***
The competition was set to start at 1 PM. Today, fairly thick rain was pouring down.
Even as he left the house, his mind was complicated and troubled. What were his parents doing? Had Hwang Jegu been expelled?
Since he’d been absent on Friday too, if Yeon Cheonguk’s calculations were right, yesterday had been the last day.
On the way to the subway station with an umbrella, someone wavered beyond the umbrella. Wine-colored rain boots, a knee-length skirt. It was an outfit he knew all too well.
“Cheonguk-ah. Cheonguk-ah.”
It was his mother. Right, it was about time for this. It was about time for his parents to hear through the watchful eyes of the neighbors and his homeroom teacher about where Yeon Cheonguk was temporarily staying.
Though he’d left with plenty of time before the competition started, it would be troublesome to have his time taken away. His mother folded her umbrella and entered Yeon Cheonguk’s embrace with a hug.
“I’m glad, you seem to be doing well…”
He tilted the umbrella toward his mother to cover her. His mother’s eyes welled up with tears as she choked up.
“Your father… hasn’t come out of his room for days. After you left home like that, he hasn’t touched food and just drinks… I don’t know where he got it from… he brought pesticide and says he’s going to drink it…”
“……”
“Can’t you come home?”
Yeon Cheonguk silently hid his anguished expression. After biting his jaw to hide the pain, he took his mother and headed home.
The old communal entrance he was seeing after several days now felt like someone else’s home. His father, as his mother had said, was lying inside the firmly closed bedroom door. The smell of alcohol and foul body odor vibrated through the air.
He would never be able to perfectly understand the feelings of a father who lost his position as company president overnight due to bankruptcy and had been wandering from job to job. That didn’t mean he couldn’t empathize. Yeon Cheonguk also felt his heart crumble every time he saw his father, and it was painful enough to want to turn away from reality.
Seeing his father’s collapsed state, a myriad of emotions crossed through him. Yeon Cheonguk knelt beside the blanket and opened his mouth.
“What did you fail at so badly?”
It wasn’t sarcasm with an edge, but sincere. The words he just spat out were Yeon Cheonguk’s honest feelings as they were.
“Where would you find a wife who takes care of a failed life like this, and where would you find a son who suffers for you?”
“……”
“I know it was hard.”
“……”
“I was wrong. I’m sorry. I’m sorry for not understanding even though I knew it was hard. Don’t… don’t push yourself too hard…”
A small spark of life briefly formed in his father’s hazy eyes. It might have been tears. Yeon Cheonguk gulped down his wet throat, then spoke in a firm tone.
“But I can’t live out the difficult parts of your life for you. I have my own portion to live.”
“……”
“Yes. Meeting with that bastard Hwang Jegu and hanging out with him. Jumping into the fire to save his grandfather. That was me.”
Even if I tried not to get involved, it was useless. When I came to my senses, that was the most fun place in the world where I could sing most comfortably. He swallowed all the various detailed words inside.
“So does that mean I failed? No. Since I can remember from childhood, I’ve been a failure to you. There’s no need to use Hwang Jegu as an excuse, as if I wasn’t originally a failure.”
A cough mixed with his hoarse voice. He cleared his throat and put strength back into his voice.
“But from now on, I’m going to live my own life too. No matter how much I think about it, I don’t think I’m quite a failure. Don’t stay submerged in depression either, Father. Even someone like me is trying to work hard.”
He didn’t know how his father took Yeon Cheonguk’s words. Just as the flame Hwang Jegu possessed breathed a spark into Yeon Cheonguk’s lethargy, he didn’t know if there would be a change. It might have been an illusion that something sparkled in his father’s hollow eyes.
But Yeon Cheonguk thought he had done enough of what he needed to do.
“I have a public competition today, so I’ll be going now. I’ll get a separate room and stay there. You don’t need to worry about taking care of me.”
After a few seconds of silence, Yeon Cheonguk got up from his seat. He smiled at his mother who had followed him out with a worried face, then opened his umbrella.
“I’ll call you.”
“Cheonguk-ah.”
“He got expelled.”
“……”
“Did you know?”
Beyond the umbrella, a few trumpet creeper flowers were blooming on the rain-soaked wall. Yeon Cheonguk, who had been blankly staring at the flowers precariously nodding their heads, answered.
“Yes.”
The competition venue was the special stage at Peace Plaza in World Cup Park. Yeon Cheonguk, who had boarded the bus, vigorously shook out his wet hair. He was late for the time he’d arranged to meet with the agency’s director. His father’s hazy eyes, like a living corpse, filled his head.
Inside the endlessly swaying bus, Yeon Cheonguk looked at the floor with unfocused eyes.
— If I get expelled, grandpa will really die, he’s making a huge fuss.
— I can’t, I have to graduate. What would I do with just middle school? Even a worn-out thug bastard like me is suffering like hell to get a high school diploma.
The words Hwang Jegu had said wouldn’t leave his ears.
Yesterday, Hwang Jegu, who had been waiting for Yeon Cheonguk in front of the room where he was temporarily staying, must have already known.
What on earth had happened? What on earth?
He was seized by the urge to get off the bus right away and make a pay phone call. However, what trampled that urge was also his voice.
— You singing properly is what keeps me from being sad. Go and win the grand prize.
It meant that Yeon Cheonguk being shaken because of Hwang Jegu and ruining the singing competition would become another misfortune and sadness for him. Words too heavy to ask why. It felt like he would regret it if he didn’t follow those words.
So he didn’t press the stop button. What Yeon Cheonguk needed to do was push forward through the summer rain.
As he walked to the tent next to the special stage, someone hurriedly ran over with an umbrella.
“Hey, you…! Are you in your right mind?”
He looked up at the sudden profanity. As expected, it was the agency director who had been waiting for Yeon Cheonguk. The rain had intensified and the audience seats were almost completely empty. Still, the competition continued. A participant was singing passionately in front of the ‘Battle Singer King Selection Competition’ banner.
“Fuck… what kind of singer can you be with that attitude?”
Yeon Cheonguk, who had been silently looking over the director who was exploding in anger like he had a split personality, passed him by.
“Look at that expression? You right now…”
“I’m going in.”
“What? You… you…!”
The director, who had changed as if he were the superior since they’d given him a contract, couldn’t contain his anger and rolled his eyes. He hadn’t even noticed that Yeon Cheonguk’s throat condition wasn’t good because of a cold. Yeon Cheonguk shook off the director who grabbed his shoulder. Then he strode toward the tent where the staff were gathered.
He asked the host staff to show him the cue sheet. The song registered for Yeon Cheonguk’s turn was Boohwal’s <Never Ending Story>. They had registered it as the vocal lesson song without a single word of consultation with Yeon Cheonguk. Yeon Cheonguk was planning to sing a different song today. He had just decided on the way here. There was a song he absolutely had to sing today.
“I want to change my entry song.”
“What?”
Even though the staff member let out deep sighs with an annoyed face and gave him looks, Yeon Cheonguk didn’t back down. His skill at secretly spacing out was a big help at times like this. Instead of reading the other person’s mood, he spaced out and spoke mechanically.
“I’ll tell you the title. I dreamed a dream.”
Yeon Cheonguk’s turn was next. He understood why the director was angry to the top of his head. But he didn’t regret meeting his father and saying everything he wanted to say refreshingly. Yeon Cheonguk threw down his umbrella and climbed the stairs.
“Entry number 15, Yeon Cheonguk. Third-year high school student. The entry song is <I dreamed a dream>, an insert song from the musical ‘Les Misérables’.”
Fierce rain poured down onto the audience seats. Raindrops also dripped down Yeon Cheonguk’s forehead and eyes.
I dreamed a dream in time gone by,
When hope was high and life worth living
I dream that love will never die
I dreamed that god would be forgiving
Long ago, I dreamed a dream
When there was hope and life was worth living
Back then I dreamed that love wouldn’t wither
I dreamed that God would be merciful
His voice roughly split and gathered as it carried the notes. The rain was connecting Yeon Cheonguk’s heart with some distant space. Hot waves became rain and called out to Yeon Cheonguk.
Like a whisper guiding the way, it led Yeon Cheonguk’s heart.
In a distant place was Yeon Cheonguk’s youth. It was a vivid, deep wave.
Still burning alive despite the guilt his father had planted. Rising up again innocently even when dismissed by many adults. Flowing out while embracing even Hwang Jegu’s reality with his broken wingtips.
But the tigers come at night
With their voices soft as thunder
As they tear your hopes apart
As they turn your dreams to shame
But hardship approaches in the middle of the night
Its voice soft as thunder
But it tears your hope to shreds
And turns your dreams into shame
As he approached the high note part, his cracked voice also grew uncontrollably louder. His forehead and bridge of his nose contorted as he pushed out the sound. The singing that burst forth freely pierced through the air covered by heavy rain and spread out vigorously.
His chest opened wide to the ends of the sky in the pouring rain. Riding the rain that fiercely beat against his face, Yeon Cheonguk’s song connected with the sky.
Yeon Cheonguk sang. In a place where thoughts, time, and sensations couldn’t enter—if there was someone listening somewhere. If there was a god listening to this somewhere. If such an existence existed, he wanted to move their heart, desperately.
Yeon Cheonguk was a non-existent being within this space. Because he had poured even his running breath entirely into the song.
He poured out everything that constituted himself.
And still I dream he’ll come to me
That we will live the years together
But there are dreams that cannot be
And there are storms we cannot weather
I’m still dreaming that he’ll come back to me
That we’ll live together for a long, long time
But there are dreams that can’t come true,
And storms we can’t overcome
In the most anxious and desperately explosive section, his throat finally cracked into a mess. However, only the pitch soared high. Yeon Cheonguk bent at the waist with clenched fists and spat out the sound.
I had a dream my life would be
So different from this hell I’m living
So different now from what it seemed
I dreamed that my life would be like that
Different from this hell I’m living
So different from now, from what I dreamed
He resented and appealed on behalf of others’ hearts instead of his own. He cried through song on their behalf.
His father, his mother, himself with a hoarse throat before the competition, and on behalf of the other person who had occupied the largest part of himself since birth.
Now life has killed the dream I dreamed
Now life has killed the dream I dreamed
After suppressing emotion in the soft notes and appealing to the end, he raised his head.
Due to his rough breathing, rainwater dripped from his wet hair.
In his gradually returning vision, the expressions of a few people came into view. The director blinking his eyes, audience members who had lost their souls, and a few staff members who had stopped what they were doing.
Yeon Cheonguk moved his trembling legs and came down from the stage. After the songs of the remaining participants ended, the results were announced.
