-Onew-

“Seriously, hyung. Which part of my face that needs to be changed? That man is crazy.” I smiled to his remark, bitterly. We had just been done taking a bath and right now were practicing simple make up and clothing skills which we had learned keenly when we were still trainees, to make us be still recognizable even though hats and sunglasses disguised our look.

“Was he blindfolded when we were auditioned in front of him?” He asked again with a more high tone, describing how annoyed he was at the moment. We were doing the same thing at that day, at the same morning, and no wonder the memories of that terrible day came back again. Only that the feelings were oppositely different. We were in joy so much, now we were engulfed with the feeling of crushing somebody’s life with no mercy, somebody who had turned our lives upside down with no mercy, also.

-Flashback-

 Our debut song had been completely saved in our permanent brain archives, definitely, that although the surroundings produced no sounds even a single drip of water, we could hear the song clearly in our minds, then our lips would start moving involuntarily and the song came alive through our voices. We were doing it now, actually. Although our hands were occupied, gel here, spiky there, trying to imitate sunbaenim’s cool hairstyle and how we applied them on our own hair, our duo voices were totally in sync. Our years of painful trainings were no joke, after all.

We were just about to go out from our room when my cellphone signaled a new text message had arrived. A friend of mine sent us a website address and asked us to open it. My eyes went two times wider as my eyes caught the headline of the article on the website. Hoping this was just a joke article or any other articles which used eye-catching headline with a completely different contain, I scrolled down more and more and finally realized that the title of the headline completely summarized the whole issue in the article.

“Hyung, let’s go. Hyung?” Kikwang raised an eyebrow as he saw me looking at my cellphone as if I had seen a ghost. He, then, took my cellphone away from me to look at something on my cellphone which made look so dead right now.

Onew and Lee Kikwang, Going-to-debut singers, Are Gays and Uncredible Duo?

I could tell that he was just speechless just like I was right now. He became rigid for a second before diverting his eyes back to the screen.

“What the-?! Hyung, this is..” He scratched his head quite hard that he did not really care about his hairstyle that much anymore to just express his great frustration. I managed to keep steady and took a calm decision to call our manager right away.

After about two seconds of the caller ring, someone finally picked up the phone.

“Hyung-“

“Oh, Onew-ah. What is it, dear?” It was not our manager. It was our president.

“About the article? Ah, I know. I am reading it. Your photo looks great, just handsome.”

What?

What was the meaning of this?

“Is it because we refused the plastic surgery?” Kikwang diverted his thought of frustration as he suddenly looked at me, looking surprised as well.

““I said the truth, right? The photo in the article talked better than the paragraphs.” His ridiculous explanation boosted up my anger that I could feel my grasp on my cellphone was becoming tighter.

“All of those written are nonsense. What photoshoot schedules? You never told us any of those things.” I still did my best to keep calm and preventing myself from shouting to this guy, made him deaf by my high tone of berate through the speaker of the cellphone.

“I did well, didn’t I?” There. I could not hold any longer.

“Why did you do this? We just want to be known as talented singers, not just good-looking artists! Moreover, where did you get the photo? You-“

““Hyung!” I jerked when Kikwang shouted my name with a panic expression on his face. He was standing at the window, gesturing me to look through it. I shut my cellphone and walked nearer to the window. There were indistinct voices of crowd which made my heart beat faster in fright.

There were reporters, although not that many, with great spirit, trying to burst through our apartment main door downstairs.

“We are not wrong, hyung. We don’t have to be afraid of those people.” I plastered on my worried face to him. My heart told me to confront this crowd with their groundless assumptions about us, but my common sense told me otherwise. Mr. Han was a public figure with a reliable image in front of the media. Once we opposed this rumor, we would be damned that we betrayed our own agency and any agencies would not accept us even we kneel in front of them. But, if we said nothing, then people will think we admitted that we were gays! What should we do?

“Kikwang-ah, let’s run. We’ll think further after that.” I did not care about his rants about why we should be in the loser position. I was packing my necessary things and told him to do so which he complied with a very heavy heart, I could tell, as I saw the deep frown on his forehead, showing his confusion and hurt at the same time.

After much struggling, we finally made our way to the back door of this apartment and ran as far as we could, as if we had become fugitives.

That man.

I would never forgive him.

-Kikwang-

“I still remember how he called his security guards to drag us outside his room the next day when we were the one who supposed to beat this horrible millionare till he could not walk anymore.”  I said when we were finally back, standing still and staring with so much intensity of grudge, anger and nervousness at the entrance, a giant entrance, to the mansion of that man. We were not nervous to face the guy, frankly speaking, but it was just nerve-wrecking that sometimes we see a flash of terrible imagination. Imagination about the plan which we had been planning for days would be ruined by a single mistake and, for the second time, break our images once again, perhaps for the last time to pieces.

After two times of breathing in and breathing out to calm us down and hypnotize ourselves that the plan was going to work, we looked at each other, assuring one another for the last time before my first finger reached the bell and pressed it.  

“Kikwang-ah, what if Han Seungyeon was a fat, ugly, pimpled lady?” With a very solemn expression, Onew-hyung asked me. Whether it was his sangtae way to break the ice or not, he succeeded to make me bursted in small laughter and forget the intensity rising as we were waiting for someone to open the giant and luxurious door.

“Hyung, it doesn’t matter. We will not fall in love with her, anyway.” As I had just finished saying the last word, a sound of an opened door was heard. Instantly, we were rigid for a while as we stopped our conversation abruptly and set our eyes in front when a woman with such a pretty face and milky white complexion showed up.

We were stunned for about a second. In completely amazed kind of awe.

“Yes, may I help you?” Her angelic voice snapped me up from my paralyzed moment. I blinked before I found words to describe our intention of coming here.

“N-no. I-I mean, yes! Is Mr. Han present at the moment?” I was quite sure that she giggled or even laughed in the heart when she heard me stuttering. Once I found out that Onew-hyung was not yet back to the world, I nudged his elbow with mine inconspicuously. Eventually, he blinked for a few times and backed to his cool pose.

“Oh, my father? He’s still at his workplace. But, he will be home in fifteen minutes, I think.” As soon as I heard that ‘oh, my father’ thing, I felt a butterfly in my stomach. And … surely so did he. Twenty years of friendship was no joke that it was quite a piece of cake for me to predict what he had in mind at the moment, looking from his expression.

“Please, come in. You may have some tea while both of you are waiting for my father.” We smiled. As she drove us to enter the house more, we were welcomed by the same furniture and interior just like the last time we came here six months ago. The time the father of her impolitely chased us out as though the times when we were talking to him like sons talking to their fathers never existed.

“Please sit here. I will go inside for a while to ask a maid to make some tea for both of you.” We sat down on the soft couch and again we smiled as she made her way to the kitchen.

“Kikwang-ah, she absolutely had no idea at all that we were once here, huh?” Onew-hyung asked me silently.

“ Of course, from the news that I heard, she had been in U.S.A, studying economics, so she could be ready to inherit the company in the future, until a year and a half year ago, she came back and helping his father making the company even bigger.” Onew-hyung responded by nodding a few times.

Onew-hyung leaned his back on the couch, almost in a sloppy way, and sighed.

“This woman is out target, right? Han Seungyeon.” I smiled evilly to him. We could smell victory when our gazes met.

Target had been officially locked.

I was about to confirm our next step we had been practicing at home to Onew-hyung before she reentered the living room with a maid bringing two cups of tea on a tray.

“Kamsahamnida.” After we said that in unison, we took the cups and sipped the tea.

“Oh, appa. You finally came.” I almost choked when I heard the word ‘appa’ from . Onew-hyung put the cup instantly on the glass table and bowed ninety degrees to the ‘appa’ which I also did after coughing silently for quite a few times and put the cup on the table as well. 

“Oh.” That ‘appa’ just responded with ‘oh’? A calm ‘oh’? I thought when his expression was just as annoyingly tranquil as usual. Believe me or not, this was the longest second ever.

“Excuse us for a moment.” She unexpectedly broke the ice indirectly when asked for our excuses which we responded by a rather confused expression. She used her body language by pointing her thumb finger to the kitchen and finally went to the place with him.

After about two minutes, only he came out. He sat his bug butts on the couch across ours sloppily.

“So, what do you want?” We were quite annoyed with his tone of asking, however we could still stand it because our intention, plan, actually would show him who was the boss in the end, for sure.

“We … “

“Forgive us for the last time. We have decided to … be artists working in the name of your agency again if you allow us.” Onew-hyung cut me off, perhaps trying to convince they guy and himself, assuring himself for the exact. I gulped before I finally had the guts to talk about the plastic surgery or so-called agreed, as this fake agreement was able to convince him more about our integrity, which was fake as well, to be artists under his agency name again.

“About the plastic surgery, we have also decided to do it-“

“No need to do that.”

He cut me off. I was in a complete shock and so was Onew-hyung, of course. Had he changed? Really?

“Marry my daughter, instead.” 

-Seungyeon-

I made use the kitchen door which was opened a little bit to overhear the conversation between my father and the guys.

“No need to do that.”

“Marry my daughter, instead.”  

As I heard the last statement from my father, I could not help but smile. A desperately evil smile.

TO BE CONTINUED