Why Are They Staring
"What a strange guy."
Lee Il-baek had returned to his own van with a waffle still clamped between his teeth, muttering the words as he climbed inside.
Truthfully, the kid hadn't talked back even when he'd picked a fight with him. And yet something about it left a bad taste in his mouth. Was it a prejudice born of all those strange stories he kept hearing?
Maybe it was because Maeng Woo-shin—an acquaintance from a drama they'd done together years ago—kept telling him that steering clear of Woo Yeon-woo was the safest course. Lee Il-baek furrowed his brow and set the hollowed-out waffle wrapper down beside him. The paper shell, sticky with honey, stuck to the seat fabric, but he couldn't have cared less; instead, he pressed a hand on the script lying next to it and stared at it hard. Scattered across its pages were the lines he'd underlined and the emotional arcs he'd extracted from the director in endless questions.
It was the fruit of a vow he'd made, kicking himself for having been swept up so helplessly on the day of Woo Yeon-woo's cameo screen test. He'd never been the type to phone in a performance anyway, but that night, growling to himself, he had resolved: he would not be outshone by a cameo role as thin as a sheet of paper.
The "chase god" sequence meant that Woo Yeon-woo and he would be caught in the same shot, or alternating frame by frame across the screen. If even one viewer in a hundred came away saying Woo Yeon-woo had dominated him in that sequence, Lee Il-baek wasn't sure he could bear to hear it.
I hope you'll show some nerve, sunbae.
Little by little, Lee Il-baek wiped Rembrary's final words from his mind.
While watching Jungseo act, cheering him on, and keeping one eye fixed on Lee Il-baek in case he started tormenting him, Rembrary quietly combed over the apartment that served as the drama's setting.
He had started out simply scouting the space where the acting would take place, but as Sa Gam-jae's warning resurfaced in his memory, his mind filled up with thoughts of the shadow instead.
Would that shadow really show itself again this time? If this was once more nothing but an act they were putting on, then what on earth was the shadow's purpose? Was it planning to become a famous idol of this world as well, and use that influence to proselytize to believers?
I'll know once we try it.
If anything, the shadow seemed more intent on concealing its current state than the "real Woo Yeon-woo" was. The shadow's aims worried him, but he worried rather less about the shadow sabotaging the film itself.
Naturally, his thoughts drifted from there to the real Woo Yeon-woo, and to the email that Woo Yeon-woo had sent him.
While Gam-jae and Jong-woo exchanged remarks of their own, Rembrary pulled out his phone and opened the mail app once more.
He tapped the first link and pored over the dense wall of text he'd tried—and failed—to read the day before.
It was an explanation of possession phenomena. The writer claimed that while possession was generally regarded as an unpleasant business, used correctly, it could actually work in one's favor.
Following the link labeled Demon Summoning underneath led him to a strange magic circle. Rembrary judged this one was probably fake. If it were a genuine method for summoning demons, Nakru—people who despised anything supernatural—would never have let it wander freely around the internet.
The link under Escaping a Cult was the same. Keep your mind firm and seek the police's help, consider moving away entirely and changing your phone number, ask friends or family for help, and if your heart still wavered, seek out a legitimate religion rather than a cult—nothing but empty platitudes from start to finish.
The accounts of "actual demons" trailed off inconclusively as well...
So he did the research, but it got him nowhere.
Was that why the name Labrum had been the one thing that actually panned out?
Still, if he was going around digging like this months before he vanished, he must have kept up a steady interest, at least.
All the while, the actors ahead of them were reacting in every possible way to suddenly being confined in a perfectly ordinary living space—anxious, tense, quarreling, wary of one another, some even plainly entertained.
Spotting Jungseo standing calm and blank amid the commotion, looking for all the world like his genuine self, Rembrary waved a hand at him in encouragement.
When it became clear that Jungseo's shoot would run long, Jong-woo declared he would stay at the set, and sent Sa Gam-jae and Rembrary back first.
The reasoning was that their presence was no help to anyone, and they'd be better off returning to the office for training in preparation for the new album. Fair enough—what actually demanded Rembrary's immediate attention was the albums currently in production.
Rembrary's cameo would amount to at most one scene near the end of the film, a character with little screen time. It would shift depending on circumstances, but if filming proceeded smoothly, he'd be shooting around mid-December. There was no need to clock in at the set every single day until then. He could drop by and soak up the atmosphere whenever things were relaxed, and frankly, the mood of the latter half of the shoot would serve him better than the first half's anyway.
"I do worry whether Jungseo can hold up on his own."
"Jong-woo is staying with him, is he not?"
"He's diligent and he works hard, but he's hardly the sort to be much of a pillar, is he?"
"...That is fair."
"I ought to be there lending a hand."
Is that sincerity I'm hearing? As Sa Gam-jae mulled it over with grave earnestness, turning the steering wheel, Rembrary—seated in the passenger seat—decided he might as well dig up more about Lee Il-baek and flipped on his phone's browser.
But there on the front page, the real-time trending searches read aspiring idol and aspiring idol knife.
What in the world is this? Puzzled, he tapped it—and found a breaking report that an aspiring idol had stabbed one of the staff at his own agency with a knife.
"Good grief."
"What is the matter?"
"Someone's gone and killed somebody."
"That is hardly a first occurrence, is it?"
"Yes, but those one or two times are precisely what hurt so much, aren't they."
The breaking report amounted to nothing more than two short lines, but soon a detailed article followed, stamped with an [EXCLUSIVE] tag.
The substance didn't differ greatly, but it laid out the events before and after the incident in more concrete terms. The trainee and the staff member, it said, had been on bad terms from the start. Nobody knew exactly why, but bad terms they were—and every time the two clashed, the staff member had mocked the trainee for clinging to his trainee status for so long without debuting.
Enraged by this, the trainee had finally exploded—or so the article went. Yet when arrested, the trainee reportedly behaved with utter composure, without a shred of guilt.
"Goodness me."
Shaking his head, Rembrary tucked his phone into his pocket.
The incident pained Rembrary, but he judged there was nothing for him to do about it.
For one thing, it was a matter between complete strangers. For another, he was no longer a High Priest in this body—it would be more than a little odd to appear uninvited at the scene of the crime. Even if the man had been wounded, healing him under all those watching eyes would have been next to impossible, and in any case, the staff member had died so completely that even that was beyond saving.
The car glided smoothly into the underground parking garage of LLL Entertainment.
Rembrary rested his arm on the windowsill, thinking hard, and then asked Sa Gam-jae.
"Gam-jae."
"Yes."
"Was the Grim Reaper who took away the man who died this time you, by any chance?"
"It was not."
"Was it Sa Jik-jae, then?"
"No. It was a reaper whose name I do not know."
"I see..."
And there the topic ended.
Sa Gam-jae found a suitable spot and parked the car, while Rembrary sat still until it had come to a complete stop, undid his seatbelt, and got out.
Rembrary had nothing more to say on the matter, nor did he believe it was his affair to meddle in—so he waited for Sa Gam-jae to exit the car, stepped into the elevator with him, and turned the conversation elsewhere.
"Have you ever eaten a waffle?"
"A waffle? Naturally."
"So you have eaten one!"
"You, of all people, suddenly bringing up waffles—why?"
"I want to eat one."
Recalling that soft-looking bread that Lee Il-baek had leisurely chewed away at even while picking a fight, Rembrary heaved one rueful sigh after another. Sa Gam-jae was a Grim Reaper, true, but he was also still a manager—he surely wouldn't permit rampant snacking. Would he need to cash in another favor with Jang Tae-ri and Shin Jo-woon this time too?
But hadn't even those two—who had promised to buy him something or other with shrimp in it—failed to deliver on that yet? Especially with Shin Jo-woon, he'd gone so far as to set a date, only for it to be canceled.
I should have asked him about that yesterday!
Just then, the moment the two of them stepped off on the third floor—Rembrary heading for the practice room, Sa Gam-jae for the break room—a secretary came hurrying up with word that CEO Im was calling for Rembrary. In the end, Sa Gam-jae went on to the practice room, and Rembrary climbed back into the elevator.
"What business brings this summons?"
"It seemed like somewhat unpleasant business."
"Oh dear. Who has come to what harm?"
The secretary suddenly burst out laughing, and Rembrary arched an eyebrow.
"What is so funny?"
"I'm sorry. Normally when you say something bad happened, people ask what it was, or whether it's something to do with themselves—but you just went straight to asking who it happened to. That's why."
I see. So when people hear something bad has happened, their first instinct is to suspect it concerns them. Why is that? Rembrary tilted his head at the strange custom of this world, but held his tongue for now.
Meanwhile, the elevator reached its destination and chimed open. Rembrary, who usually dropped in on CEO Im without ceremony, went through the proper procedure this time and presented himself at the office.
"What is it? I hear someone has met with misfortune."
When CEO Im's emotions curdled toward the bad, he reached for a cigarette. But since he was quitting, he normally kept a candy in his mouth instead. Today, however, there was nothing between his lips at all. Something had happened, then—but apparently nothing grave enough to brood over.
"His name is Jang Ji-ho. You obviously won't remember him."
When Rembrary shook his head, CEO Im pointed to the sofa with a grim face and told him to come over and sit.
"Is he someone I ought to know?"
"He was a trainee at our company before transferring. To another company, as their trainee."
"Indeed? Then what of him?"
"You'd know this—no, actually, you wouldn't—but when you build a group, you don't just throw together whatever kids happen to be around the same age. It was my first time making one, mind you, but I still worked out the combination that fit best, as best I could. Plenty of kids went in and out of Wild Animal along the way, and Ji-ho—he was up for the maknae position, and I agonized over whether to include him or not."
Rembrary nodded along, but he still couldn't grasp why CEO Im was telling him all this.
"Except the kid's gone and killed someone."
Rembrary's eyes went wide with shock.
"Truly? Good grief."
"Looks like he got into a fight with a staff member and it turned into that. You didn't happen to see the news on the way here? It's him, the one in the article."
Rembrary cast his mind back to the article about the trouble between the trainee and the staff member. So that trainee had been one of the ones who'd left this company...
"Then I suppose that's why you called for me. As a colleague of his past, I ought to..."
"Right. It's what's owed between people."
"Have no worry. Give me an hour, and I can open the man's mouth."
CEO Im had been nodding absently—until his eyebrows shot straight up.
"What are you talking about?"
"You want me to find out why he killed the man, and whether he truly did kill him—no?"
Rembrary thumped his chest with both fists.
"It's my specialty. My specialty."
And in truth, it was. Hadn't this very ability been what saved the day during the Hye-gyeol incident?
"No!"
What came back, however, was CEO Im's explosive shout.
"It is not?"
"You'll get asked about all that eventually, but that's for later. First, we're paying our condolences."
"The funeral has already begun?"
Since it had been on the news during his ride over, Rembrary asked in surprise, and CEO Im explained that the incident had happened two days ago—the news had only broken today.
There was nothing for it, so Rembrary put on the black suit CEO Im had set aside for him, and together with Tae-in and Hye-gyeol—the other members still at the agency—they headed for the funeral hall where the altar had been arranged.
Whether the claim that they'd once been colleagues was true or not, Tae-in and Hye-gyeol wore exceedingly dark expressions. A friend turned criminal was hardly welcome news.
But just as the car stopped and everyone moved to enter the altar room together—
Oh dear.
Rembrary, trailing absently after the members, froze mid-step.
All around the funeral hall, demons of every color were crouched in half-hearted concealment here and there, staring straight at him—and there were, at the very least, more than thirty of them.
< Chapter 158. Why Are You Staring at Me > — End —