Chapter 94

Shin Jun, who had been tracing the corner of Gyeol’s mouth with his fingertips, began talking about his years at Ronas.

Most of it centered on the manager who had overseen Moving and worn the title of team leader—the man who had been at the heart of everything.

The man who had discovered Jun’s and Gyeol’s weakness and used it to threaten them.

The constant blackmail.

The violence inflicted on Jun and the other members whenever the mood struck him.

As Gyeol listened, his expression grew colder and colder.

“...So that’s why you couldn’t contact me?”

“I did try a few times. I borrowed other members’ phones and tried calling you. The calls never connected, but...”

As Jun described how he had been caught the next day, beaten again, and threatened into silence, Gyeol found himself thinking.

If a call came from an unfamiliar number, there was a good chance he had deliberately ignored it.

Back then, his brother had been at his worst.

Every conversation had revolved around money and debt. When Gyeol started avoiding his calls, his brother had begun calling from other people’s phones. Eventually, he even changed numbers just to keep reaching him.

The moment his thoughts reached his brother, a splitting headache erupted behind his eyes.

Gyeol pressed his fingers against his temple and grimaced.

Apparently misreading the gesture, Jun lowered his voice.

“There was one other time. I ran into Kisoo at an airport. I asked him to pass my email address on to you.”

At some point, Jun had lifted his gaze.

His eyes wandered anxiously, searching for an answer.

Gyeol had never received any email address from Kisoo Yang.

He had never even heard about it.

Narrowing his eyes, Gyeol thought for a moment before asking,

“...When was that?”

The date Jun gave matched Yuli’s birth almost perfectly.

More precisely, it had been when Yuli was around three or four months old.

A newborn who had arrived without giving anyone time to prepare.

His first experience raising a child.

His older brother—the baby’s father—had disappeared.

Left behind with a new life and a mountain of financial problems, Gyeol had spent every day trapped between despair and uncertainty.

He had never once resented Yuli’s birth.

Looking back now, Yuli was the reason he had survived at all.

At the same time, it had also been a period he could never have endured without Bae Hyesung and Kisoo Yang helping him through daily life and childcare.

If Kisoo—who knew every ugly detail of Gyeol’s circumstances—had received Jun’s contact information...

There was a good chance he had deliberately withheld it.

Gyeol had only just managed to erase Jun from his life. The last thing Kisoo would have wanted was to throw more confusion and hardship into the middle of an already impossible situation.

“I should ask Kisoo directly if I want the exact story, but... he probably didn’t tell me because he was thinking about me. My situation was kind of... complicated back then. So I hope you won’t blame him.”

“...I don’t.”

Jun shook his head immediately.

“I’m in no position to blame Kisoo. I owe him too much.”

“Good. Then that’s settled.”

The words were meant to stop Jun from dwelling on it.

But they were also meant for himself.

Don’t blame Kisoo.

If he had received Jun’s contact information back then, what would have happened?

Would he have reached out?

He probably would have hesitated.

But in the end, he would not have done it.

The reason was the same reason he had never gone looking for Jun himself, even though there had been ways.

Yuli had been born.

Too many things had changed since the days he had spent beside Jun.

The turmoil in his head slowly cooled.

This was the truth he had spent eight years desperately wanting to know.

And yet now that it finally sat in his hands, all he felt was emptiness.

It was less dramatic than he had imagined.

More unavoidable than he had expected.

And once he fit all the pieces together, he found he could not blame Jun alone.

Only one conclusion continued taking shape inside him.

The ending of a relationship he had always known was over.

Yet somehow was only now fully understanding.

“There was a lot that happened inside Ronas after that.”

We’re too different now.

“The members of Moving were all reaching their limits in one way or another. Eventually we reported everything to the internal audit team.”

We’ve traveled too far from the days when we walked hand in hand.

***

Three years earlier, cracks had begun appearing inside Moving.

Behind the glamorous image of a top-tier idol group admired by millions lay a reality of frequent gaslighting and violence.

Combined with an endless schedule, the members’ minds and bodies had gradually begun reaching their breaking points.

Jun suffered from chronic insomnia and bounced between psychiatric appointments.

One member developed panic disorder.

Another lost his health to an eating disorder.

The first people to finally declare, We can’t keep doing this, were the group’s leader, Jun Shin, and another member, Michael.

By then, the team leader at the center of everything had become even more untouchable thanks to Moving’s success.

The company was not entirely unaware that he controlled the members through intimidation and abuse.

But because he was related to Ronas’s CEO and consistently produced results, management chose to look the other way.

Eventually he was assigned to a new idol project.

As his surveillance of Moving loosened, the members gathered all the evidence they had accumulated and filed a report with the internal audit team.

Audio recordings and videos documenting assaults, verbal abuse, and threats.

Medical reports.

Prescriptions.

PDF archives of text messages.

Years of evidence had piled into an enormous collection.

The company initially tried to bury the matter quietly.

They praised Moving as one of their most valuable groups and offered dramatically improved contract renewal terms.

But their true objective was something else entirely.

Protect the team leader.

And prevent the company’s value from falling if the scandal became public.

“We should go to the press.”

Jun and Michael never wavered.

After deciding to expose everything, they began persuading the other members.

By the time the rest of the group had finally agreed to testify, Ronas abruptly reversed its position.

Coincidentally, several major abuse-of-power scandals were exploding throughout the entertainment industry at the time.

Fearing damage to both stock prices and public image, Ronas chose the simplest solution available.

Sacrifice one team leader.

The audit team launched a formal investigation.

Individual interviews followed.

In the end, the allegations were substantiated.

Not only the physical abuse, verbal abuse, and gaslighting—

but also excessive control, phone inspections, and serious violations of privacy.

At first, Ronas intended to issue a warning and remove the man from his position.

But the members pushed back fiercely.

Information eventually leaked outside the company.

Combined with other industry scandals dominating the news, the case exploded almost overnight.

Gyeol remembered all of that.

He had seen it in the news himself.

Even what happened afterward.

What he had never imagined was that any of it connected back to him.

How could anyone have imagined it?

After a long legal battle, the team leader was fired and sued for damages.

Moving and Ronas ultimately reached a settlement.

The members renewed their contracts under terms far more favorable to artists, creating what many considered a positive precedent within the industry.

The story had attracted significant public attention.

Because it reached such an unusually ideal conclusion, virtually anyone connected to entertainment—or even mildly interested in it—knew about the case.

Of course, there were details Gyeol had never known.

One of Jun’s demands had been that every piece of material used to blackmail him eight years earlier be destroyed, and that proof of its destruction be provided.

The process had been conducted in absolute secrecy at Jun’s request.

Even the other members had not been informed.

In the end, legally binding documents were drafted, notarized, and finalized.

Not long after everything was resolved, Jun and Michael found themselves alone in a practice room preparing for their comeback stage.

That was when Michael asked,

“So now you can contact him, right?”

Jun didn’t ask who Michael meant.

There was only one person he wanted to contact.

“What are you hesitating for? There’s nothing stopping you anymore. Nobody’s monitoring your calls. Nobody’s going to beat you for making one.”

“I don’t know.”

Jun lowered his eyes.

“Too much time has passed. ...Do I even have the right to contact him now?”

“Jesus.”

“Seven years is a long time. Every day I imagine finally calling him and saying, ‘I couldn’t contact you because I was being watched.’”

His voice grew quieter.

“But I have no idea what expression he’d make when he heard that.”

A faint laugh escaped him.

“I’m scared.”

“Jun Shin, you only get like this when it comes to him.”

For some reason, those words stayed with him.

Do I really only lose myself when it comes to Gyeol?

Jun didn’t think so.

Because the person who made him most like himself was Gyeol.

During all the years they had been apart, he couldn’t remember a single moment he had truly been himself.

Or truly sane.

“So what? You’re just going to keep sitting here because you’re scared?”

Michael stared at him with naked exasperation before standing.

“Then stay exactly like this. Spend the rest of your life never seeing him again and never getting over him either.”

Every night, Jun dreamed of standing outside Gyeol’s door.

About knocking.

About reaching for the handle.

About opening it.

But just like that day, he never moved.

He only stood there waiting.

Waiting outside the {N•o•v•e•l•i•g•h•t} door for hours.

No matter how long he waited.

No matter how many nights passed.

Gyeol never opened the door.

A month drifted by.

Everything had been resolved.

Yet nothing inside him felt resolved at all.

Then one night, Jun finally gave in.

He called Gyeol.

—

“The number you have dialed is no longer in service...”

—

The mechanical recording echoed in his ear.

At first he thought he had entered the number incorrectly.

He tried again.

And again.

And again.

The result never changed.

It was too late.

That night, for the first time since leaving Gyeol behind, Jun broke down and cried.

The tears never stopped.

He spent the entire night awake.

Not sleeping for even a moment.

Not long afterward, news about R-Connect 10 reached him.

At first he intended to dismiss it as something unrelated to his life.

Then he heard a name.

A name that seized his consciousness in an instant.

Gyeol Go.

Your name.

Just two syllables.