Chapter 178

I'd figured something like this would happen sometime.

I mean, in my own way I'm a #modern-fantasy character who's gone past just consuming #regression-possession-reincarnation content and is actually living through one — like I wouldn't see this much coming.

From the moment I'd been told my personalities were split, I'd sort of figured a day would come when I'd end up face to face with another me.

…I just didn't think we'd meet at a timing like this, and like this.

'We' faced each other in silence for a while. Is 'we' even the right word for it? — the question briefly crossed my mind, but there really was no other way to put it.

Being able to view the past timelines of my Comrade 'Kang Hajin' had to be thanks to Thirteen's ability — and if so, then bringing the two of us face to face like this had to be his doing too. He was the guy who'd doggedly held onto me even when I'd been running from myself as hard as I could, going as far as to build a quest around it — so of course this time too, it was time he'd made for the sake of 'us.'

I quietly looked into myself. Very, very quietly.

He's… younger than I thought.

The 'me' standing in front of me had to be, without question, the exact 'me' I saw in the mirror every day. And yet — looking at myself through someone else's eyes was even stranger than I'd expected.

Growing up I'd been called an old soul in a kid's body often enough that I'd thought I'd matured early — grown up fast in a lot of ways. But actually seeing him face to face like this, he just looked like any of the kid-brother types I used to fawn over — a twenty-year-old kid, no different — and that was kind of funny.

…I really was young, huh.

What had twenty-year-old me been like?

Nothing like the earlier past-self I'd seen — not just gloom.

Just ordinary.

Prepping for the college retake while working part-time, saving up and taking a trip with a friend, sleeping in for hours on end once early admission came through….

One memory came, then another, and another.

"Was it hard for you?"

My first words, breaking a very long silence, filled the empty space.

"You were lonely, weren't you."

I'd been lonely for a very long time.

Brutally lonely, I think.

Looking back at it now, that's what it had been.

All those moments I hadn't been able to bring myself to properly tell even my parents about — only now, faintly, were they surfacing. I'd thought new skin had grown over because the hurt was gone, but apparently the scars had been there the whole time.

I took a step closer to 'me' and spoke again.

"You held on well. You did, really."

If you could go back ten years and meet the you of back then, what's the one thing you'd most want to say?

The answer to that stock question was always some joke — tell them the lotto numbers, tell them to buy Tesla stock, that kind of thing.

But now, actually standing face to face with my ten-years-ago self, the thing I most wanted to say was….

"It's okay."

I just wanted to comfort the me who'd stuck it out and made it this far.

"I can't promise it all works out…. But — I think I've had a pretty good time getting here."

The reason the me of now could take in the wounds of that time so calmly — I knew — was purely because the me back then had endured all of them and grown from it.

And what the me of now could actually do for the me of back then — that too, I could now see clearly.

"…so this time, I'll be on your side."

I regretted having hesitated, even briefly, worrying about people I might have hurt.

Just like twenty-nine-year-old me had lingered on that small bed all this time, somewhere in my heart, the Kang Hajin left alone in that dark, cold practice room was still there too — only now did I realize it.

"Team Kang Hajin without Kang Hajin would be weird."

At the joke, a faint smile came up on the 'me' in front of me too.

Before I could even ask what that smile meant — the surroundings turned pure white and my vision blurred once more. Guessing I was waking from the dream, I slowly opened my eyes.

In a typical progression like this, this would be the moment for something like 'a dark room. A somehow familiar ceiling….' — that's what I was thinking as I opened my eyes all the way.

"…huh."

"WAAAAAAAAH!"

"Hey-hey-hey?"

…my eyes met Lee Doha's — leaning over me in pitch-black darkness, whites of his eyes rolling — and I ended up letting out a scream loud enough to bring the building down. And then Lee Doha, startled in turn by my scream, jerked backward and slipped right off the chair he'd been sitting on, landing hard on his backside on the floor.

As I scrambled upright in a panic, a wet towel dropped off my forehead with a soft thump.

Seriously, only this kind of thing in my life ever hit the cliché note dead-on.

"Th-the fever was really high. I was gonna feel with my hand and see if it'd come down."

"…yeah, right. Thanks. Sorry for screaming."

"No, I startled you. I'm sorry."

Out of nowhere in the dead of night, we were about to launch into a full no-I'm-sorrier battle.

I just nodded vaguely toward Lee Doha and thought:

Does life really need to be this much of a sitcom?

A second ago I was in this whole castella-cake mood — moist and wistful, all of it.

"Give me my mood back…."

"Hm?"

Creator. Please. Pick a genre for my life and stick to it.

---

"Your fever was up to 38."

Once the situation had settled, Lee Doha, saying it wasn't time for me to be getting up yet, doggedly laid me back down on the bed. When he set the wet towel — wrung out neatly and tight — back on my forehead, a cold, cooling feeling hit hard and all the strength drained out of my body, which was probably a sign I really was sick.

"Since you're not coughing or anything, seems like it's just stress and being run down. Take some medicine and get real sleep tonight."

"Yeah. …thanks."

At my awkward thank-you, Lee Doha didn't bother replying, as if it were no big deal, and went back to his own bed across from mine.

With the wet towel on my forehead, I rolled my eyes around and looked over the room. Some time in the last few days he must have redone all the wallpapering or something — instead of the sound-absorbing panels that had been up before, the room was now lined with clean silk wallpaper. Lee Doha's production gear, which had taken up an entire wall, was mostly gone too.

Any other day I'd have just registered it as ah, okay and moved on.

Today, though — maybe because I'd felt kind of lonely earlier, or maybe because the small-hours mood was setting in — I felt like striking up a conversation with Lee Doha for no reason.

"Lee Doha, you asleep?"

"…no."

"You cleared out all your production gear?"

"Yeah."

"Where to?"

"Moved it back to the company studio."

"The old one?"

"No. They assigned me a new room over at the new office, so there."

"Ah."

The conversation cut off there for a moment.

I briefly thought back to Lee Doha's ant-tunnel-like studio at the old company.

After a few more blinks, I spoke to Lee Doha once more.

"Lee Doha."

"Yeah."

"You're not going to ask anything?"

At that, Lee Doha went quiet for a moment.

Not long after, a slightly sleep-fogged, husky voice came back clearly.

"Want me to?"

At the question turned back on me, this time it was me who went quiet.

He must have taken the silence as a yes — Lee Doha asked me next:

"Is it true? The stuff written there."

"…half of it's right, half isn't."

Pillowing my head on my arm and staring up at the blank ceiling, I slowly told Lee Doha the stories of my past.

It had to be long and dull, but Lee Doha listened to all of it without any real reaction. Every so often when I glanced over wondering if he'd fallen asleep, he'd shift in bed, as if to signal that he was still awake.

"Anyway, so…. it's a little hard to defend myself outright. This kind of thing, you have to be able to flat-out deny it as baseless for the public to take your side."

"……."

Even after I'd finished the whole thing, Lee Doha didn't say anything.

Okay, this time is this guy really out? — I was about to lift the towel and glance over again when Lee Doha's second question came flying through the darkness.

"Those people — do you want to meet them in person?"

"Those people?"

"The kids you supposedly trained with at KD Ent."

Coming in blunt and out of nowhere — classic Lee Doha.

Meet them? To do what — yank each other's hair out?

After thinking about it a moment, I spoke:

"Actually, up until just now, I hadn't been thinking about it."

"……."

"Maybe that'd actually be better. And I'm kind of curious what on earth they were thinking, putting a post like that up."

For a post supposedly written just to screw me over — if I go public that I was the one who got ostracized, the poster's just as f-ed as I am. Isn't this basically a game of chicken? Did they hate me enough to be prepared for that too? Or is the fact that they see themselves as the victims really all that's left in their heads?

That curiosity had been sitting there the whole time. And on top of that, in any kind of conflict, laying real feelings out face to face beat writing or calling from a distance — that suited my temperament better too.

Would that actually work? If I sweet-talk Thirteen just right, couldn't he at least track down who wrote it?

Or, at minimum, if I sued for something like defamation-by-truth…. ah, that'd mean the whole controversy post was true, so public opinion would get shredded — no. Just the false-information charge, then…. no, but calling it false — there's a fair bit that's actually true, so I might just catch a backlash instead….

As I was sunk in thought weighing options, Lee Doha asked again.

"You gonna meet them?"

"But right now I've got nothing — no contact info or anything…. or wait, these days if you really try, you can find anyone?"

"I've got it."

"Got what?"

"I said I've got it. The contact for one of the kids you trained with at KD Ent."

"…what?"

What kind of development is this now?

At Lee Doha's unexpected words, I jerked my heavy body upright. Lee Doha sat up along with me, turned on the mood light beside the bed, and pulled up a contact on his phone to show me.

〈Lee Hyunil (Raon Applied Music Academy)〉

And that name really was the name of someone I knew.

"Actually, when I went out earlier, that was to meet him."

"Him…. why? How do you even know him?"

"Not directly. Back when I briefly went to an applied music academy, he was a friend of a hoobae I knew. Sounds like he wanted to get in touch with you and couldn't find a way, and while asking around he made his way to me."

"Lee Hyunil wanted to contact me?"

"Yeah. He says he has something to say to you. And he knows who wrote that exposé too."

He knows who wrote the exposé too?

A bit thrown by the sudden information, I looked back at the phone.

Sure enough, on Lee Doha's phone there really were call records and texts with Lee Hyunil.

"Figured I should ask you first, so I told him to hold on. Thought we needed to make sure whether he actually knows what he's talking about, or whether he's just some kid pretending he does and butting in."

"…Lee Hyunil — yeah, he'd know what happened back then. He was in the same crew, practiced with us plenty."

I gave a self-mocking laugh, thinking about Lee Hyunil.

"When he first came in he had a hard time adjusting, so I helped him out a lot…. Then after that whole thing, he wouldn't even acknowledge me — so this is kind of unexpected. Wonder what he wants to say now."

Pushing down the flash of betrayal and old bitterness starting to rise, I lifted my head and met Lee Doha's eyes.

"Still, I should meet him, right?"

"If it helps you."

"Then I'll tell the company as soon as it's light out."

After Lee Hyunil's contact came through to my phone from Lee Doha's, I handed his back to him. And then, out of nowhere, an impulse hit me.

"Lee Doha."

"Yeah."

"You wanna come? To meet this guy."

"…me?"

Lee Doha tilted his head and asked back, genuinely puzzled.

A little embarrassed, I rubbed my leg with my empty hand and said:

"Just — if there's even one friend with me, I think I'd be less freaked out."

"……."

"…no, whatever. Just saying. Skip it if you don't want to."

This guy — his answers are always slow at times like this.

Any second now, Lee Doha was going to hit me back with some peak-T-type reply — Yeah, no. Hajin, isn't this something you've got to work through on your own?

I was about to quickly cover my eyes with the wet towel and lie back down when — only then — the big lug finally answered.

"Alright. I'll go with you."

"……."

"I'll let the company know."

"…yeah, do that."

The fever must not have completely broken yet — the moment I sank into the fluffy blanket, I was out again in no time.

Maybe because I fell asleep so fast and so deep, or maybe because I'd been having every dream of a lifetime crammed into these last few days — I don't know — but I got to taste a sleep sweet as honey, without so much as a single dream.

How well did I sleep? Well enough that when I woke up the next morning, I actually thought, Huh. Was talking to Lee Doha in the middle of the night actually a dream?

"You up?"

"…yeah. Sleep well?"

But fortunately, I had clear proof that the small-hours conversation had been real, not a dream.

'Lee Doha' is 'reacting' to you. (Reaction rate 87%)

I still didn't know why….

But Lee Doha didn't feel awkward to me anymore.

And that alone was enough to make my morning feel fresh.