I Want: A Jang Wonyoung Story

Honest Day's Work

Everything about this was so flummoxing.

"He's not the man you thought him to be, Yeon-seo-ssi," Lee Daepyeonim sighed as he wiped his glasses. "The honourable man that he made himself to be was merely a front. He's a rotten apple."

What did it even mean when someone was a rotten apple? Were they considered 'rotten' because they've gone bad in the eyes of others? Or was it because their souls have truly blackened and started to decay—just like a rotting apple? Sunbaenim was always admirable, he always did the right things... I couldn't understand why he would be rotten.

"H–He didn't harm anyone... Did he, Daepyonim?" I asked.

I was desperate to try and fight for my senior.  The big boss placed his glasses back on his nose, then he told me.

"Not yet, but I'm not letting him get the chance to do so."
"But isn't it rather... Assumptious... Of us to think that he had ill intentions?" I argued. "This... This isn't right!"

Daepyeonim's lips formed a thin line.

"Listen, Yeon-seo-ssi... This industry isn't as straightforward as you think," he said, sounding a little weary. "The shit that you see here is all surface level stuff, the 'clean' stuff the public can know about. Below that, however, there's constant turmoil and conflict."

He slid his hands into the pockets of his trousers, then he continued.

"Think about it this way: We're fighting a political war. Our idols are our troops—The ones who will help fight this battle by campaigning for Minister Kang Hyunjae. Your Sunbae? He was a spy of the enemy, and you and I have seen and read enough about spies to know that they're never up to any good."
"But... Some spies are good! Like Ethan Hunt in Mission Impossible, or..." I started to argue, but he raised his hand to cut me off.
"Look... I understand that you looked up to him," he said. "I know you're trying to see the good in him, and that you're trying to fight for him, and I respect your dedication, but... We have irrefutable proof that he is under Lee Kangdae's payroll, and that makes him... A loose end."

Why would someone ever compare another person to a loose end of a rope? It was so dehumanising and utterly impertinent, I'll never be able to understand the way people could degrade each other.

"We can't risk it, not with HYBE joining their campaign and the recent aespa Giselle scandal," the Daepyonim concluded. "I'm sorry, Yeon-seo-ssi, but there's no time for regrets..."

With that, he left me. His assistant followed a few steps behind him as he briskly strode away, leaving me pensive as I found it in me to return to the dance studio to dwell on my thoughts. I admit—I was shaken by this whole thing. Never in my life would I ever have assumed that my senior, the man I looked up to since my first weeks in university, was up to no good. Even as I resumed my work on my laptop, I still couldn't shake all the questions that I had.

Naturally, my preoccupied state led to time passing quicker than it should. When I shut my laptop to give my eyes a break, I heard Lee Jung–IVE's choreographer and dance instructor–already thanking the girls for the practice section and preparing to get out. The clock on the wall read seven twenty-five in the evening—five more minutes until I could clock off and go home to watch that movie with Yuri.

I quickly set my laptop down and rushed to grab the water bottles from the mini-fridge for the girls. I struggled to hold all of them in the crook of my arm as I brought them over to the sweaty, tired girls, who thanked me before guzzling down the icy cold water.

Wonyoung was the only one who didn't take a bottle from me, opting to head to the fridge to get a drink herself. She made it a point to slap the bottle that was meant for her out of my hand as she walked past me, those long legs of hers lifting off gracefully from the floor with each step as she made her way to the mini fridge. Yujin looked like she was about to go off on Wonyoung, but a quick smile from me as I retrieved the bottle from the floor kept her frustration at bay.