Devin Yeo’s True Name
Went to volunteer at an abandoned-dog grooming event and met Ji-rok oppa!! T_T
He happily took a photo with me, too, and his fan service was amazing. He was so sweet. He loved the dogs so much, too.
The center director said Ji-rok oppa has been volunteering faithfully for five years, and honestly, I think that’s incredible.
He said he’d been too busy with broadcasts lately to come, and when he finally showed up after so long, he was smiling and saying how happy he was to see the dogs again…
Ha... he’s such a good person, so why on earth do people hate on him? T_T
Wow, it’s not easy to keep that up for five years...
That brat is ruining a good kid’s reputation, damn it.
See? You really can’t judge a person by just one thing.
┗ I heard from someone I know that the dog Kim Ji-rok is raising now was adopted from a shelter.
┗ Wow T_T
Vrongi, die
Where is this?
Kim Ji-rok’s image marketing was a resounding success. There was even a fan who said they wanted to adopt the dog Kim Ji-rok was holding in the photo.
After gaining sympathy votes in the second round of rankings and showing signs of recovery, Kim Ji-rok used this volunteer sighting to successfully reinvent himself, and his popularity began to climb.
And after episode 10 aired, there was one more contestant whose image changed so sharply that he rode the wave of rising popularity.
No, hey, you shark-headed bastard, if you had such insane talent you should’ve said so sooner. If it weren’t for the parachute Gal Neoul gave you, we would’ve missed it completely;;
Yeo Do-bin, what kind of hidden-power web novel protagonist are you? Why are you hiding your composing talent, T_T
It’s not too late, everyone! Please give your precious vote to Do-bin, who can sing, dance with unreal groove, compose, and rap like a monster!
Yeo Do-bin is seriously an all-rounder.
Wow, what a dark horse I never saw coming...
Breakwater is ridiculously addictive, too. I listened once and now I keep humming, I’ll be your breakwater~ I can be anything you want~
Of course attention would pour in when he made such a good song and put on such a good stage.
Then, as someone kept replaying the performance video of Team Breakwater, they raised a suspicion in the comments—well, not really a suspicion, but something like it—and support for Yeo Do-bin exploded like crazy.
But this style feels like something I’ve heard before..? Not the melody exactly, but like the same person wrote it? My heart is reacting to something here..?
┗ You mean Hwareosae, right? I thought the same thing.
┗ Ah, wow. Yeah, that one’s seriously good, too.
┗ What’s Hwareosae?
┗ Lu-Ma’s first number-one song! From the Dawn Where We Found the Bird on a Day the Sky Came Crashing Down
┗ Ohhh, the beat and melody are totally different, but there’s something about the style..? Like that, y’know.
┗ The composer and arranger for Hwareosae are listed as “Devin.”
Before coming to Korea, Do-bin studied K-pop and could’ve been influenced by Hwareosae
┗ What are you talking about; Yeo Do-bin’s real name is Devin Yeo. He said all that in detail in his intro video, remember?
┗ ?? Huh?
┗ For real?
┗ Wait, so it wasn’t Do-bin, it was Devin...?
┗ His passport name is “Devin Yeo,” and the Korean name/nickname his family uses at home is “Yeo Do-bin.” His grandfather first named him Do-bin using the characters for “peach” and “shine,” but since they were worried he’d get teased at school for sounding like a house spirit, his parents registered his birth under the similar name Devin instead.
┗ Holy crap. So Yeo Do-bin = the composer of Hwareosae?
┗ What the hell
Once it was revealed that Yeo Do-bin and the composer Devin were the same person, the community and social media turned upside down.
They’d all thought he was just a shy Aussie boy, but he was actually a genius who could out-Mozart Mozart and chew him up, huh...?
┗ Huh? Mozzarella?
┗ Mozart... lol
┗ Let’s take the joke as a joke, people.
Isn’t it a bit much to pit a working composer against a trainee though;; Isn’t that unfair?
┗ What do you want them to do about having that much damn talent lol
┗ Do-bin’s twenty. He’s the youngest out of the six contestants in the composition round.
┗ The kid worked twice, three times as hard as everyone else and has the skill to show for it, so he sold the song and got here on his own. He didn’t borrow anyone else’s power. What exactly is unfair about that?
┗ Jealous and trying to drag down a twenty-year-old is so ugly.
Yeo Do-bin absolutely has to be pushed.
┗ That insane beat... that insane melody.. impossible to miss..
┗ My eardrums are going insane, too..
┗ My heart’s pounding like crazy to the beat of Breakwater and the dopamine festival is absolutely wrecked
The existing fans who supported Yeo Do-bin, the self-proclaimed “Shark Bait,” could hardly hide how moved they were.
My baby is a genius.
Do-bin, thank you so much for coming to Korea T_T
My bias is Devin
Everyone, this is the moment. Stan him now. If you think it’s late, it’s already late. If you don’t want to regret it later, start now. Right now.
Once you fall for Do-bin, there’s really no exit! He’s good at Korean, but he buffers while thinking before he speaks, and it’s adorable. But when he switches to English, his voice changes and that Australian accent is insane T_T
Sensing a golden opportunity, fans trying to push his content joined in, and Yeo Do-bin’s short clips multiplied and spread everywhere. Team Breakwater’s performance video even shot up to the trending section.
Even fans cheering for other contestants found themselves thinking the same thing at that moment.
If you miss Yeo Do-bin, that’s a loss K-pop history will never recover from.
In short fan-made clips where viewers gathered the trainees they wanted to debut and grouped them into teams of eight or nine, Yeo Do-bin also started showing up as a fixed member.
Fans pushing the “Twenties” line, which grouped together Ha On-ha, Yeo Do-bin, and Gal Neoul—who were all born the same year—along with those promoting the “Breakwater Line,” which paired Gal Neoul, Yeo Do-bin, and Woo Cheong, were busy uploading photos and videos to spread the word.
* * *
Meanwhile, Yeo Do-bin was eating breakfast, completely unaware that a massive tectonic shift was happening beneath the surface... no, above the surface.
He was too nervous about the third round of rankings to have much of an appetite, but he couldn’t exactly refuse Won Hasin, who had gotten up in a commotion and insisted on making egg rolls from first thing in the morning.
“Hey, fish! Song Secretary’s coming soon! I’m going back to sleep, so finish breakfast and get going when you’re done!”
“Yes. I’ll be off, then.”
“And Do-bin too!”
“Yes...! Thank you!”
Won Hasin, who had cooked for them, didn’t actually eat breakfast himself and went back to his room, saying he’d stayed up too late the night before and was still short on sleep.
After Won Hasin waved a hand and disappeared, Yeo Do-bin poked at his egg roll and asked Neoul, “But why does Representative Won keep calling you fish...?”
“I do not know. Perhaps I resemble some fish he knows.”
Neoul shrugged as if he had no idea. After saying it enough times, his skill at covering things up had improved, too.
“The fans call you a humpback whale, though....”
“I am neither a fish nor a humpback whale. I am simply a prince.”
Neoul answered in a playful tone. There wasn’t a single lie in it, but naturally Yeo Do-bin took it as a joke and laughed vaguely.
Neoul, hearing his own words, suddenly thought of the Dragon King’s other children.
Sister!
He’d forgotten again to ask Won Hasin about the video letter for his sister.
“Wait here a moment. I shall return shortly, so keep eating. Leave half the egg rolls.”
“Half...? I don’t have much of an appetite, so you can eat it all...”
“You must not go hungry. Eat a little more.”
Neoul left the table behind and stormed into Won Hasin’s room.
“Representative Won Hasin. I have something to ask urgently.”
Won Hasin yanked down the blanket he’d been buried under from head to toe and answered irritably, “What now?”
“My sister. The video letter for Princess Sari. What happened to it? Is Princess Sari in contact with Brother Yeoul? Why didn’t you tell me earlier?”
“Ah.”
Won Hasin sat up and idly fiddled with his hair, which seemed to have thinned a bit. He looked as though he found it difficult to talk about, or perhaps was even afraid to mention it.
“I was thinking I’d tell you at some point.... I mean, you’d have found out eventually anyway, even if I hadn’t said anything...”
He dragged it out, watching Neoul’s reaction, and then spoke.
“The truth is, your brother and sister are under contract with our company.”
“...What?!”
Neoul’s mouth dropped open at Won Hasin’s utterly unexpected words.
“Don’t tell me they’re idols...”
“No, nothing like that. Brother Yeoul signed as an actor, and Princess Sari as a model. The reason you ended up under the surname Gal was because we set up their new forged IDs under that name. We only found out a bit late that you were their younger brother.”
“Ah...”
“Haa.... But, well, think of it as... a ghost contract, I guess? They’re not really active in the entertainment industry. It’s just that when they occasionally come out into the human world, it’s inconvenient if they don’t have a clear identity to say, ‘This is what I do.’”
“What would they need that for?”
“A lot. A whole lot. Especially if Princess Sari happens to beat someone, punch someone, clobber someone, assault someone...”
“Aren’t those all the same thing? No, wait—you’re saying my sister beats people?”
Neoul thought of his sister from the video letter, with her delicate, pure beauty.
She was a dragon, so of course she would have strength that didn’t show on the surface, but he truly had never imagined she’d go around pummeling weak little humans.
“Why in the world would she do that?”
“Well, there are reasons for that, too. Like some lunatic peeing in the river, or dumping trash in it, or catching fish drunk and falling in the river, and after she rescued him he had the nerve to hit on Princess Sari, or dumping wastewater illegally...”
As he listened, Neoul’s face went pale in real time.
Did those humans have two lives? How could they so neatly pick only the behaviors most likely to anger a dragon?
His father had always raged, too, whenever humans dumped all sorts of things into the sea.
Hold steady! You’ll bring down the walls of Dragon Palace!
The sight of his attendants dangling from the air as they begged him to calm down had been so pitiful.
He became especially furious when Neoul wandered off, ate something wrong, and came back ill for half a day. On days like that, the waves would rise especially high, or a typhoon would break out.
“Anyway, whenever that happens, the police contact our company. Then I go handle it right away. That’s what the exclusive contracts are for.”
Won Hasin mopped sweat from his brow and let out a sigh.
“Then does Brother Yeoul also beat people?”
“No. Brother Yeoul doesn’t hit anyone.”
At that answer, Neoul pictured the face of Brother Yeoul, whom he had yet to meet in person.
Is he the more gentle one compared to my sister?
In Neoul’s imagination, his brother had the same soft, pure eyes as Princess Sari, with a face that blended in the nose and mouth lines of his father perfectly. He seemed kind and gentle.
But Won Hasin, wearing a blissfully detached smile, said, “He doesn’t hit people because it’s troublesome. He just makes them disappear without a trace.”
“...Ah.”
So he does make them disappear...
Neoul’s image of his kind brother came crashing down in an instant.
---