Chapter 209

Chapter 209

The van was as frigid as a freezer—and I meant the mood, not the actual temperature.

Sh*t. Ryu Chungwoo didn’t seem particularly angry or upset, but he definitely wasn’t his usual self. I thought back to what had happened in the waiting room of the music show a few hours back.

“Hey, let’s have some snacks! Eat a lot!”

“Yeah.”

That had been it. Chungwoo sat on a sofa without doing or saying anything, a stress ball in his hand. Everyone had kept their distance from him after that. They would be filming again early tomorrow morning, but we were getting to return to the dorm before dinner for a change, and some of the members had to be excited about this, but they kept their mouths tactfully shut.

As for me, I’d never been all that talkative, anyway. I was simply checking through the public’s reactions on my phone.

Seems like the situation is pretty much sorted.

[Fancam of Ryu Chungwoo from a different angle]

[Ryu Chungwoo did NOT hit anyone]

After the explanations spread, people were finally starting to throw their support behind him again, and the mood was calming down. There were still idiots who claimed that he wasn’t who they thought he was, but that couldn’t be helped. Chungwoo’s current mood wasn’t solely because of the controversy breaking out on the internet, as far as I could tell.

The uncomfortable vibes persisted after we returned to the dorm.

“I’m going to my room, guys.”

“Okay!”

Chungwoo retired to his room as soon as we’d finished eating dinner, apparently intending to go to sleep immediately. As soon as the door closed behind him, the other members sighed with worry or smiled wryly.

Bae Sejin muttered gravely, “Frankly, I understand why he’s angry.”

“Yeah!”

“D-do you think he’s really upset? H-he did the right thing and made sure we didn’t get hurt…” Ahyeon shouted anxiously, though everyone had lowered their voices to let Chungwoo sleep.

“Well, the agency thinks he should have just sidestepped instead of pushing the guy. Maybe they felt under pressure with everyone making such a big deal about it,” Big Sejin said sarcastically, pretending to feel pity.

I thought you’d say that.

I took my bowl to the sink and said, “He’s been too nice to the agency thus far.” If he’d been harder to work with, the agency would have been too busy apologizing now to try to criticize him. But Chungwoo was kind and responsible, and the agency took that for granted. “Why don’t we just let him rest more? If there’s anything that needs attention, we should bring it to the agency right away.”

Most of the members nodded, seeming to agree.

“I think you’re right.”

“All right,” Bae Sejin said, his voice grave. He seemed all too aware that he was the oldest among us after Chungwoo. I wished I could tell him to just save his energy.

“M-maybe he’ll feel better after he’s gotten some rest,” Ahyeon suggested.

“Yes. That’s how people usually recover their good spirit, anyway. I’ll be sure to support Chungwoo a lot during the current promotional cycle,” Kim Raebin said.

“Now then, let’s get some rest ourselves!” Big Sejin said.

Our short discussion came to an end, the group consensus being that we should avoid troubling Chungwoo, if possible. Even though the show of teamwork was both reasonable and caring, it didn’t address the fundamental cause of the problem.

There’s a limit to how long we can keep this up. I wasn’t sure that any of the managers were capable of fulfilling the role that Chungwoo had been playing so far. The chief manager would often act confused about why he was being asked to do the role of a road manager and push the responsibility onto the first manager, who responded predictably. He’d take the first opportunity that came his way to push the work onto Chungwoo again, and his behavior could really set off a ticking time bomb if we weren’t careful.

We’ll be lucky if Chungwoo stops at just punching the next guy in the face. I needed to intervene before we reached that point—either by replacing a manager, or forcing them to come to their senses.

I also need to check in on Chungwoo’s morale. We couldn’t have a huge, unforeseen accident going down during our activities. My latest status abnormality—which demanded that I gather an audience of 400,000—was ever-present. For now, I would keep an eye on him tomorrow, and not let my guard down even if he looked outwardly all right.

I fell asleep after coming to that conclusion, but I realized very quickly the next day that I wouldn’t need to monitor Chungwoo all that closely.

“We’re visiting the salon before the variety show filming today. Is there anything we have to tell them?”

“No.”

Chungwoo was just the same as he’d been the day before. He even looked past the first manager like he was an inanimate object or something.

“He’s scary!”

“Quiet.”

Eugene was very loud, even when he lowered his voice. I pushed him away as he shouted in my ear, climbing into the van. I intentionally sought out a seat by Chungwoo.

Time to sound him out. He wasn’t particularly uncooperative or unpleasant in his answers. The difference in his attitude was only so obvious because he was usually so pleasant all the time.

He’s acting no different from how I usually act, to be honest. The thought left me feeling a little bitter. In any case, I waited for an opportunity, speaking up smoothly just as we were about to get out of the van.

“I’m going to get drinks. What would you like?”

“I’m fine.”

He doesn’t look fine at all, but whatever.

“Coke! Coke!” Eugene cried, demanding a soft drink. He seemed to be the only one excited. The other members were all looking at me like I’d attempted something brave. It hadn’t actually been a challenge for me at all. I was just working toward a larger goal.

The next day I called out to Chungwoo and handed him some fresh fruit just without another word.

“It’s fine,” he said.

“Think of it as dextrose. We slept less than three hours.”

Chungwoo didn’t even seem to have it in him to argue and just drank it. His eyes bulged. “This is too sweet.”

I did not doubt it. I’d asked for it to be filled with as much sugar and syrup as possible. This was the same “sugar high” method I’d used on Eugene during Idol Inc. It was a simple tactic that got the body going.

“It’s more delicious that way.”

“Hmm…”

Chungwoo drank the entire bottle in the end. He was probably too tired to argue and didn’t have it in him to worry about his sugar intake. He drank it back quickly, and I could practically see the color returning to his face. I assumed my tactic had been successful.

I asked him a question. “How are you feeling? I feel more tired than usual this comeback.”

“Yeah. I do feel like I’m recovering more slowly.”

“I know, right?”

So perhaps the reason for his attitude had been burnout, after all. This was the first time in the past few days that Chungwoo had spoken this well. He seemed to be experiencing a burst of energy, perhaps thanks to the sugar.

“The sugar really seems to have an effect. I feel more energetic!” Raebin interjected with a relieved look on his face, unable to help himself.

“Uh, yeah.” Chungwoo reacted gently, as was his usual reaction. The sugar was having a better effect than usual.

I rubbed my chin. He really does seem the type that requires some kind of physical activity to handle his mental stress. Simply resting wouldn’t cut it for him. His body needed some kind of stimulation to help clear his head.

“Hmm.”

It was a bit of a pain, but couldn’t be helped.

I owe him, anyway. I picked up my phone and got to looking up an address.

***

The next afternoon, we filmed a weekend variety show that involved being thrown into the water if we got the lyrics to nostalgic hits wrong—we were tossed into the water far too many times.

“Whoa!”

“You’re going to pay for this!”

“Wait, emcee! What are you doing? This is TeSTAR you invited onto the show!”

In the end, every one of us ended up drenched, and we piled into our van after being assaulted by towels and hair dryers. We were completely drained of energy.

I wish I could go home and take a bath… But we had one more item on our schedule, even though this one didn’t have a fixed time, and we’d selected it arbitrarily, giving us a little more freedom. It was a W Live stream.

We’d crammed it into an empty slot in our schedule, so if we wanted, we could cut it short and change up the content as much as we liked. But this time, we agreed that we should make an event of it, instead of doing something easy and comfortable—everyone except for Ryu Chungwoo, that is.

“It’s an hour away, right?”

“Yes. Let’s get a move on!”

We left for the prearranged location, all of us sleeping briefly on the way. Chungwoo, who’d usually have asked where we were going, fell asleep as well. This only contributed to his confusion when we arrived on set a while later.

“This place…”

The members crowded around the surprised Chungwoo, grinning and opening their arms wide as they introduced the location.

“This is where today’s W Live session is taking place, at a shooting range!”

“Tada!”

It was a large-scale airsoft gun range located in the center of Seoul. I’d looked it up the previous day.

“You seem to enjoy shooting, but we don’t get nearly as much time these days to enjoy our hobbies. We thought it would be nice if you got some time to enjoy it like this!” Big Sejin said.

“Enjoy it! Let’s go!” Eugene cried.

Chungwoo looked as though someone had slapped him, but his face began to almost glow subtly with emotion. “Thanks, guys. This should be fun.”

“Hehe.”

He seemed moved. The surprise event had been effective, just as I’d planned. His considerate nature, which had laid dormant inside him for days, finally reared its head once more.

“You guys must be tired. Are you sure? It’ll be difficult to be so active so late at night…”

Bae Sejin averted his gaze. “We agreed to do this because it looked like fun when we were filming for the music show. Please don’t misunderstand. We all wanted to try it.”

“Th-that’s right. I think it’ll be fun!” Ahyeon said.

“Haha, fine. All right.”

“Hem.”

Bae Sejin put up a reasonable front, though he’d been the first to agree, saying it was a great idea.

“Let’s make teams of two, then. The theme of the W Live will be beating Chungwoo!” Big Sejin said.

“No going easy on us. No mercy! I’m going to win!” Eugene said.

Chungwoo grinned for the first time in a while. “Are you sure? You guys can form teams of three, if you’d like.”

“Wow. You’re looking down on us, aren’t you?” Big Sejin said.

It became clear in only an hour that Chungwoo had been very reasonable in suggesting this.

“Oof!”

In the end, Bae Sejin and Raebin had only accrued half of Chungwoo’s score.

- LMAO

- Guys, why try something so pointless?

- We’ll pretend we didn’t see this

- LOL that’s so cute!

These were the comments I saw while watching the other teams. Chungwoo seemed to only get more into the swing of things as time passed.

“Whoa!”

“I didn’t know that was possible.”

A former archery gold medalist humiliating civilians with no experience would be a hilarious topic among the fans for years to come, it seemed.

“We need to keep in mind that Chungwoo has a bit of an advantage since he used a gun in the music video once!” Raebin said.

“But that was a musket, and these are rifles. They’re different guns.”

Raebin gasped.

“R-rifles were developed from muskets! Th-the employee here told us that!” Ahyeon said.

“I knew it! Bae Sejin and I didn’t fail. Let’s just say that we did far better than we could have been expected to—”

“He has double the score again!”

“My god.”

I continued to shoot, ignoring the chatter. I didn’t do as well as Chungwoo, but I thought I did all right. Proof of this was the fact that Ahyeon and I were the ones to almost catch up to Chungwoo’s score.

- Wow. This team’s doing pretty well LOL

- Not bad

- When is TeSTAR going to serve in the military? Hurry up already LOL

- T_T check out the vibes

Given our location, some trolls were talking about military service, but the W Live ended pretty successfully, managing to be both hilarious and exciting at the same time.

“See you next time!”

“We’ll be back!”

With the usual closing comments, everyone, including the staff, returned to looking completely exhausted.

“Ha…”

“No regrets, though…”

“That was fun! Let’s go again!”

Except for Eugene, of course. While the staff were busy cleaning up, we were given some time to rest. Chungwoo jumped into action.

“Drink this.”

“Thank you.”

He seemed to have recovered somewhat, perhaps because he’d enjoyed having some fun shooting and winning. He’d gone and bought some drinks for all of us from a nearby convenience store. Standing next to me as I took the cans, he began a conversation.

“Ahyeon told me you were the one who came up with the idea to come here, Moondae.”

So Ahyeon had told him. Chungwoo quickly wrapped up the conversation before I could say anything.

“Thanks. I feel… much better.”

I took the drink he held out to me. The pop of the can was a refreshing sound.

“Do you feel better?” I asked.

“Yes.”

That was all that mattered. I drank the zero-calorie drink without another word.

Chungwoo opened his own drink and continued calmly, “It was no big deal, really… I just felt strangely tired. Maybe it’s because I’ve been thinking about when I quit archery a lot these days.”

I’m surprised to hear him talking about that. Apparently, the activity I’d arranged had been far more effective than I’d expected it to be.