| Fan Fiction |
by Pseudonym
Chapter 31
Jaejoong
My words made me the black sheep of LN headquarters that day. No one in the group was talking to me other than Yunho. Which was why he was the person I was looking for after rehearsals.
Speaking of which, rehearsals were terrible. Due to the tension that I caused, we couldn’t perform in unity. We were all indifferent towards each other. Because of that, rehearsals were cancelled earlier than usual but we were pressed for time because we had a show to do the very next day. And I was the main problem. I was pulling the group back. They already knew all the routines and numbers we were doing but I was still in the dark. I was catching up on a month worth of absence in one day. If we didn’t get our act together we might as well cancel the show—which was something we never did. Not even for bad weather.
Luckily I found Yunho quickly in one of the studio rooms. Sometimes when Yunho was frustrated he would try and compose music to help him cope. I went in with intentions of scrawling the apology for my DUI that I would make the next night.
When he saw me he smiled wryly and I returned his smile with a faint one of my own.
Sitting beside him, I tapped my pencil on my notepad quietly for a while. Yunho continued to finger the knobs of the complex machinery ahead of him.
“So…what’s up?”
“Nothing. Trying to come up with something.”
“Oh cool, can I hear?”
“Your outburst was a bit immature.” He said suddenly.
“I’ve been holding this in for too long,” I defended.
“Snapping at Soon like that wasn’t the right option.”
“So I suppose you want to go to China?”
“I don’t mind it,” Yunho said after a while.
“Well I do. I have a family to take care of.”
Yunho got ready to say something but clumped his mouth shut. Sighing gruffly, I twisted my lips before scribbling down the introduction of my apology. My plan was to just tell my fans from the heart what I felt. But management thought it best to have a look at what I said so that I wouldn’t ‘make any more mistakes than I already had’.
Yunho and I worked separately. I noticed that he stopped making beats ever since I arrived. He’d resorted to writing music instead. I started to wonder if coming to him had been a mistake. I really didn’t want to be in the building anymore.
I was just about to give up on being talked to when he spoke up suddenly, “Jaejoong, you may not see it, but things are here at LN Entertainment.”
My head whipped to him.
“What’s going on?”
Sighing while shaking his head, Yunho let his pen down and leaned back into his chair. “They got a search warrant on the headquarters.”
“What?!” my eyes nearly popped out of their sockets and Yunho nodded.
“Yep. As we speak, they’re going through everything our record books that hold our finances and shares list. This happened while we were on vacation,” Yunho shook his head. “I can’t believe what’s happening. And they took me in for questioning before I came to see you and Mariam,” he swung his gaze to me. “They said they already questioned you. Why didn’t you let me know?”
I frowned heavily. “I didn’t want to worry anybody about it. I thought they were going to stop at me when they found nothing. Why didn’t you tell me about it Yunho?”
“Like you I didn’t want to worry anyone. The guys were already so stressed out with work and then you being a father was right around the corner. I couldn’t tell them any more about things that could possibly jeopardize their career.”
My frown deepened. “What did they question you about?”
“Well, for me they asked questions about Soon. Then they asked if I’d ever experienced any possible abuse when training or during our earlier years of debuting.” Yunho paused after that and I knew why.
We had experienced some form of abuse. Some of the things we’d gone through were damn near inhumane. The older we got, the lesser the abuse became. I think it was paramount to our success. The amount of fame we garnered was unexpected, thus earning us respect from our counterparts, fans, and also bosses.
No longer did they kick us around because we were a valuable asset to them. But whereas they no longer did it physically, the mental abuse of it all still soared. Through contracts, they controlled us. They monitored our lives.
They had a tight rein on us. We were like kings of a wide jungle. But a wide, caged jungle. At first, it was fun when we only saw the miniature spectrum of our lives. When we were younger, so were our minds. We didn’t venture further than what we already knew and what we already had. But the older we got, the more developed our minds became, the further we ventured. And we ventured far enough to recognize that we were caged animals, living in a beautified universe that was concealed by some sort of dome. And through the dome we could see the rest of the world—a world that we knew nothing about. A world that consisted of privacy, free time, friends, lovers…
A world where we could think for ourselves and act of our own free will without being punished for it.
That was the type of abuse we endured now. But in some strange twist of fate, we had come to accept that as a part of life, as a part of this business. If you wanted to stay in it, there were certain things that had to be done. Certain things that had to be sacrificed.
But for how long would we keep on like this?
I was now twenty-six, the eldest of the group. And even though our fans had grown, so had their love for us. The numbers proved that our fame wasn’t slowing by any means. Which meant that this type of life wouldn’t stop anytime soon.
And that worried me.
Because I wasn’t the same Jaejoong that I was before this entire suspension. Once this was suspension was over, the fans wouldn’t be looking at the same Jaejoong they saw before. This time I would have more secrets. More problems.
And how I was going to deal with it, I did not know.
Yunho’s heavy sigh drew me back to the conversation at hand.
“Then they asked if I knew anything about Park Jong Hun’s beating and any bribery that may go on behind the scenes.” Shaking his head, he run his fingers through his hair. “This is all too much. They need to leave Soon alone. They’ve been after him for years. Why do they give him such a hard time? He’s a hard working man. Everything he owns he earns the right way. Bribery?” he scoffed before drafting deeply from his beer. “It’s not fair for them to say things like that. We work hard to get demand from all of these stations. It’s not like it’s all handed to us on a silver platter.”
The more Yunho talked, the more my throat tightened. If only he knew what really happened behind closed doors. There were days I still asked myself whether what I saw was real or not. It really hurt to think that if that was just one TV show Soon had to bribe them to have us in, then how many other shows had he also bribed? I’d always thought we were well liked to the point where people were begging us to be on their shows. I didn’t know we were actually the ones begging them.
I already felt bad about the guys not knowing I had children even if it wasn’t any of my doing. I couldn’t keep yet another secret from them.
“Actually Yunho, things aren’t what they seem,” I began. Now that I had started there was no turning back.
“What do you mean?” he asked after looking at me strangely.
I took a cleansing, bracing sigh. “Those rumors are true.”
He just stared at me blankly. An indeterminably long time passed before he spoke again.
“What are you talking about? What rumors?”
“The ones about Soon. About him bribing.” I turned away from him and stared straight ahead. “It sucks doesn’t it? I used to think we were so important because our talents made people want us. But it’s not our talent. It’s our management’s money. LN Entertainment has the finances to get us all this promotion because Why do you think we’ve been winning all these award shows? How do we get so many radio spins that have us consistently topping the charts?”
“Are you saying we didn’t earn any of that?” I couldn’t tell whether he was angry or not. His expression was inscrutable.
“We did. We have. But I guess some things are too good to be true.”
Yunho stared at me once again for a long time, this time in disbelief.
“He said you would say something like this,” he murmured dismally while looking away.
I wasn’t expecting that. I thought long and hard about his phrase before speaking, “What?”
“Soon said you were going to say things like this.”
“What did you just say?”
Spitting a caustic curse word, Yunho shot up to his feet and walked a short distance while frustratingly raking his fingers through his hair.
“I don’t even know why I try with you. You keep doing wrong over and over again, and I always have your back. Now you’re siding with the enemy. How can you say that Soon is responsible for this? After all the things he’s done for you? For us? If it weren’t for him, you and I would still be homeless guys on the street working odd jobs to try and feed our families!”
He was livid. And I was getting pretty irate myself. Today was not the right day for my patience.
Any small thing would make me snap. I rarely got upset but when I did it didn’t look pretty. Sure, Yunho and I argued occasionally because we were close enough to have a few bickering moments. But very rarely did we have full, blown out arguments. We usually got along. But now was proving to be a different story.
“Yunho, you need to calm down,” I barely moved my lips as I spoke. I was trying to tamper down my rising temper but it was difficult.
“How can I calm down? This group is falling apart because of you!”
My eyes flicked up to him at his words and I squinted incredulously, “What?”
“You heard me. This is where we were four years ago, only now we’re much worse off,” he shoved his hand in his pockets. “And I know exactly what the problem is.”
Speechlessly, I waited for him to continue. I was too shocked to say anything.
“Mariam is the reason for all of this.”
I felt like I’d just sustained a heavy blow to the head. Gnawing at my lip, I thought about what had just left Yunho’s mouth for a couple of seconds, letting it set in and marinate before speaking.
“Whenever you’re with her, you become brainwashed. Think about it, how did all this begin? When you thought you saw her at that club, that’s when your heavy drinking started. Four years ago when she was in your life, you were always out of line with your disappearing acts. The world doesn’t exist when the two of you get together. Especially DBSK.”
My eyes went wide and my contracted like a strong fist was closing over it.
“What?” I murmured softly in disbelief. The one hand resting on the arm of the chair closed in a tight fist, so tight that it began to tremble.
“Just admit it Jaejoong. You don’t care about DBSK anymore. Whenever you’re around her, we don’t even exist to you. You forget us. Now you’re saying that the man who basically gave us a chance to have all of this is a fraud? You already know what Soon has been through in the past with these rumors. How could you say such things?”
“What the hell does Mariam have to do with this?”
“Think about it Jaejoong! Your thought process changes every time you’re around her! DBSK means nothing to you whenever you’re around her.”
“That’s not true!” I rose up to my feet and faced off with him.
“Get the f*** out of here Jaejoong! You know I’m right! It’s to the point where you don’t give a worth damn about your fans—“
It happened before I could even understand the enormity of it. My fist had connected with Yunho’s jaw.
I had hit my best friend.
It all seemed to happen in slow motion. For that nanosecond my mind had shut off. All the suppressed anger had finally pushed me to the limit, causing me to explode.
When I was upset, I usually hit things. But that was the point, I hit things like walls and such, but never people.
Out of all the arguments Yunho and I had ever had, none of them had ever surmounted to this.
After catching himself from stumbling backwards, Yunho blinked sporadically, shock showering his features. He then slowly dabbed the corner of his lip with his fingers as if to check if there was any blood on him.
The moment of silence that followed was so thick with tension I couldn’t breathe. Then Yunho let out breathy, humorless snickers.
“You’ll even hit me for her?” he murmured quietly.
Running my throbbing hand over my face, I shook my head in disbelief. “Yunho I’m sorr—“
Before I knew it I was yanked by the collar and thrashed against an adjacent wall. The impact sent an excruciating blow from the back of my head to the front.
With one arm barred against my neck, a fist flew down. I didn’t move an inch as I waited to be struck. The anticipated pain never arrived though.
Instead, all I heard were harsh breaths from men fuming like bulls. One arm of Yunho’s was choking the daylights out of me, pressed across my neck. The other fist was suspended in mid air, inches away from mine.
His features were tautened with rage. His eyes a violent storm. I saw in his pupils that I mirrored his countenance.
At that very moment we heard some bustling in the room but still never moved a muscle. Changmin, along with some staff had run in. One of the studio techs roughly wrenched Yunho away from me.
Yunho then wrested his arms away from the man’s hold, shaking his head while looking at me with a type of disdain that I had never seen in his eyes.
“Don’t worry, I’m not going to hit him.” We stared at each other, hurt hidden deep within the hearth of enraged fire blazing our eyes.
“He’s not even worth it anymore.”
With that said Yunho turned around and weaved through the crowd that was perplexed about what happened.