Can You Pull This Off?
Flustered, Rembrary blurted it out in his original way of speaking.
"Bragging about money, fine—but why does your lover become my lover?"
Cathy tapped his lips twice with a finger—the universal signal for watch your mouth—and answered grumpily.
"How should I know? It's not like I wrote the lyrics. It's not even a song I sang."
"..."
"There are songs like that, you know—the kind that brag about yourself to an almost excessive degree."
Rembrary asked, his expression grave.
"Please play the song one more time."
When Cathy played it again on his phone, Rembrary listened even more gravely than before. He had heard the lyrics clearly enough, and yet the melody alone never suggested words like those.
Rembrary considered it for a moment, then spoke.
"Even so, I will sing it choir-style."
Jong-woo pressed a hand to his forehead, but he didn't stop him. Singing a swaggering song packed wall-to-wall with slang in full choir style was absurd—but at the very least, it would make waves again this time too.
A week was a tight squeeze for arranging, practicing, and preparing for the contest. Because of that, Jong-woo announced they would simply keep filming straight through, and Eun-seon and Cathy's cameraman followed them into the agency itself, cameras in hand.
Rembrary followed Jong-woo straight to the practice room. Inside, the other three members were drilling their group choreography; at the sight of two people carrying cameras, they froze and shot each other frantic looks.
"They're with Sing Survival," Jong-woo explained quickly, and the members bowed in careful, reading-the-room unison.
Cathy turned naturally to his own assigned camera. "These are our group members, they are."
Idols though they were, Wild Animal, sadly, was not accustomed to cameras. More so than Jong-woo, perhaps, but compared to idols who slyly tossed out jokes for the lens, they were hopelessly stiff. So the moment the greetings were done, the atmosphere curdled into awkwardness.
Eun-seon, who could exchange pleasantries but not steer a conversation, kept stealing glances at her watch for no reason, while the other three—this not being a show where they were the main cast—did nothing but trade wary looks. Cathy, for his part, was busy checking something on his phone.
Finally, unable to watch any longer, Eun-seon tossed out a light question to thaw the air. "So why is your group called Wild Animal?"
Cathy answered right away. "The CEO named us, he did. Told us to go run wild through the music industry."
"Ah, I see."
When Eun-seon nodded along, Hye-gyeol—cheerful by nature—slipped in smoothly with a joke. "We each have an animal assigned to us, too."
"Oh, really?"
"Yep."
"What's yours? Can't you tell me?"
Eun-seon's question was meant to shake off the awkwardness, but it was also a chance for the two contestants to promote their own group. The members pounced on the bait at once, explaining their assigned animals and why they'd been given them.
Taein was a tiger, Jungseo a red deer, Hye-gyeol a hamster, and Cathy a puppy.
Eun-seon nodded along enthusiastically to each explanation, then finally turned to Rembrary.
On this point, Rembrary had heard the story from their leader, Jungseo, so he answered with perfect composure. "I am a unicorn."
Eun-seon burst out laughing. "Why are you the only one with a fantasy animal? You really stand out. What's the reason? Why a unicorn?"
The moment Rembrary had learned his assigned animal was a unicorn, he had studied up on the internet as to what a unicorn was, so without a moment's hesitation he named the creature's most distinctive trait.
"If I lay my head on a woman's lap, I fall asleep."
"AAAGH!"
The instant the word lap left Rembrary's mouth, Jong-woo let out a shriek to drown out anything further, clamped a hand over his lips, and hauled him out of the room.
Dragged into the hallway without the faintest idea why, Rembrary looked at Jong-woo. When he only stared at him, wondering what the matter was, Jong-woo curled all ten fingers like he was raking a chalkboard and said:
"Are you insane? What is an idol saying right now! Don't go proudly announcing your fetishes, you punk!"
"Is that not why the unicorn was assigned to me?"
"No!"
"Then why?"
"They made you a unicorn because you dyed your hair white, you punk! Your hair is white! You're the visual center, so they just picked something cool-looking for you!"
"Ah..."
"Next time the symbolic animal comes up... say sloth."
Having recited the most peaceful animal he could think of, Jong-woo told Rembrary to go back inside first.
"And you?"
"I'm going to try contacting the music production we work with. The song needs an arranging whether it's musical or choir style, and there's no one at our company who can do it."
The composer said he had no time today, so Eun-seon and the other cameraman agreed to return the next day. But before they left, Jong-woo pleaded his case so earnestly that the two of them had to cut Yeon-woo's unicorn remarks entirely and overlay a different interview in their place. It went like this:
"You're singing choir style, Woo Yeon-woo. Is that because you're Catholic?"
"No."
"Huh? You're not? Then why sing a choir song?"
"Because I'm best at it."
"...Even though you're not Catholic?"
"I sing it often."
"?"
The two of them wore sullen faces, as if they thought the unicorn remarks would have made better television—but they were both softer-hearted than PD Kim Moo-rok. Jong-woo counted it a mercy, thanked them over and over, and walked them out of the office himself to see them off.
And the moment he returned to the office, he launched into a full round of nagging at Rembrary. But Rembrary, with his lofty powers of discipline, absorbed the scolding with perfect calm, until at last Jong-woo wore himself out and gave up.
Rembrary, who had merely been waiting for the lecture to run dry, seized the opening to make his request.
"Since I must sing choir music, I would like to visit a cathedral."
Jong-woo refused flat out. "Listen online. There's tons online."
"And yet it would not be the same as hearing it with one's own ears, would it not?"
"It's different. Online you can hear choirs counted among the best on Earth, so it's even better."
But Rembrary kept steadily at him. Singing choir music, that was because it was the song he sang best—but the wish to visit a cathedral had nothing to do with hearing choir music.
What Rembrary wanted was to meet this world's priest, the one he had failed to meet on his earlier visit. He felt sorry for making a nuisance of himself, but he had no choice but to keep pestering. When the requests showed no sign of stopping, Jong-woo finally relented, grumbling all the while.
"Fine. But! This time you go with me."
"That is fine. I have no objection."
Since filming would resume the moment the composer arrived tomorrow, Jong-woo took Rembrary straight to a cathedral.
Rembrary, his composure slightly shaken, clasped his hands together anxiously. Whether or not he could find a way back to his original world hung on this, so even a man as unshakable as he could not help but be tense.
Fortunately, this time he was able to meet this world's priest. Here, priests were called "Father," and the Father was outside the cathedral, watering the flowers. What was more, at the sight of Rembrary he went "Oh!"—he even recognized his face.
"You're with Wild Animal, the, um...?"
Rembrary even succeeded in shaking off Jong-woo and speaking with the priest one-on-one. But that was exactly where the smooth sailing ended.
"Father. I have a favor to ask of you."
"Yes? What is it?"
"I would like to have a word with God. Might you carry a message to Him for me?"
"Pardon?"
"It is quite all right if we speak face to face, so you may simply call Him here."
"...Pardon?"
The priest could not make sense of Rembrary's words. He knew from the internet that no one in this other world wielded divine power—but he had still seen a holy relic react to divine power, so he had allowed himself a sliver of hope.
Rembrary sighed in disappointment. The priest's expression was no different from Jong-woo's or the members'. The expression of a man thinking, What on earth is this kid talking about?
In the end, Rembrary offered a complicated but workable fallback.
"Then I would like to meet the Pope."
But the priest only grew more flustered and asked in return, "If it's all right, might you tell me why you...?"
"There is something I wish to ask of him."
"Pardon?"
On and on it went like that, the two of them talking endlessly past each other. In the end the conversation bore no fruit, and Rembrary left the cathedral, deflated.
Jong-woo, waiting in the parking lot, had watched him sprint off in high spirits—so when Rembrary came trudging back, he hurried over in alarm.
"What happened? Something go wrong? They won't let you see the choir?"
"So they are not easily seen. And even if one may, it seems one may only gaze from very, very far away."
"The choir members?"
"..."
Sullen now, Rembrary climbed meekly into the car. Jong-woo, who didn't attend church, cocked his head at the remark without understanding it, but Rembrary offered nothing further.
That evening, with the hoped-for meeting with this world's priest amounting to nothing, Rembrary's strength drained away and he stared blankly out the window. Who on earth had sent him here? A black magician? The Demon King? Or one of the Demon King's minions? What power had they wielded, to pull off a trick like this?
Here, it was not only the civilization and values of the people that differed—the way they approached god was different too.
In the land where Rembrary had lived, the god had kept very close to her people. Here, it was not so. There were holy relics that reacted to divine power, so a god surely existed—and yet he could not actually lay eyes on that god, and it stifled him terribly.
And besides, they said there was no magic here either...
There had been talk of demons and the like, though.
Rembrary searched the internet for demon summoning methods. On this internet, that vast treasury of information, there was nothing about summoning gods—and yet, curiously, no end of talk about summoning demons.
God-summoning methods did exist, in fact. At first he had been startled and nearly attempted one, but when Hye-gyeol incredulously informed him it was from a game, how utterly deflated he had been.
In any case, the methods on offer were overwhelmingly demon summoning. And as High Priest, he could hardly attempt a demon summoning. What if an actual demon answered the call? That would be a catastrophe.
...For now, let me simply think about the contest.
After agonizing all evening, Rembrary finally emptied his head the only way he knew: playing the contest song on repeat and committing the lyrics to memory.
The next day, at ten in the morning the two camera people arrived, and at eleven the composer showed up. Seemingly indifferent to the cameras, he didn't spare them so much as a glance and simply called Rembrary and Cathy over.
"You're doing musical. And you're doing choir style."
Apparently he'd already heard it all from Jong-woo, because he said this straight away, then asked, "Musical, choir style—those are worlds apart in mood. Have you thought about how you're going to approach it?"
Before Cathy could get a word in, Rembrary asked first.
"Would it be possible to alter the lyrics?"
The answer came from Eun-seon, camera in hand.
"No. The only rewrites allowed are when a woman sings a male singer's song, or a man a woman's, adjusting the words to fit their own gender."
The composer's eyes sharpened on Rembrary.
"Why? Planning to switch styles if you can't rewrite?"
"No."
Rembrary answered as if reading aloud from a book, then held out the paper he had stayed up all night writing.
"What's this?"
The composer absently took the paper Rembrary offered.
"This is how I wish to sing it."
He skimmed through the contents—then looked up at Rembrary, startled.
"Can you pull this off?"