“The company went bankrupt.”
Youngwoo, whom he was seeing for the first time in a while, looked much more worn down. He lived not far from the company, so at Heewook’s call, he came running out right away.
“COVID just kept getting worse, and Yoonmin hyung, who was basically the face of the company, left. Even when we made content on our own, it only put us deeper in the red. Since we’d decided to renew, the CEO did try to keep things going somehow. But in the end, he said it just couldn’t be done…”
Heewook, who had been looking at the youngest as he mumbled, lowered his gaze to the ground. It felt as if his body kept sinking, lower and lower.
“Why… didn’t you tell me the full situation?”
“We thought we shouldn’t make you worry while you were already having a hard time in the military.”
Heewook bit down on his pale lips. Youngwoo squeezed his eyes shut, then lowered his head deeply.
“I thought things would get better before you got discharged, hyung. I’m sorry.”
“No, it’s not something you should apologize for.”
The one who had naively believed, more easily than anyone, that everything would be solved as soon as he got back from the military was Heewook himself.
Maybe, as the eldest, he had simply dumped the troublesome situation on his younger members and run away to the army.
After sinking into those bleak thoughts, Heewook reached self-reproach and regret, and turned his eyes away.
“…Go on in. See you next time.”
Turning away, Heewook walked off with heavy steps. The sound of the suitcase wheels rolling against the ground grated on him.
There was nothing wrong with them, but it kept feeling as if they were spinning uselessly.
The rough sound of the wheels made it feel like he might cry, so in the end he picked it up and carried it.
With nowhere to go after leaving the dorm, Heewook went back to his family home.
It was his parents’ apartment in Guri, Gyeonggi Province.
Instead of a notice about Heewook’s discharge, the news of Two Planet’s disbandment came out, and his family quietly took in their son, who had become like a duck egg left in the Nakdong River.
A simple room with nothing in it but a bed covered with an ivory blanket, an empty desk, and a bookshelf holding a few Two Planet albums. After returning home, Heewook stayed shut up in his room.
At least it was fortunate that the door had been soundproofed well back when he was a trainee.
Heewook sang every day.
He wanted to let the fans hear him. He tried to show that even if the group had disbanded, he would keep singing.
He played guitar and sang, and sang songs he had liked since his trainee days too.
But he was never satisfied. He only felt more frustration, wondering if his skills had regressed while he was in the military.
‘What do I do?’
In the end, he even developed insomnia, which he had never had before.
When he did manage to fall asleep, he kept dreaming of one disaster after another
Most of them were mistakes, incidents, or accidents that felt like they could happen in real life.
Going through failure after failure even while sleeping made sleep itself exhausting.
‘How can I get out of the situation I’m in right now?’
After posting that he had been discharged, he had not been able to upload anything to SNS.
He wanted to post singing, but the quality was not good enough to make public, and because he was living like a wreck inside the house, he had no photos to upload either.
There were several comments under his last post from fans saying they wanted to see him.
Biting at the tips of his nails with his teeth, Heewook hesitated for a moment, then clicked the paper airplane icon in the upper right. In between DMs that were practically spam, he saw familiar fan IDs and profile pictures.
The tones of the fans looking for Heewook, who had gone under after the group’s disbandment, varied wildly.
[I miss you so much I could die, Heewook ㅠㅠ]
Someone openly grieving.
[Are you seriously going to stay under forever? Do you not think about the fans? Are you retiring?]
Someone angry at Heewook for doing nothing.
[Woogie woogie, fighting today too!]
Someone cheerfully greeting him as if nothing had happened.
Pain jabbed here and there in his heart. Heewook silently read through the piled-up messages one by one, then suddenly stopped his finger.
[YK_woogie: Heewook oppa. Hello.. It’s Yugyeong. Do you still remember me? It’s been so long since we’ve seen each other, you might have forgotten.]
The message continued on much longer than the others.
Heewook slowly scrolled down.
Asking whether he remembered her, of course he did.
There was no way he wouldn’t, after receiving so many letters from her both during promotions and in the military.
Of course, it was hard to picture her face in detail. It had been a long time since Yugyeong had come in person, and the account sending the DM did not even have a profile picture.
Back then, Yugyeong had only been a middle schooler, so she would have grown a lot by now, and even if they happened to run into each other, it would probably be hard to recognize her.
Still, the image of someone dark-skinned, long-limbed, and shy came back to him clearly.
[YK_woogie: Honestly, I thought I’d get to see you again soon as Two Planet after you were discharged. I even promised myself that when Two Planet had a comeback, I would definitely go to the concert. I was trying… to work up the courage.]
For such an ardent fan who had attended even small-scale events like fansigns, it sounded strange that she needed “courage” to go to a concert, which would have far more people than that.
But more than that, he felt sorry. To think that what he gave back to a fan who had waited for his discharge was not news of a concert, nor a comeback, but news of disbandment.
[YK_woogie: I’m upset that everything didn’t go the way I thought it would. But you must be having a much harder time than I am, more disappointed, more worn out… If I were you, I think I’d want to give up on everything too… I think the road ahead would feel completely dark.]
That was exactly how it felt. Like he was trapped in a dark pit. He knew he could not go on falling like this, but his body would not move.
The road ahead was pitch-dark, and he could not tell which direction he should go or how fast.
There followed about two lines of crying emojis. At the end of the row of tear-soaked faces came the words, “Even so.”
[YK_woogie: Even so… I want to see Sung Heewook singing again.]
After coming back from the military, he was already twenty nine.
Thinking back to the time when he used to stand on stage, Heewook let out a hollow laugh.
The “Sung Heewook singing” that Heewook remembered felt too young, too far away.
[YK_woogie: I hope this won’t be the end.]
‘Isn’t it already over?’
Letting out a self-mocking laugh, Heewook tossed his phone down as if throwing it.
With limp steps, he headed to the living room. His parents’ home was on the first floor of an apartment building, so when he stood close to the veranda, he could see the people passing by fairly well.
Because they were all wearing masks, their faces could not be seen. Heewook touched the bare skin around his own mouth. It felt stifling, as if someone had placed a thick invisible mask over his face.
“Sung Heewook, it’s okay.”
He muttered it out of habit.
“It’s okay.”
But it was not okay at all.
Since he had spent most of his time only in his room, only in his chair, there was no real strength in his knees anymore.
It felt as if his legs had lost their original function. Heewook stared blankly down at his skin, which had turned paler than before from hardly seeing the sun, then slowly rose from the chair.
He knew by now that he needed to leave the room and do something productive, but it was not easy to cast off the ennui weighing down his whole body.
In the end, he started to go outside, then stopped and collapsed onto the bed instead.
As usual, he was lying on the bed listening to music and letting time slip by in listlessness, when a noise that grated on his nerves went off.
Bzzzz. Bzzzz.
Someone was calling.
[Lee Eunseong]
Because it was a name he had not seen in a while, Heewook only stared blankly at the screen for a moment before answering a bit late. He was glad to see it, but even more startled, wondering what was going on. The moment he said hello, Eunseong’s question came back at once.
“Hyung, have you thought about auditioning? For broadcast?”
At the abrupt question, Heewook blinked in surprise. Various audition programs flashed through his mind. Especially idol survival shows featuring young trainees in their mid to late teens or early twenties.
“What are you talking about. Is there even a survival show that would take someone pushing thirty?”
“Not that kind.”
Eunseong immediately denied the question tinged with a hollow laugh. After taking a breath for a moment, he continued.
“I mean a drama.”
At the unexpected word, Heewook frowned.
“A drama?”
“It’s an audition for an idol drama, and the lead-level cast that’s already been picked is stacked. The director is famous too. Buzz is basically guaranteed. Since they’re casting idol roles, I thought maybe we could try too.”
Heewook wondered if it was a joke, but Eunseong’s voice was serious. Listening with a sour expression, Heewook scratched between his brows.
“What acting. I’m not Cha Yoonmin. I can’t do that.”
Because of Yoonmin, he was sick of the very idea of “acting.”
The thought of Yoonmin, who had debuted in the same team, gotten popular as an actor, and then left without even looking back at the stage side, made him feel bad. Too much irritation mixed into his refusal.
“Hyung.”
Maybe he sensed the harshness in his tone, because even that single syllable from Eunseong carried thorns.
The moment Heewook, half lying down, straightened his back and sat against the wall, Eunseong asked,
“Then are you going to leave the entertainment industry like this? Is that what you want?”
“We’re singers. We should be singing, not acting.”
When people talked about Two Planet’s “vocal line,” they meant Heewook and Eunseong.
Heewook, confident in high notes, had been the main, and Eunseong, with excellent sense of rhythm, had been the lead vocalist.
Every time they recorded a song, every time they stood on a live stage, Heewook had quietly trusted and relied on Eunseong, so hearing him talk about acting made him feel disappointed too.
He clearly had an area he excelled in, so it felt like a waste of his younger member’s talent to suddenly head in some unrelated direction. He meant it as persuasion, but Eunseong gave a snort as if dumbfounded.
“Is there even a stage for us to stand on?”
“…No, not right now.”
“We have to create an opportunity ourselves. To do that, we have to do something.”
“That’s true, but.”
“If we do nothing, we’re getting pushed out of the industry.”
“As long as we don’t retire, an opportunity will com…”
“What does it matter whether we officially declare retirement or not when we don’t even have an agency? If we don’t declare it, are we still singers?”
Eunseong had usually been the quietest and least talkative among the members. Startled by his somewhat heated tone, Heewook swallowed.
“If we keep doing nothing, everyone will forget us, and we’ll get pushed out of the entertainment industry.”
“…That’s true.”
“Jaegyu and Youngwoo have basically given up. They say they’re fine living like that. But what about you, hyung?”
His voice was becoming more and more worked up, like it was grabbing Heewook by the collar, and Heewook squeezed his eyes shut.
“Do you really think you can live an ordinary life like them? Start studying again from now, take exams, get certifications, find a job. And only sing as a hobby. Do you really think you can do that?”
He was already near the end of his twenties. Friends who had graduated from the same high school had long since finished college and become office workers, most of them earning steady salaries.
Heewook had dreamed of becoming a singer since his teens. He had given up on studying a long time ago, and there was nothing he wanted to do except sing.
“I can’t.”
At this point, Heewook could not confidently say he could stand on a completely different track either.
“So what then? You’re going to become an actor, like Cha Yoonmin?”
“Realistically, it’s hard to go back to being an idol trainee now and redebut. I’m already twenty five too.”
While Heewook was inwardly startled by the fact that even Eunseong, who belonged to the younger line of Two Planet, was already in his mid twenties, Eunseong let out a long sigh.
“I want to grab onto anything, as long as it’s a thread that lets me feel certain I still belong in the entertainment industry.”
“Eunseong…”
“If you have some other plan besides this, hyung, then do that. I’m going to go try auditions.”
Eunseong sounded as if he were about to hang up, speaking almost like he was muttering in resignation. After hesitating, Heewook pressed hard on his lower lip.
“Lee Eunseong, wait.”
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