‘……!’
He almost dropped his utensils in surprise, but pretended not to see and naturally turned his gaze away. The fact that the owner disliked his friendship with Hwang Jegu reflexively came to mind.
There was no way he’d come to the Myeongdong dumpling shop looking for Yeon Cheonguk—it must be a coincidence—but he didn’t want to create a situation where the owner would interact with him for no reason.
Did I see wrong? Did I mistake someone with a bulky build for him?
Questions followed. Yeon Cheonguk pulled his hand away from the owner’s grasp and swallowed a spoonful of dumpling soup. While expressing a firm refusal regarding the cell phone and the owner was rummaging through his bowl, he turned his eyes back to the window.
Hwang Jegu wasn’t visible in that spot from before. Maybe he’d seen wrong—there were just ordinary people.
Instead, he saw a scene of people giggling at the front window.
The moment he shifted his gaze slightly, Yeon Cheonguk barely held back a “Fuck!” exclamation.
Hwang Jegu was bending at the waist with his face pressed against the glass wall, grinning at Yeon Cheonguk’s table!
‘What is that bastard doing?’
Standing with his legs spread wide, Hwang Jegu kept flirting with someone inside the restaurant. He pointed at the cell phone placed on Yeon Cheonguk’s table, then even opened his eyes wide and gave a thumbs up. Bright light flashed on his jawline as he stuck his tongue out and laughed heartily.
‘Crazy bastard!’
He was anxious that people’s attention would be drawn and the owner would discover him. Because of his anxiety, he was spooning food more excessively, when the customers at the front table all stood up at once.
They were three women who appeared to be in their early to mid-twenties. They giggled as they stood up from their seats and pointed at the window. He heard dirty jokes like “Why’s he acting like that! Seems like he’s telling us to hurry over? You guys wore your panties properly today, right?”
‘…Ah.’
His fingertips weren’t pointing at the cell phone in front of Yeon Cheonguk but rather under the miniskirts of the front table, and the tongue flicking was a sexual appeal.
Damn it, even mistakes have their limits. The tense standoff with the owner was completely forgotten. When he put another dumpling in his mouth and looked, Hwang Jegu had already left. Along with the miniskirt group that had finished eating and stood up.
Yeon Cheonguk calmed his flushed face. He cleared his throat and wrapped up the conversation.
“Kim sunbae. I’m not going to sing for a while after today’s stage as the last one. Let’s consider the debut something that never happened. I’ll visit the agency myself next week and tell them that.”
“……”
“So I don’t need this cell phone either, and I don’t want you to go to the trouble of filming me with a digital camera and uploading it to your mini-homepage. Let’s go back to how things were before! Meeting at the shop on weekends and having fun working together.”
When he grinned, the owner also responded with a smile.
Thinking it was a place he couldn’t climb to for a while, the stage looked even more beautiful viewed from below the stairs.
If asked to choose the most beautiful thing in the world, he would answer “the stage” without hesitation. Though it was something he kept to himself since no one asked.
He loved everything about it endlessly, even the dazzling lights that illuminated the sweat, breath, and dust of those who climbed up there.
The only thing he could say he loved without hesitation—he would chase that place as a dream for life. Yeon Cheonguk silently thought so.
Thursday, the day Seolyun High’s third-year ‘handsome guy’ would take the stage in front of Migliore.
Since it was the last time, he chose the song as he pleased. Instead of the ballad he always sang, he picked a musical number.
He sang ‘One Day More’ from <Les Misérables> in a male key. Omitting the chorus and ensemble parts, keeping only the parts he could sing alone, and because the karaoke machine’s accompaniment wasn’t as rich as the original, awkward quality was unavoidable.
I did not live until today
How can I live when we are parted?
Tomorrow you’ll be worlds away
And yet with you, my world has started
But he was more excited and thrilled than ever. These were songs he used to sing holed up alone in a karaoke room. It was his first time holding a microphone and singing a musical song in front of a crowd. This was Yeon Cheonguk’s own ritual of saying a brief farewell to singing. Because it wasn’t a ballad with a clear beginning-development-turn-conclusion structure and wasn’t a familiar pop song, the response was more lukewarm than usual.
Will we ever meet again?
I was born to be with you
Yeon Cheonguk’s gaze, which had been flying over Myeongdong on his powerful, pleading vocals, stopped at one spot.
Before a shadowy presence standing among the crowd. A height that, even standing in the back corner of the last row, was tall enough to easily see Yeon Cheonguk. Fiery goosebumps spread up from Yeon Cheonguk’s toes.
The voice that went out through the microphone and speakers felt like it was entering the ears of just one audience member today.
Had he perhaps read the code written on the comic book flap? Had he immediately rented out the returned book?
Between these various thoughts, the majestic song headed toward its end. He imagined carving through all the empty space here with his voice. Yeon Cheonguk poured out everything inside him toward the summer night. A tremendous shout stretched out long toward the high-rise buildings and Seoul’s night sky.
One day more
Do I stay? And do I dare?
Admiration burst from the audience at the true voice that rose without obstruction. The overwhelming vibration that he couldn’t get when singing alone with desperate emotion… became sweat droplets forming on the nape of his neck.
He wanted to cover up the self that was about to give up the wish held in his heart with song.
My place is here, I fight with you
When the song ended, the audience sent applause with puzzled faces. The unfamiliar song they were hearing for the first time, the English lyrics, and the heavy and intense vocal style different from usual must have felt strange. Even some audience members who came to see Yeon Cheonguk were giving obligatory applause when it happened. A thunderous shout noisily shook the plaza.
“Wow- Whoo!”
Among the people Yeon Cheonguk knew, there was only one person who could be so free from concepts like tact, embarrassment, and social gaze.
“Shiiiit! Wow! Killer!”
A few who recognized the audience member in the back row putting on a one-man show with rough laughter also giggled along. Some screamed in surprise. Soon applause and cheers spread from the audience.
Yeon Cheonguk playfully struck an ending pose like a magician. Even in that moment, he had to fight the urge to lift his head and look at the back row.
Was what he just saw real? He was dumbfounded.
Yeon Cheonguk, who came down from the stage, was briefly surrounded by female students asking to take pictures with him. After pulling his cap down low and making a V sign, he deflected questions asking for his Sayclub and Cyworld IDs with a joke—”I don’t have them, I only know songs”—then escaped from Myeongdong.
The owner was waiting, standing at a distance. Fanning Yeon Cheonguk’s forehead, which was drenched in sweat from singing passionately, he pointed to the back of the department store.
“Let’s go, I’ll take you. I won’t talk about the cell phone, so get in!”
Only then did Yeon Cheonguk realize that until just moments ago, the owner hadn’t even been on his mind. He couldn’t even remember whether he’d been in the audience or not.
He felt sorry for treating him coldly at the meal, and he was also a grateful person, and since he seemed to understand what was said, he decided to go home together. The two headed to the underground parking lot through the road behind the department store, which was relatively less crowded.
There was a sign of presence at the dim entrance to the underground parking lot. Yeon Cheonguk learned that the audience member who had been standing in the back row wasn’t a hallucination.
Hwang Jegu walked out from under the shadowy darkness. Along with a smile whose meaning couldn’t be read.
His heart felt like it was dropping. If it was a coincidence, it was strange, and if it wasn’t a coincidence, wasn’t it even stranger?
Could it be that he’d come looking for Yeon Cheonguk since the gyoza dumpling restaurant earlier?
The moment he thought this, he couldn’t help but be conscious of the owner standing next to him. Yeon Cheonguk consciously avoided Hwang Jegu’s eyes and then glanced at the owner’s face.
Hwang Jegu’s face, which had been watching such a Yeon Cheonguk, was soon covered with displeasure.
It was the moment he subtly urged the owner whose expression had stiffened and passed by Hwang Jegu. Whoosh—the hot air shook and a solid arm wrapped around his neck. Below his field of vision, he could see a forearm with vivid scars.
“I’m going to kidnap you for a bit.”
