Assistant Manager Kim Hates Idols-Chapter 284: Stranger (2)

Thud. The bedroom door opened.
“Hey, come out.”
Lee Cheonghyeon, who was lying in bed, checked the time at his younger sibling’s words. It was 6:30 p.m.
Staggering to the dining room, he saw his father and older brother sitting there. The table was set for dinner, likely prepared by the housekeeper before she left.
Seeing that his mother was absent, he could only guess that she was on a business trip or working late.
“…I’m home.”
“Why are you greeting me only now?”
His father’s low voice reprimanded Lee Cheonghyeon. Lee Cheonghyeon sat down with an apology.
The meal was quiet. Only the sounds of clinking dishes could be heard.
Lee Cheonghyeon wished he could just pass out. The food wouldn’t go down his throat. The rule that he couldn’t leave the table freely was the only thing keeping him in place, and it was agonizing.
Just as he was forcing himself to at least pretend to use his chopsticks, someone put down their spoon with a clatter.
His father was looking at him.
“Lee Cheonghyeon.”
“…Yes.”
“How long are you going to do this idol thing?”
His voice was indifferent yet sharp.
Then he threw something onto the table—it clattered violently, dishes clinking and breaking. The table was a mess in seconds.
The screen of the thrown phone was shattered. On the cracked screen, a fancam of Spark’s IRREGULAR stage was visible.
Lee Cheonghyeon glared at his younger brother. His father wasn’t the type to look something like that up on his own.
“Did you make a big fuss about becoming an idol just to go around doing this? Aren’t you ashamed to be parading your face around like this?”
Of course, he wasn’t ashamed. For that one stage, Lee Cheonghyeon had arranged the music to death and practiced, squeezing out time he didn’t have.
And yet his family called this embarrassing. Because Lee Cheonghyeon danced with fluid lines, wore a pink outfit with a cute hat, and winked at the camera.
He didn’t even think, ‘of all things, they had to see IRREGULAR’. His father would have been angry no matter what he saw, and Lee Cheonghyeon would have become one of three things: embarrassing, pathetic, or empty-headed.
Lee Cheonghyeon said nothing. He knew best that talking to a wall was meaningless.
“You skipped your finals to do this? Did you not feel any guilt sending that kind of card home? Don’t you feel sorry for your parents?”
His brothers left the table first. Only Lee Cheonghyeon couldn’t leave the table, where the side dish soup was dripping.
“You’re a senior now. You have less than ten months until the college entrance exam.”
The warning pressed down on Lee Cheonghyeon like a heavyweight.
“This is your last chance to undo a wrong choice. With your brain, it’s not too late if you come to your senses now.”
With those words, Lee Cheonghyeon was truly left alone.
No one cared about things like broken dishes—everyone just assumed the housekeeper would naturally clean it up when she came tomorrow.
Lee Cheonghyeon cleaned the table by himself. And he wiped the table clean, as if wiping a stain from his heart.
The bed he lay down in after getting ready for sleep was uncomfortable. The bleak air was cold. He missed his room at the dorm, which was full of his things.
Wondering what the members were up to, he looked at the group chat, and messages had already piled up. Lee Cheonghyeon also sent a message late.
Then, Kim Iwol immediately sent a private message. A preview appeared on his lock screen.
Our Eldest Hyung
[Everything’s okay?]
[Call me if anything happens.]
Unable to take his eyes off the pop-up message, Lee Cheonghyeon couldn’t even think to reply and just stared at the preview.
* * *
His eyes opened at the crack of dawn. Lee Cheonghyeon washed up early. Then he sat on his bed and waited for all his family members to leave.
He sighed in the pre-sunrise darkness.
‘I woke up too early.’
It couldn’t be helped as he had tossed and turned all night. He wanted his daily life to begin at hours where he wouldn’t have to clash with his family.
It was then. He heard the sound of the door lock opening.
‘Did Mom just get here?’
Lee Cheonghyeon quickly pulled the blanket over his head and lay down. He was already distraught, and he didn’t know what he would hear if he ran into his mother.
He could hear his mother and father’s conversation beyond the door.
“You’re just getting here?”
“Yeah. I’ll get some sleep and then head out again.”
“Didn’t you say you were going somewhere in the afternoon?”
“A seminar. But I’ll be back in the evening.”
It was a normal conversation. Lee Cheonghyeon liked this kind of peace.
“Did you have a good talk with Cheonghyeon?”
“He just kept his mouth shut. Hard to talk when the other person won’t say anything.”
“He’s nineteen and still can’t get a grip.”
But the fact that he was always the one who ruined that peace—that was what hurt Lee Cheonghyeon the most. He failed to sneak out while his family was out.
He even had to have breakfast with his entire family. The table, with all five chairs filled, was more uncomfortable than yesterday.
It was his mother’s voice that broke the long silence.
“Lee Cheonghyeon, I heard you had a little talk with your father yesterday?”
Could you even call that a talk?
Maybe once, it might have been considered normal, but not anymore. To be precise, he knew after seeing Kim Iwol. Because Kim Iwol always tried to prevent his dongsaengs from being in such situations.
“…Yes.”
Lee Cheonghyeon forced himself to answer.
“Have you thought about it?”
“About what?”
“Your father must have told you. That it’s time to seriously start studying.”
His head was blank. Lee Cheonghyeon stammered.
“Are you telling me to quit being an idol?”
“How long were you planning to keep doing something only little kids dream of?”
His ears rang as if vibrating. His mother’s gaze was sharp enough to pierce through Lee Cheonghyeon. A wave of emptiness spilled from the gash in his heart.
He had worked so hard since debut. He’d been exhausted, overwhelmed, but happy when the results came in. Not once had writing music ever felt anything but joyful.
Every moment with the others had been precious. Even when a friend battled mental illness, or his hyung struggled, he gave everything he had to help them through.
Even when he was happy throughout all their activities, he’d still felt the pressure—he feared being told he was useless if they didn’t earn money. So on the day they finally received payment, he’d barely managed to exhale in relief.
Back then, he’d felt not joy—but relief.
He knew he’d be criticized for flunking tests. But he wanted to show them that at least in his field, he was doing just fine.
But now, everything he had built with such sincerity was being dismissed as a childish phase to be tolerated.
Lee Cheonghyeon shot up from his seat. Leaving behind a voice asking what he thought he was doing, he went into his room and shoved the charger he had brought from the dorm into his bag.
“Who do you think you are, getting up in the middle of a meal…”
“I knew you wouldn’t understand. So I wasn’t expecting anything.”
“What makes you think you have the right to talk back?”
“Besides studying, is there anything you’ve ever said I was good at?”
His family members came running. Everyone stood behind his mother.
There was no one by Lee Cheonghyeon’s side.
“We got first place on a music show. We even won an award. You guys always said awards were a good thing—are these ones embarrassing to you?”
His sorrow overflowed, not knowing how to stop.
“I stayed quiet because I figured it came from concern. You must be worried about your child throwing his life away on an uncertain future, you must want him to walk only on a solid path, so I just listened and moved on.”
“And you’re still acting like this? You think we’re worrying just to watch you suffer?”
“I don’t want to live like that!”
Lee Cheonghyeon shouted.
“You were the ones who chose piano for me. From the start, I never had a say in what instrument I played. Even when I won competitions, you called me a stubborn brat. You said if I didn’t win an international prize by 25, I had to quit everything!”
“So we let you become an idol. Among Soohoon and Kangmyeong,  has anyone else lived chasing what they want like you?”
“So now that the grace period is over, you’re telling me to quit? When I think of this as my profession?”
“Are idols even recognized as a proper profession in society?”
He was at a loss for words. A passage from a book he had read on a sleepless night and in a car where his thoughts had grown heavy came to mind.
**“What had taken the rabbit from him? Why had they forbidden him to fish and to take walks?”
After reading the end of that book, Lee Cheonghyeon had felt endlessly empty. Lee Cheonghyeon didn’t want to become like that.
“Mom, I…”
Tears flowed. Lee Cheonghyeon squeezed out the last of his energy to speak, wiping his tears.
“I don’t want to be recognized by society, I want to do what I love.”
“……”
“I’m not doing something that harms others…”
Tears fell to the floor in drops.
Cold words fell on Lee Cheonghyeon’s bowed head.
“Then leave.”
“Honey.”
“If you’re going to live however you want, then leave. But, leave behind everything you bought with the money your mom and dad earned.”
It hurt as if his chest was being gouged out.
“If you can’t appreciate the blessed life you’ve had, then I’m done caring.”
At those words, Lee Cheonghyeon opened the bottom drawer of his dresser.
A cheap, tangerine-colored pouch, unbefitting of the luxurious house, revealed itself.
“Didn’t I tell you? Leave everything behind.”
“I will leave everything behind.”
Lee Cheonghyeon opened his bag and shoved the charger he had packed into his pants pocket. He threw the bag straight into the trash can. He also took off the cardigan he was wearing and threw it on the bed.
“But I bought this.”
“……”
“I bought it with the prize money I won from a water rocket competition. There was no lesson on how to make a water rocket in the online lectures you signed me up for, and Dad didn’t drive me to the competition venue. I did it all myself.”
Lee Cheonghyeon’s hand, clutching the pouch, tightened.
“I don’t need anything else.”
Lee Cheonghyeon stormed out of the room. The entire time he was heading down the hallway to the front door, no one stopped him.
A familiar outer coat fell on Lee Cheonghyeon’s shoulder as he was putting on his shoes.
Lee Kangmyeong was looking down at him.
“You’ve become a beggar, so at least take a piece of clothing with you.”
“Get lost.”
Lee Cheonghyeon flung the coat away. The coat fell to the floor limply.
Lee Kangmyeong sneered.
“If it were me, no way in hell I’d live like that. Getting cursed out online every day, having to manage your image—what’s fun about that?”
“Then are you happy living like that?”
Lee Cheonghyeon asked with bloodshot eyes. Lee Kangmyeong smiled brightly.
“Of course.”
Normally, Lee Cheonghyeon would have gotten up and left at this point.
Instead, Lee Cheonghyeon chose to look his younger brother straight in the eye.
“Yeah, I bet.”
“What?”
“You failed the entrance exam for the gifted high school.”
At Lee Cheonghyeon’s provocation, Lee Kangmyeong’s eyes flashed.
“It would have been a sight to see if I had gone to the gifted high school, too. Then, among us, you would have been the only one treated like a dunce who couldn’t get into the gifted high school.”
“Are you done talking?”
“No? I should probably also say that acting all smug just because you found a half-decent backup school is pretty childish.”
“You couldn’t even get in.”
“Thinking that I couldn’t get in is a bit too self-serving of a judgment, isn’t it?”
A silence fell between the two. As Lee Cheonghyeon was about to finish putting on his shoes and stand up, Lee Kangmyeong spat out a curse. Lee Cheonghyeon just stared at his younger brother.
Lee Kangmyeong shot at Lee Cheonghyeon.
“You really think your future’s gonna be that bright?”
Lee Cheonghyeon didn’t answer.
Perhaps interpreting the meaning of the silence as ‘lack of confidence,’ Lee Kangmyeong said.
“I’m not gonna live like you—reckless and without a damn f*cking plan.”
Those words touched something in Lee Cheonghyeon.
The source that had whipped Lee Cheonghyeon forward as the year-end approached.
“The future?”
Tears still streamed down Lee Cheonghyeon’s face.
But his eyes gleamed with a sharp, cold light.
“How can you talk about the future so confidently—when you don’t even know if you’ll be alive tomorrow?”
The day Kang Kiyeon announced his hiatus, Lee Cheonghyeon feared he might never return to the stage.
When Kim Iwol was hospitalized twice due to unexpected accidents, he wondered if he’d ever see his hyung again.
The reason Lee Cheonghyeon had pushed himself to the brink.
The reason he had written songs like a machine in a small studio, recalling the sea Kim Iwol had taken him to, even though creation wasn’t something that just happened by sitting there.
“I don’t think about things like the future.”
Because he didn’t know if the six of them would still be together in the future.
Because he couldn’t guarantee that this moment would last forever.
“My goal is to leave evidence that the six of us exist right now. As much as possible.”
Lee Cheonghyeon’s voice trembled. It was a voice filled with resentment.
“So that even if I get into an unexpected accident on my way back today, people will say that I left all the records I could leave in a year.”
“……”
“You just go ahead and live your whole life just planning for the future.”
With those words, Lee Cheonghyeon stepped out the front door.
And he called Kim Iwol, crying.
“Hyung.”
His face was wet, but he had no time to wipe it. Lee Cheonghyeon clutched the pouch and asked.
“Can I go back to the dorm a little early?”
Lee Cheonghyeon needed a place to rest.
—
**Hermann Hesse, ‘Beneath the Wheel’, translated by Lee Soon-hak, Seoul: Mir Book Company, 2023, p. 133.