What more should I say here? To Juno hyung who has already properly misunderstood me, will anything change if I speak here? The more I speak, the more severely distorted it will be when it reaches hyung, and the truth won’t reach hyung anyway because he doesn’t want to hear it.
With that thought, I couldn’t let out the evidence about the fact that I was Cha Hohyeon that I had been trying to speak until just now.
“Let’s make it win-win for both of us.”
Hyung left those words, turned around, took out a file from the bag he brought, and turned it page by page in front of me as I lay prostrate. At first, I just stared blankly at what this was, but gradually as the pages turned, I felt the blood draining from my body.
“I’ll help you. Anyway, because of this comeback preparation, I have to gradually start filming variety shows and doing broadcast activities.”
“……This is.”
“I’ll include you in all the broadcasts I appear on, and if you want, I can even arrange spots directly for you. If you have other requests, I’ll grant them all.”
This file was densely filled with information about Cha Hohyeon. Really trivial habits of mine, even acquaintances—everything was contained in it.
While looking at the file, I felt as if I had been stripped naked and couldn’t say anything, frozen, when Juno hyung closed the file and held it out to me.
“However, if you become Cha Hohyeon.”
When I looked up at Juno hyung blankly, hyung blinked for a moment as if thinking I didn’t understand, then said,
“You said composing is a hobby, right? Then you’ll understand more easily. Think of this file as the guideline for a song called <Cha Hohyeon>.”
Guideline. Something a composer creates to properly convey the feeling, emotion, and pitch of a song to a singer, and the singer completes the song following that guideline. And hyung had just given me the guideline for <Cha Hohyeon>.
“Follow it perfectly like this file. So that Go Yoon absolutely won’t notice.”
“……”
“From now on, if you live not as Ka Jerim but as Cha Hohyeon in front of Go Yoon, you can obtain what you want.”
It was a file that captured me so well it was chilling.
The moment I saw that file, hyung’s voice continued to reach me, but it didn’t enter my ears well. I just felt that the fact that I, the living Cha Hohyeon, had to imitate the dead Cha Hohyeon confined only in the file as printed text, was terribly horrifying.
“Anyway, you want to pretend to be Cha Hohyeon, and I need you pretending to be Cha Hohyeon.”
What made hyung like this? But I couldn’t easily resent Juno hyung. This file was tattered, as if hyung had directly gathered information, written it, and made revisions.
And above all. On the unfolded papers here and there were dried, twisted tear stains.
Having already seen traces that making that file wasn’t an easy decision for Juno hyung either and that he suffered, I couldn’t resent Juno hyung. Perhaps because Yoon hyung kept being mentioned, it was plainly visible that this action was Juno hyung’s choice for Yoon hyung’s sake. Then who should I resent?
I blinked while staring blankly at the file.
The cause of all these things happening, the direction of that arrow.
“……want to.”
It pointed at me.
“What?”
Cha Hohyeon. Why did you come back to life?
Just die, why come back to life.
“I want to die again.”
Experience pain you don’t need to feel, and also give pain to others?
In that case, just die forever that day. Die completely so you can’t feel anything, can’t see, there’s no one, no one thinks of you, and you can’t think anything either.
“Why did you come back to life……”
Why didn’t you just die, Cha Hohyeon.
The moment I had that thought, my vision faded to black as if a screen was being dyed dark. Juno hyung’s voice stuck to my ears like tinnitus, and in a world where I couldn’t see anything, the sound of rain and thunder rang noisily as if representing my heart.
‘Wanting to die.’
And through the gaps of that noisy sound, I mocked myself for having such thoughts.
I never once thought of wanting to die even when it was hard enough to die while living as Cha Hohyeon. Because I was always afraid of death, and even if life was hard, I was a person who felt joy in filling up each day.
But this moment was different.
I wanted to die. I wanted to die. I felt like I could do anything to die.
[The living Cha Hohyeon must imitate the dead Cha Hohyeon.]
I’m alive, but the world says I’m dead.
And now the living me must imitate the dead me.
That fact was unbearably hard to endure, so miserable, endlessly unfair and sorrowful. I thought it would be better to die rather than feel these emotions.
“……!”
“Sto……p……”
It was the same even now, after briefly losing consciousness and waking up.
In my hazy consciousness, Juno hyung slapping my face, and the voices of employees stopping such a hyung. A throat throbbing again as if choked. Sharp pain rushing in as if my body had been thrown, a stinging tongue, cheeks, head.
“It hurts.”
My whole body hurt.
Through hazily opened eyes, Juno hyung was rushing at me as if to kill me.
“Juno-ssi, stop it! He’s regained consciousness!”
“……Ha.”
Only at the employee’s restraint did Juno hyung finally look at me with a drained face. I sat there blankly and examined my body, but there wasn’t a single place that was properly unharmed.
After Juno hyung sent the employees out, he just stared at me silently, then opened his mouth to say something, but I was faster.
“To make me like this…… do you hate me enough to want to kill me?”
“……”
I was startled and froze for a moment at my own cold tone that even I could feel, but I was more surprised by my hoarse voice and reflexively raised my hand to touch and fumble at my throat.
“Ha, why is my voice like this?”
My throat hurt beyond imagination, and perhaps because it was strangled quite hard, my voice was terrible to a degree different from before. My arms also seemed to have been hit and grabbed hard, so even the simple act of touching my face was difficult.
“Really hyung, no. Kang Juno-ssi.”
The inside of my mouth also seemed all torn as the fishy taste of blood rose, but this situation concerned me more than that. Because I knew all too well that Juno hyung hated violence, I couldn’t believe this fact at all.
“Did you make me like this?”
My voice came out scratching like metal. Even at the hideous and bizarre voice, Juno hyung answered me without wavering, just standing tall like a wooden post, staring at me vacantly.
I couldn’t see hyung’s appearance properly because of the cap, but I could only speculate that inside it was surely filled with hatred toward me.
And time passed, and finally the end of the long silence came.
“I did it.”
At the end of the long silence, hyung’s words killed me again. Juno hyung whom I liked most, Juno hyung who hated violence more than dying, Juno hyung who cared for me.
“I did it all.”
The fact that he tried to kill me was unbelievable but it was reality.
‘Cha Hohyeon, don’t be in pain. If you have something difficult, say it.’
The Juno hyung who had been speaking to me worriedly in my head until just now slowly disappeared. Instead, now hyung with a cold face was staring at me from afar, smirking.
‘Why did you come back to life? You should have just died completely.’
That’s right. Why did I come back to life, why on earth did I come back to life and stand before hyungs again? Turn back time and don’t sing <Poison Cup>, don’t make that damn slip of the tongue, and just live a second life as if dead, granting Ka Jerim’s wish. Why did you come back to life and appear before hyungs again?
But what’s even more foolish is that even though Juno hyung hates me, despises me, and even tried to kill me. I was more concerned about the tear stains here and there on the file and Kang Juno who must have burst into tears while writing this file, about you.
‘Hyung, I lost.’
Even if Juno hyung hated me, I couldn’t hate hyung. In the end, no matter how hard I tried, I could only lose in front of hyung. So I barely raised my trembling hand and picked up the file that had fallen on the floor to do as hyung wanted.
Hyung said to me earlier, right?
How far down into hell am I planning to drop you?
“I’ll do it.”
But already.
“Imitating the dead Cha Hohyeon.”
This place was hell for me.
* * *
Click—
“Are you alright?!”
After Ka Jerim regained consciousness, Kang Juno quickly sent the employees out.
And after telling Ka Jerim that since this was something he permitted, he would immediately arrange a schedule to keep the promise and contact him through the agency, and that they should talk once more again soon, as soon as he quickly left the room and entered a deserted corridor away from the room, he frowned deeply and clenched his hand.
“At least the emergency room……”
“It’s fine. I can just stop by a pharmacy. Take care of that kid in the room.”
The employees who followed brought gauze and disinfectant as soon as Kang Juno told them to leave, and busily set them down in front of Kang Juno. As if Kang Juno could no longer bear it, he frowned and rolled up his sleeves. Then.
“What do we do!”
There was a hand covered in bright red blood. The flesh of his fingers was dangling, and because it was a deeply gouged wound, the blood showed no signs of stopping and kept flowing. This was true not only for his fingers but also for the back of his hand and wrist. Kang Juno’s hand was a complete mess with no corner that wasn’t bleeding.
Kang Juno stared silently at his hand, then opened his mouth.
“Why did I do that?”
It was an impulse. Suddenly shoving his hand into Ka Jerim’s mouth as he tried to bite his tongue.
“He’s someone I thought it would be good if he died, so why did I…… stop him?”
Ka Jerim choking his own throat was truly instantaneous, something no one could have predicted. Ka Jerim suddenly rolled his eyes and tried to commit suicide, and eventually Kang Juno, who was stopping Ka Jerim alone, mobilized even the employees outside as if it really wouldn’t work.
