Cruising Along
Surely Shin Jo-woon wouldn't actually pick up? Woo Sung-woo swallowed drily, wound tight with nerves.
But after three or four rings, the tone cut off and the call connected with a click.
Sung-woo's heart plunged straight to the floor. His eyes wavered with something close to despair.
Shin Jo-woon's mouth, by contrast, curved upward in triumph.
"Hey, piggy."
When the person on the other end of a call is nicer to you than they need to be, suspicion is the first thing that creeps in. What wrong has this person done me, you wonder — are they being sweet because of some dirty scheme, or because they're about to ask for something awkward? That was exactly the state Rembrary was in. The moment Shin Jo-woon's voice came through the phone sounding warmer than usual, he felt displeased for no reason he could name.
"Why did you call?"
His voice turned curt right along with his mood.
[Busy?]
Jo-woon kept up his buoyant tone regardless, but Rembrary spared him no mercy. "I'm recording. I'm busy. Hanging up." Then he pressed the end button.
Shin Jo-woon, who had been grinning in high spirits, scowled when the other party cut the call without giving him so much as a word in edgewise. Then, remembering that he hadn't actually had any particular reason to call either, he smiled instead and held his phone out so Woo Sung-woo could see the call log on the screen — 13 seconds.
"Taking the handoff from me, then?"
Of course the call time had to be thirteen seconds, Sung-woo cursed inwardly, then shouted in urgency, "Try my phone right now! Quickly!"
He still couldn't make heads or tails of the situation, but one thing was certain: staying in contact with his brother could only be a good thing. A moment ago Yeon-woo had said he was in the middle of a recording and busy. If he'd hung up on Jo-woon's call in order to slip into a recording booth or somewhere similar, the odds were high he wouldn't pick up again afterward. Hence the push to get another call through immediately.
Jo-woon had no intention of pulling tricks at a moment like this, so he slipped his own phone into his pocket, picked up Sung-woo's, and dialed Yeon-woo. This time, too, Yeon-woo answered right away.
[Seriously, what is wrong with these people?]
He was grumbling just the same.
"Yeon-woo!"
Hearing his brother's voice through the speaker, Sung-woo roared into the phone. He'd been about to scream for someone to save him.
"Busy. Hanging up."
But Yeon-woo, exactly as before, ruthlessly severed the call again.
That little punk, I swear...! Sung-woo's stomach churned, yet he addressed Jo-woon with affected grandeur. "See that? He picked up. The deal was one answer out of three, right? That one counts."
Jo-woon, who had apparently been certain all along that Yeon-woo wouldn't answer Sung-woo's call, gazed thoughtfully at the screen reading 5 seconds.
Sung-woo swallowed drily. His throat tingled for no good reason.
The madman had never said what he would do if it turned out Sung-woo wasn't close with his brother. He'd only asked whether they were close, and then pulled this stunt. But no one who thought normally would kidnap a man out of nowhere just to verify something like that.
With no telling which way the man might swing next, tension was only natural.
When Sung-woo fixed him with a hard stare, Jo-woon murmured, "Shame, that," picked up Sung-woo's phone, and walked toward the door.
Where is he going? Sung-woo jerked his head up to watch, but Jo-woon was already climbing the low steps in front of the door. And then he simply opened it and walked out.
Bang. The door thudded shut, and the sealed room went dark. Sung-woo wrenched his bound body with all the strength he had.
"Perfect! Absolutely perfect!"
In another sealed room entirely, someone was exclaiming in open admiration. The someone in question was the composer.
Only moments before the recording, this composer had been glowering at Rembrary. Once the take was done, however, his opinion had swung so completely that he was now thrusting both thumbs up in Rembrary's direction.
The composer came over as Rembrary gathered up his phone, thumping him heartily on the back as he declared with total conviction, "You traded in your personality to get that voice. That's how precious that voice of yours is."
Was that supposed to be a compliment...?
Rembrary remained unconvinced, but the composer at least looked thoroughly pleased.
Jong-woo looked pleased as well. He turned to the composer with a buzz in his voice. "How's the boys' song? You think it'll get a good response this time?"
The composer thrust out a thumb again. "Oh, it's the best. Wild's a performance group, and their vocals are top-tier too. I'd say this one lands well."
"It has to be more than just decent this time. We need to really lock in our position to breathe easy."
"Well, it doesn't overlap with any of the major idol comebacks, so it should go smoothly."
The composer laughed heartily, then seemed to wonder if he'd misspoken and hurried to add, "Vocally they could go toe-to-toe with a major comeback and not lose an inch. It's just that fandom-wise, they're still a step behind those guys."
As the members walked to the parking lot after finishing the recording, they huffed and vowed to crush Sea Butter flat.
Strictly speaking, Sea Butter hadn't actually wronged them — they'd merely gotten tangled up with Wild Animal by chance. But with everything knotted and snarled the way it was now, a competitive fire seemed to well up all the same.
Since that competitive spirit was binding the members together for the first time in ages, Jong-woo didn't bother talking them out of it.
The only ones who stayed aloof through all of this, as usual, were Rembrary and Jungseo.
Rembrary especially.
He had hung up right away, true — but with Sung-woo calling three times in a row and Shin Jo-woon calling in between them, he couldn't help wondering whether something had happened.
The moment Rembrary boarded the van, he slid into the innermost seat and dialed Sung-woo, the one who had called three times straight.
Sung-woo picked up before the phone had finished its second ring.
[Hello?]
Buckling his seatbelt, Rembrary asked, "Why were you calling earlier? Was something the matter?"
[That was me doing the...]
"?"
[...]
And yet this was the man who had called three times and answered on the first ring. Sung-woo's words suddenly trailed off into silence.
"Yeon-woo's brother. Out with it."
Pressed by Rembrary, Sung-woo shoved aside whatever he'd been about to say and asked a question instead.
[You. That man from the variety show you're on. CEO Shin Jo-woon.]
"Anchovy?"
[Are you close?]
"Now and then."
Rembrary answered without a thought and turned his gaze to the window. The scenery beyond the glass crept slowly into motion, and the parking lot slid away behind them.
[Stay away from him.]
The admonishment that followed was absurd.
Rembrary's brow furrowed. "And what business is that of yours?"
[It's advice. From your brother.]
"Aigoo, spare me."
[Where'd you even learn to needle people like that? What's with the tone?]
"Hanging up."
The moment Rembrary pressed the end button with a decisive click, Sung-woo called right back.
Rembrary answered and said at once, "If the message that took you three calls to deliver is something as juvenile as don't play with so-and-so, then I've heard quite enough."
[That man is dangerous.]
Rembrary pressed the end button again.
Jungseo, sitting quietly beside him, watched him do it and asked, "What's the matter?"
"Your hyung says I'm not allowed to play with someone."
From the front seat, Hye-gyeol shouted, "He means don't play with Cathy-hyung, right?" — and a smack landed on the back of his head. Hye-gyeol's howl followed, along with Jong-woo's furious bellow.
"So it would seem."
Rembrary gave Jungseo this small reply, then called Shin Jo-woon this time. Jo-woon, too, picked up before the ringtone had finished a few cycles.
[Hey, piggy.]
This time, unlike with Sung-woo, Rembrary offered an opening greeting.
"Have you quarreled with my brother?"
[Your... tone?]
"Did you fight?"
It was a question born of piecing things together: Jo-woon and Sung-woo calling back to back, and Sung-woo abruptly warning him to stay away from Jo-woon.
In Rembrary's judgment the two of them had no reason to fight, but then, one never could tell with people.
Shin Jo-woon answered in a voice laced with laughter. "No."
"That doesn't sound like a no."
[It really isn't.]
More laughter followed, and then Jo-woon asked with an air of apology, [But I'm a bit busy at the moment. What shall we do?]
"Then I'll hang up."
Once again, Rembrary pressed the end button with a crisp click.
Then he rolled the phone around in his palm, rested his temple against the window, and turned the matter over carefully.
Sung-woo hadn't offered any real explanation. Neither had Jo-woon. And yet it somehow felt as though something had passed between the two of them... was he reading too much into it?
Besides, Jo-woon's voice had been lower, heavier than usual, and Sung-woo had been saying the most out-of-nowhere things.
Rembrary thought it over deeply, but soon reached his verdict: whether those two fought or not was no concern of his.
A sound conclusion. Rembrary simply closed his eyes and went back to his unfinished sleep.
After that, with the finished recordings on loop, the members threw themselves into choreography practice — and when the appointed day arrived, they shot the music video.
The video followed the title track's lyrics faithfully, telling the story of a man who already had a lover falling for another woman, gripped by love and guilt in equal measure.
From beginning to end, the song's narrator insists that he is trash — and then persuades himself that one cannot simply invent love for the sake of becoming a good person, can one? In a word: vacillating.
First, a woman murmurs in voiceover, "I love you." And then asks, "And you?"
The heartbeat that had been beating faintly swells — thud, thud — and on the same pulse as that heartbeat, the intro crashes in: Rembrary, singing in grief-stricken tones that if I follow love, I become a bad man, but if I forsake love, I become a sad man, storms into frame.
The woman who posed her question to Rembrary reaches out her hand toward him, and Rembrary takes it.
The camera closes in on their clasped hands — then pulls away, and in that instant the woman becomes a different woman, and Rembrary becomes Jungseo.
Their expressions have changed as well. Unlike the woman from moments before, this one gazes at Jungseo with anxious eyes, as if to ask, You're going to leave me, aren't you?
Jungseo, in anguish, confesses that he feels friendship and affection, sympathy — every emotion there is — for one woman, and for one emotion only, love, he feels it for another.
Hearing this, the woman shoves Jungseo away and runs off, and he crumples to the ground.
The camera tumbles across the floor as if it too had been shoved, finds its balance, and swings back to frame — and the person pushing himself up off the ground this time is not Jungseo, but Cathy.
My life is the only one I have, so I want to live it for myself — but you, whom I loved, are also the only one you have, so I don't want to be the one who hurts you. Muttering that he no longer knows what to do, Cathy walks on.
He breaks into a light step, the camera spins — and the woman standing back to back with him is the very first woman again, the one who once asked Rembrary, Do you love me?
She smiles at Cathy and turns away — and the man standing face to face with her when she turns is, this time, Taein.
Taein confesses his love, declaring that he has fallen into the darkest love there is — yet even as he confesses, his face is drenched in self-loathing, wrung with torment from start to finish.
The woman receiving the confession, by contrast, beams. And behind her, the first lover shadows her every movement like a phantom, his face dark as a storm.
Exactly as CEO Im had demanded, the emotion was laid on so thick it verged on excess, and the members' brows never once got the chance to smooth out. But the members' acting was generally more than passable, and the two dancers cast as the first and second lovers handled both the dancing and the emotional beats so cleanly that the whole thing was never hard to watch.
Two days of shooting, plus the teaser photoshoot, and at last both Jong-woo and the members managed a ragged sigh of relief.
"I was worried when the choreography got scrapped, but honestly, with the dancing scaled back they can pour everything into the story and the emotions instead — so that part works out."
Now all that remained before the showcase was the filming of You Rap, I'll Sing — the very show CEO Im had been drooling over.