“Snacks are good.”
“I’ll have to raid my treasure trove.”
Eden opened the cupboard door with a determined expression. Crash. Potato chips, chocolate snacks, jellies, even dried snacks. All kinds of junk food he’d been hiding because of his usual diet management came pouring out onto the table.
“Wow, hyung, you had all this hidden away?”
“They’re not past their expiration date, right?”
Yunbeom giggled and tore open the bag of potato chips Eden brought. With a pop, a salty smell wafted out.
“Hey, hey. Salty things make you swell up……”
Sehyun was about to habitually nag when he felt a round chocolate snack slip into his mouth and stopped talking. Doha had put the snack in Sehyun’s mouth.
“Just eat. If you don’t eat on a day like today, when will you eat?”
“……Mmph.”
Sehyun chewed and swallowed the snack, then soon gave up and smiled with a snicker as he opened a can of beer. Tsssk, the refreshing sound of carbonation spread.
“Keu, this is good.”
It felt like he was relaxing after a long time. Though it was a bit early to relax.
“But aren’t we really going to get first place in Battle Crown at this rate?”
Yunbeom opened his mouth while fiddling with an empty can. His face was slightly flushed red. Since the third competition was over, the final competition wasn’t far away now.
“It would be good if we did.”
“I think we have enough momentum?”
Sehyun picked up his phone and checked the YouTube video comment reactions and SNS reactions.
“The reactions are good too.”
OnX was on an upward trend these days. Doha didn’t know, but the other members felt it clearly. It was even more so because this Battle Crown had become a hot potato.
Whether in a good sense or a bad sense. The fact that attention itself had increased had a big impact.
“You all know we need to be careful at times like this, right?”
“Ah, Lim Sehyun is trying to throw cold water again.”
At Sehyun’s words, Haram pouted his lips.
“But you know Doha hyung has changed a lot while doing Battle Crown?”
“Huh? Me?”
He must have been different from before that. Looking carefully, he thought maybe these guys really hadn’t been interested in Baek Doha at all. Though it was fortunate for the current Doha.
“I think you’ve become a bit kinder……”
“Kind?”
Doha wondered if he was a person close to being ‘kind.’ His MBTI was 90% T too. It wasn’t easy to be biased to one side like this, but Doha was someone who had accomplished that difficult feat.
“Starting from zero must have been hard too…… but you did it really silently and well.”
He definitely thought that was something worthy of praise. Doha’s head nodded on its own.
“It’s because I taught well.”
Lim Sehyun was trying to take credit for that. Doha glared at Sehyun.
“Anyway, let’s go all the way to winning like this!”
When Yunbeom raised his glass high, the members also raised their glasses. With a cheerful sound, beer overflowed between the beer glasses. Tomorrow would bring bloody practice and rivalry again, but at least tonight was entirely their own festival.
As the members were cheerfully talking like that, Sehyun checked his phone. A faint vibration was ringing in his hand.
Sehyun, who had been quietly looking at the numbers on the screen, pressed his hand on the floor and stood up.
“Where are you going?”
When Doha asked seeing him like that, Sehyun waved his phone in his hand and opened his mouth.
“A phone call for a moment.”
Like that, Sehyun went out to the veranda.
* * *
Inside the dark officetel room. The curtained interior couldn’t even distinguish whether it was day or night. On the floor, empty liquor bottles and trash bags with rotting delivery food were rolling around.
In the middle of that garbage-like room, Jo Taejin was sitting. A face that had become half in a few days, sunken eyes, a bushy grown beard. The appearance of the glamorous idol ‘Chase’ on stage was nowhere to be found.
He was holding his phone with trembling hands. The articles on the screen were all plastered with his name. ‘Drugs,’ ‘supplier,’ ‘expulsion.’ Everything was over. Overnight, his life had been thrown into the abyss.
‘……It doesn’t make sense.’
Taejin thought while biting his nails. It was too perfect. The timing, the evidence, the informant. It felt like he had been played on a board someone had elaborately set up. And suddenly, one person’s face flashed by.
‘No way.’
Taejin opened his bloodshot eyes wide and searched through his contacts. [Lim Sehyun].
Ring ring…… Ring ring…….
The dial tone continued for a long time. His heart felt like it would explode. Pick up. Pick up. Pick up.
– Hello.
After a while, a dry and calm voice was heard. The moment he heard that composed voice, Taejin’s reason snapped.
“……You set me up.”
A cracked voice burst out.
– What?
Sehyun on the other end of the phone was silent for a moment, then soon a snickering sound could be heard.
– Set you up? Sunbae-nim, are you interested in men?
It was a voice dripping with mockery.
“That’s not what I mean! Don’t deflect!”
Taejin screamed viciously. But Sehyun’s voice was still languid and annoyingly calm.
– Hmm, why did you call me. I don’t think we’re close enough to talk personally.
“Hey, Lim Sehyun. You think you’ll be safe after doing this to me?”
Then, a scoffing sound came from across the phone.
“You’re laughing? You can laugh right now? I’ll make you fall too. You think I’ll just stay still? You think only I’ll die!”
Taejin screamed at the top of his lungs. He wanted to go find him right now and grab him by the collar. But all that came back was Sehyun’s deep sigh.
– Hoo, sunbae-nim. You don’t seem to be in your right mind. Haven’t the drug effects worn off yet?
“This bastard really……!”
– Or did you develop delusions? You should go to the hospital first.
“Hey! Lim Sehyun!”
Taejin called his name until his throat was torn. Then the air across the receiver instantly turned chilly.
– Don’t call my name like we’re close.
Sehyun’s lowered voice had a creepy chill in it.
– Sunbae-nim kept clinging and pretending to be close, I honestly didn’t like it. I don’t want to get my feet wet in such dirty scandals.
“You…… you son of a bitch!”
– Sunbae-nim.
Sehyun lightly ignored Taejin’s curses and delivered a final warning.
– Stay quiet, hold your breath. If you don’t want to become uglier.
That was the last.
Click.
A cold disconnection. Taejin blankly took the phone away from his ear. On the screen, only the words ‘Call Ended’ were coldly floating.
“Ugh, ughhh……”
Taejin’s entire body trembled like an aspen tree. Anger, shame, and above all, fear seeping deep into his bones. It was him. It was definitely him. That devil bastard who pushed him into the abyss and was laughing from above.
“Lim Sehyun…… Aaaaaaah!”
Taejin screamed and threw the phone he was holding toward the wall.
Crash-!
The phone hit the wall and shattered into pieces. LCD fragments flew in all directions. But it wasn’t just the phone that was broken. His life, his pride, everything was rolling on the floor like those fragments.
.
.
.
Lim Sehyun’s eyes looking at the phone screen that had shone brightly then turned completely black were dry as a desert. Not even a shred of sympathy arose.
He has good intuition though. Or is it stupid not to know?
Sehyun swept his face with his palm. Strangely, he suddenly felt tired.
He felt like he was looking back at the dregs left on the path he had been running like a racehorse only looking ahead. It wasn’t that he wanted to ruin someone’s life. He just thought that punishment should be received by those who deserve it.
It wasn’t an action only for OnX. Isn’t this ending justice and natural order? Not innocent Eden hyung being covered in false accusations.
“Haa.”
Even though he thought he did the right thing, strangely his energy was completely drained. Earning someone’s resentment was a heavier matter than he thought. Even though he had sufficient resolve, his heart was heavy.
“Am I tired?”
However, Lim Sehyun of the existing generation couldn’t believe that he himself was losing energy over just this much.
Thinking about it, he had been struggling to do everything well without any leisure to resolve the accumulated mental damage and physical fatigue that had continued from before his regression, so if he wasn’t made of steel, it was natural to be exhausted.
Moreover, the fact that there was no one under heaven to confide in about this series of events was also suffocating. Sometimes he was even lonely.
“Get a grip, Lim Sehyun.”
At times like those, Lim Sehyun comforted himself and pulled himself together.
There was no time to dawdle and stay still. There were still mountains of tasks to solve. Just as Sehyun turned his body like that.
Slide.
The sound of the veranda door opening was heard. Sehyun flinched in surprise and hurriedly composed his expression. He erased his tired look and tried to put on his usual leisurely and shameless mask.
“……Aren’t you cold?”
The one who appeared was Doha.
