Screw the Parachute, Screw the Crew — From Now On, It's Nothing but Fun
Washing yourself off before you climbed into the bath was one of the basic courtesies of a sauna.
"No, that bastard suddenly started running his mouth. So I grabbed a soju bottle and cracked his skull on the spot."
"Hahahaha! I saw the whole thing, hyung! The way he flipped right over—that was basically slapstick mastery, wasn't it?"
"That's our hyung, all right. Who in the world starts cracking skulls at lunchtime?"
"Didn't you hear me? I'm telling you, that bastard ran his mouth first."
"Keh heh heh... Well, then it is self-defense."
And not bellowing at the top of your lungs in a bathhouse—where even a whisper rang off the tile—was another courtesy you were supposed to observe.
"What? You got a problem? You that bent out of shape that I taught that disrespectful little shit a lesson?"
"Still, hyung, the higher-ups have already been telling you to watch yourself, and if you go cracking heads in broad daylight..."
SMACK!
"Say it again. You pissed?"
"N-no, sir."
And, all too obviously, casually throwing your weight around in a public place went beyond bad manners. It was against the law.
What the hell kind of situation was this?
As they'd said, it was broad daylight, so the bathhouse wasn't crowded. Aside from me and Choi Chulhoon, there were only two or three old men. Even so, carrying on with that kind of shameless arrogance in a room where other people were plainly present was not the right thing to do.
In the old days I'd have shoved his head under right there in the bath and made him sing the national anthem through the fourth verse. But I wasn't a gangster anymore. All I had to do was wash up and leave.
Watching men who looked like gangsters, tattooed like gangsters, pull thug stunts was uncomfortable, sure. I knew all too well by now that the smart play was to avoid them. The gangsters in front of me hadn't even picked a fight with me or with Choi Chulhoon. So far they'd only been talking among themselves. They'd slapped a man across the face, but no direct harm had come to us. Some noise, at most. If that was all, better to let it go.
Right. I was supposed to become an idol manager. If I'd resolved to be the greatest idol manager in the world, I had no business getting worked up over every little thing like this...
"...Ah."
Right. An idol manager.
Not just an idol manager. The greatest idol manager in the world.
I—I was definitely trying to become an idol manager. A manager for a glittering, sparkling girl group, at that. So what in the world was I doing right now?
And yet there wasn't an idol anywhere near me. Nothing but uncles.
"Anyway, I hate hitting people... but these sons of bitches just keep asking for a beating. Huh?"
"I-I'm sorry."
Tattooed broth-hog gangster uncles, greasy as pigs rendered for stock—the kind I'd watched until I was sick of them in prison.
"...Gangster bastards."
And a bland-faced uncle who didn't act his age, burning with hostility, looking ready to charge those gangster uncles at any second.
And the other old men, washing themselves quiet as mice in an atmosphere that had turned distinctly wrong.
Everyone around me was an uncle, or a grandfather who used to be one.
And the most horrifying part was this: even if I left the sauna and went back to the agency, the fact that there would be nothing but uncles around me would not change. Of course, barely a day had passed since I'd gotten out of prison, and the agency did have a few women on staff, even if they were little more than professional paycheck-collectors. That didn't mean a situation surrounded by nothing but uncles was about to change, and someone fit to be an idol was not going to drop out of the sky just because I sat still.
That unbearably horrifying fact made it impossible to endure.
"What the hell kind of nonsense am I doing right now? Why am I in a sauna with some weird, plain-faced guy like this?!"
"H-huh? Wh-what did you just—"
There was no time to spare for the flustered voice coming from beside me.
"Haa, what the hell is this shit... Hey. You over there. Shut your—"
I didn't hear the gangster across from me, either. His threat wasn't threatening in the slightest.
Right now the only thing in my head was the job of idol manager, and everything else was meaningless.
SPLASH!
I rose from where I sat, and the moment my body cleared the water the whole room went quiet as a grave. I didn't have tattoos like the greasy hogs across from me, and I didn't have a perfectly cut bodybuilder's physique like Choi Chulhoon beside me. And yet everyone in the bathhouse took one look at my body and lost their nerve.
But pausing over each of those reactions—getting flustered, feeling embarrassed—was a luxury.
"Choi Chulhoon. Out."
"H-huh? But we haven't even been in the cold bath yet."
"Out. If you don't want to die."
"O-okay!"
And so I hauled Choi Chulhoon with me and burst out of the bathhouse as if something were chasing us.
"Hey, were those gangsters that scary? They'd barely walked in, and you're already tucking tail like that..."
Half disappointed, half relieved, Choi Chulhoon asked me cautiously. The question wasn't worth an answer, so I didn't give him one.
"The boss is upstairs, right?"
"Uh, y-yeah. When he came in earlier he said he didn't have anywhere to be today, so he ought to be in... but why are you just dropping the formal speech like that?"
"We're the same age. You dropped it first."
"Th-that's true."
Having demolished Choi Chulhoon's feeble objection with a single stroke of unassailable logic, I lifted my head and looked up at the building—once Jeongdo-pa, now Bareungil Entertainment.
The top floor. Where Hyung's office used to be, the president of Bareungil Entertainment now sat. The guy at the top was still the guy at the top. Some things didn't change.
"I'm heading up. Do whatever."
"Huh? Wait, you're just walking into the president's office like that, out of nowhere?"
"Yep."
"No, even if you got parachuted in here, you can't just live however you feel like—"
A mechanical whine, a clunk. The elevator doors shut, and Choi Chulhoon's voice—which I had no need to hear—was cut off with them.
Can't live however I feel like. Then what the hell did I spend seven years in prison for?
The truth was, I'd only sat quietly in a cell for those long seven years because I'd lived too much however I felt like. I'd done the gangster's work as I pleased, and as I pleased, until my influence had grown too large for that kind of life to be allowed anymore. To make the world forget me, I'd had no choice but to endure—to be patient—for seven years. Not a short time. Not by any measure.
"But that ended up being poison."
However much I'd hidden for fear of making a name in the world, seven years of endurance had trained me. Trained me to endure. To wait. To go along with the way the world flowed. The proof? From the moment I got out until now, hadn't I been living as others told me to live, going where others led?
In the old days, no matter what anyone said, I'd have done exactly as I pleased.
Resolving to live for tomorrow—that was good. Swearing I wouldn't live as a gangster—that was good too. But that did not, in any way, mean it was good to live as others ordered, jerked this way and that at someone else's whim. If that was the life on offer, I'd be better off living like a gangster.
Looking toward tomorrow meant carving out your own future with your own hands. Even in my gangster days, when I lived only for today, that had been obvious. And yet here I was, failing to live a life that obvious.
Prison really did a number on me.
When they told me prison was a correctional facility, I'd snorted. But seven years is a long time, and over that long stretch the place had corrected me after all—the way dripping water bores through stone.
From now on, it was different. I wouldn't be pushed around anymore. The boring part was over. From here on, it was going to be nothing but fun. Because I was going to live exactly as I pleased.
As proof.
"Boss! Get out here!"
Just like in the days when I was a gangster, I charged straight at the room where the agency's president sat—the man who was about to be forced, whether he liked it or not, to hold the rope of my life.
Knock, knock, knock. Click.
Of course, after that I knocked, turned the handle, and went in politely. In the old days I'd have kicked it in, handle and all, whatever. Yeah. I'm not a gangster.
Inside the door I'd opened that way, one man sat with his back plastered flat against the chair, he was so startled.
"Wh-what? Wh-who are— huh?"
The man sitting behind a nameplate that read Jung Baro, President of Bareungil Entertainment, was, of course, an uncle.
President-uncle... no. Mr. Jung Baro. No—Boss. He froze for a moment as if a debt collector had stormed in, then recognized my face, and his eyes went round.
"K-Kang Jinhyuk...?"
"You know my face, right? Well, this is my first time seeing yours, so let's at least say hello."
I walked up to the president—who couldn't even get angry at me for barging in, and was only startled—and held out my hand.
"It's a pleasure to meet you. I'm Kang Jinhyuk. I started today."
I let the words hang, took his hand in mine, and then finished, putting weight into every single syllable.
Seven years and nineteen hours.
Long, if you called it long. Short, if you called it short. And in that span of time, I was able, at last, to exist entirely as myself.