The Blood-Red Bet
Spotlights rained down from the ceiling trusses.
On the vast stage, seven backup dancers heated the arena with a dazzling routine, pushing the crowd’s excitement higher and higher.
And then, in an instant, a man in a tight pure-white outfit stepped into view at center stage.
The charisma pouring from his dark eyes, the easy gesture of brushing his hair back with his fingertips.
Advancing toward the audience in rhythmic steps, he pressed the microphone to his lips and unleashed a voice that exploded through the arena.
-Your traces log out, my stage logs in
-Love is over, vibe is on
-Even without you, I glow up, spotlight on me
-Delete your name, save my fame
-Cold shut down, hot start now
In an instant, the audience shook.
Screams and cheers surged like waves, swallowing the stage whole.
Standing at center stage, he launched into the choreography with a bold, fearless expression.
Perfectly synchronized knife-like movements with the backup dancers, matched to the explosive rhythm of the percussion.
After a single step, he rolled across the floor and sprang into the air.
Even then, the vocals bursting from the microphone rode the arena loudspeakers like a gale, sweeping through the seats.
“Aaaaaaaaaaaah—!!”
The roar of thirty thousand voices shook the arena.
Fans in the standing section jumped up and down, unable to contain themselves as tears spilled over.
Shin Yeon-ho!! Shin Yeon-ho!! Shin Yeon-ho!!
The moment the vocal line stopped before the chorus.
What thundered through the arena instead of song was a frenzy of chants.
The man lifted his thumb and slowly brushed his lips, overpowering the crowd with choreography that was both sexy and provocative.
He grabbed the microphone again and took a rough step forward.
Like a leopard launching into the hunt, the man leaped powerfully toward the air.
-Stay mad, stay pissed off
-Delete your drama, erase your filthy traces
Just as he was whipping through acrobatic choreography that looked almost like a backward tumble, the microphone slipped from his grip.
As though in slow motion, his pupils caught the mic cutting through the air.
Betraying the man’s desperately outstretched hand, it grazed the back of a backup dancer who was moving through the routine with brilliant precision and then rolled across the floor.
And yet, from the speakers, his explosive vocals still rang on.
-Upgrade my life, I’m moving toward a better life
-Break the chains, I’m unstoppable now!
!!!
A chill fell over the entire arena for one brief instant.
The man who had lunged after the microphone collided with a backup dancer continuing the choreography and sprawled onto the floor.
He reached out desperately, but the microphone still would not come within his fingertips, gleaming under the lights as if mocking him.
Even so, the spectacular vocal line continued.
The technically demanding bridge carried on without a break, echoing through the arena, and the camera closed in on the face of the frustrated man as if he had lost his entire country.
Tightly pressed lips.
A distorted expression as though he wanted to chew and swallow the moment whole.
The voices of fans shouting, “It’s okay!”
and the mockery erupting from the rival singer’s cheering section shook the arena at the same time.
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇
After the performance ended, Shin Yeon-ho walked down the corridor and gave a slight nod to the middle-aged chief stage director coming toward him.
“...Yeah. Good work.”
Even with his face set in a stiff expression, the director patted his shoulder twice and moved on.
Shin Yeon-ho immediately yanked open the door to his waiting room.
“...Ha, fuck!”
A coarse curse burst from his face, twisted with irritation.
Unable to restrain his temper, he gripped the front of his chest with both hands and tugged hard.
Rattle-rattle-rattle!
Jacket buttons flew off and bounced across the floor.
Then the door opened again, and a man in his mid-thirties wearing a mask was shoved in as though his back had been pushed.
Right behind him, two broad-shouldered men with bulging muscles in their forearms stepped into the waiting room.
Shin Yeon-ho’s eyes flashed.
With a murderous glare thick with uncontrollable rage, he fixed the masked man with a stare.
“...Shii...it! You fucking....”
The way he ground his teeth made it look as if he might swing a fist at the man at any second.
The masked man, watching him calmly, furrowed his brow.
“But that wasn’t my fault. Missing the microphone was your mistake.”
“Hey! Fuck! You’re the one who didn’t check the monitor properly! Why are you dumping this on me?”
With a furious shout, Shin Yeon-ho hurled his jacket aside.
“Hey, Yeon-ho! Relax!”
“Don’t get worked up. If people outside hear, they’ll hear everything.”
Startled, the two men quickly moved to block Shin Yeon-ho’s path.
One was his assigned manager, and the other was the security team leader the agency had attached to him for the event.
Blocked from glaring any further, Shin Yeon-ho shot them both a venomous look and exploded in indignation.
“I told you to sing while watching my lips carefully, and you can’t even do that properly!”
“......!”
Roughly shoving the manager’s side, Shin Yeon-ho craned his neck and shouted again at the masked man.
“Fuck, know your place and keep your head down. Without me, you’re nothing but trash. You idiot!”
The jaw muscles along his clenched face bulged outward, and his fist trembled in his grip.
At that moment, the waiting room door swung open again.
The person who came in was the agency president, a stocky man who looked to be in his mid-fifties.
“President!”
“Welcome, sir!”
Only half acknowledging the deep bows from the two men, the president’s gaze settled on Shin Yeon-ho.
With a greasy look in his eyes, he tilted one corner of his mouth upward.
“Anyone can make one mistake. If the same thing happens again, though, you’ll have to be prepared for the consequences. In any case, you should offer a proper apology to the concert’s chief director, shouldn’t you?”
“...I’m sorry.”
Lowering his head, he picked up the jacket that had fallen to the floor and slipped his arms into the sleeves.
“You stay right here and don’t move until I come back.”
The air froze under the president’s flickering gaze as he turned to the masked man.
“You two make sure this guy doesn’t go anywhere.”
“Understood.”
“Let’s go.”
The president shifted his attention away from Shin Yeon-ho and jerked his chin toward the door.
“Yes, sir.”
As the president left the waiting room, the two men bent their waists low again toward his back.
“Have a safe trip, sir!”
After they disappeared, the manager and the security team leader who remained let out sighs that sounded almost relieved.
Then the short-haired manager turned to the masked man with a shameless expression.
“But seriously, did you really not see him drop the mic? You didn’t miss it on purpose just to screw him over, did you?”
“Come on, no way he did that on purpose.”
The security team leader beside him let a sly smile creep onto his lips.
Even so, he stole a quick side glance at the masked man’s expression.
“...Ah! No, I didn’t. I really didn’t see it.”
When he waved his hands in denial, a dark crease deepened between the manager’s brows.
“How could you not see it? You were singing while standing right in front of the giant monitor with Yeon-ho’s face on it! What, did the camera just happen to turn somewhere else at that moment?”
At the manager’s words, the security team leader’s lips twitched.
“Would it have been a camera problem? The cameraman on the front stage, Hanjaeng-gu, has filmed documentaries for fifteen years. The guy wouldn’t take his eyes off the camera for fifteen straight hours, even while filming ants, to the point that he’d be pissing himself—so what do you think....”
“...Exactly.”
Listening to the two of them, the masked man let out a frustrated sigh and yanked the mask off his face.
In an instant, mottled burn scars were laid bare around his mouth and jaw.
“There has to be some variation in the vocals, too. The vocal tone has to change to match Yeon-ho’s choreography. If the timbre stays exactly the same no matter how intense the movement is, that doesn’t make any sense. He’s whipping his head around and doing back tumbling....”
“...So?”
“So I follow along with Yeon-ho’s choreography while I sing. I did the same thing during rehearsal. I repeated it over and over—how was I supposed to know Yeon-ho would drop the mic?”
Even with his plausible explanation, the manager crooked one corner of his mouth.
“It sounded exactly the same to me.”
“...What did?”
“You said you were singing while copying Yeon-ho’s dance moves. You said the vocal tone had to match the motion. But to my ears, it sounded identical to the recorded track.”
“It’s subtly different.”
At the masked man’s answer, the manager gave a snort, and the security team leader nodded faintly.
“Yeah, it did sound a little different. More vivid and powerful, I guess?”
“Oh, come on. Now even you?”
Frowning deeply, the manager glared at him, and the security team leader offered an awkward laugh.
“But still, you must have seen that the mic dropped later on, right? So why didn’t you stop singing until the end?”
The manager’s tone and expression were almost triumphant, as if he had found a fatal flaw, and the masked man let out an exasperated sigh.
“If I stop in the middle, the problem gets completely out of hand. The microphone was already lost during the back tuck, but the vocals were still coming out, right? If the vocals come out after the mic is dropped and then suddenly stop again, wouldn’t that be even stranger?”
“...Ah...!!”
At those words, both men nodded.
He was right.
If the song were halted halfway through, anyone perceptive enough would immediately start eyeing them suspiciously.
If rumors began to spread that the real singer wasn’t Shin Yeon-ho on stage at all but someone else entirely, everything would spiral beyond control.
And it wasn’t as if Shin Yeon-ho could step up in public and sing directly to prove otherwise....
This bizarre project using a “stand-in vocalist” had begun three years ago.
Since then, every release under Shin Yeon-ho’s name had become a megahit.
The theme song inserted into last month’s film OST was now sitting at number one on music broadcasts for the fourth straight week, riding high on a wave of popularity.
As long as security remained airtight, they could ride that peak popularity for years to come.
And with that, they calculated that they could accumulate enormous wealth.
That was why they were carrying out this scheme in secret now.
“Exactly. If we’d just gone with in-ear monitors from the start like the stage director said, none of this would’ve happened.”
“Ah, hyung! That’s easy for you to say because you don’t know. Shin Yeon-ho’s head shape must be weird or something, because whenever he does intense choreography, they just fly right off. After trying it a few times, we had no choice but to give him a handheld mic.”
At the manager’s grumbling complaint, the security team leader let a bitter smile slip onto his lips.
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇
In front of Sangam World Cup Stadium.
It was already well past 12:30 a.m.
Mixed in with the crowd spilling out after the concert, I trudged along the road.
Buses and taxis had long since been given up on.
All at once, I remembered Shin Yeon-ho fumbling helplessly onstage, unable to dance or even hold the microphone properly.
What an idiot.
If he’d at least put in real effort with the dancing, maybe people could have passed it off as using AR vocals because of the choreography. But no—he had to act half-heartedly.
If you’re foolish, your body pays the price.
Why on earth had he bitten off choreography he couldn’t even handle in the first place....
If things had gone according to schedule, I’d probably be lounging at home watching Netflix by now.
Instead, after making every stupid mistake himself, he had dumped all the blame on me, and I’d ended up taking the full brunt of the agency president’s curses.
The agency president was an ex-gangster, and the idol-turned-solo singer was an arrogant tone-deaf brat—what a perfect combination.
As I kept dragging my feet forward, before I knew it I had reached the three-way intersection in front of Mapo-gu Office.
When I stopped at the traffic light, my wandering gaze caught on a small bar sign.
Silver Moon Study. Even the letters were blurred by dust on the old signboard.
“......!!”
Wait. There had been a rundown bar like that in a place like this?
I tilted my head, but I couldn’t know for sure.
The sign carried a faint, inviting sort of lure, as though it were saying, Come in and have a drink before you go.
It whispered as if to remind me that I’d worked hard all day, that I should come inside and wash all that stress away.
“No, it’s too late.”
I shook my head and turned away.
But the traffic light numbers were already falling fast.
6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Then the signal turned red.
...Then that must be a sign from God telling me to go in and have a drink for a moment.
Fiddling with my mask, I slowly walked toward the bar.
Jingle.
The door opened with a little bell attached, releasing a clear, soft chime.
“Welcome.”
The first thing I saw when I stepped inside was a long counter stretching horizontally across the front.
Behind it, the back wall was packed tight with bottles of liquor.
In the middle of it all, a middle-aged man greeted me with a bright smile.
On the left side of the hall were two tables for four.
They were empty, but sitting alone there would probably feel rude for no reason.
“Please, have a seat here.”
The man’s voice reached my ear.
What he pointed to was the counter stool in front of him.
I had no choice but to move closer and sit my hips down on the round stool.
Looking around, all I could see were bizarre bottles and glasses I had never seen before.
Just by the design alone, they looked expensive.
The settlement I got this month had already gone toward paying off debt, and the living expenses I earned from part-time work were running on fumes.
“...Do you not have draft beer?”
At my question, the middle-aged man slowly lifted the corners of his mouth.
His hair, streaked with gray, flowed from both ears around the sides of his head, and at a glance he looked to be well into his mid-sixties.
“Unfortunately, we don’t serve draft beer....”
His warm gaze was matched by a gentle tone.
“Would you like to try one of our signature cocktails instead?”
“...Ah.”
No beer, huh.
Well...
A cocktail couldn’t be that expensive, could it?
But then, in an instant, the grim news that had been circulating on TV lately flashed through my head.
Everyone had probably heard some version of it at least once: you have a drink in Gangnam, wake up in a hotel room, and everything you own is gone.
I hesitated for a moment.
“Boss, give me one more too.”
A stranger’s voice spoke up.
When I turned my head, I saw a man slowly rising from the far end of the counter.
“...!”
There had definitely been no one there when I came in.
Was the interior just too dim and I’d missed him?
The man walked over to me as I looked at him in confusion.
“Then I’ll make one drink for each of you right away.”
After the owner disappeared into the bar area, the man sat down casually next to me.
He set an empty cocktail glass on the counter, turned to look at me, and lifted one corner of his mouth.
Under dark eyebrows, his large eyes flashed with something fresh and mischievous, while his sharply defined nose and red, full lips were strangely alluring.
He brushed back his wavy bangs with the flat of his hand and looked at me with a faint smile.
“...Ah!”
That face. I’d seen it somewhere before.
It was so strikingly handsome that I had thought so at once.
“H-Han Seo-jun?”
No doubt about it.
An actor with unreal, almost inhuman looks, yet mocked for having utterly disastrous line delivery.
He had debuted under a flood of spotlight, but after just two works, he was already teetering not only on the edge of losing his lead role, but even his supporting parts.
“I’m honored. For Do Hyun-woo sunbae to recognize me.”
“......!”
“Even with a mask on, my eyes don’t miss anything. You debuted at eighteen as a five-member idol group called Day First, and you were even praised as a vocal genius. It was just that your looks were a little lacking, so you never got the spotlight you deserved. After the group disbanded, you switched to acting, and I thought you were finally getting attention, but... to lose everything at once in an unexpected fire accident. Sunbae, your luck really is unbelievably rotten.”
He spilled it all out without restraint, then curved his lips in satisfaction once more.
“Ha....”
He didn’t seem to care one bit about other people’s feelings.
To write it off as blunt Gen Z honesty would have been far too generous; he was simply shameless.
He had to be about twenty-three by now.
He was a full zodiac cycle younger than me, and yet after rattling off all of that, he was staring at my face with complete composure. It was audacious, to say the least.
More than that, I found it strange how he seemed to know so much about me, already a relic of the past.
“No, then....”
The moment I was about to speak to Han Seo-jun, a shadow slowly slid up from behind the counter.
“There we are—your cocktails are ready.”
A middle-aged gentleman with a kindly smile appeared, holding a glass in each hand.
Set before me was a cocktail with the color of blood.
Inside the transparent martini glass, the crimson liquid scattered a soft gleam.
“Blood in Hell. A cocktail beyond compare, unlike any other drink. If you’re lucky, it brings tremendous fortune. If not, it brings just as much misfortune.”
What on earth was he talking about?
Sex on the Beach and the like—cocktails often had strange names to begin with.
In the end, wasn’t this just a bit of showy wordplay so the bar could sell it at an outrageous price?
Just as I was sneering inwardly,
“Then, sunbae. How about it?”
Han Seo-jun looked straight at me with a brazen tone.
“How about we make a bet today? Let’s put all our luck on the line.”
Curving the end of his red lips,
he stared at me with a provocative gleam in his eyes, as if trying to pierce straight through me.