Chapter 2
Chapter 2
The decision to quit being a trainee was an impulsive one.
―Chaegyeom, this isn't like you. Why are you acting this way?
At that moment, I was staring at unidentified droplets of fluid falling from the IV pack connected to my left arm.
Normally, they would have just docked points on the 'Physical Fitness & Condition Management' category whether a lowly trainee collapsed or not, so this was clearly a special kindness.
Even though I knew that better than anyone, I didn't feel grateful at all.
―Think it over carefully. All those images on TV that people cheer for and obsess over—the company manufactures all of it. They're products, chiseled from head to toe, every single part fabricated.
―.......
―Let's be honest here. Do you think there's any other company that produces them better than we do?
I answered.
―No.
The director's face lit up with delight.
―Right, so.......
―I just don't want to do it anymore. The idol thing.
All the director's subsequent attempts at persuasion, repeated several times after that, were utterly thwarted.
Because when I returned to the company, I didn't hesitate for a second before stamping my seal on the contract termination agreement filled with densely packed confidentiality clauses.
Back then, when I coldly marked the end of my years with the company and shoved all my practice journals—written with the thought that they'd someday become memories—into the recycling bin.
I firmly resolved.
Never.
I would never come back.
[Congratulations. A new objective has been unlocked.]
Never ever.......
"Even after hearing that story, I didn't think you'd sign the contract. Hyung, you're a real ho, ho... sleeplessness is sweet cotton candy with holes poked through it......."
"Just say pushover."
In the middle of the practice room. Lying sprawled out like a starfish in denial of reality, I had Kim Sanho—the 'former' sole trainee of Sorasum—poking holes straight through my insides.
Kim Sanho was the second trainee to join Sorasum, and after his senior's escape, he had been guarding the practice room alone for about a week or so.
He was eighteen years old, he said.
As expected, eighteen seemed to be an age where people were generally a few screws loose. Him too. Past me from last year, too.
"Ah, shit."
"You can't."
"What?"
"Termination of contract......."
I ruffled my hair trying to shake off the dark history surfacing again, and a startled Kim Sanho latched onto my forearm, clinging tight.
I was about to tell him that I couldn't quit anyway, but then I remembered my situation—I couldn't exactly explain the reason either. So I just shut my mouth and shifted my gaze elsewhere.
[Objective: Recruit colleagues and achieve debut. (1/N)]
[Progress: Tutorial (Warning ×2)]
'Right, the sooner you give up, the better.'
I deeply empathized with the maxim that if you can't avoid it, you should avoid it as much as possible, but the world also had things that absolutely couldn't be avoided.
Then from that point on, I had to find a solution. Dig a tunnel and die trying?
[Preparing hint.]
Fortunately, this System had at least a bare minimum of conscience.
Though opinions might be sharply divided on whether tossing an innocent person into the middle of a desert and then handing them a single sip of water really counted as a conscience.
Anyway, since it was called a hint, it was clearly meant to function as a guide directing me toward whatever the System wanted.
If so, there was no point in pointlessly igniting my rebellious streak and going in circles. I should quietly follow where the hint pointed.
And then end it.
Where exactly the end was... I didn't know, but still.
[Preparing hint.]
'What's taking so long?'
Was it handmade or something?
While I wrestled with empty air for a while, Kim Sanho cautiously asked from beside me.
"Hyung, but are you acquainted with the CEO?"
"Why?"
"How did you find out about this company? There isn't even a website."
I suddenly grew curious about this company's structure, but I deliberately ignored it. I still lacked the resolve to face an abyss deeper than this.
"Got a business card on the street."
"From who?"
"The Shingae Team... no, that probably doesn't exist here. Anyway, from a staff member."
"Huh?"
Kim Sanho tilted his head.
"Which staff member?"
"Come on, you know."
"Pardon?"
"The......."
"Pardon?"
"Wait."
Trying to recall the staff member's appearance, I pressed my fingers to my forehead.
'Why can't I remember?'
Literally, not a single distinguishing feature came to mind.
Memory was an essential ability for an idol. Obviously. Because if you just gave an awkward smile every time you got the classic fansign event question 'I came last time, do you remember me?', the fansign hall would quickly corrupt into an inquisition ground for 'checking if you've lost your roots.'
But, I had already forgotten that face I'd run into over and over?
Me?
"......."
At that moment, a chill stabbed the back of my neck.
Simultaneously, the memory of signing the contract began to replay in my head, slowly, and vividly.
The second-floor office.
The staff member, hazy like a bubble, and me.
The contract placed between the two of us.
The staff member's words.
―It may be a shabby sight now, lacking in appearance and not fully equipped, but together with us, you will be able to achieve anything.
There was nothing strange about this...... wait a second.
Now that I looked at it, that phrase 'shabby sight, lacking in appearance and not fully equipped' seemed to be talking about me, not the company?
―Just stamp your seal here, and you'll be with us until the very end.
The feeling that I was being pressured into signing a bodily waiver definitely surfaced. Contrary to my complicated feelings, my hand had diligently stamped the seal.
―Until the day you become the greatest idol, we will pour every moment into it!
Ah.
"......Time."
"Pardon?"
I urgently rummaged through my pockets and found the business card I'd received a few days ago.
And then my hand trembled faintly.
"Do you want jjajangmyeon?"
"......."
The thing that had definitely been a business card.
Had turned into some Chinese restaurant's opening event coupon.
"How much is all this......?"
"Eat a lot."
The money would come back anyway if I got one more warning.
Kim Sanho, who had been hesitating in front of the lavishly set table, ran off somewhere when he saw me about to snap open the wooden chopsticks.
Then he came back carrying a mini table, individual plates, and metal spoons in sequence, starting to set the table neatly one by one.
I obediently held the chopsticks Kim Sanho had thrust into my hands and thought to myself.
Why on earth was all this stuff in a practice room?
"......Who goes to a Chinese restaurant and orders udon?"
"Maawoo?"
"Right. Eat well."
I forcibly shoved the pan-fried dumplings I'd gotten from the opening event into my mouth.
Eating something did give me strength... no, it didn't.
"Ha."
Far from getting strength, only sighs came out. Was it at least fortunate that there was no further escape route left?
In conclusion, even after figuring out that the staff member was the System, my situation remained the same.
Because when I immediately went up to the office and pounded on the door like a loan shark, an empty space was all that greeted me.
This was entirely my fault for spending all those past years only training and neglecting to cultivate my imagination. I should have sometimes lived with the insane thought that the person in front of me might not be human.
Well, that didn't mean the gains were entirely zero. Hadn't I discovered a way to identify the System?
And it was even simple.
All I had to do was close my eyes and picture it in my head.
Let's test it out right now.
"Hyung? Why are you suddenly closing your eyes like a cosmetics ad......."
This one wasn't it, at least.
As for the next suspect, naturally.
"What's the CEO like?"
"Huh? Um, he's nice."
"Does he have any strange points, or anything like that?"
"He likes tangerines. He also has a huge tangerine farm."
"His face?"
"His face? ...Just an ahjussi?"
'The CEO isn't it either.'
The CEO was actually someone I suspected from the start. The person with the most to gain from me signing with this company would obviously be him.
Putting it this way makes it sound like I'm inflating my own value, which is a misunderstanding.
Who on earth would trust a tiny company like this and sign a contract on the spot? Except for someone whose life was taken hostage or a naive kid who seemed to know nothing about the ways of the world.
"......."
I glanced up at the naive kid across from me while tearing open a dish's plastic wrap.
"Why did you sign with this place?"
"Nyom?"
"I feel like you probably had quite a few places asking for you."
At my question, Kim Sanho's chopstick speed slowed.
Chewing the sweet and sour pork like a herbivore, he gulped down the food and then asked me back.
"Why did you leave Mary, hyung?"
"......."
Mary.
That was my former agency.
From a personal assessment, I wanted to rate it as not a very good place.
But in this industry, a trainee who bolted out of Mary on their own feet was branded as a bastard who didn't know his place, or someone lacking grit.
I... probably fell under the latter.
"Stuff happened."
"Then I have stuff that happened too."
'Let's skip this topic.'
Right as I thought to myself that I had been rash bringing up a sensitive subject at the dinner table.
I reflected and silently scooped up my spicy beef soup.
"It's pretty good."
"Who even eats spicy beef soup at a Chinese restaurant......."
[Preparing hint.]
Was it lagging?
Yeah, keep loading like that until your battery dies.
"Are you going home?"
"I should. You?"
Kim Sanho, who had come back after finishing the dishes, asked me as I put on the coat I'd taken off and gathered my things. He was wearing an apron and rubber gloves.
Around the time I started wondering whether I'd visited someone's house instead of a practice room, Kim Sanho called out to me in a tiny, ant-sized voice.
"Um, hyung."
And uncharacteristically, he fidgeted.
"Can I go to your house too?"
......What was this?
Was he a cultist?
This much intimacy already, when we'd only known each other for a few days?
On top of that, today was December 31st. I'd been taught it was a meaningful day in its own right, not one to spend with someone you'd known for a few days.
'.......'
Thinking calmly, even if we'd only known each other for a few days so far, unless the System suddenly changed its route, we were going to keep seeing each other from now on.
If I built walls for no reason and things got awkward, the only one who'd lose out was me. Hiding my bewilderment, I deflected indirectly.
"It's a single-person study room, so it's cramped."
"I'm a really quiet sleeper."
"It's so cramped even two corpses wouldn't fit."
"Why do you phrase things so morbidly......."
Kim Sanho seemed to give up quickly and then slipped right into the side room, which kept producing household items.
And he pulled out a blanket from there.
A blanket?
"You sleep here?"
"I can't go home."
If he couldn't go in, that meant he did have a home.
I glanced over at the fold-up bed sitting lonely in the corner of the practice room.
'He didn't run away from home, did he?'
Why?
......No, let's not jump to hasty delusions. It was obviously a personal matter.
Before I knew it, Kim Sanho was slowly spreading the blanket over the bed. I silently watched his dejected back for a moment, then irritably swept my bangs aside.
Outside, the silence was eerily still. The kind of night so quiet that someone prone to loneliness would have to hug a tear-soaked pillow to sleep.
Ha, shit.
"Is there another blanket?"
"Huh?"
"It's not like there's another bed."
At my words, Kim Sanho blinked, then soon nodded his head up and down rapidly and dashed toward the side room. At least he was quick on the uptake, which was a relief.
He brought over an exercise mat rolled around his entire body and spread it on the floor.
There was even an electric heating pad. A strange sense of dissonance crept in from how a company with nothing else going on was well-equipped with household goods.
'At this rate, it'd be better to just set up a dorm.'
No, what dorm—when you only have one trainee.
Well, now there were two.
"Are you going to sleep right away?"
"You want to count down or something?"
"No."
Kim Sanho came back after showering and turned off the practice room light.
Since the practice room was located in the basement, just turning off the lights brought complete darkness. In the dark, I heard the sound of Kim Sanho skillfully finding his spot and lying down on the bed.
Around the time I was lying on the floor blankly staring into the pitch-black darkness, I heard a rustle from above, and then a black silhouette poked its head out suddenly.
"But a ghost comes out here, is that okay?"
"......You've got all sorts of things, don't you."
I had to retract the statement about this company having nothing.
'Still, a ghost is considered a good omen in the entertainment industry, I suppose.'
I felt a little sorry about using an aggrieved ghost as a stepping stone for success, but it couldn't be helped. Being an idol was a career where success and failure were starkly divided, and those who succeeded were only a tiny fraction.
So for success, you had to step on anything and climb.
That could be a ghost, could be a colleague.
Could even be myself.
"Hyung, you'll be an adult soon."
"Yeah."
"You already seem like an old soul, though."
"Hey."
And then from outside, the sound of bells could be heard.