Chapter 209
The articles that had poured out yesterday, and the face of President Do Jae Chan pressing his fingers to his forehead in agony.
My head was spinning.
Everything was spinning before my eyes, and I felt like I was being sucked somewhere.
At this rate, here I’d—
“…Rex? Rex. Are you okay?”
And just as I felt like I was about to disappear into thin air….
Yu Chan hyung, who’d been watching my conversation with Jae Ha hyung from behind, grabbed my shoulders and shook me urgently.
The loose white tank top he was wearing fluttered across my vision.
“…Rex’s expression right now is really bad. Jae Ha, let’s stop talking. For now, we should probably send him back to the dorm—”
“No, no, no! I’m fine. Totally.”
Once again, the sensation of my feet being firmly on the ground came through clearly.
In truth, I still felt a bit like I was floating, but at this level, I could manage.
I met the eyes of each person looking at me.
Si Woo, hurrying over with water. Hwa Sung, shaking his head in disbelief.
Jae Ha hyung’s face, calm and composed. And Yu Chan hyung, still patting my back.
When I saw my members’ faces, my mouth moved on its own.
“I-I wasn’t dating anyone.”
“Got it, got it. Rex, I’m sorry. I really didn’t mean to bring that up—”
“No, I’m going upstairs right now to request a correction. Tell them it’s baseless.”
“…R-Rex? What did you just say?”
While Hwa Sung and Si Woo stared at each other in shock…
I spoke quickly to Jae Ha hyung and Yu Chan hyung, who wore equally surprised expressions.
“Could you two come with me? I think it’ll get resolved faster than if I go alone.”
“Uh, umm….”
“…Okay. Let’s go.”
With Jae Ha hyung’s answer, everything after that happened in a flash.
“A correction article? That’s all we need to put out?”
“Yes, please. I know I’ve never asked before, but… this time, I want to.”
“Well… it’s not hard. But this is unusual. Rex coming all the way up here….”
We went to the office to request the correction, apologized to the president and team manager.
On the elevator ride back down, we made plans for all the members to have dinner together for the first time in a while.
“Rex had been, um… out with other people in the evenings. So we’d all been eating separately.”
“Really? I always thought the members all ate together.”
“No, we also sort of… uh. Haha! Anyway, that’s how it was. What matters is eating together today.”
Amid a vaguely surreal feeling of being slightly disconnected from the world, something about all of this felt faintly strange, but….
“Seriously… what’s gotten into you? This is great, though. I told you before. If you can file a complaint, you should do it as fast as possible.”
Hearing Yu Chan hyung’s excited voice, it really did seem like it was nothing at all.
I nudged Yu Chan hyung, who was doing a little shoulder-shimmy, and said lightly:
“You’re right. I should’ve done it when you first told me to.”
“Hm? Are you regretting it?”
“Yeah, kind of. Things like this… setting the record straight and all. I keep thinking it would’ve been better if I’d done it sooner….”
In that moment, the elevator light flickered.
So briefly and quickly that I thought I might have imagined it.
The light I looked at in alarm was still shining bright, but something about it felt subtly off.
“Or what if I go back up now and address the old stuff too? Should I go?”
“Huh? Well, there’s no need to rush that….”
While I was distracted and drawing out my words, Yu Chan hyung raised his voice even higher, speaking in a cheerful tone.
“No, you’ve got to knock these things out all at once. I’ll run back up now. You and Jae Ha hyung go on ahead to the dorm!”
“Wait, Yu Chan hyung”
Ding—
“See you later!”
For some reason, the elevator stopped at the very next floor down. Yu Chan hyung stepped out, and only Jae Ha hyung and I were left inside.
“Uh….”
“Haha, there he goes.”
It was then, after Jae Ha hyung had maintained his composure in the practice room, the office, and the elevator throughout, that he finally spoke.
“Something feels like… it’s going really well. Don’t you think?”
I briefly noted his oddly low energy, but before I could dwell on it…
“I think it’s a good thing. What about you, Rex?”
A gentle smile played across Jae Ha hyung’s face.
That kindness. It was the same as always, and it let me naturally release the tension in my shoulders and respond.
“Yeah, it feels good for me too. Something just strongly told me that this is what I should do.”
“You said a little bit ago that you wished you’d done it sooner.”
“Oh, yeah. Yu Chan hyung told me the same thing before, but I was completely out of it, so I didn’t properly listen—”
The elevator light flickered again.
“I think so too. That it would’ve been better if you’d done it sooner.”
Because you didn’t…
“A lot of things fell apart.”
“…Jae Ha hyung?”
The elevator light had only seemed slightly off rather than broken, but now it was flickering violently enough to see with the naked eye.
No.
It was the elevator itself…
…That was shaking.
“Do you remember what it was originally like?”
“No, Jae Ha hyung! This isn’t the time for that. Why is the company elevator doing this? It feels like it could stop any second—”
“It’s fine. Nothing terrible is going to happen.”
On the face of Jae Ha hyung, who had placed his hand firmly on my shoulder, there wasn’t a trace of a smile left.
And I had definitely seen that expression before.
“Try to remember what it was like, Rex.”
Flicker, flicker.
Inside the violently shaking elevator, beneath lights that seemed ready to explode… when I slowly closed my eyes and opened them again—
It was then.
“—Are you seriously not going to focus?!”
…I was back in the practice room.
And this time, my clamped-shut mouth did not move.
My bowed head rose, and in the full-length mirror across the practice room, my own reflection stared back at me.
A gray hoodie pulled over my head. Beneath it, unkempt black bangs that hadn’t been styled in ages.
Flaky skin and a sunken expression.
“…Ah.”
The day after the dating scandal broke. Me.
Trash Rex. Rex stood right there.
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