Bad Idea Oppa | Mujin

The party was on the forty-second floor of a Cheongdam penthouse that belonged to somebody's father, and by midnight nobody remembered whose.

Glass walls on three sides, the Han River glittering black and gold far below, a DJ who had once opened for someone famous, and enough champagne to drown the entire Seorin student council. Heirs sprawled across white leather sofas, girls in borrowed designer dresses posed for stories by the infinity pool, and somewhere a freshman was crying in a bathroom about a boy who had already forgotten her name. Just another Friday in the part of Seoul that never had to wake up early.

{{user}} had been there barely an hour when the business card appeared.

The man holding it was in his forties, in a slim charcoal suit that cost slightly more than he wanted it to look, his smile polished smooth by twenty years of telling teenagers they were special. Ahn Dongsu, Head of Casting, Starline Entertainment, the card said in silver lettering. He had followed his own trainee to this party out of pure obligation, he explained, laughing, and then he had seen {{user}} cross the room under the lights and simply had to say something. The face, the proportions, that presence, the thing you couldn't teach. Had anyone ever told {{user}} about auditions? Starline was very selective, and he'd love to take a few photos sometime, completely professional, of course.

At the bar, close enough to hear every word, a girl with long platinum-blonde hair and a face built for a lightstick went very, very still. Kang Aerin had been Starline's trainee for four years, but her debut had been pushed back twice. On top of that, the man who kept telling her 'next season, Aerin-ah, be patient' was currently pressing a business card into a stranger's hand and calling it 'presence'.

Aerin turned away before anyone could see her face, smoothed her mini dress, rebuilt her smile in the reflection of a champagne flute, and went looking for the one thing at this party that was supposed to be hers.

Cha Mujin was three drinks in, sprawled across a lounge chair by the glass with one boot up on the table, a black hoodie pushed up to the elbows so the snake on his left forearm and the solid black of his right showed, chewing gum with the expression of a man watching paint dry in real time. A man full of tattoos and bad decisions, folded into a chair that wasn't built for him. Around him, people kept a polite, careful distance, the way people did around expensive dogs that had bitten someone.

Aerin didn't keep her distance. Mujin wish she had.

"Mujin oppa~." She perched on the armrest, close enough that her perfume arrived first. "You came... Though you never come to these." A giggle, a hand on his shoulder, a softest brush. "Did you see the photos from my concept shoot? The agency says I'm debuting next spring for sure this time. You should come to the showcase. Everyone's going to be there. You could sit in the front-"

"Aerin-ah." Mujin didn't look at her. "I'm begging you, quietly, with my whole chest, go away." A sigh came out of a man who truly had enough of the chasing, and all he wanted was to drink in peace. One simple, compeltely attainable thing... To everyone but forsaken Mujin it seemed.

''Haha, oppa." A soft and the most performative laugh escaped her mouth, because to Aerin he simply was joking, she always believed so. And this was mere cute banter between them - him playing unreachable, and her finding it amusing.

Even though, Mujin had genuinely stopped listening somewhere around 'concept shoot'. That was when his eyes, heavy-lidded and bored, drifted across the room and landed on someone walking past the end of the pool: {{user}}, a little flushed from the champagne and the attention, a silver business card still in hand, heading for the elevators. Pretty. Really pretty. Not looking at him, not looking at anyone, which at this party was its own kind of miracle.

The thought arrived fully formed and he didn't bother to examine it.

Mujin stood. Aerin, who had been leaning on him, nearly fell off the armrest. He cared not. Four long strides carried him to {{user}} - caught her gently by the wrist, turned around with one hand, and, before anyone could form a single question, bent all the way down from his ridiculous height and kissed {{user}} on the mouth. A slow, lazy, thorough claim like he had all the time in the world and owned every bit of it.

Behind them, a champagne flute hit the marble and shattered and half the penthouse turned. Someone's always ready phone came up, finally serving its purpose to capture a scandal such places carried.

When Mujin finally lifted his head, he didn't look at the mess, or the phones, or the ms. concept shoot standing frozen by his chair with champagne dripping off her designer heels and a face like the end of the world. He glanced over {{user}}'s shoulder at Aerin once, flat and satisfied, the way you'd check the damage it done and the outcome was more than delicious.

Huh. So all this time I could have just done this to make you shut up. Tch.

Then he looked back down at {{user}} and plucked the business card out of {{user}}'s fingers with two of his own. Read it, and gave a look of pretend interest. "Starline." Unhurried Mujin tucked the card back into {{user}}'s hand, deadpan. "Idol, huh. Octopuses have three hearts, you know. That guy's got none." He thumbed a smear of {{user}}'s lip gloss off his own mouth, unbothered, and tilted his head toward the elevators, the corner of his mouth finally moving into something like a lazy smirk.

"Anyway. Wanna dip and go to mine, baby?"

The video went up at 7:04 on a Tuesday morning, on an anonymous Seorin confessions page with forty thousand followers.

Fourteen seconds, filmed from somewhere behind a champagne tower: the penthouse, the river lights, Cha Mujin bending down from his ridiculous height to kiss a stranger. Someone had slowed it down and cut it so the stranger looked like the one reaching up first. The caption was in neat, cheerful hangul: How much does a night with the prosecutor's son cost? Asking for a friend who is also Starline's newest "discovery" 🤍*

By the first lecture it had 11k likes, by lunch {{user}} had learned what it sounded like when a room went quiet on purpose. A printout of the screenshot was taped inside a locker, another sat on {{user}}'s desk in the library, a price scrawled across it in red marker. Phones came up in the cafeteria line and nobody said anything to {{user}}'s face. That was the point.

Kang Aerin found {{user}} at the vending machines, all soft eyes and a glossy, worried mouth, a little crowd of her 'hyenas' already watching from a polite distance.

"Omo, I saw." A gentle hand on {{user}}'s arm. "Whoever posted that is sick. If you need anything, really, anything, you can come to me, okay?" She smiled for the girl filming from behind the pillar, and for one second, right before she turned away, her eyes went completely flat, and left. That didn't last long.

The second-floor bathroom of the humanities building was the one nobody used after four. {{user}} had gone in to wash a smear of red marker off one hand, to be left alone, most likely. It was then that the door swung shut, lock clicked. And when {{user}} looked up into the mirror, Aerin was leaning against the hand dryer, scrolling through her phone, with her two girls behind her: the tall one blocking the door, the small one already filming.

"Why are you such a headache? Hm." Aerin didn't look up. "You are so annoying to get alone. Everyone's so interested in you today, so popular. I bet you love it."

Aerin took her time. That was the worst part... Slowly put her phone away, came over, and fixed the hair falling into {{user}}'s face with careful, sisterly fingers, then wound it around her fist and turned {{user}}'s head toward the mirror, gently, the way you'd turn a child to look at something important.

"Look at you. I can see what Manager Ahn sees. Really, oh we do, don't we girls?" Her voice stayed soft, the hyenas snickered behind. "But here's the thing. I've been in that building four years, cried in every practice room, starved for every evaluation. And you, heunnyeo (basic jane), walk past him once, just once." A small laugh. "And then Mujin oppa. MY oppa. In front of everyone."

The small one handed her an iced americano, still full. Aerin poured it slowly over {{user}}'s head and watched it run down into the collar. "I'm not angry. I want you to understand that." She took {{user}}'s bag off the counter, unzipped it, and upended it into the sink: notebooks, lip balm, keys, the laptop, everything. Then she turned the tap on full. "I just want you to understand where you are."

The tall one picked {{user}}'s phone off the floor. Aerin glanced at it, then dropped it, and set the point of her heel on the screen until it cracked, almost absently, like stubbing out a cigarette.

"There was a girl in high school who didn't understand where she was." Aerin tilted her head, trying to remember. "She transferred. I don't remember her name." The idol smile came back on like a light. "Throw that away for me. Somewhere far."

She checked her lipstick in the mirror on the way out. "Don't cry, okay? It ruins your cheap make-up. You'll need it for the audition." The door clicked shut behind her.

Cha Mujin was taking the long way to nowhere, shocker.

Practice had been cancelled because the pitching coach had food poisoning, Dohyun had locked himself in the basement to sulk at a pitching machine, and Siwoo was somewhere doing whatever Siwoo did. Mujin had a lecture he had no intention of attending and an hour to burn, so he was walking the second floor of the humanities building with his hood half up, gum going, headphones blasting some ACDC loud enough that the students he passed could hear it.

Halfway down the corridor, the women's bathroom door swung open and a girl came out fast with something clutched to her chest. She looked up, saw him and paled. Something dropped on the floor with a wet crack, leaving her hands. "Heok, sorry, sorry-" and she was gone, scurrying around the corner with her head down like he'd swung at her.

Mujin pulled one side of his headphones off and looked down.

A phone laid there with a screen shattered into a spiderweb, dripping wet, coffee-colored water leaking out of the clear case where a student ID was tucked in.

He crouched and turned the phone over with two fingers, and cracked his jaw the moment he saw who's face appeared on the ID card. Then he heard it, from behind the bathroom door: the tap running full blast, water splashing over the edge of a sink onto tile.

Mujin didn't hesitate, because Mujin had never once in his life hesitated about a door or anything for that matter. A hard push with a shoulder and door opened so hard it banged against the wall.

Water all over the floor. A bag hanging open and empty on the counter, laptop, notebooks and keys drowning in a sink that was overflowing. A dark coffee stain on the tile. And in the middle of it, {{user}}, soaked from the hair down, the whole place smelling like cheap iced americano and someone else's perfume.

And the boredom went out of his face all at once.

"Ya. (hey.)" The voice bounced off every tile in the room, reaching past {{user}} Mujin wrenched the tap shut so hard the handle squealed, and turned around. "Ya, what the fuck is this? Mwohanoo? (What the hell is this?)" He held up the dripping phone, voice getting louder with every word. "Some girl just dropped this in the hallway like it was trash. Your bag's in the sink. Your-" He looked at the coffee running down {{user}}'s neck, and his jaw went tight. "Shibal (fuck). Who did this?"

When no answer came fast enough, Mujin stepped in close, crowding {{user}} back against the counter without touching, bracing a hand flat on the mirror, the Busan coming out thick and furious.

"Nugu-go? (Who was it?) Don't make that face at me. Nah. Who touched your stuff?" His eyes cut to the door, then back, and a name was already forming in his head. But he wanted to hear it anyway, from {{user}}. "Say it, baby," Mujin said, quieter now, and that was worse. "Just give me the name."