“Evan?”
“Yeah. Go quickly and call Evan hyung. Oh, and tell Yechan to heat up a few instant rice packs while you’re there.”
Siwoo, who had been about to make more skewers, got up reluctantly at Ian’s words asking him to do several things at once. As he went inside, Siwoo buried his nose in his sleeve again. He smelled soft and fresh since he’d washed up as soon as he came in, but he couldn’t help being bothered by it.
As soon as he entered through the back door, Siwoo met Evan standing in front of him and quickly lowered the hand he’d been holding to his nose.
“Everyone come out.”
“Yeah? I found beer. There wasn’t any soju though.”
“We’re drinking soju here too? Everyone’s just drinking beer lightly.”
Siwoo looked down at Evan’s hands holding a pack of beer cans.
“You said you like somaek. Even if you don’t look it, you’re quite the drinker.”
This kind of conversation was truly something he couldn’t get used to. It came at unexpected moments. He knew things about him that he never even thought about himself.
“You really don’t know anything you don’t know.”
He reached out his arms to help carry some, but at Evan’s action of chuckling and stepping back, Siwoo’s hand stopped in midair.
“It’s going to get cold, so put on another layer before you come out.”
“Evan-ah.”
Siwoo called out to him as he passed by. He didn’t answer but stopped and looked at him, and Siwoo raised his head to meet his eyes.
When he hesitated without easily bringing up what he wanted to say, Evan slightly lifted his chin then lowered it as if telling him to hurry up and speak.
“Um… Do I smell?”
Unless he asked, there was no way to know. If they didn’t tell him first, it was a world he could never know about.
Evan’s expression, which had been smiling gently, furrowed slightly but soon changed to peaceful. An idol in his fifth year. He was more professional than anyone at hiding his emotions.
“Why?”
“I washed up as soon as I came in, but if you guys don’t tell me, I’ll keep not knowing…”
“It’s fine.”
Siwoo blinked rapidly at the answer that was different from his question. He didn’t understand Evan’s answer right now.
“No matter what scent comes from you, it doesn’t matter. But if someone covers you with pheromones, I’ll tell you right away.”
“So right now, I…”
He definitely said that pheromones get washed away after washing. But he wanted to know if that was certain.
He couldn’t avoid Evan who suddenly approached. His cheek and his own cheek seemed like they were about to touch. Maybe he had a higher body temperature than normal people, or it felt like he could sense heat from him.
“Coco. How should I take it that a twenty-three-year-old man uses baby powder scented body products?”
He felt warm breath by his ear. To him, the smell of the shower gel he’d just used was strong, but from Evan came quite a refreshing scent. A small laugh lingered by Siwoo’s ear, who couldn’t turn his head or pull his body back.
“I like it.”
Even after Evan left through the back door, Siwoo stood still in that spot.
Such a thought suddenly occurred to him. What if he were an omega? That kind of thought.
He’d be able to feel his pheromones that were supposedly cool and crisp, and maybe he could read the emotions hidden in his actions just now.
It would have been easy to distinguish whether all these actions he was doing were simply for bromance, or flirting with at least some emotion in it.
‘It would hurt a bit if it’s just a joke.’
Rubbing his face with both hands, Siwoo rolled the words in his mouth that he couldn’t spit out. It’s not like he’d been living deliberately blocking the flow of his emotions. So maybe that’s why this situation came to be. He should have locked it from the beginning.
Siwoo had also gotten entangled in the spider web of the famous person who was said to enchant everyone in 3 seconds. The spider threads he’d thrown one by one had already gotten all tangled up around Siwoo’s body. He had no idea which thread to cut with scissors first.
Siwoo knew exactly. That cutting this spider web wouldn’t be easy. And the person who would cut these threads wasn’t him but Evan. If he stopped throwing threads, they were threads that would gradually fade over time and completely disappear at some point.
After the broadcast ended and they parted at the airport, Evan wouldn’t throw threads to him. At first there would be contact, and maybe they’d all gather together to watch the first broadcast. And then? After that? Meetings without any connection never lasted long.
“Hyung. Let me pass.”
At Yechan’s voice, Siwoo quickly stepped aside. And he looked at the camera placed on the table. All these moments were being recorded too. It would all be edited out anyway since they were scenes with nothing much to see, but he suddenly felt uncomfortable.
Allowing this filming was the start of the problem. Only after Yechan left did Siwoo remember the instant rice. Not having the personality to call someone and tell them to do it, Siwoo found the instant rice and put it in the microwave.
After a certain amount of time, when the microwave’s completion sound rang indicating cooking was done, Siwoo took a deep breath in and let it out.
Life came to Siwoo’s expressionless face. When things were hard, painful, and exhausting, showing a bright and cheerful appearance was easier than eating cold porridge.
Even with the camera, everyone enjoyed their freedom. They drank as much beer as they wanted, and talked comfortably knowing it would be filtered out.
At the beginning, the PD threw out simple questions, and everyone answered diligently. And even after the filming crew left, the drinking session continued comfortably.
“Oh, right. We covered Ocean’s song last time. Ocean’s dance is seriously fucking hard. Hyung, how do you dance all that? My lungs were totally dying. And you do it live too.”
After even the main camera was turned off and everyone was chatting casually, Yechan, who had been touching his phone, played an Ocean song loudly. Yechan, who had been whining about being hit by Evan and how much it hurt, suddenly jumped forward as if that never happened.
Then as he danced to the music, even Ian and Louis joined in. Everyone was moderately drunk, so rather than dancing properly, they were just playing around hitting the point choreography.
“Right. We ended up putting in modifications in the middle while doing this.”
When Louis and Ian went out too, Siwoo also wanted to go out. And at some point, even Siwoo was running around on the lawn.
Following Ocean’s song, Phantom, Phoenix, and Luminous’s songs came out one after another, and Siwoo accurately hit the point choreography.
“Awesome. Siwoo hyung knows them all! How do you know them all?”
While everyone was dancing half-heartedly, sitting down, coming out when they wanted to dance and going in, being busy, somehow only Siwoo kept standing on the lawn. The alcohol was moderately rising and as he moved his body, old memories came back. Those days when he practiced in the cramped practice room with members, crying and laughing.
“Ah, I memorize choreography pretty quickly.”
They were all living their own lives. Without going through terrible things in car accidents, they were all living normally as ordinary college students or as members of other groups.
There were various reasons why Siwoo didn’t do much broadcast activities. Avoiding meeting former members was one of them. When he did that, opportunities to appear on broadcasts or stages noticeably decreased. He was afraid that if he met them by chance, they might get swept up in his strange life.
“Siwoo, can you memorize this too then? This is our new one.”
Suddenly having some thought, Luca jumped out. Everyone’s eyes sparkled watching him dance while playing a song that hadn’t been released yet. They were all dance groups, so they were confident in dancing.
“No. Why are we doing this!”
Luca suggested it to Siwoo, but except for Evan and Hyunsu who said it was too bothersome to move, everyone was standing behind Luca. Even while saying that, they all moved busily following Luca’s movements.
“This is crazy. How do you do this while doing it live. I can’t do it.”
The first to give up was Louis.
The same song repeated several times, and as they moved following Luca, they started stopping one by one. But even then, Siwoo was standing still on one side.
“I really don’t know what the choreography team was thinking giving this to us. Doesn’t it seem absolutely impossible to do live?”
“But the song is really good. What should we do, revealing it to us.”
Even while everyone stopped and chatted, the song that Luca had set to repeat kept playing.
“Luca hyung. Here, the right foot, isn’t it originally supposed to be like this? If you do it the way hyung just showed, it’s awkward though?”
When the song started again, Siwoo, who had been moving lightly, stopped exactly at the part where Luca had been stumbling.
“Where?”
“Here. Before turning to the right like this, hyung showed it like this, but I think it would be more natural and comfortable to do it like this rather than that.”
Siwoo didn’t put strength into it or pick out the movements precisely. He moved his body lightly overall and only showed clean movements at the parts he was explaining.
“Whoa. Kim Siwoo. Did you just memorize all the choreography?”
From Hyunsu’s mouth, who had been watching them while tearing open dried squid, came a voice of disbelief. The members dancing together didn’t notice, but to his eyes watching from afar, everything was visible as it was. Siwoo, who hadn’t moved at all during the four or five repetitions, was now precisely executing the choreography to the song.
“Well… I didn’t memorize all of it. This is the point part, so.”
When all eyes suddenly focused on him, Siwoo awkwardly smiled while scratching his cheek with his fingertip. To others it might seem like an incredible ability, but to Siwoo, it was natural that he should be able to do at least this much.
Leaving aside having done ballet for about 10 years, considering how much he’d danced in his continuously repeated life, compared to the time he’d been stuck in that semi-basement practice room, it was a natural result.
“The reason Siwoo hyung isn’t popular is probably because he strongly didn’t do many broadcasts by his own will.”
Ian spoke as thoughts came to him, but that was truly an accurate judgment.
