Idol of the Heavenly One - vanish into fiction

“Fans seem to think you and I don’t get along.”

“……”

“Look at these comments. They all say we look like a hate-ship.”

“……”

“Do you know what hate-ship means? It’s when it looks like people hate each other.”

“……”

“Should we act a little friendlier on broadcast?”

“……”

“Or should we take a selfie together tomorrow and upload it?”

I was being serious, suggesting different ideas, but Baek Jae-heon had already taken his eyes off the screen and was just staring blankly at me. Ah… surely this brat in puberty is not about to say something like, “Let them misunderstand if they want to.”

Pfft—

After a long silence, Baek Jae-heon suddenly burst into laughter.

“……Why?”

Why was he suddenly laughing like that? It was a little unsettling. But that laugh… he really was handsome. It overlapped in my mind with that moment in the video where he secretly smiled while looking at me.

“What do you think the numbers in front mean?”

Still smiling faintly, Baek Jae-heon pointed at the [100/1000] in front of the video title.

“Hundred, thousand? What, the number of views?”

“What’s my family name?”

“Baek.”

“What’s your name?”

“Ji Myeong-hyeon.”

“Your stage name.”

“Cheonmyeong.”

“Then what do you think ‘Baek-Cheon’ means?”

What else? Obviously Baek Jae-heon and Ji Cheonmyeong. But so what?

“They’re pairing us together.”

“Pairing us how?”

“As a couple.”

“…What?”

It was such an absurd thing to say. Pairing me with him? As a couple? Why? How? We’re both men. And how do we even look like a couple? We just look awkward, like we don’t get along…

Pfft—

Suddenly the scene replayed in my mind, the one I had watched several times earlier, when during our content meeting, Baek Jae-heon laughed while looking at me and then quickly hid it, pretending he hadn’t.

“……”

So that was what people were pairing us on. Him smiling at me like I was cute. That was what they were seeing. Even I, watching it, had felt a little fluttered, enough to mutter, “Huh?” without realizing.

Wait. Did I just say fluttered? Watching that video?

“So when things like that pop up, just don’t watch them.”

Baek Jae-heon gave the advice casually. I stared down at him blankly. He looked up at me just as quietly, as if waiting for my reply, but all I could see was the curve of his lips that had not quite disappeared since that earlier laugh.

“……”

Following the curve of his lips, my vision filled with those red, glossy lips, full enough to be attractive but not too much. When those lips curved into a smile, the line running through the center tightened. That was so striking that even another man could not help looking over and over again…

“What are you looking at?”

“…Huh?”

His voice snapped me out of it.

“I asked what you’re looking at.”

“…Nothing. It’s nothing.”

I must be out of my mind. Truly out of my mind. To be staring absentmindedly at the lips of the same member, no, more than that, at the lips of another man.

I jerked my head to shake off the thought, hurried back to my own bed, turned my back to Baek Jae-heon, shoved my phone under my pillow, and pulled the blanket up over my head.

This was all because of lack of sleep. That was why I kept having these ridiculous thoughts. That was why I was losing my mind like this. Since tomorrow was a rest day, I should just sleep as much as I can to make up for it.

***

I am a light sleeper. That has always been true, both in my previous life and this one. Which makes me think that being a light sleeper is not just physical, but more of a mental habit.

It caused me a lot of trouble in my previous life. At the orphanage, even with my eyes closed, thousands of noises would crowd in, and eventually I would fall asleep only from sheer exhaustion. That was my routine. Which is why, when I moved out and first tried to sleep alone in my own room, I was shocked to realize, “Ah, so this is how peacefully one can fall asleep.”

In this life, I had been surrounded by far more noise than when I lived alone before, yet strangely, it never bothered me once. On the contrary, hearing those sounds would make me relax and help sleep come more easily. It reminded me of when I was a child, napping on the living room sofa, while my mother prepared dinner in the kitchen. That was when I realized it. The world does not only have cold and sharp noises, but also warm ones that wrap around you gently.

“Ji Cheonmyeong! Ji Cheonmyeong!”

But this noise was definitely not a warm one. No, rather, it was a little…

“The light of the living world has ended! Ji Cheonmyeong! Follow me!”