Little Pink Starfish

After Choi Jaesung’s mother left, the two of us stayed behind and talked.

We spent a long time together, but the conversation itself wasn’t long.

Because this was not something that could be decided between just the two of us—other members had to be part of it as well.

“I’ll come back tomorrow with the others.”

“Hyung.”

“Yeah?”

“I meant it.”

“Meant what?”

“That I’d rather be by your side, even just as a manager, than do something else somewhere else.”

Choi Jaesung’s voice was low and slow, as if talking was still difficult for him.

But I could feel his sincerity.

So I answered him sincerely, too.

“I don’t like that.”

“Why not?”

“Because if the manager dances better than me, I’ll feel self-conscious.”

We looked at each other and laughed, then left the hospital room.

The next day, I visited Choi Jaesung’s hospital room again with the members.

And then…

“It’s not that I didn’t want to talk to you guys. I think… I was just embarrassed.”

We got to hear about Choi Jaesung’s past.

---

Choi Jaesung’s parents were renowned classical musicians.

His father had led Korea’s largest symphony orchestra as its conductor.

His mother was a violinist there.

Though both had now retired and worked as university professors, their families were deeply rooted in classical music, constantly surrounded by musicians.

Among them, his parents were the most outstanding in their respective families.

So naturally, the child born between such talents drew a lot of attention.

“That was my older brother.”

Choi Jaesung’s older brother had something special from a young age.

He could stare at sheet music for over 20 hours, memorizing it, and watched his parents’ performances without blinking.

Everyone rejoiced, thinking a genius had been born—but he wasn’t a genius.

ASD.

Autism spectrum disorder.

“From here on is just my guess. No one ever told me, but I figured it out from context.”

Choi Jaesung’s parents couldn’t accept that the child born between them couldn’t do music.

Maybe it wasn’t about music—they just couldn’t accept someone below average.

So they wanted another child, and that’s how Choi Jaesung was born.

He was different from his brother.

He was clever from a young age and did well in school.

What he remembered of his childhood was full of favorable discrimination.

Everything revolved around him.

Tasty food, fun things, comfort, their parents’ love.

They loved him far more than his brother, and he took it as natural.

It had always been that way from birth—he didn’t even realize it wasn’t right.

The only issue was that Choi Jaesung wasn’t very interested in classical music.

To be precise, he preferred pop music over upper-class music.

There were some conflicts with his parents, but nothing too serious.

Maybe it would’ve been worse if he were the eldest—but he was the second.

“I think they had trauma because of my brother. They were just grateful I was a ‘normal’ person.”

But then, a fateful event changed everything.

Being prominent classical musicians, his parents had many students.

Among them, Oh Jaeyoung was particularly close and affectionate with the family.

Choi Jaesung called him Uncle Jaeyoung and followed him well.

As Kim Hyunsoo was to Han Sion, Oh Jaeyoung was to Choi Jaesung.

Oh Jaeyoung never said it, but he always pitied Jaesung’s older brother and spent time with him.

Then, he discovered the brother’s true talent.

A vocalist.

A tenor—known as the pinnacle of male vocalists.

Jaesung’s brother had a natural gift for tenor singing.

“Wait…?”

“Yes. Choi Sungho. That’s my brother.”

Choi Sungho’s appearance turned the vocal world upside down.

Not just in Korea—on a global top-tier classical scale.

Their parents immediately started caring for him and tried to nurture his talent.

He needed extra support due to his autism, but it was fine.

Choi Sungho’s talent was real.

All they needed to do now was care for and help him.

But what they didn’t realize was that people on the autism spectrum remember a lot of things.

At his first competition in Germany, where he won, Choi Sungho gave an interview.

“When asked who he liked the most, he said Uncle Jaeyoung.”

That much was fine.

It made sense—Oh Jaeyoung was the first person to discover his talent.

The problem came next.

When asked what he feared most as a musician, he said his parents’ names.

The household erupted.

Even the elders of the family began questioning whether the parents had abused Choi Sungho.

They were furious.

And to be fair, they had raised him without material lack.

He ate well, wore good clothes, and slept in comfort.

They just hadn’t paid him any attention.

“That could be considered emotional abuse, but my parents wouldn’t agree. That’s the kind of people they are.”

Maybe that’s why, one day after school, some adults appeared before Choi Jaesung.

They started asking him questions.

By then, he’d grown enough to realize that many of the “advantages” he received as a child weren’t right.

So he spoke honestly about what had happened.

Times when only he was taken to amusement parks.

The day the housekeeper had to leave early due to an emergency, and his brother spent the whole day at home, alone and hungry.

He confessed all the things he felt guilty about.

His thought process was simple.

If he made a mistake, adults scolded him and corrected it—so if his parents made a mistake, they should fix it too.

He hoped his parents would apologize to his brother, and that everything would go back to being okay.

He was just a first-year in middle school, after all.

What happened between the adults afterward, he didn’t know.

His brother went to stay at their grandfather’s house for a while, and their parents visited him there every day.

After a few months, his brother came back home.

But Choi Jaesung felt something was off.

His parents acted the same as before toward him—smiles, no lack of anything.

But their attitude had no sincerity.

“It’s just a metaphor I can use now, but it felt like how a CEO treats a whistleblower.”

And so, Choi Jaesung became a well-fed loner.

He began to rebel more and more, though to outsiders it just looked like a spoiled tantrum.

His parents still provided for him financially.

He always had enough pocket money, never lacked anything.

He tried diving into classical music late to regain their love—but nothing changed.

He just had no talent for it.

Time passed, and in his second year of high school, something happened.

He had a fight with his brother.

It was nothing major—his brother had dropped his smartphone into the toilet.

Anyone would be mad, and Jaesung was, too.

But the next day, Choi Sungho told the adults that Jaesung had bullied him.

And Jaesung understood.

Though he was grown, his brother still had the mental world of a child.

It was the kind of thing a child would say.

Just like how he brought snacks that evening to Jaesung’s room, asking to play together.

But his parents saw it differently.

They thought maybe Jaesung had been bullying him when they weren’t around.

Accused, Jaesung said:

“I only had a brief fight with him. If you want to talk about bullying, that word fits better with how you treated him before you discovered his talent…”

That hit a nerve—triggered their guilt and trauma.

The discomfort he’d always felt became obvious, and Jaesung lost his place.

Even financial support stopped—he had nothing.

Of course, if he’d just bowed his head and apologized, things could’ve gone back to normal.

At least on the surface, he could’ve been part of a harmonious family again.

But he didn’t want to.

He didn’t know why.

He just felt like this wasn’t right.

He couldn’t justify it, but he was certain this kind of life wasn’t okay.

So he left home and joined the agency that had once scouted him.

It wasn’t easy to find an agency that allowed trainees to live in dorms, but he was lucky.

That’s how he started training.

He even experienced a debut falling through right before it happened.

“Everything after that, you all know. Coming Up Next.”

He never talked about it, but after joining Sedalbaekil, he realized something important.

Why he thought his parents were wrong.

What kind of logic he hadn’t had before.

Though they’re close now, Sedalbaekil had started as a business partnership.

There were members like Hansion and Onsaemiro who didn’t quite mesh, and ones like Hansion and Ieon who had an unspoken coldness between them.

People like Hansion, who bragged too much.

People like Hansion, who’d already decided the team’s expiration date.

“Wow, that’s all you, hyung.”

Still, Sedalbaekil felt more like family than his real family.

Because everyone thought about ‘us,’ not just ‘me.’

Whatever their personalities or feelings, when it came to Sedalbaekil, the team came first.

Because in a group, that’s how it should be.

But his family wasn’t like that.

His parents viewed ‘us’ as just a lesser version of ‘me.’

Not because they were parents—but because that’s the kind of people they were.

Maybe it was because they were musicians used to creating a collective ‘us’ under the strong charisma of a conductor.

He wanted to think of it that way.

Choi Jaesung didn’t hate his parents.

He used to—but not anymore.

He had found happiness with Sedalbaekil, but his parents hadn’t.

“That’s why I’m curious.”

Can we still be ‘us’?

Even if I can’t sing like before.

---

After Jaesung finished, the members all held back their words.

It’s hard to speak carelessly when it comes to family matters.

Taking Jaesung’s side felt like insulting his parents.

Honestly, his past was far more tangled than what I’d known.

I had stopped researching halfway, so I didn’t know the full story.

I had only assumed that once his brother’s talent blossomed, Jaesung was neglected because he lacked musical skill.

But no matter what, there was one thing I could say with certainty.

“Choi Jaesung.”

“Yes.”

“You’re going to stand on stage again.”

“How?”

From now on, it’s time for a well-meaning lie.