Chapter 103: The Same As Back Then

After safely completing ‘KM ConFesta’ – NUAVE’s first official schedule, overseas schedule, and also performance schedule – up to the final stage, we returned to the waiting room.

The ‘ALL Time’ team members, who had finished their stage earlier, were each sprawled out occupying sofas and chairs.

“Everyone worked hard!”

I bowed my head to the managers and staff’s words of encouragement, answered with thanks, and also found an empty chair to sit in.

After everyone rested for a while, we began getting touch-ups on our hair, makeup, and outfits again.

Because after all the stages were over, there was still the ending stage where all the performers would go up and greet the audience.

While waiting for my turn for touch-ups, I picked up a can of cider placed on the waiting room table.

I went back to the chair I had been occupying until just before, and the moment I bent the can tab up –

“Oh!

Jae-seo, are you okay?”

With a loud noise, the cider began spraying out everywhere, soon sticky soaking my hands and arms and dripping onto the floor.

“The one we drank earlier was fine, why is that one suddenly doing that?”

The moment I heard the stylist, who had come over right after seeing the cider overflow and was checking my outfit, casually say that, a reflexive thought made me mutter to myself, “No way…”.

The root cause of almost all the unlucky events and accidents that had suddenly happened since entering this game world came down to one thing.

Namely, the meddling of this crazy, perverted, psycho game.

But since I hadn’t seen even a hint of its meddling for nearly a month, the thought ‘no way’ naturally followed.

And above all, the cider exploding seemed unrelated to the perverted things the meddling usually did…

“Hyung, I’ll go to the bathroom for a bit.”

Thinking it was nothing serious, I shook my head and left the waiting room.

…And only after arriving at the bathroom and encountering another unlucky incident did I belatedly remember one completely non-perverted incident the game’s meddling had caused.

An incident very similar to what I was experiencing now.

On the second day of the second group dormitory session of Please Take Care of My Idol, when my hand got stuck to the bathroom doorknob and I overheard Yoon Ji-heon and Seo Jun-jae talking inside.

And now, just like back then, I had my hand stuck to the bathroom doorknob and was eavesdropping on a conversation inside.

Even…

“Seo Jun-jae.”

One of the people involved was the same as back then.

…Oh my god.

“Long time no see.

You’ve grown up prettily, huh?”

The voice that followed again felt somehow familiar.

Among people who would say ‘long time no see’ to Seo Jun-jae, had there been anyone whose voice I had heard long enough to feel familiar with?

As I was thinking that, a face suddenly popped into my head.

And it was the face of someone I had met just yesterday.

“Jun-jae, you’ve been acting cheeky since yesterday.

Do you think it’s okay to treat your senior, who’s like the sky to you, like this?”

The other person seemed to indeed be Noh Hae-min, Seo Jun-jae’s company senior and a member of the popular idol group Eternals.

“Ha, geez.

No answer, how cheeky…

If you keep this up, Hyun-tae – ”

The moment Noh Hae-min, who unlike yesterday when he had seemed refreshing, now spoke in a heavily sarcastic tone and brought up the name of his same-company junior Yeo Hyun-tae –

Before he could even finish his sentence, a loud bang of something hitting hard echoed loudly even to the hallway where I was.

Startled by the ominous sound, I unconsciously looked around, but perhaps due to the game’s meddling, no one had been passing by since earlier.

Counting that as a blessing in disguise, I let out a deep sigh of relief.

Then, for the first time, I heard Seo Jun-jae’s voice from inside the bathroom.

“…Ha, this disgusting bastard.”

The moment the voice, spoken more like a mutter to himself than to the other person, reached my ears, I opened my eyes wide in shock at the chilling tone, wondering if the person inside was really Seo Jun-jae.

And then I was even more shocked by the words that followed.

“Do you really think that pathetic threat of yours still works?”

…So Noh Hae-min had threatened Seo Jun-jae using Yeo Hyun-tae?

“Did you say you watched the show?

No, even if you didn’t watch it, you would have heard about it.

Because one bastard like you got screwed over on broadcast.”

If someone got screwed over on broadcast, the first person who came to mind was Nam Jin-wook.

If Noh Hae-min was a bastard like Nam Jin-wook, then no way…?

As I connected all the things the two had said, the conversation reached a single conclusion.

Once I thought that far, an uncomfortable feeling arose – was it okay for me to be listening to such unpleasant talk?

“Haha, so you mean you’re going to threaten me in return?”

Noh Hae-min, who had been silent for a moment, suddenly burst into a refreshing laugh and then spoke.

Even though the content became more distasteful, the sarcastic tone from earlier had completely disappeared from his voice, replaced by nothing but joy.

While Seo Jun-jae didn’t answer, Noh Hae-min continued to let out laughter, then suddenly spoke.

“That’s right.

I wanted you to come at me like this.”

He had been talking about threats just moments ago, then suddenly said something incomprehensible.

At the end of the hard-to-follow sentences, a shocking word popped out.

“I love you, Jun-jae.”

…What?

Could the word ‘love’ even appear in the conversation between these two that hadn’t seemed like a conversation at all?

Shocked by the incomprehensible flow, I unconsciously stepped back.

At that moment, the strength in my right hand seemed to give out, and my hand stuck to the doorknob came off with a tap.

At the same time, the bottom of the long metal handle caught on my sleeve, causing the door to rattle and briefly open and close.

…Damn it.

I’m screwed.

Feeling as if the already quiet bathroom had become even quieter, I carefully but quickly stepped away and started running.

The moment I turned the corner toward the waiting room, I heard the bathroom door open from behind the wall.

Phew.

Letting out a long sigh mixed with relief and complicated emotions, I quickly moved toward the bathroom on the opposite hallway.

And for the first time in a long while, a familiar thought crossed my mind.

…Damn this crazy psycho game.

***

After finishing all the schedules for ‘KM ConFesta in Hong Kong’, we arrived at the hotel late.

Walking through the hallway noisy with the other members, Seo Jun-jae and I entered our room alone.

I felt oddly uncomfortable.

Thanks to the game’s meddling, even though I had gone to the bathroom on the opposite hallway, I had arrived at the waiting room before Seo Jun-jae, so thankfully he didn’t seem to have found out that I was the one eavesdropping.

But the word – whether it was a confession or something else, hard to identify – that Noh Hae-min had said kept coming to mind, and Seo Jun-jae, who seemed to have lingered there for a while even after hearing that bizarre word, bothered me for some reason, making me feel awkward all along.

“Do you want to wash up first?”

While I was lost in thought, standing blankly near the door, a voice came from beside me.

I turned my head toward it, and the moment my eyes met Seo Jun-jae’s, the conversation I had heard earlier suddenly intruded into my mind again.

Forcing a natural expression over my awkward one, I shook my head.

He let out an “Hmm,” sounding displeased, then said okay and headed to the bathroom first.

Soon, listening to the small sound of running water, I walked to the table by the window and sat down.

Ddiring-

As I placed on the table the small bag of fruit Manager Park Bo-sung had handed out on the way into the hotel, asking if we wanted some, a familiar notification sound came from my pocket.

Thinking of the gallery that would naturally be updated on a day like this, I let out a low sigh.

“Ha…”

I took out a piece of fruit from the bag and with my other hand launched the game app on my phone.

While peeling the purple skin, I checked the now-loaded game screen.

Sure enough, a ‘New’ marker was on the frame-shaped icon.

Leaving the white flesh on top of the peel for a moment, I tapped the frame icon.

I scrolled through the photo album, filled with endlessly embarrassing photos, and when I reached the last page, a new photo appeared.

“…I was right.”

The moment I looked down at the first photo that didn’t feature me, I let out an idiotic reaction without meaning to.

The moment the bathroom doorknob had caught on my sleeve and the door opened slightly, the photo, taken from an angle as if capturing the inside through that gap, showed Noh Hae-min leaning against the bathroom stall wall and Seo Jun-jae beside him, reaching out an arm against the wall, from behind.

After checking Noh Hae-min’s expression – the only identifiable information in the photo – I thought, so that word I heard was really a confession after all.

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