— Are you really going to be a singer? Fly to the Sky? Brown Eyes? Jo Seongmo?
— I heard you already passed an audition?
— I heard you went to an audition and saw Baby V.O.X? Are they pretty?
— Are you really debuting next year? Did you get a song from Yoon Ilsang? I should get your autograph in advance.
“What…?”
The speed at which distorted rumors spread throughout the school was faster than Earth’s rotation. He couldn’t quite adapt to the sudden fame.
Yeon Cheonguk was a student with no presence except for his decent height and looks, which could be argued as ‘Class 3’s best-looking guy’ if you really insisted. He occasionally acted like a screw was loose with his normal-looking face, earning the modifier ‘4D,’ but there was a seismic shift in his position as an otherwise ordinary character whose only quirk was always having earphones plugged in.
It was troublesome in many ways. It wasn’t the time to go in and out of karaoke rooms with friends because of his family’s overnight financial ruin.
Though he went around boasting about the title of Canmoa weekend part-timer as if showing off his looks, in reality it was work to earn even a bit of spending money. During exam periods he had to cram, normally he had to master the Bugs Music charts, practice singing secretly from his parents, attend choir club whenever he had time, work part-time on weekends. He was busy to death, and now even his school life had become noisy.
Guys who asked him to teach them singing stuck to him whenever there was a gap. Among them were punks who wore their uniform pants loose, making it even more annoying.
He wasn’t free from romantic problems either. A week after the field trip, a female student stood in front of the school gate holding a large glass jar. She said there were 1,000 roses inside the jar. Even though he’d been confessed to two or three times before, this was quite surprising. That means she folded over 100 a day—do her fingers even survive…?
— Yeon Cheonguk. Sing a song for us.
— Hey, give us one song.
— Can you hit SG Wannabe’s high notes too?
— Teacher, I’m sleepy! Let’s listen to Yeon Cheonguk sing!!
He was on the verge of getting neurosis, especially because of the bastards who shouted requests as an excuse not to study. He wasn’t a CD player that plays songs when you press the play button, nor was he a jukebox. Whenever there was a gap, they demanded songs. Requests varied from pop songs to ballads, but recently Wheesung’s <Is It Impossible> was overwhelmingly popular.
The unremarkable nickname ‘Cheongnyeon’ soon changed to ‘Seolyun High’s Jo Seongmo.’
“With a face like yours, if you pull off Wheesung’s songs, isn’t that debut material?”
“……”
Sometimes those compliments felt like empty words. They shot them off comfortably because they didn’t know his situation of being about to end up on the streets.
What good would passing an audition do when he couldn’t even ask his parents for money to go to the school store right now? What money would he use for trainee life? Far from getting parental support until he succeeded, he’d be moving from one semi-basement rental room to another. Yeon Cheonguk buried his empty wallet deep in his bag and slumped over his desk.
“Shut up and hurry up and pay the song fee. Today it’s corn bread.”
He filled snack time by singing one verse and extorting what wasn’t really extortion. When they annoyed him asking him to sing more or teach them, he plugged in his earphones and turned on his MP3. Being a future singer listening to music became a good excuse.
However, there are always guys who can’t stand it when someone rises above them in the hierarchy through a detour. The kind who must step on anyone who bothers them to feel satisfied. Yeon Cheonguk soon faced a reorganization of the school’s influence rankings.
There were two or three minor clashes. Most ended as happenings due to friends’ or teachers’ intervention, or Yeon Cheonguk’s non-reaction. However, what some third-year senior bastard attempted remains as a fairly chilling memory.
Let me tell you in advance that Yeon Cheonguk was, contrary to appearances, the owner of a not-so-large liver.
During break time, he was catching up on sleep he’d lost tossing and turning at his thin-ice home. Someone tapped his shoulder and woke him up. He turned around irritably. An unfamiliar guy delivered a message.
Hey, the music teacher said all choir club members should gather at the east building storage during club activity time.
Without much suspicion, he went behind the east building. He thought maybe they’d move instruments or something, but what do you know—there were no choir club members, just four students he’d never seen before.
Judging by their brown-ish name tags, they were third-years. Hip-hop warrior-style uniform pants, hair with extensions in violation of school rules. Anyone could see they were so-called punks who’d given up on the college entrance exam. One of the four wiggled his index finger.
“I’m disappointed I couldn’t hear a live performance on a music show. Sing once! I’ll evaluate whether you’re really Wheesung or if you could really be a singer.”
A five-thousand-won bill fell in front of Yeon Cheonguk’s indoor shoes.
They squatted in a row and clapped. From their perspective, there wasn’t much to fear. The club activity start bell had already rung. Right now, with all students scattered in club rooms, if they quickly hit Yeon Cheonguk a few times, it was a time period with no witnesses.
Though Yeon Cheonguk’s liver was the size of a bean, during this period he had, how should I say, a venomous edge. When the IMF aftermath completely destroyed his family’s economy and a family’s peace was butchered. If someone inflicted violence, he too could do correspondingly crazy things—a venomous edge of being at the cliff’s edge.
Life was originally shit and the path to becoming a singer was distant. Come at me, fuck. Is your life shittier than mine?
“I’m not a jukebox. I’m not a singing doll that sings when told to sing.”
The bastards laughed as if it were ridiculous. Then they crowded closer and took turns messing with him.
“Hey junior. We heard you’re busy getting it on with the girl who folded roses for you, so we personally took time to come here. Let’s hear if you’re really Jo Seongmo or Wheesung.”
“If we listen and it’s not good, bam, one hit every five minutes.”
“He’s busy keeping up his concept. Look at him going around with earphones.”
One bastard pulled out Yeon Cheonguk’s earphones. He even swiftly pulled out the MP3 from his pants pocket—his skills weren’t ordinary. He was clearly experienced in touching other friends’ wallets. The bastard dangled Yeon Cheonguk’s alter ego, the MP3, back and forth. He even added the gesture of stretching the earphone cord down to the floor and pretending to step on it with his sneakers.
“So, has the intro started?”
In anger so intense his eyes felt like they’d flip backwards, his head became cold instead. Yeon Cheonguk raised the corners of his mouth high and pointed out.
“It’s not an intro, it would be accompaniment…”
“……”
“<Is It Impossible> has a high vocal range so it’s more expensive, five thousand won won’t do…”
The bastard’s eyes flashed for a moment as he watched Yeon Cheonguk grinning with his eyes wide open.
When he sensed something flying at him, Yeon Cheonguk quickly dodged his body to the side. A fist that would have hit his forehead crossed through the air. He dodged the first punch by luck, but pushed by force, they fell to the floor together.
Yeon Cheonguk was vastly outnumbered. If he stayed like this, he’d definitely get beaten. The wisest method seemed to be shouting loudly and clearly enough to echo through the school.
However, the bastard moved quickly. After stepping on Yeon Cheonguk’s throat with his sneaker, he unfolded a Dorco razor blade and held it to his face.
“If your vocal cords get destroyed or your face gets scarred, you won’t be able to debut, right…?”
The other three bastards started reading the room at the excessive action. They seemed to be debating whether to stop him. Even though it was clear he’d only threaten and stop, Yeon Cheonguk flinched for a moment. He sensed the same clumsy bravado, madness, venomous edge as his own from this punk. Are you more unhappy than me? Will you really show me how far you’ll go?
His intuition told him the guy might really clumsily slash with the blade. In front of overwhelming fear, just as Yeon Cheonguk was about to be swept up in madness himself, a friend from behind stepped forward to block.
“Hey, hey. Above. Jegu.”
“……”
At the single name that came from his friend’s mouth, the bastard paused. The bastard who stepped back raised his head high. Yeon Cheonguk also barely suppressed his coughing and looked up. A head was sticking out of a fourth-floor window.
“Aw, I was watching something fun. Why are you stopping?”
“……”
“Hyung, really. If you called him to confirm he’s a nobody, you should do it properly, why are you holding back?”
An uninvited guest had butted in. It wasn’t difficult to deduce who the owner of the dark, thick voice was.
However, it took some time to accept the content of what followed.
“Just looking at him, he seems like someone who’s only got a mouth and will start trembling right away if hit. Get a feel for it! Just kick him in the stomach twice. Just two kicks and he’ll spill whatever you tell him to. Make him sing ‘Please stop hitting me’ as a song.”
“……”
That was his half-assed first encounter with that bastard as Yeon Cheonguk remembered it.
The four punks were confused by the uninvited guest’s words but were laughing hard. Then a crimson object fell from the sky.
“Ah…! Shit, that scared me!”
The five people on the ground quickly scattered and stood apart. The identity of the object that fell from high up was a burning comic book.
