HTMB 05

Chapter 5

“…I’m so screwed.”

Sui muttered blankly under her breath, making sure no one could hear her.

She had practically demanded to see Choi Hwaja, the figurehead president of Hwaja Entertainment, right in front of the company’s executive director.

The memory of how arrogantly she had acted toward this man by the vending machine just moments ago flashed through her mind.

She had also made a mistake when she saw the secretaries bowing respectfully to him as they entered the office and simply thought, Wow, Kang Tae-hyung really is a big deal.

But wait. Why would an executive director be buying a celebrity a 500-won cup of vending-machine coffee downstairs?

And if he was an executive director, why not just say so? Why act all smug and tease her to see how she would react?

“I-I think I m-mistook you for… Kang Tae-hyung. Y-you look so much alike.”

“You mistook me for him?”

Despite Sui’s hasty change in attitude, Tae-hoon fixed her with an intense glare.

Feeling even more intimidated by his gaze, Sui hurriedly added the words she had nearly forgotten.

“…I’m sorry.”

Only after she lowered her tail and apologized did Tae-hoon give a faint chuckle and lean back against the sofa. However, he never took his threatening gaze off her.

Jeong Sui, who had once been a big name at Itaewon’s 007 King Club, was now bowing before someone with power.

The bitter irony of her current situation struck her all over again.

“If you want to join my company, show me everything you’ve got, Im Yuna. I’ll decide whether you’re worth investing in.”

“……”

“Not CEO Choi. Me.”

“……”

“But isn’t Im Yuna’s lack of talent already common knowledge?”

At his words, Sui frowned and looked at Tae-hoon. That was undoubtedly a remark that would have wounded Im Yuna’s pride.

Sui didn’t know just how little talent Im Yuna had, but Jeong Sui was another story.

Back in her heyday, when people talked about singing, they talked about her.

Although she had died an unknown singer, she had been known for her heavenly voice and musical genius.

A strange sense of competitiveness stirred within Sui.

Tae-hoon, by contrast, merely looked down at her with a languid expression, showing no particular expectations.

His gaze was practically brimming with prejudice, as though it were asking, What could someone like you possibly do?

“Do you like the spring rain so much?”

“……”

“I’ll sing this song for you.”

“What song is that?”

Don’t tell me he doesn’t know this masterpiece. He’s practically a newborn!

Sui cleared her throat.

It had been twenty-five years since she last sang, so she wasn’t sure whether she could perform at her former level. Still, his dismissive gaze annoyed her enough that she decided to give it a try.

It was a duet between a man and a woman. The female part required a delicate, clear voice, almost like a child singing a nursery rhyme, with particular emphasis on resonance.

Without even announcing that she was about to begin, she simply started singing the lyrics.

As she sang the opening line, Sui was a little surprised.

Yuna’s voice was much clearer than she had expected. If Jeong Sui’s voice had been slightly husky and low, Yuna’s was high and crystalline.

Her resonance and tone were beautiful, but she had probably been worked to the bone by her agency without any proper vocal training. She likely had never learned how to use her vocal cords correctly.

Closing her eyes, Sui began to immerse herself in the emotion of the song.

She sang as though she were standing beside a window, watching a fine drizzle fall while longing for someone she loved.

Her delivery was casual and unassuming, like someone tapping chopsticks against a dining table to keep time with a melody. Yet she let the sorrow at the heart of the song seep into every note.

Whenever she sang this song, she always felt unbearably sad.

Whether it was someone she loved, a family member, or even someone whose face she couldn’t remember, the song always intensified the longing until it became almost impossible to endure.

She grew calmer and calmer. Deep in her chest, she felt an unfamiliar ache.

What is this pain? Who am I longing for so desperately right now? What was it that kept me wandering through this world after death?

After finishing the second verse, Sui pressed her lips together.

She had become so absorbed in the song that she had nearly burst into tears.

With her eyes brimming with tears, she looked at Tae-hoon.

He remained in exactly the same position, staring at her with an expressionless, perplexed look.

She was astonished that he could wear such an expression after listening to a song so full of sorrow.

But… something seemed strange.

He appeared unusually stiff, almost as if he had frozen in place.

Sui lifted herself slightly off the seat and waved her hand in front of his face.

Only then did Tae-hoon blink once.

“The song’s over.”

“……”

At Sui’s words, his gaze shifted toward her.

Looking more closely, she noticed that Tae-hoon had sambaekan eyes—eyes with visible white beneath or around the iris. When his face was expressionless, his gaze was endlessly cold and piercing, making it impossible to read his thoughts.

She hadn’t realized eyes like that could look so mysterious.

Perhaps those eyes were the reason he had intimidated her so much.

“It’s been a long time since I sang. I should’ve warmed up my voice first.”

It had been ages since Sui had sung in front of anyone, and she felt awkward, so she rambled on unnecessarily.

But Tae-hoon merely stared at her without saying anything.

When someone was already feeling awkward, even a harsh criticism would have been better than this. His burdensome gaze made her feel as though she could hardly breathe.

Even though Jeong Sui had once been praised for her heavenly voice, her one significant weakness had been its husky, heavy tone. Her high notes could sometimes sound strained and sharp.

Yuna’s clear voice, however, made the high notes sound even softer. Her voice was as bright and pure as glass beads rolling together, with a refreshing clarity that seemed to wash over the listener.

It was as though Yuna compensated for all of Sui’s few shortcomings.

She even felt as if Yuna were her missing half, perfectly filling the gaps in Sui that she had never been able to overcome.

So why was Tae-hoon sitting there with that expression, saying nothing?

Ah, whatever. This isn’t even the problem right now.

Just as Sui was about to shout at him in frustration, Tae-hoon finally opened his mouth.

“…That expression.”

His face looked almost as though a few screws had come loose, and Sui couldn’t make sense of it at all.

She swallowed nervously and waited for him to continue.

“What were you thinking about when you sang?”

“…W-well, someone I missed.”

“Who did you miss?”

“…I-I don’t know.”

For Sui, who had been waiting for his evaluation—good or bad—this question was anticlimactic enough to leave her feeling deflated.

Who did she miss?

She didn’t know, either.

Honestly, she wasn’t even sure whether the emotions she had felt belonged to her or to Yuna.

“Don’t sing this song again.”

That was what Tae-hoon finally said after a long silence.

“Wh-why?”

“I’m the only one who gets to hear it.”

“……”

“Sing this song only for me.”

Recently, Tae-hoon had received a report that a strange woman had been hanging around the company’s headquarters.

It was hardly unusual for fans to linger around the building in hopes of catching a glimpse of the agency’s entertainers. However, ever since his younger brother Tae-hyung had acquired a particularly persistent sasaeng stalker, security had been tightened considerably.

Tae-hoon and Tae-hyung were brothers, seven years apart in age.

Apart from Tae-hoon being taller, they looked so much alike that someone with blurry vision could easily mistake one for the other.

Even CEO Choi Hwaja still occasionally confused Tae-hoon with Tae-hyung and playfully smacked him on the shoulder.

Perhaps that was why sasaeng fans and stalkers sometimes had trouble telling the brothers apart, too.

This latest stalker wasn’t causing any major trouble, but she was persistent. Even after security had been increased beyond what they had used before, they couldn’t seem to catch her. The situation had begun to wear Tae-hoon out as well.

Since Hwaja Entertainment had gone through a major upheaval and Tae-hoon had become directly involved in its management, he hadn’t expected this sort of thing to become such a headache.

After watching the CCTV footage in real time, it wasn’t difficult to identify the woman wandering around the building as Im Yuna rather than a stalker.

Tae-hoon knew Im Yuna quite well, too.

She was an actress the same age as his younger brother, Tae-hyung, and had appeared alongside him in his debut drama. She had also been the person responsible for making a spectacular mess of that opportunity almost immediately.

She had even worked as an exclusive model for JC Planning, a subsidiary of the JC Group. Thanks to that, Tae-hoon had crossed paths with Im Yuna several times, though they had never actually spoken to each other.

As time passed, Yuna failed to show the public anything particularly appealing, and her exclusive contract ended before she had even completed two years.

She lacked both skill and the kind of charisma that could draw an audience, and her public image had steadily deteriorated.

So why was Im Yuna hanging around outside Hwaja Entertainment?

And why had she been doing it for several days?

She had apparently tried to disguise herself with a mask and sunglasses, but all she did was stand by the vending machine and count her coins.

Even if she was only a B-list celebrity, Im Yuna was still an entertainer. If someone like her kept hanging around the building, rumors and scandals involving Hwaja Entertainment’s own celebrities were bound to spread.

Tae-hoon had considered contacting Yuna’s agency and having them come collect her. He had also thought about simply calling security to chase her away.

In the end, he decided to go downstairs himself.

He was curious about what she was doing, and, that particular day, he also happened to be craving some sweet vending-machine coffee.

But something was strange.

The Im Yuna he knew was exactly the person she appeared to be on television: dim-witted, frustrating, unmotivated, and slow to react.

Or was she not?

He hadn’t expected that small, mumbling voice of hers to be so loud. He hadn’t realized her previously indistinct pronunciation could be so clear, either.

Her distinctive way of speaking and behaving might ordinarily have come across as arrogant, but somehow, she seemed confident and full of energy instead.

It was as though her gaze could bring everything around her under control.

With eyes like those, he felt an intense desire to recruit her on the spot and develop her potential himself.

“I need to check something, so please excuse me for a moment.”

He had never found a pair of tacky black sunglasses so obstructive before.

Nor had he ever been so proactive about asking someone for permission to look into their eyes.

But he was curious. What kind of eyes belonged to someone with such an audacious voice?

He gently lowered her sunglasses, and his eyes met Im Yuna’s.

Her dark pupils looked up at him. Her large, round eyes were so bright and clear that they seemed ready to spill tears at any moment.

Her gaze was innocent and pure, yet at the same time, her rebellious and confident inner self showed through with startling clarity.

It had been a long time since he’d seen eyes so full of contradictions.

He remembered someone from his past who had once looked at the world in much the same way. The memory had faded with time, but that person’s gaze still lived on vividly in his mind.

Tae-hoon had stopped Yuna as she prepared to leave, complaining that she was cold, and dragged her all the way to his executive office—a place ordinary employees couldn’t enter without authorization.

He simply hadn’t wanted to let her go just yet.

“If I’m hanging around outside Hwaja Entertainment, who else would I be here to see? CEO Choi Hwaja, of course.”

“I want to audition. I want to join this agency.”

She had boldly declared that she wanted to meet CEO Choi and audition, rather than seek out Tae-hoon himself, a major power player in the media and entertainment industries.

It was like standing right outside a tiger’s den without recognizing the tiger that owned it.

Her sudden announcement that she wanted to audition was unexpected, too.

“Do you like the spring rain so much?”

“I’ll sing this song for you.”

Tae-hoon leaned back lazily in his chair. Just imagining that voice made him feel as though all the strength had drained from his body.

What on earth was that old-fashioned singing style?

Im Yuna, singing songs from the seventies and eighties as though she had actually lived through that era, kept replaying in his mind.

He had listened to songs by some of the most celebrated singers in the country, but never before had he experienced anything quite like this.

It was clearly not the Im Yuna he knew. The old Yuna could never have done something like that, not in a million years.

He remembered how, even at the height of her career, she had lacked confidence and could barely look straight at the camera.

So how had she changed so completely?

Singing ability could improve with practice. But changing one’s vocal style and developing such a distinctive identity was unquestionably difficult.

Had The Olim Entertainment been concealing a hidden gem named Im Yuna for ten years? Or had Yuna herself worked relentlessly in private to achieve this?

If it was the latter, wouldn’t that be almost impossible to believe?

Tae-hoon gazed through the window at the city lights spreading across the nightscape and massaged his temples. He had been unable to focus on a single task all day because of Im Yuna.

Just then, someone knocked on the door.