Idol of the Heavenly One - vanish into fiction

But the plank I thought would be simple turned out to be anything but, and Go Hee-min, who was glaring at me like he’d drill a hole through me when I showed up at 8:05, wasn’t easy either.

“Did you stop on every floor to hand out résumés or something?”

“What résumés?”

“What Hee-min means is, he’s sarcastically asking if you stopped at every floor to go ‘Hi, I’m new here~!’ and introduce yourself—that’s why you were five minutes late.”

Next to Go Hee-min, who was radiating menace through those tiny eyes, was a boy about our age. I couldn’t tell if he just knew Hee-min very well or if he just understood the Chungcheong dialect, but he translated everything for me.

“Ah…… that’s not it, but the elevator really did stop on every floor. Still, late is late, so sorry.”

Thanks to Baek Jae-heon, I’d gotten into the elevator at 7:58, but it had stopped nearly every floor on the way up, taking over seven minutes to get to the sixteenth.

“Don’t be late next time. The teacher has to wait, you know.”

“Yeah, I got it.”

I wasn’t sure if Go Hee-min was just strict about time or strict about manners, but either way, since it wasn’t the bad kind of strictness, I thought I’d better be careful.

“I think you should sing this part in falsetto.”

“Hm, do you?”

“Yeah. If you sing this whole song in chest voice, it doesn’t really suit you.”

“Hm.”

“Try it the way I’m telling you.”

“Sure.”

Unlike dance, where I’d gotten one-on-one teaching, the vocal lessons seemed to be done as a group. Hee-min and the boy who’d been translating for him seemed to be getting coached too, though the teacher hadn’t arrived yet.

“Ah, I saw Myeong-hyeon sing earlier—he’s really good at chest voice.”

“What’s chest voice?”

“Huh? You don’t know what chest voice and falsetto are?”

“Nope.”

“…You really know nothing. How’d someone like this even—”

Was chest voice and falsetto some kind of fundamental language I was supposed to know? The translator’s face seemed to twist, maybe even darken a bit. I suddenly felt embarrassed, but what could I do? I didn’t know. I’d just have to study later. I opened my phone’s notepad and wrote it down next to “plank.”

“Falsetto’s when you make your voice thinner. Watch.”

And right then, Go Hee-min, who’d been silently listening the whole time, suddenly began singing to demonstrate what falsetto was.

“……!”

It honestly felt like I was listening to a professional singer. I’d never heard a live performance in person before, but this was no different from hearing a singer on TV. No—he was insanely good.

Clap, clap, clap. I found myself applauding on reflex. As if this was nothing special, Hee-min then showed me what chest voice sounded like, and my clapping only got faster. Damn…… I’d guessed from his tiny eyes that he might be good, but he was even better than I’d imagined.

“If you’re good at chest voice, you can be good at falsetto too. Practice.”

“Yeah.”

The teacher still hadn’t come, but Hee-min already felt like one. He was cool—not just his singing skills, but the way he encouraged me too.

“Uh, by the way.”

“Yeah.”

“Where’s the teacher?”

At that point, my curiosity about the missing teacher got the better of me. If Hee-min was this good, just how good would the teacher who taught him be? It was already 8:30, so I finally asked when he’d be arriving.

“He’s right here.”

But what I heard from Hee-min made no sense. The boy who looked like he was our age was the teacher? My eyes blinked a little faster from surprise.

“Haha. I do look a little young, huh?”

A little young? He looked completely like a kid. At most he might be twenty-two? How was someone like that a teacher? Staring in disbelief, I looked back and forth between them. But Hee-min had been speaking casually to him—he’d even been talking back earlier.

“He used to be a trainee here. Se-jin hyung.”

Reading my expression, Hee-min quickly explained, then went back to practicing the song he’d been singing earlier.

“I was a trainee here for eight years. Then I realized teaching vocals suited me more, so I went down that path.”

The translator—no, the vocal teacher—smiled as if this was nothing special.

“I see. My apologies for assuming you were just another trainee.”