172. An Untimely Encounter
172. An Untimely Encounter
***
Hoengseong Pleana Glamping.
The spot marked with a "VIP 1" sign was a special place that even most visitors to Pleana Glamping had a hard time accessing.
Literally a space set aside exclusively for VIPs. They had even signed an agreement with a major credit card company, and as a space set aside for that purpose, the night view and the scenery alone set it apart from the rest.
And in one of the pensions at the spot marked "VIP 1," there was a man.
A celebrity who even had the modifier "face genius" attached to his name, an entertainer active as both a singer and an actor. It was Seo Eunwoo.
It was now the hour when lunch was slowly passing.
He was lying in a shaded corner of the pension yard, looking up at the sky.
"...It is a nice place."
The words slipped out of Eunwoo's mouth as he stared blankly at the sky.
In the midsummer heat. The cloudless sky was utterly clear.
Staring vacantly at the sky, Eunwoo felt an incomparable sense of ease in a space with no one else around.
Because the vast space beneath the blue sky now in view was a space that put his eyes so completely at rest.
It really wasn't bad.
At first he'd wondered why his manager had booked him something like a glamping trip. But once he actually arrived, it was pretty nice.
"...Hoo."
There was almost no one to run into or worry about, and every natural view in sight was perfect for unwinding.
On top of that, the fully equipped convenience facilities, with nothing to prepare separately, all suited his taste one by one.
Whish.
Even the light wind brushed pleasantly across his skin, and Eunwoo found himself giving a small laugh.
"...When I was little, I feel like I used to just run around under the blazing sun."
He found himself remembering the past, when his family had spent time together. He and his brother, three years apart, had run around and played without a care even under the scorching sun.
Before he knew it, that had become a past more than ten years gone.
He missed those days a little, but the present wasn't so bad either.
"I wonder what my brother's up to right now."
At some point they had each gone out into the world, and now they didn't even have time to see each other.
Each of them was too busy just living their own life, so even on the rare holiday there was never a time when the family could coordinate their schedules. It even felt like it had been so long since they'd met that he wondered whether the family had ever really been close.
"Well, he'll be doing fine."
His brother had been good at everything, so he figured he'd manage somehow.
When he turned his gaze from the sky to the wide-open space, it was all green.
It was neatly kept, but whether it was laid with turf or not, the ground looked so uniformly flat that it seemed perfect for running around and playing.
But that time had passed now.
Nature was sometimes satisfying just to look at, like now.
On top of that, thanks to the temperature control inside the pension, even the wind blowing outside felt like a gentle breeze indoors.
Even while sitting in the yard, it felt like being in the middle of nature, so this pension definitely had its charm.
"Is this... healing?"
Normally this would be time spent playing Another World, but right now that thought had completely vanished. Because sometimes just spending time in nature like this seemed fine too.
If this was romance, then it was romance, and since it was time spent alone for the first time in a while, it felt even better.
A space where all contact was turned off and there was no need to think about society.
"...I guess you'd call this time well spent."
He murmured the words idly, taking in the blue sky with his eyes.
Before his debut, he had certainly never attached that much meaning to time.
He had gone to an audition with his best friend to cheer him on when his friend said he was going to try becoming a celebrity. Ironically, his friend failed, and he was the one who got cast on the spot.
At first he tried to refuse, but when he thought it over, he remembered that he had no particular plans for the future.
He had just lived however life carried him, with no real purpose, so he ended up thinking maybe he should at least do this, and that was how he started his idol life.
After half a year as a trainee, he took the center position in an idol group called "SJJ" that had been active for two years.
The moment he thought about SJJ, his expression naturally crumpled.
"Those bastards... if they'd just treated me a little better, I would've stayed with them to the end."
Other people described that period of "me" as two years of idol time spent racing down the road to success. But during my time as an idol, I never had any fun, and I was never happy.
I just ground my body into an endless schedule, and living felt like hell.
Honestly, before that I'd thought, what's so hard about being a popular celebrity, what's so difficult about it, but once I experienced it myself, I understood.
That in the end, everything in any environment is relative. Because in that process, if I felt like I was struggling, everything felt like a struggle. During that period, more than anything, I felt a deep disillusionment with human relationships.
I learned what being an outcast meant, brutally, through my trainee and idol life.
Having joined the group after only half a year as a trainee, I never fit in properly with the group members from the start.
Like a stone that had rolled in from nowhere, the other kids in the group thoroughly ostracized me.
I had suddenly joined and debuted like some kind of parachute hire, and on top of that I'd snatched the center position in the group.
The group members, who had trained for at least four or five years, must have hated the sight of me.
Maybe because of that, their attitude stayed the same even after debut.
As I appeared on more programs and landed more commercials during our active period, their jealousy of me crossed the line a little more every day, and in the process there were even a few dangerous incidents.
So the reason I ended up leaving the group called SJJ was, perhaps, not a choice but an inevitable result.
Even now, thinking back, I must have heard the words "Who's backing you?" at least several thousand times over those two years.
Eunwoo shook his head, trying to shake off the thoughts.
He let out a hollow laugh at himself for still thinking about such things now.
If he'd come to rest, he should just not think about anything.
"Let's just rest comfortably."
From his second year of high school, when he entered as a trainee, he had run almost every single day without missing a single one.
Now that he was twenty-five before he knew it. For this rare break, at least, he should just spend the time comfortably.
Scuff, scuff.
Then, at the sound of footsteps, Eunwoo frowned faintly.
'They said no one comes to the VIP rooms, so what's this?'
He raised himself up slightly, wondering who it could be, and then blinked.
His eyes soon widened enormously.
"Huh...?"
He stared at the woman now in view for a moment, unable to grasp the situation.
***
"Huh...?"
At the sight of the man letting out a small sound from a distance, Eunha and Serin glanced over, wondering what was going on.
It was certainly some distance away, but they could see that he looked startled as he stared at Eunha and Serin.
"Don't you think that person recognized you, Eunha?"
When Serin looked at Eunha and said that, Eunha shook her head indifferently.
"It's a VIP facility, so he won't go out of his way to come over."
Eunha glanced at Serin and then walked toward the pension marked "VIP 2," as if to say there was no need to pay the man any attention, and Serin followed, casting one glance back.
Without thinking, she felt that the world really did favor certain people.
From the man now in view to Eunha walking beside her, anyone using the VIP rooms clearly had money—but both of them were attractive enough to put most celebrities to shame.
The saying that the world is fair was definitely a lie.
"Serin?"
When Eunha called her, Serin turned her head and approached the pension entrance.
As she took out the key Eunha had given her earlier and brought it to the door, she thought that this part was really analog.
'Is it some kind of aesthetic?'
Maybe, since this was a pension in the mountains, they had deliberately made it this way. The thought crossed her mind.
Click.
The interior of the pension they stepped into was clean and luxurious.
From the shower room and refrigerator to various cutting-edge appliances, plus a massive piece of cooking equipment in one corner of the open yard that looked like a barbecue grill, the place was stocked with all kinds of facilities.
In one area, she could even see stacked firewood, as if a separate space for a campfire had been set up.
A sight that looked like almost everything she could think of had been prepared.
But in contrast to Serin, Eunha, who had lightly looked around the interior once, thought the facilities were quite ordinary.
"Serin. What would you like to do about lunch?"
When Eunha asked as if she'd just remembered, Serin nodded faintly.
"...Now that you mention it, we haven't eaten lunch."
"Would you like to eat something light? Or should we just have dinner early?"
When Eunha asked for my preference as if she would go along with whatever I wanted, I thought for a moment and leaned toward having lunch.
If I said we should eat late, Eunha would probably eat late too, so it seemed better to have at least something light.
"Then let's eat something light."
......
Sizzle!
Listening to the sound of the seafood on the griddle cooking with a sizzling noise, Serin spoke as if amazed.
"I didn't expect even the ingredients to be fully prepped."
The ingredients, already cleaned and prepared, were neatly organized, so all they had to do was take them out of the fridge and grill them.
She'd even heard that if you called someone, they'd take care of the cleanup afterward, so it was nothing short of astonishing.
"This is standard, Serin."
When Eunha looked at Serin and laughed softly as if in disbelief, Serin found herself laughing softly along with Eunha.
Grilling food in one corner of the pension yard, she felt a completely different sensation from usual.
Now it really felt like being "outside."
"Can we use all the ingredients inside?"
There was already plenty of seafood grilling, but the fridge had a lot of other food too.
"Yes. It doesn't matter. It's all included in the cost."
She wondered how much the base cost was, curious for no real reason, but nodded for now.
By now she felt like she was getting somewhat used to Eunha's spending. She had plenty of money, so of course she spent like this.
With a salary in the billions, maybe this much was a modest daily routine for Eunha.
Just as she was picking up a piece of seafood that seemed properly cooked—
Knock, knock.
She heard the sound of someone knocking on the railing at the edge of the yard.