“Ha.”
Go Yoon looked at his phone with a frustrated face and soon lowered his head. Despite experiencing a major accident with casualties, he didn’t have any major visible injuries. Of course, he had bruises, but because Cha Hohyeon had hugged Go Yoon so tightly…… Go Yoon was unexpectedly fine.
And that came to him as despair.
“Liars.”
Go Yoon sat on the bed and covered his face. What Go Yoon saw as soon as he regained consciousness and woke up were the members’ faces. Lee Robi crying loudly saying he was so worried because he wouldn’t wake up even though he had almost no external injuries, and the faces of Kang Juno and Ha Moon hyung with tears welling up were so unfamiliar to him.
‘Where’s Hohyeon?’
‘Cha Hohyeon is alive.’
But the words Go Yoon uttered in a hoarse voice as soon as he opened his eyes were ‘Where’s Hohyeon?’ Because he vividly remembered Cha Hohyeon, who had smiled while firmly holding him even as the vehicle shook violently.
However, even though he heard Kang Juno’s answer that he was safe, strangely he was anxious.
Because he couldn’t easily forget the face of Cha Hohyeon crying and saying sorry in his dream, he kept asking the members, but they all answered that he was fine, and the people who came to visit also said that Hohyeon needed to rest now so he could only meet him later, so he thought that was the case since everyone said so.
On the second day after waking up like that, his condition had improved to some extent, so Go Yoon, who had now sent back his family and members, remained alone in the hospital. Since his phone was smashed in the car and he had nothing to do, Go Yoon, who was lying down listlessly, soon became drowsy because of his languid body.
But, late dawn just before falling asleep. Kang Juno suddenly came to the hospital room alone.
‘What’s going on at this hour? Didn’t you go back?’
‘……’
At the sound of the door opening, Go Yoon yawned and leaned his body against the backrest. Kang Juno, without answering Go Yoon’s words, walked toward Go Yoon and immediately gave him a phone.
‘This is my phone.’
Go Yoon took the phone and pressed the power button in bewilderment. The power turned on fine. Seeing the intact phone, Go Yoon tilted his head in wonder. Because the road manager had said it was broken because of the traffic accident.
‘Did you fix it? By the way, where are the other members, and why are you alone at this dawn……’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘What?’
At Kang Juno suddenly apologizing to him, Go Yoon somehow felt an ominous feeling. Still in the pitch-black hospital room with the lights not even turned on, Kang Juno clasped his trembling hands together and slowly continued speaking.
‘We were scared. You couldn’t wake up for several days and just barely woke up, but they said if you got shocked you might lose consciousness again, so……’
‘Hey, Kang Juno. What are you saying right now?’
Go Yoon felt too ominous. Kang Juno had an unusual feeling, and Go Yoon also realized this wasn’t something that would just pass, and his expression gradually stiffened as his body began to tremble like an aspen tree. But before Go Yoon could do anything, Kang Juno quickly knelt down and immediately shed tears. Since Kang Juno was really famous for not crying, seeing those tears, Go Yoon froze in place.
‘We wanted to deceive you as long as possible, for as long as we could.’
Go Yoon barely opened his mouth that wouldn’t open.
‘Don’t.’
‘But I can’t deceive you anymore. I’m so tormented that I feel like I’m going to die now.’
But Kang Juno didn’t listen to Go Yoon’s words. Like a broken machine, he knelt blankly and continued speaking calmly like someone trying to exclude emotion as much as possible. Seeing such a Kang Juno, Go Yoon frowned and grabbed Kang Juno’s shoulder and shook it.
‘Wait. Don’t say it, I said don’t say it.’
‘This kind of lie is too cruel…… I can’t bear it.’
‘Fuck, I said don’t say it!’
The suspicion seemed to be becoming certainty.
No, it’s not like that, right? It’s not like that. You all said Hohyeon is alive. My family, road manager hyung, the CEO, my friends all said Cha Hohyeon is alive. My dream was already so strange that I asked everyone who came in.
‘Yoon-ah.’
‘If you say one more word, I’ll kill you. Shut up, shut up.’
‘Hohyeon.’
It felt like he shouldn’t hear those words. As if the moment he heard them it would be irreversible, he shook his head and grabbed Kang Juno’s shoulder. Kang Juno swayed back and forth endlessly in Go Yoon’s hands, but soon in a terribly sad voice.
‘He’s dead.’
He stated the fact Go Yoon had been avoiding.
‘Yoon-ah, Cha Hohyeon is dead.’
Go Yoon looked at the crying Kang Juno in a daze. His hands lost strength with a thud, and his body collapsed backward. Kang Juno also, the moment he uttered the words, lost all strength as all his energy drained, and soon slid to the floor and sobbed.
Go Yoon sat blankly for a long time listening to Kang Juno’s crying. Then suddenly he jumped up from his seat and screamed, making the hospital room a complete mess.
The overturned desk, the spilled vase, even stepping on the flower petal pieces torn to shreds on the floor, Go Yoon moved faster as if unable to control his anger, destroying everything as if to sweep it all away.
Go Yoon, who had been wandering around like that for a long time, soon sat down helplessly and let out a long cry, sobbing.
Rather, Go Yoon cried as if the onlooker would suffocate. Kang Juno, who crawled over to such a Go Yoon and hugged him tightly, shed tears and murmured.
‘He’s gone from this world, but I can’t believe it. Yoon-ah, what do we do? What do we do?’
They couldn’t believe that Cha Hohyeon was dead.
* * *
[D-80]
“How can we do these lyrics on stage!”
With hands that curled up and wouldn’t straighten, the recording of the title song *<Routine>* ended. (*Routine: A term used in magic. Arranging several magic tricks in a series of processes to combine them into one performance. The delicacy of this determines the completeness of the magic performance.)
“The progress between you and me.”
“Don’t do it!!”
“……Is just a routine.”
“Nooooo!”
And this song produced incredibly cringeworthy lyrics. Seon Hobeom ended up in charge of the highlight part that was so cringeworthy that all the members avoided it, and during recording he did it shamelessly well so he thought it was okay, but when the members teased him like this, he couldn’t bear the cringe and suffered.
Ma Doun scratched his wrist vigorously next to him as if getting goosebumps just hearing that line, then saw Ka Jerim blankly looking at them from the side and hesitated before carefully opening his mouth.
“By the way…… Jerim……ah. You endured it really well.”
Actually, Ma Doun had agonized a lot before calling him ‘Jerim-ah.’ Since they hadn’t known each other long, he worried whether calling him by his given name without the surname would be rude, or whether it would upset him. But most of all, it was because calling him like that was embarrassing.
“But hyung did well too.”
As if knowing Ma Doun’s thoughts, when Jerim smiled brightly at Ma Doun and spoke, Ma Doun’s face flushed red as if it would burst.
‘Human relationships are too difficult.’
When Ma Doun, who had been ailing like that, left his seat, Onseol, who had been teasing Seon Hobeom, suddenly squeezed in and said.
“Ah, right. Ka Jerim, the lyrics you got are also really no joke.”
In fact, Jerim’s lyrics were also incredibly cringeworthy, rivaling Seon Hobeom’s lyrics. However, the person himself calmly did well, and the members watching were dying more.
Even when the members asked if he was okay, Jerim said he was really okay and just smiled as if it was nothing. Because for him, with 5 years of idol experience, this level of cringe wasn’t a problem at all—but no one there knew that.
“Entering sub-title song recording!”
Like that, they recorded all day long, and as soon as they came home after barely finishing recording, they collapsed.
Later, Seon Hobeom revealed on a variety show that the shock from that day’s recording was so great that he had a dream where he got hit by each member in turn every time he couldn’t say the cringeworthy lyrics.
.
.
[D-70]
The choreography for the sub-title song was relatively easy, but the problem was the title song’s choreography. On the day the Abyss members first saw the title song’s choreography, they couldn’t close their gaping mouths.
Because the opening itself was bizarre. Fire suddenly came out of the hand of the dancer opening the performance, then turned into a flower, the flower into dollars, and the dollars had somehow turned into cards.
The Abyss members made incredulous expressions asking if they really had to do that, but the two dancers standing in back didn’t care about those words and performed the choreography. The two dancers danced with handcuffs on only one hand, and it just looked like they were dancing without magic.
So the moment the members let their guard down.
Click—
In an instant, the handcuffs were entangled with each other.
For the members who didn’t see the scene of the handcuffs getting entangled, it was absurd. Of course, the two handcuffs overlapping and stretching out long was also bewildering, but when they danced an intense dance while bound, they now stared at the dancers with dumbfounded faces.
“No, how are we supposed to do that?”
The choreography was incredibly flashy. Even though they were close together because of the handcuffs, the Abyss members watched the choreography with troubled faces as they quickly found the empty spaces in between and performed high-difficulty choreography.
‘Is this choreography or a magic show?’
Just then, a person who seemed to be in rapper Park Eden’s position appeared making rapping motions across the stage. When he opened his hand, a rose appeared. Whoo— When he blew on it, the petals flew and a card was suddenly held in his hand. Park Eden, who had been watching with an expressionless face until now, let out a hollow laugh with a face that had given up thinking.
