Chapter 177. The Earth is Round (1)
“So, what do you want to do?”
After hearing everything I had to say, Ji Suho asked me that.
“Since concrete evidence has already surfaced, responding with a denial won’t work.”
“Revealing that you were bullied and eventually forced to leave the company is the most convenient method.”
Reversing the roles of perpetrator and victim.
Indeed, that would serve as a good bait to overturn the heated public opinion.
But…
I couldn’t easily nod at Ji Suho’s suggestion.
“I’m not sure.”
Reversing the roles of perpetrator and victim.
Is that really the best course?
“It’s not that I’m unwilling to explain. I just don’t think claiming that I was solely the victim is the right approach.”
I was both a victim and a perpetrator.
It was true that I didn’t feel justified claiming victimhood solely because I left the company.
‘Maybe if I were the twenty-year-old Kang Hajin.’ But for me now, the anger and wounds from that day were too faint, too shallow.
“If I’m not careful, it could be interpreted that those kids didn’t bully me, but that they cut ties with me because they were hurt by me. Like it’s my own karma.”
“……”
“I’ll think about it a bit more. Today… my head hurts a little.”
“…Alright. I’ve already put out a statement saying we’re confirming the facts, so take a rest for now.”
Having left the company, I was on my way back to the dorm in the manager’s car, which was waiting outside. The manager, sensing my bad mood, drove in silence without playing any music on the way to the dorm.
Usually, I would’ve made a joke about why he was being so cautious, but today, I was too drained to say anything, so I just let it be.
“……”
Gazing out the car window, I was once again submerged in a tide of thoughts.
It was a relief that Dan Haru didn’t seem to be making any moves to regress, but just thinking that the damned regressor might be up to something made my already cluttered mind throb even more.
“Hajin-ah. We’re here.”
“Oh. Yes, hyung. Thanks.”
I shivered as if waking up from sleep at the manager’s voice.
As I got out of the car and walked up to the dorm, I felt a bit dazed. Whenever I got stressed, my vision would blur like this sometimes, so I hurried my steps, thinking only of getting inside the dorm to rest.
“……”
However, as I stood in front of the dorm entrance, I couldn’t bring myself to open the door and go inside.
‘…If I go in, they’ll all be there.’
Today was the first day we were moving into the dorm, and we originally planned to have some kind of celebratory party in the evening.
We couldn’t go out to eat, so we decided to cook ourselves and get a cake to celebrate the formation of Kairos.
‘What should I say?’
At that moment, I realized belatedly that my hands were trembling.
I hoped the members hadn’t seen the exposé, but honestly, I knew that was a far-fetched wish. After all, it was our very own search king, Seo Taehyun, who found the post first and informed me.
‘…What if they’re disappointed in me?’
Except for briefly mentioning my past to Joo Eunchan, I had never spoken to the others about it. The words and actions described in the exposé were more than enough to disappoint someone, and the members would be no exception.
‘They…’
It felt like someone had discovered the ugly, cracked glass coaster hidden deep within me.
I felt as if I had been completely exposed, revealing the person I had desperately tried to hide, wrapping it in layers upon layers of prettier packaging.
When I opened the door and stepped inside the dorm, I was terrified of how the members would look at me, of what attitude they would take toward me. The fact that I couldn’t confidently say it was all lies if they asked made me despise this situation even more.
[ㄷ! 돌ㅂᅟᅡᆲ )#쿠 ㅓㅔㅔ스트@~]
Content: Take my hand.
Reward: I’ll make it all go away.
As I lingered in front of the dorm door, the regressor’s quest window appeared before my eyes.
[Shall I turn back time to before the exposé was posted?]
[Or I can manipulate the timeline so that everything that happened at KD Entertainment never occurred.]
“Shut up, you noisy bastard.”
[What if the ‘companions’ you barely gained are so disappointed in you that they turn their backs on you again?]
[And what about your fans, who are probably being mocked just for liking you right now?]
The regressor flooded the screen with lines of text as if mocking me.
Once again, I was furious that I couldn’t refute a single word.
[Think about your parents watching you get bashed.]
[What about your younger sibling? Now, when they go to school, the talk will be all about you. Won’t that anger spill over onto your sibling?]
I squeezed my eyes shut as the regressor even brought up my family, but the damned regressor whispered endlessly to me, even in the darkness behind my closed eyes.
[Don’t you want to go back?]
[Don’t you miss this morning when nothing had happened?]
[You were so happy this morning, Hajin.]
[Say it, Kang Hajin.]
[Say you want to go back. That you want to be happy.]
[Then I’ll take care of the rest.]
“Please shut up, you crazy bastard….”
[ㄷ! 돌ㅂᅟᅡᆲ )#쿠 ㅓㅔㅔ스트@~]
Content: Take my hand.
Reward: I’ll make it all go away.
Just as my entire field of vision turned red as if the regressor’s blood-red letters had dyed it,—
“Huh? Hajin hyung?”
The front door, which had been closed, opened, and Dan Haru appeared, standing in the light of the bright living room, his eyes wide with surprise.
“Taehyun hyung! Hajin hyung’s here!”
“Ah, Wook hyung. He found Hajin hyung. Sorry. Yes, yes. Yes, got it. Please go in~”
“What’s hyung doing over there without coming in?”
As the flickering light in the now-dark apartment hallway turned off completely, the noise and bright light flooded in.
In the dorm’s living room, which had been empty just this morning, balloons of all colors were scattered about, and the dining table was laden with delicious-looking food. The scene inside the dorm was exactly as I had imagined it this morning, with the members excitedly moving around.
Even the expressions of the members looking at me hadn’t changed one bit.
“Hyung, hurry and come in.”
“Oh? Oh, yeah….”
As I was led by Dan Haru, feeling bewildered, and entered the entrance, Jung Siwoo, who had been tidying up the dining table in the living room, approached me.
“You came back from the company, right?”
“…Yes.”
“Did you talk well with the Director?”
“Well, more or less.”
Jung Siwoo nodded as if he understood and cynically added.
“Then that’s good. Come and eat. Everyone was waiting for you.”
Questions like “What happened?” “Is that true?” or “How are you going to handle it?”
There were none of the questions I expected to come.
There were no looks of contempt, nor any signs of disappointment that they were avoiding me.
“No, if you dropped someone off at home, you should come up right away. You’re not a thief, so why didn’t you come into the house? Wook-hyung said he dropped you off, but you didn’t come up, and do you know how worried we were? We were about to send Eunchan to check the rooftop.”
As Jung Siwoo returned to the dining table, Seo Taehyun approached me with a ladle in hand, starting to nag.
“Why did you turn off your phone? Your mom got worried when you didn’t answer, so she called me.”
“Ah… Sorry. The battery died.”
“I told her you were probably busy with something at the company, but make sure to charge it and give her a call, okay?”
What’s with them?
Didn’t they read it?
That can’t be.
While I was confused, Joo Eunchan, who appeared behind me, seemed to have snatched the ladle from Seo Taehyun, perhaps worried that he might wave it around. Meanwhile, Lee Yugeon took the carrier from my hand.
“Your room is over there. You’re roommates with Doha-hyung.”
“…You’ve already decided on the rooms?”
“You weren’t at the meeting, so no voting rights for you.”
Is this revenge for making them rap during Blue Flare?
I was speechless with astonishment, but Lee Yugeon casually walked off with my carrier toward the room where Doha and I had previously been trapped.
As I continued to stand in a daze, Dan Haru, who had been standing beside me all along, dragged me into the room.
“Hyung, change your clothes and come out. Doha-hyung just got back and is in the room.”
“Hey, wait a minute.”
When we reached the room door, I ran into Joo Eunchan, who had just put the ladle back on the sink.
Joo Eunchan glanced at the other members gathered in the living room, then cautiously approached me and whispered.
“…I didn’t say anything.”
“……”
“Hyung, um… what happened at your previous company, I thought you might not want to talk about it, so I didn’t tell the others.”
After delivering that message, Joo Eunchan quickly ran off at the sound of Jung Siwoo calling him from the living room.
Their reactions, which I never imagined, left me in a daze. Still standing at the door, I didn’t move, and as Dan Haru, who was about to leave me and return to the living room, noticed this, he came back.
“Hyung. …While you were gone, we talked a bit.”
“……”
“Well…. We just decided to trust the hyung we know.”
They trust me?
No.
The ‘me’ you know isn’t the real me.
“So, just… when you feel comfortable, you can talk to us first. About anything.”
As written in the exposé,
I’m selfish, self-centered, rough, clumsy, and lacking.
I just worked hard to hide that for more than a few years.
I struggled to pretend to be a good person because I didn’t want to be rejected.
“We trust you, hyung.”
The ‘me’ that you trust….
I am…
‘Who am I?’
What kind of person am I?
Suddenly, my vision became blurry. I tried to brace myself, thinking it was the damned regressor’s doing again, but it wasn’t easy.
“Hyung, hyung? Hyung, your body is really hot… Hyung! Hajin-hyung!”
Dan Haru’s voice grew distant.
The last thing I saw was the shocked faces of Dan Haru and the other members rushing in from the living room, before my vision slowly went dark.
* * *
I had a dream.
I realized it wasn’t a space of unconsciousness because this dream was so familiar to me.
The beginning of the dream was always the same.
– We decided we won’t practice with you anymore.
The cold, dark, and chilly atmosphere of the practice room still remained vividly in my memory.
The stares directed at me, the snickering laughter. The sight of those who, until just yesterday, laughed and chatted with me, now unanimously hurling criticisms at me.
– Aren’t you leaving?
Leaving everyone behind, ‘I’ walked out of the practice room alone.
As I walked through the empty hallway, ‘I’ thought endlessly.
What did I do wrong?
What was the problem?
Which of my actions hurt them so much?
Ceaseless self-scrutiny and self-loathing slowly boiled from within, mixing with regret, fear, and confusion, creating an unimaginable loneliness.
So what if I’m alone, I thought, but the isolation in the peer society, where I had to spend most of my day, was more painful than I had imagined.
– The monthly evaluation is free, so form teams and submit them.
No one formed a team with me.
– We have a two-hour break, so take some time to rest.
No one spent their free time with me.
– Hey, did you guys go somewhere together yesterday?
– Yes?
– …Ah. Hajin, didn’t you go?
No one, not a single person.
“……?”
As I watched ‘myself’ left alone in the small, narrow practice room, I suddenly realized I was looking at ‘me’ and was slightly surprised. At that moment, the practice room vanished, and in a transparent, shining space, I was face to face with ‘me.’
“What the… This isn’t a dream?”
I quickly looked around, startled, and then turned my gaze back to the ‘me’ standing in front of me.
The same face as mine.
But slightly older than the ‘me’ in the dream, with a calmer demeanor and a much more confident and composed expression.
I immediately knew who it was.
“You… are ‘me.’”
It was the 20-year-old Kang Hajin.
In other words…
The ‘me’ who had never experienced regression.