The Cult's Shadow and the Japanese Trainee
“This is something else…”
Chairman Park Beomjun tapped his fingers on the desk as he read through the flood of articles dominating the portal sites.
“Has an entertainment company ever dominated the news section like this before?”
“If you or I were to completely ruin the company, maybe we’d get this kind of coverage. Still, we are one of the Big Four,” Division Director Yun Sangho replied with a bright grin.
“And a rookie manager who’s only been with us for a month pulled it off.”
“The kid really does have an unusual aura, just like you said, Chairman. To think he’d storm that place all by himself… unbelievable.”
“Thanks to him, the PR team can’t get any work done because their phones won’t stop ringing. I turned mine off too,” PR Team Leader Park Youngsun grumbled.
“We need to release an official statement, but the new hire is nowhere to be seen. There’s so much I need to ask him.”
“He’s probably at the hospital. You know how he gets when it comes to anything involving Red Blossom. I wonder if Sera has woken up yet.”
Cha Soyeon had arranged a VIP hospital room for us. Since the story had blown up massively in the media, reporters were currently going crazy trying to track down both me and Sera. This place wasn’t accessible to just anyone, so we could stay here comfortably during her hospitalization.
“Aren’t you going to tell me who she is?”
I was sitting in the lounge with Cha Soyeon. We had brought the girl who had been locked up with Sera, but since I wouldn’t tell her who the girl was, Soyeon kept asking.
I really didn’t know either.
“I already told you. I don’t know who she is.”
“Then why did you bring her?”
“She was locked up with Sera. I figured they might know each other or there might be some story there, so I brought her along.”
“It could just be the cult leader’s taste. You know… the three of them doing stuff together…”
“A threesome, you mean.”
Oops.
Cha Soyeon’s eyes narrowed. The way her expression stayed completely blank while only her eyes narrowed was honestly a little scary.
“It just slipped right out. Does that mean you have that kind of preference, Juwon?”
“I only told you because I thought you didn’t know. Why are we even talking about preferences?”
“Well, there’s Red Blossom and me, that makes four of us. If we paired up and took turns… then I’d be with Yeoreum and…”
She was gone. She had already fallen deep into her own world. Just how far ahead was she thinking?
“Snap out of it! That’s never going to happen! What on earth are you imagining?”
A different emotion flickered across her normally expressionless face. I could feel both panic and disappointment at the same time.
Why did she keep doing this to me?
“Am I not pretty?”
“Excuse me?”
“Everyone says I’m beautiful. They make such a fuss about it.”
“Of course they do. If you’re not pretty, Soyeon, then what woman in the world could possibly be?”
“Then why do you say it will absolutely never happen?”
“Wait, what are you even…”
“Men always try to make a move when they see a pretty woman. Are you saying you’re not a man, Juwon?”
My reflection stared back at me from her lake-like eyes. There wasn’t a trace of falsehood in that gaze.
It was strange. No matter how much I had saved her life, this was too much. It wasn’t like I had a face that would make someone fall for me at first sight. Her approach felt far too overwhelming.
No, before it was overwhelming, it simply didn’t make any sense.
The sound of someone running down the hallway reached us. The lounge door burst open. It was Lina.
“Oppa! Unnie! Sera unnie is… huh?”
She tilted her head, sensing the strange atmosphere.
“Is something going on between you two?”
“Nothing at all. Did Sera wake up?”
“Yeah.”
Hearing what had happened to Sera was far more urgent right now.
*
“I talked to my little brother on the phone, but when I went outside, Mom and some man were there.”
She had been on her way to see her brother after he got into an accident.
“They said we should go to the hospital together. I should have been suspicious from the start, but when I heard my brother was hurt, I couldn’t think straight.”
She said she didn’t remember what the man had done in the car. It seemed he had used some kind of drug to knock her unconscious.
“What about your mom? Didn’t it feel like she had no choice but to come get you?”
If she had come with the man, it was possible she had been coerced by his threats and cooperated against her will.
“No. It seemed like she already knew him pretty well. It didn’t look like… she was being forced.”
So she had sold her own daughter to a cult. To be the cult leader’s plaything for a night.
While I was away from the private property guarding the hospital room, Cha Soyeon’s bodyguards had searched Sera’s house. They confirmed her younger brother was safe, but Sera’s mother had vanished without a trace.
“What are you going to do about your mom? Are you going to forgive her?”
Lina and Yeoreum had already told her about the kidnapping.
“No. I can’t take it anymore. She used up all the insurance money that came from Dad’s death, and that still wasn’t enough so she dragged me into this too. I can never forgive her.”
She was so angry her whole body was trembling. Her eyes were filled with tears.
“I understand. We’ll find her somehow.”
Cha Soyeon stroked Sera’s hair as she spoke. It looked like she was planning to mobilize even more people.
“It’s quiet next door. Has she still not woken up?”
She pointed at the bed hidden behind the partition.
“That girl woke up first, but she just pulled the blanket over her head and won’t say anything,” Yeoreum answered with a troubled expression.
So she had regained consciousness. The doctor said even when he asked about her condition, she stayed silent with a terrified face. She clearly wasn’t mute.
I pushed the partition aside. A lump under the blanket rose on the bed. Not wanting to waste time arguing, I yanked the blanket off in one swift motion.
“Kyaaaaaah!”
The girl in the patient gown pressed herself against the headboard, trembling violently as she stared at me. Her eyes were filled with pure terror.
“Do I really look that scary?”
I asked the girls.
“Yeah.”
“A little bit, yes.”
The answers came immediately.
Alright, time to soften my expression.
“Your face has become ridiculous. Please return to normal,” Cha Soyeon scolded.
This was harder than it looked.
“Ah… um, this is a hospital, so please don’t be too scared. I brought you here because you were locked up with our kid. You’re safe now, so there’s no need to worry.”
Her eyes widened in surprise. There shouldn’t have been anything surprising about what I said.
“R-really? You’re really not connected to those scary people?”
Even though her voice was frightened, it sounded like jade beads rolling. So this was what they meant by a voice that could melt ears.
“Why would I lie after bringing you all the way to the hospital? The police have arrested everyone who was there, so you can relax.”
“Then… what about Jongho oppa…?”
“Jongho?”
It was a name I had never heard before. The fact that she asked about him first suggested he was connected to the incident.
“I was actually curious about why you were taken there. Is it okay if I listen too?”
When I turned my head, the girls were all giving me strange looks. Even Cha Soyeon’s gaze toward me had changed.
“Why are you all staring at me like that?”
“Oppa.”
“Yeah?”
“You’re not just speaking English. Why are you so good at Japanese too?”
What?
I turned back to look at the girl.
“Are you Japanese?”
“Y-yes… (Hai)…”
Only then did I start to faintly hear Japanese on one side. The Grace of Tongues had activated automatically.
*
Matsuoka Chie.
That was the girl’s name. She was a fairly well-known junior model and celebrity back in Japan.
“I love K-pop so much that I applied to become a trainee at SN Entertainment. I’m currently part of the C Unit.”
Aside from her slightly awkward pronunciation, Chie’s Korean was perfect.
“C Unit?”
“Before SN Entertainment trainees join a debut team, they group them into small units. Since girl groups ultimately perform together anyway, they create preliminary groups to see who adapts well,” Yeoreum answered in her place.
It was actually a pretty reasonable selection method.
“The manager in charge of C Unit is Jongho oppa. He was really nice to me.”
Chie had been the most standout member of the C Unit. Because of that, she faced intense jealousy, and the delicate-hearted Chie had struggled a lot with the rivalry between members.
The person she had relied on during that time was one of the C Unit managers, Sim Jongho.
“Jongho oppa was good at Japanese. When I was crying in the corner of the practice room, he would sing for me.”
She had relied heavily on the manager who was kind to her. So when he invited her to a religious event he believed in, she hadn’t suspected anything.
“It was in Busan, and we planned to go to the beach together after the event. But I drank the beverage oppa gave me in the car and…”
When she woke up, she found herself in a room that looked like a cell, facing a scary-looking man. Before she could even scream, her hands and feet were tightly bound, she was forced to inhale some strange gas, and then she lost consciousness again.
“And then I woke up here just a little while ago. I was so shocked when I realized it was a hospital.”
It seemed that the guy named Jongho had been a follower of the Jinsaeng Sect. He had tricked her into going on a trip so he could offer her to the cult leader.
Whoever he was, he was probably one of the men whose heads had been smashed in the chapel.
‘What am I supposed to do about this…’
I had thought rescuing her would be the end of it, but a new problem had appeared. Chie wasn’t an ordinary person. She was a trainee at a rival company who was on the verge of debuting. She would be bound by a contract, which meant I had to resolve that and pull her out. Another issue had been added to the list of things I needed to handle.