Raising a Neglected Singer-Songwriter - Chapter 32



Only Krnovel

Episode 32. Time is Money or Gold

A narrow alley near exit 5 of Jongno 3-ga Station.

A man and a woman hid in an alley and kept clicking the camera shutter.

A man holding a camera, his hair stylishly combed back with oil like an Italian gentleman, opened his mouth.

“Sushi restaurant? Is it meal time already?”

“I work twenty-four hours a day, all year round, sir.”

“You only call me ‘nim’ when you talk about something like that.”

“Thank you.”

Hidden Magazine’s Ko Kyung-jae reporter put down the camera and looked at his junior Joo Hyo-eun, who was laughing brightly.

“Huh? A pitiful look?”

“Huh? How did you know, you think?”

“Now we’re getting along a bit.”

“… … .”

“Isn’t it?”

Instead of answering, Go Kyung-jae looked at Joo Hyo-eun’s shiny hair.

Not exactly shine, but oil.

Even though it is not an oil-producing country, oil pours out like crazy.

‘When he first came here as a newbie, everyone was in an uproar… … .’

He’s smiling brightly and has a good personality.

Even though he doesn’t look like a reporter, he looks like an idol… … he’s not that bad, but he definitely stands out among the general public.

So the bachelor reporters of Hidden Magazine were in an uproar.

Now, I style my hair with oil and take off my sneakers, and my feet smell amazing. One of the reporters at the office once said this.

-Oh… … It smells good. Where do you make fermented soybean paste stew? I’m suddenly hungry.

Joo Hyo-eun was a jerk, but it wasn’t something to point out.

Because styling with hair oil was pioneered by the Gokyungjes.

“Go wash up and go. Reporter Joo.”

“Instead of your name, reporter Joo… … That’s good. Reporter Joo?”

“… … .”

“You too, Reporter Ko.”

“I’m a man. I’m married.”

“Oh. Sexist remark. Very old-fashioned.”

“No… …, you crazy person. It’s not sexism, I’m just worried about you. What the hell is this?”

3 weeks of stretching.

The longest stretch in Hidden Magazine history was three months.

And what blew up was the secret meeting between a conglomerate and a celebrity, and the work of these two people.

It’s not that I don’t go home because I’m going to sleep, but I usually just take turns washing up or changing clothes.

If I’m really tired, I just close my eyes for a bit and then come out.

It’s only natural that if an important event occurs in the blink of an eye, all your hard work will go down the drain.

“Let’s talk about work.”

“yes.”

“Why do you think he went to that sushi restaurant? Some kind of secret meeting? Then maybe it was for tempering?”

I haven’t really found anything in the past three weeks of tracking the movement.

I was shopping for clothes, detergent, and perfume with a boy who kept picking his nostrils as if he was expanding a tunnel.

My daily routine is to do some everyday shopping, not even luxury items, and occasionally take the bus or subway to explore Seoul.

The high economic situation that I was watching was rather unsettling.

Although his debut was aborted, he is still a hot rookie with a decent level of recognition, but he is wandering around on his own without any management from an agency.

But since I was heavily armed with a hood over my head, sunglasses, and a mask, people just passed me by. If I had been discovered, there would have been quite a fuss, but I just walked around as if nothing had happened.

Joo Hyo-eun answered Ko Kyung-je’s words.

“Isn’t this a bit of a place for tempering…?”

“It could be that they chose this place on purpose. Hong Young-pil and Yoon Tae-joo also went inside.”

Nothing has been specifically found, but now we can make some guesses.

Because the information has accumulated.

“Hong Young-pil… … is Yoon Tae-joo entering the entertainment industry by putting him forward as the president of an entertainment company? He is the first person to be recruited by Lee Dong-wook. Do you think so?”

“What else could there be?”

“Why is Yoon Tae-joo going to enter? And even if he does, why would he do it himself?”

“Isn’t that right?”

“No. Senior Ko Kyung-je, who is an economist in name only. It’s really frustrating.”

Ko Kyung-je became mute for a moment after eating honey from his junior’s Kusari.

But is it as frustrating as Ko Kyung-jae himself?

If you follow them for about 3 weeks, even if you don’t find any important events, a pattern will develop and they will start to show unusual behaviors.

Or get dressed up and leave the house.

Or driving out to the outskirts of Gyeonggi-do.

Or, park your car in the parking lot and stand there for a while.

Someone comes to your house, etc.

That makes me guess something.

Then all we have to do is collect evidence.

But there is no particular movement.

If there were no suspicious aspects, I might have considered withdrawing early.

Of all the people I’ve chased so far, he’s the most suspicious.

That’s because I don’t know what that is.

Go Kyung-jae asked Joo Hyo-eun in a casual manner.

Sometimes you need to borrow a cat’s paw.

Now is the time when I have no idea what’s going on.

“… … Then what? Do you have a picture in mind?”

“Yes.”

Then, Joo Hyo-eun picked up her camera and pushed the LCD screen towards Ko Kyung-je.

A confident look.

It took a while, but Ko Kyung-jae took a look at the liquid crystal display.

“Tell me. What is this?”

“I was torn apart the day before yesterday and I was chasing a student named Park Min-jae, right?”

“Isn’t that so?”

“Do you see the girl here?”

Park Min-jae is in the scene where he leaves school.

At the end of Park Min-jae’s gaze, there is a female student.

“Who is this?”

“Kim Mi-so is a classmate of Park Min-jae.”

“……however?”

“Look. Isn’t it pretty?”

“It’s so fresh. By the way, what’s with this guy?”

Joo Hyo-eun smiled triumphantly and slapped Ko Kyung-je on the back.

“Oh my. How on earth did you get married, my senior?”

“… … ?”

“Now, see? Before Park Min-jae goes to Lee Dong-ha, he always stays with this girl named Kim Mi-so and then they part ways. And then he stays at Lee Dong-ha’s house for a while and then he comes out. But here’s the trap.”

“pitfall?”

“What if we missed it?”

Ko Kyung-je became more and more absorbed in Joo Hyo-eun’s story.

It’s persuasive.

I feel like I’m picturing something.

Go Kyung-jae nodded repeatedly and Joo Hyo-eun continued speaking.

“This female student, Kim Mi-so, went to Ha-yeon’s house by another route. But we didn’t know the way, so we missed it.”

Ko Kyung-jae clenched his fist without realizing it.

“Ah! Park Min-jae is a disguise?”

“Yes. Not just a disguise, but a love messenger.”

Is this how a fisherman feels when he wanders through a fog where he cannot see even an inch ahead and sees the lighthouse light in the distance?

However, it is only a fairly credible hypothesis, and is not yet certain. Even a stone bridge needs to be knocked on.

“But you’re a high school student. If you’re friends with Park Min-jae, you’re eighteen. And you’re an ordinary person. You didn’t go to school in Korea, so how do you know this student?”

“It’s frustrating, really. I already met this girl in the moving picture? I was looking for this yesterday and my eyes were going crazy. Here. Look. The first public broadcast of Nae-Pyol, at the far right of the audience.”

Joo Hyo-eun handed over her cell phone.

“Hey!”

“Can you see it?”

“I can see it, I can see it.”

Small but clear enough to recognize who it is.

There are Park Min-jae and Kim Mi-so.

“How about me?”

“You little brat… …you’ve grown up a lot.”

But the important thing is that there is still no physical evidence, that is, no hard evidence.

The economy was moving with confidence.

“Let’s do this a little longer. You stay with me and move over there when Park Min-jae gets off school. You follow that girl around once every two days. Since she’s a normal person, it’s okay.”

“Yes, senior.”

Go Kyung-je looked down at Joo Hyo-eun as if he was looking at a disciple who had just awakened.

The plum blossoms that resemble a slippery slope that looks like a fly would also look pretty.

Fortunately, even though Joo Hyo-eun looks like this, she is still a woman.

If you do get caught, there are ways to deal with it.

“If I can just get some evidence, I can blow this up. Whether it’s provocation or pure love with a fan.”

At twenty you’re an adult, at eighteen you’re a minor.

The article is a frame fight.

The same facts can be packaged as beautiful puppy love, but they can also be turned into a picture that goes against the national sentiment.

I’ll think about how to draw it after I’ve secured the evidence.

Joo Hyo-eun felt the gaze of a beast that had once again captured its prey in the eyes of her senior, Ko Kyung-je.

“Senior, by the way. Why do I keep meeting Chairman Yoon Tae-joo and Hong Young-pil?”

yes.

I’ve completed my own hypothesis, but this is the part that’s really mysterious.

“… … Just … … take a picture. I don’t know anymore.”

The two men picked up the camera again and zoomed in hard.

Just in case something gets caught through the crack in the door.

* * *

“Mr. Chairman, I think you should take a look.”

An expressionless man… … That is, the chief secretary, whose name was Kwak Moon-ki, checked his cell phone and then approached Tae-joo.

And Tae-joo hyung looked at his cell phone silently and then opened his mouth.

“What? Are they homeless?”

“Ah… … No. They’re not homeless people. I found out they’re reporters from Hidden Magazine.”

Homeless?

reporter?

I moved my head and looked at the cell phone of the chief secretary in Tae-joo’s hand.

There are two men and two women.

Shiny hair.

Clothes that look like they were roughly picked up from a used clothing collection box.

In his hand he even holds a camera that looks like a thermos.

It looks somehow sentimental, except for the camera.

I remember the beginning of the show when I went out wearing clothes bought by the senseless Beomseok and growing my hair out haphazardly.

Secretary Kwak Moon-ki spoke to us as if reporting the situation.

“If they had followed us, we would have figured it out sooner. It seems they have followed the moving army. What should we do?”

I heard it right next to me, Tae-ju hyung was asking me, not Secretary Kwak Moon-ki.

“Dongha. What should we do?”

“Can you bury it in the ground and do that?”

“no.”

“Then the security guards dragged the reporters away, beat them, and then took away their cameras?”

“No.”

“Then why do you ask?”

“Because you are the leader. And I followed you.”

I was just joking.

Taeju hyung is so serious, it’s like I’m the mastermind who eliminates two people.

I said it as if it was no big deal.

“Let it be, then. Paparazzi is like a tax to rock stars.”

And headed to the basement.

Pass Taeju hyung and go out the back door of this place, which is only a sushi restaurant with the same sign as Taeju hyung when he came in.

I looked down the stairs to the basement for a moment and… something… came poking me from inside.

Something heavy, not sharp.

“Youngpil and I tried to remember as much as we could.”

This… this is shit.

I feel like I’m home.

Back in 1994.

The time is 1994, but it’s earlier than that.

It reminds me of some time in the 1980s.

We were kids of the 80s, so we decorated this place with this exact feel.

A poster attached to the wall on the way down the stairs.

Inside, there’s Axl Rose from Guns N’ Roses looking at me with long hair.

AC/DC’s Angus Young with his guitar on his back and his tongue sticking out.

“Meh… … There’s also Talika.”

“It’s Dongshik’s favorite group.”

I couldn’t respond to Tae-ju’s words as he walked down the stairs following me.

F*ck.

Did my male hormones decrease like my brothers?

Is this some kind of side effect of time slip?

Tears poured down and my vision became blurred.

“You managed to save me… … .”

I barely managed to open my mouth and pretend not to say anything.

“I went to find it myself and got it from a guy called Rock Mania. Money doesn’t convince everyone. I asked him.”

“Do you remember the day you put this on?”

I stood in front of the Metallica poster for a long time.

It may be a distant and hazy memory for my brothers, but it is vivid for me.

-I like Metallica.

Armed guerrillas, or North Korean agents.

Dong-sik, who looks like he can easily make his way through a minefield, smiled as he put up this poster with his own hands.

―Lars Ulrich says drumming isn’t sensitive, but in rock, drums are basically power.

A drummer characterized by powerful drumming that shows a distinctive color that is like Metallica’s identity.

Metallica’s leader, Lars Ulrich.

Dong-sik really liked Lars Ulrich and wanted to be like him.

And I looked at that kind of animal and said this.

-Don’t like it too much.

-why?

– A rival, right? He’s someone you have to beat, not an idol. There’s a difference between liking someone and worshipping them.

-Hey… … You really… … have big dreams?

―Of course. We won’t be the ones worshipping, but the ones being worshipped. So just like it. Good music from good colleagues. Just that much.

“The construction was done haphazardly. The water is leaking.”

I moved my mouth for no reason.

I already got caught crying, so I wanted to shake off the embarrassment.

Then, Secretary Kwak Moon-ki, who was slightly visible, turned his head here and there, not knowing what was going on, looking for the source of the water leak.

Taeju hyung quietly stretched out his arm and wiped my face with the sleeve of his suit, which was so thick I couldn’t even tell.

“Isn’t it leaking now?”

“Newer. Pouring… pouring.”

Finally, I buried my face in Taeju’s chest and poured out all my emotions.

I tried to hold out, but it didn’t work.

“Dude, I’m so… … crying. Metallica must have been performing and having fun for 30 years without any regrets.”

I would rather have lived and wasted 30 years.

I don’t think it would be this unfair.

The warm hand of Yeongpil covered my back.

So, I gritted my teeth and said to my brothers.

“Live until you shit. We’ll be performing for 30 or 40 years.”