In the end, I could only hold my head and let out a long sigh at the sight of myself still stuck in this unrealistic situation despite everything.
“No, I did say I didn’t want to die, but why did I end up in this direction—”
How many people would believe this absurd truth? Just moments ago, I was in a different body, and that body is apparently having its funeral right now. If I were to tell the members about this?
“I’d end up in a mental hospital.”
It would already be strange enough for a dead person to come back to life, but that dead person entered someone else’s body. Even I can’t believe it, so who else could?
With a gloomy face, I shuffled my scrawny body and left the bathroom. The small studio apartment had nothing much to see—just a crackling TV, a desk, a wardrobe, a chair, things like a yoga mat, and shabby clothes.
Rolling my eyes around, I plopped down in front of the TV that was still broadcasting my funeral live and stared at it blankly.
It was an old, worn-out machine, but fortunately it captured the news well. However, whenever the TV flickered and briefly turned to a black screen, seeing this appearance felt unfamiliar.
In the black screen, I—no, this body—had a rope around the neck that hadn’t been properly untied yet, and was watching TV with an incredibly exhausted face. Unable to adapt at all, I hurriedly focused on the TV like someone escaping from reality.
“Oh, Juno hyung?”
That’s when I saw a familiar face on the screen.
Juno hyung with orange hair and glasses.
The only member who also did acting, he had dyed his hair orange for a delinquent role this time, and it suited him perfectly like rice cake.
“With that build, he’d be perfect not as a high school delinquent, but as a gangster.”
Seeing the hyungs makes me laugh.
As Fort’s maknae, I loved my hyungs so, so much.
That’s why the moment I saw Juno hyung, I forgot about the situation and grinned stupidly, but then gradually hardened my expression at the camera’s close-up of Juno hyung. Although I couldn’t see hyung’s expression properly behind his glasses, he looked especially incredibly angry today. Come to think of it, hyung doesn’t usually wear glasses—he must have worn them to hide that fierce face.
Leader Kang Juno, Juno hyung.
A dignified leader who always silently protected the group and a hyung I wanted to emulate.
Of course, everyone worried a lot because once he got angry, his personality was such that he got frighteningly angry to an uncontrollable degree, but I think there was no one who gave as much for the group as hyung did.
But right now, hyung seemed very angry but appeared to be holding back his anger because it was my funeral.
“By the way, isn’t our Robi hyung crying too much?”
Behind him was Lee Robi, Robi hyung, a tall figure with blonde hair sticking out from under a black beanie that couldn’t quite hide it. I laughed at how he couldn’t hide his superior physique like Juno hyung’s and stood out prominently among the reporters, but then I closed my mouth when I belatedly noticed that hyung’s face was all swollen.
Well… there’s no way he’d be okay. How much hyung loved me.
“Now who’s going to teach hyung Korean? This is serious.”
I always helped him. Memories of studying Korean together with our heads close came flooding back to me.
While thinking this and watching, I saw the red hair of Moon Hamoon, Ha Moon, hyung behind him, consoling the crying Robi hyung while crying just as much.
Actually, Ha Moon hyung’s personality was no joke either. The first thing that comes to mind is when he said he was going to get a tattoo right before debut, and despite the agency staff trying to stop him, he lay down on the practice room floor, closed his eyes, and stubbornly held his ground as if to ignore them.
So originally, if they went by age order for the leader, Ha Moon hyung should have done it, but there’s an anecdote about how it changed to Juno hyung because they said the group would be ruined that way. However, Ha Moon hyung completely changed as a person, perhaps due to the growing love from fans and the deepening affection among members.
“Geez, but what do you do when the person consoling cries even more.”
Now there were even rumors going around that he was aiming for my position—that’s how much his aegyo had increased, and he was a total fan fool. Knowing Ha Moon hyung who appeared stiff and sharp but had a soft inside, I couldn’t dare fathom how upset he must be.
“Yoon hyung… didn’t come.”
At least it’s fortunate that only I died. From what I heard earlier, they said Yoon hyung and Manager hyung didn’t have any major life-threatening issues. I believed without doubt that those two would soon get up and dust themselves off.
“What do I do now.”
Actually, there were many things I still wanted to do as Cha Hohyeon, but I didn’t have that many lingering attachments.
Because I had already achieved everything I wanted to achieve.
It’s okay because I received far too much love that I could never repay in a lifetime over those 5 years. However, I absolutely can’t bear to watch others suffer like that because of me.
Cha Hohyeon. If you were going to die, you should have left the group first before dying, or died quietly. If you leave so noisily like that, what about the people left behind? To the very end, I’m giving the hyungs work to do.
A funeral should be a sad and quiet space, but with the reporters packed full wanting to cover it and their persistent interview requests to get even a single comment, the hyungs couldn’t even quietly mourn me.
I felt so sorry about that I squeezed my eyes shut.
I’m sorry.
The thought I had been entertaining, ‘Maybe I could visit the hyungs at least once?’ was completely erased. Along with the thought that ‘the dead should remain as the dead,’ I struggled to turn off the TV power button.
* * *
“Those reporter bastards.”
Fort’s members came into the bathroom as if fleeing. Locking the door because it seemed like they might follow them even into the bathroom, they stared blankly at the door. Beyond the translucent door, the cameras were still pointed at them.
The top idol group. And the ill-fated idol group that was scheduled to receive this year’s Best Artist Award.
They felt miserable knowing all too well that whatever article was written about them would be sensational and draw issues from the public.
Thud—
As soon as Kang Juno entered the bathroom, he roughly threw the glasses he was wearing onto the floor, and the glasses slid under the sink with a sharp noise against the floor.
“Right to know? Fucking hell.”
Kang Juno’s face was already beyond cold and filled with anger toward the reporters. It was because the reporters had set up camp at the entrance of the funeral hall, making it difficult to even properly enter.
“Juno-ya…”
“Why do we have to show people how we’re crying and suffering? How is that a right to know? Shouldn’t we then have the right to be protected?”
Kang Juno didn’t have the confidence to properly say goodbye to Cha Hohyeon with this shitty feeling right now. That’s why he came into the bathroom to calm down even a little, but he cursed again at the murmuring sounds still coming from outside the bathroom.
“…Huh.”
Lee Robi kept crying as they headed toward the place where Cha Hohyeon’s funeral was being held. Originally, Lee Robi was the type who held back tears well and endured well, but today he cried ceaselessly as if pouring out all the tears he’d cry in a lifetime.
Among the group members, the first one he became close with was Cha Hohyeon, and it was also Cha Hohyeon who caught him when he was wandering a lot after coming to an unfamiliar foreign country. So for him, Cha Hohyeon, though younger than himself, was more like a hyung—a younger brother he could trust and rely on, and a precious colleague. To such Lee Robi, Cha Hohyeon’s sudden death felt as if the world had collapsed.
“Robi-ya, stop crying.”
“Hyung, Ha Moon hyung. What about Hohyeon? Our Hohyeon…”
Next to him, Moon Hamoon awkwardly consoled Lee Robi but eventually squeezed his eyes shut, seemingly unable to handle it himself. As the oldest hyung, he shouldn’t collapse, but he keeps wanting to collapse. If Hohyeon had been here at a time like this, he would surely have smiled and lightened the mood, at times like this Hohyeon would…
Moon Hamoon finally realized after a series of thoughts.
Right, Hohyeon isn’t here anymore.
“Robi-ya, it hurts when your eyes swell up, doesn’t it? Hm?”
Lee Robi, who was crying without rest, was breathing rapidly as if about to faint, so Moon Hamoon was restless, feeling like they might have a series of deaths at this rate. Watching that from behind, Kang Juno covered his face with his hands as if he couldn’t watch any more.
Kang Juno had bitten down and held back tears again and again until the moment he came here today because if he cried here, it would be like acknowledging Cha Hohyeon’s death.
Cha Hohyeon is dead?
When Kang Juno first heard that news, he said firmly:
‘There’s no way our Hohyeon is dead.’
It was something he had never even thought about or imagined in the first place.
And it was the same for the rest of the members—they all denied that story and headed to the hospital saying there was no way, continuously. They had been coming to the award ceremony venue just fine until moments ago, so when they were suddenly told he died, they even wondered if it might be a hidden camera prank. That’s because the road manager who delivered the accident news had collected all their phones, citing the reason of maintaining the members’ condition.
They just thought the hidden camera was overdoing it.
But when they actually arrived and saw Go Yoon and Manager hyung in terrible condition, they gradually realized the reality.
Cha Hohyeon is dead.
That it was a fact that wouldn’t change no matter what.
The moment he learned that his death was real, his heart sank with a thud and his hands began to tremble. He begged to at least see his face, but everyone stopped him, saying that since they weren’t family, and seeing Cha Hohyeon’s ruined corpse would be hard to handle and would cause trauma.
Like that, the members were pushed into Go Yoon’s hospital room and sat there blankly for a while, as if denying the unbelievable reality.
The first one to come to his senses was Lee Robi, who grabbed Go Yoon’s hand as he lay in terrible condition and cried, saying they couldn’t lose Yoon too. Belatedly, Moon Hamoon staggered up from his seat saying he would go see Manager hyung, and Kang Juno couldn’t do anything and just stared blankly into space.
