The Hit Song of This Life Is Revenge - Chapter 39

—————
This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
—————

In This Life, the Hit Song Is Revenge
Episode 39
“I hate moving around after eating. Let’s just decide now.”
Baek Song-ha smiled, softening the edge of her voice.
It was a trivial comment, but a fragment of the past left Lee Jae-i with a sudden pang of aversion.
Normally, it would be natural to settle things after a meal, so why now?
Did she want to turn the spotlight back on herself?
As a brief silence settled over the table, Yeon Eun-soo was the first to speak up.
“I’m starving. Can’t we just eat first and decide later?”
“Then you, Yeon Eun-soo. You can just pick first.”
Surprisingly, the one who immediately shot back with that blunt response was Kim Cho-a.
For a few short seconds, Yeon Eun-soo froze.
Kim Cho-a’s tone seemed like she was simply wrapping up the conversation, but it carried a subtle power that twisted the situation.
Sometimes, a single word can shift the entire direction of the wind.
This was exactly one of those moments.
‘If this were the production team, they’d hold onto a moment like this for a long time.’
It was a scene where editing would stretch the tense atmosphere into every single corner.
Lee Jae-i studied Baek Song-ha amidst the uncomfortable current.
At that exact moment, Baek Song-ha’s lips twitched slightly.
She probably still wanted to play the main character.
Lee Jae-i spoke up half a beat faster.
“First come, first served usually works best for things like this.”
Her soft voice drifted across the table.
At the same time, the sharp sound of Baek Song-ha’s chair scraping against the floor caught her ear.
Lee Jae-i didn’t look over, keeping her eyes fixed on the other trainees.
Right on cue, the trainee who had been walking on eggshells the most quickly snatched up the end of Lee Jae-i’s words.
“Then I’ll handle the cleanup!”
“Oh. I was going to do that, but I’ll do the dishes instead.”
The voices trailing in succession loosened the tight atmosphere even further.
Finally, Yeon Eun-soo spoke up in a much softer voice.
“I’ll take out the trash.”
Only then did the tension pulling at everyone completely subside.
It was quiet, precise timing.
Lee Jae-i wrapped up the situation at last.
“It looks like there’s a lot of recycling to sort, so I’ll help with that.”
At those words, Baek Song-ha, who was barely visible within her peripheral vision, flinched.
Lee Jae-i turned her head toward Baek Song-ha at that minute movement.
The corners of her mouth were faintly ticked upward.
Knowing Baek Song-ha, she obviously wanted to step up and handle the situation herself.
‘…What is it?’
Now that her role had been stolen, it would be natural for something suppressing her displeasure to linger on that face.
Did her acting skills improve in the meantime? Or,
‘Is it because the camera is rolling?’
Since she wore a mask during recordings, she might just be putting on a practiced expression.
However, a lingering sense of unease refused to fade.
She could definitely feel a calculated warmth, but the intention wasn’t clear.
If she kept staring, her own hostile gaze might give itself away.
Lee Jae-i looked away from Baek Song-ha and kept the momentum going.
“Let’s eat now!”
With the atmosphere lightened, everyone picked up the utensils they had set down.
“This looks so delicious!”
“Right? It smells amazing.”
The compliments stopped exactly there.
As soon as the swirled noodles entered their mouths, everyone maintained a consistent silence.
To spit out the truth would mean ignoring the image they had to project on broadcast.
The thought crossed her mind that she might not even need the digestive medicine she had prepared in advance.
You have to actually eat something to get indigestion.
Even though everyone had mentioned how starving they were, more than half of the bloated noodles remained on the plates.
Before long, one by one, they set down their forks, bringing the hungry meal to a close.
Everyone helped clear the plates, but after that, they split into their designated roles.
Lee Jae-i gathered the bags together and headed toward the trash can.
As she pressed down on the trash to compress it, something subtly glittering caught her eye inside.
‘What’s that?’
At first, she thought the plastic was just reflecting the track lighting hanging over the kitchen.
But when she carefully lifted it, shattered glass shards were scattered inside.
Her brow furrowed tightly.
‘How could she… discard it like this?’
Even children learn that throwing things away like this can injure sanitation workers.
Just as she began to wonder if she should question Baek Song-ha’s basic common sense.
‘Wait a minute.’
Right then, a single nerve snapped to attention.
Lee Jae-i naturally kept her waist bent and only turned her head.
At the end of her gaze stood Baek Song-ha, laughing brightly with the other trainees.
The shimmering afterimage of the past grew even clearer.
Could the memory of that day, which kept overlapping so vividly, really be a coincidence?
‘You didn’t just break a plate back then.’
Yoo Young-jae’s birthday hadn’t ended peacefully after all.
Baek Song-ha had never volunteered to help clean up before, but on that particular day, she insisted on entering the kitchen.
A sharp voice had cut through the sound of running dishwater.
‘Ouch!’
She had immediately turned off the water and rushed over.
At that time, Baek Song-ha clutched her cut finger and spoke with tearful eyes.
‘Jae-i… if you throw it away like this, other people will get hurt.’
The broken plate had been wrapped in layers of newspaper before being thrown into the trash can.
She had even snapped a rubber band tightly around it.
Yet inside the overturned bag, sharp shards lay scattered across the unfolded newspaper.
As if anyone could see it had been carelessly thrown away.
‘Are… are you okay? I earlier—.’
‘Did you hurt your hand? Let me see.’
Yoo Young-jae, who had shoved her aside harshly, immediately cradled Baek Song-ha’s finger as if it were precious.
Then he snapped at her with a fierce glare.
‘Do you think your hands and her hands are the same? Everything shows up on screen when she holds a microphone, and you can’t even throw away trash properly? What is wrong with you!’
What was so different about those hands?
She felt sorrowful and wronged.
But Baek Song-ha’s moist, tearful eyes had completely painted her as the perpetrator.
She tried her best to explain, but Yoo Young-jae told her to drop the excuses and got even angrier instead.
The sight of Baek Song-ha’s retreating back as she was carried away in his arms to get treated.
No matter how much she retraced her memory, the plate couldn’t have shattered like that on its own.
The conclusion that it was a setup felt even more baffling.
Because she couldn’t understand why Baek Song-ha would go so far as to injure her own body just to spite her.
But now that this exact situation was unfolding, she understood a little.
‘You really couldn’t stand the sight of me that much.’
Lee Jae-i quietly cast her eyes down.
It wouldn’t hurt to return at least the amount of injustice she had felt back then.
She naturally straightened her body and moved.
As if she hadn’t noticed a single thing.
Meanwhile, Baek Song-ha kept scanning the busily moving trainees out of the corner of her eye.
‘Yeah, her.’
The reason she had broken the cup earlier was because that girl had mentioned Lee Jae-i.
Especially that unaccompanied stage.
Since her score wasn’t bad, she figured she had just gotten lucky and moved on.
But on screen, Lee Jae-i looked like someone who didn’t even possess the emotion of panic.
‘How is that even possible?’
Having watched the broadcast to the end, a chill settled deep in the center of Baek Song-ha’s heart.
She thought she could afford to ignore Lee Jae-i during the composition mission.
Writing a garbage song wasn’t the issue.
Even without a backing MR, the stage felt completely full with just her voice alone.
‘What if she performs like that on the final stage too…’
Anxious at the thought, she could barely maintain her facial expression while sitting across from her to eat, yet Lee Jae-i’s eyes sparkled.
Just like the way that color reflected under the lights on stage.
‘…Ha!’
As that look came to mind again, Baek Song-ha’s lips curled involuntarily.
That single radiance dredged up the emotions she had kept suppressed.
When Lee Jae-i’s fingers lifting a fork caught her eye.
An imagination of a nearby knife slicing into those fingertips overlapped.
For a brief moment, she felt a sense of relief.
Baek Song-ha’s gaze lingered on the trash can for a second.
If another trainee had been cleaning it up, she was about to add a word telling them to be careful.
But the moment Lee Jae-i said she would do it, her lips hardened on their own.
‘My goodness. The two exact things I hate to look at.’
Baek Song-ha shivered with a thrill.
The broken cup had already been settled as an accident.
It was a trivial matter that didn’t even require an excuse.
A single piece of glass.
It wasn’t a major injury that would cause an issue.
Just a minor mishap that would end as an isolated incident.
Even if she were blamed for her own carelessness, she could just say she would be more careful next time.
Baek Song-ha smiled brightly, continuing her chat with the trainees.
Since she was laughing on the inside as well, nothing felt awkward.
Just as her thoughts reached their peak, Lee Jae-i lifted the trash bag.
Having confirmed that much, Baek Song-ha deliberately turned her body further away, putting her back to the kitchen.
A rustling sound continued for a few seconds, and then, a scream erupted.
“Ah-!”
“Oh! What’s wrong? Did you get hurt?”
Yeon Eun-soo’s worry immediately followed Lee Jae-i’s voice.
Baek Song-ha hurriedly turned around, pretending to be shocked.
One of the trainees gathered around Lee Jae-i blocked her view.
The trainees who had been sitting together also stood up, pushing their chairs back in a rush.
“Gasp… Oh my. What should we do?”
Someone’s sighing voice drifted out.
‘Exaggerating. Making such a fuss over a little cut from glass.’
Baek Song-ha snorted inwardly as she stood up.
With her eyebrows knitted tightly, she gradually closed the distance.
As she drew closer to the crowd, the tilting trash bag spilled onto the floor.
Behind the clear vibration of glass clinking against each other, an anomalous sound blended in.
The echoing ring of metal striking metal.
“…What is this?”
Someone picked up exactly that, furrowing their brow with a sharp expression.
At that moment, all expression was wiped clean from Baek Song-ha’s face.

—————
This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
—————