WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Chen
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ Incarnation of the Malevolent Star ◈
Chapter 42: Part 1 - Whispers of the Dark Brother (42)
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The twenty-three-year-old idol told her story with a bittersweet sense of relief.
Pain. Sadness. Fear.
A life that had only grown more hopeless with every passing day.
Days filled with nothing but dark emotions.
And the people in those days who never stopped hurting her.
Sitting beside the country boy on the narrow wooden veranda, speaking quietly as a gentle breeze drifted in, was a soft moment of healing that gradually breathed warmth into the deepest part of her heart.
“Ha!”
Just as she finished one part of her story about her current agency, the country boy casually caught a mosquito between his thumb and forefinger.
He tilted his head beside the idol, who stared in amazement and said, “Wow!”
“I don’t understand.”
“What don’t you understand?”
“Why does that management division head have to say such cruel things? The more they do that, the more tired and unmotivated you noonas will become. If you lose all your energy and motivation, even things that might have gone well will be more likely not to work out. Wouldn’t that make it harder for the company to get back the money it invested?”
“Well, who knows what goes on in a bad person’s heart? Maybe they enjoy hurting and crushing other people. Or maybe they just take out their work stress on the people below them. They might also be venting stress from outside work.”
“Doesn’t the CEO fire them? They’re an employee who’s costing the company money.”
“I don’t think he sees it that way.”
“Why not?”
“They always seemed to get along well. The management division head was extremely respectful toward the CEO. When they were scolding us harshly, the CEO would sometimes come by, fold his arms, watch for a while, nod as if he agreed, then leave. I guess he thinks that’s the right way to handle us.”
“He’s incompetent.”
The boy said it bluntly, then nodded to himself.
“Well, if the water upstream is clear, it would be hard for only the water downstream to be dirty. A company isn’t exactly a stream, so there might be exceptions, but I guess noona’s agency isn’t one.
“Even if our Boss went over there and became the CEO right now, our Boss would do a better job than that.”
The twenty-three-year-old idol let out a long breath and began badmouthing the CEO.
“You’d be lucky if he were only incompetent.”
“What else is there?”
“Listen. That man brags all the time that when he gives lectures outside the company, he can easily command one million won an hour.”
“Yes.”
“I don’t know whether that’s true, but I think there’s a ninety-nine percent chance it isn’t. The lectures he gives us are terrible. And he always says the same things. Hard work is important, willpower is important, mental strength is important, if it doesn’t work then make it work, young people these days are too weak...”
“Wait. When you say he always says the same thing, does that mean you have to listen to those lectures over and over?”
“Twice a week. An hour each time.”
“What kind of lecture is that? That’s brainwashing.”
“I think so too, but there’s another real problem.”
“Ah. There shouldn’t be one...!”
“Pfft.”
The idol gave a brief laugh, the corners of her eyes softening.
“Every time we listened to one of those lectures, the amount the agency claimed to have invested in us went up by one million won. Do you know how absurd it was when I first found out?”
“What kind of...”
“They say it’s the same as spending one million won on us, because they could have earned one million won giving that lecture somewhere else, but gave it to us instead.”
“...?...???”
“This investment money is what we have to earn back before our contract ends if we want to receive any settlement money... If they keep increasing it with nonsense like that, what does that make us? Until we somehow hit it big, we’re nothing but slaves running from event to event.”
Even so, secondhand idols had to cling to the hope that they would somehow make it big.
They had renewed their contracts because they felt there was no other path.
The only path still open to them was with their current agency.
Of course, legally speaking, the practice plainly violated the law.
But unless they were prepared to quit being idols immediately, it was hard to file a lawsuit.
If they did sue, they would have to wait until after the contract ended.
Even then, it was only worth doing if there was money left to recover.
“That’s... such a nasty, petty thing to do.”
“That’s not the end of it.”
“There’s more?”
“Since I’m the leader and the oldest unni, I tried protesting to the CEO face-to-face. I told him that if the investment amount was going to increase anyway, he should let us take more lessons instead of listening to his lectures. It’s two million won a week, eight million a month. Add just a little more, and that’s enough for one semester at an idol academy.”
“What did he say?”
“He hit me. Without warning.”
“...”
“He grabbed my hair and slammed me onto the floor. He said the reason we hadn’t made it wasn’t a matter of skill, but a problem with our mentality. He had judged that and was sharing valuable experience with us, but instead of being grateful, we had the nerve to talk back to him. That was why we were still such a pathetic mess... Something like that.”
The boy was horrified.
“My goodness... That person’s character is like Bonggu’s poop! He’s really awful!”
“Who is Bonggu?”
“One of the hunting dogs Boss raises. But Bonggu is more obedient to me than to Boss. And Bonggu poops the most out of all the hunting dogs. Bonggu loves greasy food too much, so they get diarrhea a lot. A real poop dog.”
“Pfft...!”
In short, the agency’s CEO was a complete piece of dog poop.
After quietly giggling at the country boy’s insult that hardly sounded like an insult, Sera shook her head.
“If I have to listen to a lecture anyway, I’d rather listen to yours than his, Onik. You make people happy. And... the stories you told earlier were really nice. It’s a shame the younger members couldn’t hear them too.”
“Um... thank... you?”
“Why did that sound like a question? I was complimenting you.”
“I do like compliments, but the thing I’m being compared to smells like poop, so I have mixed feelings...”
“Pfft... Stop talking about poop!”
“I’m sorry. But I don’t think I should swear. If I swear, I’ll seem like a bad kid.”
“Ah. That’s true. Noona agrees. Our Onik is such a good boy.”
The city idol playfully stroked the country boy’s hair.
At that moment, the boy glanced to the side and plucked another mosquito out of the air as it flew toward the back of Sera’s neck.
Sera flinched when he suddenly reached out, but he quickly lowered his hand. Watching him rub his thumb and forefinger together to brush away the mosquito’s body, she smiled.
Then she thought to herself.
‘What a strange child.’
His talent for catching mosquitoes was truly astonishing.
No, even before catching them, it was astonishing that he could be looking straight ahead or up at the sky and immediately notice a mosquito flying toward the person beside him.
How sharp did his hearing have to be to do that?
But those were hardly the only astonishing things about him.
By now, Sera simply accepted it as, ‘Because it’s Onik.’
Just as all the other devoted viewers of Onik Uncle did.
In any case, she was grateful that they could have such a serious conversation without being bothered by summer mosquitoes.
“Still.”
The idol from the gray city swung her legs as if she were on a swing and resumed her story.
“There was a time when I believed those people weren’t completely bad. They were bad, but I didn’t think they were the very worst.”
“Why did you think that?”
“Um, I don’t know if I should be telling you even this much...”
“Why? Is it about sexual favors? Or being propositioned for a sponsor arrangement?”
The ugly words came casually from the country boy’s mouth.
They caught the city idol, who had been hesitating, off guard.
“...I’m surprised. How did you know?”
Sera asked because, once again, he was a child who surprised her in so many ways.
The boy answered as if it were nothing.
“Things like that are in the news sometimes. Grandfather and I watch the news while we eat breakfast and dinner. Also, isn’t it widely known that there are lots of problems like that in the entertainment industry, both in our country and overseas? When I thought about what noona might consider the absolute worst thing, that was the first thing that came to mind.”
“Oh. I see...”
“It’s okay, so please tell me. I’m not so young that I don’t know there are many bad people in the world. I understand the kinds of things they do too. Well, at least as much as the news reports.”
What the boy added at the end was not entirely true.
The frightening boy had always taken a deep interest in people who deserved to die.
He knew far more about the bad people in society than what appeared in the news.
Researching such things was one of his main hobbies.
“Mmm... Okay. If that’s the case.”
After calming her surprise, Sera continued.
“There’s something the management division head always says whenever they scold us. They say, ‘At least I’m not making you go to those kinds of places.’ They ask whether we don’t know, from what we’ve heard, how other agencies around the same size as ours operate... Haa.”
As she remembered it, their sharp, shrill voice seemed to come back to life beside her ear. Sera could not hold back a sigh.
“They tell us to be grateful. They ask whether we think there’s another agency that would treat girls in our position with this much respect. They tell us to work hard and think about repaying the company’s consideration.”
“Con-si-de-ra-tion?”
“Funny, isn’t it?”
“It isn’t funny at all. It’s too different from the meaning of consideration that I learned. I guess at noona’s agency, they call keeping the bare minimum of human conscience ‘consideration.’”
“Right. From an ordinary person’s point of view, it must sound completely ridiculous...
“But in this industry, especially among agencies that aren’t major companies, a ‘used product’ like me with little shelf life left really is supposed to be grateful for even that much consideration and respect.”
“Hey! What do you mean, used product? No matter how those bad people talk, noona shouldn’t call yourself that. Are you an object? You’re a person.”
“Hahaha...”
Sera laughed awkwardly.
“Anyway, at first I thought we were fortunate. Neither the management division head nor the CEO pressured us about that sort of thing. Looking at the things they usually said and did, it was almost baffling.”
“It is strange. It really is.”
The boy tilted his head.
“But there was actually another reason it was strange, right?”
“That’s right.”
“What was the reason?”
“It turned out... Our agency didn’t refrain from doing it. It couldn’t do it.”
“...? Why?”
“Among the entertainment-industry insiders and powerful people who might receive secret sexual favors, our company had a bad reputation in that area. Calling it an unreliable supplier would be about right.”
“What happened this time...?”
“I heard about it by chance. From an unni I used to be close to. We were at the same agency until a few years ago, but we split up when I was sold off as a used product...
“No, sorry. I used that expression without thinking. It’s become a habit. I was wrong, so don’t look at me like that.”
“You didn’t do something wrong to me, you did something wrong to yourself! Apologize to yourself!”
“Okay...”
“...? I told you to apologize. Why aren’t you saying anything?”
“Huh?”
“Come on, repeat after me. ‘I’m sorry, Sera. I won’t do it again.’”
“...Do I really have to?”
“There are no fake apologies in the world!”
For Sera, at twenty-three years old, referring to herself in the third person was a little embarrassing.
It was embarrassing even when it was part of a concept she used on stage. Away from the stage, it was even more embarrassing.
But even though their eyes had only met briefly before the country boy shifted his gaze aside, Sera could not hold out for long before his stern expression.
“I’m, I’m sorry, Sera... I won’t... do it again...”
“You did well! Onik will praise you!”
“Thank you...”
When the country boy clapped soundlessly, the idol from the gray city finally burst into another small laugh.
The feeling in that laughter was more relief than embarrassment.
The country boy was pleased to hear the city idol laugh.
When people talked about sad things, it was inevitable that they would sink into sad feelings.
The city idol’s heart was sick enough that death had come close. Sensitive to death, the boy had been carefully lightening the mood whenever he found an opening.
That way, he was moving the idol even a little farther from death.
Pretending to be shameless, the boy made a demand.
“Now, please continue. You were at the part where you said you heard it from an unni you used to be close to.”
“Ah, right.”
Now in a different mood, Sera brushed her hair back.
“We met again when our group appeared on a terrestrial music show for the first and last time. We asked about each other’s lives and worried about each other, and somehow we started talking about that sort of thing too.
“I said I was worried because there were so many things like that in the industry. But then, unni’s expression...”
“Her expression...?”
“Something was wrong.”
“You had a feeling.”
“Right. I had a feeling. Ah, something must have happened to this unni.”
“Um... I have a feeling this conversation didn’t end well.”
“Wow. You really have good instincts.”
Sera nodded.
“You’re right about that too. When I pressed her, she didn’t say anything clearly, but her expression kept getting worse. Seeing that, I became certain. I was worried, so I told her not to do it, to stop, that it was the wrong path, but...”
It was a memory lodged in Sera’s mind like a shard of glass.
If the boy had not helped change her mood just before, her heart would have ached badly at this part.
“Unni grew very defensive and said it like she was mocking me. She asked who I thought I was to worry about her. She said our company was a place that couldn’t even manage that kind of business.”
As it turned out, Sera’s agency was an even worse case.
While arranging sexual favors for industry insiders, it secretly recorded or filmed evidence whenever it got the chance.
So it could hold the idols and trainees in its company more tightly. And-
“...So it could blackmail those industry insiders if the time ever came.”
“...”
“The problem was that they got caught. The person receiving the favors found the camera a trainee had set up in a bag at the hotel.”
After being questioned violently, the trainee confessed that it had been the CEO’s order.
「Please don’t hit me! Please forgive me! The CEO told me to do it! He said this would give me protection too! He said it would be good for the company and good for me!」
The CEO, in turn, pushed the blame onto the trainee.
「Why would I have done something so insane?! That bitch is lying! She held a grudge because the company couldn’t support her properly, so she deliberately harbored malicious intentions!
You all know, don’t you? There are so many trainees who are uneducated and have rotten personalities!」
The people receiving the favors were all connected in a cartel, with brokers in the middle.
Even so, the reason the CEO had managed to stay in the industry was because his excuse had some plausibility.
There really were trainees who held an ‘unfair grudge’ over their treatment, trainees who did not know their place and were ‘insolent.’
Of course, it was a suspicious, unconvincing explanation.
But from the perspective of the people involved, they wanted to avoid branding the CEO guilty based solely on a trainee’s words.
The reason was...
“If they did that, the other ‘suppliers’ would get scared too.”
A bitter smile appeared on the idol’s lips.
“Think about it. If one company was crushed based only on a trainee’s words... What agency would feel safe arranging sexual favors after that?”
“Why do bad people only think so deeply about things like that?”
“Tell me about it.”
“So they couldn’t punish your company or its CEO openly, and they just quietly decided to shut them out?”
“Something like that.”
Sera had not heard all of this from one person.
After first hearing the shocking story from an old acquaintance at the broadcasting station, she had quietly sounded people out whenever she met industry figures.
She would say things like, “Our CEO is very sorry about what happened before.”
Just by doing that, fragments of the agency’s hidden past reached Sera’s ears one by one.
The fact that the agency’s broadcast appearances had sharply declined around that same time was also circumstantial evidence supporting what she had learned.
“That’s horrible.”
The boy was indignant.
“Then what does that mean? The company is partly responsible for noona’s group not becoming successful, right? They made people hate them first, and now they keep blaming only you noonas? All the opportunities that should have come to you must have gone away too!”
Whether it arranged sexual favors or not, the company itself had fallen out of favor. Naturally, opportunities would stop coming.
The idol agreed with him.
“...They probably did.”
“You must have felt so wronged.”
“...A little.”
“Do the other noonas know about this?”
“No. I didn’t tell them on purpose. They would only be stressed if they knew. It’s not like there was a way to solve it. The CEO and management division head don’t know that I know either.”
“You carry a heavy burden as leader... The other noonas should be grateful. It’s not easy to find such a kind and considerate leader.”
“Hehe. Thank you.”
The boy thought that if she had kept all of that to herself and suffered with it in her heart for so long, he could understand why her heart had become sick enough to make her want to die.
The reason the idol from the desolate city now looked relieved was probably because she had finally let out the stories she had been forced to keep locked inside.
A little later, Onik spoke again, very carefully.
“Then, noona.”
“Yes?”
“If your company’s CEO was really that bad... Um, I mean... if he was someone who wouldn’t observe even the most basic boundaries...”
Even if she had not been able to attend school properly, Sera was not stupid.
From the context, she could easily guess why the boy was trailing off.
“I know what you want to ask. Luckily, nothing like that happened. He never asked us to do it in the first place.”
“...That’s unexpected?”
“It isn’t that unexpected. Maybe he did it before. Right now, it’s probably only because there’s no one for him to do it with.”
“...? But he has you and the others. And probably other trainees too.”
“But there aren’t any men among us. Apparently there used to be, but they all left.”
“...??? I don’t understand what you’re saying.”
“Our CEO is gay. He likes men.”
“!!!!”
It was something he had not expected at all.
Seeing the boy reflexively turn around with his eyes wide, the city idol let out a small laugh.
“My goodness!”
“You look very surprised.”
The boy’s eyes darted about, and then he mumbled awkwardly.
“I, I said earlier that he smelled like poop, but I didn’t know he really was someone who liked buttholes...
I guess I accidentally said something insulting about gay people... Oh no... I’m not that kind of person...”
“Pfft!”
The talk of poop once again lifted the city idol’s mood.
Their conversation stopped there for a while.
But neither of them found the silence uncomfortable.
For Sera, it was a peaceful silence instead.
The country boy had listened to her story with such sympathy and interest. His very presence felt more and more comforting to her.
The boy, who had been looking off into the distance beyond the wall, swung his legs just like the idol beside him and spoke.
“Noona.”
“Yes?”
“Do you know what I think after listening to everything you’ve told me?”
“I don’t.”
“...I think they sound like people who deserve to die.”
Sera flinched.
For a very brief moment, Sera felt a chill run down her spine.
‘What was that just now?’
The feeling had passed in an instant. Unable to identify it, Sera could only be confused.
Her heart began pounding after the fact, making her even more puzzled.
Who could have imagined it?
The murderous urge of the frightening thing wearing the shape of a boy had lightly touched the survival instinct of the person sitting close by.
While the twenty-three-year-old idol was a little confused by her body’s reaction, a dark gleam flashed in the country boy’s eyes as he stared into the distance.
Footnotes:
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