100 Keywords (3)
When Shin Jo-woon called out to Rembrary, who was fumbling through his words, laughter burst out on all sides of the studio. Rembrary's brow creased faintly as he turned his stare on him, and Shin Jo-woon shrugged, the very picture of a man whose fault it was not.
Forget whale—a python suited the man far better, really. Perhaps he ought to have called him a python from the very start. Come to think of it, "Anchovy Python" sounded even more unpleasant than "Anchovy Whale."
In the meantime, the MC tossed the same question at Shin Jo-woon.
"So who's your ideal type, Shin Jo-woon?"
Shin Jo-woon answered without a moment's thought.
"Taeri, of course."
Screams of waaah erupted from the audience.
Even the MC who'd asked gasped out a "Whoa," then excitedly unloaded a barrage of questions.
"Is this a public confession? Do you actually have feelings for her? Are we standing on the very spot where a dating rumor gets confirmed right now?"
Shin Jo-woon shook his head, smiling.
"Until Dating Process wraps up, Taeri is naturally my ideal type. If you named someone else your ideal type while leaving your girlfriend behind, wouldn't that make you a two-timer?"
The MC, catching Shin Jo-woon's intent, doubled over laughing all over again.
They had assumed Shin Jo-woon was making a romantic confession. Listening on, though, it became clear he was slyly taking Rembrary to task—naming someone else his ideal type while leaving Taeri behind.
Rembrary, sensing the barb buried in Shin Jo-woon's words, hastily added one of his own.
"I like Taeri as well—she resembles Guan Yu."
Shin Jo-woon snorted at that.
"Taeri won't thank you for that one."
"Do you dare belittle Guan Yu?"
"What's with the way you're talking?"
"I became excited."
"Somehow that made it weirder."
"Being an ideal type with an expiration date would displease Taeri as well, I'd think."
"Better than you, who never mentioned her at all. I know, it's fifty paces laughing at a hundred—but I'd rather have run the hundred than never set foot on the field, wouldn't you?"
Rembrary with his serene face, Shin Jo-woon with his smile, neither yielding a single inch as they sniped at each other—they made a remarkably convincing pair of genuine love rivals.
At that, one of the MCs pointed straight at the two of them and hollered, "Film this! I said film this!"
"Shin Jo-woon and Woo Yeon-woo get along so well on Dating Process! And you're telling me this is a rivalry?!"
The audience was loving it too, but the clock was unforgiving, so the MC cut the bickering off at just the right moment and moved on.
"Alright, our next keyword is 'love rival.' Shin Jo-woon, what do you think of Woo Yeon-woo as a rival?"
"Do you mean within Dating Process? Or—"
"In real life. If the two of you met as genuine rivals in everyday life, would he be a formidable one—or a rival who wouldn't even be worth competing with?"
Rembrary expected Shin Jo-woon to spout more nonsense, but Shin Jo-woon paid him a compliment with perfect composure.
"Yeon-woo is the purest person I've ever met."
"Oooooh!"
"His brain, I mean."
A fake-out.
As the room burst into laughter and Rembrary laughed along on the surface alone, Shin Jo-woon watched him out of the corner of his eye and added, perfectly composed:
"No, but truly—as long as you don't take anything he says seriously, he's adorable. Far too trivial to call a love rival. An adorable pig—ah, my apologies. We agreed to retire that word, didn't we."
"…"
"He's like an adorable little brother."
The MC turned to Rembrary this time.
"That's how he describes you. What do you say, Woo Yeon-woo?"
Shin Jo-woon, as if he knew perfectly well that Rembrary would mock him this time, leaned back against his chair and smiled with complete ease.
But Rembrary did no such thing. Trading the same sort of sparring in a venue like this would only turn childish.
In moments like these, it was better to simply ignore Shin Jo-woon and speak his own mind honestly.
"Every person in this world loves me. It's a variety show, so I suppose love rivals exist here. In reality, the very concept of a rival cannot exist for me."
The audience laughed as though they'd heard something not meant for their ears, the MCs tittered about his self-esteem being too high, and Shin Jo-woon shook his head slowly, wondering what on earth went through that head of his.
Then it happened.
Slicing through the pleasant atmosphere, one rough-tongued MC tossed out a question found nowhere in the MC script.
"But doesn't Woo Yeon-woo have nearly as many antis as fans?"
True enough—but hardly something that needed saying here.
The atmosphere turned frosty, and the audience, unsure whether to laugh, froze into awkward expressions for a moment.
And through it all, Rembrary declared with perfect composure.
"I'd call it love-hate. Deep down, they love me."
100 Keywords, with Shin Jo-woon and Rembrary appearing as guests, drew ratings 3% higher than usual. It was no blockbuster variety program, but it had always turned in steady, respectable numbers—and a clean 3% jump was a genuinely remarkable thing.
LLL churned out articles crediting all of it to Yeon-woo's star power; the Dating Process side pushed articles crediting the program itself; and Shin Jo-woon's company tried to push articles crediting Shin Jo-woon, only to get caught and shut down by Shin Jo-woon himself.
Over at LLL Entertainment, they heaved sighs of relief—the ostracism rumor had been stamped out the moment it surfaced, and the results were excellent.
But the ones happiest about the results, naturally, were Woo Yeon-woo's and Wild Animal's fans.
An ostracism rumor inside the same group was a delicate matter, one that could easily have split the fandom down the middle. But with the whole affair so neatly contained, and with such results following on his very next variety appearance, Yeon-woo's fans could hardly contain their joy.
To express that joy, some of them took to SNS to sing Woo Yeon-woo's praises to the skies.
Truthfully, on an ordinary day it would never have reached this pitch. But this was a variety outing straight on the heels of the rumors—Hye-gyeol's disappearance, Yeon-woo's ostracism—so everyone made a point of chattering with extra vim.
However, the phrase "best among male idols" roused Oh Jung-shin's fans, lately quieting down, back to their feet.
Rembrary heard of all this while sprawled on the sofa, diligently breathing. Cathy had told him that his fans had clashed with Oh Jung-shin's fans yet again, and Rembrary, eyes unfocused, picked up his phone.
Privately, he thought Oh Jung-shin's fans had a point this time. But the moment he laid eyes on the contested battleground, his mind changed at once.
Oh Jung-shin's fans were raging that Woo Yeon-woo's fans had dragged other singers into it—and all the while, they were doing the exact same thing to Rembrary themselves.
Watching his fans get torn into by Oh Jung-shin's, Rembrary jolted upright on the sofa.
They fumed that their own singer was being cut down just so mine could be praised. And now here they were, cutting me down in precisely the same fashion.
The double standard was staggering, but watching his believers get knocked about this way and that soured his mood considerably.
They were fighting hard, to be fair. But they seemed to be losing on sheer numbers, which was a pity.
In the end, Rembrary sprang up off the sofa entirely.
So valiant was his bearing that Jungseo, arriving with a tomato juice, asked in alarm:
"What's with that face? Did something happen?"
"A holy war is upon us."
"A holy war?"
"The holy war must be won, verily."
"Huh?"
Bewildered though he was, Jungseo held out the juice; Rembrary accepted it, gathered up his phone, and strode out onto the balcony.
And there he began sending hearts brimming with heart and love to his hard-pressed believers, by way of a rallying cry.
At the sight, Oh Jung-shin's fans—already locked in combat with Woo Yeon-woo's—erupted into a fresh uproar, furious that a celebrity would insert himself into a fan war.
But Rembrary's fans cheered, and Oh Jung-shin's fans, all the more inflamed by that cheering, began summoning Oh Jung-shin in turn.
Oh Jung-shin, hearing the news at the gym, clicked his tongue.
"What is that lunatic thinking, living his life? Why is he fighting alongside his own fans?"
But judging that wading into a fan war himself would accomplish nothing, he turned his focus back to his workout.
Jong-woo, who heard the news at almost the same moment, arrived at much the same conclusion. Rembrary had no business wading into a fan war, he felt.
So Jong-woo phoned Jungseo and instructed him, first things first, to take the phone away from Rembrary.
But by that moment, Rembrary was no longer watching the holy war.
He was staring at an unknown number on his phone. It was late in the evening, and a call had come in from an unsaved number.
Who could this be?
He pondered for a moment whether to answer, but with Sa Gam-jae and Nakru business in the mix, he decided to pick up and pressed the call button.
"Hello?"
"It's me."
The caller was, unexpectedly, Woo Sung-woo.
"Why are you calling from some random number?"
When Rembrary asked, dumbfounded, Woo Sung-woo skipped any explanation and went straight to what he wanted.
"You remember the place you went to test the 'Eyes'? I hear you met a man there who goes around holding a leash."
"Aye. It was only days ago. Of course I remember. What of it?"
"That man from back then. The one who'd seen you leading a youkai on a leash."
"Aye, aye, that's right. What about him?"
"He reached out saying he wants to meet you."
There rose in Rembrary's mind the youkai that had groped at empty air as it walked, leash fastened, no features to its face. And the man in the suit who had buckled that leash on and led it away.
So the man in the suit wishes to see me?
"But why would he want me?"
— End of 117. 100 Keywords (3) —