Chapter 81

Han Seongwoo doesn't remember much of what happened after that.

"…so we're planning to wrap this up with you quietly leaving the company."

Show withdrawal.

Viewer voting manipulation.

Trainee contract termination.

Warnings about penalties and damages that would follow.

The words coming out of Ji Suho's mouth were, every last one of them, familiar and terrifying at the same time.

He'd carried an uneasy corner in his mind that said one day, maybe, it would get out….

But not now. Not now. At the very least, not like this.

Feeling the alarms ringing in his head and the fast beat of his heart, Han Seongwoo denied reality.

"I — I don't know anything about this."

"……"

"I really don't know anything about it, Team Lead. Please, believe me!"

But the response that came back was cold.

"CP Yoon Giseok has already admitted everything, and on the condition we bury it, he's agreed to take separate disciplinary action from the broadcaster's side."

CP Yoon spilled everything? After how much we've paid him at our house?

The moment he heard that, Han Seongwoo felt his blood run cold, and clenched a fist trembling with rage. He clenched his teeth so hard his jaw ached.

Watching him do it, Ji Suho quietly delivered the verdict.

"You know this is a crime, right."

"……"

"If I wanted to blow this up, I could blow it up as big as you like. We're only settling for this much — not for your sake, Seongwoo."

"……"

"I want you to keep firmly in mind that it's because I don't want to waste the effort of all the other kids who are still practicing hard, sweating over it right now."

Then he quietly slid over a few documents the legal team had prepared.

A non-disclosure agreement, along with other papers legally binding just in case.

"I haven't told your parents. You're an adult too, at this point."

"N-no! Please, not my father—"

Ji Suho looked at Han Seongwoo — dumbly, still trembling — and let out a small sigh.

Then, drawing on whatever last bit of affection he'd had for the kid he'd been watching all this time, he offered the only piece of advice he could.

"Why did you do it, Seongwoo?"

"……"

"Why on earth would you make this choice. You should have trusted yourself more. Really, you should have."

"……"

"Trusted your own effort, trusted how badly you wanted it. However cutthroat this industry is — however much it's a world where someone has to die for you to live — what you did isn't competition. It's illegal, and it's fraud."

"……"

"Read them slowly, think it over, and sign if you feel you can. But whether you sign or not, the show withdrawal and the contract termination are still valid."

Speaking firmly, Ji Suho left Han Seongwoo in that small meeting room and stepped out.

'This… what is this.'

Han Seongwoo was alone again.

When he dropped his head, water still dripping from his damp hair pooled into a small puddle on the table.

'What is this. What the fuck. What the hell is this!'

His life and his dream, dumped out overnight — it all felt so empty.

He resented his father, who hadn't pushed him hard enough to save him from ending up like this.

And he hated CP Yoon — who'd taken all that money, and then, not content with getting caught, had dragged Seongwoo down with him.

'Where did this go wrong?'

Han Seongwoo racked his brain trying to pinpoint the cause of this disaster.

Among everything and everyone he was blaming and resenting, there was nothing about himself.

By the time Han Seongwoo's trembling hand had finished signing the contracts in front of him,

he was already half out of his mind with self-justification and rage over the whole situation.

After some time had passed, Ji Suho came back in wearing his usual composed expression.

"…all done?"

"……"

"Sorry, but I'll need you to clear out your things right away. If it's too much to carry in one trip, let me know."

An unmistakable order to leave.

Never in his life having been treated with this kind of coldness, Han Seongwoo bit down on his lip and asked.

"…do — do the other kids know?"

Not a trace of reflection or apology in his voice.

Suho answered with a small snort of a laugh.

"No. Only a very small handful of people in the company even know about this."

"……"

"Though, who knows. This industry is small, and rumors travel fast."

"……"

"Thanks for the work you've put in. Get home safely."

Only then did Han Seongwoo realize he was crying.

His body — soaked and clammy from head to toe — felt disgusting, but he knew, deep down, that the disgust wasn't from the rain. And he also knew, in fact, where that disgust really came from.

Han Seongwoo slowly rose from his chair.

It was time to leave.

---

Naturally, when Han Seongwoo left Miro, not a single person saw him out.

'Bunch of little shits who wouldn't have amounted to anything without me anyway….'

Grinding his teeth all the way, Han Seongwoo doggedly packed up his things. Fortunately, most of the trainees had gone up to the practice room on the third floor, so there weren't many people in the basement — he didn't run into too many of them.

"Aigo, hyungnim. Heading out {now?"}(#2r8kks9stvai)

But among the handful still down there, the moment he saw the one person he least wanted to run into, Han Seongwoo finally lost his grip on his sanity.

"You — you fucking bastard!"

"Aack, this hyung is trying to kill me!"

With a clatter, the things Han Seongwoo was holding fell and rolled around messily on the floor.

But Han Seongwoo didn't seem to give a damn, charging in the basement corridor at Hajin — who was standing there openly mocking him with a bright smile.

He grabbed the collar of Hajin — a good half a foot taller than him — and slammed him against the wall with everything he had.

"It's you, right? It was you. You fucking snitched, didn't you?"

"Huh? Hyungnim, what are you talking about?"

"Shut up! It was you. You're the only one who knew about me and PD Yoon — it was you who snitched, you fuck!"

Han Seongwoo, who'd been feeling backed into a corner this whole time, went into an uncontrollable rage the moment his composure snapped. Refusing to admit any wrongdoing on his own part right to the end, he started pinning everything that had happened to him on Hajin.

"Hyungnim. You're a little worked up — let's calm down first…."

"I've hated you from day one. The way you walk around acting like you're something, huh? Seriously fucking obnoxious. You — you — I'm going to get you good the second I'm out of here. Got it?!"

"Got it, so let go and let's talk, Seongwoo-hyungnim. Even so, grabbing a guy by the collar like this…."

"You know what kind of man my father is? It's not like this is the only agency around — I'll just go out and debut somewhere else. You think there aren't plenty more brainless pigs out there who'll debut me if I throw some money at them?"

"……"

"Fuck, I never should've come here in the first place. Cocky little shits, hiding behind me while they play their own pecking-order games and sort each other into ranks…. Stuck in a — stuck in a place like this, if it weren't for my father, fuck, I would've really — !"

"H-hyungnim. Please — please, just—"

His mind had gone fully off the rails; the hand gripping Hajin's collar was tightening more and more.

Whether he was aware of it or not, Hajin's neck was slowly getting choked. Hajin, faintly gasping, seemed to fumble to grab Han Seongwoo's wrist with a slightly frightened look — and then—,

"—let go and talk, is what I said."

Face cool and voice level, perfectly unbothered, he peeled Han Seongwoo's hand off with ease.

"…w-what?"

Now it was Han Seongwoo staring up at Hajin like he'd seen a ghost.

Hajin looked down at Han Seongwoo with a mix of contempt, mockery, and a lot of pity, and pushed Han Seongwoo's wrist away with a terrifying grip. Han Seongwoo skidded backward two, three steps under the force.

"Really. What a lack of manners."

Hajin, as if he'd never been pinned to a wall a moment ago, straightened his collar with ease and pulled a phone out of his pocket. On the screen he turned toward Han Seongwoo, the recording function was clearly active, the time ticking away on it.

Watching Han Seongwoo still too startled to properly process the situation, Hajin tapped the stop-recording button.

"So, the thing about you, hyungnim… you're such a see-through kind of guy. Like, I can basically map out what step you're going to take next."

"You — you!"

"Keep with the 'you, you' and this voice recording might accidentally end up online, you know. You still don't get it?"

"……!"

A recording.

The moment he pictured what would happen if that spread online, the color drained from Han Seongwoo's face. If what he'd just said about his father got out, not only he but his father and his father's company would take the hit.

'How many times has my father already had to cover for me as it is — this, absolutely not!'

He lunged in trying to snatch the phone, but Hajin — proving that he'd let his collar be grabbed earlier on purpose — brushed past Han Seongwoo effortlessly and slid the phone into his back pocket.

"How's this going to work, hyungnim. At least last time there was no physical evidence, but this time something got left behind."

"You — why the fuck are you doing this to me!? I never did anything bad to you, so why! What kind of grudge are you working out on me?"

Hajin didn't so much as blink at the shout, which was closer to a tantrum. He twisted one corner of his mouth into a slow, lazy smile and shrugged like he couldn't believe it.

"Hyung didn't have a reason either, right? For bullying Ju Eunchan along with the other kids."

"……!"

Ever hear of putting yourself in someone else's shoes, I wonder.

Hajin's snide voice came through, but Han Seongwoo couldn't offer him any kind of reply anymore.

"Listen carefully, hyungnim. This is how blackmail is done. Me — sure, I'll just not get to debut and that's the end of it, but hyungnim, you've got a lot to hold on to, and that means a lot to lose, right?"

"……"

"Meaning the moment you try anything cute, we both go down in flames. Hope that's clear. Now — get out of here, quietly. Let's not see each other again."

And then he walked right past Han Seongwoo with a look of unmistakable mockery.

Like there was no need to exchange another word.

Like it didn't matter to him at all whether Han Seongwoo sank on his own from here.

"……"

Only then did Han Seongwoo's head cool, and he took in his situation objectively.

Unbearable fear and helplessness rushed in. Nausea rose. Now that he'd realized everything, the only thought he had was to get out of here fast.

"Fuck, this — this is… this is insane…."

Han Seongwoo scrambled to pick up his belongings as if someone were chasing him.

Hurriedly gathering the things he'd flung down himself just minutes ago in a fit of temper, he rushed out of the basement before anyone could see him. Afraid he might run into someone if he took the elevator, he took the emergency stairs up instead, breath coming ragged.

"How could — how could — those little shits, how dare they — how dare they do this to me…!"

By the time Han Seongwoo — mind completely shredded — reached the entrance, a small notebook slipped out of his armful of things and dropped, forlorn, to the ground. Seongwoo's own practice notebook, which he'd once kept with real dedication.

As he bent to pick it up, someone else got to it first — brushing off the dust and dirty water and holding it out to him.

"…here."

The one holding out his soiled practice notebook was Ju Eunchan.

The Ju Eunchan Seongwoo had smeared with a parachute-hire rumor and, for a stretch, gotten completely frozen out by the other trainees.

"You come to laugh at me too?"

"……"

"Go on. Laugh. Mock me, fuck!"

The truth was, Han Seongwoo had envied Ju Eunchan.

He'd envied a Ju Eunchan who, despite similar conditions to his own, seemed to outmatch him at every turn.

Squeezing every last breath out of that shining kid until he couldn't move an inch had made Seongwoo feel superior.

And with that whole dynamic now completely inverted, Han Seongwoo was certain Ju Eunchan would mock and despise him.

But what came out of Ju Eunchan's mouth was the exact opposite of what he'd expected.

"Why would I have to mock you, hyung?"

"…what?"

"There was a while when I used to wonder — had I done something wrong to you, hyung."

"……"

"I thought about it, and thought about it, and thought about it… and it turned out no, I hadn't."

Only then did Han Seongwoo realize there was no emotion at all in the way Ju Eunchan was looking at him.

"So I don't feel anything about you anymore, hyung."

"……"

"I'd like it if you were the same, hyung."

With that, Eunchan set the notebook lightly on top of Han Seongwoo's pile of things and walked past him, on toward wherever he'd been going.

Which meant Eunchan really hadn't come to laugh at him or mock him — he'd just happened to cross paths with him.

In the end, Han Seongwoo realized he hadn't managed to leave a mark on anything.

Realized he hadn't left behind so much as one thing he could point to to salvage some sense of superiority, some proof he'd made an impression.

This was where it ended.

Without accomplishing a single thing, with every one of his weaknesses in someone else's grip, it ended right here.

"No…."

And that was how Han Seongwoo left Miro.