A Member Has Vanished
"No. He said he wanted to practice more and stayed behind at the studio?"
"Seriously? He's not at the dorm? God, I'm losing my mind."
"Why? He's not at the studio?"
"Nope."
"Did you actually go check? Why does this feel familiar, hyung? Hye-gyeol turned off his phone and practiced overtime before, remember?"
"Of course I went. I wouldn't be calling you in the middle of the night if I hadn't."
"And he's not there?"
"Nope. I figured he'd ditched to go mess around somewhere nearby, but that's not it either."
"How long has he been out of contact?"
"Five hours."
"Hold on a second, hyung."
The members had all been hanging on Jungseo's every word. Even without hearing Jongwoo's voice, what Jungseo said was enough to make it clear that Hye-gyeol had vanished.
When Jungseo looked up from his phone and asked, "Have any of you seen Hye-gyeol?", they each began rattling off the last place and time they'd seen him.
The lounge, the hallway, the bathroom, a meeting room at the company… the answers varied, but oddly enough, not a single member had last seen him at the practice studio.
What was more, everyone except Hye-gyeol had returned to the dorm at the same time, so nobody had crossed paths with him since they'd gotten home.
"He is no child. Could he not simply have gone out to clear his head?"
At Rembrary's blunt question, Jongwoo — mercifully within earshot — shouted through the phone.
"He's not a child, and that's exactly the point! He's old enough to know he has to keep in touch so people don't worry themselves sick!"
Then came Jongwoo's muttering, half to himself.
"If it were just some kid gone missing, I wouldn't be worrying this hard."
There was something oddly weighted about those words.
"What problem?"
Jungseo asked the question as he switched his phone to speaker mode, and Jongwoo's grim voice filled the cramped living room.
"He left his shoes behind. We have no idea what he was wearing when he disappeared."
For a celebrity, image was life. For an idol, doubly so.
Accordingly, the agency decided to wait until morning before reporting Hye-gyeol missing to the police. He was still at a hot-blooded age, and it wasn't impossible he'd simply bolted, fed up with the suffocating group life.
In the meantime, the staff turned out in force to comb the surrounding area.
The members barely slept through it all, waiting anxiously for news.
Rembrary, too, quietly sent Sa Gam-jae a text.
The answers were far too brief. Unable to stand it any longer, Rembrary called him directly, and only then did Sa Gam-jae give a proper reply.
"The only people whose whereabouts I can properly discern are those entered in the registry. Those on the very brink of death. It is better that I do not know where he is."
"And it did not occur to you to put that in a text message?"
"It was a hassle."
Rembrary hung up and worried. Had it been Taein or Cathy who vanished, he'd have fretted less — but Hye-gyeol was on perfectly decent terms with him, so worry he did.
Texts from Shin Jo-woon kept arriving, but Rembrary was in no state to answer them. Sick of the phone's incessant buzzing, he set it down on the bed and burrowed under the covers — only for the strange sound hidden inside that summer song to start nagging at him.
Perhaps I should have told him after all…
The next day, Rembrary woke, yawned, and climbed out of bed. It was only on his way to the bathroom that Hye-gyeol came back to mind.
He splashed some cold water on his face and stepped out, curious whether anyone had found Hye-gyeol, whether the police report had been filed.
But no other members were in sight, and the living room was silent.
The only person there was Jungseo, crouched on the sofa.
And his expression was gravely, deeply dark.
"Why so glum? Has something else befallen?"
Startled by Rembrary's approach, Jungseo instinctively moved to hide his phone. When Rembrary froze mid-step, Jungseo pressed the phone against his chest with a pained look.
"Ah… are you in love, then?"
It was the same reaction Cathy showed whenever he texted Yuli O, so Rembrary asked — and Jungseo sighed and shook his head. Then, after a moment's hesitation, he held the phone out.
Rembrary took it and looked. In the real-time search rankings, the terms Hye-gyeol missing, Hye-gyeol ostracized, Wild Animal ostracism, and Woo Yeon-woo ostracism were climbing in a neat, ominous row.
"What is this?"
"Hye-gyeol. They couldn't find him, so the agency finally filed a missing persons report with the police."
"But 'missing' is only one of these search terms?"
Jungseo, looking pained, hesitated — then took the phone back, opened a bookmarked community site, and handed it to Rembrary once more.
"See for yourself."
Rembrary quickly scanned the crowd's reactions, then handed the phone back to Jungseo.
"Read it?"
"I read it."
"…You're okay?"
"So everyone thinks I am handsome."
"Did you actually read it properly?"
"I read it properly."
Jungseo flicked up through the screen Rembrary had returned, thumb ticking against the glass, and stole a glance at his face. Contrary to his expectation that the man would be upset, Rembrary was the very picture of composure.
Composure was a relief, and yet… Still unsatisfied, Jungseo asked again.
"You're not upset?"
"Which is the correct word — eoui, or eoeu?"
"That's what's upsetting you?"
"I study most diligently, yet no matter how I labor, words I do not know keep appearing before me. It truly grieves me."
"Ah. Right…"
"It calls something to mind from a while ago. I once posted a photograph on SNS and used as its title one of the compliments my believers paid me. But then my believers began insisting I post photos only, and title them with nothing but the date…"
"What did you title it?"
"'I am a hopeless otaku.'"
"…Why on earth that title?"
"There is something my believers often say to me. That if one watches my video journal, one will surely 'ssipdeok-sa.' When I looked the word up, I found that the character 'sa' means to die. And yet how could I speak of death to my fans? I wish for my believers to live long, long lives. So I removed the 'sa.' But my good intentions were known to me alone…"
Watching Rembrary solemnly searching eoui and eoeu, Jungseo found himself at a loss — unsure whether to feel relieved or deeply concerned.
After the missing persons report went out, something had gone sideways: a rumor spread across the internet at astonishing speed that Yeon-woo had ostracized Hye-gyeol.
The "evidence" was a series of cunningly cropped captures of the members' expressions and reactions at key moments. Rembrary talked nonsense so often that the members frequently wore blank, dumbfounded looks in the seconds after he spoke — and the captures had fixated on precisely those moments.
The clincher was the clip of Yeon-woo jabbing a finger into Cathy's eye while they all waited for a music-show number-one announcement.
People spun out one absurd tale after another — that Woo Yeon-woo had bullied the members, and because of it Hye-gyeol had run away from home. Had attempted suicide. Had defected. And on and on.
Jungseo had worried the rumors would wound him, but since he would inevitably learn of them and would have to respond regardless, he'd shown him anyway — and the man himself was fixated solely on having been called handsome.
He wondered for a moment whether Rembrary was feigning strength, but there was no trace of pretense anywhere in his expression.
It's a relief he isn't hurt, but still…
"Why so glum?"
"It's nothing. As long as you are all right, that is enough. But you should clear this up quickly."
"Clear up what, exactly?"
"The ostracism rumors. Take this down."
"?"
"Post it on SNS, without the photo. 'Our youngest member, Hye-gyeol, has been out of contact. We hope he returns safely. If anyone knows anything about Hye-gyeol, please contact us right away.' Like that."
Rembrary transcribed it at his own leisurely pace and showed Jungseo the screen.
"Is this how it should read?"
"Delete the emoticon at the end."
"But this is the actor's emoticon…"
"No. Delete it."
"What of a crying mark, then?"
"If someone has gone missing and you attach a crying emoticon, people will say you're making a mockery of it. Do not include one."
Because he trusted Jungseo more than Maeng Wooshin, Rembrary deleted the actor's emoticon exactly as told and showed him the post again.
"Post it just like that."
Jungseo let out a long sigh and had him upload the text precisely as it was.
The SNS post Jungseo had made him write worked.
It had gone up the instant the rumor began spreading, and Rembrary's image had been improving lately besides. What was more — separate from all the dragging over his character — he'd rescued quite a few lives along the way, so everyone agreed Rembrary could hardly have been the one orchestrating an ostracism.
"You're equipped with a mouth you can't handle, but you swing that mouth all on your own — you never swing it together with others," Jongwoo said around lunchtime, as he walked Rembrary through the shifting real-time search rankings. "Honestly, I don't know whether to be glad your image is like this or not."
"Jungseo bade me post on SNS at once. Jungseo is truly brilliant."
At Rembrary's praise, Jungseo gave a faint smile before turning to Jongwoo.
"Jongwoo-hyung, setting aside the rumors and Hye-gyeol's situation — I think we need to track down whoever first spread it early on as 'Yeon-woo bullied Hye-gyeol so badly he killed himself.' That kind of framing."
Jongwoo nodded.
"Yeah. The CEO said the same thing. The moment Hye-gyeol is back, we investigate quietly and catch them."
Cathy, who'd been gnawing anxiously at his fingernails through the whole conversation, cut in.
"What about Hye-gyeol? You still haven't found him? Did you try contacting his parents, hyung?"
Just then, Rembrary's phone gave a faint buzz. He checked it — a text from Sa Gam-jae.
We have found Hye-gyeol and are bringing him back. However, there is a problem.
— End of Chapter 114 —