Chapter 119

“Ha....”

Putting Kim Yeban into a vegetative state was out of the question.

But pushing Gowon into the mire with his own hands—

“...I just can’t do it....”

That face, flustered as though it were the first time he had ever experienced liking someone.

How could Hanje do that after seeing it right in front of him...?

Would it be better if I just drove drunk and barely tapped Gowon with the car...? Would something insane like that count?

His mind had gone so blank that it was spiraling toward extremes.

“...There’s something our youngest is thinking about wrong.”

At that moment, Yunjin’s voice changed from before.

“Huh?”

“What that thing you call a ‘quest’ really favors is... ngh.”

Yunjin abruptly broke into a dry cough.

“...Yunjin?”

“It can’t lose you.”

“Yunjin, what’s wrong? Are you okay?”

“If you’re going to bargain with it. Threaten it.”

A wet choking sound came through the speaker, as though fluid had surged up his throat.

“Put yourself on the line.”

“What...!”

The call cut off before Hanje could say anything else.

He tried calling back several times, but Yunjin didn’t answer.

“...Ha....”

So many things had crashed over him without pause that his head was spinning badly enough to make him wish it were all a dream.

Then he bit his lip hard enough that it almost made a crunching sound and rapidly scrolled through his contacts.

“Taeyoung, find Yunjin.”

“What? What are you talking about all of a sudden—”

“Go straight to Yunjin’s place, Yensu.”

“The youngest?”

“Yeban.”

“Bangwon.”

Hanje fired off orders to the members with no explanation and tossed his phone aside.

For now, he entrusted Yunjin to the members he could trust.

And... he also made sure Kim Yeban, the target of the penalty, stayed with the other members.

...So that even if things went wrong and he suffered an “injury severe enough to cause a vegetative state,” they would be able to react quickly....

Then now—

“...Quest window.”

Pop.

The window appeared before his eyes, looking more inorganic than usual.

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

Success: Rewards vary by difficulty.

Failure: Quest Scenario forcibly terminated.

Wish: The world ■■■■■ ■■.

Quest Scenario <The Senior Who Paves the Flower Road>

The Senior Who Paves the Flower Road

Final Success Reward — ■■■ ■■

Failure Penalty

① Gowon: ■■

② Baek Hanje: All rewards obtained from previous Scenario Quests will be confiscated

“No wonder everyone else’s penalties were life-threatening while mine ended at having my rewards confiscated. So that means... you’d send me back to how I was at seventeen. Something like that, right?”

In that case—

“Take it out on me.”

Hanje stared heavily at the window, which looked cold enough to freeze.

“What did Young Ace ever do wrong? All five of the others worked hard on their own. They never got some kind of unfair benefit handed to them through me.”

He could hear the tremor entering his voice, but he kept going.

“...And Gowon deserves to be happy.”

The world has already hurt him enough. Don’t hurt him anymore.

Even now, Gowon was still awkward with overwhelming happiness and emotion, with all the different expressions those feelings brought to his face.

He had spent so long rolling painfully across a brutal gravel road.

Now he had only just spread his wings and taken his first step, staring at the world in wonder.

And Hanje, pathetic excuse for a senior that he was, unable either to protect his junior or coldly abandon him, was reduced to begging the quest.

“I’m the only one who got cheating-level luck from you. So take the price from me.”

Bargaining with himself as collateral hurt more than he wanted to admit.

But compared to the people who made up Baek Hanje’s world, his own value did not matter nearly as much.

Young Ace, his teammates and Hansel’s eternal muses, who had been practically his entire world ever since debut.

...and Gowon too, who had slowly wormed his way inside Hanje and made a place for himself there.

At some point, just like the members, Gowon had become someone Hanje could no longer let go of.

...Damn it.

The quest window gave no response.

It only kept dutifully counting down the remaining time.

Right.

If begging nicely could solve anything, all the suffering Hanje had gone through so far would have been ridiculous.

...Then should I finally do this my way?

“Flower Road Bastard. I’ve got a question.”

He could feel the blood draining from his face.

Even so, Hanje smiled at the quest window and threw down his wager.

“...What happens if, before the quest’s time limit expires, the person responsible for carrying out the quest becomes incapable of doing it?”

The edge of the quest window distorted the instant his question ended.

You thought you were the only one who knew how to threaten people?

For example, the same way it had tormented him over and over.

“What if I suffer an injury severe enough to put me in a vegetative state?”

Crackle—

“What if I die?”

The gray window began rippling even more violently.

If Yunjin was right—

if this thing truly cared about Hanje—

All right. Let’s do this.

“Normally, if one party to a contract dies, the contract loses force. I have no idea how you work, though. Still, it’d be pretty hard to hold a living person responsible for a dead person’s obligations, wouldn’t it?”

Yunjin, I’m sorry.

He apologized inwardly to the person who would be hurt the most if he found out what Hanje had decided to do with the hint he had given him.

“...So if you don’t want to lose me, shift the responsibility for this quest onto me.”

Activate ‘Server Clock’

The screen vanished again.

“Do it. I’ll do anything! Please...!”

A judgment for the universal benefit of ■■ ■■.

Activating ‘Server Clock’.

“......!”

The quest text distorted and began changing little by little.

‘Gowon’ video ‘1,000,000’ views ■■

It’s changing into something...!

Q. 3-2?%■

‘Baek Hanje’s’ ■■■ ■■■■■■■■■

“!”

Through the shaking screen, the target responsible for completing the quest changed from Gowon to Hanje.

The relief that they had reached some kind of compromise lasted only a moment.

The vague fear inside him suddenly spiked.

It felt as if a blade that had been pointed elsewhere had swung around and come to rest directly against his throat.

He was afraid.

But he had no regrets.

Looking at his own name now occupying the place where the two syllables of “Gowon” had originally been, Hanje remembered Gowon’s face flushing bright red in the rain.

How did you end up liking someone who does nothing but mess with you all the time?

Come to think of it, Gowon’s taste was pretty strange.

Hanje wasn’t delicately pretty like Gowon was, and although he had helped him as a senior, he had hardly done it in a soft or sweet way.

It had only been half a year.

...Ah.

As his thoughts continued, he suddenly realized something.

When he had seen Gowon’s inner feelings—

I like you.

After stripping away the shock caused by the quest window’s sudden action, the feeling that had remained underneath was....

Ding—

The vague realization was cut off as the screen changed.

Quest Conditions Changed

Achieve ‘100,000,000’ views on a ‘creative work’ by ‘Baek Hanje’

“...What?”

Whine.

“......!”

For an instant, it felt as though all the blood in his body had dropped downward at once.

As though something that had been part of him for a very long time had been torn out.

3,892/100,000,000

6,114/100,000,000

15,472/100,000,000

The unknown numbers displayed on the screen began climbing rapidly.

Once they reached the hundreds of thousands, they rose even faster.

“...What—what is this...?”

2,363,080/100,000,000

4,805,332/100,000,000

10,378,779/100,000,000

“What the hell is this...?”

The unexplained numbers surging into enormous figures poured fuel onto his fear.

Then the phone he had thrown aside began vibrating violently.

Kwon Taeyoung

“.......”

As a company executive, Taeyoung would probably be the first to understand whatever was happening to Hanje.

His trembling finger pressed the answer button.

“Baek Hanje!”

The usually composed man shouted immediately.

“Y-Yeah. ...What about Yunjin? Is Yeban okay...?”

No matter how hard Hanje tried to sound calm, his voice trembled.

“You...!”

As Kwon Taeyoung shouted again, Hanje finally understood what had been ripped away from him.

His arms dropped limply to his sides.

“Everything on your computer, all your work, it’s all—!”

50,439,134/100,000,000

“Ah.”

Hanje immediately tapped the cloud folder synced to his phone.

But he couldn’t get in.

It was as though access had been blocked.

“...So this is it.”

The price chosen by the quest window was every creative work he had made up to now.

Thousands of songs, if the unfinished ones were included.

“...Ha. Ha ha....”

It had started when he was ten, at the piano academy his mother had taken him to by the hand.

And in earnest, when he was fourteen and first encountered recording equipment and began learning music theory.

Everything he had accumulated simply because he loved making songs.

Because he had been happy to have this profession.

All of it was being released.

100,000,000/100,000,000

Q. 3-2?%■

CLEARED

***

[NEWS] K-pop’s Leading Producer, Young Ace’s Hansel, Has All Creative Work Leaked in Mysterious Hacking Attack

(Photo: Young Ace’s Hansel)

[Article abridged]

K-Dom Entertainment stated that the cause has not yet been identified and that the company is working to find a way to recover the files as quickly as possible.

Comments

Forget recovery, AI already gobbled every last bit of it up, burp~

There’ve been a fuckton of songs that sound like Young Ace going up on SoundSky since yesterday lmaoooo

Hansel unfinished songs collection.zip ← anyone who hasn’t downloaded it yet hurry up, link here. Starting tomorrow, run it all through AI and get a free ride as a composer

K-pop Board

[NEWS] Young Ace’s Baek Hanje: “This Was Entirely Due to My Own Carelessness... I Apologize for Causing Concern”

(Full article)

Hansel’s notice already made the news

Comments (999+)

Hanje, no, the hacker is the bastard who deserves to be torn apart, why are YOU apologizing...?

It sucks, but if he’s the flagship creator at a huge entertainment company, he really should’ve paid more attention to security tsk tsk

? (47 replies)

Hansel, it’s okay. They didn’t hack your talent too. You can make even better things from here on out!

? I dunno about that... if more than ten years’ worth of samples and beats are basically unusable now, starting over won’t exactly be easy, will it?

?? Nobody asked for your opinion, asshole.