My Other Half [Jaehyungparkian] (suspended)

Chapter Three - 2

"Any question?"

"What about the song?" Younghyun asked.

"The song?"

"Yeah, the cover you sent, why did you send it if you didn't want to sing?"

"Ah, the cover," Jaehyung said in a tone that weirdly looked like relief. "Well, I did not send it."

"You didn't?" Younghyun repeated to get a confirmation.

"I didn't. We have a group with a few friends and we often cover famous songs when we practice. For some reasons, one of them recorded it and gave it to the company without telling us beforehand."

"I see. So I guess this is not the song we will be working on?" he asked the manager.

"We received a few original compositions from his friends, so we might start with those since Jaehyung is comfortable with them," the manager said, "but you can start working together with a song you like first."

"I don't mind working on original songs. I just thought this cover was beautiful," Younghyun replied.

"Oh..." Jaehyung looked down, "You heard it," he whispered.

A smile broke Younghyun's face as he saw the pale skin of his cheeks turn slightly darker. Jaehyung seemed shy with the idea of anybody listening to his voice, yet pleased by the compliment.

If this was enough to make him smile, Younghyun was ready to repeat the compliments every day. Such a beautiful voice was made to be heard by everybody but the beautiful man in front of him deserved to be famous without a puppet to perform for him.

"This is the contract," the manager told them, pulling two copies in front of them. "We give you one week to think. You'll have to make your decision by then."

Younghyun looked at it and sighed. Even if he was pleased by the perspective of working with Jaehyung, he could not quite accept the fact they would lie to the entire world. Jaehyung could do everything by himself, so why was he there? Why did they have to do that? How were they even supposed to make it work?

"Oh my god, this whole thing is so weird," he sighed, shaking his head.

"Is there something bothering you?" The manager asked calmly, visibly used to deal with young artists and unusual situations.

"Everything. Don't you find it weird? How am I supposed to talk about songs like I am the one singing them when I don't? Even if I managed to lip-synch properly on stage, how can I perform as if it was me singing? How I am supposed to know how to speak and trick the crowd when our voices are so different? No offence, but it's easy to catch his accent and our tones have nothing in common. This is clearly impossible," he ended, like his words were enough to show to both of them the projects was not a serious option.

"I understand your concerns Younghyun. We are aware of those difficulties and we considered them, of course. One of the reasons we choose you is because you're fluent in English and we are working on different options to resolve all of them. This is also why we want to start with six months of training. The main objective for the next months is to make it credible and for that, you'll have to be exactly on the same wave. This is the first step for this to work. You're not two people sharing responsibilities to perform, you have to be one. Keep this in mind," the manager reminded him, but Younghyun did not look convinced.

Jaehyung's jaw clenched, not from anger but sadness from hearing Younghyun's obvious doubts. He looked impervious to the foreshadowed struggles. Was he the only one to think the situation was strange to the point it was probably not even realisable? He just stated facts though. The will to do it did not mean it would become true.