The Believers Have Grown
The next morning, Rembrary wandered outside mid-yawn and stopped dead in his tracks, startled.
Cathy was crouched on the sofa, staring blankly down at his phone.
With the shadows under his eyes, he clearly hadn't slept a wink.
"Cathy? Art thou well?"
Worried, Rembrary approached, and Cathy rolled only his eyes up to look at him. Then he asked, astonished:
"You're okay?"
Rembrary blinked at him, dumbfounded.
"I am fine?"
"How are you fine? How could you possibly be fine?"
"Huh?"
What's gotten into him?
Perplexed, Rembrary took half a step back.
Cathy asked again, as if he genuinely couldn't understand.
"You can sleep? You can actually sleep?"
"Why would I not sleep?"
"You're not worried about how people are reacting?"
Cathy grabbed a fistful of his own hair, then kicked his phone away. Since he was kicking it on top of the sofa, though, the phone simply scooted a safe little distance backward.
"It was my first solo stage. People are talking about it. It's driving me insane wondering who's talking about me. Aren't you the same? Am I the weird one? I'm the weird one, aren't I?"
Frankly, he did look a little strange at the moment.
Rembrary laughed it off as if it were nothing.
"Worrying about it changeth nothing, does it?"
"That's easier said than done..."
Cathy let out a long sigh and picked his phone back up. Watching him sink into the same hunched pose over the screen as before, Rembrary scratched his forehead awkwardly.
So the lad is sensitive, is he.
But Cathy wasn't the only one acting this way.
Jong-woo, who came by that morning to pick up the members, was in much the same state. And when he saw Rembrary, he looked even more flabbergasted than Cathy had.
"Looks like you slept well? You can sleep?"
Even on the drive to the company, Jong-woo and Cathy kept their faces buried in their phones, brows furrowed.
This world, too, is a mercilessly cutthroat place.
The state of affairs lasted all day long.
Even during dance rehearsal and vocal practice, Jong-woo — who under normal circumstances would have been scolding them or cheering them on — did nothing but stare at his phone, occasionally tilting his head and jotting something down.
The next day was no different.
Only when it was finally time to head back to the dorm did Jong-woo set his phone down, clench his fist, and grin.
"It's working!"
Something has worked?
When Rembrary, just back from the bathroom, stared at him blankly, Jong-woo rushed over at once and showed him the phone he'd been looking at.
Across the screen ran lines of every color.
"What is this?"
"It's a graph from one of the country's three biggest music charts."
"...What?"
"It shows digital sales and streaming numbers by day, by week, by month. See this line here?"
"Ah, Cathy's name is written there."
"Yep. It's the musical version of the song Cathy sang on Sing Survival. See it climbing up the chart?"
"Indeed. It is rising, slowly but surely."
Rembrary followed Jong-woo's pointing finger with his eyes, and then it clicked.
Jungseo had once explained to him what a digital single was — that it was good when many copies sold and many people streamed it. So a graph climbing like that meant...
"It seems Cathy performed well in this competition."
When Rembrary said it with a smile, Jong-woo gave him an odd look.
"Wherefore sayest thou that?" — no, that wasn't it; Jong-woo simply stared because there wasn't a trace of envy in Rembrary's reaction to the good results of Cathy — a bandmate, yes, but also his rival.
Has losing his memory taken away his competitive spirit too?
Bewildered as he was, Jong-woo quickly swiped the phone screen sideways.
"That's not all. Look at this."
What appeared next was a YouTube screen.
Rembrary recognized it at once as footage of his own stage. Even frozen on the paused frame, Woo Yeon-woo's face was visible, and beneath it a title was splashed across the screen in bold letters:
Sing Survival Round 1 — Woo Yeon-woo
And below that, the view count...
"Tis fairly high."
Rembrary's eyes went round. Even at a glance, the number was enormous.
"It's not just the numbers. The response is great too."
When Jong-woo scrolled up to show him the comments, a flood of foreign words appeared that Rembrary, for his part, couldn't decipher at all. There were Korean remarks mixed in among them, praising his skill — though insults about his personality were attached before and after.
When Rembrary looked up at him, Jong-woo, apparently having no intention of showing him the insults too, quickly scrolled back up with a laugh.
"Cathy's digital numbers look solid, and your YouTube views are through the roof. I was worried you might be a flash in the pan, but you just keep picking up speed."
"Is that so?"
"'Is that so,' my ass. You're the highest of all twenty contestants, you punk!"
Jong-woo laughed heartily, genuinely delighted, and pounded Rembrary on the back. Then he did the same to Cathy, who'd just come in from outside.
Unlike Rembrary, Cathy gave exactly the reaction Jong-woo had hoped for, and the two of them bounced around giddily together for a good while.
The other members caught the mood and lifted right along with them, chattering excitedly about what was to come.
For the first time in ages, everyone was in high spirits.
"Tonight I'll let you all have three chicken breasts each!"
That is, until Jong-woo said this, as if it were some kind of reward.
After the mutual congratulating was over, they were tidying up to head home when Jong-woo — who had stepped out saying he had to see CEO Im — returned after only a short while and called Rembrary over.
"Yeon-woo, do you remember anything about your family?"
The members, huddled together squatting in front of the big practice-room mirror, all turned to look at Rembrary.
Rembrary shook his head.
"Nay. Wherefore?"
"Really? Not even a little?"
"Not at all. Why dost thou ask?"
When Rembrary pressed, Jong-woo tilted his head and explained.
"After your checkup, I told your parents about the memory problem the very next day. And that there was nothing physically wrong with you."
"Ah. Those people who look nothing like..."
Rembrary nodded, recalling the photos CEO Im had shown him.
"But why those people?"
"They're living in the States for work..."
"And yet why?"
"When I told them about you, your mother said she'd call you herself."
"She has not."
Rembrary answered with perfect confidence, having learned from Jungseo how to place and answer calls.
"You're sure?"
Jong-woo asked, frowning.
"She called just now, and she said she's called several times over the past few days but you never pick up."
"?"
"She said you've been ignoring her texts too."
"I have?"
Since Rembrary genuinely looked clueless, Jong-woo raised an eyebrow and asked.
"Mind if I look at your phone?"
Rembrary handed it over without protest. Jong-woo tapped around here and there, and then —
"Ahh."
he let out a sound.
"Everything's blocked. No wonder."
"What is that?"
"It's a feature that blocks calls and texts from certain people. Rejects them automatically."
"Ahh."
Rembrary nodded along, then furrowed his brow. Now that he heard it, something was very off indeed.
Rembrary hadn't even known such a feature existed. He certainly had never blocked Woo Yeon-woo's parents.
So why were Woo Yeon-woo's parents blocked on Woo Yeon-woo's phone?
Jong-woo, thinking along the same lines, asked uncertainly, "Did you fight with your parents?" Then, remembering that Rembrary had no memory, he cocked his head and turned the question to the members instead.
"Did Yeon-woo ever fight with his parents?"
The members, who'd been following the conversation, all shook their heads.
"Never heard anything like that."
"He's on good terms with his parents, isn't he?"
"He seemed the same as always."
"He used to talk about them all the time."
Jong-woo tilted his head. As far as he knew, too, Yeon-woo had been close with his family. But family matters were a sensitive subject, so he didn't dig any further. It was possible Yeon-woo had fought with his parents before losing his memory and simply never told the members.
"Anyway, Yeon-woo — your mother says she'll arrive Saturday evening. Go meet her, have a nice meal together, comfort her so she doesn't worry, okay? Then come back."
The real Woo Yeon-woo's family is coming?
A vague unease crept over Rembrary, and he answered slowly.
"...I understand."
He hadn't taken this body on purpose — but it was another man's body all the same.
Rembrary had no idea what had become of the real Woo Yeon-woo after he entered this body. If there had been an accident, he might have assumed he'd possessed the body of a dead man. But before he came into this body, Woo Yeon-woo had, by all accounts, been looking into a mirror. Because Rembrary had arrived in the middle of that moment, it was impossible even to guess what had become of the original Woo Yeon-woo.
And now the birth mother of this body was coming to visit.
It hadn't been his doing, but he couldn't help feeling a little uneasy — as if he had stolen another woman's son.
Jong-woo studied his expression closely, then added:
"Wear a mask, just in case. And sunglasses too."
"Thou said she cometh in the evening. And I am to wear sunglasses?"
"Yep."
He couldn't very well avoid her outright over mere discomfort. After all, she was coming down because her own child had gone wrong.
Yeon-woo sighed and said he understood.
"Is thy mother the only one coming? What of thy father?"
"CEO Im mentioned it — apparently your father was hospitalized around the time you lost your memory."
"?"
"That's why he couldn't come right away... You'll have to hear the details from him directly. That's all they told us."
Cathy slept deeply that night, but Rembrary lay awake thinking about 'the real Woo Yeon-woo' and ended up not sleeping properly at all.
Before, he'd been so focused on why he had ended up like this that he hadn't given it proper thought. Only now did his mind finally turn to the real Woo Yeon-woo.
Rembrary himself had been thrown into this world when he tried to stop the Demon King's summoning.
Then what of Yeon-woo?
Had he been flung over there in turn, the moment Rembrary came flying here?
Or had he died in that instant of a heart attack?
There was no way to know the answer, and all his agonizing did was make his head heavier.
And so, on Friday morning, this time it was Rembrary who rose looking haggard and worn.
"What happened to your face?"
It was bad enough that Taein, catching sight of him, cackled and ribbed him for it.
But Rembrary's Divine Power, working of its own accord while he washed his face and washed his hair, melted the fatigue right out of his body.
Taein's eyes went round at how different he looked coming out of the bathroom than going in, but Rembrary, half in a daze, just changed his clothes.
Today was a music show day, which meant a stop at the hair salon first, so — at Jungseo's insistence — he'd started wearing sunscreen. Not today, though.
After getting his makeup and hair done at the salon, Rembrary entered the broadcasting station's waiting room with what was now a fair amount of familiarity, got through his stage without a hitch, and came back down.
The cheering sounded a little louder than usual, but he didn't think much of it.
However, when he slipped out the back entrance to head home after the stage was over, Rembrary realized the loud cheering had been no illusion.
A crowd of women stood behind the broadcasting station, holding up signs with his name on them — and their number had unmistakably grown since the first time he'd seen them.
My new believers have multiplied!