Chapter 4

Pacifying her spoiled child, the woman turned a glance of fleeting pity toward the groaning, crumpled boy on the floor.

“I’m sorry, little one,” she murmured softly. “For my child to thrive, this was the only way. If you must harbor a grudge, hold it against me.”

Taking her husband and son by the hand, she stepped out into the night. His grandmother, the sole remaining kin Seo Mu-yeong had in this world, burned to death in the blaze that consumed the shrine. Before the flames took her, she had hurriedly shoved Mu-yeong into clothes meant for a swift escape.

Tears cutting through the soot on her face, the dying shaman rasped, “Even knowing your parents’ destined lifeline, I could change nothing. And now I have failed to foresee an inch of my own doom.”

Forcing a pair of iron scissors into the crying boy’s hands, she shoved him toward the mountain path, her parting words ringing in his ears like an iron decree.

“Never seek out a mudang’s house again, and never return here.”

Seo Mu-yeong ran blindly into the mountains. In the haze of terror, he felt neither the burning agony in his lungs nor the raw scrapes tearing across his bare feet. Though he dashed through pitch darkness, his feet never caught on a single rock.

Running without a single pause for breath, he collapsed beneath a towering old pine tree. There, as he hacked off his tangled, wild hair with the scissors, his resolve set like stone: as his grandmother commanded, he would never set foot in the past again.

From that day on, Seo Mu-yeong lived like a phantom, neither truly present nor entirely absent. And he never breathed a word of what had transpired to a living soul.

Until he was nineteen years old, when a classmate uttered the very name he had buried beneath the earth.

“Did you guys see the male contestant teaser for Next Flight that dropped yesterday?” a boy in class asked. “The new idol audition show. I looked through all the trainees, and Choi Sijin is definitely my top pick.”

The moment that name struck his eardrums, it felt as though an unseen fist had seized Mu-yeong by the scalp and yanked with savage force. His heart hammered in violent erratic beats, his whole frame shivering uncontrollably.

It can’t be, Mu-yeong thought, pressing a trembling palm against his chest. But the face smiling on the classroom television screen belonged unmistakably to that very same Choi Sijin.

With each passing broadcast, Choi Sijin’s fame exploded. Screen grabs of his boyish charms flooded online forums, and clips of his stage performances dominated the top of every video trending chart.

Throughout all of it, Seo Mu-yeong ate lunch alone in corners, passing whole days without uttering a single syllable to another human being. Even his homeroom teacher forgot he was enrolled in the class.

On the afternoon he was forgotten during mandatory college counseling, Mu-yeong stood outside the faculty room, staring at the floor. Am I even human? he wondered. Or am I no different than a broom shoved into a janitor’s closet, or a thumbtack stuck to the bulletin board? He felt like an inanimate prop abandoned in an empty room.

Inside his chest, the name of Choi Sijin accumulated like burning, suffocating lead. Eventually, merely hearing the surname ‘Choi’ was enough to choke the breath from his throat.

Then arrived the day he could endure the festering poison no longer.

Seo Mu-yeong raced toward the filming site. The gymnasium hosting the live shoot was swarming with a sea of fans, colorful banners and slogans rippling in every direction.

Sijin. Sijin-ah. Our Choi Sijin.

We love you. Always cheering for you. You’re our only one. Forever the best.

Mu-yeong felt violently nauseous, his vision spinning. The closer he drew to the contestant quarters, the more violently his knees wobbled. Even so, he slipped into the dressing room, curling up in a blind corner to wait.

At long last, Choi Sijin was left entirely alone in the room.

Mu-yeong stepped out of the shadows. Dressed in a pristine white academy uniform accented with a silk ribbon tie, Sijin’s hair was meticulously styled into soft brown waves above wide, round eyes—the very embodiment of a radiant sunshine boy.

Yet Sijin stood a head taller and broader than Mu-yeong. As the idol smiled admiringly at his own reflection in the vanity mirror, Mu-yeong spoke up from behind him.

“Give me my name back,” Mu-yeong demanded quietly.

The reflection of Seo Mu-yeong in the glass was wretched: a frayed ball cap, a rumpled jacket, a blurred silhouette with features smudged like an out-of-focus photograph.

It was a face that even Mu-yeong himself could no longer clearly recall. Tugging the brim of his cap lower, he balled his trembling hands into fists.

“You’re not sick anymore,” Mu-yeong rasped. “You said you’re completely cured. Stop using it and give it back to me. The name you took from me when we were eleven.”

Sijin’s shoulders jerked in shock, his eyes darting across the mirror in confusion.

“What the hell… A ghost?” Sijin muttered, whirling around.

Failing to locate the speaker in the room, Sijin’s eyes scanned the empty air. Mu-yeong lunged forward and gripped his forearm.

“I’m a human being,” Mu-yeong said, his voice trembling. “The person you turned into this. …So give it back to me. It’s mine.”

It took several moments for Sijin to process the reality before him. His face twisted into an ugly snarl, and he violently ripped his arm from Mu-yeong’s grasp.

“Have you lost your fucking mind?” Sijin hissed.

“Why the hell are you showing up now?” Sijin scoffed, stepping into his space. “They said you would have croaked years ago. If you managed to keep your pathetic life, you should have stayed quiet like a corpse. Coming here out of nowhere demanding what? Your name?”

Sneering down his nose at him, the idol jeered, “You think I’ll just hand it over if you ask? Don’t make me laugh. I bought that name, which makes it mine. You sold it to me for a hundred won yourself.”

“You only got it because your parents were going to murder my grandmother!” Mu-yeong roared, shouting at the top of his lungs.

In that instant, Sijin’s fist crashed into Mu-yeong’s cheek. As Mu-yeong stumbled and hit the floor, a brutal kick slammed squarely into his ribs.

“So what are you going to do about it?” Sijin mocked, raining kicks onto the curled-up boy. “You going to sue me? Report me to the cops? Go ahead, try reporting me! What are you going to tell them? Do you have a single shred of proof?”

Sijin stomped mercilessly on Mu-yeong’s ribs, his lip curling into a venomous sneer.

“Go whine on some online forum,” the boy mocked. “Actually, there are plenty of cameras outside—why don’t you shove your face into the lens and get on TV? Go ahead, cry to the world that I stole your name!”

Just then, a sharp knock rattled the dressing room door. “Sijin-ah, is everything alright in there? I heard shouting,” a staff member called from the hallway.

The instant Mu-yeong opened his mouth to scream, Sijin clamped a heavy palm over his lips. In stark contrast to his murderous scowl, an impossibly sweet, cheerful voice poured from the boy’s throat.

“No, hyung, I was just rehearsing my lines!” Sijin called out sweetly.

From the other side of the wood, the staffer instructed, “Got it. Hurry up and come out—the live broadcast starts in ten minutes.”

“Yes, hyung!” Sijin answered brightly.

The footsteps receded down the corridor. Glancing at the wall clock, Sijin clicked his tongue in deep irritation. “Fuck, I don’t have my phone on me, so I can’t even call someone to clean this trash up…”

After a moment of hesitation, Sijin hauled Mu-yeong up by the collar and dragged him down a quiet, deserted rear hallway. Looking anxiously around every corner, the idol seemed terrified that someone might spot his pristine white stage uniform stained with blood.

No one crossed their path until they reached the emergency exit. Kicking the heavy steel door open, Sijin hurled Mu-yeong out into the alley beside a cluster of commercial dumpsters and recycling bins. Shaking out his hands, the trainee issued a hurried, breathless threat.

“Listen to me, asshole,” Sijin spat, wiping sweat from his forehead. “I have to perform on live TV right now, so I’m letting you off easy today. But pull this stunt again, and my dad will bury you alive in concrete. Got that?”

“…It’s mine,” Mu-yeong wheezed, coughing up blood as he reached out a trembling hand. “Your life… cough… it belongs to me…”

Sijin brought his polished boot down onto the reaching hand, grinding the fingers into the rough asphalt like extinguishing a burning cigarette butt.

“That’s just your pathetic victim complex talking,” Sijin sneered.

The idol laughed coldly as Mu-yeong bit his lip against the blinding agony. “You think an incompetent loser like you would have made it this far just because of a name? I’m successful because I’m talented. Got it? This is who I am.”

Sijin gestured proudly toward the crisp silk ribbon tied at his collar. Yet in Mu-yeong’s hazy, battered vision, the tiny droplets of dark red blood spattered across the pressed hem of Sijin’s trousers showed far more vivid.

He taunted, “And that is who you are. Wake the fuck up to reality.”

The heavy metal door slammed shut, cutting Choi Sijin from view. Afterward, a handful of people drifted through the alley: taking out the trash, smoking cigarettes, or loitering near the exit. Not one of them noticed the bloody youth lying in the shadows.

Eventually, all footsteps ceased. From deep within the arena, the muffled roar of the crowd and booming music reverberated through the concrete walls. Splayed across the damp asphalt, Seo Mu-yeong slowly opened his eyes.

‘Your precious vote! Please support Choi Sijin!’

Printed beside the bold slogan was a photo of Choi Sijin beaming in his trainee uniform. The cap bore the audition program’s insignia, and beneath the aviator-style white blazer, his smile shone bright and pristine.

Mu-yeong stared blankly at the paper banner. As his limbs stiffened in the chill, he had no strength left to stand.

That was when a sudden gust of wind swept through the garbage alley. Beneath the yellow glow of a sodium streetlamp, something fluttered through the air. What he first took for moths multiplied by the second, sweeping across his entire field of vision.

It was a shower of blossom petals.

The pale pink petals drifted down indiscriminately, alighting on moldering tangerine peels, crumpled napkins smeared with fried chicken grease, his bruised temples, his split lip, and the bloody hand struggling to hold onto life.

Watching the swirling petals dance, Seo Mu-yeong stretched an arm into the empty air. Holding his palm open, he waited, but every falling petal swerved past his skin. Even after keeping his arm raised for several long minutes, not a single petal landed on his hand.

Sucking in a ragged breath, Mu-yeong planted his feet against the pavement. Clamping one hand over his broken ribs, he hauled himself upright and spread both arms wide. A tiny petal grazed the tip of his fingers, only to tumble harmlessly to the ground.

Frantic, Mu-yeong stripped off his torn windbreaker. Unfolding it wide, he hoisted the dark fabric high above his head, straining onto his tiptoes despite the searing agony in his torso.

Once more, a fierce gust of spring wind howled through the alley.

Petals rained down in a swirling blizzard. One of them fluttered down onto his outspread jacket. Then a second, a third, a fourth… Stumbling on unsteady feet, Mu-yeong chased after every speck of pink, fixing his eyes on nothing else.

His breathing grew so ragged it was indistinguishable from the roaring wind. He grabbed the petals in handfuls, grinding them between his fingers until the delicate blossoms were crushed into a pulpy, fragrant mess. His scraped palms turned pink, stained with petals he had caught with his own hands.

Heh… heh-heh-heh… Burying his face into the crumpled jacket, Seo Mu-yeong laughed for a very long time, his ragged chuckles swallowed by the distant, thunderous cheers of the crowd.

That very night, Choi Sijin clinched first place in the final rankings, securing his spot in the debut lineup of the idol group ‘AEROX.’