An Unexpected Reaction, Part 2
“I didn’t know mermaids could get mouth sores.”
Neoul was about to ask what a mouth sore was when he caught Baek Yuri’s serious expression and shut his mouth. He would have to look it up later.
“How long has it been like that?”
“Mm.”
Neoul rolled his eyes in thought for a moment, then held up three fingers. It meant the pain had first appeared about three days ago.
What had started as a small inflammation had gradually swollen and grown worse, and by now the pain had driven Neoul’s pronunciation to an irrecoverable state.
“The final stage is the day after tomorrow, and you’re like this...?”
Baek Yuri’s face went pale.
“Can you even sing with your pronunciation this bad? No, wait. Let’s get some medicine on it first.”
“I cain stang it. I cain sang.”
Neoul insisted he could still sing, but he did not sound especially convincing.
Fortunately, among the emergency medicines there was something for mouth sores.
One type felt horrifically painful, as though it had been seared with fire, but worked relatively quickly. The other was less painful to apply, but made one wonder whether it did anything at all.
Two kinds had been prepared, but because the sore had grown so large, the first ointment could not be used.
In the end, Neoul applied the second ointment and took the tube with him back to the lodging.
When the team heard that Neoul had developed a mouth sore, A Team went into emergency mode. Baek Gi-yeom’s face also turned grave.
“Oof. That must hurt. And your pronunciation... it’s like your tongue’s been cut in half?”
Neoul shook his head, saying his tongue had not been cut off. Then he asked whether a mouth sore was a serious illness, and whether it was even possible to recover from it.
“No, nothing like that. Just eat well and get some rest. Maybe you stayed up too late practicing, or kept grabbing naps and overdid it. It’s the changing season too, so your immune system might have dipped.”
“Wha... is immune?”
Even hearing it a second time, the pronunciation was tragic enough that Baek Gi-yeom rubbed his forehead. While he explained about immunity, Baek Yuri dug through his bag and found some vitamins.
“Neoul, take one vitamin B and one vitamin C for now. I’ve got propolis candy too, so keep one in your mouth just in case it helps.”
“Yuri. I also want vitamin.”
“Of course. Let’s all take one each, just to be safe. We’ve barely had any fruit lately anyway.”
Baek Yuri handed out vitamins to every team member. Then he opened his bag wide and started searching for other things.
“Ah, I’ve also got red ginseng. Anyone want some? Leave it out for people who run hot or don’t do well with ginseng. It can cause side effects, so even people who’ve never had it should be careful.”
“Yuri hyung, you carry red ginseng too?”
Lee Gal-chae showed interest in the ginseng, then gaped at the medicines pouring out of Baek Yuri’s bag one after another.
“...This is basically a full pharmacy, isn’t it? There’s medicine for stomachaches, colds, and headaches too?”
Painkillers, alcohol swabs, and bandages of every kind came spilling out. There were also several varieties of supplements, including magnesium.
After finding out the production staff had forgotten to bring a thermometer for the outdoor shoot last time, Baek Yuri had added one to his travel bag as soon as they returned to Seoul. It seemed likely that mouth sore medicine would be added soon too.
Baek Gi-yeom found the box of propolis candies and opened it as he said, “Back in high school, Yuri used to pack his locker full of medicine, so everybody called him Yuri Pharmacy. The other kids would borrow bandages, headache pills, painkillers, one tablet at a time, and later they’d bring back a whole new bottle, so the same medicine would pile up in ten full boxes.”
“Right. That happened.”
At Baek Gi-yeom’s words, Baek Yuri chimed in and remembered his high school days.
“I kept telling them not to buy me anything since I already had plenty, but they always brought one anyway. If it passed the expiration date I’d have to throw it out, so I didn’t need that many. Why did they do that? In the end I just gave them out to people around me.”
“Huh, you didn’t know? They were just looking for an excuse to talk to you for even a second longer. So they’d pretend to be sick and borrow medicine, and then pay you back with a fresh pill just to talk to you again while thanking you.”
“Pretending to be sick...? Why...? You could talk to me as much as you wanted without doing that.”
Baek Yuri’s eyes went round.
“I just thought everyone must be really sick, since the moment they saw me they only looked for medicine.”
“If they were really sick, they should’ve gone to the nurse’s office. Why would they come to you? They wanted to talk to you, but since you were an idol trainee they were afraid of bothering you and causing trouble. So they used being sick as an excuse to borrow medicine.”
“Ah...!”
Baek Yuri answered with an awkward expression, as though he truly had no idea.
“I just... even after I came to college, people kept looking for medicine. I thought stress from studying and being unable to exercise must make everyone weak.”
“You can read ghosts everywhere else, but you’re completely dense in moments like this.”
Baek Gi-yeom clicked his tongue and pulled out a propolis candy, handing it to Neoul.
“Open it and eat it. Don’t swallow it and don’t bite it. Let it dissolve.”
Neoul did as he was told, peeling off the wrapper and putting only the candy in his mouth to suck on it. It tasted sweet, with a fragrant herbal scent mixed in.
Baek Yuri handed Yeo Do-bin a pouch of red ginseng, then put the medicines back in his bag. Lee Gal-chae watched him and asked,
“...But why do you carry so many kinds of medicine, Yuri hyung? Were you weak when you were a student?”
“......”
For a moment, silence settled over them.
Baek Gi-yeom looked flustered and was about to answer in his place, but Baek Yuri spoke first.
“I was healthy.”
“Then why...?”
“I just wanted everyone who passed by me to not be in pain.”
Baek Yuri smiled bitterly as he said it.
“That’s all.”
He zipped his bag closed, stood up, checked the time, and said, “Then shall we go practice?”
* * *
While practicing, Baek Yuri watched Neoul drink water. In the humid summer, he had been drinking about six to seven two-liter bottles a day, but by autumn his water intake had increased to nine bottles.
Baek Yuri had asked the production team for a container of salt and brought it back.
“I thought salt water might help a little. Gargling with salt water can disinfect the mouth when you get mouth sores or a sore throat. People even soak toothbrushes in salt water to sterilize them. And... Neoul came from the sea, after all.”
From that day on, Neoul began salting his water before drinking it.
“......!”
It tasted far easier to drink. It was enough to make him grieve all the bland fresh water he had endured until now.
Baek Gi-yeom somehow managed to get hold of a mouth sore patch.
“If you stick this on, it’ll hurt less.”
It was true. With the sore no longer touching his teeth directly, it felt much better. Baek Gi-yeom urged Neoul to go to bed early.
“We’ve already finished getting everything ready perfectly. Neoul! Stop practicing today and go to bed early!”
“I cain’t.”
“All right. Then let’s just run through it one last time, and after that you can sleep!”
“Three times.”
“What?”
“I wil do it three more times and then go to sleep.”
In the end, Neoul stubbornly practiced three more times and even finished stretching before he finally went to bed.
* * *
On the day of the final performance.
Even after being diligently supplied with salt water, vitamins, and propolis candy, and armored with a mouth sore patch, Neoul’s sore still had not healed. There had simply not been enough time for full recovery.
Even with the patch in place, his pronunciation had not completely returned to normal.
The team waited on edge, hearts full of worry.
“Everyone, I’m here to announce the performance order!”
Before rehearsal, the youngest writer came to deliver the lineup to the contestants waiting in the holding room.
“The order was randomized. C Team is first, B Team is second, and A Team is the final stage!”
Baek Gi-yeom said, “We’re last, huh.”
“Ah...”
Baek Yuri could not hide his disappointment. Baek Gi-yeom and Yeo Do-bin both wore equally regretful expressions. Lee Gal-chae rolled his eyes, sensing the mood, and asked,
“...Isn’t being last a good thing? Usually the team that seems the most anticipated or promising goes last, right? It’d be the most attention-getting slot, wouldn’t it...?”
Baek Yuri explained, “It’s a little different. In the final round, voting starts the moment the live broadcast begins. This time, the earlier the order, the better. If you’re confident in your skills, that is.”
“Ahh.”
Lee Gal-chae nodded, finally understanding why everyone was disappointed. Then he started rummaging through his bag for something.
“But it’ll be fine. We really did prepare well!”
“R-right...!”
Yeo Do-bin agreed with Baek Gi-yeom and nodded.
“Um...”
Then Lee Gal-chae quietly held out a stiff sheet of paper he had taken from his bag.
“Should I ask them to change the order, then?”
“Huh?”
“Wait, how...?”
The team crowded around Lee Gal-chae.
Performance Order Change Ticket (1 use)
Don’t like your performance order? Too early, or too late, and feeling pressured? Just once, you can change the order however you want!
(If you’d like, you can even change another team’s order if you don’t like it! Try making your rivals sweat!)
Reading the words on the paper, the team widened their eyes.
“Whaaat? What is that? You had something like this?”
“You can change the performance order however you want?”
“Wow! Whoa...! Gal-chae, this is one of those things, right? Neoul used something similar before, didn’t he? An item...!”
Lee Gal-chae nodded.
“It came out of a random item box.”
At the Jeju Island folk village, Neoul had discovered a random item box and obtained a Team Member Exchange Ticket (1 use).
Lee Gal-chae had also found a box at the ranch, through the clue note hanging around a lamb’s neck. The item that came out that time was the Performance Order Change Ticket.
“...I didn’t really feel the need to use it until now, so I just kept it.”
Lee Gal-chae fiddled with the paper as he spoke.
“I think this is the time to use it. If you older brothers are all okay with it, I’d like to change the order.”
He looked over each of his teammates in turn. Neoul, whose pronunciation had become awkward because of the mouth sore, stood out starkly in his view.
There was no doubt that there were advantages to being first on the stage in the final round. But you had to be confident enough to seize that advantage.
If his mangled pronunciation ruined the stage, then changing the order could become a negative factor instead.
“Let’s change it.”
Neoul said, sensing their gazes.
“I can do it. So do not worry, and go make the change.”
His pronunciation had suddenly become clear. He had been speaking awkwardly just moments ago, and now every syllable came out crisp and distinct. It was not only his pronunciation that was clear; his gaze was clear too.
It was the look of someone determined not to make a single mistake on stage, even if the patch in his mouth ended up falling off in the middle of the performance.
“Go on, Gal-chae. Go and tell them.”
Once Neoul made his position unmistakable, Baek Yuri answered without hesitation as well.
It wasn’t as though delaying their stage would suddenly heal Neoul’s mouth sore. If Neoul said he was fine, there was no reason to refuse.
“All right. Go on, Gal-chae.”
“Me too...! I like it! Changing it!”
Baek Gi-yeom and Yeo Do-bin, who had just said the last slot was fine, quickly agreed as well.
If there had truly been no choice, that would have been one thing. But when there was a chance to turn the situation in their favor and they didn’t take it, that would have been foolish.
This was the final round. Their debut was right around the corner. If they survived this, they would debut, and nobody on this team was stupid enough to throw away an opportunity in hand.
A smile appeared on Lee Gal-chae’s face.
“I’ll go and tell them.”
A moment later, the revised order was announced again. Rehearsal began on the huge stage of the performance hall where the final competition would be held.
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