Chapter 80:
Translator: MarcTempest
Editor: Rxel
Chapter 80
The Time That Has Passed
Friday lunchtime.
New Black’s fan cafe was busier than ever.
There were twice as many posts as usual, and the real-time chat room was buzzing with fans chatting.
They were all waiting for one thing.
-Ah… I’m so excited
-They said it would be around 12 o’clock, so they should be coming out soon, right?
-Yeah, probably
-I wanted to go too???????
It was the promise that New Black had made to their fans for being the first-place candidate.
-I really wanted to go, why do I have to work
-Why am I a graduate student
-Let’s all cry together??
-I wish they did it on the weekend, Kyuho is so consistent with his work???
-I asked the Lemon PR team and they said they wanted to do it on the weekend too, but they got rejected by the city hall;;
-Huh… I see
They all accepted it and swallowed their regrets.
-Is anyone in Myeongdong right now?
-Me
Someone answered.
-I work nearby, so I sneaked out when I went to lunch??
-Is it crowded??
-They’re lining up and setting up the amp right now, but there are a lot of people… But they don’t seem to know what’s going on. They all look like ordinary people.
-Huh, are there not many fans??
-No? I guess it’s because it’s a weekday
-What if there’s no reaction? It can’t be embarrassing…
The Souffles were worried about the citizens’ reactions.
They wanted to run to them and cheer them on, but they all had their own lives to live, so they could only suppress their anxious feelings.
-Oh? There’s an announcement up
-I brought the YouTube link
The fans moved to the link that someone posted in the chat room.
Soon, a low-quality screen showed the Myeongdong street.
A security line was set up in a semi-circle, and security guards in suits were standing there.
[What is this?]
[Are they busking?]
[Is this some kind of broadcast?]
The sound of murmuring came from the speakers.
The pedestrians stopped one by one and looked at the empty mini stage, wondering what was going on.
In that atmosphere, the fans swallowed their dry saliva.
-Ugh…
-Ugh, I’m shaking…
-It’s their promise, but why am I nervous;;
-I’m afraid I’ll vomit, so I’m on a forced fast for lunch…
-Me too
Just then, a majestic BGM started to flow from the broadcast.
The chat room went silent.
The door opened and New Black appeared.
-???
-Penguins?
-????What is that???
After a moment of confusion, the chat room was flooded with laughter.
Penguins with different expressions, different characteristics, were waddling down the stairs.
-Lol???? I can tell who’s who
-????That fluffy penguin is definitely Wang Jiho
-Giant penguin is so Kim Junghyun????
-Who are the remaining two?
-Bijoo and Rihyuk, right?
When they started to guess the members, everyone’s attention was drawn to one person.
-Emperor penguin…?
An emperor penguin that stood out from the rest.
It looked like a real penguin was inside, not a doll suit.
Unlike the other penguins who walked awkwardly, the emperor penguin waddled and flapped its wings.
It exuded a professional aura that was hard to miss.
-??, that’s Woojoo
-Woojoo
-Definitely Woojoo
The penguins gathered in one place and started dancing to a K-pop medley.
The chat room was buzzing every time the five penguins flapped their wings, and someone captured their funny poses and posted them online.
-??, I can tell by their dancing
-The yellow feather is Bijoo
-Rihyuk is so cute ????
-Rihyuk’s personality shows even in his dance ?
As the penguins danced, the fans could tell Bijoo and Rihyuk apart.
With that small mystery solved, the chat room quieted down.
Everyone was mesmerized by New Black, who had transformed into penguins.
Finally, the dance was over.
The staff came over to take off their costumes, and the fans swallowed their saliva, waiting for their reaction.
Pop-
One by one, they took off their costumes.
The sound that was empty without the background music was filled with loud noises.
The live audience’s exclamations.
The fans nodded their heads in agreement, recalling the shock they felt when they first saw New Black.
And when it was Woojoo’s turn, the fans had a feeling of what was coming next.
Pop-
Suddenly, the screen was covered with a white filter, and a face with high-definition features appeared.
The idol member who brushed off his sweaty hair.
Raw compliments from everywhere sounded through the speakers.
And then.
-Woojoooooo
-Everyone?? Yes, they are our kids??
-Quick, say you’re New Black
-Everyone, calm down…
The fans behind the screen were making a racket.
***
Woojoo always enjoyed spending time with the fans.
Especially when they were happy, Woojoo felt happier too.
From that perspective, his mood was at its peak today.
“Oppa. I wanted to go see you perform in the penguin costume that day, but I couldn’t because of my academy schedule. I was so sad.”
“You did well. Studies come first.” Woojoo signed the album CD and said, “Instead, since you couldn’t see it, I’ll show you a bit of what I did that day. Is there any penguin dance you want to see?”
“Oppa’s break dance.”
“It’s hard, but I’ll try.”
Woojoo got up from his seat and did the dance he did that day.
The movements that were engraved in his body flowed out.
It was a dance that he made by imitating the penguin movements from YouTube.
The fan in front of him laughed out loud.
Snap- Snap-
The people sitting in the front row of the waiting seat pressed the camera shutter, and Woojoo smiled awkwardly and wiped the sweat dripping from his cheek.
Was it because of the weather?
He sweated even with a little movement.
After finishing all the conversations, he shook hands and waved to the fan who couldn’t go with a regretful face.
“Phew, it’s hot.”
Woojoo cooled off with a mini fan and looked around.
They were holding a fan signing event under a tent set up in front of a department store in Daejeon.
It was a kind of national tour that they couldn’t visit because they were always active in Seoul or Gyeonggi-do.
The open fan signing event schedule that was held in alphabetical order in metropolitan cities such as Gwangju, Daegu, Daejeon, Busan, and Ulsan was a new activity that filled the empty space where there was no broadcast.
The difference from the last fan signing event was that it was open, so people passing by the department store watched them with curious eyes or held up their smartphones and snapped their faces.
They typed and disappeared, and Woojoo wondered if they were saying something like ‘New Black, the idol group, is that them?’
Woojoo felt a bit strange.
A month ago, he was nervous all day if someone looked at him or pointed their phone at him, but now he was calm even when people passed by and looked at him.
Did he get used to the attention?
And even when dealing with the fans, Woojoo was still clumsy, but he had made a lot of progress compared to when he first met them and trembled.
“Hello. Is it very hot?”
“Yes, it’s really hot.”
“I’m sorry, we should have met in a place with good air conditioning.”
As Woojoo handed over the mini fan he was using to a fan who was fanning herself, she smiled and brushed her hair back.
The conversation that followed was friendly and warm.
Woojoo also received a gift, a picture of five penguins dancing that was torn out of a sketchbook.
She said they had just come off the stage, and her skills were…
“Wow, you have a jewel hand.”
“A jewel hand?”
“Oh, I learned some new words from Jiho yesterday. He said people who draw well like this are called jewel hands.”
Then, Bijoo whispered to him, “It’s a gold hand, Hyung.”
“A gold hand?”
“I was curious too, so I searched it yesterday.”
“…Wang Jiho, that son of a gun.”
The fans sitting in front of Woojoo and Bijoo burst into laughter.
Jiho, who was on the far left, perked up his ears and then sent them a heart with the cutest expression he could muster.
The fans in the hall started laughing too.
“Really, I can’t scold him for that.”
Woojoo sighed and continued the conversation with the fan in front of him.
The main topic was the promise for the first-place candidate.
The impact in Myeongdong was so strong that every fan he met talked about the penguins.
Thanks to that, Woojoo learned a lot.
The fan cafe had a lot of nicknames with ‘penguin’ in them, the fans made a virtual group called ‘Penguins’ and fangirled over them, and the most popular member was the ‘Emperor Penguin’ born in '93, and the paper that PD Gu Jaeyong described as a ‘Combat Penguin’ turned out to be a ‘Gentoo Penguin’.
And those stories always ended with a question directed at Woojoo.
“But how did you do that?”
“The Emperor Penguin?”
“Yeah, yeah, even the experts were amazed.”
Experts?
That was the first time he heard that.
Seeing Woojoo’s curious expression, she showed him a screenshot.
It was a comment on a video on an SNS page called [Today’s Honey Jam Guaranteed^^].
-I’m a current Antarctic ecologist. A friend sent me a link and I watched it and I was amazed. You look like a friend who studied penguins hard. Penguins are animals that can’t move their center of gravity evenly. When they put out their right foot, they tilt their body to the right, and when they put out their left foot, they tilt their body to the left, and their center of gravity shakes as they rotate their body. I was writing that the actor did a good job of reproducing that even though his body structure is different, but then an idol friend came out. What… How did you do that? [Like 336]
└ Suddenly an idol??????
└ ????????
└ Doctor, you’re flustered
Woojoo couldn’t help but laugh as he watched.
“Actually, I’m good at imitating things. I wanted to do it properly, so I studied how penguins move for a few days.”
“You can do that?”
“Um, yeah, it worked.”
Honestly, he had a hard time making excuses for this part.
He was embarrassed to explain his ability.
He couldn’t say this:
Do you want to hear it? I got a weird ability when I hit my head during the college entrance exam last year. I can imitate anything I see.
Of course, he didn’t know it would work for animals too.
Woojoo was curious and thought about looking at snakes or insects, but he gave up. He didn’t know if it would work, but he didn’t want to lose his human dignity.
He thought he should set a date and experiment properly again, and he told the fan, “Do you want me to show you again?”
As Woojoo sat down and showed her the flapping of his wings, the fan across from him cracked up.
Thanks to that, Woojoo succeeded in diverting the attention of the person who was tilting her head at his awkward explanation.
While Woojoo was signing the album CD, the fan asked him the last question.
“What are you going to do now?”
It was the most common question along with the penguin dance.
They all had the same expressions.
Eyes filled with anticipation and anxiety.
It was fine when they were active on music shows, because they were on TV every day, but now that there was no talk of what they were going to do, the fans seemed anxious.
They wondered if they would be hard to see because they were going around the local events.
“There are various things we are preparing for. There are external schedules. Internally, we are talking with the company’s PR team. There will be a reality show too. We also got permission to write on the fan cafe, so we will be visiting you very often soon.”
When Woojoo said that, the fans smiled brightly and took the CD and went back to their seats.
Every time he saw them, he felt a tingling in his mouth.
He had two things he wanted to tell them.
About the two plans they were preparing right now.
***
After finishing the five-day fan signing tour around the city, they finally got some rest.
“Tomorrow, you can rest as much as you want.”
Seokhwan Hyung’s words sounded so sweet.
Woojoo almost thought he was listening to a heavenly harmony.
He unknowingly hugged Rihyuk and ran around the room. They soon realized the situation and glared at each other.
“Hyungs, don’t think too much today.”
With that threat, they spent the night watching a movie that their maknae played on his laptop.
They originally wanted to go to the theater and watch a late-night movie, but they all rejected the idea.
Rihyuk said he was tired, Bijoo said he didn’t want to go unless they all went together, Junghyun said he didn’t care what they did and ruined the maknae’s enthusiasm, and Woojoo said he couldn’t go because his body was sore from the emperor penguin dance.
Bijoo felt sorry for him and kept putting sliced apples in his mouth.
Meanwhile.
The energetic 17-year-old Nangrang kept nagging them to do something else.
They ended up compromising and watching a movie at home, or rather, at the dorm. Like this.
Woojoo wanted to wash up and sleep as soon as possible, but if he did, their maknae would nag him for days.
So they watched a movie that was popular these days.
It was a movie about Admiral Yi Sunshin, who was about to hit ten million viewers.
It was amazing.
Woojoo heard that nowadays you could watch movies that were in theaters right away on VOD.
Woojoo said it seemed like the world had become a better place while laughing, but the kids teased him for being old-fashioned.
Damn.
Anyway, that was all he remembered.
He fell asleep right away.
Not just him, but everyone.
Even the guy who said he was going to burn the night with the Hyungs fell asleep first. He kept waking up and saying ‘I’m not sleeping’ with his fish eyes.
Really, there was nothing he could do about Jiho.
Anyway, when Woojoo woke up from the scene where Admiral Yi Sunshin was in trouble, everyone was sleeping together with the drained laptop.
The blanket was thrown away and the living room was a mess.
When was the last time they went to a training camp?
Woojoo thought it was in fifth grade, but it was the first time he saw such a sight in a long time, so he felt strange and surprised.
Woojoo opened his eyes and Junghyun’s face was right in front of him.
He was really shocked.
He didn’t know if it was because his eyebrows were bushy, but it felt like he was watching them right in front of him.
The mountain with the president’s face carved on it that he learned in the English exam.
He was so surprised that he didn’t even notice that his card wallet was switched until he got on the village bus.
He found out after he tapped it.
-Beep
-Child.
He was surprised and so was the driver.
And he decided.
He was going to get rid of Wang Jihyo today.
“What a day, starting from the morning.”
Woojoo wondered why there was a child’s bus card in his card wallet and decided to ask him later as he headed to the company.
When he stopped by the office to get the practice room key, the staff in the management team’s office looked at him with surprised eyes.
“Aren’t you off today?”
“I’m going to practice a bit.”
“Take it easy. Why do you want to practice even on your day off?”
The staff clicked their tongues and gave Woojoo an awkward smile as he took the practice room key.
He looked around the office and didn’t see the face he was looking for.
“Are you looking for Director Yoon?”
“Yes.”
“He went to a meeting because of your ad deal. He’ll be back after lunch.”
“Oh, thank you.”
“Sure. You’re so diligent, even coming on your day off.”
The staff smiled at Woojoo.
Their satisfied smiles seemed to misunderstand him as ‘he’s really diligent’.
Woojoo bowed and didn’t bother to correct their misunderstanding.
It wasn’t a lie.
From a certain point of view, it was true that he came to practice.
But today’s purpose was not normal practice. 𝚏𝚛ee𝐰𝗲𝚋n𝐨𝘃𝗲l.𝐜𝐨m
It was to check what he had been putting off because of the activities.
The change that happened to his body since last November.
He had been vaguely thinking about this ability, what it was, and today he was going to do some experiments to find out.
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