※ Episode 3 : Ah! A Menhera Idol Has Appeared!
I was to meet my fiancée at a high-end Chinese restaurant nearby — a place run by a chef from Taiwan that had built its fame purely on word of mouth. Word had it the food was good enough for celebrities and politicians to sing its praises, but the prices were beyond anything I could imagine.
"We can order dongpo pork, right?"
"Bada, they told us to order whatever we wanted and said the adults would take care of the bill, remember? We couldn't eat this stuff on a normal day if we tried..."
"Then I'm trying the shark fin! Can we order the Chinese-style fried eel too? I wonder what bird's nest soup tastes like?"
"Don't go overboard with the ordering. I'm worried your fiancée's going to take one look at us and write us off as some penniless family."
"And what are you having? Jajangmyeon? Jjamppong?"
"Did you not hear a single word I just said?"
The menu at this place was crammed with dishes I'd never even heard of in my life — plenty for Bada to order away at her heart's content. For someone whose tastes ran to neighborhood jajangmyeon and jjamppong, I honestly wondered whether I was allowed this kind of extravagant treatment.
"Mmm... this dongpo pork is seriously good... the fat just melts right on your tongue..."
Thanks to this girl and her utter lack of refinement, the high-end Chinese restaurant was quickly taking on the atmosphere of a neighborhood joint. The fiancée hadn't even arrived yet, and Bada was already busy wolfing down the two slices of dongpo pork that had come out first.
"It kind of tastes like bossam or jokbal, doesn't it? — boiled pork and pig's feet. Or maybe it does? The sauce has this herbal-medicine flavor to it. What was it called again... 'cucumber scent'?"
"It's five-spice sauce."
"Yeah! That's it! Five-spice sauce! This should be what's trending, not mala!"
Seriously, that girl will pull every pompous stunt in the book to make herself look classy. Still, seeing my little sister being this bright and carefree in front of me put my mind at ease in its own way, and let the tension drain out of my shoulders.
"Oppa. Even if she turns out ugly, keep smiling in front of her, okay? Smile, smile. Got it? You have to promise."
Wiping the sauce from the corner of her mouth with her napkin, Bada mimed stretching her lips into a grin with her index finger as she passed this pearl of wisdom on to me.
"I said I got it. Do you really not trust your own brother?"
"Hahaha... I do... I know exactly what kind of person my brother is."
For the sake of Yujeong-sunbae, who had helped me, and Bada, who had carved time out of her day to come along, I resolved to keep smiling as best I could even if an ill-fated fiancée I couldn't stand showed up.
"Ahh... my big brother getting a fiancée... what fortune for our family... You'd better treat my new sister-in-law really well, you hear?"
"As if. My temper's rotten enough that I'm worried whether any of us will survive it..."
Bada's moods swung wildly, and she threw hysterics often enough that calling her good-natured would be a stretch. I worried that even if the engagement went through without a hitch, she'd end up playing the wicked sister-in-law.
"Isn't anyone going to find me a boyfriend...? Isn't there a seriously cute boy among your friends, Oppa?"
"Mingyu?"
I had maybe two guy friends I was close with, and the moment she said 'ridiculously pretty,' I knew exactly who she meant.
"Ohh, so his name was Mingyu-sunbae."
"Want me to introduce you?"
"Really?!"
Bada was over the moon at the prospect of me setting her up with Mingyu. Normally I'd have dug in my heels as her older brother — no way I was handing her off to just any screw-up — but since I'd agreed so readily, I could understand the reaction.
"Mingyu I can vouch for. If it were one of the other guys, I'd have blown up on the spot and told you to dump him, but he's got my stamp of approval."
"Thank you, Oppa! Then set up a chance for me to meet Mingyu-sunbae sometime soon!"
I hadn't planned that far ahead, but someone was getting ahead of herself. The idea, of course, was to put in nothing but good words about my sister to Mingyu and let a meeting come about naturally from there.
"Well, I guess it doesn't matter since we're here to meet your fiancée anyway, but you really don't have a girlfriend or anything, right?"
"Nope. To begin with, there are exactly three girls at school I'm on friendly terms with, and you're one of them..."
My little sister Bada, Yujeong-sunbae from my club, and Suwon from my class. Those three were the only girls at our school I kept any real friendship with. Naturally, I thought of them purely as friends — there wasn't the slightest chance I harbored romantic feelings for any of them.
"You'll have to sort all that out eventually anyway! So? No girl you like?"
The fiancée still hadn't shown up, and she was lobbing nothing but sensitive questions. Bada — who knew only that Suwon and Yujeong-sunbae were acquaintances of mine — kept pressing me on whether I had my eye on some other girl.
"Cheon Cheri..."
Cheon Cheri. The moment I murmured that name under my breath, Bada's face settled into the look of a mischievous cat.
"You're hilarious, Oppa... You go around saying you couldn't care less about Cheon Cheri or idols in general, and it turns out you were a fan all along?"
"That's not what I meant."
The words had slipped out on their own because that incident from a few days ago kept gnawing at me, but Bada seized on my old 'idols aren't my thing' attitude and used it as ammunition.
"Riiight... you just love Cheon Cheri... she's gorgeous and sings like a dream... and didn't they say she likes stars? Smart, too..."
Wiping away the tears from laughing so hard, Bada closed one eye and shot me a wink.
"But a smart man doesn't climb trees he can't climb! For you, Oppa, she might as well be a star in the sky."
"Some way to repay me for offering to introduce you to Mingyu. Thanks a bunch, Bada."
"Besides, you already have someone to marry, Oppa! A daughter of a prestigious family! That's a far better deal than winning Cheon Cheri!"
I didn't know her name, her face — I'd never even met her — but that one title, 'daughter of a prestigious family,' left me with nothing to envy about winning the heart of an idol like Cheon Cheri.
"They say she has a nice personality, too. She's not going to suddenly start cursing out our family and making everything tense, right?"
"I certainly hope not."
And for the record, if it were me, I'd have thrown her out the second she pulled something like that... I'm looking at you, Bada...
Pretty face or not, I figured anyone carrying an arrogance that couldn't be cured would be a nightmare to marry, daughter of a prestigious family or not.
"By the way, why do you keep going 'Cheon Cheri, Cheon Cheri' these past few days? You get all grave and serious whenever I bring her up?"
Bada propped her chin on her hand, wearing the expression of someone lost in profound thought.
"Ooh! I've got it, haven't I? Cheon Cheri is secretly your ex-girlfriend!"
Okay, now she'd gone too far.
She had just put forward the utterly preposterous theory that Cheon Cheri was, in fact, my ex-girlfriend.
"You and Cheon Cheri were dating... but then she became an idol and drifted away from you..."
"Cut the bullshit already."
"But then Cheon Cheri finds out you're getting engaged, and from that moment her heart begins to waver... You know how it goes. Human desire can't be controlled."
"I seriously doubt that."
"The exact scenario you fear! Suddenly, Cheon Cheri appears at this very table! Eyes dead and hollow, she goes, 'Yongsung... you're throwing me away to marry some rich young miss?' and drags you off somewhere, and then..."
"She looks nothing like Cheon Cheri, so quit doing impressions of her!"
Bada's broken delusional streak was simply beyond anyone's control. All I'd done was mention Cheon Cheri once, and now she kept trying to forcibly link us together — little sister or not, my patience had its limits.
"Listen. Cheon Cheri actu—"
I figured that if there was one person I could tell about the secret of Cheon Cheri I'd witnessed with my own eyes, it would be Bada. The shocking truth that the very idol Cheon Cheri had been preparing to hang herself in an empty space.
Of course, even if I did tell her, Bada wouldn't seriously believe a word of it. She'd just laugh it off — 'You must've seen things, Oppa~.'
"Ah! Right! Cheon Cheri shows up wearing a face like this! Like she'd kill you if you so much as spoke to another girl..."
Glancing off to the side, Bada was hamming up the face she was sure Cheon Cheri would make — then she froze mid-act.
"KYAAAAAAAH!"
Bada shrieked loud enough to split my eardrums and, startled out of her wits, nearly toppled backward off her chair before barely lurching herself forward again.
"What's wrong? Bada? Did you see a ghost?"
The only times Bada had ever reacted like this were when a sewer rat invaded the yard or she spotted a cockroach, so I asked her urgently.
"Ch-... Ch-... Che-che-..."
"Che? Don't tell me the virgin ghost's shown up again and you're darting your eyes around, laying the buildup to spook me?"
"It's not that! Oppa! I have a feeling you and your fiancée are about to have a funeral!"
"Talk so a person can understand you! Why is that delusion of yours coming back now?"
"It's Cheon Cheri! Cheon Cheri! That very Cheon Cheri is here! Right there! Look beside me!"
You should learn some restraint even when you're joking around... She's a busy idol no matter how you slice it — there's no way she'd show up at a restaurant like this...
"..."
It was true...?
Cheon Cheri, dressed in a white dress with both hands folded politely over her navel, was standing right beside Bada.
S-sui... suicide...
I only managed to mouth half the word before it slid straight back down my throat.
The warning look Cheon Cheri was sending me brimmed with a whole tangle of emotions. Say it here — tell my sister the truth — and she really would kill me. At the very least, she was in a position where she could make a nobody like me disappear...
"Hello, Beom Yongsung, Beom Bada. Please understand — I only heard your names for the very first time five minutes ago myself."
Even as Cheon Cheri greeted us with flawless manners, the hollow expression she wore didn't change in the slightest. It was enough to send a chill down my spine.
"My name is Cheon Cheri. I hope we'll get along well from here on out."