Chapter Text
Let us tell a story about a boy who loved to sing.
From an early age, the boy had always dreamed of being a singer. He loved music, because the boy had grown up on a diet of Korean trot and American classics, some sung by his loved ones, others sung by the greats of pop. Frank Sinatra. Elvis Presley. Michael Jackson. The Cho Trio. They sang wonderful songs, soul-connecting songs, songs that made you smile or cry or feel love or feel good. There had been other types of songs too: K-pop was ubiquitous on radios and television and shopping arcades and the internet. It was a pleasure to sing for and listen to band music, and the boy, growing into a young man, recently acquired a taste for UK garage. No matter how indie or mainstream the music, whatever the genre was, the boy found that he liked it. He wanted to create these types of music, all kinds of popular music.
The road to singerhood had not been straightforward, of course. There had been piano competitions to conquer and school to do well in. There had been vocal classes to take from idol academies. But all these events are part and parcel of the boy’s pilgrim’s progress, his eyes fixed on a steady, unwavering goal, for as soon as he held a microphone: Jo Minjae has always dreamed of being a singer.
It was after his successful audition into an arts high school that he seriously considered making music with others. There was an allure to sounding together, collaborating to create heaven from nothing. So, lending his voice to bands and applying himself to vocal examinations, he let himself dream of becoming a singer in a group. After all, a great many of the singers he knew debuted in groups first. Boys like him ended up in boy groups: NCT. Seventeen. Boy groups from survival shows, even. They had a sort of camaraderie that a soloist could never have.
It would not hurt to try becoming a singer, the boy reasoned—a singer in a group.
So here he is, as a young man, on a survival show to realise it.
“Let’s dance,” calls co-leader Junpyo, in Everybody and Sherlock’s practice room. He twists in place as co-leader Jaeyoung turns on the speaker, the one Yundeok says looks like a kettlebell. “Shall we warm up to Sherlock again?”
“We’ll just warm up to Everybody then,” Sherlock leader Jiahao retorts with an impish grin. Next to him, Gihyeon grimaces at the running joke. Minjae does not envy Gihyeon, who sings all the important vocal parts, intro and belts and ad-libs and the all-important chorus; who stays for extra hours in the vocal practice room in anticipation of the upcoming interim check. (Nevermind that Minjae practises his ad-libs every spare second that he gets the chance to, that he stays up late at night to sing beneath his bed covers, that he dreams of how to tackle SHINee’s wall-of-sound improvisations in his sleep.)
As if influenced by Minjae’s thoughts, Gihyeon yawns and buries his face in his hands. What he does next is blocked by Yundeok, who bursts into the practice room, his beanie askew from the rush. The muscle-clad dongsaeng that Minjae has grown fond of has arrived two seconds before practice begins, as usual.
“Yundeok-ssi! Nice of you to join us.” says Junpyo, with teasing politeness.
“I’m on time!” Yundeok protests. He dashes over to the table, seizes the show-provided tablet, and turns it on as he waves it at Junpyo’s general direction. “See? I’m right on time!”
From his spot on the practice floor, Anxin snickers. “Okay, Right on Time-ssi.”
“Hey!”
“Okay, Mister Right on Time, assume your position for the warm up,” says Jaeyoung, grinning. He steers Yundeok towards the centre of the practice room. Yundeok makes a show of non-resistance, flexing the occasional muscle like a champion wrestler being escorted to his rightful place. His eyes land on Bingfan, who he waves at, then Minjae, still huddled up against the practice wall.
“Hey, Minjae-hyung.” Yundeok tilts his chin at Minjae, then at the floor, and raises his eyebrows quizzically to ask, “Joining us?”
His expression is infectious enough for Minjae to smile, to rise to his feet and ignore the small lump of lead sticking to his throat. His body moves to the beat on instinct, with grace in effort, interlocking with his teammates.
During lunch break, Minjae goes to find Sion, because Sion is the cutest being on Earth and thus deserving of Minjae’s affections. He locates the younger boy eating next to Woncheon, his only same-aged teammate in the Round One mission.
“Ah, MJ-hyung,” Sion calls, waving him over. “I saved you a seat!”
“Make way for MJ-hyung!” Woncheon imitates Sion in a high-pitched voice. Aki had christened Minjae’s moniker with a new meaning a while back. Like Michael Jackson, he had said, then a few phrases of English that made Minjae want to become more fluent in the language. “Hey!” Sion had kicked Woncheon under the table.
Minjae tucks himself flush against Sion, the recesses of their bodies fitting together like components of a puzzle. He does not bother with meal prayer before he starts digging in. “How’s practice going?”
“The song is really hard.” Sion sticks out his bottom lip. “The singing parts are too high and they suck.”
“Only because you don’t ask for help from Hyunjun-hyung ,” Woncheon says through a mouthful of food.
Sion wrinkles his nose, precious in the way a newborn piglet is. “I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because you keep hogging him,” Sion complains, though his voice lacks the venom to be spiteful.
Woncheon rolls one shoulder, then another, with an audible crack. He smirks. “And what of it?”
Sion bares his teeth in response, taking the threat way too seriously. Woncheon is all posture and play, because he is a fifteen-year-old as much as he is a national champion in sport with the muscles to prove it. During Growl team’s practice sessions, he would endure Junpyo’s teasing and let Minjae rest his chin on his shoulder, and it would be a shame if Sion ripped apart this dongsaeng .
“Hyunjun-hyung sings well, doesn’t he?” Minjae cuts in.
“So do you.” That pacifies Sion, because he slides into Minjae’s lap with a most adorable pout. “And you’re nicer to me. Can’t you be on my team instead?”
“You wish. We’re already in the same group.” Minjae pinches Sion’s cheeks, just because he can, and runs careful fingers through his hair, detangling knots. Sion burrows into Minjae’s stomach with a pleased hum.
“Minjae-hyung ?” he says, voice muffled by Minjae’s shirt.
“Yeah?”
“I don’t want to lose against ‘Crown’.”
“There’s no way Hyunjun-hyung would let that happen,” says Woncheon.
Sion shakes his head, messing up his hair. “You haven’t seen Jung Hyunjun practice.”
Minjae imagines Jung Hyunjun, perfect maknae , seizing victory with his silver tongue and animated expressions. He imagines Jang Hyunjun leading the chorus of his song, imagines the crowd going wild at the sound of his voice. As it stands, the two of them seem evenly matched, and Minjae cannot bring himself to lie in order to soothe.
So he says, “At the very least, Sionnie, I’ll win the benefits for you.”
Sion makes a kissy face of gratitude at him, and they laugh.
“What a great story,” remarks Woncheon, as if to make up for the lack of cameras.
Gather around! We would like to spin you a yarn, a chant lasting three hours long, an epic of animals come to life, told and retold over three centuries.
Once upon a time, there was an insatiable dragon king, lord of the sea, who needed a hare’s liver to cure his illness. The king asked his marine courtiers to go up to land to capture a hare. Fearing for their lives out of the water, the fish refused. It was a lowly terrapin, the turtle’s cousin, who volunteered to capture the rabbit. He did not fear being turned into a delicacy. He only thought of his king.
The terrapin went ashore and found a hare. With some stubborn urging and a white lie, he convinced the hare to go return to the underwater palace of the dragon king. It was only when the hare met the king that he realised he had been tricked. He was to be killed for his liver.
The hare was a wily creature, full of wit and charm. He thought of a ruse to escape his death. In some versions of the tale, he tricked the king by saying he left his liver on land. In other versions of the tale, he said his liver was so much in demand that someone would try to steal it if he were killed here. The king and the court were duped by the hare. Despite the terrapin’s protests, they asked the terrapin to bring the hare up to land once more, to find his liver or to kill him away from prying eyes. He ordered the terrapin to do so under the pain of death.
Faced with no choice, the terrapin did as he was told. Once on land, the hare escaped, leaving the terrapin to face punishment from the king.
When it had come time to divide the lines, the team had naturally given the hardest ad-libs and high notes to Minjae. Bingfan had gotten the rest. Junpyo had also secured a decent share of lines, but the other three are more difficult to place.
“Can you sing this?” asks Junpyo, pointing at the first verse. In their half-circle, Yundeok’s brows furrow, as if staring through the lyrics will lower its key.
“Be—behind your grown up mask— ” his voice cracks, pitching.
“Ahh, that’s not fair to him,” Jaeyoung complains, wringing his hands. “That’s Taemin’s line. Taemin’s.”
Junpyo’s face remains carefully blank, but Minjae can see the well-oiled cogs of his mind turning as he assesses the situation and runs through possible solutions. Perhaps, with the robot concept they are doing, the cogs are circuits of code blinking in Junpyo’s central processor as he analyses the victory probability of different choices. With Robot Junpyo, his mind is not just a well-oiled machine, but a multistory, state-of-the-art server farm. “Fan,” he says, “can you take this one?”
“Yes, I can,” says Bingfan. “I think, also… Yundeok-hyung should—” He points at the sheet and hesitates, glancing at Minjae for confirmation. Deference. Anticipation.
“Yundeokie has a slightly deeper voice,” Minjae agrees. “I think he could sing Minho’s first line. The moment you dig deep… ” He demonstrates. Yundeok repeats it after him, strangled notes evening out into a natural smoothness. It is no louder than a hum, like sound muffled by the sea, but it is enough for now, and Junpyo nods appreciatively.
“Now I want Minho’s other line,” jokes Jaeyoung. “After all, we have two blockbuster vocals and Junpyo- hyung for the rest.”
It is an honour to shoulder responsibility. Minjae is steadfast in this belief, but he finds himself repeating the words in a silent prayer whenever Junpyo and Jaeyoung look to him for vocal affirmation, or when Anxin struggles to sing his assigned lines while dancing, or when Bingfan asks Minjae to practise how to belt with him.
Someone’s voice could crack catastrophically on stage. Someone could trip and fall out of sync. When that happens, it will be certain death. The audience will vote for the other team and execute Everybody. No benefits. No survival. And Minjae will have to share that burden of knowledge, that he had a part in sending his team towards oblivion. This is what it means to shoulder responsibility.
Everybody has a team that, on paper, consists of aces. In practice, each “ace” has wildly different strengths. Bingfan has the natural charisma that makes him look good doing anything. Jaeyoung, dance machine extraordinaire, captains their practice under Junpyo’s watchful eyes. Anxin, somehow, rounds out every group he is in.
Dance is not Minjae’s strongest suit. Yundeok is no dance prodigy either, but neither of them are so terrible that they can’t keep up with the group, so Jaeyoung suggests that they watch out for each other.
“You’re not wiggly enough during this move,” says Yundeok, during a break in practice. He flutters his fingers in an unconvincing attempt at recreating the choreography, then pokes Minjae’s right cheek. Minjae sees his face dimpling in the mirror as he pokes Yundeok back. Wrinkling his nose in mock-disgust, Yundeok shakes Minjae off, a child at heart. Cute! Not as cute as Sion, but still cute.
Yundeok slouches, leaning against the mirror. He sings Minho’s line under his breath, bouncing a listless leg, shakes his head as he goes off-pitch, repeats it. All of a sudden, he groans and slides to the ground.
“I wish my brother was here,” he says, curling up on his side. “My actual brother.”
“Why?” asks Minjae, like a good hyung, in lieu of Yundeok’s actual brother.
“He would be better at this.” Yundeok rolls once, twice, facing away. Not to be left behind, Minjae sidles over and drapes an arm over Yundeok’s shoulders.
“Yeah, but can he dance?”
“Kinda. Not really,” Yundeok admits. His expression in the mirror is obscured by his mop of hair. “At least I could ask him how to sing it. But I can’t text him right now.”
So this is where the conversation is going. Minjae senses it before he hears it—perhaps he has even been waiting for it with bated breath, for the hammer to fall, for Yundeok’s rising and falling chest to stutter for extra purchase.
“Can you teach me later?” asks Yundeok. He flops over, ears tinged pink, but there is determination in his narrowed eyes. “How to sing my line better, I mean.”
There it is. A familiar weight settles against Minjae’s chest. “Of course.”
There are rules to these requests, rules that Minjae had internalised as soon as he met the Growl team for practice a few weeks back. This is an idol survival show, not a singing competition. Everyone must play an equal part in the performance, despite their strengths. Do not offer too much commentary unless requested. When commentary is requested, give up all they need to know, so the group’s performance is a success, a victory, so you can advance further and survive for longer. Give concessions and encouragement, because their improvement is most important, because a recognised talent must be magnanimous.
It is not a matter of skill. It is a matter of respect, of meeting others where they are at. Right now, Yundeok is reaching out, and it would be an insult not to take his hand.
“You already have a good voice, Yundeokie,” Minjae says, focusing on the positives. Cracked timbre, warm lower register, delightful contrast to the lighter tenors in their team.
“Really?” Yundeok raises himself up with hopeful surprise.
“Yeah. That’s why we should train it.”
This is Minjae’s duty to his teammates. This is Minjae’s duty to his dongsaeng: to teach him everything he asks for, so to lift them to greater heights. This is what it means to form part of the concept, individual automaton-robots a part of a larger whole. The benefit system is for an entire group, after all. Right?
Yundeok flashes him a relieved smile, showing his two front teeth. He rubs his nose with a curled hand. “I guess I’ll get out of this alive.”
Duty is all that the constriction in his chest is. Minjae knocks his arm against Yundeok’s, and is satisfied when it does not give way. “I’ll make sure of it.”
Here is what you should know about Seo Yundeok. He comes from Jeju Island, but he does not know its dialect or its language. The baby of the family, he has an older sister who once went to study in Australia and an older brother who recently debuted as a musical actor. His mother loves him very much and is proud that he is growing into a real man, just like God intended.
Seo Yundeok likes swimming, surfing, and skiing. He has been on trips to the Philippines and Thailand and Japan. He saves victims adrift in the sea, having acquired a scuba diving licence in 2023. Sometimes, he accompanies his brother and mother to see musicals. They used to go to karaoke together as a family, and little Yundeok had been fascinated by the disco lights and sound system. His mother had taken a video of him, once, trying not to clip his buckteeth on the microphone as he babbled and waved it around.
After the pre-bias stage, it was Yundeok who first greeted Minjae when he returned from the walk of fame from the stage to the waiting room. He had shaken Minjae’s hand, and asked, “Did you cry?” It was Yundeok who helped Minjae and the other hyungdeul to calm Woncheon down, who teased Woncheon back from tears to laughter with a smile and a friendly pat. It was Yundeok who, in the end, had taken Minjae’s shoulders and given him a firm shake out of lingering melancholy. Minjae had allowed him to do so, and only him.
There is probably a lot more you need to know about Seo Yundeok, but that is information he has not revealed himself.
The interim checks begin. The first sign of trouble comes stumbling to meet Minjae in the form of one Kim Sion.
“What’s wrong, Sionnie?” says Minjae, patting his back.
“I got scolded a lot.” Sion's lip quivers as he comes to a standstill. He cannot even quite look Minjae in the glistening eye, staring at his feet as he blinks away his tears. Minjae’s heart swells in sympathy for the younger brother he never had. That won’t do, but there is no point in sugar-coating the truth.
“It’s not just you that’s getting scolded,” he says, matter-of-factly. “Many others are too.”
Sion sniffles, but the tears do not stop. At Minjae’s beckoning, he crumples into Minjae’s arms, burying his face somewhere the cameras cannot reach.
“I bet they didn’t scold you,” Sion whines between hiccups. Minjae strokes Sion’s hair, hoping for touch to soothe where words cannot go. “You’re MJ- hyung .”
MJ, like the King of Pop, the number one celebrity of the world. MJ, the way Sion had been determined to make it stick, to make it mean vocal legend, stagemaster. Myeongchang. (He would like to be called that, someday.) If there is one debt Minjae has to repay, it is a debt to Sion, for the latter’s adoration has been given freely, with no expectation of any returns.
So Minjae says, “MJ-hyung won’t leave you in the dust.” He will win the battle for you. He will make sure you survive. He will have to, even if the murmur of the practice room is deafening in his ears even if hair prickles on the backs of his arms. He cannot, and will not, let you slip through the ranks.
Sion’s plush lips press into a pout against Minjae’s shirt collar, mouthing, “I bet you got praised.”
They are walking down the corridor, the six of them, after the interim check. Minjae puts one foot in front of the other, walking an inexorable road back to the practice room and to the performance and towards singerhood, for better or worse. There is a mantle on his shoulders weighing the force of a cliff, and the nape of his neck prickles against a shower of falling gravel.
It is all make-believe. Almost fake. The only one making it real is Jo Minjae himself.
“What are you thinking, Minjae-ya?” says a gentle voice by his side. Junpyo has fallen back to last place, next to Minjae. He places a hand on Minjae’s shoulders, and the cliff crumbles, settles into a mound grounding Minjae up to his neck. Junpyo has always had the effect of bringing his juniors back to the earth.
“Nothing in particular,” says Minjae, which is true, nothing except the feeling of the path beneath him and sharp stones cutting into his soles, leaving molten metal in its wake to encase him.
Junpyo hums, then lowers his voice. “You’re okay with the new parts, right?”
Minjae’s feet throb from jumping into the ground for the choreography during the dance interim check. Worse than that had been Vata and Ingyoo’s criticism of their lack of commitment to the concept, and worst of all—during the vocal interim, Bingfan’s audible voice cracks in several ad-libs, Onestar’s tutting, the demand—why aren’t you using Minjae properly?
“I’m okay with them.” The answer comes mechanically, naturally, from a robot-doll in the making (as their concept requires). In Everybody , Minjae’s role is transparent, if implicit. He will not delude himself here to think that a trainee’s handsomeness is not an advantage. And if Bingfan can leap higher when unfettered by the weight of the song, it is up to Minjae to take his vocal heft—to provide a stable foundation beneath the sea as part of the iceberg that is the performance, cushioning the chorus, adding highlights, pushing others to greater heights. Junpyo and Jaeyoung do the same in dance, so it is fair. It is just. It is right.
“Are you sure?” asks Junpyo, as if confirming the weather.
“I have to be.”
Rain hits the studio windows at the far end of the corridor. It spatters against Minjae’s ears, soaking the weight on his frame to twice the heaviness. Minjae takes a breath, holds it, wonders how long it would take for his lungs to burst if he plunged underwater, and sank.
“Alright.” Junpyo’s voice has always been high and light. Right now, it is soft as a breeze on his cheek. “I trust you to do what you need to.”
Minjae squeezes his eyes shut and turns against Junpyo’s shoulder. Junpyo obliges, arms wrapping around Minjae’s width, and the rush of the screaming crowd tears through Minjae again, the aftershock of his exertion in Growl ringing in his ears as Junpyo had held his convulsing form, the heat blazing trails down his cheeks. He can smell the salt of the sobs wracking his body as it had stained Junpyo’s sweat-soaked costume, because if he had made a single mistake, if he had failed…
Junpyo pats him, soothing to the last. “It’s a hard path you’re walking, Minjae-ya.”
If Minjae holds his breath and never lets go, he will not start a new phase of his song, will not ruin the harmony of its sound. Better to be a balladeer who sings for the love of the old greats, better to be a connoisseur who enjoys a new take on the golden standards of pop. Better to be safe than sorry, but you cannot shine beneath glacial waves. You will cave under its pressure. You will fall to the depths of the ocean floor. No. If you are to perform, you must let the water flow through you, let yourself gurgle and choke, and expel it as you kick upwards, flailing for the sweet life of oxygen. Only then can they see you—as a breathing, living creature, sweetly serenading.
Here is what being a myeongchang means.
It means having years and years of experience on end, capable of standing your own in plain clothes. It means having a voice of scratched gold and expressions that change in the blink of an eye, running the gamut from euphoria to fury to sorrow, gestures that animate a world to life. It means the practised, natural entertainment of audiences, no matter their background, charms turned on to the maximum to entertain listeners.
In the olden days, myeongchang were venerated veterans of pansori , pan meaning “to gather”, sori meaning “sound”. They sang for hours and hours to tell epics of yore, accompanied by a simple gosu , a drummer. They sang in open crowds for peasants and merchants; they sang in courts for the yangban class. Through their storytelling, they spoke of devotion and piety and all the old verities. It took years for a pansori singer, a sorikkun , to master the art of pansori.
Nowadays, the myeongchang title can be applied to singers of any genre, from trot to K-pop. It is only natural that the legends of modernity have ancient roots. True, they no longer preach filial piety and loyalty to the monarchy, but they speak for the verities of the now, romantic love lost and gained, struggles in emotion and mundanity. Just as before, they weave their truths in song above all else, stitching together a tapestry of all-too-human stories. Just as before, this role requires no less than a master.
To be a myeongchang, then, means to be a “master singer”.
It is ten thirty in the night after a long day of practice. Minjae swings his backpack over his shoulders with the intent to walk out of the building doors. He would have done so if pounding footsteps had not rounded the corridor corners and gained on him. This bulky blur stands its ground, blocking his way to the exit’s escalators.
“Hey, Minjae-hyung !” Yundeok grins with his arms outstretched, an enveloping welcome of a farewell. Sweat glistens on his brows and slicks back his hair, rivulets running down the towel on his neck.
“You’re dripping,” Minjae points out.
Yundeok’s smile morphs into panic as he raises his arms in surrender. “It’s just water. I washed up twice, I swear.” All the same, Minjae musses up his hair to drive the point home. He gets maybe two seconds in before Yundeok dodges with a squawk of protest.
“Going home?” Why haven’t you left already? remains too strange to be said. Minjae usually ended his practices in the vocal booths long after Jaeyoung finished running Yundeok through extra dance drills.
“Yeah.”
“Where’s Jaeyoung? Where’s Jaeyongie?” Here is another strange observation—Yundeok going home alone, without a friend or roommate.
Yundeok shrugs. “Jaeyoung left first and Jaeyongie got detained by our maknae.”
Minjae frowns. “Hyunjunnie’s working hard.” Fifteen-year-olds should be in bed by eleven o’clock.
“He’s up against Hyunjun-hyung , and he’s staying just as late. He wants to win. We all do.” Yundeok rubs his face with his towel. His cheeks glow faintly pink from the friction. “Hyung, I—” He scrubs his face again, runs the towel through his scalp. “Walk home with me?”
A strand of Yundeok’s hair falls across his forehead. He tries to blow it off, but it sticks, damp and stark. Minjae laughs. It would be so natural, so ordinary, to walk home with Yundeok.
“Of course,” he says, slinging an arm over Yundeok’s shoulder. “C’mon, let’s go get your bike.”
For the duration of the programme, home means the dorms, and Yundeok’s room is an hour and a half’s walk from the company building. Yundeok’s bike clicks against the sidewalk, tires swallowing the ground with reassuring regularity. The chilly days of March have long passed, and the late spring air carries the freshness that returns after rush hour.
“Let’s take a detour,” says Yundeok, pointing at a gap between one block and the next. “I wanna show you something.”
Seoul’s streets remain brightly lit as they turn into a smaller alley. Residences line the road, casting half-light on it through drowsy, half-shuttered windows. As if unaware of the need to keep the noise down, Yundeok breaks into a sprint and swings onto his bike. Shadows dance under Minjae’s feet as he chases the bike’s careening path, the heavy tread of its tires, Yundeok’s whoop of delight at the newfound breeze. Before long, the pavement yawns open. They race up a gentle slope, railings rushing past them, feet flying.
Their dash ends as abruptly as it began, Yundeok braking to a halt. He hops off the bike, pushes it closer to the railings, and gestures beyond. “Look.”
They are on a bridge across the Han River. The glow of the skyline reflects against its surface, revealing the likeness of an underwater city.
“Nice view, isn’t it?” says Yundeok, eyes luminous in the urban night.
“It is.” Minjae peers into the water, making note of the structures that cross the river to lend visibility to this watery kingdom. Perhaps the neon trail beneath the opposing bridge outlines a dragon’s palace, the foam and ripples marring its glass-like surface an aquatic guard. The bridge Minjae is on casts a dark shadow—perhaps a submerged main street?—upon which two shapes move, no larger than a thumb.
“Hey.” He nudges Yundeok. One of the shapes mimics his movement, raising a skinny elbow. “That’s us.”
“Us in the water,” Yundeok echoes with odd delight. He waves at their reflected figures, arms long and broad as windmills. “Hey!” His doppelganger’s arms ripple in response, like seaweed, like—
“Look at that. You’re a kraken,” says Minjae, wiggling his own arms. He kind of manages a wave, just like Jiahao taught him for basic practice.
“That’s right, I eat people,” Yundeok boasts. He raises his arms above his head, fingers turning into claws. “Watch out!”
“Now your arms look like rabbit ears.”
“Then I’m a swimming rabbit. What about you?”
Minjae’s other self is hunched and reserved, far cry from an apex predator or fleet-footed prey. “What do you think the me in the water is doing?”
“What else?” Yundeok balls his hand into a fist and thrusts it towards Minjae, a makeshift microphone. “Singing his heart out, I bet. Just like you are up here.”
The Han River sucks at the bridge’s supports as it flows downstream. Its gurgle is an edifying chorus, leaving ample room for a melodic line, so Minjae sings a few lines from “Englishman in New York” to humour Yundeok. Be yourself no matter what they say…
Easier said than done in this above-water world, though.
“Yundeokie,” says Minjae, “why’d you want me to walk with you?”
Yundeok scratches the back of his head. It is a moment before he responds. “You said you’d teach me how to sing better.” He keeps his voice light, face half-obscured in the dark. “I figured now would be as good a time as any.”
“Oh,” Minjae says slowly. “Right.” He had not forgotten. It had always been somewhere in the back of his mind, a lingering thought lost in fine-tuning choreography and taking care of his voice between ad-libs and belts. “Let’s do that. Where would it be most comfortable for you?”
“Dunno.” Yundeok glances away. “I usually just sing in the shower, so…”
“That's a good start.” Minjae means it.
Here is how a pansori singer—a sorikkun—trains. They are apprenticed to a master for the duration of their tutelage. The master will guide them through the repertoire of the genre, song cycles handed down from centuries past. They will extoll expression, lecture on leisure, impress what it means to embody the legacy of an oral tradition. The apprentice, to perfect their craft, absorbs these lessons, not only in their performance, but also into their character.
The apprentice will learn the breath and movement of the tales they tell. They will synchronise with the watchful eyes of a gosu, their accompanist drummer, a comrade in creating atmosphere. They will learn how to engage the audience with tone and dance, miming each scene with their hapjukseon , a folding fan. They will elicit chuimsae interjections from the crowd, an encouragement to complete the saga they tell. Above all, they will apply their unique voice to their performance—a piercing wall of sound capable of cutting through the heavens.
The sorikkun trains for years and years to achieve this voice. The master starts them indoors, instructing them to repeat phrases by rote. When the apprentice develops a full enough sound to fill a room, the master takes them to the mountains to train. They find a waterfall. Sitting beside it, they recite their verses, imitating the susurrus of the breeze, the rolling fauna of the hills. They shout against the roar of the waterfall and croon like the trickling stream, until their voices thicken with husk and they spit and bleed. That way, they learn what it means to be loud like thunder. They learn what it means to be soft as the setting sun. They achieve the truest form of mimesis—a re-presentation of nature. They embody the human in the elements, letting the narrative unfold as the hours trickle away, like sand.
Throughout all those years, their vocal folds thicken. Their timbres scratch the ear like a damaged record, until neither man nor woman is distinguishable from their song. This way, they become pure emotion, a keening dirge, a festival chant. All emotion. All story.
They kick off their shoes and drop their backpacks as soon as they reach the dorms. Half the room looks like it has been blown apart by a tornado, clothes scattered on beds, shoes overturned in a haphazard heap.
“It’s all clean,” Yundeok hastens to stay, picking a few socks off the ground. “We just left in a rush this morning.”
Minjae waves off the implicit apology and shucks his jacket, folding it neatly on top of his bag. Then, he peels off his socks. Yundeok has already disappeared into the bathroom with a shouted “make yourself at home”. Minjae nudges a pile of sneakers out of his path and avoids the overflowing laundry basket as he picks his way towards the bathroom. He nearly trips over a black stick, which closer examination reveals is attached to a small camera.
“Yundeokie, do you want to film this?” The opportunity to create reality television is not lost on him.
“What?”
“We can always delete it.”
Yundeok shakes his head. “I don’t want to get it wet.” Framed by the ordinary bathroom walls, he is a regular boy again, not keen to expose his weaknesses.
“Fair.”
“Lock the door.” Yundeok licks his lips. Minjae obliges, trapping them with a click. Now it is just the two of them and the unspeakable between them, a growing heaviness in the room.
“You can start the shower,” Minjae says. Yundeok yanks at the tap, unleashing a torrent that sprays them both. “Slowly!”
“Sorry!” Yundeok scrambles. The shower slows to a trickle. Minjae breathes out, flicks water from his hair.
“Okay. You wanna sing something?”
Yundeok looks at him like prey caught in the headlights, Minjae’s own awkwardness reflected in his gaze.
If Minjae was any less of a vocalist, perhaps this situation could have been avoided. He could have asked a better singer to help Yundeok in one of the vocal practice rooms, like a proper coach would, or left Yundeok to the mercy of Onestar and Kim Sungeun’s ministrations. But obligation is a leaden claw clamping down on his limbs, automating his actions, and only with a win will its sharp jaws unlock to release him. (Perhaps not even then. The next round will augur the next batch of trainees who cannot keep up with dance and forget their lines, and Minjae’s responsibility remains as long as there are still those who are in need.) In any case, Minjae refuses to run while Yundeok’s pleas remain unanswered.
An age passes before Yundeok glances away. He makes a show of rubbing some invisible stain out of the walls with his back. Perhaps he is trying to conjure up a backing track to his rescue with his scratching. It has been years since Minjae felt the nervousness that comes with singing for others—Growl does not count as it is a public performance, not a private setting—but he has faint memories of the glare of prying eyes and the anxiety clogging up his airways.
Half out of sympathy, Minjae offers, “I can step out of the room if it helps.”
“No, it’s fine, I mean—” Yundeok taps the wall tiles, thud thud flick thud. He steels his gaze in a concerted effort to engage with Minjae. “I can do that. Sing something, like—”
“Anything is fine,” Minjae says in a rush. “Literally anything. Your favourite song, whatever’s hot right now, as long as you dig it.”
The tapping becomes a rhythm, thud flick thud, thud flick thud. Yundeok traces wavy patterns into the ceramic behind him, contemplating the opposite wall, and hums a wordless melody. A drumset comes to life in Yundeok’s artless fingers, providing a nostalgic beat. Maybe his gestures imitate the swaggery of his favourite singer Zico, or the quiet confidence of Zico’s teammate B-Bomb. His low voice, at first hesitant, grows stronger as Minjae claps with him to the interjections of Movie’s Over —until he stumbles over a syncopated rhythm, a missed note.
The song grinds to a halt. Yundeok holds out a hand and mutters something under his breath, words unravelling in some bright, fast-paced rap—
“ I beat the buk and janggu by myself—no.” He shakes his head, knocks it back against the wall. “Why is this so hard?”
“Try getting into the water,” suggests Minjae. “Pretend you’re actually showering.” Clapping is a bad idea after all—Yundeok has to ignore him, to immerse himself.
Yundeok glances at him, chewing his lip. His assenting blink means trust, a tooth-revealing tug of his mouth, affection. With a swift motion, he tosses his jacket to Minjae and steps into the wet cubicle. Fresh droplets spatter half-dry shower walls as Yundeok opens his arms, head tilted back to let the water run off his muscled chest. His clothes have the sour scent of hard work in Minjae’s arms, intermingled with the breeze of the Han River.
“Now what?”
Minjae breathes in, his toes digging for purchase on the floor tiles, a porcelain riverbed. He lets the liquid density of gallons upon gallons settle on his still form, lets the running current carry his words downstream: “What’s on your mind right now?”
“Block B.” Yundeok’s eyes are closed. “Always Block B.”
“Not Very Good, I’m guessing.”
Yundeok laughs, water jumping off his torso. “Do you want me to slip and fall, hyung?”
“I want something with singing in it.” Firm, but not harsh. Not setting a trap, but giving free food for thought. Here is the conceit: to tease out a person’s potential without overdoing it.
The shower keeps up its steady drizzle, gathering mist overhead. Yundeok pushes his hair back from his face and steps forward, shoving his head beneath the showerhead. He stills. His wet shirt clings to his skin, teasing out sculpted hard lines of his body that belie the tender flesh lingering on a boy still filling out a man.
Yundeok opens his eyes to the dim glow above the mist, and sings.
The first few notes are tenuous, a melody not quite trusting its wavering self. Slowly, it gathers its courage, weaving filaments of sound into sinuous threads. Minjae lets his head bob, floating in the eddies of time, tapping a foot to the beat. It is not quite the languorous strains of a ballad, or the explosive energy of a hip-hop track, but a compromise, carrying the steadiness of a drumbeat, rich harmonies that fill the air. The lyrics are hopeful, a request, a plea: Be my light. Shine on my black and hidden heart. Melt my frozen self, so that I’ll be so dazzling that no one else can look at me. Yundeok does not sing in falsetto like Minjae remembers the chorus to be. His voice is low and warm as he cajoles through water and wall, acting out his emotion as the music washes over them. The little details he adds would have increased fanvotes for him on a survival show stage—the scrunch of his brows, the crinkle of his eyes, the shine on his lips. He had always been a natural at acting.
“You can join me, you know.” Yundeok says mid-way through the chorus. “I need someone to do the lines in the background, like the…”
“I know what you mean.” Minjae has heard the song before, has sung it himself a couple of times. He does not need to sing to teach (much less sing backing vocals in English), but Yundeok is asking, and that is all he needs to fulfill this call and response.
“You can clap and everything. Two, three—Be my light… ”
“ Shine your light on me baby… ”
“ Be my light… ”
Yundeok’s gaze gleams with such steadiness, such a relish of being in rapport, that Minjae cannot help but step closer. Here is what he was made for: sounding in harmony, musicking in antiphony, allowing accord to flow through their song. It is no surprise, then, that they make it to the end.
“Nice warm up,” says Yundeok, his sheepishness gone. Relief fills out his smile, as does a growing excitement.
“Next one?” says Minjae, already trying to gauge which songs Yundeok might sing. It is what his robot-self would do in their imagined concept, and it does not hurt to be prepared.
Yundeok nods, running his fingers through the shower. “You bet.”
They do not talk about it in the morning.
Bleary-eyed, Yundeok stumbles into group practice at just the nick of time. He stretches, just like usual, showing off his muscled arms to a giggling Junpyo and Anxin. Jaeyoung fusses over their formation, just like usual, correcting Minjae’s posture to the exact angle and calling Yundeok to attention at the right times. Bingfan, just like usual, is impeccable.
They are going to win this battle.
“So,” Jaeyoung asks the team during their post-practice reflection, “Any thoughts on how we can improve? To get us to the next level?” He glances meaningfully at Minjae and Yundeok, as if to ask, have you been checking in on each other, like we asked you to?
Yundeok catches Minjae’s eye, grinning wide. “Maybe we need to practise in a robot factory,” he quips. “I have a feeling it would help us get into the concept even more.”
Jaeyoung groans and smacks him, fond. Minjae suppresses a laugh. He digs his knee against Yundeok’s shin, so Yundeok lets his leg fall, hooking it over Minjae as he leans onto him. His hand rests lightly on Minjae’s bicep, a testament to a shared knowledge that—
Last night, they broke free.
In the boxed-in bathroom, steam rises from their breath and fogs up the mirror. In a drab and sterile space, they sing of energy and sunshine, heartbreak and lovelorn. To the beat of Minjae’s palms, Yundeok gesticulates, sweeps, and bows. He splashes through the water, dances through puddles, lets each drop slide down his bronzed skin and rubber-round cheeks. He has Minjae pull off his shirt, two slippery fish wrestling beneath the waves, to reveal smooth planes of abs and pectorals, ending in solid bulk that connects to his waist. His jeans, baggy and damp, weigh at his ankles.
Maybe Minjae’s breath catches in his throat, more than once. He can chalk it up to the growing heat in the room, the steam that chokes a gasp out of you in lieu of regular words of encouragement, or the strain of keeping up with Yundeok, checking his mistakes, and noting them down for later. It could have been his keeping score, measuring every highlight against all the other teams to determine if one man could tip their group over to victory. Maybe it is something else: envy of a body. A flash of teeth. Not being allowed to touch, not being allowed to run your hands over the perfect contours of body and bone and call it yours.
Yundeok notices.
To Minjae, whose arms are drenched, Yundeok stretches out a hand. The curtain of water parts before his unmistakable gesture:
Let go.
All this calculating, this rigour, when you sing so freely—what is it all for?
So Minjae falls, tasting salt. Yundeok pulls him closer. Minjae does not resist.
They revel in the slap of skin against skin, arms grasping for purchase, the soles of their feet stamping against the wet floor. Metal corrodes and melts off beleaguered vessels of flesh. Exposed to human want and will, regularity terminates its sequence. The beat cycles through longer and shorter sets, twisting and turning until they hit an even rhythm, like a radio tuned to the right frequency. It seems so easy to turn the tap to full power, the showerhead hissing at the increased water pressure.
“ Everybody, wake up, wake up, ” Minjae begins.
“ Everybody… ” Yundeok sings Minjae’s line for him, sending an electric jolt through Minjae’s spine. Minjae drums his palms against the wall, mimicking the bounding electronic synth. “ Everybody, everybody, every every body… ” Their ricocheting voices bounce against a liquid deluge. Yundeok tugs Minjae closer, the cascade of water above them weighing the force of a pounding waterfall.
“Louder,” urges Minjae. “Sing from here.”
He palms Yundeok’s solid trunk, drags his fingers across the middle. Yundeok draws a sharp ragged breath of energy. It builds in his gut, pressed against Minjae, so that Minjae can feel Yundeok’s chest vibrating against his. Life shoots up his diaphragm into the clean cavity of his lungs, glides up his throat as he parts his lips. For the briefest of moments, Yundeok’s song pierces through the curtain of sound, travelling into the centuries past and the years to come. In the deep of the night, he matches Minjae’s rhythm, two bodies tangling in tandem beneath the tides.
They do not talk about how, last night, they stood there until early morning. How, braced against each other, they let the rapids crash over them, wave after wave. How, listening to each other’s breaths, they stayed that way until their clothes were drenched through, shivering, soaked to the bone.
Imagine in early dawn: a team of two standing in a tranquil pool, ripples by their feet, bodies dripping. Imagine the surge and ebb of the sea, lapping against sand-flecked feet.
When they peeled apart, Yundeok had knocked their foreheads together, his skin alight with flame, and whispered the inexpressible.
What if the terrapin helped the hare? What if the terrapin, seeing the hare’s life in danger, decided to help the hare?
This is the modern world, and old stories can be rewritten. What if the rabbit wanted to see the sea for himself and the terrapin helped him? What if the terrapin realised an innocent rabbit would die for his dragon king? This is not a betrayal; it is an act of compassion. The dragon king is prone to whims and fancies and values his life above all else. He dictates that for him his subjects must live and die. What has he done to garner this loyalty? Has he kissed the feet of his poor subjects and washed them? No, better to realise more hares will only perish to keep this sick despot alive.
In no way do we criticise the stories of yore. This is simply a new twist. It co-exists alongside the old, a deoneum passage that explains our current reality. It is an ordeal to pass unscathed through those who consume and consume. It takes great skill and great charm to remain relevant and not be skinned alive.
In our version of the story, the hare is a friendly creature who befriends the terrapin. When the terrapin realises the hare must die, he is moved to save his friend, letting him know exactly how the hare can escape his fate. The hare enjoys a banquet thrown by the king and even manages to sing well enough to please him. The terrapin sings even better, lulling the king and the court to sleep with his voice.
With no one to stop them, they escape to land to live another day.
When Everybody wins against Sherlock, Minjae cannot help but let out a cry that winds him, he cannot help the joy that escapes his squeezed-shut eyelids. Yundeok, next to him, has raised his head to the sky, his face in his palms. Minjae reaches out, holds his arm. Their fingers brush. The roar of the audience is deafening. The victory had come all-too-suddenly, despite Minjae’s stiff digits and sluggish legs, the vocal hitches and wooden expressions.
Yundeok is looking at him with the biggest grin on his face, half-covered by his hand. His grin stretches impossibly wider as Minjae collapses on his shoulder, keening. Drawn into his arms, Yundeok’s solid form is a reassurance that this is real—that they had done it. Faint laughter rumbles from his chest, and he pats Minjae, arms wrapping around him in a warm, damp embrace.
“What’s this?” Yundeok says, mirth in his voice.
Minjae shakes his head, stifling a wail that threatens to break out of his throat. Let me have this, he wants to say, pressing the red fabric of Yundeok’s coat closer, inhaling the sweat and tears. It is all a bit gross and embarrassing, but to be allowed to sob onto someone else is a reward in itself.
Yundeok laughs again, ushering Minjae towards their team. “Don’t cry,” he says, as Anxin and Bingfan reach for them. “Don’t cry,” he says, as Junpyo pats Minjae from behind, gasping and teary himself. Jaeyoung, from afar, is his mirror image, his face screwed up in an act of sobbing.
When Minjae turns back to the audience, covering his eyes, Yundeok rests a hand on his shuddering shoulders, rubbing it between his thumb and forefinger. When Junpyo straightens, maintaining his distance, Yundeok lets Minjae’s arm wrap around his—lets Minjae hold onto his hand, squeezing his fingers.
They will take the benefits. They will rank higher. And Minjae has fulfilled his duty to his teammates and groupmates, his vow to Sion.
And Yundeok? Yundeok will live on for another day.