The Hidden Ripples

“Huh? A Floor?”

“I wasn’t going to say anything… because I know things aren’t good between Jay Oppa and you. You—you don’t have to help me with the call. Seriously.”

Floor was the fandom name for Enheim, the group featuring Jae-in, who had been part of Pentagram’s debut lineup.

However, Ji-ho’s shock wasn’t because Mirin liked Enheim, but because of the absolute certainty with which she claimed he and Jae-in were on bad terms.

Of course, it was true that there were issues between Jae-in and Ji-ho. During their debut trainee days, they had been closer than anyone. But after Jun-o was kicked out, they had drifted so far apart that Jae-in now unilaterally hated Pentagram.

‘But no one outside of Pentagram and Enheim officials should know that.’

Ji-ho realized Mirin was talking about something else. Something had happened to Enheim while he was away, and it likely involved him in some way.

His first thought was, ‘Again?’ He immediately thought of the Brief Challenge video he had recently filmed with Enheim. Ji-ho hadn’t even appeared in the challenge; at most, his voice might have leaked into a behind-the-scenes clip. No matter how hard he thought, that was the only thing anyone could nitpick.

‘Surely that conversation with Jae-in about Kim Jun-o wasn’t caught on video. No, I checked the uploaded video myself; there was nothing strange.’

He found it hard to understand why people wouldn’t leave him alone, even though he had gone into hiding and cut off all connections, including the internet and his phone. If not for Mirin’s next words, he would have continued to misunderstand.

“Jay Oppa is already having a hard time because of this incident. If I ask to call him just because I want to see him, I’d be a bad fan. And I think everything people are saying about Jay Oppa is fake. You know, there’s so much manipulation and stuff these days.”

‘It’s not me… but Jae-in who’s in trouble?’

Ji-ho naturally controlled his expression. Instead of asking what on earth happened to Enheim or Jae-in, he feigned a relaxed face, as if he knew everything.

Rather than satisfying his own curiosity, his priority was to comfort Mirin, who was worried about Jae-in. Wasn’t it his duty to protect fans who felt the pain of their favorite idols as if it were their own?

“You say the rumors are fake, but you believe the talk that Jay and I are uncomfortable with each other? Hmm, as a Floor, your faith in your artist is a bit weak. Should I go tell Jay—I mean, Jae-in—everything?”

“Ah, no! Don’t do that! It’s not that I don’t trust Jay Oppa. You’re not really going to tell him, right? Right, Ji-ho Oppa?!”

“Well, I might change my mind if you promise to be our fan as well as Jae-in’s.”

“I promise! I’ll start liking Pentagram from today, too!”

At Ji-ho’s playful tone, Mirin answered urgently. On the other hand, she seemed relieved, believing that his relationship with Jae-in was actually solid. When Ji-ho exaggeratedly stuck out his pinky finger, asking her to “promise,” she even burst into laughter, seemingly finding his antics ridiculous.

“Oppa, do you know you’re being totally childish?”

As he intended, Mirin no longer showed signs of gloom. They laughed and chatted for a long time afterward.

At the end, Mirin sincerely said she would become his fan. Only after parting ways with her did Ji-ho revisit the question.

‘Just what happened to Enheim and Yoon Jae-in?’

*******************************************

Though Mirin had sparked his suspicion regarding Jae-in’s situation, Ji-ho finished his walk with Bok-gu as if nothing was wrong. It was only after returning home from a “water play” session disguised as a bath for Bok-gu that he realized it would be difficult to look into Jae-in’s business.

‘I have no way to search for news or articles about Enheim. If I go to the community center and borrow a phone, word might get back to Mirin that I was searching.’

Technically, it was a miracle that a man in his twenties in today’s internet-dependent society had adapted to a life disconnected from the online world. But Ji-ho had long since grown accustomed to living without a smartphone.

It wasn’t that difficult. Ji-ho had never been the type to care much for social media, and except for the time around the car accident, he had avoided going online following manager Yong-ha’s advice. Before his debut, he had spent years as a trainee at a major agency that banned phones during training; since he didn’t go to high school, training all day in isolation from the outside world was his daily life.

‘I was a bit worried about not being able to do “Balloon” with the fans, though. Maybe I should have just opened a phone line.’

Balloon was a private messaging service where celebrities could exchange messages with fans. From the artist’s perspective, they saw only a fraction of the many fan messages and replied to them, but from the fan’s perspective, it appeared as a 1:1 chat format. It was highly popular content due to its immersive nature.

Among the Pentagram members, Ji-ho was the one who enjoyed the Balloon service the most. Of course, the fact that it was a paid service didn’t mean malicious messages didn’t fly in, but most of the fans who chose a specific artist and maintained the service were Glows who truly loved Ji-ho.

‘Thinking about it, taking a break like this is also a disservice to the fans.’

When he moved to the countryside, the company had announced that his Balloon messages would be suspended for a while, but there were surely fans still waiting for a text from Ji-ho.

The reason these thoughts suddenly surfaced was because of the desperate look in Mirin’s eyes as she tried to trust Jae-in until the end. Idol fans had higher loyalty than other celebrity fandoms, and because they tended to be younger, they often became deeply immersed in the idols they “stanned.”

Perhaps Ji-ho’s fans had also believed in him and waited for him when the accident controversy broke out, just like Mirin. Thinking that made Ji-ho’s heart ache.

For a moment, he felt a sense of skepticism about whether it was okay for him to be leading such a leisurely life.

“…Ha-un is there, even if the other members aren’t. He’s the youngest and full of love for the fans, so he’ll treat the Glows well even without me.”

Naturally, he became curious about the members’ current status. He also thought of Yong-ha, who hadn’t contacted him since the news about the song-related issue broke.

Only then did Ji-ho realize it had been quite a while since he’d thought about Pentagram. He realized he hadn’t had the group’s affairs on his mind at all until he heard the news about Jae-in.

It was a very strange feeling.

When he first came to his hometown, Pentagram was on his mind all day. Even after falling asleep, he would dream about their activities. He had made up his mind to stand tall on his own and distance himself from the factors that made him depressed, but it hadn’t been easy.

At times, he trembled with fear that there would be no place for him to return to. He felt slighted by the silence of the members, wondering if all their time together had been a sham. He worried that even though they had announced his hiatus, the controversy wouldn’t die down and would continue to harm the team. Subconsciously, he even had the selfish desire for the members to feel his absence.

Compared to then, Ji-ho’s current attitude was a massive leap forward.

He no longer waited for the members to contact him, and he had only spent a few days worrying when Yong-ha mentioned the trouble with the album. The training he had repeated without rest, even while his body was in pain, was now less about being a member of Pentagram and more like preparation for a possible solo career.

The old saying that out of sight is out of mind was not wrong.

‘If they knew this, would they feel slighted that I’m resting so peacefully?’

If it were Ha-un, who used to cling to him every day calling him “Ji-ho Hyung,” he would probably still be pestering Yong-ha about why Ji-ho hadn’t gotten a phone yet. No-a would pretend not to care while secretly eavesdropping on Ha-un and Yong-ha’s conversation, and Se-han would likely state the obvious—that it was dangerous to be in a remote place without a phone.

‘Choi Go-hun probably wouldn’t care and would be preoccupied with something else.’

He also tried the opposite assumption. He imagined the members perfectly preparing for the full album without him—members who felt more comfortable because Ji-ho wasn’t craving their attention. It was negative, but this felt like the more realistic scenario.

“It’s only a three or four-hour drive from Seoul. It wouldn’t have been that hard to come visit me once.”

Ji-ho wasn’t a fool; he knew.

Whether it was because the company blocked contact, they were busy with the moved-up promotions, he hadn’t revived his phone, or Yong-ha was keeping the members in check for Ji-ho’s rest—no matter what excuse was made, nothing could excuse the disconnection between them.

The members he had considered family, considered brothers, were still ignoring him. Ji-ho didn’t stubbornly contact them first to ask why, either. He even tried to avoid finding things out through Yong-ha or through searching, as he felt he needed to do now.

In that way, nearly three months had passed.

‘It just means I’m nothing more than a headache for the group now.’

Melancholy crept in for the first time in a while. It felt like being betrayed by someone he trusted, and he felt like screaming out of rising resentment. He wanted to relieve this suffocation somehow, just as he had thrown his tablet in the hospital before.

“Woof!”

“Ugh.”

At that moment, something white entered the room and struck Ji-ho’s thigh. He ended up rolling across the room, just as he had on his first night back home.

Before he could even register the sudden ambush, the first things he felt were fur smelling of shampoo and a body temperature warmer than a human’s. It was Bok-gu, whom he had forgotten about.

“I tied you up in the yard—how did you get in? Ah, I must have left the leash lock button off on the back mountain earlier.”

Bok-gu, seemingly just excited, climbed on top of the lying Ji-ho and licked his face. He didn’t seem to care that Ji-ho was in pain from falling backward; his long tail wagged back and forth.

However, Bok-gu’s ignorant behavior wiped away all the melancholy that had been seeping into Ji-ho. Unlike other times when he couldn’t even get up because he was rolling in the pitch-black darkness alone, Ji-ho immediately sat up and checked his leg.

Beneath his mid-thigh length shorts, his white, resilient legs were visible. Only the long, deep scar on the left proved the two legs were different.

“I’ll have to use a warm compress before bed because of you, Bok-gu. Argh, stop licking! Okay, I take it back. It’s not your fault. I just overdid it today, I guess.”

A faint pain was felt near the scar on his leg, but Ji-ho wasn’t worried at all. He didn’t even try to look up the matter involving Jae-in that he had heard from Mirin.

‘Yoon Jae-in isn’t the type to act foolishly like me. Whatever it is, he’ll overcome it.’

With just one charge from Bok-gu, the name Pentagram was already erased from his mind. All that remained for Ji-ho was the everyday concern of how to spend the rest of his day.

Because of that, he completely failed to expect it.

The unexpected guest who would visit him a few days later. And how he himself would begin to change because of it.