Chapter 70

Gowon likewise showed no particular sign of anything, merely leaving the house and coming back.

Today, too, he stepped through the front door around dinnertime.

“Where have you been?”

“Ah, I went to practice, then stopped by the grocery store.”

“......”

As though someone might fail to realize he had a decadent concept coming up, he answered while pulling down his black mask.

During promotions for <DEEP>, his main concept had involved flowing silk shirts, so he had maintained a body thin enough to seem almost excessive.

Perhaps because he had relaxed the strict dietary restrictions after promotions ended, his upper body had bulked up slightly compared to a month ago. His broad back and shoulders pulled his short-sleeved T-shirt taut in a pleasing way.

He does look better this way, but that’s not the important part....

“Don’t you have something to tell me?”

“What? Ah, I was planning to make braised kimchi for dinner.”

“No, not that.”

“......?”

“......”

“...Ah.”

Exactly. Hurry up and tell me what the problem is! That way I can either help you or cause enough of a scene to get you out of it.

But why was he suddenly sulking again?

“I think every member of Young Ace has at least one part of their personality that resembles yours.”

“Huh?”

“...They scare people, then say it was a joke.”

“What? What are you talking about?”

“I’ll have dinner ready soon.”

Carrying a pay-as-you-throw garbage bag stuffed with the groceries he had bought, Gowon strode off into the kitchen.

“What the hell is he talking about?”

Status window.

A window appeared before my eyes.

Today, the system window once again displayed a strange color that was neither gray nor pink. It changed like this every now and then, and now it was doing it again.

Gowon

Current Status: Hmph.

Is he going through puberty?

Had puberty finally arrived late because he had spent his childhood acting as the head of the family?

Quest, regardless, isn’t he in some kind of crisis? Hurry up and give me one of those emergency whatever-it-is things. Like with Executive Director Choi.

But the quest window remained silent.

“Hey, Gowon. I’m asking whether you have some problem you can’t talk about.”

Standing in front of the pot with a bottle of soup soy sauce in his hand, Gowon turned around.

“...It’s a secret.”

“Well, look at you.”

Gowon

Current Status: You wouldn’t understand.

Oh, would I not?

“Hey, it’ll be too late if you tell me afterward.”

“......”

“I’m telling you, it’ll be too late.”

Gowon merely continued slicing kimchi with crisp, crunchy strokes.

***

While Gowon, struck by a belated adolescence, circled around harboring a secret from me, the day of the Taejang Card Concert finally arrived.

Because the concert included artistic performances and filming was prohibited, fancams did not circulate in droves the way they did for idol stages.

But the response was nothing short of explosive.

And the most talked-about performance of all was the one Gowon had participated in.

...In a positive sense.

When no emergency quest had appeared even at the very last minute, I eventually lost patience and discreetly asked Kwon Taeyoung about it.

“Gowon handled it just fine on his own.”

That was his response, so I assumed Gowon had changed the song or altered the style of the performance.

But that was not it.

I watched a grainy, dimly lit video that someone had secretly recorded.

Gowon stood at the center of the stage.

A woman approached from behind him.

Click.

Gowon brought both arms behind his back of his own accord, and handcuffs were fastened around his wrists.

Then the controversial song began to play, and the performance started.

With the entire dynamic between the man and woman in the original song completely reversed.

The woman yanked Gowon toward her roughly.

Following choreography adapted from contemporary dance, Gowon performed partner movements with his hands bound behind his back.

He looked like a man who willingly followed a lover obsessed with control, even as he discarded his entire self for her sake.

Gowon made full use of the image he possessed. The obsessive gaze and movements of someone determined to do anything to fulfill his desire. A love he would achieve even if it meant throwing away everything he had.

With his upper body restrained, he turned that into art expressed solely through his two legs.

An insane love-hate relationship between one psychopath and another. A destructive bond with no intention of breaking apart despite knowing it would end in ruin.

“...Gowon was really on fire that day....”

Exclamations escaped the people watching the video with me in the division head’s office. Since Gowon had been in the position of having to personally travel to the rehearsal studio prepared by the other party, none of them had properly seen the practice performance, making their admiration even greater.

With artistry at this level, there was no room for controversy or anything else.

While everyone was breathing a sigh of relief, the dance trainer, who knew at least part of what had happened during rehearsals, spoke up.

“You remember when he did that special host stage with Hanje? There was a part Gowon struggled with, so the two of them swapped sections. Apparently he took inspiration from that and applied it to this choreography. That kid really is a genius. Even with the contemporary dance movements, the moment the instructor demonstrated one, he picked it up immediately.”

“......”

“His partner went to an arts middle school, an arts high school, and even majored in contemporary dance, but somehow he doesn’t get outclassed at all. He’s a sponge. An absolute sponge.”

It was certainly something worthy of extravagant praise.

But that was... a little strange.

Gowon had never been a trainee before. He had merely been an ordinary civilian who happened to join <Debut Chart> after coming to the broadcasting station for a delivery job.

And yet he had revealed an innate genius and overwhelmed the stage.

...Why had I never, not even once, found that strange?

No. Perhaps it had taken me longer to realize because I was a senior singer.

My standards were simply too high to recognize an achievement so excessive that it bordered on bizarre....

But now that I saw this, I understood.

Broadcast choreography and contemporary dance were plainly different fields.

His first attempt at contemporary dance had reached a level comparable to someone who had majored in it?

Gowon, who had only been learning dance seriously for two years?

Does that make any realistic sense?

“Maybe Gowon really is a genius. Isn’t that why he won first place on <Debut Chart>?”

“Oh, Hanje. Couldn’t Gowon do another decadent concept like that next time? It suits him so well.”

But no one sympathized with the question I had cautiously raised.

...What is this?

Once suspicion took hold, it only grew stronger.

When I thought about it, there had been something fundamentally strange from the beginning.

First place on <Debut Chart>.

That did not mean Gowon’s skill was unworthy of first place. Gowon had clearly been born to stand onstage.

But that program had suffered from a ranking-manipulation scandal.

Which meant there had been predetermined contestants intended to place in the rankings.

No matter how skilled someone was, a producer’s power could edit them to look like an inferior student within the program.

And yet Gowon had come in first.

They could have edited him out before he became the overwhelming frontrunner.

How the hell did he do it?

“Because Gowon was good!”

“......”

After receiving the same answer every time, I returned to my studio and began searching for <Debut Chart>.

Naturally, since the program had caused an uproar throughout the entire country over its manipulation scandal, every legitimate route for watching it had been blocked.

Several hours passed before I realized it.

There’s nothing.

There was truly no trace of it at all.

It had been such a popular program, yet forget the full episodes—I could not even find performance clips.

“...What the hell is this?”

The sense of wrongness kept growing.

<Debut Chart>. Gowon. What the hell was this? Why was I the only one who had noticed how strange it was?

After digging for much longer, I finally swallowed my unease and entered a suspicious, unidentified website. There, I discovered that at least a few clips remained.

“Hah.”

Among the handful of videos, I clicked one with Gowon in the thumbnail.

Gowon stood in the center position, his face still carrying more baby fat and his overall atmosphere less dark than it was now.

“What the hell? Why is there no sound?”

It was not muted, and the speakers were on and working. The video had already started, so what was wrong?

“Hyung.”

At the exact moment the inexplicable silence broke, something suddenly settled on my shoulder.

“I knocked... but I don’t think you heard me.”

Gowon was standing behind me, having appeared without my noticing. He looked at the screen and opened his mouth.

“Y-You ✧ NоvеIight ✧ (Original source) were watching my video?”

“...Uh....”

The tips of Gowon’s ears began to turn red. Watching him hesitate and mumble, “That was back when I wasn’t even very good,” seemed to calm my heart, which had been pounding from the sense of wrongness.

—I’ve waited for this day for a very long time.

At that moment, sound abruptly began playing through the speakers.

Having sung the intro as the center, Gowon stepped back.

And then.

“I was just... getting curious, so I was watching....”

The person who would sing the next part approached from behind Gowon while changing positions.

But that face.

Me...?

Seventeen, eighteen....

It was my face from around the time Young Ace had just begun escaping its failed-idol days.

There had been someone on <Debut Chart> who looked that much like me?

“Hey, Gowon. Do you know who this is?”

“What? Uh... I’m sure....”

—Don’t think you can just let it slide. You already noticed.

“What the fuck is this?”

Even the voice was exactly the same as mine!

Goosebumps rose across my entire body, and I shot to my feet as though fleeing from my chair. What the hell was this?

“Hyung?”

“Gowon, what the hell is—”

Kzzzzzt―――.

The monitor displaying the performance suddenly distorted.

“Hyung, what’s wrong....”

Then Gowon’s face as he grabbed me in confusion did the same. No, everything around me flickered like the screen of a malfunctioning old television. Which meant there was something wrong with my vision.

There was only one possible reason for such an abnormal phenomenon.

—The quest window!

Get out here right now!

Before I knew it, a blue rectangle appeared amid the gray that had covered my vision, crackling with static in the same way.

<A Senior Paving the Road to Glory> Part 3

Become the year’s most outstanding rookie.

Stage 3 Objective: Win Rookie of the Year

(Temporarily Suspended)

<A Senior Paving the Road to Glory> Part 4

Correct the Error in Time

Stage 4 Objective: Establish plausibility for the gap left empty in the past

What the fuck does that even mean?!

The quest window stretched long as though its light were bleeding outward. None of the curses I wanted to shout could become sound.

Instead, a melody I had heard hundreds of times this year rang in my ears.

—Para, Para, Para, Paradox.......