by crow » 08/18/2019 2:20 AM
Jae turned his gaze to his own feet as Ji-sung spoke. Something about Ji-sung's words... Jae couldn't look him in the eye, afraid of what he might read in Ji-sung's expression. It sounded so... clean when Ji-sung said it, as though being an idol really could be someone's earnest, honest dream. Jae was the one who had asked, but it felt as though every word was a new weight upon his chest.
Envy was a flaw, he reminded himself; and what did it say about him that he thought this was something to be envied? Ji-sung's history, as he was learning, wasn't without its own share of pain. But that didn't make the feeling go away. Instead, a pang of self loathing coiled itself tighter around his insides. He took a deep breath, long and slow, drawing the cold into himself.
What about him? Yes, why indeed? A part of him wanted to laugh, but that wouldn't have helped anything.
Jae wrapped his arms around the chains of his swing, then leaned his head back, eyes closed. "Someone scouted me," he said, though maybe Ji-sung knew that part already. It wasn't exactly a secret, and sometimes the other trainees liked to gossip about how they came to the company, as if that were some sort of predictor for who would debut. And maybe it was; Jae didn't know. He only knew that he had to, he absolutely had to... That he would work as hard as he had to to make it happen.
He could have stopped there. Usually he did, and let people fill in the blanks as they liked. Maybe he had been flattered. Maybe he'd thought it would be easy money. Maybe his parents pushed him into it; maybe they tried to dissuade him and he was doing this to spite them.
Anything but the petty, feeble truth of it.
But Ji-sung had just laid so much bare, and somehow, it felt... different with him. Jae couldn't have said why, exactly. Maybe it was just that Ji-sung didn't make him feel like a spectacle, like every ugly thing about him existed to sate someone else's curiosity. Slowly, he rocked his swing with his feet still planted on the ground.
"We needed money," Jae said. He had meant to make the words--- what? Bitter? Offhand? In the end, it was neither. His voice was quiet, soft with shame. "My family, we don't... My dad runs a chicken shop. I wasn't... good at anything. But I thought maybe if I could do this, I could take care of him."