* * *
The only light in the living room made the area around the kitchen dark, which contributed to Louis being startled.
“What the…”
Louis’s eyes widened even more as he looked around in surprise.
The object that had bounced off his head and slipped away was a balloon.
Colorful balloons were scattered all over the floor.
When he slowly looked up at the ceiling, he saw that some balloons were still stuck there.
Only then did Louis notice the thin fishing line connected to the refrigerator door.
It seemed that opening the refrigerator would pull the line and release the balloons.
“…No way.”
The word “surprise” flashed in his mind.
At that moment.
The door swung open, and the members entered with a loud commotion.
“Kim Louis!”
Louis quickly turned around at the sound of Woochul calling his name.
There was Woochul holding a cake with candles on it.
The surrounding members, led by Heungmin, sang a song for Louis.
“Congratulations on your graduation~ Congratulations on your graduat…”
However, the song didn’t finish.
The candles on the cake had gone out as they approached Louis while singing.
“Ah! All the candles went out!”
“I told you to light them while sitting down.”
“No, we should have sung the song later!”
Even in the midst of the bickering, Kijoon cleared his throat with a humph.
The two who had regained their senses laughed awkwardly and tried to smooth things over.
“Anyway, congratulations on your graduation, Kim Louis. Twenty years old! What’s this? Sounds like a curse.”
“Let’s sit down, relight the candles, and sing again.”
Kijoon, Dojae, and Kyuseong also extended their congratulations to Louis.
Although he had been busy and had forgotten about it, tomorrow was Louis’s graduation ceremony.
Louis didn’t place much significance on graduation since he hadn’t been able to attend school often due to his activities.
But to the older members, it was quite meaningful that the youngest and the only minor, Louis, was graduating and finally became an adult.
Last year, they had all gone to Woochul’s graduation to celebrate, but this time it was difficult for everyone to attend due to recording schedules.
So they wanted to celebrate like this instead.
Dojae had suggested preparing a gift, and Woochul and Heungmin had proposed a small surprise party.
“Louis, were you very surprised?”
Kyuseong asked as he watched Louis, who was blankly receiving congratulations.
Louis blinked quickly in response.
“Kim Louis, you must be so moved!”
Woochul poked Louis in the side.
“Then… you haven’t had dinner yet?”
“Of course not.”
Kijoon quickly answered Louis’s dazed question.
They had expected him to be overly excited and thrilled, but his reaction was a bit different from what they had imagined.
Dojae placed his hand on Louis’s shoulder and asked.
“Are you okay?”
To be honest, they thought he’d be more surprised than scared when the balloons fell from the ceiling.
But since Louis had almost screamed, they wondered if he was that startled.
When Dojae asked, Louis shook his head and frowned.
“Huh? Louis, you…”
Woochul pointed at Louis’s face when he noticed his expression.
“What, what.”
Heungmin, who was about to relight the candles on the cake, was startled and blew out the match.
Before he could ask if Louis was crying, Louis started sobbing and hugged the members.
“Sniff. Thank you, hyungs. I felt so left out, thinking you all went to dinner without me… I had no idea you’d celebrate like this!”
Louis shouted as he hugged the members tightly.
Since he couldn’t hug all five of them at once, Dojae, Kyuseong, and Woochul, who were nearby, ended up being hugged, while Kijoon and Heungmin could only touch the tips of his hands.
“I love you guys so much. You’re the best!”
His voice was quite choked up, though he wasn’t actually shedding tears.
Woochul, stuck in an awkward position, burst out laughing.
“I knew he’d be this touched!”
Seeing Louis moved and Woochul proud of their successful plan, the remaining members chuckled quietly.
“If he gets the present too, he might faint.”
At Heungmin’s words, Louis released his hug and asked.
“What? There’s a present too?!”
Dojae took out the gift he had been holding.
The present the members had pooled their money to buy was the Bluetooth earphones Louis had wanted.
“This! How did you get this?! I couldn’t even buy it because it was sold out.”
“Dojae hyung is really good at clicking very fast.”
At Woochul’s explanation, Louis gave a thumbs-up and thanked the members again.
“Thank you, hyungs. Really! Thanks a lot!”
“Youngest, congratulations on your graduation. Keep being bright like now… but not as bright as Woochul…”
At Kijoon’s words, Woochul protested.
“Wow, that’s harsh.”
“Just kidding. Keep getting along well with Woochul.”
Louis giggled and nodded.
*
Soon, the ordered jokbal, pizza, and chicken arrived on time.
They were on a diet, but they had gotten permission from their trainer for the day.
Today’s main character, who was thrilled to eat two of his favorite chicken legs, mumbled while munching on the chicken.
“I had no idea because I fell asleep.”
It hadn’t taken more than an hour to get from the practice room to the dorm because of traffic.
The members had asked Jung Giljoo in advance to take a detour.
“You fell asleep? Practice must have been tough?”
Heungmin asked as he piled three layers of jokbal on a lettuce leaf.
“Not really…”
“Nothing happened, right?”
Dojae asked sharply.
He had sensed that Louis was subtly different from usual.
Of course, it was so subtle that even Dojae wasn’t sure.
After hesitating for a moment, Louis shook his head.
The youngest of The Origin had been annoying by saying somthing that seemed to ignore both the company and the team.
If he told his hyungs, they would get angry with him, understanding the frustration he had felt at that moment better than anyone.
However, he didn’t want to hurt his hyungs’ feelings, who had taken time out of their busy schedules to buy him a gift and prepare a surprise party.
‘I wasn’t planning on telling them from the beginning anyway.’
He thought that seeing Dojae and the other members would bring back his sour mood, but it was just the opposite.
No, he felt better than he had expected.
Louis took a big bite of the last chicken drumstick and responded as if nothing had happened.
“I think I was just a little tired.”
“It can be stressful to dance with strangers.”
At Louis’ words, Kijoon nodded understandingly.
Then Woochul asked,
“Aren’t you acquainted with the youngest member of The Origin?”
“Yes, we practiced together briefly at NEW.”
“Is he okay?”
Heungmin asked softly.
Everyone knew that Chaehyun wasn’t one of the trainees who had bullied Dojae.
As a newly joined younger member, Heungmin was worried that Chaehyun might be getting bullied in place of Dojae.
“Uhm…”
Louis hesitated to answer.
He was sure Chaehyun wasn’t being bullied.
Instead…
“He’s not that nice.”
Louis chose his words carefully, and Heungmin asked again, “Really?”
Louis tried to tone it down, but the fact that easy-going Louis spoke negatively was already a bad sign for the members.
“What the heck, really? Birds of a feather, flocks together, huh.”
As Heungmin clicked his tongue, Dojae muttered quietly.
“It might be the place.”
“The place? What do you mean by ‘the place’?”
Louis asked, and Dojae explained what he meant by ‘the place’.
“Geomantically speaking… it means the energy of the land isn’t good. The land itself might be fine, but it may not align well with certain people. Something like that.”
“Wow, I didn’t know that existed. As expected from Dojae hyung. What about us? How’s the energy of our company and dorm?”
“We’re good. Geographically, it aligns well with me… and it should be good for the other members too.”
Heungmin, who was listening, let out a dry laugh.
“No way, Dojae, do you even know about geomancy?”
“I know a bit. It’s an old tradition and often quite accurate…”
“Are you really from the Joseon Dynasty?”
At Heungmin’s comment, Dojae’s gaze drifted into the distance.
Not the Joseon Dynasty, but the Imperial House of Korean Empire .
“Anyway, we’re going to do well continuously. Right?”
Even though Louis’ words seemed a bit out of the blue, Woochul nodded vigorously.
“Of course!”
At Woochul’s clear answer, Louis beamed.
*
The next day.
Originally, only Louis was supposed to briefly attend the graduation ceremony, but the members decided they couldn’t let it pass like this and started moving busily from the morning.
“Hyung, wake up quickly!”
Even Kijoon, who had been working on songs until dawn, woke up at Woochul’s loud voice.
Due to the recording schedule, it was impossible for all the members to attend the graduation ceremony, but they could visit the front of the school gate before it started.
Thus, the six members stood on either side of Louis, who was wearing a yellow school uniform, and took a photo.
It was a group photo of the six members to be placed alongside the trophy on the living room shelf, next to the photo taken at Woochul’s graduation.
*
After finishing the part-by-part recording of the included songs, the members headed to the dance practice room with Louis, who had returned from the graduation ceremony.
In the practice room were Yangmal, the dance trainer and choreographer for MOST, and his dance team.
“Come on in, come on in!”
Yangmal was in a much higher tension than usual.
Today was the first day of practice since the choreography for the title song had come out.
The choreography, which had been deliberated over a lot, turned out better than expected.
The members showed some reluctance, saying that the difficulty was much higher than their previous songs, but Yangmal was looking forward to seeing how the members would handle the choreography.
As they gained more stage experience compared to before their debut, their expressiveness had also improved significantly.
“Wow! Is that really a piano?!”
Woochul exclaimed in surprise when he saw the piano placed in the middle of the practice room.
When concretizing the concept of this album, the planning team pondered on how to express the frustration of youth in a direct yet beautiful way.
That’s when the image of a ‘boy whose dream of being a pianist was shattered’ was born.
Although the inspiration for the song came from Dojae’s emotionally charged arrangement version of [I Am Different], the planning team also drew inspiration from Dojae himself, who played the piano.
Accordingly, a piano would also appear in the music video and stage for the title song [Yours].
“You all watched the choreography video, right? I’ll show it to you in real life now, so if you have any opinions before we start practicing, let me know.”
At Yangmal’s words, the members answered in unison, “Yes.”
Soon, [Yours] started playing, and the dance team demonstrated the choreography.
“……”
“……”
In the practice room, the sound of the song and the energetic footsteps hitting the wooden floor echoed powerfully.
As they had thought while watching the video, the choreography was indeed challenging with many difficult moves.
Some of the choreography involved a level of acrobatics around the piano.
Although the tempo of the song was slow, the movements continued incessantly as if trying to fill in every moment.
Even on the faces of the skilled dancers, beads of sweat soon appeared.
‘It matches the song well… The overall feeling is beautiful. It has artistic value.’
Dojae thought as he watched the dancers.
It felt like the color of the song [Yours] was becoming clearer.
‘But…’
It felt like it wouldn’t work as it was.
It was the same feeling he had when he first received the video.
* * *
*Summary page is only available for login users. Non-users can view the chapters on the chapter list.*
I love that Dojae believe and is a nerd about geomancy very fitting lol
Thanks for chapter