“Hyung.”
“What a spectacular sleep talk. What are you doing? Go sleep in your room.”
Seon Hobeom, flustered by the crying, tried to get angry, but frowned at his own voice that came out grumbling in bewilderment. Anyway, why won’t this damn wrist let go?
After struggling for a while, he barely freed his wrist and was about to get up. But soon, Seon Hobeom froze because Ka Jerim suddenly pulled him in and hugged him.
“Juno hyung, I missed you so much……”
Ka Jerim desperately hugged his neck while crying. At that, Seon Hobeom hesitated while on his knees, but since he didn’t want to have such intimate skinship with someone he disliked, he tried to push Ka Jerim away. However, when Ka Jerim suddenly touched his head, he couldn’t push him away forcefully.
He couldn’t understand a single word of what was being said. But Ka Jerim muttered for a long time in a very sorrowful and regretful voice, and Seon Hobeom silently offered his neck to him.
‘I fucking hate this bastard.’
But when someone hugs you so pitifully like this, who could push them away?
He hated the smell of sweat, hated crying kids, hated bothersome skinship, and hated Ka Jerim who was hugging him now. So if it were his normal personality, he would have already pushed Ka Jerim away, but somehow the current situation was confusing. After pondering, Seon Hobeom carefully lifted the drooping Ka Jerim.
“He’s fucking light. What kind of weight is this for a guy?”
While grumbling, Seon Hobeom silently headed to his room.
“The clothes will probably be big.”
After Seon Hobeom laid Ka Jerim down on his bed, he hurriedly looked for clothes. There were only big clothes, so they would probably be too big for the small-framed Ka Jerim. He found a sweatshirt that looked relatively small and set it down, and when Seon Hobeom took off Ka Jerim’s T-shirt, he immediately froze.
“Why is he so skinny? Isn’t this malnutrition?”
Ka Jerim was so skinny that it was questionable how he could dance and sing with such a body, whether he even had the stamina for it. But there was something that caught his attention more than that.
‘He even tried to attempt suicide in the practice room-‘
His friend’s voice clung to his ears like tinnitus. When he heard that story, honestly, he wondered what crazy bastard would attempt suicide in a practice room. But seeing the bright red line drawn at the boundary between Ka Jerim’s neck and head, Seon Hobeom’s expression gradually hardened as he thought the rumor might be true.
“Fuck.”
It was a red mark as if his neck had been strangled by something, and it looked painful just looking at it, a wound that must have been quite agonizing at the time. As soon as he saw it, Seon Hobeom threw down the sweatshirt he was holding onto the floor and immediately left the room.
And shortly after, he came back with a bunch of assorted band-aids, a dry towel, and a wet towel, and hurriedly turned on the room light. When he turned on the light, he put down the band-aids he was holding while frowning deeply at Ka Jerim’s scar that became even more visible.
“What the hell kind of band-aids does that bastard Ma Doun have?”
Spitting out curses mixed with informal speech at Ma Doun who was older than him, Seon Hobeom spread out the band-aids he had brought from Ma Doun’s room. Then, holding the wet towel, he looked at Ka Jerim sleeping on the bed with a more comfortable face than before and let out a hollow laugh.
“Ha, what the fuck am I doing at this dawn? The day has come when I’m nursing someone I hate.”
Unlike his grumbling, Seon Hobeom’s hands swiftly wiped Ka Jerim’s body with the wet towel. He didn’t wipe Ka Jerim’s body with delicate touches, so when Ka Jerim groaned as if in pain, he immediately stopped wiping and cursed.
“Ah, I got it.”
Only then did his rough touch become much more delicate. After wiping his upper body and back for a while, when he reached the neck area, Seon Hobeom finally stopped his quickly moving hand.
‘It’ll hurt if I scrub it.’
It would hurt if he scrubbed it with the towel. But if he let him sleep all sweaty like that, it would be worse……
While debating whether to wipe it or not, as if he couldn’t delay any longer, he carefully wiped only around the wound, being careful not to touch the injury itself. Because Ka Jerim flinched at even the slightest roughness, Seon Hobeom also put his heart and soul into it, and before he knew it, sweat was beading on his forehead.
“Just for today. Got it?”
Even though there was obviously no way to hear an answer from the sleeping person, Seon Hobeom spoke to Ka Jerim as if confirming to himself. Blowing on the ointment-applied neck was embarrassing, and while roughly fanning with his hand, he looked at the clock and it was already 4 AM. It was soon time to go for his morning jog.
“I won’t be able to sleep at all.”
As he fanned while dozing off, the shininess of the ointment decreased. Thinking this was enough, he tried to wrap the neck scar with band-aids but ran into difficulty again. Because it happened to be an assorted band-aid pack, the sizes were generally small and really varied.
Eventually, when he mixed and stuck various band-aids, Ka Jerim’s neck looked quite ridiculous. Like children had played a prank.
Seon Hobeom, who let out a bitter laugh as if absurd at what he had done, put the sweatshirt he had taken out earlier on Ka Jerim and looked at the clock. The clock was already pointing to 4:30.
“Jogging at 6:30, is this for real…… This is fucking overkill.”
With a tired face, Seon Hobeom quickly went to the bathroom, showered in 5 minutes, came out, and checked Ka Jerim’s face. Ka Jerim, who had kicked off the blanket and was sleeping, had a much more peaceful face than before, and seeing that face somehow brought a sense of relief.
Like that, Seon Hobeom, who had been staring intently at Ka Jerim breathing evenly, covered him with a blanket.
“It’s hard.”
Leaving his own bed behind, he lay his back on the mattress, but while grumbling continuously, he still properly covered himself with a blanket.
‘I should at least sleep for two hours.’
The feel of the hard mattress wasn’t very familiar, but there was nothing he could do about it.
Like that, Ka Jerim and Seon Hobeom’s first night passed.
* * *
Why am I sleeping here?
Opening my eyes on the bed, I was startled and rolled off the bed. I hurriedly looked around, but there was no one in the room and only traces of someone having laid on the mattress remained.
“That’s strange. I slept on the sofa.”
While tilting my head in puzzlement, I soon stretched fully. I was surprised that my body felt dry and fluffy today, and somehow my mood was good and my condition was good too.
Usually when I woke up from sleep, my whole body would be drenched in sweat and felt unpleasant, but today was different. While thinking such thoughts, I lowered my head.
“This isn’t my clothes?!”
Seeing the unfamiliar navy sweatshirt, I was flustered. However, the unfamiliar clothes were bewildering, but more than anything, because of my neck where the rope marks were still vivid, I couldn’t wear clothes with exposed necklines like sweatshirts, so I hurriedly covered my neck with my hands and looked around.
No one saw it, right?
I hurriedly got up from my seat and quickly headed to the full-length mirror in the room. And standing in front of the mirror, I discovered something strange on my neck, opened my eyes wide, and made a stupid expression.
“……Huh?”
Because Pororo stickers were crookedly plastered all over my neck.
[Director Gye’s Profile 3]
Name: Seon Hobeom (looks like he has a shitty personality)
Age: 19
Height: 180.00 (even the decimal point has a shitty personality)
Points to note: Originally in the rap position but switched to vocal. Has trauma about rap, so don’t bring it up. Hobeom enjoys self-dyeing his hair, so absolutely must not nag him about it.
Anecdote: In the old early trainee days, when we said something because he dyed his hair so much, the next day he shaved all his hair and came to the practice room bald. Anyway, since then no one tells him not to dye his hair.
One-liner evaluation: Crazier than you think.
Episode 4
After finishing jogging and returning, Seon Hobeom came back to the dorm, dragging his unpleasant body wet with sweat.
‘I have to go to the agency for the meeting.’
Today was finally the day to decide the group’s concept and determine the group name. Since there wasn’t much time left until the meeting, Seon Hobeom entered his room thinking he should slowly get ready to go to the agency too.
“I’m tired.”
He didn’t sleep much today, and the hard mattress was such an uncomfortable sleeping place that he was really tired. Seon Hobeom, who barely managed to shower after forcing his eyes open that were trying to close, was drying his hair when he tilted his head.
[Thank you.]
A neat square memo on his bed. After picking it up and reading it, he shrugged his shoulders and put the note back down.
The handwriting is really neat. While Seon Hobeom was thinking that, the corners of his mouth had already slightly risen without him knowing.
* * *
I had to go to the agency earlier than the concept meeting time to renew my contract. When I sharply questioned the conditions of the contract point by point in front of Director Gye and the O-All Entertainment CEO I was seeing for the first time, Director Gye was quite flustered. And when the discussion was coming to an end, Director Gye said he would go separately to my parents to get their consent.
‘Usually they come together to sign the contract. Seeing them come out like this, the agency must also know that my relationship with them isn’t good.’
He said it so naturally that I couldn’t ask either and just nodded my head.
Like that, as soon as Director Gye came out the door, he repeatedly asked, “But how do you even know to question such things?”, but I just smiled silently. Even if I look like this, I’ve spent more than 5 years in the entertainment industry, so this level of knowledge is natural. Then, he, who had been looking at me suspiciously, suddenly opened his mouth as if remembering something.
“Right. Doun happens to be in the conference room!”
“What?”
“That worked out well~ Take this chance to say hello! You haven’t greeted him yet, right?”
Including Onseol, Park Eden, Seon Hobeom, and Ma Doun, a person I haven’t met yet, and me, there are a total of five members.
