༺ Requesting Cloud Support from a Shooting Star – 9 ༻
“Um, you… resemble her?”
Kyung Seo slowly muttered the unfamiliar two-word phrase. Oblivious to the awkwardness, the red-haired member nodded with a smile.
“Yes! I noticed from afar, but now that you’re up close, I recognized you right away. Your nose and lips look the same, don’t they? Do you know my name? I’m Hee-wook, the team leader.”
Hee-wook. An oddly deflating balloon popped into his mind.
It was a name that started gently and ended firmly. Kyung Seo rolled the two syllables around his closed mouth. Hee-wook. This man’s name was Hee-wook.
“Leader….”
Hee-wook had introduced his position, but he couldn’t picture his image on stage. Compared to the other members, his vibrant red hair stood out. Taking in the sight, Kyung Seo squinted his eyes.
With such a flamboyant style, he’s likely to be a rapper, he guessed. He opened her mouth, recalling the idols he’d seen over his sister’s shoulder.
“Do you rap?”
“I sing.”
He assumption had been off. But his speaking voice was so pleasant that he became curious about how he would sound when singing.
“You must be good.”
At his hesitant comment, Hee-wook grinned.
“Singing? I’m a singer, of course I’m good!”
His voice was fundamentally warm and affectionate, but the added confidence made it sound even more charming. Hee-wook continued the conversation while skillfully signing autographs. Kyung Seo watched him, entranced as he completed the large autograph, punctuated with a star at the end.
After finishing his signature, Hee-wook paused as he was about to write ‘To’.
“Shall I add an adjective before your name?”
“Huh? Yes……”
He didn’t fully understand what he meant, but he inadvertently nodded. With a playful smile lingering on his lips, Hee-wook scribbled down the words. Even though he was looking at it upside down, it wasn’t hard to read.
[To. Yu-kyung who will love me a lot!]
Kyung Seo blinked dumbly. The words felt like a gentle tickle of a dandelion. Even though it wasn’t his name, it still tickled him.
“I wrote down my wish.”
Hee-wook closed the album and said with a smile. A staff member behind them signaled for him to move along.
“Come again!”
Hee-wook called out in a bright voice to Kyung Seo, who was hesitantly getting up. He thought it was just a standard phrase, something polite to say, but it still sounded sincere, as if directed solely at him.
“Yes, I will come again.”
Even though he had firmly vowed never to return to such a place again. Even if his sister, Kyung-jin, tried to persuade him, he was determined to refuse.
As if under a spell, he nodded. He faced the two members behind Hee-wook, but he didn’t hear any of their conversation. Even while listening to the members, only Hee-wook’s laughter was distinctly audible to him.
That’s when it started. He started obsessively searching for information about Two Planet’s Hee-wook, appreciating his photos and videos. Even when Kyung-jin didn’t ask, he shamelessly started to show up at Two Planet’s concerts and fan events.
“You’re back, Yu-kyung?”
At every concert, at the autograph session for the second album released after their debut, Hee-wook recognized Kyung Seo, who was always present, and greeted him with a bright smile.
He seemed proud to have remembered the name Yu-kyung. Without bothering to correct his misunderstanding, Kyung Seo simply nodded his head.
“Isn’t it about time you told me?”
“Told you what?”
“Who you’re here to see!”
Hee-wook asked the question with his hand on his lips, as if inquiring about a great secret. At first, he felt worried, but now he didn’t even feel a twinge of guilt.
Kyung Seo answered with wide, moon-like eyes.
“I came to see you, oppa.”
Facing Hee-wook’s smile with her blatant lie was a hundred times more joyous than painful. But the sweet scam couldn’t continue for even two years.
When he could no longer ignore the warnings of his gradually deepening voice due to puberty, the nightly growing pains, and his rapidly growing height, he bid farewell to Hee-wook.
“I can’t come anymore.”
He would soon have to cut his long hair, which had become difficult to maintain, his body would grow even larger, and his voice would fully change to a low and thick one. His time of pretending to be Yu-kyung in front of Hee-wook had ended.
“But that doesn’t mean I’m quitting as your fan. I’ll keep cheering you on. And I’ll write letters too.”
But he couldn’t completely stop wearing the mask of a female fan.
Seeing his face freeze for a moment at his words of not being able to come anymore, he softened. That was the only excuse for Kyung Seo to continue the lie of being ‘Yu-kyung’ online.
***
[YK_woogie: Long time no see! I watched your live broadcast, Hee-wook oppa.]
He wrote when he last saw him, then deleted it, typed out in detail how he endured the blank space in between, and then erased everything again.
He didn’t want to sound too clingy, but he also didn’t want to say nothing at all. It wasn’t easy to choose what to say without putting pressure on him. There was so much to say that he ended up saying nothing. Kyung Seo gently scratched the keys with his fingernail tips and started typing again.
[YK_woogie: I’ve been wondering what you’ve been up to and where you’ve been, missing you, and worrying about you. Please keep your promise to visit a lot.ㅜㅜ]
“If broadcasting feels burdensome, at least post photos often. Are you thinking of cobwebs on your feed? Fans need some breadcrumbs to keep the fanning going.”
While his messages were soft and gentle, complaints spurted out from Kyung Seo’s mouth in a grouchy tone.
Being already taciturn, not much of a communicator like an idol, and an actor who even refuses to appear in variety shows, Cheon Kyung Seo never imagined his fans would have a sigh of relief at his words.
Kyung Seo paused his typing and exhaled deeply. No, in truth, even if Hee-wook frequently posted daily photos, his long-standing thirst wouldn’t be quenched. He frowned, thinking about the stage videos he had been diligently watching earlier.
[YK_woogie: I’ll keep waiting for the day you sing on stage again. Always supporting you!!]
What he truly wanted was for Hee-wook, who loved singing, to shine brilliantly on stage as he used to. It would be nice if he picked up the microphone and sang again.
[YK_woogie: I miss youㅜㅜ]
After choosing words, erasing, and correcting, he sent the message that ended up being shorter than he thought. Kyung Seo, who felt drained in such a short time, leaned heavily against the back of his chair.
“I wonder if there’s a way to see him in person.”
He mumbled to herself, then chuckled lightly.
“Even if I saw him, I couldn’t say it’s me.”
The fan named Yu-kyung that Hee-wook remembers doesn’t exist anywhere, and he would be just a stranger to him. It was impossible to attach the word ‘together’ to all the memories built up. Kyung Seo, who sighed briefly, lifted his half-laid body.
“So what.”
Initially, they were a star and a fan. It doesn’t matter if he doesn’t remember. He simply liked and supported him because of that.
Kyung Seo closed his laptop and stood up. He moved to the living room to open the window.
He needed ventilation.
***
The next day, Kyung Seo headed to the company with a light step. ‘Hwarang Actors’, the company Kyung Seo was affiliated with, was located in a high-rise building in Gangnam-gu.
Ordinarily, a sudden call would have been annoying and frustrating, but today, for some reason, he felt unusually good. He thought it must be due to the fact that his favorite had reported his survival.
Inside the shaking van, Kyung Seo looked at Hee-wook’s recent photo with a pleased expression and zoomed in by moving his finger on the screen. His cheeks seemed thinner than before, even if they had filled out a bit, and although he had come out of the military quite tanned, he seemed a bit paler in the meantime. Anyway, he looked very handsome up close.
“He’s handsome.”
“Your disobedient son?”
At Manager Woo Jin’s joke, Kyung Seo glared fiercely.
“He’s not disobedient anymore, is he?”
Kyung Seo tried to mix in some playfulness as he glared, but due to his intense mask and large frame, it felt ten times scarier than he expected.
“Ah, you saying he’s disobedient…”
Though Woo Jin was genuinely frightened, he pretended not to be and quietly put on some music. A refreshing dance song from the debut album of Two Planet started playing through the Bluetooth connected to Kyung Seo’s smartphone. Woo Jin didn’t know the artist Two Planet, but he knew well that Kyung Seo liked this song very much.
Humming along, Kyung Seo sang the familiar song. It was a song he had listened to so much when he was younger that the lyrics naturally rolled off his tongue.
Arriving at the office in a joyful mood, Kyung Seo frowned at the unexpected words he heard as soon as he entered the meeting room.
“Why am I going to the final audition?”
The drama ‘Dive into you’, which was chosen for the next project, was in the process of auditioning for actors to play the supporting roles after confirming the male and female leads. He had heard that after the first and second rounds of online auditions, the final audition would be conducted in person.
It was unheard of for a leading actor to attend the final audition.
“But wouldn’t it be good for you to see it once?”
“Is my opinion important for the casting?”
“Well, it’s a supporting actor who will be in sync with you, right? Director Cha insisted that your opinion is important. Well, to me, it seems like he just wants to see your face one more time. He really likes you, you know.”
Kyung Seo furrowed his brows. The intimidating aura emanating from his large physique and dark eyes filled the meeting room with tension.
Despite there only being two people in the spacious room, the atmosphere felt stifling. Woo Jin glanced around and fiddled with the position of a figure standing on the shelf.
“If you’re really uncomfortable, refuse.”
“Uncomf….”
“I heard about the audition, it was quite a spectacle. Since it’s for an idol role, all sorts of desperate people came flocking.”
“Desperate people?”
“Yes. Current idols, aspiring idols.”
Kyung Seo’s eyebrows twitched at the nonchalant response. There was a momentary glimmer of expectation in his deep, dark eyes that resembled a pitch-black pit, but Woo Jin, oblivious to even this small change, shrugged his shoulders.
“Due to Covid, a lot of them can’t perform on stage because their debuts or comebacks got canceled.”
Woo Jin tried to elicit empathy with a shrug, but Kyung Seo didn’t respond and looked off into the void. In the seemingly unbreakable silence, Woo Jin awkwardly cleared his throat.
There was no way that Kyung Seo, who was notoriously cold to others, would show flexibility to the director’s proposal. He felt a wave of regret for calling him out of the blue.
“Anyway, don’t worry about it. I’ll call the director and tell him to see you during the script reading.”
Woo Jin picked up the cell phone that he had momentarily put on the desk. He wanted to escape this suffocating space as soon as possible. But then, Kyung Seo spoke up.
“Let’s see them, why not.”
Woo Jin, who was about to leave, doubted his ears. He turned to look at the handsome actor who seemed to be carved out of dark chocolate in shock. Kyung Seo still had an unreadable expression, but at least he didn’t look displeased. Woo Jin, unable to believe his agreement, asked again.
“Really? Why?”
“I just want to see what kind of people they are.”
Kyung Seo brushed past Woo Jin and grabbed the handle of the meeting room door. He hesitated for a moment, then added quietly.
“I have nothing better to do anyway.”
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