“……Please save me.”
I want to live, to stay.
I laughed now as if I’d gone mad.
What good does it do for me to beg like this? If there was a god who would measure my suffering and try to help me from the start, they wouldn’t have brought me back to life in the first place. Then who am I begging to right now? A sense of futility washed over my entire body.
Crash—!
And the sky shining bright white due to thunder. Unable to control my body and staggering, I, who had been standing at the edge of the road, tilted as if I would fall off the road.
Of course, if I grabbed the sign right in front of me, I wouldn’t fall, but I didn’t want to grab it. I just wanted to leave myself alone to fall if I was going to fall, so I simply closed my eyes in preparation for the pain that would come.
—!
At that moment, someone from behind pulled my staggering body into their embrace. Then they turned the clothes they were wearing over my head and just held me quietly.
The warmth of the other person touching me, who had taken shelter from the rain under the clothes, was so warm that I could finally tell how cold my body was. My entire body from head to toe was trembling.
“Yoon hyung, I told you not to follow me……”
“……”
“I abandoned hyung.”
Thinking it was probably Yoon hyung, I spoke, but the other person just held me without saying anything and stayed still. However, as if listening, they put strength in the hand wrapped around me.
“Uh……”
Unable to control my weight as if I would collapse soon, the outer garment draped over my head slipped and fell to the ground. And in the barely brightened view, I could see the hands of the person embracing me.
The hands had particularly many wounds, and it didn’t seem like Yoon hyung’s hands, so even in my hazy state of mind, I blinked slowly and looked at the hands again, and what was held in them glinted.
“I’m sorry for not recognizing you.”
“Ah.”
That hand was holding my USB.
Why is that there? In a situation where my head wasn’t working at all, I opened my eyes wide at the voice I heard, and the person holding me hugged me even tighter without any gaps as if afraid to let me go.
“I know well that you hate being alone.”
His voice gradually became tinged with moisture.
And he, who began to slowly heave, opened his mouth.
“Hohyeon-ah.”
“……”
“I’m sorry for leaving you alone.”
“……Heu.”
It was such a warm voice I hadn’t heard in so long that even though I knew I shouldn’t, I couldn’t push him away.
“I should have found you first.”
“Haheu……”
“I’m sorry for making you find me.”
* * *
Go Yoon, seeing Ka Jerim running with all his might to avoid being caught by him, couldn’t bring himself to chase after him. When he was running so desperately, how could he chase him?
Go Yoon resented and hated himself so much for creating this situation that with a despairing face, he couldn’t watch until the end as he pushed through the employees and ran, only lowering his head and closing the door.
Thud—
Beyond the closed door, the noisy voices of the employees were blocked. In the quiet silence filling the inside, Kang Juno, who had been standing blankly behind, picked up the USB that had fallen on the floor and slowly read aloud the phrase written small on the USB.
“For Dino.”
Dino. Kang Juno frowned at the somehow familiar word.
‘I’ve heard it, but where……’
At that moment, Kang Juno suddenly remembered a conversation he had with Cha Hohyeon long ago. A memory so trivial he thought he had just forgotten it.
‘The name Junho is too old-fashioned, I need to change it.’
‘A stage name?’
Kang Juno’s name before the name change was Kang Junho, but since he had never liked his name from the start, he tried to change his name to a stage name while deciding on a stage name.
‘I’m going to change my legal name and promote with that name…… What name do you think would suit me well? I’m thinking of Juno for now, but I’d like the name to be more unique.’
At the time, Kang Juno, who wasn’t particularly friendly with Fort’s members, often talked with Cha Hohyeon, who at least treated him warmly. So during practice breaks, he asked Cha Hohyeon about a name that would serve as both a stage name and legal name change, and got an answer.
‘Then I think Dino is better than Juno.’
‘Dino? What does that mean?’
‘D.I.N.O!’
‘What. Is it English? It’s not weird, right?’
At Kang Juno’s words, Cha Hohyeon searched on his phone a few times and said with a grin, and it was obviously a playful tone, so when he immediately searched, it said Dino was short for an Italian man.
‘Short for Italian man? Oh…… I can’t change my legal name to this, but it looks good as a stage name.’
When Kang Juno said it was a more decent word than expected and the more he looked at it, the more it seemed like a fairly presentable name, Cha Hohyeon smiled brightly.
‘Ah, that’s not it. There’s also dinosaur, and dinosaur, and- there’s dinosaur too, right?’
‘Then you mean Dino is short for Dinosaur…… Hey, you want to die?’
Seeing Kang Juno’s absurd expression, Cha Hohyeon laughed loudly as if it was fun.
‘Hyung, you have a dinosaur face! It’s totally perfect.’
But after that, whether Cha Hohyeon liked the stage name he had given, until the name was confirmed as Juno, he would occasionally write Dino playfully in his notebook or save Kang Juno’s phone number as Dino.
However, after changing it to Juno, all of that disappeared as a joke, and Kang Juno thought this story was too trivial, so there was no need to mention it on any broadcast, and he had never told the members about it either.
“No. That can’t be.”
It’s just one word.
Even while shaking his head saying it was difficult to confirm Ka Jerim was Cha Hohyeon with just this one trivial word, Kang Juno’s face was somehow pale white as if he had intuited something. He slowly turned over the USB and looked at the back. And forgetting even to breathe, he just stared wide-eyed at the letters.
[Album-3]
‘Later when hyung releases a solo album, can I produce it?’
‘You? I’ll fill it completely full, so even if you do it, there needs to be an Intro, Title, and B-sides…… and even an Outro. If you take full responsibility, I’ll let you do it.’
‘Then can I just make three songs? Intro, Title, Outro! Three songs like that!’
‘Are you crazy? What about the other B-sides? Are you really a scammer?’
‘Why! Intro, Title, Outro! Three songs is enough!’
‘……That’s technically true, but it’s pretty weird. Then promise?’
‘I promise.’
Kang Juno didn’t have the courage to look inside the USB. In case there really were three songs inside, and those songs were Intro, Title, and Outro tracks.
Kang Juno, who had been staring blankly at the USB, said to Go Yoon, who was closing the door and hitting his head against that door while blaming himself.
“Yoon-ah, do you happen to know Dino?”
Go Yoon shook his head.
“And the story about Hohyeon writing an album for me?”
“I don’t know.”
“And that there would be three songs on that album?”
The person who could call me Dino, the person who told me to release an album with songs they produced, and the person who said they would write exactly three songs.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about right now.”
Kang Juno grabbed the shoulder of Go Yoon, who was only looking at the door, and turned him around. Go Yoon, who was forcibly turned around by Kang Juno, couldn’t know the situation in detail but let out an empty laugh at Kang Juno’s face that looked like the world had collapsed.
“Kang Juno, what good does it do to know now?”
“……”
“You’re too late.”
Drip—
At Go Yoon’s words, Kang Juno’s tears fell drop by drop onto the back of his hand. As if not quite knowing he was crying, Kang Juno stammered while tears dripped down blankly.
“This kind of thing is too trivial, really too trivial…… how can this be evidence?”
Go Yoon, who was watching such a Kang Juno, briefly shifted his gaze between Kang Juno and the USB Kang Juno was holding.
“Why does it need to be as grand as evidence that everyone knows?”
“……”
“That a person is that person…… it’s actually easier to know when it’s trivial, isn’t it?”
Kang Juno thought that perhaps he was fitting together absurd coincidence upon coincidence, but what Ka Jerim knew was something too trivial. Because it was trivial, he had no choice but to believe.
The evidence Go Yoon had shown until now all pointed to Ka Jerim being Cha Hohyeon in every situation, but it was difficult to be certain because there was no proper connection with himself.
“Hohyeon really came back again……”
But this USB that might be connected to him, he could tell just from the writing on the outside without even checking it. To others, it was so small that they would ask what kind of evidence this was, how could you tell from just a few letters.
Kang Juno was someone who couldn’t believe even after seeing the black box, Lee Robi’s award acceptance speech, and the story and evidence of Go Yoon and Cha Hohyeon’s planned collaboration song. But now holding this USB, he had no choice but to believe. Because within those few letters contained on the USB were the remnants of memories from the distant past.
“I, no, I am.”
Ka Jerim is Cha Hohyeon.
Kang Juno realized far too late that this proposition could be established.
“No, no. I was going to…… but, Hohyeon……”
The words all came out chopped up in chunks without connecting. Seeing Kang Juno muttering like that with a face not knowing what words he was spitting out, Go Yoon smiled bitterly.
“What have I done?”
Kang Juno blamed himself, recalling what he had done to Ka Jerim, no, Cha Hohyeon until now.
