Chapter 3: Hidden Wealth

“This is a piece of cake. Isn’t it basic?”

“…I shouldn’t have asked. Just practice quietly.”

“You need to learn to be humble when you get praised, hyung.”

At first, even Hwi-young could barely hold a conversation because he was intimidated by Ye-jun’s presence.

Now he nagged naturally too.

And Ye-jun liked this atmosphere.

Part of it was that he knew they were all kind, good kids.

Another part was that being with the members was the only place he could feel at ease.

That was why Ye-jun could never tire of them, even after ten tedious years.

“But hyung. How do you know the stage so well?”

“What?”

“We’ve never been there. Rehearsal is still days away.”

“Why?”

“No, it’s just… never mind…”

When Ye-jun shot back in a firm tone, Jun quickly wilted and trailed off.

At first he used to bark and argue just fine, but after Ye-jun regressed once, then twice, Jun could no longer keep up with him.

Since he couldn’t fight with a high schooler six years younger the way he used to, Ye-jun had become the only full-grown adult among them.

“You can get a rough feel for the stage even from videos. If you got it, go practice quickly. And don’t come down crying because you messed up again.”

“Yes…”

Ye-jun patted the head nodding up and down in front of him and sent Jun back to his original spot.

Jun, ignoring his long legs and taking short quick steps to find his position, stopped as if something had occurred to him.

“When did I ever cry?”

“Someday? You know I can see the future a little.”

“Ah, Ha-hyeon hyung. This hyung is saying weird things again!”

“Leave him alone. I’m playing the song again.”

But Ye-jun deliberately acted like a childish adult.

At least in here, he liked it that way.

“Ah…”

With the concert right around the corner, Ha-hyeon’s condition was bad.

His condition kept worsening before their first concert, and worry spread everywhere.

“Are you okay? Can you keep practicing?”

“Yes.”

As the main dancer, he had an intro solo and quite a lot of parts, so Ha-hyeon was an important member who could never be left out.

Even the manager seemed anxious and checked Ha-hyeon’s condition regularly.

It wasn’t a simple cold either.

Even though he ate properly, his condition was noticeably unstable compared to the other members.

“I’m going crazy. Hey, Ha-hyeon. The concert is three hours long.”

“…”

“Right now you look like you’ll die just doing two songs in a row. How are you going to handle three hours?”

Ha-hyeon swallowed two headache pills without a reply.

Watching Ji-gu’s back as he paused practice and led Ha-hyeon out, the manager let out a deep sigh.

Ye-jun responded calmly because he had already been through that chaotic first concert twice.

When he first regressed, he tried this and that, but nothing changed.

The concert was an event he couldn’t cancel on his own.

Both of the first concerts he had experienced ended precariously in the worst state, so this time would probably be the same.

“Hyung… can we do the concert?”

Seeing Ha-hyeon, who always stood at the center and practiced silently, looking unstable, Jun seemed to grow anxious too.

At the question asked with a face full of worry, Ye-jun simply nodded.

“We just do it.”

“But Ha-hyeon hyung, I don’t know if he can really run for three hours.”

“He can. Just leave him alone. He’ll handle it.”

That was how it had been from Ye-jun’s perspective.

He had endured it and made it to the end.

At the words spoken with a blank face, words that could be misunderstood, Jun frowned slightly.

“Aren’t you worried at all, hyung?”

“No, I mean he can do well.”

“Then you should have just said that.”

“Ah… okay. I’m sorry. I really didn’t mean it that way.”

In the end, Ye-jun threw in the towel and apologized.

He needed to watch his mouth in front of the kid.

Reflecting, Ye-jun took good care of Jun and got into the waiting van.

It was five days before the concert, a day with a short photo shoot.

Even after arriving at the shoot, the staff were busy because of Ha-hyeon’s condition.

They were frantic cooling his feverish face from the side and kept checking his condition so it wouldn’t show.

It was an unavoidable process before starting a shoot in poor condition.

Standing quietly nearby and watching, Ye-jun heard voices digging into his ears from somewhere.

“Anyone would think he’s the Daesang singer.”

The staff lowered their voices and whispered.

But the thick voice cut through the air even in that noisy place and reached him quickly.

Ye-jun had sharp ears.

“Kids who start doing too well from the very beginning have no manners. They need to roll around as unknowns for two or three years to learn their place and move quickly on their own.”

“Exactly.”

What were they saying in front of a sick person?

No matter how you looked at it, this wasn’t the right situation to lecture about manners.

But apart from that, Ye-jun was used to this kind of talk from staff.

He had thought he was forever done with being treated like this, but somehow he had regressed again.

“Did last year’s rookie award even have any real rivals?”

“The way he holds his head high, anyone would think he’s the Daesang singer.”

The staff member snickered and drank coffee from a paper cup.

From a quick look, he wasn’t even regular staff.

Just an assistant, maybe.

Ye-jun narrowed his eyes slightly.

How many times had he given a Daesang acceptance speech at awards ceremonies?

Seo Ye-jun, leader of REVE, the group that had won the Daesang five years in a row, had his pride wounded.

But this place was the distant past, too far back to freely show the pride that once overflowed.

Honor, glory.

The only person who could prove all of that was himself.

“There are even rumors he got sponsored.”

“Right, from that sh*tty little agency. How far can broadcast luck take you?”

Just the first verse, only the first verse.

He tried to quietly endure it, but when the words continued without end, Ye-jun quietly folded his hands together neatly.

Ye-jun had a lot of money.

Not a moderate amount either.

He had an enormous amount.

He did not simply live in Seoul, in a large new apartment near a subway station in a neighborhood famous for expensive housing.

The main house was in a neighborhood where only chaebols lived.

The three-story house surrounded by high walls was so large that empty rooms were left abandoned.

In that bleak neighborhood, bodyguards stood ready twenty-four hours a day, and social gatherings went on all day.

Gatherings of rich kids weren’t fun.

On the surface they praised everything, real or not, while behind each other’s backs everyone knew what they were doing.

Ye-jun’s personality wasn’t good enough to ignore that hypocrisy and be friendly anyway.

But no matter how obnoxious he acted, people didn’t easily turn their backs on him.

Because of exactly one thing: his family background.

The more people had, the more they lived every day anxious that their overflowing wealth would be taken away.

When Ye-jun was ten, too lazy to solve the homework his tutor assigned, he secretly searched the internet and thought for the first time that those people were pitiful.

And when he said that at dinner, his parents were horrified.

Is our child really ten? …Well, it’s been ten years since we gave birth to him.

When people asked about his family, he shrugged it off as nothing special, but in reality it was a company people recognized just by the name.

It was an exaggeration to say it was top three, but it was within the top ten, a place others would envy.

Yet Ye-jun hated that instead of someone’s footsteps, all he heard endlessly was the sound of luxury sedans rolling by.

So since childhood, he often said he would leave home to live on his own.

In the end, he left the main house at seventeen and started living alone.

So saying that Ye-jun had a temperament that made him keep his word once he said it was just a waste of breath.

It was natural that he refused the glorious route of inheriting the family business.

He had a good memory but hated committing things to memory.

He didn’t like actively running around, but he hated sitting still in a chair studying even more.

The hobby he picked up instead was rap.

“I can’t understand a single word he’s saying.”

“Listen closely. The lyrics are really good.”

“Play it slower.”

“Just listen.”

When he first encountered hip-hop, he wondered what kind of music this was.

For Ye-jun, who mainly listened to upbeat dance songs, rap was a fresh shock.

Because it was astonishingly unintelligible.

Not long after, his ears opened quickly, and he began looking up and reading the lyrics of famous songs.

At some point he fell deeply into it and started writing and spitting his own lyrics.

Over beats where many people showed off and exaggerated, Ye-jun felt it was the only space where he could write nothing but the truth.

Meeting rappers, doing self-recording together, and making a small, insignificant album was far more fun than studying.

Ye-jun loved rap.

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