Chapter 223

Chapter 223

It was completely silent in the car—with the exception of Raebin’s gasping sobs, audible from time to time. The members who would have normally consoled him, told him his grandmother would be fine, said nothing now, instead patting him on the back or focusing on driving. Empty platitudes would only make him feel worse in this situation.

“Yes… Of course, at this hour. We’re on the road, so please be ready nearby as soon as possible.” After telling a manager, whom I’d had to call several times before getting through, about the situation, I hung up angrily.

Are you seriously complaining about the hour? There’s a time and a place to ask for work-life balance, you son of a b*tch. After that, to my dismay, I could do absolutely nothing. I simply sat there thinking. It would take us at least three hours to get to Gangwon Province, where Raebin’s home was located, and there was nothing we could do to change that.

There’s every chance we might get there too late. I thought about how things would have changed if we’d started out from Seoul, as he would have if we hadn’t come on this trip. Doing so would have reduced travel time by an hour and a half or more. The difference an hour made was enormous, and I couldn’t help but think about that.

F*ck… The guy sitting in front of me would be thinking the same thing soon enough. Raebin hadn’t been able to let go of his phone since he’d gotten the call. He was no doubt waiting for another call to arrive, and terrified of what that would mean. He didn’t dare to call anyone himself, though. My breathing was quickening.

That’s enough. It was hilarious. I wasn’t Raebin, and I couldn’t help him in any way, but I was getting worked up over the matter. Filled with self-scorn, I stared out the window and decided to keep my mouth shut. At least I was out of his way.

After an agonizing three hours, we passed the final expressway tollgate between us and our destination. In his usual steady way, Chungwoo called back, “We’ll arrive in thirty minutes.”

Bae Sejin turned and said with some difficulty, “You should get changed.”

Raebin, who’d been stiff with worry and anxiety, unmoving for far too long, slowly began to change his shirt. It was all but dry already, and as it fell below the seat, sand was sent skittering to the car floor. Raebin tugged on a new shirt and sat there in a daze for a while. Then the tears began to pour down his face.

“I… I shouldn’t have asked… for us to come on this trip… Now I’ll be late—”

“No,” I found myself saying before I even realized what I was doing. I now had to come up with something more to say, but I had no time to explain myself. Someone else butted in.

“That’s right! This is all because of me,” Eugene said. “I’m the one who suggested it first. It wasn’t Raebin’s fault!” He sounded firm, but he looked ready to start crying himself.

Raebin shouted hoarsely, “N-no! W-we planned the trip together… I chose the location—”

“You can think about all that later,” I said, cutting him off. “Right now, you just need to go see your grandmother.”

Raebin nodded, though it looked like it cost him a great effort. I couldn’t let him think right now. I knew this much from experience.

The navigation app on the car soon informed us that we’d arrived.

“Let’s go.”

“Right…”

Raebin stumbled out of the car, and then toward the hospital. The rest of us went with him as far as visitors were allowed to—that is, we ended up sitting in the chairs in the corridor outside his grandmother’s hospital room, waiting for Raebin to come out.

“Oh, Mother…”

People who seemed to be friends and relatives as well as medical staff went back and forth, but we sat still and quiet, no one attempting to strike up a conversation or ask questions. It seemed like we hadn’t arrived too late… thankfully.

Though, I’m not sure if this situation is one to be grateful for. The sun was starting to rise outside the window when Chungwoo finally spoke to me.

“Moondae.”

I looked over at him.

“Park Moondae, why don’t you go to the car and get some sleep?”

“Chungwoo… you should go instead.”

He’d driven through the night without getting any sleep. It was a wonder he was still awake. It was only right for him to go and get some sleep, but he shook his head.

“I’m not that tired.”

“Right. Neither am I.”

Our short conversation ended there. The members didn’t suggest that anyone else rest after that, and we just continued to wait. Raebin trudged out a while later, pale as a sheet, and gave us an update on the situation.

“Raebin.”

“Are you all right?”

“Y-yes… I spoke to my grandmother… Sh-she’s sleeping now…”

The immediate danger had passed, then.

Ha! Hilariously, I felt all the energy suddenly leave my body. Raebin hadn’t been too late. I could tell from the look on his face, however, that he didn’t think it was safe to relax yet.

Seems like this situation isn’t going to end well. I had the feeling this might turn out to be the worst vacation Kim Raebin had ever had.

***

Staff from the agency eventually showed up. After telling them about the situation, those of the members that had homes to go to left. Raebin’s older sister had appeared from inside the hospital room at some point and gently recommended that we do so.

“Thank you so much for bringing Raebin here.”

“Don’t mention it. It was the least we could do…”

“I heard you were on vacation. I’m sorry you had to waste a day like this… Please have a safe trip back.”

This was a reasonable request to make since she was probably apologetic, but not capable of tending to so many visitors. It was a great show of loyalty that all the members had come all this way when they hardly got more than a couple of chances every year to see their families. Eugene, however, refused to leave, since he would just be returning to the dorm, anyway.

“It’s all right! I can’t go home, anyway! I’ll stay here.”

“Eugene…”

Raebin’s sister seemed to know Eugene, probably because he and Raebin had been signed to the same agency previously. She didn’t seem to be upset that he was choosing to stay. But I couldn’t leave Cha Eugene alone.

He’s not really suited to looking after someone else. Raebin’s sister could potentially end up with an extra charge on her hands. I would be going back to the dorms alone if I left him behind, which would just be silly, especially when I was the older member. So I decided to stay as well.

“I can also stay.”

I’d had every intention of just hanging around the dorm during my vacation anyway.

After a few attempted refusals and a badly concealed sigh of relief, his sister and grandfather suggested that we go to Raebin’s parents’ house. Raebin’s sister also told us some of the details regarding their grandmother’s condition.

“We’ll be monitoring her for a few more days, and she’ll have an operation if possible…”

“It’s… not looking good.”

“Still… I thought it would be best if Raebin was prepared for what’s coming, instead of being taken by surprise like he was this time.”

We weren’t insensitive enough to inquire about the details of her disease, but from what we’d picked up overhearing friends and family moving about, it apparently had something to do with her pituitary gland.

Raebin finally relaxed a little after returning home, and he cried as he told us, “Th-they found the problem last time she was in hospital… She told my family not to tell me about it, since she didn’t want me to worry while I was working in Seoul… I-I had no idea! I didn’t even bother to ask. That was so stupid of me.”

“No! You’re not stupid,” Eugene insisted.

“Yes, I was! E-even today… I couldn’t pull myself together… I couldn’t even think properly…”

“You did perfectly fine,” I said, interrupting him. “You did what you needed to do calmly. And you were able to see your grandmother. Nobody is good at this sort of thing.”

Raebin’s shoulders relaxed. I weird realization came to me when I noticed my words had helped him.

I’m not wrong, I suppose. How could someone struggling through something so difficult be expected to handle it perfectly? He’d done very well, all things considered. I opened the window and fetched a sports drink from the fridge, having asked Raebin’s sister in advance for permission.

I poured a glass for him, since he was probably dehydrated. After watching him drink all of it down, I told him slowly, “I’m sorry about being so hard on you on the beach. It can’t have been easy.”

“N-no! It was thanks to you that we got there in time…”

Nothing bad would have happened if there had been a minor delay in setting out, but I supposed he wasn’t really thinking straight at the moment. I also realized that he was going to have a whole lot of mental and emotional hurdles to deal with from now on.

It’s not going to be easy, no matter what happens. That includes the conversation he’s going to have to have with the agency after the vacation is over.

“Eat something yummy, Raebin. Take out some food!” Eugene said.

“Y-you mean order delivery, right?”

“All right. Order!”

Raebin seemed to recover at least a little bit of his usual energy as he spoke a little with Eugene and eventually ordered something to eat. He didn’t have much of it, though. It was tenuous at best, but we managed to interact as we usually would for the next few days of our vacation, waiting for an emergency summons from the hospital.

Then the moment I’d been dreading finally came.

***

It was the morning of the last day of our vacation.

“My grandmother is going into surgery,” Raebin informed us calmly after receiving a call from his sister.

He’s holding his phone upside down, though.

“Eat while you talk,” I said.

“Raebin, your seat’s here!” Eugene said.

“I know! This is my home! Yes, Moondae. Uh, she’s better now. She’s recovered enough for surgery!”

So there was a chance she might recover. But it also meant there was a significant chance the operation wouldn’t succeed. I couldn’t figure out if I should temper his hopes or just let him have it. Instead, I decided to address a practical concern—the difficult problem I’d been considering since the first day of our vacation.

“Are you going to stay here and take care of her?”

“What…?”

“I’m sure you’re aware, but our vacation ends today.” I put my spoon down in my bowl. “We need to return sometime tomorrow morning. You need to think carefully about whether you can live with yourself if you go back to Seoul.”

If he resumed work in Seoul, there was a chance that he wouldn’t be able to return to her side before she passed should her condition suddenly deteriorate during or after the operation. I recalled what Raebin had told me in the early days after our debut, when his grandmother had fallen ill for the first time.

“Even if I do hear about it quickly, would it be right for me to leave in the middle of a performance or a shoot? If I did… that would make me unprofessional.”

What was more important, family or work? It was finally time for him to make that damnable choice. It would be four weeks before they would be able to gauge the results of the operation.

Talk about a sh*tty situation. As before, I could only tell him one thing.

“I’m telling you now, you can stay on hiatus for the time being. There’s no need for this to be a painful decision you have to bear. We work to live, don’t we?”

“Yes! It’s fine!” Eugene said.

“We’ll convince the agency together, so don’t worry about it.”

Eugene was pretty good at providing supporting fire. He’d behaved with surprising perceptiveness over the past few days. Frankly, I expected Raebin to close his eyes and start apologizing at this point, admitting that he needed to stay. I was wrong.

“I-I think… that would be just as painful! Our next full album is very important. I haven’t finished any of the songs I need to make… And the title track isn’t done, either.…”

As I should have expected, Kim Raebin also had dreams of his own and responsibilities he couldn’t let go of.

“I won’t be able to contribute to the music video, the choreography, or any of the performances…”

Raebin was the member who was in charge of producing our music—he was the core of TeSTAR’s musical identity. He was astute enough to realize that if he stepped away entirely, our group identity would suffer.

“If my grandmother doesn’t die and makes a recovery, I’ll have done all that for no reason—no, that’s not what I want.”

“Okay,” I said, stopping him.

He was right. If his grandmother recovered without issue, Raebin would regret having taken time off. Then he would be disgusted at himself for feeling that regret.

Am I too biased? It had been a mistake, projecting my own past on the situation. I tapped the dining table with my fingers.

The best thing to do would be to delay releasing the album for a couple of months. But I couldn’t accept that outcome, since it could wreak havoc on our tour schedule, and subsequently cause problems with clearing my current status abnormality.

This is driving me nuts.

“Do both, then!” Eugene shouted. “We’ve got plenty of methods! We can use the phone, and… uh…”

“You can speak in English.”

“Right! I can speak in English, can’t I?” Cha Eugene thumped his fist against the table, his eyes gleaming. “We can use email. We live in the digital age! We can do video calls and chat, too! Kim Raebin can do his work here! We’ll work on the other elements in Seoul!”

This was a surprisingly reasonable suggestion. I translated for Raebin, “Eugene’s saying that you should work on your songs here, remotely.”

“Remotely?”

“I think it’s a good idea.”

As expected, Raebin visibly brightened. “I-I think you’re right! But what about the other work that doesn’t involve music—”

I intertwined my fingers. My brain was starting to function properly for the first time in the last few days. “Here’s what we’ll do. We’ll make two versions of the choreography just in case—one with you in it, and one without.”

“What?”

“Great!”

“And the same goes for any shoots we do. We’ll film footage of us as a group, as well as individually. Then we’ll delay your shots as much as possible.”

“Wow!”

“We’ll make it so you can join us as late as possible, but also have a version ready to release should you not be able to come.”

Raebin’s mouth fell open. “I-I’m sorry.”

“What are you apologizing for? The later you join us, the harder it will be for you.”

I asked, “Are you up for that?”

“Yes!”

Good. Raebin nodded eagerly. He’d seemed pretty energetic until now, but he soon began to rub at his eyes. I could tell there were a lot of different emotions swirling around inside him at the moment.

“Yes. Let’s do what we can.”

“Okay…”

I added, “And if you don’t think it’s working out, you can always stop.”

“Right! It’s not your fault this is happening, Raebin.”

Eugene was right.

And so began our attempt to choose both work and family.