Chapter 57

Chapter 57

“Wait for what?”

I sighed. Despite boldly telling me to stay, Ahyeon looked to be on the verge of tears. It was almost as if he was the one who would be leaving the show, not me. I, on the other hand, was growing more cool-headed.

This isn’t a problem that the passing of time can solve. If I was an idol who’d already debuted, I might have the option of taking some time off and waiting for things to tide over, but that approach was impossible for an audition show contestant with the finals just around the corner.

If I stayed on the show when people believed I had no right to, it would only increase public animosity toward me. This wasn’t any old audition show, either. It was a cable TV show with a viewership rating of over ten percent that was currently dominating the search engine charts. If I chose to be stubborn, I would literally be killing any future chances I may have.

If I’m just going to be disqualified from the finals anyway, the best thing to do is just to step off the show quickly and figure things out.

For now, making up some sort of ambiguous excuse about health problems would have to do. It was the solution that would do the least amount of damage. If Park Moondae turned out to be innocent, it would make things easier to explain later.

And if he really did do it, I’ll have to find the girl and apologize... Damn it! She had dropped out of school because of this incident, whatever it was. I wouldn’t have let Park Moondae debut, either, if I was in the original poster’s shoes. There was no other way.

“Unless we have proof that it wasn’t me, waiting will only make things worse.”

“B-but with Sejin—”

“We found the original photograph right away and we had access to our phones.”

Frankly, Big Sejin had been really lucky. Ahyeon hung his head, and silence fell over the room. Someone knocked on the door again.

“Is anyone inside?”

“Yeah,” Big Sejin called briefly.

The door swung open and Raebin entered, followed by Eugene. I had no idea why the latter was here since this wasn’t his room, but if he’d done so intentionally, he truly was utterly tactless.

Raebin regarded us cautiously, picking up on the terrible vibe that blanketed the room. “We just finished our practice session.”

Ahyeon and Big Sejin had skipped out on practicing more to come find me. I knew they wouldn’t be of much help, but frankly, I was grateful.

My patience was at its limit, but I said in a calm tone, “Go back and practice some more.”

“B-but—”

“You only have a few days left. You’ll regret it later if you don’t.”

“What are you going to do?” Big Sejin asked.

My voice was nonchalant. “I’m going to talk to the staff about leaving the show.”

“N-no, you can’t...”

I would check what was happening on the internet one final time and if nothing had changed, I’d come up with a suitable excuse for leaving.

“What? What is this about, all of a sudden?” Raebin asked, confused. The awkward guy had apparently not heard the news yet.

I’m so tired. I didn’t want to talk anymore. He would hear about it himself by tomorrow, at the latest. I walked past Raebin and moved toward the door. I intended to go meet with the writers straight away.

Two sets of hands seized me from either side, grabbing on and holding tight.

“Now, now, Moondae. You need to get some rest. Think about it when you wake up.”

“Th-th-that’s right. Y-you should rest first. R-rest your head.”

I couldn’t pull myself free from both of them at once. I was dragged like a naughty puppy back to my bed. Were they out of their minds?

“Are you guys crazy?”

“You’re the one who needs to get it together. It’s only been thirty minutes since you found out about this. Are you going to abandon months of effort in only half an hour?”

“The more we delay, the worse things are going to get—”

“The articles will come out tomorrow, even if you leave the show right now. You can deal with it in the morning.”

Big Sejin and Ahyeon pushed me back down onto the bed.

“You need to think about all this with a clear head if you don’t want to end up regretting your decision! You’re scared out of your mind right now, you know that right?”

“What?” I asked, pausing in my attempts to struggle to my feet. What they were saying made no sense. “I’m totally in my right mind.”

“Yeah, sure you are. You’re scared and confused.” Big Sejin added softly, “That’s how it was for me as well. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have to tell you that it’ll make no difference whether you go now or tomorrow morning.”

Sh*t. He was right. I couldn’t deny it.

I’m panicking? I sighed. Why do I keep feeling like I should have kept that Imperturbable Trait?

For now, I just lay down as they requested.

Ahyeon visibly sighed with relief.

“What in the world is going on here—”

“Now, now, now, let’s all get out of here.”

I could hear Big Sejin ushering Raebin and Eugene out of the room.

Ahyeon followed them out, pausing in the doorway to say, “G-get some rest.”

The door clicked shut softly.

Your beds are in here, you’ll just have to come back later... Not that I cared whether they snuck back inside awkwardly in three hours’ time or chose to sleep in the practice room. I didn’t have it in me to worry about that now. Crossing my arms over my chest, I closed my eyes.

Let’s try to look at this from an objective point of view—goddamn it, how am I supposed to do that? I was about to be publicly humiliated, and probably killed thanks to the status abnormality.

Status window!

The status window hadn’t changed even a little bit and the only thing that stood out to me was the sword still hanging over my head.

[Status abnormality: Debut or Die]

“Why is this happening to me?”

Why did it have to be me? Why did it have to be Park Moondae? It was intensely irritating that I knew nothing about my situation, and could do nothing to find out more. What was more, it was obvious to me that I would fail to find some sort of amazing solution by morning. And the situation didn’t seem likely to change, either.

I’d be stupid to hope for some stroke of luck. Shockingly terrible things happened to people out of the blue all the time, but the opposite was very rarely true. Compare the probability of buying a winning lottery ticket to the chance that you’ll be in a car accident, and you’d find the latter to be far more likely. Take me, for instance. My life had changed entirely because of some supernatural phenomenon, but who could have known I’d be dumped into such a flawed existence?

“Ha...”

I was only growing more nervous the longer I just lay here. If I was going to quit anyway, I wanted to just get it over with right now.

Maybe I should just wait one night. Not that I really expected anything to happen. I was only waiting for my teammates’ sake, who’d been dragged into this disaster whether they liked it or not. I sighed and lowered my arms to my sides. My thoughts were a convoluted mess that only got worse the more I tried to figure out the best course of action.

There is absolutely nothing I can do right now…

I fell asleep.

***

I heard a thud that shook me from my slumber.

Was that the sound of wood breaking? I squinted my eyes open, only half awake, and found Ahyeon, who’d just rushed through the doorway.

“M-Moondae.” His face was flushed bright red.

What is it now? If another scandal about someone else had just emerged, maybe I could hope it would eclipse my situation.

He held something up to my face. It was a smartphone, its screen brightly lit up.

“L-look at this!”

The light suddenly thrust into my face was blinding and I squinted as I took the phone from him.

Where’d he get this? Phones were not allowed on set. I started reading the words on the screen.

It was a miracle.

========================

[(2nd Place!) I’m the girl mentioned in the post accusing Park Moondae, a contestant on Idol Incorporated. (632)]

: I’m still very scared about posting something like this publicly, but I don’t want an innocent person to suffer anymore.

I did drop out of high school after the sanitary pad incident.

But it wasn’t Park Moondae who stole them.

......

========================

The post described the situation at the time in extreme detail. The girl had been bullied since the start of the semester by some nasty fellow students over meaningless nonsense.

The bullying, which had started with rumors spread behind her back, had only gotten worse with time. Before long, the girl had reached her limit. Her family situation had prevented her from dealing with the bullying head on and so enduring had been her only choice. Then her sanitary pads had been stolen. The bullies had wanted to kick things up a notch by blaming the theft on Park Moondae, who was friendless.

========================

[I didn’t want to live anymore.]

========================

Though the details she provided regarding this incident were vague, the bullying had apparently crossed the line into sexual harassment. The OP broke down from the stress of it all and skipped school for ten days.

And in that time, Park Moondae had dropped out. The girl tried to get in touch with him afterward since she felt bad about him even though she was the victim.

She shared Park Moondae’s response to her apologies and questions.

========================

[He sent me a long reply that essentially said, “You did nothing wrong, so you have nothing to apologize for. And I was planning to drop out, anyway. But if you want to bring the bullies to justice, I can help you.”]

========================

The girl had been taking antidepressants at the time and had a panic attack any time she went anywhere near the school, meaning it was impossible for her to report the bullies for what they had done.

Her conversation with Park Moondae had ended on that note, but even after the incident was behind her, she’d tried to contact him again because she was concerned about him. His number had no longer existed.

That’s because Park Moondae canceled his phone service.

========================

[When I saw Moondae on the audition show, I failed to recognize him because his style and general demeanor had changed so much. Only after the recent scandal did I realize that he was Park Moondae.

He was always a quiet boy at school, but he wasn’t a weirdo or someone who did anybody harm. After I dropped out, I learned that he was actually a thoughtful and kind-hearted person. I really hope he doesn’t get hurt because of this incident.]

========================

The post ended on a satisfying note—the girl would be taking the bullies to court and presenting voice recordings she had in her possession. She had also attached a handful of photographs to prove that she was the person she claimed she was and in the most recent comments, people were getting bashed for trying to deny the veracity of the post. A lot of them were deleting their comments and doing their best to disappear.

The top comments consisted of people who were taking back their previous accusations.

- Holy crap. No wonder something felt so strange. Moondae didn’t seem like the sort to hurt a fly. Of course he didn’t do something so freaky T_T

- Anyone that claimed to be his classmate in the comments and spread this rumor is going to have to prepare to pay damages now LOL

- Oh... Thank you so much, OP T_T Thank you so much... I can’t imagine the pain you’ve been through, Moondae...

I felt woozy.

It wasn’t Park Moondae. The victim had appeared and proved beyond a doubt that he was innocent, and less than a day after the original accusation had been posted. I didn’t know what to think.

“E-everything’s going to b-be okay now!” Ahyeon started rambling, but I was having a hard time processing anything. My brain was full of fog.

Is this even real? I hadn’t had to do anything and the situation had fixed itself so quickly. Was it normal for a problem like this to just go away? I felt weird, rather than relieved or happy. It seemed so strange that something like this could happen to me.

I’d learned from experience that happy coincidences didn’t just happen in life and that unless they were the product of hard work, coincidences usually weren’t good.

Who’d have known I’d experience differently in someone else’s body?

“Hey!”

A pack of people rushed in through the doorway, Big Sejin in the lead, followed closely by the rest of my teammates.

Come to think of it... I’m their leader, aren’t I? I’d considered their behavior regarding all this to be strange since we’d never been all that close. No doubt it must have been difficult for them to adapt their practice routine while their leader was very likely about to disappear from the show. I felt certain a lot of things had gone through their minds overnight, as well.

“Hey! I told you to wait, didn’t I? Did you show him?” Big Sejin asked, catching on to the situation after seeing Ahyeon. Apparently, he’d already seen the post.

“Yeah,” I admitted. “Thanks.”

If it hadn’t been for them, I’d have already quit the night before and sorely regretted it come morning.

“I guess I’m staying because of you guys.” I smiled.

Ahyeon kept saying “Don’t mention it” and “I’m so relieved” over and over, a happy smile on his face. Big Sejin grinned.

“If you’re grateful, buy us steak.”

“Let’s just call it even, yeah?”

“Hey!”

I don’t have any money. I finally felt some relief as I listened to Big Sejin grumble and our other team members congratulating me. Now I can just practice quietly until the finals come around.

“Thanks for bringing me the phone. How’d you get it, anyway?” I asked.

“I-I asked them t-to give it to us!” Seon Ahyeon said, grinning as he took it back.

I hoped I wouldn’t have to look at another phone until after the finals. However, I had no idea that while I was looking the other way, the situation would take an even stranger turn.

It all began with a post uploaded by Goldie #1.