novelraw Chapter 195: The Absence of a Teammate (2)
Chapter 195: The Absence of a Teammate (2)
After the rehearsal, something was seriously wrong with Kang Kiyeon.
His drenched hair, uneven breathing, and unfocused eyes made him seem more beast than human—like someone cornered to the extreme.
There hadn’t been any mistakes. Kang Kiyeon had completed all three rehearsals perfectly.
Maybe it was because he had poured every bit of his focus onto the stage, but his steps as he came down the stairs were dangerously unsteady.
“Kiyeon, are you okay?”
Jeong Seongbin grabbed Kang Kiyeon’s arm as he staggered. Kang Kiyeon’s gaze wandered somewhere across the floor.
“I’m fine.”
His voice cracked like dry earth.
No matter how you heard it, it wasn’t the kind of voice that came from someone who was fine.
Jeong Seongbin held onto him again.“You’re sweating…”
“I’m fine, hyung.”
Even as he gave the short reply, Kang Kiyeon struggled to breathe. Lee Cheonghyeon, standing next to him, paled visibly.
The five-minute walk back to the waiting room felt like an eternity. As soon as the waiting room door closed, Kang Kiyeon collapsed onto the sofa.
Our manager, holding onto Kang Kiyeon’s shoulder as he struggled to lift his head, asked,
“Kiyeon, you have to tell us where it hurts so we can help you. Since when did you feel unwell? Should we go to the hospital?”
Worried voices filled the room.
‘Should we call 119?’ ‘Let’s wipe off his sweat first.’ Where exactly does it hurt?’ … The other members, frozen in shock, just watched him silently.
While words of concern couldn’t physically heal or worsen his condition, Kang Kiyeon seemed to grow more distressed as the voices multiplied. His hands, covering his face, were white.
I excused myself and gently pulled the manager back. Then I knelt at Kang Kiyeon’s feet.
“You’re not actually in pain, are you?”
“……”
Kang Kiyeon didn’t answer. He just trembled visibly.
Did he need my help here, or not?
Probably not. He was a person fueled by ambition and diligence. If he needed help, he would have asked for it already.
‘…About managing nervousness, I was wondering if you had any advice.’
‘How can I create pressure?’
‘Then… I’ll leave it to you.’
The fact that he wasn’t asking anyone for help meant either he knew this wasn’t something that could be solved with an IV or…
He believed that no one could help him. It had to be one of the two.
And I likely wouldn’t be of any help to him in his current state.
“Then lie down. Get some rest. Joowoo, can you get a blanket?”
As the focus of the conversation shifted from him to Park Joowoo, Kang Kiyeon obediently laid his head on the sofa. His shoulders heaved with each labored breath.
When Park Joowoo hurriedly brought a blanket and covered him, Kang Kiyeon buried his face in the back of the sofa.
Only Kang Kiyeon’s uneven breathing echoed in the silent waiting room.
* * *
“You think calming pills will be enough?”
“Yes, probably.”
“Are you sure he’s not seriously ill? I think it’s better to take him to the hospital…”
“I think his stage fright suddenly got worse. We should take him to the hospital, but… since he insists he’s fine, it’s best to give him the calming pills and talk to him once he’s calmed down.”
The manager, still unable to shake off his worry, reluctantly left the building to find a pharmacy.
Just as the manager disappeared down the hallway, the door to the waiting room behind me opened. Choi Jeho stepped out, awkwardly lowering the hand that had been about to run through his hair.
“How’s Kiyeon?”
I asked quietly, and Choi Jeho replied with an indifferent expression,
“Looks like he’s asleep.”
Despite his nonchalant demeanor, his gaze was fixed on the waiting room.
“Where are the others?”
“Jeong Seongbin and Park Joowoo are comforting Lee Cheonghyeon.”
Choi Jeho crossed his arms and leaned against the wall.
Since they were close friends, Lee Cheonghyeon must’ve been really shocked too. I recalled his face—he had looked like he was about to cry.
“Of course he’d be scared. I was so focused on Kiyeon that I forgot about Cheonghyeon.”
Lee Cheonghyeon had frozen up completely, unable to speak. I couldn’t imagine how he must have felt.
“Is it that?”
“Is it what?”
Choi Jeho asked vaguely. I questioned him, and he elaborated.
“Kang Kiyeon—is it that anxiety thing?”
He seemed to be asking if the old extreme anxiety from his trainee days had come back.
“Probably.”
“I thought it had gotten better?”
“It did, a lot. But there’s no such thing as ‘100%’ in this world.”
Somewhere, at some point, the dam that Kang Kiyeon had carefully maintained had burst.
Our job was to find and plug the leak as quickly as possible.
‘I should have asked him, even if it meant he slept less.’
‘What ifs’ kept piling up in my mind. My eyes stung.
Choi Jeho stared at me quietly and then asked,
“Did you know?”
“Know what?”
“About Kang Kiyeon being like this.”
“No. Why do you ask?”
“Your response was too natural.”
What response? All I did was give him the blanket Park Joowoo brought and tell him to sleep.
If anything seemed natural about it, it was probably because…
“I guess it’s because I know how that feels.”
“What?”
Confusion clouded Choi Jeho’s eyes.
“When I feel like that, I don’t want to think about anything. Other people’s concern feels burdensome, and I just want to be isolated from the world. It’s not like I normally think that way. It just happens sometimes.”
“……”
“At those times, I just want to sleep without thinking about anything. I handled it that way this time because it was urgent, but don’t take it as the right answer.”
I told him I was going in first and entered the waiting room, leaving him in the hallway. Jeong Seongbin greeted me with a glance.
Park Joowoo was diligently massaging Lee Cheonghyeon’s hands. Lee Cheonghyeon’s eyes were red.
He cried. His makeup had been so pretty, too.
I gave him a gentle pat on the back and approached Kang Kiyeon. He still had the blanket pulled over his head.
‘What could’ve pulled the trigger?’
I sat as far away as possible so as not to disturb him on the sofa and watched him as I pondered.
What had caused Kang Kiyeon, who had held on so well, to crumble? What had I missed? Were the signals I’d caught the only indicators of this breakdown?
My mind was clouded with uncertainty.
And it reminded me of something I didn’t really want to remember.
The image of myself, standing alone in the farthest stall of the company restroom, clutching my rapidly beating heart and taking deep breaths alone.
‘Natural response, my ass.’
I, too, had run away to the bathroom because I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t even realize that a cramped space could make it worse until I locked myself in.
This was simply the best solution I knew.
Not the correct answer, but the best one I could come up with.
My chest felt tight, heavy like a stone pressing down on it…
+
▷ Reduced perception of negative emotions effect is currently active.
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…and then, just like that, it vanished without a trace.
* * *
About an hour later, Kang Kiyeon opened his eyes.
Then he gulped down the calming tonic the manager had brought. Kang Kiyeon didn’t say a word until he drained the bottle to the last drop.
He finally spoke thirty minutes after drinking.
“…I’m sorry.”
“For what?!”
Lee Cheonghyeon yelled before being stopped by Park Joowoo.
“You, you…”
Lee Cheonghyeon looked aggrieved. But seeing Kang Kiyeon’s state, he closed his mouth.
It was understandable that Lee Cheonghyeon was upset. Back when they were trainees, he had been the one to listen to Kang Kiyeon’s worries more closely than anyone.
Having gone through that together, it was natural for him to feel betrayed that Kang Kiyeon had hidden his current state from him.
“Kiyeon, why don’t you sit out today’s stage?”
Jeong Seongbin asked cautiously.
“No. I feel better after sleeping.”
It didn’t seem like a lie. His complexion was still pale, but color was slowly returning to his face.
“Kang Kiyeon.”
“Yes.”
Kang Kiyeon’s head turned towards me at my call.
His gaze was still unsteady, and his eyelids fluttered.
“It won’t be the end of the world if you take a break. If you’re too exhausted, it’s okay to rest.”
“……”
“But it will be a big problem if you’re absent for a long time. The team will struggle without you.”
Fans were extremely sensitive to members dropping out. It had been the same with the Sparklers in the past.
Right before the contract renewal season, rumors ran wild about who would betray whom, whether the team needed to split up to survive, and so on.
But aside from all that, you need to be healthy, both physically and mentally, to sing, dance, and support others.
“So, let’s take good care of our health. We have a long way to go with Spark.”
“…Yes.”
Kang Kiyeon hesitated before answering. My words didn’t seem to resonate with him.
‘Well, he might think I’m being presumptuous.’
He might think, who am I to lecture him? I was the least qualified, having collapsed during a live broadcast.
Feeling awkward, I used cleaning up the empty bottle as an excuse to slip out of the waiting room.
Kang Kiyeon remained stubborn. He had his hair and makeup retouched and his clothes adjusted. Aside from the change in lip color to cover his pale lips, he looked the same as before the rehearsal.
The first broadcast of 『MISSION』 started and ended perfectly, without a single deviation from the rehearsal.
Despite being live, no one missed a note or a step. It was a performance that belied the issues we’d faced during the waiting period.
And after the stage…
As soon as we got backstage, Kang Kiyeon covered his mouth and crouched down. He dry heaved and clutched his chest tightly.
Even as he breathed into a paper bag, tears streamed down his face. The tears were a physiological reaction to the suffocating feeling. Yet, there was something undeniably sorrowful about his appearance.