What Bambi's Colors Reveal
I thought it again.
Seo Jio is strange.
"Seo Jio."
"......"
"Say something. Anything."
Stop just staring at me like that.
Seo Jio had been staring at me wordlessly for a while now. What was with him?
If he had something to say, he should say it. Standing there in silence, just looking at me, was making me awkward.
'I knew it. Something's off with this guy.'
I'd had a rough idea of how Seo Jio would react when he heard I'd recommended him. I figured he'd wear that loose, lazy smile of his and reply in his usual slow drawl—something like, "Well, I guess I had that coming," or "That's a surprise."
His actual reaction couldn't have been more different.
He stared at me. Just... quietly. For a long, long time.
The way he scrutinized me, like an alien scientist dissecting a life form it had never seen before, wrung a sigh out of me.
"Jio. Why are you staring like that?"
You're giving me a headache, man.
I told him I'd get up and leave if he had nothing to say, and only then did Seo Jio finally open his mouth.
"It's because I'm disappointed."
"About what?"
"That I was wrong about you."
I asked with my eyes what that was supposed to mean, and he smiled, a beat behind the conversation.
"I was wondering which of you would open up to me first—you or Yeon-i. I was sure it would be Yeon-i. But it was you... Honestly, it doesn't match my expectations. I don't know whether to be disappointed or happy about it."
Who the hell is Yeon-i?
Seo Jio said it was his cat.
"You know that stray I'm always talking about? Her eyes kept getting stepped on—she was getting trampled—so I brought her home."
Oh, I see.
Somehow, the news left a funny taste in my mouth.
'Her name...'
There was no way, obviously, but hearing that the name was similar to mine irritated me in a way I couldn't quite pin down.
My expression must have given me away, because Seo Jio laughed.
"Don't get the wrong idea—I didn't name her. My little sister's name is Seo Jiyeon. I just took the last syllable of hers. Though I do like that it happens to sound like yours."
"You could've left that last part out."
"Mm. Just felt like saying it."
He let out a silly little laugh. When I scowled at him openly, the corners of Seo Jio's mouth climbed even higher.
"That expression of yours makes you look even more like Yeon-i."
"What's wrong with my expression?"
"Turns out I'm the one who brought her home, but she hates me and only me. My dad, my stepmom, my little sisters—she loves them all. She just refuses to come near me. It's bizarre. I'm the one who feeds her treats."
Actually, I think I know exactly why she does that.
I kept the thought to myself, but Seo Jio made a face like he'd read my mind anyway.
"I know. That you don't like me. And of course, I understand the reasons why."
The way he drawled it out, slow and unhurried, made me click my tongue.
"I told you, I don't dislike you. If I did, I wouldn't have recommended you."
"That's a separate issue. Even if you found me absolutely repulsive, you'd have recommended me anyway if you thought I fit the role."
"......"
Wow, you really do know me.
Seeing how precisely he'd seen through me made me feel even more unsettled than before. When I put on a visibly sour expression, Seo Jio gave that loose smile of his.
"Anyway—thank you. For looking kindly on my acting. I've got my audition this week, and I'll do well."
"You just have to not get in your own head. Do that and you'll get it."
I said it like it was nothing, and the laughter pooled even deeper at the corners of Seo Jio's eyes.
"You're a strange one, you know that? You act like you can't stand me, and then you turn around and say the sweetest things."
"You're stranger."
I shot back without missing a beat, and he smiled roundly, like he'd expected exactly that.
Honestly. What a weirdo.
After that, we talked about the drama for a long while.
What the 'ghost' he'd be playing meant to the protagonist, what I'd focused on when writing the script, and so on.
Seo Jio listened intently to everything I said, taking notes along the way.
Only after his notebook had filled to the margins with writing did our conversation wind down.
"That's everything I can give you."
"Thank you. I'll practice hard with everything you told me today."
"Yeah. Good luck at the audition."
After everything I'd done for him, surely he wouldn't fail.
I stood up, telling him to let me know once the results came out next week—and Seo Jio's face flickered with confusion.
"Why are you leaving already? Busy somewhere?"
"...?"
Wasn't this meeting literally about that?
'Because we're done. Everything's finished.'
I found it odd, but answered anyway.
"Yeah. I have to go get my hair done."
"Your hair? Oh—to cover it with black?"
The protagonist I'd be playing in the drama was an ordinary high school student, which meant the current state of my hair—faded orange streaked with patchy grown-out roots—wouldn't do. I'd been told I'd need to dye it black before filming began.
"No."
But that wasn't today.
I shook my head and told him I'd be going black before filming started.
"Then what are you getting done today?"
This guy is really, really bored, isn't he.
It was strange to see him peppering me with pointless questions about something that had nothing to do with him.
After confirming I still had plenty of time before my hair salon appointment, I sat back down.
"I have a fan meeting tomorrow."
I'd held a vote letting my fans choose which hair color they most wanted to see.
The plan was to bleach my roots two more times today and then dye it that color on top.
"You're dyeing your hair—for one single day?"
Seo Jio stared at me like I was some kind of curiosity.
"It already looks pretty damaged as it is."
"That's what happens when you bleach it too much."
I found the way his fingers fiddled with my hair irritating, but I was too lazy to stop him.
I was doing conditioning treatments alongside everything else, but keeping bleached hair alive was no easy task. My hair was definitely in far worse shape than it used to be.
Well, so what—hair grows back.
'Making Biyeon happy matters more.'
When I told him I wanted to give my fans a perfect day, Seo Jio's brow creased, just barely.
"But it's your birthday."
"Yeah."
That's exactly the point.
I didn't need birthday presents.
Just seeing my fans smiling happy faces in front of me was enough.
Even thinking about it made my chest tickle.
Seo Jio quietly watched me smile, then murmured:
"You have a habit of putting everyone else before yourself."
"My fans aren't 'everyone else.'"
I countered immediately, and Seo Jio replied that anyone who wasn't me was 'everyone else.'
It was such a perfectly Seo Jio thing to say that I snorted.
'You just don't get it.'
Seo Jio would never understand, not in a hundred years.
How I felt about Biyeon.
They were people who liked me 'for being Lee Yeonjae.'
For people like that, I couldn't settle for a half-hearted, thrown-together day.
'It has to be perfect.'
Tomorrow would be a perfect day.
'Because I'm going to make it that way.'
Which was exactly why there was still one decision left to make.
I closed my eyes and thought it over.
How I was going to deal with 'that bastard.'
***
'The time has come.'
The moment Kwon Inah, president of Lee Yeonjae's official fan club Biyeon, opened her eyes, that was the thought that hit her.
The day had finally arrived.
The fan meeting she had waited for, longed for, dreamed of.
She checked the clock—it read five in the morning—and shot out of bed.
Humming poured out of her all through her shower.
'Being a fan really is the best thing in the world.'
On workdays, merely opening her eyes was suffering. Today she felt so light she could fly off the ground.
She said it every time she fangirled, but the power of love was truly mighty.
'And our Bambi is the greatest in the entire universe!'
The president's mood soared as if it might paint the sky.
'Our boy might actually be a real angel.'
Years of fanning experience had already taught her the hard truth: rookie celebrities who couldn't handle their fans' love all too often ended up with those dead fish eyes after a few years in the industry.
Even if they never got that far, the gradual numbness creeping into their gaze was impossible to hide.
But Bambi was different.
Bambi acted like he was desperate to give his fans more—more of anything.
She knew it better than anyone, having watched him prepare for this fan meeting for the past month. He'd gone through the list of what fans wanted, item by item, and rehearsed his parts over and over, endlessly.
The rehearsals went on so long that even the fan club staff, who sat in on all of them, were starting to lose steam.
When his manager was asked whether the kid practiced his acting like that normally, he'd smiled faintly and said:
'He's holding back a lot right now.'
'Sorry, what?'
'If it were up to him, he'd practice even more. But then we'd all have to wait around next to him, so he's restraining himself as much as he can.'
He's going to go home and practice again after this, isn't he. The president had to swallow a sigh.
'It's so, so sweet how much he thinks of us... but I wish he'd think of himself too.'
Bambi wanted to give his fans more, even one thing more, like a small child who'd just learned 'how to love.'
She felt a tangle of complicated emotions about it—but regardless, today was D-day, with a mountain of tasks to get through.
She had to work hard to make sure everything Bambi had poured himself into didn't go to waste.
The staff gathered ahead of the fans and headed to the venue.
Maybe it was all those rehearsals, but today everything clicked smoothly into place.
"Hello there."
And three hours before the fan meeting began, Bambi arrived.
His voice was as gentle as ever.
"Hel—"
The moment Bambi's voice reached her, the president looked up with a smile—and the words died in her throat.
At her strange reaction, the other staff turned their heads.
And they all went silent together.
"Is something wrong?"
Bambi tilted his head.
It took the president a long moment to choke out a single word. "Your hair..."
"Oh, right. I dyed it yesterday."
He smiled bashfully and asked if something looked strange, and the staff barely managed to arrange their faces into smiles.
"It really... suits you."
"It really, really does..."
Bambi seemed puzzled by the staff frozen in place like stone statues, but there was no time for questions—he thanked them and moved along.
The moment Bambi disappeared behind the curtain, the staff exploded with the breath they'd been holding.
Her eyes collided with the others' midair.
'Oh my god. Oh my GOD.'
The same thought was written in every pair of eyes.
'PINK is the ☓☓☓☓ that suits him BEST!!'
***
Bambi's new hair color was, to the fans, nothing short of a cataclysmic surprise.
The fans who had braved the freezing winter wind to reach the venue froze solid the instant Bambi stepped onto the stage.
The sight of him—cotton-candy-pink hair, beaming down at them, saying "I missed you"—made them forget the cold entirely.
Worried that the fans who couldn't attend might feel left out, Bambi had even posted a selfie to the fan café right before he went on stage.
It was, in every sense, the pinnacle of fan love.
Down below the stage, the president darted busily about, keeping one eye on Bambi.
Bambi up on that stage was radiant.
Not simply because he was handsome or pretty—he genuinely glowed, in the purest sense of the word.
'I really think he looks happy.'
Along with the greeting that it had been too long since they'd seen each other, his warm words poured out without pause.
He looked at each fan, one by one, like someone gazing at precious jewels, and he spoke to them like someone who was, at that moment, deeply happy.
The president quietly watched Lee Yeonjae.
Back when she hadn't known Bambi well, she'd sometimes thought of him as an aristocrat at leisure—someone born to ease.
The unhurried way he moved, drawing every gaze no matter what he did.
The placid, unbothered expression of someone long accustomed to being looked at.
She'd loved that natural-born-celebrity quality of his.
She still loved it. But the Bambi she was looking at now...
'He looks like a little kid.'
Bambi was smiling like someone being loved for the very first time in his life.
Like a bird freshly hatched from its shell, utterly defenseless against the love right in front of him—the look was adorable, and at the same time, it ached somewhere deep.
The longer she watched him smiling that happy smile, the more that feeling deepened.
There was something desperate underneath it all, and it made the president's heart hurt.
'I have to love him even harder.'
It was fine, she decided. Bambi could grow those dead fish eyes one day and it would still be fine.
Hoping for the day her celebrity came to take love for granted, the president resolved to work even harder herself.
It was a thought she could only afford because she had no idea what the beaming Lee Yeonjae up on that stage was actually thinking.
***
At that very moment, Lee Yeonjae—gazing tenderly at his fans—let his eyes flick toward the staff seats.
At the same instant, his gaze turned coldly sharp.
'Found him.'
Lee Yeonjae, who had spotted 'that bastard,' smiled brightly.