I had an incredible amount I wanted to say to this bastard, but I should start with this.
“First, let me ask you something. How the hell were you so certain an insane plan like kidnapping me wouldn’t be discovered? Once my vacation ended, everyone would be desperate to find me.”
“…….”
Cheongryeo looked at me with dark eyes, then answered flatly.
“Because I planned to finish within ten days.”
Apparently he had checked the length of my vacation through my smartphone too.
“So what you mean is, if I didn’t show signs of killing myself within ten days, you intended to kill me. Understood.”
I adjusted my posture slightly.
Then I asked again.
“And I understand that you firmly believe I’ll restart if I die, but where exactly does your belief that you’ll go back too come from?”
There was no way I could avoid asking.
“Did it never occur to you that I might be the only one who dies, while you stay here and get arrested as an idol who murdered another group’s member?”
“…….”
“Sunbaenim.”
Cheongryeo leaned back against the chair.
His face was expressionless.
“Who knows…. I probably wouldn’t have been caught.”
“…!”
“I have your phone too… and if you make the right gestures, the police don’t start an investigation just because a member of an idol group with as many incidents as TeSTAR suddenly disappears. The agency blocks it.”
Cheongryeo smiled faintly.
“They’ll think you cracked under the pressure and gave up, or that you got your settlement money, lost sight of your original intentions, and ran away. Then they’ll search among themselves… but once the cost grows too high, eventually they give up. Even without you, the remaining group still makes plenty of money, and eventually they focus on keeping that running.”
“…….”
“That’s how Park Moondae gets quietly processed as ‘activities suspended for health reasons’ and disappears. Hmm… after two or three years, I suppose only the occasional person getting nostalgic would bring you up.”
That was too much of a leap.
With a perfectly valid contract period remaining, there was no way an agency backed by T1 would give up on ‘Park Moondae’ that easily.
And at this point, my level of public attention was high enough that, if things went well, I could probably rank within the top ten idols.
The fallout from suddenly suspending activities wouldn’t disappear so simply.
…Still, when I looked at the overall structure of what he was saying…
there was enough plausibility to make my skin crawl.
Fuck.
I really had almost died.
Even as I clicked my tongue, though, I was satisfied with the conversation itself.
“I see. Thank you for the testimony.”
“…?”
I pulled something from my pocket.
My smartphone, which had been recording.
“…!”
“You hid it in a more cliché place than I expected, so I found it pretty quickly.”
Apparently, he had even considered location tracking.
He had turned the phone completely off, connected it to a laptop, and used some kind of routed connection to access the messaging app.
Anyway, my smartphone, which I had found inside the dishwasher, was luckily intact.
I pressed the stop-recording button.
“Judging from the situation alone, even if I report this, it’ll look like mutual assault. I’m guessing you were also aiming for the possibility that if the press picked it up, the controversy would snowball until it interfered with my final mission and caused me to fail it.”
I tapped the smartphone lightly.
“I recorded everything and took photos of the circumstances, then set all of it to automatically back up to the cloud.”
“…….”
“Meaning that once I leave here and report you, it’s over.”
“Is that so?”
“Yes. So start cooperating, you fucking bastard.”
I perched on the edge of the chair and punched him across the face.
Thud!
A short, dull sound rang out satisfyingly.
Damn, that felt good.
Apparently the inside of Cheongryeo’s mouth had split because he probed it with his tongue, but he barely reacted.
“…My comeback’s ruined anyway. Hmm, that hurts. You said you weren’t feeling well.”
“You got knocked unconscious after getting beaten by a sick guy, yet somehow your mouth still works fine.”
“Haha. Hmm, but I don’t think you’ll report me anyway, hoobae.”
Cheongryeo met my eyes.
“Even with evidence, you don’t seem like the type who’d leave room for getting dragged into an incident like this and interfering with your mission.”
“That’s true.”
I nodded.
“But if you piss me off badly enough… who knows. I might release everything the moment the final mission ends.”
“…….”
“It’ll get a little noisy, but there isn’t a single person in my group who’d oppose it. Seems like the reporting process would go pretty smoothly. What do you think?”
If anything, they would probably be horrified and ask why I hadn’t reported him sooner.
I could already picture it clearly.
But his reaction to my words was…
outside the expected range.
“What? Hahaha.”
Cheongryeo laughed brightly.
“I thought you were smart, but you’re unexpectedly naïve.”
“…!”
“You like your current team? Ah, of course it’s fantastic right now. Your results are good, and you have so many external enemies that you practically have to unite. How nice.”
Cheongryeo lowered his head.
“But how many years do you think that’ll last?”
“…!”
“No, not even years. Once people get famous, it only takes a year or two before some idiot starts saying strange things.”
He looked into empty space.
His eyes were bored, as though recalling an utterly predictable past.
“All kinds of people appear. From idiots going on about ‘finding themselves’ to people spending all their time in clubs and selling out the group. It doesn’t matter what kind of team you build. Human passion and diligence are consumable resources, apparently.”
“…….”
“Even if you don’t think so now, think carefully. Were there never tiny flaws that bothered you? Later, those things… come back as major disappointments.”
His low, calm voice finished speaking.
“After the tour ends and everyone receives another settlement payment, you can’t know for sure that there won’t be a single person telling you to stop doing pointless things and just let this go quietly.”
“…….”
I didn’t exactly trust people much either…
But maybe because this bastard had accumulated repeated experiences, he was on another level entirely.
I stared at him, briefly speechless, then shrugged.
So what?
Was he telling me not to get unnecessarily attached and to start over based purely on efficiency?
Absurd.
“If we stop fitting together, we can just disband later. My missions will be over by then anyway.”
“…!!”
“We could continue only with the people who still get along… or if it doesn’t work out, we quit. Why are you staking your life on a group that much? Ah, right. I’ve been thinking this ever since you first started talking about restarting.”
I crossed my arms.
“Is VTIC not allowed to decline?”
“What?”
“This isn’t an industry where you can stay top-tier for a thousand years. A peak is a peak precisely because it ends.”
No matter how long an idol group’s popularity lasted, once members went through military service and got older, there would inevitably come a point where they passed their highest peak and started descending.
“There’s going to be a day when VTIC declines whether this happens or not. I don’t understand why you’d go so far as restarting just to delay that for a while.”
Surely he didn’t seriously fantasize that VTIC could remain the best group in the industry forever.
Cheongryeo’s expression briefly went blank.
Then he smiled.
“Hoobae, since you’ve never done it even once, you probably can’t really feel it yet, but honestly, restarting once isn’t that big of a deal. If it can extend the group’s lifespan, it’s worth trying.”
He leaned forward slightly.
“And rather than having the group’s career fall because of some unexpected incident like this, I can plan for it to decline along a very smooth curve. Next time, that’s how it’ll be, so don’t worry.”
I tossed out the words.
“It won’t.”
“What?”
“That perfect career. It’s never coming.”
I almost rested my chin on my hand, but stopped when pain prickled through it.
Damn.
“VTIC’s decline is an event that has no choice but to happen. Only the timing changes. But how the hell would you know which timing is the most perfect? Are you going to restart every time your album sales drop?”
I delivered the conclusion.
“Then you’ll end up restarting forever. Rationalizing it every time with, ‘Next time will be better.’”
“…….”
Cheongryeo parted his lips as though to answer, but no words came immediately.
His face was expressionless.
Looks like I hit something.
I didn’t know whether it was a land mine or a switch, but I needed to solidify it now.
I have to break his momentum.
I couldn’t let this bastard interfere with my life anymore.
Now that things had come this far, there was no point holding back any cards.
I would finish it here.
I spoke first.
“Though I suppose I don’t get that opportunity anyway, since even if I die, I can’t restart.”
Almost by reflex, Cheongryeo opened his mouth.
“……I told you, if you fail the mission—”
“You die. That’s it.”
I uncrossed my arms.
Then I told him the truth.
“I wasn’t originally Park Moondae.”
“…!!”
“I was originally a twenty-nine-year-old college graduate preparing for the civil-service exam. Then I woke up and found myself in Park Moondae’s body. I didn’t restart. I just ended up inside somebody else’s body.”
Even saying it myself sounded ridiculous.
I snorted.
“So if I fail the mission and die… even in the best-case scenario, I’d probably just go back to my original body and that would be the end. Don’t you think?”
“…….”
“Wasn’t it strange in the first place? I probably didn’t feel like someone in his early twenties. I was originally twenty-nine.”
For the first time, all sorts of emotions passed over Cheongryeo’s face.
Apparently I didn’t look like I was lying.
He muttered blankly.
“That can’t be.”
“I’m telling you it is. Why would I lie after I’ve already got you completely restrained?”
I rubbed the back of my neck and laughed.
I’d avoided telling him because I thought it could become a weakness, but now that I had evidence of attempted murder in my hands, surely I could say this much.
It felt damn refreshing.
“You can’t restart anymore.”
“…….”
There.
He was definitely shaken.
Now…
I didn’t like it, but for a perfect ending, maybe it was time to offer a carrot instead of the stick.
“So… it means you don’t have to give up your current life just because it developed a flaw.”
“…!”
“What you have now isn’t going to disappear anymore. So just live a little more comfortably. Raise a dog. Do things you want to do.”
If we could cleanly cut ties here, I genuinely had no intention of reporting him.
Of course, I would be demanding compensation for damages.
As long as I never have to get involved with him again, I’ll settle for cutting ties.
I fidgeted with my wrist where the scratches had begun to itch.
“…….”
Cheongryeo lowered his head.
His hands, bound by cable ties, trembled faintly.
At that moment, a pop-up appeared.
[‘Now That You Mention It, You’re Right (A)’ activated!]
I had no idea in what sense it had activated, so I decided to wait.
“…….”
Only after quite a while did Cheongryeo raise his head.
Surprisingly, his expression was calm.
“I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.”
“You have to figure that out yourself.”
“Is that so.”
His voice was calm, but there was a strange hint of depression in it.
Understandable, I guess.
Until now, every time this bastard failed to succeed as an idol, he had simply restarted.
So he had probably concentrated every standard of value entirely on VTIC’s success.
Otherwise he would’ve gone even more insane.
And whenever he failed to clear a mission and got reset again, his brain had probably processed it as ‘an opportunity for VTIC’s perfect success.’
What I had just done was basically jam a wedge into that idea and tell him, That wasn’t an opportunity. It was giving up!
I had no idea what would happen in the future, but for now, he clearly looked as though he had lost the will to fight.
Done. Fuck.
First, I had evidence.
Second, I had disclosed my circumstances.
Third, I had hit him mentally.
That ought to keep him rationalizing things on his own for at least half a year.
And by then, all my missions will be finished.
Excellent.
I immediately stood from the chair.
“Then I’m leaving. I’ll put the tools beside you, so free yourself.”
His movements were restricted, so it would probably be hard for him to throw the tools even if he tried.
Thud.
“…….”
Cheongryeo stared at the toolbox I pushed toward him with my foot, then spoke quietly.
“If you wait a little, I can drive you back to your dorm.”
“I’ll pass. I remember that anesthetic pretty clearly.”
“…….”
From what I could tell, we were somewhere around the outskirts of Seoul.
If I took a bus for an hour or two, getting back to the dorm shouldn’t be a problem.
The injuries around my wrists wouldn’t show under long sleeves either.
I took only my smartphone and headed straight for the front door.
A voice came from behind me.
“…Sorry.”
That feeling and attitude had better last at least half a year.
Otherwise, even if it cost me something, I would put him in prison.
I opened the door and stepped outside immediately.
The wind hit my face.
It felt refreshing.
Read only on MUGEX
I immediately caught an intercity bus at a nearby stop and headed back to the dorm.
I had to transfer once, but the route wasn’t complicated, so it wasn’t a major issue.
The problem was that the pain was gradually starting to hit me.
I need to get examined.
For now, I planned to come up with an excuse after returning to the dorm.
To distract myself from the pain, I checked my smartphone on the bus.
First, quite a lot of messages had gone back and forth in the group chat since the vacation began.
Mostly updates about where everyone was and what they were doing, along with casual chatter.
There were also people calling for the unresponsive ‘Park Moondae.’
Like this.
[Big Sejin: Moondae-Moondae? Did you cancel your phone service?]
[Big Sejin: Looking for Park Moondae… Even on vacation, cutting all ties with the secular world… As expected of Tibet, merciless]
And Cheongryeo had answered like this.
[Me: Stop it.]
The synchronization was honestly creepy.
…He made it more convincing than I expected.
Feeling uncomfortable, I checked the other private message rooms.
[Kim Raebin: Moondae hyung, my grandmother has requested a video call. I am truly sorry, but could you please grant her just one opportunity? I will adjust entirely to whatever date and time you prefer!]
After that was an image of Hallasan flashing in glaring primary colors, with fluorescent text saying, ‘To you, whom I am grateful for♬ I am always thankful.’
“…….”
How should I put it…
It was exactly the kind of situation I had expected.
And Cheongryeo, impersonating ‘Park Moondae,’ had rejected him cleanly.
[Me: Sorry. I want to rest. Would next time be okay?]
[Kim Raebin: I am truly sorry. Understood. I will see you after the vacation ends!]
That one bothered me a little.
It’s not even difficult.
I decided I should do it once I went to the hospital and recovered, then checked the rest.
They were all similar.
Whenever someone suggested something, ‘I’ rejected it.
[Bae Sejin hyung: I found three listings. Which floor plan looks better to you? (Photos)]
[Bae Sejin hyung: You don’t have to reply if you’re busy]
[Me: I’m not sure. Sorry.]
Same here.
[Seon Ahyeon: Moondae, I’m traveling near Seoraksan with my family right now and the autumn leaves are really beautiful so I’m happy. I couldn’t take pictures as well as you do, but I tried taking a few. I’ll bring them back to the dorm. (Photos)]
[Me: Yeah, thanks.]
Same on this side.
And I found Cheongryeo’s final trace in the group chat.
[Me: I came to a hotel to rest more seriously. See you all when the vacation ends.]
[Big Sejin: Wow, hotel vacation! (emoji) Moondae-Moondae tell me, is it five-star??]
There had been no reply after that.
“…….”
For some reason, that felt…
strange.
I was starting to really feel that my vacation had been stolen.
Fuck.
Maybe once that bastard’s Status Abnormality ended, I really should expose everything and kill him socially.
Fortunately, judging by the date, I still had half my vacation left.
I calmed myself as much as possible and leaned my head back against the bus seat.
It was a weekday afternoon and the bus was nearly empty.
No one recognized me beneath the mask and hat, and I managed to reach the dorm peacefully.
My physical condition, however, was anything but peaceful.
Damn it.
The instant I opened the dorm’s front door and stepped inside, I let out a sigh of relief—
and collapsed face-first onto the floor.
Thud.
The marble pressed against my cheek, but compared to the burning pain throughout my entire body, I could barely feel it.
Fuck.
This is bad.
I can’t move.
It felt as though all the cartilage had vanished from my joints.
There was no strength anywhere in my body.
Ambulance.
No.
If someone gathered up all the injuries currently left on my body, I would obviously look like a crime victim.
After handling everything this far, I had no interest in creating some pointless controversy before my Status Abnormality was resolved.
Won’t I feel better if I just pass out and wake up?
I looked terrible, but maybe I could just lie collapsed in the hallway like this for a while—
Bzzzzzz—
My smartphone.
Someone was calling.
Almost unconsciously, I pressed the answer button.
A voice I hadn’t heard in several days rang out.
-Ah, you answ—
I cut them off.
“I’m… at the dorm. Don’t call 119… hospital, please…….”
-What??
“Don’t… contact the company, just…….”
-Moondae? Park Moondae!
I went completely limp.
It was strange to say this, but it was the deepest sleep I’d had in days.