Signal Song
“My mother always says that having your bangs cut as short as possible above the eyebrows makes you look like a chestnut, cute and handsome, doesn’t it? It’s unfair! Seriously unfair! If you knew how hard I worked to protect my bangs, then you’d—”
“……”
“And the Bigbee seniors all had long hair, buzz cuts, eyebrow slashes, the works! They always say I can’t because I’m still a student. The school doesn’t even say anything because it’s a free hairstyle policy! So I secretly got allowance from my dad and dyed it! Oh, right, Bigbee is our dance crew! The seniors are all amazing dancers, but these days they say their joints hurt because they’re getting older. But even ten years ago, they were saying their knees and shoulders and every other joint hurt. So I—”
It was a headache.
Under the relentless assault on his hearing, Neoul’s complexion grew steadily paler. Woo Cheong was an exceptionally talkative human.
He’s loud.
Half the words pouring out of him in a stream-of-consciousness babble were lost on Neoul entirely.
One sentence after another shot past his ears and vanished.
Woo Cheong was now talking about how he had been eating water dropwort, which was good for the joints, and how very healthy his bones and joints were. Then, as if remembering something, he suddenly raised his voice.
“Ah! Just speak casually, hyung!”
Neoul rubbed at his throbbing head and answered, “Very well.”
“……?”
You, you got way too casual... He’s using low speech...?
Neoul’s natural, royal tone had everyone around him, including Woo Cheong, Baek Yuri, and the other trainees seated nearby, staring with rounded eyes.
Woo Cheong took it for a joke and burst into an awkward laugh.
“Hyung, hyung, your way of talking is so unique! It sounds like a historical drama!”
But Neoul had run into another wall.
“What is a historical drama?”
It was a word he couldn’t translate. Woo Cheong, however, didn’t answer him and only laughed harder, delighted by something Neoul still couldn’t understand.
The human seated beside Woo Cheong smiled as if they were already close and spoke to Neoul.
“Neoul, you’re actually really good at acting. Funny.”
“……?”
I haven’t acted at all.
“My name’s Kim Ji-rok. I’m twenty-three. I’m older than you, so you can speak casually.”
He’d wondered what it meant when Woo Cheong said Kim Ji-rok had done some kind of Scratch on his eyebrow, and now he saw it. The left eyebrow was missing a patch, as though something had scraped straight across it. In his hand, he held a birdcage model that matched Woo Cheong’s blue bird.
“Me too, me too! Let’s all get close! I’m Gye Tae-seok! I’m twenty-seven, but just treat me like a friend. I feel like I’m the only old one here, and it’s lonely.”
A human seated behind the eyebrow-less Kim Ji-rok cut in, shaking a keychain with a glass-slipper charm attached to it. Gye Tae-seok had sharp, lean facial lines, and something decadent hung about his looks.
“……”
Decadent meant morally corrupt, dissolute, decayed in manners and culture. Neoul glanced back and forth between the eyebrow-less Kim Ji-rok and the dissolute Gye Tae-seok, then quietly pinched his nose shut.
The two humans, who had been trying to act friendly, were horribly taken aback by that subtle wrinkle of the brow and nose-covering gesture.
“W-what? Do I smell bad?”
“Huh? Do I have bad breath? I brushed really well earlier. Did somebody fart?”
Kim Ji-rok, with the missing eyebrow, raised an arm and sniffed at his clothes in panic, while the dissolute Gye Tae-seok began searching for the culprit who might have farted on the bus.
Other participants chimed in from around them, saying they couldn’t smell anything or that it hadn’t been them.
“Ji-rok hyung smells like cigarettes!”
Woo Cheong cried brightly, only to have Kim Ji-rok clamp a hand over his mouth.
“Hey, hey, Woo Cheong, shh...! The cameras are rolling...!”
“Mmmph mmmph mmmph! Mmmph mmmph mmmph! (He smells like cigarettes from his hand too!)”
Seated beside them, rabbit teacher Baek Yuri fell into a pit of confusion all on his own and started talking nonsense.
“Neoul, does your nose hurt? Is it hard to breathe? I don’t think this is a matter of just enduring it. We really should go to the hospital first and get examined...!”
“……”
Neoul gave the humans and one rabbit descending into chaos a sidelong look, then spoke with visible reluctance.
“From the souls of those two....”
“Hm? Souls?”
“There is a stench of rot.”
“……?!”
“I’m sorry to speak so plainly on our first meeting, but I would appreciate it if you would close your mouths.”
“!”
The once-noisy bus fell silent in an instant.
Baek Yuri was too stunned to speak, and even Woo Cheong, who had so much to say, shut his mouth at once and watched the mood. The other participants were the same.
Kim Ji-rok, missing eyebrow and all, and the dissolute Gye Tae-seok couldn’t exactly show their displeasure in front of the cameras, but Neoul’s insane remark that their souls stank made them roll their eyes, wondering what on earth they were supposed to say back.
“Uh... right. Sorry.”
Gye Tae-seok’s apology only made the atmosphere even colder.
The main writer, who had come along on the bus to brief the Signal Song center candidates on the schedule, watched the scene and broke into a cold sweat.
They had been expecting chemistry among the participants now that they were just starting to get acquainted, and instead this had happened out of nowhere.
The one who saved them from the suffocating silence was the bus driver’s announcement that they had arrived at the lodging.
“Everyone off!”
The main writer got off first, and the participants followed.
Neoul watched Baek Yuri unbuckle his seat belt and did the same, then stepped down from the bus at last with support.
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇
What they had arrived at was a massive pension with a wide lawn spread in blue-green grass, a swimming pool, and even an indoor practice space.
The writer led the participants into a room that had already been set up inside the pension.
Baek Yuri wanted to move with the others to avoid Neoul after his crude outburst, but he couldn’t bring himself to abandon Neoul, who was staggering along like a calf that had only just learned to walk.
I really hope I don’t get tangled up with him any more than necessary.
Neoul’s careless words would inevitably make it to air unless the production team generously edited them into an angelic version.
Then there would be a personality scandal, and he’d get dragged through the mud with every insult imaginable. If he ended up walking alongside Neoul, it would be a problem if the two of them got lumped together as a set for no good reason.
But we got paired up in the mission, of all things....
In a case like this, there was a strong chance they’d be first-room roommates until the next mission.
As Baek Yuri supported Neoul on his right side, a human naturally slipped in on Neoul’s left.
“Hi, I’m twenty too. Ha On-ha.”
Neoul turned to glance at him. It was the blue-eyed human who had been seated beside Gye Tae-seok.
Ha On-ha greeted Baek Yuri politely, then looked around the area. After that, as if worried someone might hear, he lowered his voice.
“Why’d that happen earlier?”
Baek Yuri glanced once at the microphone clipped to his clothes, then at the microphone clipped to Ha On-ha’s.
Even if we talk quietly, the audio will still get picked up...
Besides, there weren’t any cameras following them at the moment, but several had been mounted on the exterior walls of the building. If they let their guard down, every careless little remark could end up in the broadcast, so they had to be careful at all times.
But Ha On-ha seemed to forget the cameras and microphones for a moment, or perhaps he simply didn’t care, because he went on.
“The older guys seemed like they wanted to get close to you~”
“……”
“Oh, wait. Do you have bad rumors about those guys or something? Is that why you put up a wall first?”
His large, long eyes curved like a fox’s, sly and bright.
Ha On-ha wore a wide-brimmed straw hat as if to keep out the sun, and over that a thin gray jacket with long sleeves. White polka dots were scattered across the back like little stars.
Neoul thought the pattern looked a lot like the markings on Byeoldtongi’s back.
Where does one even find clothes like that?
In any case, since Neoul knew nothing about human rumors, he simply shook his head blankly. The reason he’d said they smelled rotten was only because their souls were a bit spoiled. He had no way of knowing why.
It was said that animals and children could see ghosts because they were pure. Neoul, as a mermaid, had been able to see ghosts since childhood.
Ghosts who got lost at sea and came to the Dragon Palace usually had no smell at all, and sometimes they even carried a faint, pleasant fragrance.
But every so often there were ghosts who reeked, like Kim Ji-rok and Gye Tae-seok.
Ghosts blackened, suppurated, and rotten enough to swarm with maggots.
Those sorts were locked away in cages until the Grim Reapers came, bound them with hemp ropes, and took them away.
When Neoul shook his head again, Ha On-ha smiled in a way that made it impossible to tell what he was thinking.
“Mm~ so there aren’t any bad rumors, then?”
Ha On-ha sniffed at his own arm and asked, “Do I smell too? I ran around and danced a lot earlier, so I did work up a bit of sweat.”
Neoul shook his head again.
“Really? That’s a relief~”
Ha On-ha asked nothing more. He hummed to himself and kept supporting Neoul as they walked.
They arrived in a hall-like space with a large screen installed. As soon as the main writer told the participants to sit in the prepared chairs, Ha On-ha tapped Neoul’s shoulder a couple of times and moved away.
All ten participants took their seats. Then, without any further explanation, the projector mounted on the ceiling switched on and the program logo appeared on the screen.
[Idol Travel]
[We hope Idol Travel can be a happy first step for all of you traveling toward your dreams.]
[We support your challenge.]
[Now, let’s reveal the Signal Song!]
Immediately, the title of the signal song appeared, and then the choreography and track were unveiled.
[Welcome]
The bouncy beat caught the ear at once. It was a bright, summery tropical-house song.
[Welcome—
I wanted to meet you
Someday—
I knew we’d meet]
[I think I must have been
waiting for you for a long time]
Neoul listened, his head bobbing along of its own accord in delight.
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇
After the Signal Song reveal, they filmed the participants’ reactions and followed that with short interviews.
Neoul stared hard at the white screen left behind after the projector turned off.
How did a person get into there? Where did it disappear to?
Meanwhile, the other participants’ interviews began.
[What thoughts came to mind when you heard the Signal Song?]
At the question, rabbit teacher Baek Yuri answered with an upturned face.
“When we were filming on the beach, I felt light-headed and it didn’t quite feel real, but once I heard the Signal Song, it really felt like the survival show had started. I’m very nervous.”
The baby dolphin-like Woo Cheong flapped his arms and legs and raised his voice.
“The song is so good! I want to get on stage fast!”
Kim Ji-rok, with the missing eyebrow, clenched his fist and smiled softly.
“It made me want it more. I definitely want to be center.”
The dissolute Gye Tae-seok pressed down on the dark circles under his eyes and gave a shy smile.
“Um... it feels like a dream. I’ve always felt like I was too late, so I was anxious, but I’m really happy to have a chance to challenge myself like this. I’ll work hard.”
It was Neoul’s turn.
When the interview writer called him over with a wave, he trotted up on both feet and sat down in the interview chair. Fortunately, he didn’t fall.
The interview writer, a woman of average height, flinched in alarm for a moment when the huge Neoul bounced toward her like a hopping zombie.
Neoul wasn’t just tall; his body was also powerfully built and muscular, which made him seem even more intimidating.
Was there a contestant like this among the participants?
The interview writer tilted her head, searching her memory of the profiles she had reviewed in advance.
Ah. He must be one of the extra-selected contestants.
Something about him felt oddly out of place, but she had no time to dwell on it.
I didn’t expect one of the extra participants to end up among the center candidates.
Looking at the center-candidate list she had just received by message from Producer Seok O-young, there was one unfamiliar name among the people who had entered in fifth place: Neoul.
“I’ll start with a simple interview first. It’s nothing difficult.”
The interview writer asked Neoul the same question she had asked the others. Neoul answered honestly about his feelings after hearing the song.
“It was interesting.”
“……Is that all?”
At the brief remark, the main writer asked in disbelief.
What else was he supposed to say?
Neoul tilted his head and looked at the main writer. He thought carefully about what he had felt when he listened to the song.
“It was fun?”
The sight of the humans moving in all sorts of dazzling ways on the video was entertaining. They wriggled so fluidly, as though they were swimming despite having no water at all on land... that had been very interesting.
The song was new to him, too, and the changes in it had been intriguing.
The interview writer studied Neoul’s face in detail, then scratched her cheek, thinking that they’d really picked up an unusual one.
“Mm. That’s fine. Good work.”
Next, participant Ha On-ha.
Ha On-ha turned his eye-smile toward the camera and gave his ambitions with a look that could melt a person straight through.
“I’ll definitely become center and show you the most amazing stage ever! Please watch me, everyone~”