Lost in his own thoughts, Sung-min collided head first into a young woman pulling along what appeared to be a mountain goat. Both goat and girl gave him an angry look and the goat threw in an angry baaa. Sung-min apologised profusely to both of them, then quickly turned around in embarrassment and headed in the opposite direction. He was stopped in his tracks by the sound of a familiar voice calling his name. He saw Ryeo-wook coming towards him.

“Sung-min, what are you doing here? Has there been a crime committed?”

Sung-min rushed over to him, taking his hands gently as he willed him to be quiet. “I’m not with the police right now,” he said in a hushed voice.

“Then you came just to see me?” Ryeo-wook smiled brightly at him, and Sung-min could feel his chest tighten. With some embarrassment he recalled how Ryeo-wook had always been especially fond of him.

“Yes, Ryeo-wook,” he said softly. “I came to see you. I saw you on the television last week, and I was quite surprised by it. You did well.”

Ryeo-wook linked arms with Sung-min and guided him back down the corridor. “I have to get ready now, but you can stay and talk with me. And if you like, you can tell me why you’re really here.” Sung-min tensed at these words, but when Ryeo-wook laughed lightly he decided that he probably wasn’t in too much trouble.

They arrived at a dressing room, where there were mirrors on the wall and a few people were adjusting their costumes. The goat girl was there, busy fixing her hanbok in the mirror but the goat was thankfully absent. Ryeo-wook took out a tie and began putting it on.

“So, any reason you wanted to see me?”

Sung-min sighed as his eyes moved from Ryeo-wook to his hands. "You know, I was doing some thinking the other night. Your father was always a good mentor to me, and I realise now that I should have made a better effort to become closer to you after his death. I realised I don’t even know where you are living!”

Ryeo-wook shrugged. “With my auntie. I’m fine though, really.”

“Still, I think I should have kept in touch with you.”

“It’s not too late. We can still be friends.” He smiled and pressed his palms against Sung-min’s cheeks. Sung-min shivered at the cold touch. He returned to dressing himself and Sung-min returned to watching him, contemplating his friend’s appearance. He looked different to how Sung-min remembered him, although not as much in person as he did on the television. Up close he still had the same manner, but there was something fundamentally different about him which Sung-min couldn’t quite place. Perhaps he was just getting older.

“You’ve grown up a lot,” he said. “You were just a teenager when we last met. Now you seem changed.”

“For better or worse?”

Sung-min stared hard at him, not sure how to answer. “I can tell you’ve lost weight.” It may have been the heavy make-up he was wearing, or light in the room, but in that moment Sung-min thought that Ryeo-wook looked particularly gaunt, and he regretted having said anything about it.

A man with a clipboard came into the room, rounding up the contestants. “I have to go now,” Ryeo-wook said softly, touching Sung-min’s cheek again. “Watch the show and talk to me later.”

Sung-min watched him go, then returned himself to the maze of corridors. As he walked he almost tripped over a black cat, which had appeared out of nowhere. It screeched menacingly before slinking off back down the corridor. Sung-min watched it go with a mixture of annoyance and amusement. Who ever thought a television studio could have such animals?

As soon as the cat had vanished, Kyu-hyun appeared, also seemingly out of nowhere. He took Sung-min by the arm. “Where have you been?” he snapped. “We’re about to go on air. Get back to work!”

Kyu-hyun dragged the dumbfounded Sung-min into a control room, where the crew was set up and a glass window gave a view of the main stage. The stage was now full of people and Shin-dong and the co-host were standing in the starting position.

“What do you want me to do?” Sung-min asked.

“Go get me a coffee,” Kyu-hyun replied and then continued to instruct the people at the controls. Sung-min did as the producer asked and returned a few minutes later. He found Kyu-hyun making hand movements to the crew.

“Lights, camera, on air in five, four, three, two, one, go!”

The audience applauded on cue. “Hello and welcome to the number one singing show in the country,” the big man announced. His female co-host continued: “Tonight, a various selection of young performers will try to win the hearts of our judging panel and hopefully you at home.” The audience clapped again.

Kyu-hyun put both his hands behind his head. “Ratings were pretty good last week,” he told the control room. “Audiences really like the girl with the mountain goat.”

The show was getting under way and the first performer had made their way onto the stage. Sung-min sat and watched, not knowing what else he was supposed to be doing.

“Do you think she’ll win?” he asked Kyu-hyun, who was now drinking coffee and looking over an assortment of papers.

“No,” he replied flatly. “The winner ought to be someone with actual talent, not just an entertaining gimmick. We will make sure that she stays in the contest right until the end though, to keep the viewers entertained, and then have the best singer win the show, so that we maintain our integrity as a program.”

“So you decide who wins? I thought it was decided by voting.”

Kyu-hyun tapped his nose. “Of course it's decided by voting. We also get a vote.”

“So can you tell me who will be the winner?”

“Well we have to see how the competition goes, give them a chance to prove themselves.”

“What do you think of Ryeo-wook?”

Kyu-hyun scrunched up his face in thought. “Nice kid, but plain. He has a good singing voice, but what he lacks is charisma.” He paused to briefly consult the ratings report that he had left on the table. “According to this, he is quite popular with the middle aged housewife demographic. They like his innocent and childlike demeanour.”

They ceased their conversation and Sung-min directed his attention back to the program. The audience cheered with delight as the goat girl came out to sing an old folk tune with the goat by her side. The audience was also quite responsive to another young singer, who performed a light-hearted song and dance number. Sung-min sat on his hands, feeling restless and impatient to hear what Ryeo-wook would sing.

Ryeo-wook was the last performer of the evening. The audience clapped politely when he was announced, but the entire studio became silent when he appeared on stage. He sat at the piano, but made no sound; it was as if he was waiting for something. Sung-min could feel his heart rate increase. He suddenly realised just how dearly he wanted Ryeo-wook to do well. Every nerve and emotion in the boy seemed to rip through his heart too; how painful it was to watch him just sit there!

It was a dramatic silence, broken just before it might have been considered awkward. When at last he began to play, a swell of anticipation had filled the room and the audience hung on every note. So too did the crew in the control room as they watched with bated breath, but Kyu-hyun’s expression quickly turned to one of horror when he recognised the song that Ryeo-wook was performing.

“What the hell does he think he’s doing? He must be mad!”

Sung-min also recognised the song. It had been released many years ago by a female singer. The words of the song described a young woman rejected by her lover who was planning her own death. It was such a macabre song that it sent people into fits of depression and madness, and the government had even banned the song from being played on the radio for a period of time after its release. Ryeo-wook sung it well, so well that Sung-min was caught between feelings of pride and misery as the words of the song struck at the heart of his sadness. Ryeo-wook was barely twenty years of age, and yet he sang with the pain and experience of someone who had lived one hundred years!

When the song was finished the audience gave a cautious applause. Sung-min noticed that some tears had formed in corner of his eyes, so he quickly wiped them away. Kyu-hyun gave an exaggerated sigh of defeat.

“The suicide song. He may well have been singing about the suicide of Cho Kyu-hyun! There goes our good ratings, I can’t wait to hear all the complaints from our middle aged housewife demographic...”

Sung-min noticed one of the cameramen wiping away a tear with his sleeve. He turned to Kyu-hyun. “But it was a brilliant performance. He did very well.”

“Yes, yes, he’s fine musician and all that business,” Kyu-hyun grumbled as he sorted the ratings report. “But this is the sort of show that people tune into to see a mountain goat bleeting along to a folk tune while a pretty girl dances around it. Television isn’t about great art, it’s about giving the people what they want.”

“Having said all that,” Kyu-hyun added as they were leaving, “his charisma has improved a great deal.”