Prologue

You should probably just go.

The man spoke, squinting his half-open eyes as he gave a sidelong glance.

Why?

Yoo Hyun asked.

“Because everyone is looking.”

At those words, Yoo Hyun was startled and raised his head.

It was true.

At the very least, everyone within his line of sight had come to a complete stop and was staring at Yoo Hyun and the man.

Yoo Hyun rolled his eyes.

Beyond the high glass walls of the eerily quiet airport, where not even the sound of footsteps, let alone people’s breathing, could be heard, birds and airplanes flew across the pale blue sky.

It seemed as if time had frozen solid only inside the airport.

This is just too weird.

Weirded out by the bizarre situation, he found it hard to breathe.

It looks like a good idea to run now.

The man whispered by his ear.

He suddenly remembered.

This man was the one he had run into earlier at the airport…

Yoo Hyun urgently shifted his gaze toward the man.

“…….”

Even though the man was sitting right beside him, Yoo Hyun couldn’t make out his features.

This shouldn’t be possible.

Yoo Hyun abruptly stood up.

Then, with everyone watching, he took steps backward, putting distance between himself and the man.

As if he were Orpheus who had caught a glimpse of light, an urge to look back just once arose, but he resisted it.

The moment he looked back, he felt he would find himself in an extremely difficult situation.

There was no basis for it, but his intuition told him so.

The airport remained eerily silent as if completely empty, and he could tell just by the lack of sound that no one was pursuing him.

Yet, the closer he got to the airport entrance, the faster his sprint became.

The entrance was right in front of him.

Just as his desperately outstretched fingertips were about to touch the door, a familiar call came from behind.

Yoo Hyun-ah.

Yoo Hyun instinctively turned to look.

The man, the very one whose face he couldn’t see, was standing right behind him.

A startled Yoo Hyun opened his eyes wide.

And then,
his upper body jerked up as if in a spasm.

Yoo Hyun, opening his eyes in the pitch black, sat up in bed.

“H-heuk, huk, heuk…!”

It wasn’t the airport; it was his bed.

As if he had been submerged underwater for a long time, Yoo Hyun gasped for air, breathing rapidly.

Once his breathing had somewhat settled, Yoo Hyun lifted his hands, let out a deep sigh, and wiped his sweaty face.

Then he gave a hollow laugh.

It seems he felt really bad about not helping that man at the airport earlier today and just passing him by.

To the point of having a nightmare about it, no less.

Yoo Hyun pushed the covers aside and headed to the ensuite bathroom.

It was the only single room with a bathroom in the dorm.

The room assignment was due to the CEO’s intervention.

‘Currently the only one who makes money.’

That was the position the CEO had designated for Yoo Hyun within the group.

There had been resistance at first, but when a dating rumor surfaced involving the only other member besides Yoo Hyun who had stayed out of trouble, that statement became an undeniable fact.

Entering the bathroom, Yoo Hyun turned the water to the coldest setting and washed his face roughly, splashing water haphazardly.

As he carelessly scooped and splashed water on his face, the front of his t-shirt was quickly soaked through.

He felt a bit more awake.

‘Since I’ve already splashed water anyway, I might as well wash off the sweat from my whole body.’

Yoo Hyun immediately pulled his top off.

He pulled his arms and head out of the shirt and opened the mirrored cabinet to place it inside, away from the water splashes.

As he was about to take off the rest and put it away too, Yoo Hyun slowly straightened his bent back at the sight of his reflection in the slightly ajar cabinet.

He reached out, closed the cabinet door, and then rubbed at his clavicle bone reflected in the mirror.

I must be seeing things.

Yoo Hyun swallowed dryly and moved in front of the sink.

“…What is this.”

****

Kim Sangjin, the manager for the second-year idol group MAINE, was huddled in the darkness where only the faint light from a streetlamp seeped in, drinking alcohol with his bear-like frame.

As he emptied three or four shots of soju in succession, the lit phone screen automatically darkened.

Sangjin tapped the phone again to brighten the screen.

[They have zero f*cking popularity but their standards are sky-high, only going after top female idols, those bastards with their consciences gone to the next world.

It’s been almost two years since debut and these bastards haven’t even made it into the top 100 for a single hour, yet they still don’t know their place and only cause scandals.

There’s definitely a reason flop groups stay flop.

MAINE fans are ‘yours’?

No.

MAINE fans are ‘mine’.]

The unfiltered criticism tore at his heart.

Sangjin closed his eyes tightly as if he couldn’t bear to read it and poured another shot.

Fueled by the alcohol’s courage, he moved to the next post.

[What’s the point of that handful of ‘yours’ tearing off their own skin to bulk-buy albums?

Does my idol appear on music shows?

On variety shows?

They can’t even get on those radio shows that supposedly play requests from anyone who texts.

What the f*ck, does this make any sense?

The cost-performance of stanning them is f*cking terrible.

If that was all―]

This one seemed to be written by a fan.

Trying to steady his vision, which was blurring bit by bit from drunkenness, he lifted the phone.

Perhaps because it was based on affection, the damage from the vocabulary was definitely less.

Sangjin felt a bit teary, sniffled, and moved his thumb to scroll down.

Then, the unseen continuation appeared.

[―If that was all, it’d be a relief.

I’d stan like crazy even if they were just ‘Han’ (low-tier).

But for f*ck’s sake, every quarter my idol’s in a ‘some’ situation or dating, these flop idols acting up.

Makes you hear annoying 500-won worth of sasaeng rumors.

f*ck, this is the first time I’ve seen a boy group with stanning difficulty this extreme.]

Flop idols….

Sangjin put the phone down and clutched his head in the darkness.

Not a single word was wrong.

‘I should stop reading now.’

It was akin to torture and self-harm.

He turned off the screen and refilled his glass on the once-again pitch-dark table.

He couldn’t understand it at all.

Neither as the manager overseeing them, nor as a regular salaried employee.

‘Am I the only one anxious?

Am I the only one suffering like this?

If you debut, don’t you have the desire to at least try to reach the top?

Isn’t that why you debuted?

If they become top-tier, is it good for me?

It’s good for them!’

Of course, if an idol succeeds and becomes top-tier, the manager who worked with them would feel rewarded and happy too, but it wasn’t just about them, was it.

Sangjin swallowed his drink and lamented his lot.

Why did he have to offer up this kind of monitoring as well?

‘Those lazy bastards.’

Usually, for the mental health of idols who debut young, they’re advised not to read comments or upsetting posts, but that didn’t apply to the occupants of this dorm.

Those bastards, sleeping soundly in their rooms oblivious to the world, needed to see with their own two eyes what public sentiment was like.

Creak, the door opened.

Sangjin’s eyes lit up like a tiger’s.

‘Which one is it, which bastard is trying to sneak out again!’

“Hyung.”

It was Yoo Hyun who came out of the room.

Sangjin’s eyes instantly turned gentle.

‘That poor kid….’

“Yeah, Yoo Hyun-ah.

What, did you come out because you were thirsty?”

Even the voice he used was kind.

“Hyung….”

Yoo Hyun, who should have been complaining by now—’Why are you drinking alone so pathetically at this hour?’—didn’t come closer and just called ‘hyung’ from afar.

Somehow, even that seemed pitiful, so Sangjin staggered to his feet.

“What, what’s the matter.

Aigoo, why is our Yoo Hyun’s body so cold?

Huh?”

As he got closer to Yoo Hyun, a surprising chill hit him.

‘Huh, am I too drunk?’

Sangjin tried to remember how many bottles he’d had, but his memory was fuzzy after finishing three empty bottles around midnight.

Even if the alcohol was strong, drinking soju back-to-back might have been too much, as he was having trouble standing properly.

Holding onto Yoo Hyun’s shoulder to steady himself, he asked again.

“Why did you call hyung?

What should I get you, huh?

Water?

Should I get you water?”

Yoo Hyun, who had been quietly looking up at Sangjin who kept repeating ‘what-should-I-get, what-should-I-get’, let out a small sigh, opened his room door, and went inside.

Sangjin blinked a few times and then stepped into the dark room.

Sangjin’s brain was now processing what he saw not as a video but as a series of still photographs.

And they weren’t even consecutive scenes; his alcohol-soaked brain arbitrarily skipped a few frames on its own.

Between one blink and the next, Yoo Hyun had disappeared.

“Yoo Hyun-ahhh, hyung needs to keep an eye outside right now….

If your members sneak out again, hyung’s gonna get beaten to death….”

“Come and take a look at this.”

Yoo Hyun, who had been right in front of him a moment ago, had somehow gone to the bathroom, turned on the light, and was now calling him from inside.

Walking in a zigzag, Sangjin banged his shin on the bed, which brought him to his senses for a moment, and he stood by the bathroom door.

“Hyung’s here.”

“Hyung….

What does this look like to you?”

Sangjin looked at Yoo Hyun with dazed eyes at the arm that had come right under his chin.

“Your arm?”

“Right here on the arm.”

Yoo Hyun pointed with his index finger to a spot on his forearm.

Sangjin pulled his head back, frowning to try and focus.

And then, slowly, his gaze sharpened.

All traces of drunkenness had fled from his face.

He roughly pulled Yoo Hyun’s arm closer to his eyes to check.

It was text.

“You, you, what is this?”

“…Then what about this?”

Yoo Hyun grabbed and pulled the neckline of his t-shirt.

What was on his arm was also on his collarbone.

‘How can this be happening?’

As if he had witnessed a murder, Sangjin covered his mouth with both hands.

“Hyung, what do I do?”

‘I don’t know either.

Why are you asking me, you little brat.

What the hell have you been doing outside again?’

Such words rose to his throat, but seeing Yoo Hyun’s pale, shocked face, he couldn’t bring himself to say them.

Sangjin took a deep breath to regain his composure, but he felt like he might get drunk all over again from his own exhaled breath.

In the end, covering his mouth with one hand to block the rising smell of alcohol, he forced a calm voice.

“…So, who is it?”

The MAINE member ‘Yoo Hyun’ that Sangjin knew was good-natured.

In a word, he was an easy member to handle.

Thanks to his long trainee period, he had a high understanding of the idol industry system, and perhaps due to experiencing several failed debut attempts, unlike the other members, he had a very clear sense of purpose as an idol.

He was what they called a ‘promising seedling.’

Yoo Hyun didn’t fool around behind the company’s back, and he hardly ever lied.

“I don’t know.”

‘A lie.’

Sangjin thought Yoo Hyun was lying to him for the first time.

Because a reason for him to lie just occurred to him.

Unlike the other members, Yoo Hyun, on a two-year contract, was soon due for renegotiation.

“Hyung, I really don’t know….”

As if sensing that distrust, Yoo Hyun’s voice wavered.

“You don’t know your imprinter?

How does that make any sense―”

Sangjin remembered something, closed his mouth, and pressed his forehead.

“…It actually could be possible.”

He had to admit that this promising seedling was telling the truth.

He pulled the bewildered-looking Yoo Hyun out of the bathroom, sat him on the bed, turned around, and spoke.

Just sleep for now.

“Sangjin hyung….”

“We’ll go to the hospital at daybreak.”

Sangjin could feel Yoo Hyun’s anxious gaze sticking to his back, but whether it was because of the damn hangover or the sudden shock, his head felt like it was splitting, making it difficult to deal with anything more.

And unlike when he had entered with unsteady steps, he left Yoo Hyun’s room with a straight, steady walk.