“Look at us for once.”
Why do you only chase after Cha Hohyeon?
At Kang Juno’s desperate voice, Go Yoon barely managed to raise his head and meet Kang Juno’s eyes, but couldn’t bring himself to speak. Kang Juno’s eyes were filled with indescribable sadness, despair, and above all, resentment.
“I’m begging you like this, I’ll beg for your emotions. Please look at us who are dying.”
Tears fell from Kang Juno’s eyes. After Cha Hohyeon’s death, Kang Juno revealed the inner feelings he had been hiding deep in his heart all this time.
“I still vividly remember the day you sat in that hospital room like a dead person.”
The day when he first lied to Go Yoon that Cha Hohyeon was alive, then could no longer deceive him and finally told him of his death—the day Go Yoon cried as if the world was collapsing.
“I was grateful that you resented us. You really looked like you were going to die soon.”
“……”
“But you know what? We were really struggling too. It’s just that you seemed to be having the hardest time, so we pretended to be okay because we didn’t want to burden you anymore. Actually, we weren’t okay at all, and we’re still not okay now.”
Tears mixed with various emotions thickly flowed down Kang Juno’s cheeks, and seeing this, Go Yoon could only stare blankly at Kang Juno, not knowing what expression to make. Kang Juno’s tears flowed and flowed, running down his chin and dripping, soaking his clothes.
“Whenever you keep creating secrets and doing incomprehensible actions like this, I’m so scared.”
“……”
“Yoon-ah, I’m so scared I feel like I’m going crazy.”
Kang Juno was so scared.
Actually, he knew that Go Yoon had been slightly strange from before, that he was doing things he normally wouldn’t do, but he thought it was part of the aftereffects. But the behavior Go Yoon showed today had too many problems to be dismissed as simply peculiar behavior.
“Even though I’m playing the role of a pillar in this team……”
Kang Juno’s voice was calm. If you didn’t look at Kang Juno’s face, which showed no crying in his voice, anyone would not know he was crying. Kang Juno just continued speaking calmly while shedding tears like someone who didn’t know how to cry, and watching him, Go Yoon’s heart was breaking.
“……I was only twenty-three too.”
When Cha Hohyeon died, Kang Juno was only twenty-three. Even so, he held back, worried that if he showed himself breaking down, the members would have a hard time. Let it out. Put it down now. Even when his inner heart pleaded that he would break down at this rate, Kang Juno hid, concealed, and suppressed such feelings. That way, Kang Juno’s heart slowly rotted inside, and Go Yoon realized this fact far too late.
“To experience things like this, I’m still young too……”
“……”
“And yet you always turned your back on me. You know what? We cried behind your back even when we were struggling, pretending to be okay in front of you because we were afraid you’d have a harder time if you knew we were hurting too. You were the only one who didn’t know.”
The members all cried in hiding for Go Yoon’s sake.
At this fact, Go Yoon felt great remorse, but in one corner of his heart, resentment welled up about why they hadn’t told him until now. But Go Yoon was about to say why didn’t you tell me, when he realized something and had no choice but to close his mouth.
‘What right do I have?’
He was the one who kept his mouth shut until the end even in front of Kang Juno, who pressed him asking why he didn’t speak up no matter what happened. Such a person had no right to press the members about why they hid the fact that they were struggling.
‘What should I do?’
Go Yoon looked blankly at the medicine in front of him with a confused face. Then, noticing that Lee Robi’s pill bottles were particularly numerous, he slowly reached out and grabbed Lee Robi’s pill bottle, and realizing that Lee Robi’s pill bottles were more depleted and more numerous compared to other members, he slowly opened his mouth.
“Why is Robi’s medicine like this……”
“Why does Robi have the most medicine and why is it the most depleted?”
When Kang Juno asked back at Go Yoon’s question, Go Yoon nodded. He couldn’t understand. Among the current members, the people who smiled most brightly were Lee Robi and Moon Hamoon.
Among them, Lee Robi especially brought vitality to the team with his consistently playful appearance, playing around almost every day, so Go Yoon was puzzled by the fact that such a Lee Robi took the most medicine among the members. Toward such a Go Yoon, Kang Juno slowly continued his story.
“Robi has depression, panic disorder, and camera phobia.”
“That can’t be……”
“His insomnia is so severe that he can’t sleep without medicine. The camera phobia and panic disorder…… I think it was caused by being thoroughly photographed by reporters at the funeral last time and having reporters stick to him.”
Recently, Lee Robi developed symptoms of trembling hands whenever he stood in front of cameras. Especially when flashes went off, he showed serious signs like gasping for breath as if he was about to burst into tears.
Actually, these symptoms of Lee Robi’s didn’t worsen immediately after Cha Hohyeon’s death. After articles came out with reporters secretly following and photographing their every move before they could even come to terms with Cha Hohyeon’s death, the doctor’s opinion was that the camera phobia and panic disorder seemed to worsen day by day.
“He says he’s scared of people. He says if he stands still, they’ll rush at him and beat him to death with cameras.”
“……”
“A celebrity who has to be photographed in front of many people for life developing camera phobia and even panic disorder. What could be more absurd than this?”
“Right now……”
“He’s still struggling a lot now. But the idiot absolutely never says he’s in pain. Especially not to you.”
“……”
“Do you resent why he didn’t tell you?”
At those words, Go Yoon couldn’t manage his expression at all and stared blankly at Kang Juno, and reading the emotion in Go Yoon’s eyes, Kang Juno laughed helplessly.
“Remember clearly what you’re feeling right now. Because that’s the emotion we feel toward you.”
It hit the mark. At those words, Go Yoon couldn’t make any rebuttal and squeezed his eyes shut. The apology, resentment, and sadness the members must have felt watching him try to hide everything hit him all at once. With those words as his last, Kang Juno stood up as if to leave the room.
But just as Kang Juno was about to leave, Go Yoon squeezed his eyes shut and grabbed the hem of Kang Juno’s pants.
“Why. Do you have more to say?”
The moment he met the eyes of Kang Juno looking down at him silently, Go Yoon pushed down the hesitation he’d had all this time. If he let Kang Juno go here, if he didn’t say it, he felt like he’d regret it for life.
‘Hohyeon-ah. I’m sorry.’
Go Yoon took a deep breath. Kang Juno waited toward Go Yoon, whose nervousness was evident. Go Yoon slowly began to speak.
“Remember that favor I asked? To believe me later when you hear something that doesn’t make sense.”
“……Yeah, I remember.”
Go Yoon silently stared at Kang Juno’s face. It wouldn’t be easy. Since he was Go Yoon who had doubted himself several times despite seeing all the evidence and circumstances, he knew all too well that Kang Juno wouldn’t believe him without any evidence, that it wouldn’t be easy.
Perhaps he would regret this decision. But he could no longer just watch Kang Juno, and the members, who looked fine on the outside but were rotting from the inside.
“Hohyeon.”
Vowing that whatever damage resulted from this decision, he would bear it himself, Go Yoon clasped his trembling hands together out of fear and apologized to Hohyeon.
Hohyeon-ah, I’m sorry. You said you’d tell the members yourself, but I couldn’t wait.
But you know, Hohyeon-ah. Just as you are precious to me, and I am to you.
“He’s alive.”
We are all Fort, precious to each other.
“What I’m about to say will be very hard to believe.”
Just turn a blind eye this once.
Please.
* * *
Since that day, there had been no contact from Yoon hyung.
I was worried that something might have happened to hyung since the call ended like that, but I couldn’t rashly contact him first for fear that something like that day would happen again if I called.
In the end, I had no choice but to carry the worry and anxiety about hyung while pushing forward for the comeback that was soon approaching.
Click—
I closed the laptop and stared for a long time at the phone screen that once again had no contact from hyung today, then let out a deep sigh.
“Actually, this isn’t the time to be thinking about this……”
I muttered while staring at the yellow post-it note stuck on the studio desk.
[1 track / Title song concept setting / Lyrics / Arrangement]
There were plenty of things to do, but I felt bad because it seemed like I hadn’t done any of them properly. So far, I had produced a total of three songs and just finished working on the fourth song, but the problem was that there wasn’t a single song among them that I liked.
“Is it a slump?”
Strangely, the songs I used to create as Cha Hohyeon weren’t coming out.
I am Cha Hohyeon, but strangely when I kept working, the songs flowed in a direction I didn’t want. My head screamed that I didn’t want to make this kind of song, but in the end, the result turned out to be ‘this kind of song.’
“Or is it because of Ka Jerim?”
The new songs I was writing this time weren’t in the style of songs Cha Hohyeon would originally make. It felt eerie because it was as if I kept writing songs that Ka Jerim would have written when he was alive. This fact was so creepy that I scrapped the songs several times, but I kept making songs that seemed like Ka Jerim would make. I looked at my hands with resentful eyes, then held my head.
“What do I do? The title song meeting is tomorrow.”
Of course, it’s not that Ka Jerim’s style songs are bad. Just looking at Ka Jerim’s self-composed playlist, the songs were really good, but increasingly it felt like Cha Hohyeon—like I was disappearing, and that was really hard to bear. When I wrote <Poison Cup>, maybe because I used an already written song, it was okay. But now, why is this happening?
