Dissing
Shin Jo-woon answered that it was nothing, then hung up the phone. But a laugh, once it broke loose, didn't fade away so easily.
As Shin Jo-woon kept shaking with laughter, his secretary behind him wore a puzzled expression.
"What's so funny, sir?"
"That kid really is hilarious."
Shin Jo-woon gave a short reply and glanced at his secretary.
"You heard it too, didn't you? His rapping."
He looked genuinely bewildered, as if marveling at how anyone could have kept a straight face through that.
"Yes, I heard it. But if you keep laughing, won't Mr. Yeon-woo think he's offended you?"
Shin Jo-woon replied flatly.
"If he cared about that, he wouldn't have called in the first place."
In any case, having that conversation had taken a bit of the edge off his mood.
Shin Jo-woon deliberated for a while, then simply sent a polite, noncommittal reply.
The truth was, he had released Woo Sung-woo for Woo Yeon-woo's sake, and ever since he'd done it, the whole thing had been gnawing at him.
Did I really have to go that far? The thought kept creeping back.
He considered Woo Yeon-woo entertaining and thought well enough of him, but that was the extent of it.
And beyond whatever goodwill he had for the kid, he absolutely despised Nakru. Despised it to the bone.
Yet he had handed over one of Nakru's own purely because the kid asked, because they were friendly.
It had been his own choice, his own decision — and Shin Jo-woon found himself sunk in regret over it.
But listening to Woo Yeon-woo call him up just to perform for him like this, he decided he could live with this much. It wasn't as if the Nakru operative he'd let go was the last Nakru operative left in the world.
Shin Jo-woon nodded to himself, satisfied with his own reasoning, and turned to his secretary.
"What about the analysis? Finished?"
The secretary answered.
"Yes. We've stationed people around Woo Sung-woo, and we've begun tracing all the phone numbers stored in his mobile as well."
Shin Jo-woon nodded with a careful expression.
"The numbers saved in their system will all belong to people with no ties to Nakru, most likely. The call records will be clean too."
But low odds of finding anything were no reason to skip the investigation.
"Let's keep a close eye on who this lucky escapee's been rubbing shoulders with."
The next day.
Rembrary went straight to Beta's agency. They needed to pick their song together and rehearse the number they'd perform on stage.
The moment Rembrary walked in, the employees of Beta's agency turned to look at him and started whispering among themselves.
That's Woo Yeon-woo.
He's even better-looking than the rumors. With a face like that, does he really say and do the things they say he does?
A few of them couldn't even pretend to work and sneakily wandered over just to gawk.
Beta had come down to the lobby to meet him, spotted the scene, and chased the employees off in sheer exasperation — though it didn't do much good.
"It's fine. I'm used to being the center of attention."
Only after Rembrary said this did Beta stop shooing people away and lead him up to the practice room.
"Did you practice yesterday?"
"Of course. Right away."
"And people could actually understand you?"
"Everybody understood me just fine."
"Wait, seriously?"
Beta furrowed her brow, wearing a look that said there's no way.
But it didn't take her long to come around. Anyone who talked with Woo Yeon-woo regularly had probably just grown used to his pronunciation.
"If pronunciation isn't a problem, then I'll trust you on that front."
"You bet!"
When Rembrary declared this with total confidence in his own abilities, Beta held out the papers she'd been carrying.
"Here, this is for you."
"What is it?"
"The song we're doing. You said yesterday it'd be better if I picked it."
"Ah, right, that."
The paper Beta handed over was streaked with yellow highlighter here and there.
"These parts are your lyrics. Since it has to suit both of us, I picked a song without a huge vocal range, and for the rap I went with mostly repetitive lyrics."
Rembrary knew absolutely nothing about any of this, so he simply answered obediently.
"I see."
"You're not writing your own lyrics, so let's focus on getting the pronunciation exactly right and not forgetting the words."
"Understood."
"You haven't forgotten lyrics before, have you? I watched a ton of videos of you rapping, and you had every line memorized without a single mistake."
"Naturally."
"Okay, then I'll show you where to put emphasis so the rhythm actually lands when people listen."
For the next forty minutes or so, Beta walked him through which parts of the lyrics to punch so they would stick in listeners' ears.
Then, partway through explaining the back half of the song, Beta suddenly flinched.
"What's wrong?"
Did I explain something wrong? Do I have to start over? As Rembrary looked at her in confusion, Beta scrunched up her face, went "Hmm...", tapped the table a few times with the back of her pen, and finally came out with it.
"Have you seen this show before?"
"No."
When Rembrary said this quite frankly, Beta spoke with concern.
"I just remembered. Not every episode, but sometimes the MC messes around and makes the rappers — well, actually they're vocalists, right? Anyway, he makes the vocalists who only became rappers for this round do an impromptu freestyle diss rap."
"What's a 'diss'?"
"Um... it's when you find someone's flaws and tear them down. Their weaknesses. And even if it's not really a weakness, you can just claim it is."
They order people to do something that disrespectful? Rembrary's eyes went wide.
"The tally takes longer than you'd think sometimes, you see? That's probably when they do it, to kill time. There's a live studio audience too."
Beta let out a sigh and continued.
"Anyway, if you end up having to freestyle, slip a little English in here and there. I think rapping purely in Korean is better, but that exposes exactly how skilled you are. You've got to cheat a little. I know they call it just a joke, a bit of fun — but do well at it, and it quietly earns you real points from the audience score."
"Understood."
Rembrary accepted this without complaint. But at his next question, Beta, who had been straightening up to stretch, froze mid-motion.
"By the way, Beta. I can barely speak any English at all."
Beta shot back a look of pure disbelief.
"You graduated elementary, middle, and high school, didn't you?"
"No, I never graduated any of those."
"Uh... did you drop out?"
"No."
"But you said you didn't graduate?"
"I didn't graduate elementary, middle, or high school, but I did graduate school."
"Who are you talking about?"
"Myself."
"But you said you didn't graduate?"
"I didn't graduate elementary, middle, or high school, but I did graduate school."
"Who are you talking about?"
"Me, though."
"Then which school did you graduate from?"
"I don't know. Either way, it wasn't elementary, middle, or high school."
"?"
Beta could only blink, utterly bewildered.
Rembrary was every bit as baffled himself.
"Well, whatever. Let's just work with what I know."
Unable to make head or tail of anything Rembrary had said, Beta settled for an uneasy compromise.
All the while thinking, Wow, this guy really is weird. Genuinely, deeply weird.
After two grueling days of practice, the day of the You Rap, I'll Sing recording finally arrived.
With CEO Im's backing, Rembrary was styled even more dazzlingly than usual.
His outfit was a sponsorship, so he wore that.
When they arrived at the studio, half the contestants had already shown up and the other half hadn't.
As he was going around exchanging greetings, the rapper from Sea Butter and Queenz looked over and smiled meaningfully in his direction.
But when Rembrary smiled back at them just as pleasantly, the two of them flinched and exchanged glances of their own.
At last, the competition began.
Rembrary and Beta performed somewhere in the middle, and thanks to Rembrary's voice, their reception turned out quite good despite everything.
Just not as good as Sea Butter's rapper and Queenz.
It was hard to believe the two of them had simply swapped positions — they were just as polished singing outside their usual roles as they were in them.
With Queenz, everyone had expected as much, but few people had anticipated this much from the Sea Butter member, so the whole room was stunned.
Perhaps I should have woven a bit of Divine Power into my voice as well...
When his song ended, Rembrary watched the Sea Butter rapper descend backstage to a roar of applause, his gaze laced with displeasure.
No. Still, I was right not to mix it in.
Then, after every competing team had finished their songs and all of them were standing on stage, waiting for the results to be tallied —
the MC made a playful suggestion.
"We've got a little time to kill — how about the rappers of today take turns dissing each other in three lines?"
Exactly what Beta had described. The only addition was the three-line limit.
On top of that, "diss rap" and "diss" were slightly different words, so it was unclear whether he wanted an actual rap or just a diss.
And amid all this, the first person called upon was Queenz, who was teamed with Sea Butter.
After picking Queenz, the MC laid out one more rule that had to be strictly observed.
"Whoever gets dissed has to point at another contestant — anyone except the person who dissed them — and diss them back. Absolutely no going back to diss the person who dissed you. That's how the grudges escalate."
Queenz agreed easily and gave a brisk nod.
Rembrary focused his attention on watching Queenz closely. It never once occurred to him that she might come for him. True, Queenz had ended up partnered with the Sea Butter rapper, but she'd appeared on Sing Survival alongside him, hadn't she?
Yet the moment the MC told her to begin, Queenz walked straight up to Rembrary.
He watched, caught off guard, as she stopped a few paces away and flashed a sly grin.
Then she pointed at him.
"Whoa!"
The MC stoked the crowd along.
And before Rembrary had the slightest chance to react, Queenz let loose.
"You've got no filter in that mouth. Truth is, there's nothing in your head either. Thank goodness people are into the adorably dumb type, huh?"
A chorus of ooohs rippled through the studio audience. She went there. She went there.
Queenz gave Rembrary a smile as sweetly apologetic as could be, then quickly retreated to her spot.
Beta glanced at Rembrary, a little worried. Disses flew around often enough in this industry, sure. But Rembrary was different, wasn't he? What if he'd actually taken offense?
But Rembrary's expression was perfectly composed. He was firmly convinced that his head was in fact full of wisdom, and that his failure to demonstrate it here was only because this was a different world — so there was no room for hurt feelings.
In any case, having been picked as a diss target, he now had to return the favor to someone.
Without a moment's deliberation, Rembrary walked straight up to the Sea Butter rapper.
The rapper had been bracing for this, and he looked back at Rembrary with a practiced, unbothered smile.
"My, my," the MC joked, careful to keep it borderline, "seeing these two standing face to face like this reminds me of a certain controversy from a few days ago."
A few audience members snickered.
The Sea Butter rapper wore a cool, easy smile that said come at me with as many disses as you like.
Rembrary smiled back just as graciously, and confirmed the name hanging off Sea Butter's side of the stage: Mr. Yang. Strange as it seemed, that was apparently his stage name.
Then Rembrary recalled Beta's advice — that a diss rap sounded far more convincing with English mixed in.
Having thoroughly committed the counsel to memory, Rembrary opened his mouth, smooth and unhurried.