A Peaceful Day (5)
A Peaceful Day (5)
I hummed to myself as I pulled out the rye bread and yogurt.
"The finishing touch is cheese~"
I spread cream cheese on the rye bread, then layered yogurt on top, tore off a piece, and dipped it lightly in mango jam before eating.
For a while, I watched Dubu's Neotube video as I tore off pieces of bread, then grabbed some milk from the fridge.
When I checked the donation list, quite a lot of people were asking what I was going to do today.
"A while back, a bunch of people said they wanted to watch me draw, so I was thinking about doing some painting, but it might be boring...?"
I ignored the chat saying they were satisfied just looking at my face and switched to the camera I'd set up before starting the stream.
The feed being broadcast to viewers showed my workspace in full.
One wall of my workspace, where a wall ought to be, was packed with canvases and art supplies.
The chair had a design slightly out of place with the rest of the space—it boasted a look as if you were supposed to switch on a computer and play some 4D game.
I filled a big cup with ice, took a cola from the fridge, and poured it to the brim.
Before drawing, to get some inspiration, I sat down for a moment and stared at the donation list.
- Isn't it the universal rule that you dump cola once it goes flat?
- ?? You dump it when it goes flat? You're putting an expiration date on cola?
- Cola is a food that goes bad; once you open it, if you don't drink it in time you have to toss it.
- ????
- Honestly, I'd rather die than drink flat cola.
- So why didn't you just die then lol
- "Why didn't you just die then" lmao what the fuck
Most of the chat was this kind of stuff that didn't need a response.
I slotted the cola into the cup holder on the chair and took out the palette beside me.
I got out the brushes and paints I'd be using, squeezed them generously onto the palette, and dabbed some sky-blue with a brush that had bristles bigger than my palm.
"As soft and fluffy as possible..."
I just rubbed lightly to complete the shape, then used a different brush to boldly and decisively extend the lines.
Without realizing it, I got absorbed in the drawing, and my free left hand started to move toward my nose to pick it before I remembered I was live.
I turned my attention to the donation list and saw it had piled up far more than I expected.
"Ahem. Ah, sorry, I got focused for a second."
Questions people were asking after dropping a million won...
"What am I thinking about while I draw...? Hmm... With oil paints, one brushstroke comes out to about 300,000 won?"
At my comment, the chat, which had been scrolling so fast it was hard to read, went dead.
"When I'm doing the spreading and brushing work at six strokes a second, that's practically 1.8 million won, pure profit. A hundred million per minute, heh... Still, right now I'm just doing it roughly, so maybe... about 50,000 won? Honestly, I'm not great at pricing paintings either..."
Among my paintings, some of the ones that sell at the lowest price do clock in at the ten-million-won range, but those are the doodles I did with a pencil at school.
Maybe because I'd reduced the number of oil-paint works, like Farzier said, the moment I dabbed some oil paint and revealed it publicly, the price skyrocketed exponentially.
Predicting the price of a painting I'd done was difficult even for me. But there was one thing I knew for sure and was fully aware of.
Depending on how the finishing touches turned out, the price difference in my paintings was enormous.
So, since I didn't feel like finishing it today, I just left it as is.
- Wow... so that's the finished piece?
"No, when I'm bringing out the details I pick it back up on a day when the feeling is definitely right. Anyway, that's it for now."
And with that, I abruptly declared the stream over.
The viewers must have thought I'd at least continue interacting with them, because the chat was on the verge of exploding.
By now, lingering with the viewers after a stream had practically become a national rule.
But when I went to turn off the stream, some people could tell what I was about to do.
I casually broke that universal rule for them.
I turned off the stream, did a light workout, then finished showering and fed Alpha and Beta.
Knowing Dad wasn't home, Da-yeon punched in the door code and came in.
"Hiii~"
"You're here?"
"Yeah! Today I decided to make a study break day!"
"Ooooh~"
I spent the rest of the time playing the Maple Leaf game with Da-yeon.
Honestly, I didn't want to play ROK with Da-yeon and end up on her bad side.
Time flew by, and we turned nineteen.
Da-yeon, Ji-hoon, and Tae-oh started studying even more seriously than before, and the one who changed the most was Park Ji-hoon.
Park Ji-hoon dyed his hair red, took the drawing I'd done for him, and had it tattooed all over both arms.
He looked like the absolute king of thugs...
He was wearing arm sleeves, yet kept stroking his own arm with satisfaction as if it was some kind of goddamn swag.
"Finally nineteen... Good lord..."
I stretched out my long legs, which were disproportionate to my body, and rested my arm on the fridge.
Feeling Dad's gaze on me for a moment, I stuck my butt out a little. Dad seemed to have given up now, and he started pretending not to notice.
I smirked and stuck my butt out even more exaggeratedly.
And as if to show off, I slowly raised and lowered it, up and down.
"....."
Still no reaction from Dad.
As if my twerking skills had improved in proportion to my age, I showed off my developed ability.
At the intense twerking that would've put Cardi B to shame, Dad, who had been ignoring me, finally looked horrified and quite naturally picked up the rod.
"Whoa!!! You're going to hit a nineteen-year-old?!"
We'd entered our third year of high school, when everything revolved around the college entrance exam.
Regular classes were pared down to the bare minimum; most periods were Q&A sessions where teachers handled problems students didn't understand.
For the first time, school had turned so boring I genuinely didn't want to go.
So, using album activities as an excuse, I was slowly releasing songs and resting often at home playing games.
"Dad, do you have some kind of fetish? Why do you keep trying to hit me?"
"You! What kind of way is that to talk to your father! Are you coming out or not!?!?"
Seeing Dad raging from behind the door, I smiled, thinking today was another day full of life.
"Ha! I'm going to be an adult next year, you know?"
"That's next year, not right now."
"So, once I'm an adult, is twerking allowed?"
"Are you insane...?"
With school having become so boring, my time at home grew longer, and these standoffs with Dad also became more frequent.
Before I knew it, the drama we'd filmed earlier, 'My Love Was a Gumiho', had started airing on Notflix.
I'd already done countless monitoring sessions, so I wasn't interested, but Dad seemed to be different.
Dad stared intently at the TV, as if trying to commit every single one of my scenes to memory.
The Joo Ha-rin character I'd played, already the subject of huge buzz from the teaser alone, captured everyone's attention.
People cosplaying me were everywhere, and the comments in all kinds of languages had now become routine...
More than anything, there was the synergy between my looks on Notflix and Dad's name recognition...
I proudly took first place on Pobus's list of teenagers moving the world.
And at some point, my name started getting firmly engraved in the number-one spot of the global beauty rankings.
On the red carpet, a photo of me in plain clothes was posted, and from all directions, people sent love calls to Uncle Jang Seong-man trying to interview me.
In the end, I appeared on the talk show Dad uses, together with the people who had filmed 'My Love Was a Gumiho'.
When the first episode of this drama came out, the response was, to say the least, explosive.
Over-the-top praise comments about me were wildly popular.
- Light seeps through a small crack in a dark space... and that light was you.
- Si-yoon, keep acting like that and you'll end up nothing but a global star.
- One day, our Ppopi started looking like Joo Ha-rin to me... Brace yourself, Ppopi.
I wasn't sure what he was planning to do to Ppopi, but I could tell that bastard was a lunatic.
With such an explosive reaction from just the first episode, which barely had any content, I couldn't help but chuckle.
And then, the 'Next-Door Hyungnim' side contacted Dad. Dad was stunned by my appearance fee, which had risen to a level incomparable to before.
Having achieved the number-one global beauty ranking, our Chinese friends were as overwhelming as ever...
The Chinese netizens, practically foaming at the mouth ever since the selfie I'd posted previously, seemed unable to stand seeing me succeed.
This time, I appeared wearing shoes, clothes, and a bracelet from WAK—a company that promotes Korea—while dancing choreography I'd made for a song Dad and I released together.
Maybe because the product had the company logo and Dokdo boldly stamped on it from the start, the Japanese suddenly began demanding to know why we were picking on them.
Since those crazy bastards knew exactly how to push my berserk button, I was about to name the next song Little Boy and Fat Man, but Dad stopped me.
And due to the statements from the Japanese side, a full-scale internet war between Korean and Japanese netizens began, starting with me as the flashpoint.
China had been banning people from copying my makeup method exactly, but when people dressed up as Joo Ha-rin and performed the dances I'd created for this new song...
It seemed they couldn't ignore this overwhelming aggro.
Even though Dad claimed he just recorded the beat, it was a beat he had carefully crafted, thinking he was giving it to me.
By now, if you asked a Chinese or Japanese person whether they knew 'Si-yoon' or 'Ji-ho,' they'd come at you foaming at the mouth, reacting as if you'd just insulted their race.
At this level, it really felt like they'd even hire a hit job.
When we became third-years, the way we studied changed a lot.
A separate classroom for self-directed study was set up, divided into a space for students who would focus solely on studying and a space for those who wouldn't.
For each subject, a teacher was assigned to a classroom, and for each period you booked a slot on your phone and entered the desired class; there were also classes that only took questions.
This was all for the kids preparing for the college entrance exam through the regular admissions track; kids getting in through school grades had separate classes conducted for them.
When I arrived at school with Da-yeon, the classroom was full of the sound of kids breathing and pages turning.
Kids sitting in their seats studying.
Some had earbuds in listening to lectures, some were focused only on their books.
Park Ji-hoon and Kim Tae-oh had even cut down their workout time and threw themselves into reading books every day.
Da-yeon also invested all her time solely in studying, so I was the only one left out, drifting apart.
I slipped out of the study-only classroom and went to the classroom with the kids who'd given up on studying.
A classroom mainly for arts and phys ed where the study-quitters gathered...
Still, I didn't really expect it to be particularly fun.
Because so far, the times I'd gotten tangled up with someone and had fun were somewhat rare.
There was no one in the classroom yet, so I sat in any seat, and shortly after, someone yanked the door open.
A male student came in singing a song Dad had made before called 'My Apples' and shaking his ass.
"My apples are here yeah, budget~ oh yeah~ shiet"
He was uniquely ugly, but in a way, his face was also just really, really common-looking.
Eyes closed, riding his own vibe, he was grooving, doing a sleazy wave, and twisting his body around when his eyes met mine.
""......""
Suddenly going expressionless and pretending to be a normal person, the male student sat down on the complete opposite side from me.
I thought I'd made a good call switching classrooms.
This, right from the start, felt promising.
I approached the male student and spoke.
"Hey."
"...Yes?"
"I don't know anyone here, do you want to sit together?"
"No."
The male student answered without even a moment's hesitation.
Looking at his name tag, his name was Han Jong-su.
"Haa... I really don't know anyone here..."
"....."
"I was hoping someone could explain things..."
After a moment of serious deliberation, Han Jong-su slowly sat down next to me.
His narrow, unfocused-looking eyes were absolutely priceless.
It was like he looked like Park Gi from the past, maybe?
"Hi~?"
"...Yes."
The moment he sat next to me, I dropped the formal speech, and he seemed flustered.
With eyes as small as Park Ji-hoon's before he got eye surgery, I couldn't even see his pupils.
"Want me to teach you a dance?"
"No..."
"That song's by my dad, you know? The copyright is with my dad—get permission and sing it."
"....."
Han Jong-su began ignoring me with total consistency.
This sparked my stubbornness.
My exact mindset right then was, 'How dare someone like you ignore me?'
The sensation of becoming a clingy girl felt slightly novel too.
When I poked him in the shoulder—poke, poke—Jong-su brushed me off—swat, swat—without even looking at me.
"I'm bored~"
"Watch your phone then."
"You can drop the formalities with me~"
"This is more comfortable."
"It's okay if I drop them, right?"
"Do whatever you want."
"Wanna go out with me?"
"No, I don't want to."
This bastard's way of looking at women as if they were stones made him seem like a sage.
"Are you gay?"
"Are you insane?"
He frowned, and even that was truly ugly.
At that moment, someone came in and waved at Han Jong-su.
"Yo~ Han Jong-su~"
"Yo~ Yuk In-su~"
Han Jong-su, as if to prove a point, looked at his friend and amped up his energy.
And the guy called In-su hadn't spotted me hidden behind Jong-su's body.
Only when he got closer did Yuk In-su lock eyes with me.
"Huh? Wh-who... Oh!? HUH!!!?"
Yeah, now that's a normal reaction.
In-su turned his face away as if he were embarrassed just from looking at my face.
As the classroom gradually filled with people, I poked Yuk In-su, who was sitting in front of me.
"Hey there~"
"Yes!?"
"Is Jong-su always like this?"
"...He has a phobia of beautiful women."
"...?"
"His palms are probably soaked with sweat by now. More importantly, is it okay if I drop the formalities too...?"
"No."
"...Yep."
"Ahaha, I'm kidding~ talk comfortably."
"Whoa! I gotta brag to my mom~"
With the sudden appearance of his mother in the conversation, I wasn't sure what kind of reaction I was supposed to show.
So, I looked at Han Jong-su and smiled.
"You had a phobia of beautiful women!? Our Jjong-su?"
"".....""
"Since this big sis is a beauty, I'd better cure that phobia~ Wanna go to a PC bang together after this?"
Since Jong-su wasn't responding, I looked at Yuk In-su and said,
"Wanna come with?"
"Wah, absolutely!"
I gave him a sidelong glance as if to suggest seducing Jong-su.
In-su nodded his head as if on the verge of drooling.
He really looked like someone who had genuinely been bewitched by Joo Ha-rin.
"Jong-su, you were good at singing, weren't you?"
"Jong-su's the type who's a social butterfly but pretends to be an outsider. It kinda feels like he just humors me and hangs out with me, you know?"
My heart twinged a little at the part where he called himself an outsider and said Jong-su just humored him.
Even so, he was a really bright kid.