In This Life, The Greatest Star In The Universe

CSAT test site.

A group of people had gathered at the very back of the exam hall.

“Are you feeling okay inside?”

“Yes....”

A face as white as a sheet.

The celebrity, whose long eyelashes fluttered and who put down a bottle of Vilemin and said,

“I feel a little better now. Ugh....”

“Would you like a bag? In case you need it during the exam.”

“Th-thank you.”

Someone took an extra plastic bag from their bag and handed it over when he gagged.

“...Thank you so much.”

Ri-hyuk answered politely.

He wiped the drink from the corner of his mouth with a tissue neatly, but cold sweat stood out on his pale face.

His tidy movements and his somewhat delicate appearance made the examinees blink.

“He looks like some frail princess from a cartoon.”

“A paper person....”

“The weakest character from the history adventure show was real.”

He looked so fragile, like a sheet of paper, that he seemed about to collapse if anyone didn’t help him.

Combined with the Korean trait of taking pity, the examinees were trying to relieve the celebrity’s indigestion.

“There’s a thick part between your thumb and index finger. If you rub there, your stomach gets better.”

“Really?”

The white fingers rubbed his hand delicately, looking even weaker than an ant.

“....”

“What’s wrong?”

“....”

“I’m rubbing it.”

Someone watching said,

“Can I try for a moment?”

“Why?”

“You can’t get it open like that. I get indigestion a lot, so I know.”

As Ri-hyuk watched with slightly wary eyes, one examinee pressed his hand down tightly.

NewBlack’s main vocal screamed.

“Nyeaaahhh!”

The shout rang through the exam hall and people nearby instinctively covered their ears.

At the same time, a clip from a music show he’d seen recently flashed into someone’s mind.

“Guess that button was going to pop.”

“My eardrum popped instead.”

“What kind of scream leaps over octaves....”

It reminded the students that not just anyone could be a singer.

At the same time.

Nyeaaahhh~

The faintly echoing shout made people laugh in another exam room.

“What is that sound?”

“What’s that?”

“Don’t play dog-barking noises, that was what it sounded like.”

Students in the classroom murmured.

Those who had gone off, curiosity piqued, began to return with amused faces.

“What happened?”

“Well...”

The returnee, stifling a laugh, said,

“A celebrity came to take the exam.”

“Oh. NewBlack?”

Everyone knew who that was.

Reporters lined up in front of the test site with dozens of cameras, and broadcasting crews had brought recording equipment too.

“So what happened to him?”

“He ate kimbap and got indigestion.”

“...?”

“Someone tried to ‘unblock’ him by pressing his hand tightly, but it hurt so much he screamed.”

The mournful, faintly sentimental scream made the students laugh again.

“So did he get fixed?”

“Yeah.”

“Apparently it totally worked,” someone said, and laughter followed.

Nyeaaahhh~

The scream replayed in their heads.

Before the third period, the stressed students couldn’t help but smile for a moment.

“Thank you. Really, thank you.”

“No problem.”

“I’ll make it up to you later. Thank you all so much.”

Wiping the drops of cold sweat away, Ri-hyuk offered a clumsy smile of gratitude.

The examinees around him asked,

“Are you okay now?”

“Yes.”

“Then it’s fine.”

Hearing that he was okay, the high-school seniors left briskly.

“Phew....”

Ri-hyuk took a deep breath and thanked the student in front of him for the stomach medicine.

“Nyeaah... I almost died. For real.”

His stomach still felt bloated, but thanks to someone pressing his hand tightly the indigestion had suddenly cleared.

He rubbed the cold sweat from his hands on his pants, took off his coat, and rolled up his sweater sleeves.

“Now I have to do well!”

How much had he studied for today.

He had squeezed in practice books and free online lectures whenever he had time between schedules.

Even if he didn’t do great, he was likely to enter the same cyber university that Viju hyung and Junghyun hyung attended...

But since he was taking the test anyway, he couldn’t treat it carelessly.

His rule was that once he did something, he prepared thoroughly.

“I’ll get a top grade in English.”

He didn’t expect much for math because he had no time to study, but he felt he did well in Korean.

He’d perked up every time people around him checked answers after the first period.

He may have guessed one ancient Korean question, but because he read a lot, he didn’t find non-fiction too hard.

And he was confident in English because he’d lived in the U.S. as a child.

“If I do well in Korean history too...!”

Thinking about posting on SNS, “Souffles, I got a top English grade!” made his chest swell.

“No, but some people flopped—would boasting a top grade be annoying? But then I ripped math so maybe it balances out.”

Worries about trivial things floated around Ri-hyuk’s mind as always.

He twirled his mechanical pencil and shook his head.

“I should ask Sun Woo-ju about this.”

He decided to ask the team leader who always gave clear guidelines on what to do and what not to do.

Despite making all sorts of embarrassing moments, Uju had never caused controversy.

“Heh heh Kim Deok-soon heh heh,” he’d joke, but he was thorough where it mattered.

“Please put any items other than writing tools away.”

At the proctor’s instruction, chairs scraped and zippers zipped and things rattled all around.

The English listening test began.

As the questions continued, Ri-hyuk carefully filled in the OMR bubbles.

“How many...”

“It’s probably nine o’clock. Oh. Wait....”

It was one of those later listening questions with hotel reservations where a distracted customer says “A, no B,” and the other person goes, “Oh, is it C?”—everyday dialogue for the group, so he found it easier than most.

“Nine....”

The word “nine” suddenly tickled his ear.

He shook his head to clear it.

The listening test ended and the sound of pencils busy on English passages filled the room.

Ri-hyuk focused on the passages.

—Nine Nine Nine~

Junghyun’s chorus kept ringing in his ear.

He shook his head again.

But then, like a chorus of “e-be-be-be,” the other members joined and the sound started to whirl around his head like a maddening carousel.

“....”

Ri-hyuk gritted his teeth and gripped his pencil.

Then the word “nine” popped into one of the passages like a slap.

The chorus surged.

“....”

It turned out that the phenomenon wasn’t limited to NewBlack’s members in that hall.

“What the—why does ‘nine’ keep showing up?”

“Nine....”

“I didn’t listen to Mango Chart last night, I’m screwed....”

People in the same exam hall—maybe because they’d heard Ri-hyuk’s voice—found the catchy melody of “Nine” reverberating in their heads.

Every time they completed a problem, electronic sounds buzzed in their minds.

And the same happened not only in Ri-hyuk’s hall but in neighboring schools too.

—Nine Nine Nine~

Anyone who had been listening to Mango Chart 100 recently while working through problem sets or on their commute found this happening.

“....”

Across the country, examinees closed their eyes whenever the song echoed while solving English passages.

English is already easy to lose focus on because it’s in a foreign language.

Each time, “Nine” kept seeping in.

“It wasn’t on the CSAT banned list so I thought I was safe.”

“This is basically a CSAT banned song....”

Students usually avoid songs that would be banned on test day, but such lists often appear only after people suffered from a song on test day.

“Sigh....”

And then,

“Ah, this pisses me off.”

The person suffering most from the addictive chorus of “Nine” was Ri-hyuk.

For others, hearing the song at most five or six times a day might be all; for him, as a member of NewBlack, it was a song he’d listened to hundreds of times for choreography and stage practice.

—Nine Nine

—Kyaruk! Kya!

—Ri-hyuk, be careful if you see the old man dragging a handcart!

Hallucinated echoes he hadn’t heard filled his head as Ri-hyuk groaned and worked through the English passages.

Outside the exam site after the CSAT.

My brothers and I waited in the car driven by the managers.

“They must be done. So many are coming out.”

“Ooh.”

Students streamed out, finished with their second foreign language, faces either relieved or oddly blank as they trudged toward their parents and hugged.

Jiho, sucking a Chupa Chups, said,

“I think I know that feeling.”

“Really?”

“Like after preparing an album for months, then doing your first music show—there’s that feeling.”

“Ah....”

It was an apt analogy we agreed with.

After months of all-night prep, you do a three-minute stage and descend with a strange mix of emptiness and a lot of relief.

The youngest asked,

“How is it? Similar?”

“I don’t know—I didn’t take the CSAT.”

“Ah.”

Watching the students come out with moist eyes, Viju and Junghyun wore wry smiles.

Seeing Wang’s stuffed eyes looking around wide-eyed, I said with a laugh,

“I regret it a bit, but if I think another way, since I didn’t get into the test, we wouldn’t have met.”

“Oh?”

“If I’d gone in peacefully I probably would have been on a composition program in university, and I wouldn’t have crossed paths with you guys before becoming a professional composer.”

“If so, NewBlack wouldn’t exist either. At the year-end eval, you saw the Man to Man logo and switched.”

“Oh. Right.”

Junghyun agreed.

“If Uju hyung hadn’t been here, our...”

“Le...”

“Lemon Boys...?”

The boys staring off into space grasped my hand at the same time.

“The handcart old man is really our benefactor.”

“Hyung, glad you came.”

“Phew. That could have been bad.”

The managers laughed at the youngest’s teary-eyed relief at not having sat the CSAT.

Jiho said, 𝒇𝒓𝒆𝒆𝙬𝒆𝒃𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝙡.𝒄𝓸𝒎

“Why are you laughing? If Uju hyung hadn’t come, you’d all be Lemon Boys’ managers.”

“....”

“Or maybe Flying Angels or Hot Voice that the CEO likes...”

The managers abruptly stopped laughing.

They muttered “Lemon Boys managers for the families...” then shot hot glances.

“Glad you came, Uju.”

“....”

“Ugh, a Lemon Boys manager—just thinking about it scares me.”

Mingi hyung’s line made us burst out laughing.

At the same time, everyone felt a strange sensation.

A butterfly effect, perhaps.

Thinking that a single variable two years ago had led to present-day NewBlack felt surreal.

If you traced things back, nothing would seem purely coincidental.

For my part, I was really glad I hadn’t taken the CSAT.

I was so lucky to have met them.

“If someone else had picked you up—what would we have done? They’d have taken this lucky charm hyung... aaah!”

The youngest chomped his Chupa Chups and then suddenly said,

“Hey, did you know? When I was in third year of middle school my mom went to get our fortune told. She asked how her son would turn out. The fortune teller said...”

We all pricked up our ears.

“Someone shouted that a golden chicken will roll into my future.”

“A chicken?”

“Yes. At first I thought it meant my dad’s company sells chickens, so maybe something good would happen with the company. But thinking about it, I guess that chicken was you, hyung. I’m a Year of the Rooster, right?”

“True enough....”

“You were wearing a yellow padded jacket that day, too.”

We all laughed at the youngest’s novel interpretation.

“Are you saying I rolled like a chicken on the icy road to bring you good luck?”

“It’s just a saying.”

“Superstition is superstition. If that fortune was right, the CEO said once we’d...”

What had he said?

“That we’d become the world’s most famous boy group,” maybe.

At the time it sounded ridiculous, but thinking about the path we’d walked in under two years left us speechless.

“What did the CEO say?”

“It’s nothing.”

“Hyung, you say you don’t believe in superstition but you do believe Junghyun’s hunch.”

Junghyun muttered, “My hunch is good...,” looking downcast.

I said seriously,

“Jiho.”

“Yes?”

“Junghyun’s hunch isn’t superstition.”

“...?”

“It’s science.”

At my words Viju burst out laughing.

Junghyun muttered, “No, it’s not me...” and the youngest agreed, “Science,” and they all laughed.

While we chattered,

“Oh! He’s out! He’s out!”

“Is Ri-hyuk coming out?”

“He looks like he’s coming. So many people flocking.”

Hearing Ri-hyuk was coming, we grabbed bouquets and got out of the car.

We ran with the managers.

“Ri-hyukaaaa!”

“How was the test?!”

“Our Ri-hyuk worked so hard in the world!”

Surrounded by people as he walked out, Ri-hyuk covered his face with his hands and tried to avoid us.

Reporters flashed their cameras at us.

Ri-hyuk, clearly embarrassed by our attention, tried to look away, then laughed when we patted his shoulder.

“How’d the test go?”

“Yeah. So-so.”

His face flushed and he blew out a breath.

“I bombed math because I didn’t study, but I think I did well in Korean history and the others.”

“Oooo.”

“But it was really hard in the middle...”

We thought maybe his stomach had gone bad from kimbap, but Ri-hyuk changed the subject along with the kimbap story.

“I didn’t know this.”

“Hm?”

“Our song...”

Ri-hyuk looked at the deepening evening sky and ✪ Nоvеlіgһt ✪ (Official version) said wistfully,

“was a CSAT-banned song.”

After the CSAT finished.

Various communities started posting their test stories.

“From today I’m a NewBlack anti, damn.”

“I was doing English and saw ‘nine’ and then it kept going nine nine nine and I got totally wrecked.”

“Don’t listen to this.”

“It wasn’t on the CSAT banned list so I thought I was safe, but I got royally fucked.”

“lol you’re done”

“Typical of people who can’t study.”

“When did you ever hear ‘nine’?”

[OP] “While studying the day before.”

“lol who studies with music the day before the test”

Because of the addictive melody, posts about “Nine” were popping up all over.

“I wasn’t the only one lol”

“When I saw ‘nine’ in the passage my brain went nine nine nine I nearly lost it”

“It wasn’t on the FB banned list... it definitely wasn’t...”

“There must’ve been NewBlack fans among the seniors—wonder how they reacted”

Among the posts, Souffles who proudly smiled with bittersweet faces were mixed in.

“I was taking the test and my favorite song kept looping...”

“Our oppas were so harmful during exam life lol”

“I didn’t have that problem, but I found myself hearting Uju in a Korean passage”

“I thought only ‘Baramkkot’ was addictive but ‘Nine’ was no less catchy”

“LOL but you guys had Nine... I stared at Gyuho during science and thought of Gyuho”

“LOL”

Soon SNS cards like “2015 ver. New CSAT Banned Song List” appeared.

[At the exam site people helped NewBlack’s main vocal with indigestion + review]

Stories about being with NewBlack’s main vocal at the test site spread.

“He’s really that handsome in person???”

“Yeah, the proctors flinched when they came in. We’ve seen handsome people before but this was like. Wow.”

“I’m so curious.”

“NewBlack’s stories are always extraordinary.”

Souffles searching for those reviews then started posting promotional posts on idol boards.

“Today’s NewBlack Ri-hyuk CSAT witness review.jpg”

“LOL so friendly”

“Their ordinary-person reviews are never normal; if they’re normal it looks fake”

“Look at their press photos, you’ll die laughing”

“From past reviews it sounds like he studied hard—curious about his scores”

Someone attached a press photo in a comment and people burst out laughing.

It showed NewBlack members running with bouquets, managers gallantly running beside them.

A photo caption read, “NewBlack’s love dash for member who took the CSAT.”

“What is this lol”

“Looks like the superhumans in a comic kicking off trees and running”

“Nothing about them is normal lol”

“Sometimes they seem like aliens sent as scouts to Earth”

That evening and the next day, stories spreading like wildfire were turned into articles.

-“Why did the NewBlack Ri-hyuk CSAT story suddenly become a hot topic?”

-“[Photo] NewBlack’s Ri-hyuk leaving the test site, ‘Had trouble with indigestion’”

-“[Health] What NewBlack member ate on CSAT day and got sick... 10 foods to beware for digestion”

Click. Click.

Yoon Seok-hwan, reading articles, stared into space silently.

Then he read the proposal in his hand.

“Why the hell are we getting offers for stomach medicine commercials from idols...”

NewBlack members kept bringing home bizarre ad offers like swallows bringing twigs.

He felt proud and impressed, but as their image started to stretch beyond the idol realm, the manager wondered whether he should like it or worry.