Would My Friends Believe Me?
...Would my friends even believe me if I told them? I’d still been worked up from the baseball talk earlier, and the unexpected overlap in hobbies had me a little excited too, so I hadn’t had the mental space to overthink it. But if I calmly listed only the facts of what happened… I’d gotten an idol’s phone number. What was that about? Why had women suddenly started showing interest in me?
Even if I tweeted the whole thing, no one would buy it, so I buried today’s events deep in my chest and collapsed onto the bed.
…She was surprisingly warm and cute, nothing like her image. Despite that mature-looking face, she gave off the exact vibe of a well-raised little sister. The kind that made you think it would be nice to have one like her.
But when I remembered the horrifying, nightmarish things unfolding around that innocent girl, pity crushed me. The boss she believed was her older sister’s boyfriend was actually sleeping with her colleague too. It was too cruel. If it had just been an affair, maybe I could have understood, but they were openly in a threesome without even that excuse. It was so terrifying and repulsive that I decided to carry this story to my grave.
…And on top of that, she seemed to think the boss was actually a good person. She’d called him serious and cool, the type her sister would naturally fall for. Maybe. At this rate, the boss might even lay his hands on Seo Jia….
“…Ugh.”
No. Even for him, a sister sandwich was pushing it….
My paranoid fantasy that she was doing all this out of resentment for being cast aside had already been smashed to pieces earlier. Seo Jia didn’t seem like a bad person at all, and Seo Haeun—that part-timer senior—was completely head over heels for the boss. The boss himself… even now, after overhearing that phone call, if he announced he was marrying the senior, I’d probably think it was for the best. She worked hard, didn’t drive a flashy car, had insane muscles, decent looks, and clean style. At least to me and the other staff, he was good to us.
The only real downside was the threesome with Hinami… but honestly, it was so far outside common sense that it was hard to even picture. If the madam—no, the senior—was the same type as me, what right did I have to judge? If I imagined I was the one dating the boss, and Hinami suggested the three of us have sex together, I’d probably say okay without much hesitation.
…Sorry to Jia, who I’d just gotten closer to today.
There was nothing more obnoxious than sticking your nose into someone else’s relationship. Anyway, I’d keep my mouth shut. It wasn’t my business.
The holiday was over. The schedule had begun again. Filming from dawn, filming, filming, an event, more filming, and still more filming. I was already missing yesterday’s half-hearted meeting with Hwang Suah. When you kept things wrapped up that tightly, it was surprisingly easy not to get caught, which made it convenient. But during work, you could never hide who you really were.
Still, far more exhausting than the usual fatigue was this.
“Good work, unnie~ Get home safely~”
“…Good work, everyone.”
“Yeah, you too. Get home safe~”
“Manager, you drive safely as well.”
“Ah, yes…”
…Acting like nothing had happened. Sitting right beside me, politely saying goodbye to the group unnies who got off first, treating the bubbly Hinami exactly as I always had.
“…You worked hard too.”
“Yeah. After finally getting two days off, I feel a bit recharged.”
I had no idea how much she actually knew. If that man had really run his mouth, then she knew I’d figured out the relationship between the three of them and was deliberately teasing me. …At the very least, after sleeping with her friend’s boyfriend, I never imagined she would send me photos like that.
“Haah…. Jia, what did you do yesterday?”
“…I was tired. I slept.”
“Really? I… met up with my boyfriend.”
“Hey…”
“…”
…But no matter how softly she whispered into my ear, the fact that she would openly bring up something like this while the manager was sitting right there in the driver’s seat made it impossible to believe easily. She loved making my heart drop too much.
“Ah. Manager oppa, could you cover your ears? This is private stuff.”
“Y-yes.”
She casually asked the person gripping the steering wheel to cover his ears, then continued like a classmate whispering about her crush during lunch break.
“On Saturday. We ran into each other at the gym, remember? …Actually, after hanging out with your sister for a bit, Juhyuk oppa gave me a ride to his place. He’s Haeun unnie’s boyfriend too, so he’s someone I can trust.”
“…”
She fed me the story assuming I wouldn’t understand, barely telling any outright lies, mixing in only the smallest bit of deception.
“Anyway. So we had a house date the whole weekend… it was really nice.”
“…”
“Yesterday he even cooked for me. He made curry, and it tasted just like the stuff I had in Japan, so I was shocked. He’s seriously good at cooking.”
Watching her whisper with that excited, glowing face, I had no idea how I was supposed to respond. How easy it would have been to squeal and get excited with her like any normal friend my age. If the other person hadn’t been that man… if I could have taken off the idol label for just a moment, I might have been able to empathize.
“Oh, and yesterday morning… when we woke up after sleeping together… we did a morning kiss… It was so romantic. Like something out of a manhwa.”
“…”
I wanted to cover my ears. Not mine—the manager’s in front of us.
“…And then we just stayed in bed? I stayed still while he held me.”
The group unnies often talked about dirty things when it was just us, so I wasn’t particularly embarrassed. But the mere possibility that an outsider might overhear made my head throb. There was a contract. Even if he heard, the story wouldn’t leak… but still.
“Before we slept, we took our clothes off… so our skin was touching. Our hearts were just pounding, thump thump… It felt incredible. Really.”
The scenes from those photos still saved on my phone. The vulgar images gradually rising in my mind. The fact that those could appear in someone else’s imagination too—I hated it.
“…Ah. Is this too much for pure little Jia? Should I stop?”
I didn’t want to know this side of my friend. We’d lived together for years. I thought I knew exactly what kind of person she was. …And because I knew her so well, the horrible photos felt even more real. I didn’t want to think about it.
“Why aren’t you saying anything, Jia? If you want to hear it, say so. If you don’t, tell me.”
“…I don’t want to hear about someone else’s love life.”
“Wow, you’re calling me someone else? That’s cold. …You’re the only one I can brag to.”
“…”
I knew Hinami felt lonely. I knew she was struggling. Otherwise she wouldn’t have let me catch her with nicotine or alcohol. Still… I thought she would keep getting through it like always. The more I watched her seem to find comfort by leaning on a man like that, the angrier I became.
“You still haven’t met anyone you like, have you, Jia?”
“I haven’t.”
“What? So you’re saying you don’t even like your fans?”
“…That’s not what I meant.”
“Ehehe, I’m just kidding.”
It felt like she was dismissing every memory we’d shared as worthless. Even the love for our fans that she repeated every single day now sounded like nothing but a joke.
“You should try dating too… well, even if not all the way, you should fall in love. It really changes how you see life. The whole world starts sparkling.”
“…I’ll do it after the contract ends.”
“Come on, that’ll be too late. There’s a kind of love you can only do when you’re young and clueless like this.”
“You sound like an expert.”
“Well, I’m in the middle of it right now. Even if I don’t know much, it’s the age where you’re full of confidence. It feels a bit like right after we debuted, you know?”
“…”
Comparing the time when she had shone brighter than anyone to now—when she had fallen for that kind of man and was letting him devour her light. I hated her for it.
“Besides, I’m a year older than you. There’s such a thing as a year’s worth of experience.”
“…It’s only been a month.”
“A month or a year, it doesn’t change that much, does it?”
“…”
I couldn’t bear to look at her face—the face that still wanted to sparkle like it had back then. If the light was gone, I didn’t want to see her dimmed. If she was shining, it irritated me. The fact that she was shining because of that man made it unbearable.
“We’ve arrived.”
“Ah… thank you.”
Until the very end, I avoided looking at her lively face. I gave Hinami a small wave, then hurried out of the car.
“…Good work.”
“You too, Jia~.”
She was no longer the friend I knew. She wasn’t an idol anymore, or anything else. She had simply become a woman—one who would surely be treated even worse than my foolish older sister who had lived her life so stupidly.
I glanced at Hinami, forced on the same natural smile I always wore, and trudged up the stairs to the floor above the house where that man lived.
“…”
Now… the only person who would contact me privately was that part-timer who had approached me for her own selfish, impure reasons. Realizing that, I clutched my phone—the one with no family, no friends, no lover in it—and sent a message to the contact I had gotten from the part-time unnie yesterday.
Unless I erased that man from my life, I didn’t think I would ever get back the friend who had once shone the brightest among everyone I knew.
Even if I lost her, even if I cried, grieved, and suffered, it didn’t matter. That man was a drug. An effective narcotic painkiller. If my friend had gotten her hands on something like that… helping her quit, comforting her through the withdrawal—that was what a friend was supposed to do.