Chapter 41

Chapter 41

In the idol industry, school bullying was the type of scandal that killed careers. Past records of similar incidents were proof of this.

As soon as bullying or physical violence was involved, in particular, there was no escaping backlash. I’d never seen any tactic successfully save an idol mixed up in something like this except leaving the group and enlisting for their compulsory military service. And now one of these scandals had befallen a member of my team, of all people.

Let’s see what they have to say first. I clicked on the post. The number of comments had increased in the short time it had taken me to click on the link.

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[3rd! I’m exposing Big Sejin from “Idol Inc.” for school bullying. (491)]

I’ve been trying to keep this to myself, but the frustration is killing me. So here we go.

Lee Sejin, also known as Big Sejin on the show Relisted! Idol Incorporated harassed other students the entire time he attended Cheongsol High. After I saw the posts describing him as an exemplary student who ran for student president in high school, I began to lose sleep at night and couldn’t stop crying.

Lee Sejin has been smoking and drinking since middle school, and abused me with his posse, all while pretending outwardly to be a nice guy.

[...]

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The post described at length Big Sejin’s many sly offenses during his high school years. The bullying had always presumably happened when he and the victim were alone, and there were detailed descriptions of what they’d suffered through. Even I was somewhat persuaded of the post’s veracity, just skimming through it.

This isn’t just some random post trying to stir drama. It had been uploaded with a clear purpose, regardless of whether it was true or not. There were even pictures attached at the bottom of the post, one of a graduation photo album that belonged to the OP, and a photo of Big Sejin with a cigarette held between his fingers.

Below the photos was this text.

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[I’ve got plenty of other photos. You know what’s about to happen, so I’d advise you to quit the show right now. I can’t stand the thought of someone like you successfully becoming an idol.]

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Even if this is fake, the rumors that this post will stir are going to be hard to shake off later. There are even photos. This was basically a death sentence as far as an audition show was concerned and a huge problem for our team. We would be torn apart by the editors, even if Big Sejin chose to tough it out, and there would still be hell to pay if he didn’t. We would have to re-distribute the roles and do the choreography all over again. I bit back a sigh as I looked up.

I need to check if it’s true first.

“I just read the post.”

There was a heavy, awkward silence. No one asked what I was talking about. That can only mean everyone else has read it, too. Big Sejin was quietly staring down at his phone.

“Is this you in the photo?” I asked.

“I don’t know...” he murmured blankly. “I’ve never knowingly had my photo taken like this...”

But you can’t say for certain it isn’t you. I changed angles.

“You smoke?”

“I did briefly when I was in my first year of high school... I was going through some stuff at the time. But I quit almost immediately, and I never did any of the stuff they’re saying I did in the post. Why would I?” Big Sejin’s voice grew progressively louder until he fell abruptly silent as if he were suddenly struggling to breathe. He stared down at his phone again.

He’s looking through the comments. People would be tearing him apart, I knew. Goldie #1 realized what was going on and hurried to intervene, “Hey, don’t look at those. Turn it off. Turn your phone off for now.”

“I need to see them if I’m going to do something about them, don’t I? But... Yeah. It’s over.” He put his phone down, hands shaking. “Frankly, I wouldn’t believe me either, if I were you guys. I smoked, but I never took that photo, and nothing they wrote aside from the smoking is true... but that doesn’t sound very convincing, does it?”

Big Sejin seemed to be calming down. Or rather—it’s more like he’s... giving up.

“People won’t... believe me, will they?”

Things looked pretty hopeless, what with the pictures and all. To my eyes, Big Sejin seemed innocent based on his reaction to the accusations and the behavior the post described was contrary to what I knew of him thus far.

Given his personality type... I think he would have made sure nothing like this would come back to haunt him later. I would have believed it more easily, maybe, if they had accused him of attempting to gaslight the victim into thinking that he was the source of his own misery, rather than Big Sejin.

He would not have chosen to behave like this, knowing it could bite him in the ass later. But these were all just assumptions on my part. I hadn’t actually known him that long, so I couldn’t be sure. Everyone had a variety of different faces tucked away, after all.

There were plenty of boomers in the workplace that went out of their way to make life miserable for everyone working under them, for instance, who turned out to be loving fathers to their sons at home. I considered for a moment, then returned my attention to my phone. As I started re-reading the post carefully from beginning to end, Big Sejin and my teammates wallowed in despair.

“I… I’ll quit the show tomorrow, guys,” Big Sejin muttered quietly.

“Hey, hold on a second.”

“Y-y-you need to th-think about this carefully—”

“I already did. It’s true that I used to smoke. And no matter what I say to defend myself, things will only get worse.” He seemed to be struggling to keep his voice from breaking. “Maybe after things have calmed down a little, I can explain myself properly and debut in a few years’ time. And though I really don’t remember taking that photo... seeing it scares me.”

My teammates were shocked to hear the eternally easygoing Big Sejin speak like this.

I continued to stare at my phone and replied, “I don’t think that’s a very good idea.”

“Why not?”

“The person who wrote this post advised you to do just that. If you do, then everyone will believe it’s real.”

Big Sejin seemed annoyed by my meddling. “Just leave it alone. Things are already bad enough. Trying to explain myself won’t change anything.”

“What matters is how you explain yourself.”

“What?”

I held up my phone and showed the screen to Big Sejin. The final photo from the post could be seen. “This photo is fake.”

Dude, you look like your eyes are about to pop out of their sockets. If he’d thought things through more carefully, he might have guessed that this photo had been altered. Apparently, he’d been too scared of what was to come.

I handed the phone to Big Sejin and pointed to the location on the photo where I’d found the telltale signs. First, there was his hand, which held the cigarette. “If you use a photo editing app and zoom in like this... See? There’s a bit of pixelation. I suspect the OP reduced the resolution of the photo on purpose, but the pixelation is still visible.”

Then there was the cigarette. “The cigarette’s luminosity is all wrong. Given the photo’s overall lighting, it should be brighter in color. But they went overboard trying to force it to blend in and made it too dark.”

It was an easy beginner mistake to make when adding white objects to a photo. White objects were supposed to stand out, but most people over-thought the editing process and, finding it awkward, would often dim the brightness. My phone was old and the app was laggy, but the zoom still worked just fine.

Who knew I’d be able to make use of my photoshopping skills like this? I thought of my previous life for a moment, recalling how I’d made a few extra bucks for fulfilling client requests like “Please remove that gross pattern from my outfit T_T.”

“H-how do you know all this? Are you sure?”

“Yeah?

Big Sejin stared at my phone silently. I thought I could see a gleam of hope in his eyes.

Goldie #1 suddenly shouted, “Hey! Then comment and explain, quickly! Tell everyone the photo is fake!”

“Oh... Yes! We should do that—”

“No, wait a second.”

Big Sejin, who was popular and well-liked in the real world, didn’t really seem to understand how things worked on the internet.

I explained quietly, “We know it’s fake, so some of your fans have probably noticed the photo was manipulated as well.”

“Oh!”

“Th-then we can wait. H-his fans will—” Seon Ahyeon said.

“No, what I mean is... Even if the photo is a little sus, netizens will believe the post anyway because it’s fun to tear into people on the internet. They’ll just say that Big Sejin’s fans are desperate and trying to do damage control.”

“Oh...”

I knew I had to spell it out for them before they gave into despair again. “So find the photo.”

“What photo?”

“The original. If you upload the two photos side-by-side, no one will be able to deny that it’s fake.”

Big Sejin was looking at the camera in the photo, which meant he’d been aware that it was being taken. This also meant it had very likely been taken by someone he knew.

It’s not safe for him to contact all his friends right now. The culprit could be any one of them.

Seeing as the OP attached the photo without any fear of repercussion, they must be under the impression that not many people have access to the original picture... No, wait a minute. This might actually not be the case, since that would also make them really easy to single out.

Hmm. If that’s not it... I thought for a moment, then asked Big Sejin, “Do you tend to save photos other people take of you?”

“Yeah, if I’m in them.”

“In that case... Why don’t you start looking through any photos you have from large events or get-togethers? The sort where you took a bunch of photos.”

If they had cropped a group photo and changed the background, it would explain why the op was confident they would not be caught.

“Moondae, what did you used to do for work, exactly? Are you employed by the National Intelligence Service?” Goldie #1 asked.

“Of course not,” I denied, quickly dismissing his nonsense.

The entire team was gathered around Big Sejin, squinting as they prepared to look through the photos together.

“Check the group photos, too, not just the solo shots,” I said. “The photo they uploaded might be zoomed in on you and cropped.”

“Okay!” Big Sejin said, finally sounding a little more like himself again as he opened his photo gallery.

What followed was a lot of scrolling accompanied by a heavy dose of eye strain. Big Sejin had way too many photos. The ones from his high school days in particular seemed never-ending.

Half an hour had passed and we weren’t even through all the ones from his first year in high school yet. Even Seon Ahyeon muttered a shocked comment, “S-Sejin... you sure have a lot of friends.”

“Haha...” Big Sejin laughed awkwardly, swiping through some more photos.

We’d reached the first semester of his sophomore year when Kim Raebin cried, “Hey! This one!”

He pointed at the photo on the screen, which Big Sejin quickly zoomed in on. Five or six people were standing and smiling at the camera. There were a handful of similar photos taken before and after it, with slightly different poses.

Big Sejin was standing in the corner of the shot, off to the side, and after zooming in on his upper body, we knew for certain—this was the photo from the post.

“Haah...” Big Sejin hung his head and let out a deep sigh of relief. He muttered hollowly, “It was taken during my student council campaign.”

“Hm.” I recalled that his running for student president had been mentioned at the start of the post. Whoever had written it had apparently despised Big Sejin for it.

Maybe I should have told him to start looking for the election photos from the beginning. But we’d found it, and that was all that mattered.

He leaned back, looking energized. He nearly banged his head on the wall next to his bed, but he probably didn’t even notice. “What a relief that photo was in my gallery.”

“Yeah,” I said, nodding.

Goldie #1 said, “All right! You have an agency, right? Send it to them! Have them issue a statement.”

This was logical advice. Since things had gotten so bad, so quickly, the cleanest way to deal with all this was to provide evidence via a more official channel. Big Sejin didn’t seem too eager to contact them, though.

“My agency?” he asked, rubbing his neck as his expression twisted into something hard to identify. “Uh... I don’t know about that.”

Why not? This is exactly what agencies are for.