Chapter 390 |
Side Story (7)
“Hng…….”
It seemed our conversation had stirred Seo Yuseong from sleep, as he frowned faintly and shifted a little. I leaned closer and whispered, “No, no, go back to sleep,” then ruffled his hair roughly, the way I used to when petting a backyard puppy, coaxing him to sink his head back into the pillow. It was something I’d often done to help him sleep ever since he was little.
Soon, Seo Yuseong’s movements quieted down, and the sound of his steady breathing followed.
“Haa … how come he hasn’t changed at all since he was a kid?”
I can guarantee that if it had been anyone else beside him right now, things wouldn’t have gone this smoothly. He was already tired, and after being woken up several times, it was about time for him to start getting cranky.
“Thank god you’re here, hyung. If it were just us, he’d probably be up by now, and the whole set would be in chaos…….”
With a bright, casual expression, as if he were simply saying, “The weather’s nice today”, Jo Inchan began talking about Seo Yuseong, then suddenly clamped his mouth shut. The way he darted his eyes around anxiously made it clear he was worried someone might overhear us or that a camera might be recording. To be honest, his wariness was understandable. These days, even a single offhand comment can spark rumors about bullying or personality scandals.
You might ask whether it’s okay to describe someone else’s little brother like a rabid dog, but honestly, when it came to Seo Yuseong right after waking up, even I didn’t have much to say in his defense.
“Yeah, I know. Whenever something happens and we call, you always come right away, hyung. It’s fine. Ah … maybe…….”
Jo Inchan, who usually tells me everything is fine, just said ‘maybe‘.
Which meant, in short, that it wasn’t fine at all.
“Hyung! Yuseong is at it again!”
It was justified. After all, the Prism members had already called me several times while I was away on schedule, desperately begging me to save them. I rubbed my face hard and muttered under my breath.
“Sorry. I’ve tried fixing all of Seo Yuseong’s habits, but this one issue just won’t change. He’s been like this since he was little. No, actually, it was even worse when he was a kid. If he woke up and didn’t see me right away, he’d throw a huge tantrum.”
“No, the chaos last time happened because Yuseong came back late from work and a sasaeng barged into his room. Anyone would be angry at that.”
“Still, he should know how to tell friend from foe. What if he ends up screwing you guys over too? Besides, he gets cranky even when he wakes up from just a bit of noise.”
For the sake of Prism’s honor, I won’t go into detail about what exactly Seo Yuseong did.
The only thing I can tell you is the incident where he pressed a pillow over Cha Woon’s and Yoo Jay’s mouths was actually one of the mild ones.
‘Now that I think about it, all three of those lunatics got cranky the moment they woke up. Is there some kind of morning-temper trait on lunatic gene?’
As I lifted my gaze and searched my memory, the images came back to me one by one: No. 1 sleeping gracefully on his side, No. 2 curled up like a caterpillar, and No. 3 lying face-down with his face buried between his arms.
To start with, Lunatic No. 3, Yoo Jay, is the type who can’t fall into a deep sleep, so every morning he’s completely drained and in a foul mood. But despite that, he’s also a heavy sleeper, so it takes ages for him to fully wake up. His voice gets all raspy, his eyes turn bloodshot, and his condition is probably the worst among the three. On top of that, his hair is always a mess from sleeping face-down.
‘At the dorm, he only has the older members around, so even if he throws a fit, it doesn’t matter much, but who knows what he was like during the time he lived on his own.’
And Lunatic No. 2 was exactly as I said earlier. I’ve already half-given up on that temper of his, but I really wish he’d fix that habit of curling up into a ball when he sleeps. It’s bad for his back. While he’s at it, it’d be great if he could also stop stealing all the blankets to wrap them around himself. I’m already sensitive to the cold, so what am I supposed to do if he takes my blanket away?
And lastly, Lunatic No. 1. He’s always the troublesome one.
When it comes to Choi Jeokhyeon, it’s hard to even describe him properly, because he never lets anyone stay near him when he wakes up. Not his secretary, not the housekeeper, not even his own family. So no one knows what goes on in that time frame.
If you visit Choi Jeokhyeon’s house early in the morning, it’s so quiet you could hear a pin drop.
‘Don’t tell me the reason he can’t get a lover is simply because he’s too irritable in the mornings.’
It was a reasonable suspicion. If everyone avoids him because they can’t handle him, then in a way, he might actually be the scariest of them all.
Still, there must have been a first victim for the rule ‘Do not approach Choi Jeokhyeon right after he wakes up’ to exist. But whatever happened, no one knew the details, and the person involved had practically disappeared afterward, which only made it even more frightening.
“…Hmm?”
No, wait.
Something felt off.
‘Come to think of it … I think I’ve been waking Choi Jeokhyeon up however I wanted this whole time.’
If I needed him for anything, I’d just barge straight into Choi Jeokhyeon’s room and yank his blanket off to wake him up. That was pretty much my routine. Nothing ever went wrong, so I don’t even remember how he reacted each time.
“…You’re here?”
I think he just smiled.
If anything, he seemed a bit slower and even gentler than usual.
‘I don’t know. I don’t care.’
Of course, that’s how it has to be.
Since if they dare display that ill-mannered temper toward me, I’m going to kill all three of them…….
“So, did you resolve the Yuseong situation? The manager seemed completely out of it earlier.”
Just as I was indulging in those vague musings, Jo Inchan suddenly popped his head out and asked me a question. I answered him while running my fingers through the tangle of Seo Yuseong’s curly hair.
“Well, I knew something would go wrong since he hates appearing on variety shows and we basically forced him to do it, but I didn’t expect him to cause trouble on the very first day.”
Seo Yuseong was the sort of guy who had extremely clear boundaries in his own world. To put it nicely, it meant he was deeply focused on himself; to put it negatively, it meant he was completely absorbed in his own little world.
‘Seo Yuseong, for starters, basically has no interest in other people…….’
To be honest, watching him react the same whether someone sang terribly or fantastically had me more worried than I can say. There are plenty of people in this world who love music and sing well, and the older brother in me kept hoping that if he connected with people like that, Seo Yuseong might grow even more.
So, when the survival program asked to have him as a judge, I accepted the offer after a lot of thought. On the condition Seo Yuseong gave me, “I will appear on the show as you wish, hyung, but I will act as I please.”
But I never imagined it would turn out like this.
“You haven’t been practicing, have you?”
He asked a senior singer—someone with nearly forty years of experience, basically a veteran—that question immediately after the performance ended. He pointed out that the rhythm and pitch were off right from the intro. He said he didn’t understand what he was supposed to evaluate when the performance was clearly not prepared at all.
“Your singing is lazy.”
Even though it was obvious to everyone that he fell short compared to the other contestants, the others tiptoed around him and forced themselves to give him positive feedback out of deference to him as a revered senior. And yet, Seo Yuseong still went and said something like that.
“Director-nim, the atmosphere here is really tense. What should we do ……. I heard the other singer is currently exploding in rage at the production staff in the waiting room, ranting about how Yuseong-ssi has no manners.”
“Ah, about Seo Yuseong?”
“…Director-nim, are you angry?”
The manager looked like he was on the verge of tears.
The show’s concept was to place established singers and unknown singers on equal footing and judge them fairly, so in that sense, what he said fit the program’s intent, but … well, there’s this thing called Korean etiquette. You’re supposed to be respectful to your elders, and juniors are never supposed to point out a senior’s mistakes. Regardless of whether these unspoken rules are reasonable or fair, most people still follow them just to keep the atmosphere from turning uncomfortable.
However, Seo Yuseong was relatively inept at picking up on those basic social cues.
“He said he didn’t want to listen to songs where the singers can’t even get the basics right. I guess it stressed him out, because he took some headache medicine earlier.”
“He never said anything like that to me … Is that why he rarely listened to other singers’ music up until now?”
If you wanted Seo Yuseong to do something, you needed to give him a reason he could accept. I’d raised him that way since he was young, explaining everything to him step by step. So expecting him to give biased evaluations just because someone had more years of experience must have been something he found hard to accept.
“I heard that even before the filming started, he was talking down to Yuseong and asking why some kid so much younger than him was acting as a judge … it’s kind of funny.” Jo Inchan muttered as he stared into the air, as if recalling the veteran singer’s face.
The dark, lifeless look in his eyes was chilling. In the end, he was Prism through and through. Sure, people naturally side with their own, but Prism members did it to an extreme.
“This is the first time I’m hearing about that. Haa … that guy’s problem is that he never says anything. I need to know what’s going on if I’m going to protect him properly.”
“Haha, Yuseong doesn’t like making you worry, hyung. Still, you always look out for him.”
“Of course I should. I’ve already talked it over with Choi Jeokhyeon and taken care of it. Don’t worry.”
“We need to shift public opinion to Seo Yuseong’s side. First, I’m going to pressure the production team into airing everything, including the part where the other singer showed a bad attitude.”
“They must be able to just cut the whole thing out, right?”
“There were too many people on set, so if we just tried to cover it up, it could easily get twisted in weird ways and lead to rumors. It’s not like it’s the first or second time people have said Seo Yuseong has no manners. Someone like him can’t hide that kind of personality we try to force it. It’s better to expose his nature to the public on our own terms, as someone who ‘speaks his mind even to a senior.’”
“Then once the episode airs, I’ll have the ‘power-tripping singer’ scandal ready to drop.” “A power-tripping scandal?” “People who explode like that on set usually have at least a rumor or two floating around. I’ve dug up something decent.” “…You really…….”
“We didn’t fabricate something that doesn’t exist, did we? On the contrary, since we’re empowering a victim, it’s closer to doing something righteous.It ‘coincidentally’ just happens to benefit us as well.”
You wicked bastard!
We really are on the same wavelength!
While I was thinking that as I looked at Choi Jeokhyeon sitting across from me, the tug-of-war match between Pantheion and the Trainee Team came to an end. I immediately gave instructions to the staff member waiting behind me.
“Please tell them to blur Do Yuda’s and Nagi Zen’s faces. It’s for the artists’ protection.”
“Yes, Director-nim.”
They tried so hard that their face ended up completely unfit for broadcast.
I mean, you’re supposed to pull the rope with your hands, not with your face, right? I really wish they wouldn’t forget their duties as an idol.
“Waaah!”
Seeing the bananas hugging each other and jumping up and down, it looked like Pantheion had won.
In truth, the Trainee Team and Pantheion without Woo Kangwon were pretty evenly matched. Among Pantheion, Nagi Zen was noticeably stronger than average, but Lee Hwayoung participated with the attitude of barely resting his hand on the rope, so their plus-one and minus-one basically canceled each other out to zero.
“Chise-sunbaenim is the best!”
“Congrats, kids! I’m glad we won. This hyung did a good job, didn’t I?”
“Ugh, that hyung’s strength is honestly not normal. Yutae-hyung should’ve done this instead of me.”
It seemed that the outcome was decided by the match between Lee Chise and Nam Yihwon, who participated as helpers.
“Wow, our Pantheon! You truly clenched your teeth and absolutely crushed the Trainee Team! There was absolutely no holding back, not even one bit! Please say a few words about your victory!”
Perhaps thinking Zen would be good on variety, Gong Seonghwa immediately approached him and handed him the microphone. Zen then shrugged his shoulders slyly and spoke with his face cast in deep shadow.
“I always give my all when I face off against someone, no matter who my opponent is. Even if that opponent happens to be a junior.”
“Yes, thank you for that very appropriate comment. Now, next up is the match between the Solo Team and the Staff Team. Helpers Cha Woon-sunbaenim and Yoo Jay-sunbaenim, please enter the field!”
At Gong Seonghwa’s cue, two tall figures entered the arena, swinging their long legs like models on a runway. Everyone else couldn’t help but admire the impressive sight, but the moment I saw them, I thought, ‘Ah, no.’
“I’ll win against you, hyung, even if it kills me.”
“Just die already.”
…Why, of all people, did those two have to be the ones left?
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Translator’s Corner:
asdfghjkl I didn’t realize two weeks passed by since the last update. My mind doesn’t register the concept of time these days. Sorry it took so long.
It’s lowkey a habit … when translating, once you lost motivation and the flow broke, it’s really hard to get back. I think I tried to translate this chapter for more than a week? It took so long because I kept getting distracted even after just finished 1 page. It’s not helping that it’s raining heavily in my area these days, so I couldn’t open my laptop often.
ANYWAY life update. I actually got a job offer … but, well. I rejected it. I actually spent a lot to go to the interview since it’s on another city and you know, rural area like mine doesn’t have a public transportation. They accepted me, but the wage … I’m actually prepared to get paid below the minimum, but it’s not only below the minimum ??? It wouldn’t even be enough to cover my food cost for a month, let alone rent too. People around me calling me too picky, but hello … am I supposed to be a slave in this modern world … they should at least pay me enough for food ??? but anyway. It’s so bleak.
These days I read a lot of novels. Chuchuz separation lowkey made me doesn’t want to look at idol bromance, so I read a lot of romance … oh, right. Assistant Manager Kim already ended. And if anyone read “Duke, Please Repent”, the author released a new novel, and it’s so fun (I can’t remember the exact translation of the title). I guess it’s because it’s 100% academy novel, perfectly to my taste so far, but I like this new one better than their previous work. Also for any rofan enjoyer, if you plan to read “How To Get On the Protagonist’s Flower Path”, I suggest you let’s just don’t … I finished that novel recently and the male lead endgame made me so mad ….
Anyway, that’s it for now. I’m still healthy so far. I hope you guys have a good November and in good health too!
(P.S. I saw some people re-reading from the start these days too, fighting! I enjoyed reading your comments on old chapters, it brightened up my days! Also, there’s currently 57 chapters of side stories right now, so you’ll still so many of Prism, Pantheion, and Choi Jeokhyeon happy life!)