“You don’t need to put on sunscreen?”
At the same time, Myeongwoo asked while rummaging through his bag.
“Sunscreen, Siyoung-ah. Are you going to put it on or not?”
“What are those guys doing?”
“Hm?”
Myeongwoo, who had been sitting with his back to the ocean, turned his head. Patrick was enthusiastically explaining something to Seungun using both hands, and Seungun was nodding as he listened, occasionally bursting into laughter. Myeongwoo grinned along as he watched Seungun’s smiling face.
“Looks like those two became friends already. That Patrick kid has a lot of good stories in this industry.”
“……”
“The kid’s young but seems to have good character. Well, I heard that even in that short time, he gave autographs and took photos with our company staff. You have to be a good person first to succeed.”
“Call him.”
“Who?”
“Who else? Im Seungun. Isn’t that kind of odd job originally what rookies do? The rookie’s over there playing by himself while the person with a team leader position is doing things like handling sunscreen?”
“You really. How hard is this kind of thing, and what does it matter who does it?”
“So you’re not calling him?”
“Ah, I’ll call him, I’ll call him.”
“……”
Myeongwoo grumbled as he called out to Seungun.
“Seungun-ah! Here, over here!”
Gi Siyoung turned his head back to face forward. As if he hadn’t been looking there in the first place. He sent both arms behind his head and reclined his body at an angle. Through his loose short-sleeved shirt, his well-defined muscles were glimpsed here and there.
“Siyoung sunbae-nim!”
Patrick’s reaction was faster than Seungun’s. The person who was supposed to come over didn’t, and instead the guy who was already exhausting just to look at came running over like a puppy. Then he stood in front and fidgeted as if embarrassed. Gi Siyoung propped himself up on his elbow and raised his upper body at an angle. When he frowned, the sunglasses that had been resting on his eyebrows slid down perfectly onto the bridge of his nose.
“We meet again.”
Gi Siyoung nodded with a face that said this was the first time he’d seen Patrick today.
“Oh, please speak comfortably. I’d be really happy if you could just think of us as casual, like hyung and dongsaeng.”
Seungun approached Myeongwoo.
“Did you call me?”
“Yeah, it’s not me—”
Gi Siyoung cut off Myeongwoo’s words and interrupted.
“I forgot and left my room card behind. Do you have it?”
“Yes. I have it. Do you need something?”
“I left my script behind. I want to read it here.”
“Script? I packed that!”
Myeongwoo cheerfully pulled out the script from his bag.
“When we were leaving the room together earlier, I had a feeling you’d look for it later so I packed it ahead of time. Isn’t this hyung’s sense killer?”
“……”
Gi Siyoung pressed his lips into a straight line. He silently snatched the script from Myeongwoo, and Patrick kept grinning as he asked.
“Sunbae-nim, won’t you swim with us? The weather’s so fantastic, if we don’t swim on a day like today—”
“I’m not really into water play.”
“Then what about Manager-nim?”
Gi Siyoung, whose gaze was on his script, glanced over it to check.
“……”
Im Seungun was hesitating.
“I can’t swim. More than anything, I don’t have a swimsuit right now.”
“Seungun-ah, I have swim trunks with loose legs. Put them on over yours. The hotel should have tubes for rent too, right?”
“Huh? Manager-nim, you really have everything!”
Gi Siyoung wanted to tie Myeongwoo’s big mouth shut with a rubber band. Patrick gave double thumbs up. Myeongwoo scratched the back of his head saying “What’s the big deal about this much?” Gi Siyoung flipped through the script noisily.
Anyway, today there wasn’t a single person he liked. The junior who interfered at important moments, Myeongwoo who was unnecessarily well-prepared, Im Seungun who only thought about playing—they were all the same.
“What are you doing?”
Gi Siyoung asked Seungun, who was standing at his feet staring at him. He couldn’t ignore him when he was staring so intently at him alone.
“May I go swimming?”
Seungun hesitated.
“Am I Im Seungun-ssi’s guardian? If you want to do it, then do it.”
Gi Siyoung replied curtly.
“I thought you might need something more. What about Team Leader Myeongwoo?”
“Go play, go play!”
“Then I’ll go play in the water nearby with Patrick-ssi.”
Seungun put on Myeongwoo’s swim trunks right there on the spot.
“Then if you change your mind, please join us anytime, sunbae-nim!”
“……”
Patrick spoke politely and then ran off excitedly. Gi Siyoung watched that sight with displeasure, then opened the script where the bookmark was inserted. He focused on the parts that were highlighted with fluorescent marker. Myeongwoo, unaware, smeared body oil on himself as he chattered away.
“That Seungun kid, he’s usually shy but became friends with Patrick right away? That’s proof that Patrick’s a good kid. I’m also seeing Patrick for the first time in Bali, but he’s pleasant and really nice. He seems to treat his staff well too.”
“……”
Thud. Gi Siyoung put down his script irritably. He couldn’t listen anymore.
“Why?”
Myeongwoo asked with wide eyes.
“Go be Patrick’s manager. I won’t stop you.”
“Aw, why are you like this again? Let me rest comfortably today too.”
Myeongwoo flopped his glistening body onto the sun bed. Then he placed his sunglasses on his face and quickly fell asleep, starting to snore loudly. It was amazing how someone with such a peaceful mind could fall asleep the moment their head hit something.
Gi Siyoung shook his head and picked up the script again. Even amid the lapping sound of the ocean and the voices of people mixing layer upon layer, he tried to read the script. Perhaps because reading scripts on set had become a habit, concentrating wasn’t difficult.
“……”
But the concentration he’d barely gathered soon scattered. It was because of familiar voices located quite nearby. Gi Siyoung lowered his sunglasses slightly to look straight ahead.
Patrick and Seungun, who had come out of the ocean, were sitting face to face with their wet, soaked appearances, playing a game of stealing sand castles. Every time one of them greedily pulled the dirt pile toward themselves and knocked down the damp twigs, they giggled.
“How old are they, they’re not kindergarteners.”
Gi Siyoung clicked his tongue. He had never played with sand castles like that in his life. What was so fun about that? They looked like people with screws loose, laughing every time a thin twig fell. They were playing the game so noisily that it interfered with reading the script, so he wanted to stomp on the sand castles they were building with his foot.
“Okay! Since you lost! As promised! Lie down!”
Patrick’s voice, which must have swallowed a train engine, flew precisely into Gi Siyoung’s eardrums. The pupils of Gi Siyoung, who was trying to read his script, turned in that direction again. Im Seungun stood up with an awkward face and, following Patrick’s instructions, calmly lay down on the sandy beach he pointed to. As soon as he lay down, Patrick excitedly began piling sand on Seungun’s body.
“Pfft, puhup! Patrick-ssi! Sand’s getting in my ears!”
“I’ll be careful so it doesn’t go in.”
Patrick reassured Seungun, speaking as if singing. He covered Seungun’s body mainly with the firm sand that had been soaked by the waves. After covering him with sand so that Seungun’s limbs weren’t visible, he rubbed the surface with his palm to shape it. It was skilled and practiced handiwork.
“Looks like you’ve done this more than once or twice.”
“Of course. I went on beach trips often with my members.”
While saying that, he pressed down firmly with the edge of his hand on the boundary between the sand piled on top of the body and the soft sandy beach to clarify the form. When the sand came up on top of his body, it was heavier than expected. With the weight pressing down from above, Seungun could only freely move the features on his face that stuck out slightly from the sand.
“It’s a bit heavy.”
“Think of it as cozy.”
“What are you making?”
“What should I make for you? A mermaid? Want to wear a bikini?”
“No?”
When Seungun widened his eyes and shook his head, Patrick told him to refrain from moving since the sand he’d carefully shaped was getting disturbed. Seungun couldn’t budge. His two arms and two legs were stuck together beneath the sand. Even the slightest movement could create cracks in the sand.
If he had seen Patrick’s face as he piled up the sand from below, being so careful, he wouldn’t have been able to get up so easily. Patrick now went down toward the lower body and began clumping sand to shape it.
“What exactly are you making?”
“I’ll show you after I’m done making it. Once this is all done, it’ll be really cute. Let’s take a picture and show it to Gi Siyoung sunbae-nim too!”
“No, there’s no need to go that far.”
“It’s almost done. Even if it’s uncomfortable, please bear with it a little longer.”
Patrick, who had suddenly come up, grinned and went back down below.
