo Yehyeon, who lost at rock-paper-scissors, almost got stuck with all the dishes, but he wriggled out of it like a slippery loach by exploiting the game's rules.
Thanks to him, Kim Dobin and I were stuck with dishwashing duty.
The next item on the script was holiday games.
"When you think of holidays, you think of yutnori, right?"
"Hey, who even plays yutnori during the holidays these days?"
I smirked mockingly and abruptly stood up, spreading out the green blanket known as the "Hwatu Blanket." Seo Yehyeon urgently called out to me.
"Hey, wait a minute! Yoon Eden, hold on! Even if you're sticking to the concept, gambling is a bit much."
"No, wait a minute, Hyung. This will get us cut for violating broadcasting regulations. There's no way 'Go' and 'Stop' can air."
"Who said we were playing Go-Stop?"
I pulled out a deck of playing cards and fanned them out with a flourish.
"Isn't this also gambling?"
"Of course, there are countless gambling games you can play with these cards. But One Card isn't one of them."
I shuffled the cards with dazzling dexterity, glanced at the camera, and smiled.
"Our show, Reve Time, strictly adheres to broadcasting regulations."
📝 Translator’s Note:
You may notice that certain lines or phrases in this novel appear both in their original Korean (or Hanja) form and in English translation.
This is intentional — these phrases are classical idioms, divine titles, or poetic expressions that carry layered meanings.
To preserve their original tone and authenticity, the raw text has been kept for reference, while the English interpretation is provided right before or after it. This helps convey both the literal and cultural nuance of the original work.
but if you guys dont want tha raw for future chapters or my future other novels u can just text me on discord and say so discord name Mr.Penny