Chapter 100

“Haa....”

Then what was I supposed to tell Gowon, who was carrying those memories around and drowning in confusion?

In the end, the jazz festival meeting finished without me managing to focus properly even once. Taeyoung even told me to come back tomorrow when I had my head on straight.

At least I managed to properly ask him to look into Yunjin’s whereabouts.

Ah. I did add one more thing.

‘Still, if you had to pick one person out of a hundred, you’d pick me, right?’

‘...Go get some sleep already. At home, not in your workroom.’

Even after getting kicked out of the company like that and driving all the way to my apartment parking garage, the troubled sighs just kept coming.

Before heading upstairs, I clenched both fists as if steeling myself one last time and called out.

“Gowon... Current Status.”

The instant the window popped up in front of me, my heart jumped ahead of itself again. It felt like I’d shaved a year off my lifespan today alone.

Gowon

Current Status: Searching....

The quest window, this bastard. At least it knows enough to read the room during an emergency.

It had gotten rid of those shitty black boxes and was showing me Gowon’s thoughts exactly as they were.

Gowon

Current Status: Searching—<Debut Chart>

Current Status: Searching—<Young Ace Baek Hanje Career>

Current Status: Searching—<Debut Chart Baek Hanje Appearance>

“.......”

You probably won’t find the result you’re looking for.

By the time you appeared on <Debut Chart! 100>, “Baek Hanje” was already a veteran idol at the top of the industry, and just like you saw earlier... any connection to the program would probably only show him as a mysterious arranger whose involvement had been kept under wraps.

Gowon

Current Status: Following related searches—<Merry Christmas Guy>

Current Status: W-Why is this here?

Current Status: ◉///◉??

“Ah.”

Some achievements are applied to the present.

Was that included in the “some” too?

“...Well, it’s not a bad image, so just keep it....”

It’ll probably land you at least one commercial every holiday season for the next few years.

Probably.

Gowon

Current Status: Still searching—“delusional disorder”

Current Status: Still searching—“mental confusion”

“...Hey. Hold on.”

How did your thoughts drift that far again...?

His self-esteem wasn’t exactly high to begin with. I had no idea how deep he might spiral if he kept digging like this.

“Flower Road, what are you going to do now? Haa... no. Fine. I get it. You screwed something up and now you’re flailing around because you don’t know how to fix it either. Then at least compensate the kid for putting him through this shit.”

Inflate the earnings payout of the guy who still had debt hanging over him, or drop a hit song into his lap that would surpass <Paradox>.

The past was restored excessively well, causing a somewhat large influence on the present.

“I told you, how is doing too good a crime? Huh? If all I had to do was make him first place, I would’ve started by smacking the producer over the head and replacing him. You know that, right?”

The quest window stopped moving for a moment.

Then something like a glittering button appeared in the middle of the translucent window.

A reward will be issued for your excessively excellent quest performance.

Please claim your reward.

“......?”

Looks like it’s trying to give me something.

After making me pace around a parking garage because I couldn’t even go into my own home, it had better not be anything weird.

I touched the glowing section with the tip of my finger. It should have been empty air, but I felt something catch beneath my touch with a soft tap.

Reward: Server Clock

A server clock?

Isn’t that... what people use when they’re trying to buy tickets?

I remembered seeing Spades fans complaining and swearing about those things on Boggle more than once.

If that’s what this is, the Young Ace girls need it more than I do.

Would you like to activate “Server Clock”?

“.......”

I still had a bad feeling about it, but I nodded anyway.

“Try whatever you’ve got, punk.”

The window stretched open at once, pouring out alert after alert.

The Senior Who Paves the Flower Road Part 3

Become This Year’s Top Rookie

Stage 3 Objective: Win a Rookie Award

Part 3 Additional Penalty — An injury severe enough to reduce Kim Yeban to the same condition as the lyrics incident

Q3-2. A truly devoted son must make sure people see his face often.

If you have built an unblemished past, strong digital performance, and Recognition, now is the time to imprint yourself on the public and cement your presence.

Create a YouTube video with at least NNNN views.

Easy: 1,000,000–3,000,000

Normal: 3,000,000–9,999,999

Hard: 10,000,000+

Time Limit — 1439h 59m 50s (D-60)

Success: Rewards vary according to difficulty

Failure: Quest Scenario forcibly terminated

“What the hell? This is the quest you arbitrarily suspended because you wanted to cram me into <Debut Chart! 100>.”

The only changes were a little extra explanation and a reset time limit.

“Are you kidding me? You’re calling this a reward—”

Ding—

As if telling me to shut up and listen until the end, another window hurriedly layered itself over the first.

The Senior Who Paves the Flower Road Part 4

CLEARED

The Senior Who Paves the Flower Road Part 5

loading...

The effect of “Server Clock” allows the Part 3 quest and Part 5 quest to proceed simultaneously.

“...Oh?”

The original final objective of Part 3 was “Win a Rookie Award,” which meant I couldn’t even confirm completion until the end of the year.

But now it was offering me the opportunity to proceed with the next quest while I waited.

Based on everything I’d experienced so far, I suspected there would be as many quest stages as there were Young Ace members.

Five stages if I wasn’t counted. Six if I was.

And if Part 5 could run at the same time, that was good for me. I could finish this bullshit where it threatened my older members that much sooner.

Wish: The world ■■■■■ ■■.

Quest Scenario <The Senior Who Paves the Flower Road>

And Gowon’s wish...

I could make that come true even one day sooner.

“What’s Part 5?”

The Senior Who Paves the Flower Road Part 5

■

The Senior Who Paves the Flower Road Part 5

Quest being formulated...

Part 5 Additional Penalty — Big Room (Bangwon Ahn) permanently expelled from the hip-hop scene

“Oh, come on. What the hell are you doing to our main rapper? Hip-hop is his entire damn life.”

Bangwon Ahn was the kind of man who had gone on a rap-battle survival show despite everyone at the company recoiling in horror and even the members trying to stop him because the potential losses were too severe—and then came back having won the whole thing anyway.

Young Ace’s main rapper, who had ultimately proven his skill despite all the contempt and stigma aimed at him for being an idol.

The achievements that came out of <Show Me the Gold> belonged to Bangwon personally. Why the hell was the system demanding those as payment?

More than anything, shoving the penalty in my face before it even gave me the quest made the whole thing feel even shittier.

“Hey, you. If the fifth-part quests take this long to load, you’d better extend the time limit accordingly. Why the hell are you so damn slow?”

Part 5 consists of a single quest.

Q5-1 has no time limit.

“......?”

What the hell could it be?

At this point, my curiosity only grew stronger.

But no matter how long I waited, Part 5 refused to move past “Quest being formulated...”

Looks like this is going to take longer.

“Then show me Gowon’s Current Status again.”

Gowon

Current Status: Searching—Using a translation app...

Gowon

Current Status: Search result—“An ancestor paving a road with flowers”?

“.......”

He’s taking the longest possible route, but somehow he does seem to be getting closer to the right answer.

Gowon

Current Status: Reasoning—Flowers on a road... a flower road...?

“Oh.”

Gowon

Current Status: Reasoning result—<The Senior Who Paves the Flower Road>

I gave a halfhearted round of applause behind the steering wheel.

“You figured out all of it. Guess there’s no point putting it in English anymore.”

Gowon

Current Status: ■■ ■■■ ■■ ■■■ ■■?

Gowon

Current Status: ■■ ■■■....

“You just did well with the English, so I praised you. Why? Why are you getting all gloomy again?”

I opened the car door with a sigh.

How long am I going to keep running away from this? Whatever has to happen, has to happen.

Flower Road, finish loading while I’m upstairs, got it?

Do your damn job too!

***

The instant the front door opened, a thunder of footsteps came rushing toward me.

The welcome was so loud that I briefly wondered whether I’d somehow started keeping a huge dog in the apartment.

“Brother.”

I looked down at the two hands clamped tightly around my arm.

“I’m not running away, idiot.”

“...Ah.”

Gowon’s fingers slowly loosened.

“You’re later than usual.... Did the meeting run long?”

The moment I saw my junior standing there looking so anxious that all the tension I’d felt in the car seemed trivial by comparison, my own nerves ironically vanished.

“Gowon.”

“...Yes.”

“You’re still a kid. Why are you thinking so hard your head’s about to explode? Just do what you always do. ‘I don’t understand any of this. Tell me what’s going on.’”

“...N-No....”

Only then did his tightly strained voice soften a little.

We went straight to the table and sat across from each other.

The exact same place where I’d once cornered Gowon and demanded answers about his family situation.

Gowon had been staring at me without blinking even once.

So this is what it feels like from the other side....

All right. What do I even start with?

While I was still thinking, Gowon spoke first.

“...There’s no way you actually went on <Debut Chart! 100> with me... right?”

He had probably spent the entire day searching until he’d figured out which half of his conflicting memories had to be the impossible one.

“Obviously not. Common sense should tell you that. I debuted ten years before <Debut Chart! 100> even existed.”

“...Ah....”

“.......”

...Haa.

The moment I saw the deep disappointment in his eyes, my hesitation disappeared.

“But sometimes, impossible things really do happen in this world.”