Chapter 116

Cold.

After walking for so long through monsoon rain that stung his skin, that was the only word left in Gowon’s head.

In a way, he preferred it.

No matter how much he thought, the only things he could do right now were pray that, by some miracle, Suhyeon’s DNA would not match the woman claiming to be his stepmother—

and cling to whatever help the adults at the company could give him.

I thought I’d grown at least a little, but I’m still right where I started.

The tension finally drained from the jaw he had kept clenched all this time.

The rain that had never stopped falling since the day he was born had finally soaked all the way into him, trying to break him apart from within.

Normally, he would have endured it somehow with a bitter Of course this would happen to me.

But he had learned what sunlight felt like, however briefly.

He had become drunk on its warmth, and the walls he had wrapped around himself had weakened.

Because someone had taught him how to rely on another person.

Because someone had helped him without demanding anything in return, until Gowon had grown accustomed to him....

“.......”

The truth was, he had been thinking about Baek Hanje for a while now.

This was not something he could ask an entertainment-industry senior to solve, yet Hanje’s face kept appearing in his mind.

Part of him wanted Hanje never to know about this miserable mess.

Another part wanted to spill every last detail, just as he had when his debt was exposed.

What would Hanje do in a situation like this?

...No.

Something like this probably would never have happened to him in the first place.

He had become his group’s producer at a young age and climbed all the way to the top. He was strong.

Even if a crisis came for him, he would never look this helpless.

After wandering without direction, Gowon eventually found himself facing the black mouth of an unfamiliar alley.

He had no idea how far he had come, so he pulled out his phone.

The moment he unlocked it, the screen showed the last thing he had searched before leaving home.

🔍 lawsuit costs│

Raindrops splashed across the screen.

“.......”

Disgusted with himself, he simply turned the phone off.

Why does this shit keep happening only to me?

He had done enough already.

He had paid off the debt that bastard of a father left behind. He had spent his whole life scraping by in poverty....

Isn’t it about time I got to be happy?

The misery of his own circumstances pressed painfully against the back of his throat.

Gowon braced a hand against the wall and slowly sank to the ground.

The pessimistic thoughts circling endlessly through his head hurt.

He bowed his head and let the rain pour straight onto him, wishing it would wash away every pathetic thought that kept returning.

He was the one who needed to get a grip more than anyone right now.

So just a little longer.

Just a little longer like this....

Then he would go back inside.

At some point, the rain stopped striking the back of his head.

“...Ah.”

When Gowon lifted his soaked face, he saw an umbrella tilted over him.

A strong hand gripping its handle.

And behind it—

the face he had been thinking about over and over just moments ago.

Hanje was taking the rain himself so Gowon could stay under the umbrella.

“An idol’s body is an asset and an investment.”

Dim streetlight fell across his wet face.

“Don’t sit around agonizing by yourself.”

“.......”

“I told you to ask for help.”

Baek Hanje stepped closer.

He briskly patted the water from Gowon’s hair and shoulders with his hand.

“What the hell is this? You could’ve at least stayed under a roof somewhere. You’re probably wetter now than you were at Splash Night.”

Apparently realizing there was no point trying to brush all the water away, Hanje simply held out his hand.

“Get up. Let’s go somewhere else first.”

“.......”

Even now, Gowon thought of the basketball court from that vanished past they had shared.

At eighteen, he had tried to keep his distance from Baek Hanje whenever the man strode toward him.

It had not only been because Gowon had never met anyone like him before and did not know what to do with it.

Maybe some part of him had instinctively understood that if he touched the light Hanje poured out, he would melt before he even realized what was happening.

But that was not why he could not take the hand being offered now.

His arm below the elbow was covered in rainwater and dirt.

He could not bring himself to dirty Hanje’s hand with it.

Baek Hanje let out a short sigh, moved beside him, and leaned against the wall.

He said nothing.

He only stood there, keeping the umbrella tilted toward Gowon.

It took Gowon a long time to find words he could actually say.

“...How did you know I was here?”

It felt as though what he truly wanted to ask was something else entirely, but he did not know what that was.

So he chose the most superficial question instead.

“Instinct.”

Baek Hanje gave the careless answer of someone who had clearly seen through him.

Then he suddenly went, “Ah—” and raked a hand through his own wet hair.

“I got your family’s address from Jonghyeok. And....”

He paused briefly before continuing.

“I’m sorry I kept this secret until now, but... that window sometimes shows me a brief summary of your condition.”

“...Ah....”

Right.

That strange translucent window.

...That was why Hanje said he had to help me.

At first, Gowon had been hurt by the realization that Hanje had not chosen him—that he had simply been saddled with Gowon against his will.

But ironically, now he felt a cowardly sense of relief that they had a connection like that, something that might keep their lives intertwined.

He even found himself thinking that this must have been how desperate Suhyeon had felt when he cried and begged them not to abandon him....

“Gowon.”

“...Yes.”

“I heard Taeyoung already told you this, but none of this is your fault.”

“.......”

“The company will help you. We’ll make sure this doesn’t interfere with your career at all.”

“.......”

Gowon could feel how carefully this senior—usually so confident and playful—was choosing his words.

He hated that his circumstances had made Hanje act that way.

He had thought the shackles tied around his body from birth had finally been unlocked one after another, leaving only one around his ankle.

Tripping over that final shackle and crashing to the ground felt more unfair than he had expected.

Especially after his heart had swelled so much while looking toward the distant future.

Gowon’s breath spread white and wide through the cold air left behind by the rain.

“...Why did that bastard have to be my biological father? Why does he still get to torment me even after he’s dead?”

As if leaving him a massive debt had not been enough.

Now Grandma, Grandpa, Sua, and even little Suhyeon had to go through this too.

“If this was going to happen, he should’ve just dumped me at some children’s home the second I was born.”

“.......”

“It would’ve been better to live as a complete orphan with no family, no ties, nothing—”

Gowon, who had been pouring out the resentment boiling inside him, abruptly stopped.

His eyes widened as he looked up at Baek Hanje.

“Hanje, I’m sorry. I—uh, no, I didn’t mean it like that....”

What he had just said—

were words he should never have said to someone who had actually grown up in a children’s home and had even been relinquished by adoptive parents.

I screwed up.

The trembling that began at his fingertips spread all the way to his shoulders.

But a moment later, Baek Hanje’s hand came down heavily over one of them.

“It’s fine, idiot. Honestly, given your situation, it’s not like you said something unforgivable. Calm down.”

Hanje’s voice was so ordinary that Gowon barely managed to steady his breathing.

But the shock of realizing what he had said, and the guilt that followed, did not disappear.

With an exasperated sigh, Baek Hanje gave Gowon’s shoulder a firm pat and spoke.

“Come to think of it, your biological parents and mine both got the qualifications to be parents ridiculously easily.”

“.......”

“Your grandparents, who struggled to raise you and your siblings. And my mom, who supported an adopted kid who said he wanted to become an entertainer. Neither of them can ever become our biological parents.”

“.......”

“And yet the people who took no responsibility are the ones who still get the rights.”

A long breath escaped him.

“...Gowon. When those trashy articles spread around calling me some pitiful adopted kid who’d already been abandoned once, I was exactly like you are now.”

“...You were?”

“I was eighteen. Actually, I was probably worse. Cried my eyes out all day.... The members were so worried they wouldn’t even let me leave the dorm. They took my phone and laptop so I couldn’t go online. I got so exhausted I slept all day, and they took turns feeding me like they were running a cafeteria.”

Baek Hanje explained that while the members kept him safely shut away, they and the company handled the aftermath, while Spades tore apart the outlet that had dug into his private life and turned it into an article.

“So somebody ought to do the same for you, don’t you think? Hell, if I’d been in that conference room, that asshole lawyer spouting all that bullshit wouldn’t have walked out on both legs.”

Even in the darkness, Gowon could almost see Hanje’s bright, easy grin clearly.

“Remember what I told you the first day I met Kim Eumyul? That you shouldn’t make fans support you by feeding them misery?”

“...Yes.”

“Making people love the pitiful version of me is the same as dragging people who love me into my own hell.”

“.......”

“Speaking from experience.”

“.......”

“For a while after that happened, Spades probably couldn’t watch my performances with the same carefree happiness they used to.”

Baek Hanje bent down toward the crouching Gowon.

“You regret something like that for a long time. I don’t want that for you. So that’s enough moping. If you stay here any longer, you’re going to get sick. You don’t want to become someone One and Only has to worry about, do you?”

Gowon had spent the entire day sinking into darkness so deeply that every thought of the stage had vanished.

Now, faintly, he remembered the light of all the stages he had stood on over the past few months with Baek Hanje’s help.

His dirty hand curled tightly into a fist as though something precious rested inside it—something he never wanted to let go of again.

“...Right. Just for today, you can be Gowon Who Got Crushed by a Crisis. Starting tomorrow, you’re going back to being Shining Idol Gowon while you calmly figure out the situation.”

Every word seemed to turn into warm air, heating the body that had gone cold in the rain.

“You’re going to be fine. No matter what.”

Something hot rose in Gowon’s throat.

It was completely different from the bitter surge of self-pity that had choked him earlier.

Gowon realized that the few months since meeting Baek Hanje had been the happiest stretch of his entire twenty-year life.

And not only because Hanje had given him a profession Gowon had never even dared dream of....

Normally—in Hanje’s workroom, or at his house—

whenever Gowon saw Hanje’s back, all the tension would simply drain from his body.

Ah.

Because Hanje never demanded responsibility from him.

If anything, Hanje repeatedly took responsibility for him.

Sometimes, he even tried to protect him.

Gowon had never had someone like that in his life.

Someone who took Gowon’s problems onto his own shoulders, then shared his talent and good fortune to help solve them.

After thrashing around in a swamp for so long, being pulled free and taking that first clean breath was something he could never forget.

“.......”

Granted, it did sometimes feel as though the total amount of misfortune Gowon carried outweighed all the good fortune Hanje had given him, considering things like this kept happening....

Still—

from the moment Hanje appeared, Gowon had stopped hearing the sound of himself falling.

Under a dark night where the clouds themselves seemed to cast light, Gowon narrowed his eyes as though the brightness hurt.

“Come on. Get up. If you get sick and become too wiped out to deal with any of this, that’ll only make things worse. You know that, right?”

“...Yes.”

Gowon desperately scrubbed the dirt from his hand against his pants, then took Hanje’s.

A strong grip pulled him up without hesitation.

...Warm.

Not only Hanje’s hand.

The things he said to Gowon.

The fact that he had come all the way here to find him.

It’s warm... and I like it.

At some point, the rain had begun to weaken.

Gowon lingered over the final words of the thought that had just crossed his mind.

I like it.

And then—

You like me?

Baek Hanje’s voice, which had been circling through his thoughts from time to time, overlapped with it.

“You’re not sick or something, are you?”

“...No....”

Confusion surged through Gowon’s head.

What the hell is wrong with me?

Hanje told me to get a grip.

Just as Hanje said, now was the time to fulfill his responsibilities both as an idol and as a member of his family....

The thoughts he was forcing into order scattered again of their own accord, and the nameless thing inside his head made its presence known.

“Like hell you aren’t. I knew it the second I saw you standing around in the rain all day. Your face is red too.”

“N-No. I’m really fine.”

“.......”

Baek Hanje tilted his head with obvious displeasure.

“You know I have a way of telling whether you’re sick, right? That window. It shows your Stamina. And whenever you get sick, the percentage starts dropping fast.”

“It can... show you things like that too?”

It was a little embarrassing, but Gowon did not feel angry at all at the idea that Hanje could see straight through his condition.

If anything, he wanted Hanje to check on him sometimes and worry about him.

Besides, he really did not feel sick right now.

Being sick was supposed to leave someone drained, but right now his heart was pounding so hard that he almost felt energized....

“Look.”

A window appeared beside Baek Hanje.

The information Gowon had seen once before was displayed there.

Gowon

Stamina: 48%

So my Stamina is at forty-eight percent. No wonder Hanje was worri—

A hand suddenly came toward his face.

Hanje pressed his palm firmly against Gowon’s forehead.

“You feel feverish.”

“.......”

“Doesn’t seem too bad, but go to the hospital first thing tomorrow morning.”

The hand slid down from his forehead and checked his temperature again at the back of his neck before moving away.

Gowon could feel real heat rising along the path Hanje’s hand had taken.

The sensation was so vivid that he felt as though he could not even touch the spot himself.

Baek Hanje had only been checking the temperature of a junior who had been standing in the rain.

It was the kind of thing he could do for anyone.

Maybe a little awkward between two grown men, but still.

Gowon’s eyes caught on Baek Hanje’s wet forehead.

Then his cheek.

Then his neck.

...Was this level of physical contact nothing to Baek Hanje?

Like the way the Young Ace members touched him all the time because he was the youngest and had always been fussed over?

Then... can I do it too?

A strange impulse began boiling inside him.

He scrubbed the remaining dirt from his hand against his clothes until it almost hurt, then reached toward Hanje.

His fingertips touched the vague space between Hanje’s wet ear and cheek.

It was undeniably human skin.

And yet Gowon felt as though he had touched an illusion.

Without realizing it, his fingertips moved slightly lower.

Past the side of Hanje’s face.

Along the smooth line of his jaw.

A raindrop clinging there transferred onto Gowon’s fingernail.

“......!”

Gowon abruptly came to his senses and jerked his hand back.

“Ah, Hanje, that was—”

His frantic attempt at an explanation proved unnecessary.

Baek Hanje was not looking at him.

He was staring straight ahead at the translucent window, eyes widened in shock.

What the hell is it showing...?

Gowon

Current Status: I like you.

“!”

Thud.

The shock hit as though the high wall at Gowon’s back had collapsed over his head.

Only his eyes moved as he looked toward Baek Hanje.

After a moment of silence, Hanje dismissed the window.

There was nothing left floating in the air.

But the strange silence and agitation between them proved what both of them had just seen.

“...Hanje, what did you just see?”