Experience Points: 1 Person, 0 People, 0 People (2)
The face of a girl so adorable she put even the cutest pet to shame. A pure, breathtaking beauty straight out of a movie. …And breasts that were surprisingly not lacking at all. If you asked who the person was that carried around such an overwhelmingly praised reputation while feeling unbearably embarrassed by it… it was me.
Nakazawa Hinami. In Korean, that would be Nakazawa Hinami. Age: twenty. Gender: female. Occupation: currently in the middle of a very successful idol career. And right now… I was floating lazily in the air after finishing a shoot overseas.
“Hinami. Stop shaking your legs and stay still. It’s noisy.”
“Why~? Jia-chan, there’s no one around, so I can do whatever I want, can’t I?”
Ever since I came to Korea, I had long since lost count of how many times I had flown on planes. The first time I crossed over here, it was economy class. The first time I flew back to Japan, I splurged and went business. When I returned to my hometown—which was neither a city nor the countryside—dressed in trendy fashion, and saw that people back home could look up my name, that was when it finally hit me.
…Ahaha. Those stupid bitches. If they had known I would end up this successful, they would have worshipped me back then, wouldn’t they? Well, I don’t have enough free time to waste on something as petty as revenge now. If they had taken care of me back then, they might have gotten some nice crumbs in Korean terms. Idiots. Just looking at my face should have told them everything. That they weren’t even on the level where they could bully me out of jealousy.
But those feelings that had once been so thrilling and heart-pounding had dulled from years of repetition until they no longer even sparked interest. I had grown so used to business class that I now wondered how I had ever managed to doze off in economy. No matter how many people commented or liked my posts on SNS, it all felt natural now. Whether the MV we filmed after grueling overseas schedules hit ten million views or a hundred million, my only reaction was, Oh, I see~.
Since I barely ever sang live anyway, I couldn’t understand why they still made us do painful vocal training. Jia-chan is the one who’s good at that, so just make her do it, you idiots. Besides, I wasn’t sure why I had to keep being polite to celebrities from this country whom I would never see again after retirement. Whether I lived here or went back home, my face wouldn’t be on TV anymore. I wanted to enjoy a free life as soon as possible. I had no intention of spending the rest of my days chatting with the lumps of flesh that worshipped me until we all grew old and died.
“I can’t sleep because of you. I feel like I’m going to die from exhaustion, you know?”
“You can’t sleep because you’re tired because of me? What does that even mean?”
“Crazy… Never mind. I’ll just wear earplugs.”
Because my inner thoughts were quite filthy for an idol, there were times I wished I could pull off a cold, haughty concept like Jia. Why did it become a trend when she said something like, ‘…Please wipe your sweat with this handkerchief,’ with a face that genuinely looked disgusted? I had tried copying her once, but no matter what I did, the fans just squealed about how cute I was and it ended in a spectacular failure.
…Seriously, what the hell is cute about me? I have C-cup breasts, you know. Sure, I’m short, but… my legs are long. I know damn well that among the fans who scream about me, more than a few have burning eyes focused on trying to see my panties. Those guys who act all innocent at fansigns go home and jerk off to my fancams. I know that all too well. Of course, I have zero intention of ever letting on that I know. I’m an idol, after all. The pure and innocent Hinami-chan… Blech.
“Ehh, calling your older sister—who was born a whole month earlier than you—a bitch? Jia-chan, that’s too mean.”
“If you take off my eye mask and earplugs, I’ll kill you, so don’t touch me.”
Anyway. If such a cute idol was actually the type who watched anime at home every day, ordered sexy outfits online to try on, took pretty selfies, and then spent her time playing with her nipples and clit… the fans who threw their dirty money at her without fail would probably look at her with contempt. Pseudo-romance with fans was still romance, after all. Until the contract ended, I had to keep pretending. In this industry, if you couldn’t train your fans properly, you wouldn’t survive. Even someone as cute as me would get torn apart over every little thing and buried if I didn’t have a fandom. A prime example sat right next to me—this tall, curvaceous senior who was also somehow my junior.
“Saying you’ll kill me if I take it off… Isn’t that a bit too erotic?”
“Hinami, is that all you ever think about?”
“No? The only thing I’m thinking about is how I want to eat samgyeopsal with soju when we get back?”
“Stop thinking about drinking and focus on managing your condition. We’re still going to be busy after we return.”
Oh, of course I didn’t mean that Jia had been buried. I meant that she had buried other people. The PD who kept hitting on her before debut. The no-name male idol who wouldn’t give up even after she put up an iron wall. The baseball player who had messed with her older sister. The leader of that other agency’s girl group who had bullied Jia’s friend. And then there were the sasaeng fans and all sorts of other weirdos. Even the ones I knew about went beyond ten fingers. I had no idea how she did it. Since our agency was huge, maybe they just handled it cleanly? Our CEO was a bit of a piece of trash, but he treated us—who made him a lot of money—extremely well, so he might have granted her a small favor. Or maybe it was because Jia’s dad was the general manager of a baseball team? Jia kept insisting that the owner was the rich one and the general manager wasn’t, but honestly I didn’t see the difference. After hearing how she dealt with the baseball player who had gone after her sister, I couldn’t trust her at all.
“Ah, getting nagged by Jia-chan makes me crave a cigarette. …I’d get caught if I smoked on the plane, right?”
“I’ve told you so many times to quit that…”
“It doesn’t even have nicotine, it’s just water vapor! It’s not bad for your body! If you ask Jia, she’ll say it has a really nice vibe…”
“Just shut up and sleep already! We have a packed schedule tomorrow too, you know? Before I cancel the promise to let you sleep for a whole day, close your mouth. I’m begging you.”
“Jia-chan. Yelling on a plane will get you arrested. Calm down, calm down.”
“…Haa.”
She lived in a super luxurious high-rise apartment, after all. I bet she secretly put a cigarette in her mouth and looked down at the Han River while thinking, ‘Hehe… you commoners…’ …I did that sometimes. When I put a nicotine-free vape in my mouth, looked down from the veranda, and laughed meaningfully for no reason, I felt an indescribable emotion. How should I put it… it felt good, like I was betraying my fans’ expectations and flexing on them. If I added a background of people having an orgy on my wallpaper, it would be like shooting a whole movie, but unfortunately I didn’t have many friends. At least Jia was close to me, so if she ever got a boyfriend, I wanted to invite them over once. Then I’d install a camera in the guest room and secretly film them. I was genuinely curious whether the popular idol Seo XX would have sex at her coworker’s house or not. And before that, I was dying to know what kind of guy would become her boyfriend. …Ideally, someone with an insanely good body. You know, like that guy I caught a glimpse of last time—Jia’s older sister’s boyfriend?
“Jia-chan, are you asleep?”
“…”
Of course, I had no intention of stealing Jia-chan’s boyfriend. It felt far more immoral for my own boyfriend to claim Jia than for me to steal hers. …The problem was whether a suitable candidate would even appear. Oh, I sounded completely Korean just now. My vocabulary really improves quickly.
“Seo Jiaaa.”
“…”
In that sense, I kept teasing Jia, who gave off an intellectual image dozens of times stronger than mine despite the fact that I was smart enough to speak 2.5 languages. The reason… was it an inferiority complex? Every time I looked at her and every time I touched her, I couldn’t help but think she seemed more Korean than I, a Japanese person, did. She didn’t even seem East Asian at all. Her body was ridiculous. Her birthday was only a month after mine, yet she was nearly 15cm taller. Her hips were beyond comparison. Her breasts… well, those too. Though I had to admit that the Jia I saw last time had much bigger breasts than this one. That didn’t mean Jia’s were small by any means. Sometimes when I watched her dance on stage, I felt defeated as a woman. My body instinctively understood that I could never beat that heavenly female no matter how hard I tried.
…Still, well. Sexy was sexy, and cute had its own demand. Our popularity was about the same…
…Uweeeeck….
Why the hell was our popularity even close? Jia should have been dozens of times more popular.
“…Yeeun, kyaa!”
“Don’t poke my side. I’m seriously tired.”
“Okay, okay. Sowwy~”
Only after pressing Jia’s berserk button and getting thoroughly beaten did I feel satisfied enough to end our banter. Ah, I’m tired. So tired. How nice it would have been if I could have taken a normal person’s position like Jia. Pretending to be pure and innocent all the time was exhausting. The moment we got off the plane, I would have to go back to acting cute and adorable, becoming the Hinami who received endless cute gazes from fans. …Even though the MV scenes we had just filmed overseas were full of subtle sex appeal. I didn’t know whose brilliant idea it was to put me in a nurse outfit, but whoever it was, I wanted to give them praise. After all, idols were basically nurses. Nurses who soothed the ugly sexual desires of fans old enough to be our fathers. Hehe… Disgusting. Truly.