The Malicious Member is Back! - Chapter 215

“Hm, from now on, Gao Yan must consider what kind of content will bring fame. Gao Yan does not particularly enjoy eating, so mukbang is out. Perhaps remote wilderness travel after all….”

But could our company really handle that kind of grand scale?

“Ha, haha….”

“Hm? Chunyong. What’s with that hollow laugh? Could it be… you want to visit Mayan civilization with Gao Yan?! To go there, we’d need to push back the debut schedule—”

“No, dude! Forget it. Get going. Logan and I have stuff after this. We need to head somewhere else.”

“Hm, understood. But before that….”

Whoosh—

“Here’s to working well together from now on, Chunyong hyung!”

Gao Yan thrust his hand out, and his smile was genuinely radiant.

Even more so than before the live broadcast, when he’d said thank you thinking it was the last time.

It was truly a rather magnificent sight.

“…Same here. Looking forward to it.”

With a casual shrug, I gripped his hand firmly and shook it.

Since I’d owed Gao Yan so much during the survival show, it was my turn to help him this time.

“Then Gao Yan shall take his leave. Gao Yan also has a schedule! A star is always busy, yes indeed.”

“Sure. See you around.”

I already knew what his main WeTube content niche would be, so I’d figure out how to help boost it in due time….

For now.

“Chunyong hyung! Wait—Gao Yan signed a contract too? What on earth—”

“Yeah, apparently so. I’ll explain the details later. Logan, you.”

Did you ask about what I told you to ask about?

“—Oh.“

I needed to take care of my debut and my members first.

My abrupt change of subject might’ve caught him off guard, but Logan, with an expression that said I already figured it out, quickly moved to the point.

“I asked, and they said I can move into the dorm as early as today. I guess this is what they call lightning speed. They said they’d send the password by message.”

“Great. Then, shall we get going?”

I grabbed Logan’s arm and walked briskly.

“Wait, Chunyong! I need to look up where it is first….”

Logan looked pretty flustered, but right now, I didn’t have the bandwidth to worry about that.

This was my first time going to the dorm since coming back too, and I was honestly quite excited.

“You don’t need to look it up, dude.”

I lived there for eight years.

How could I not know where our dorm is?

* * *

Sure enough, ToZ’s dorm was in the same place as my memory.

Apartment 812, eighth floor, in a residential area not far from the company.

“You already knew where it was, Chunyong? So that’s why you suggested I move into the dorm early. Brilliant. Impressive.”

“Well… something like that.”

It would’ve been embarrassing if I’d claimed to know the location and it turned out to be somewhere else, so I guess I should count myself lucky.

Anyway.

While Logan called the hotel to ask about having his room luggage delivered by car service.

I stood before the familiar door of our dorm and briefly lost myself in memories.

This is where I had….

“Please! Please! Rex hyung, I don’t care if you go out drinking and stumble around, just come inside and sleep! Why do you keep passing out in front of the door!”

“Ah, damn. Hwa Sung. My head… head’s ringing….”

“What kind of idol does this? God, seriously. I can’t deal with this anymore….”

How many times had I slept here?

“…Hah.”

As a sudden wave of embarrassment hit me, I cupped my face in my hands and slowly sank to the ground.

To be fair, part of it was not wanting to make noise punching in the passcode when everyone was asleep, and part of it was that lying in bed actually made me feel lonelier, but still.

Either way, embarrassing was embarrassing.

“Haha….”

How had it gone back then?

Hwa Sung, who woke up early, was usually the one to find me, and the next person who frequently looked after me was, of course….

Ding—

Right then. As if somehow knowing I’d been thinking about them.

The elevator stopped on the eighth floor, the doors opened, and someone slowly walked toward me.

“Hm, hm-hmm… mm… oh, huh? What the.”

This stride, this humming.

There was no way I wouldn’t recognize who it was.

“Yu Chan hyung?”

Even as I said the name, I couldn’t hide my bewilderment.

Why was Yu Chan hyung already at the dorm? Shouldn’t he still be in Gangwon Province?

“What, is that Chunyong?”

Yu Chan hyung, equally caught off guard when our eyes met, flinched, and the bags stuffed in both his hands swayed dramatically.

“You guys came early too?”

“Uh, yeah. Don’t tell me you’ve already moved in?”

“Yeah, yeah. My studio lease was about to expire anyway. I came in a bit early. The others should be inside too. They said they were going to drop off their stuff first.”

I’d thought everyone would spend more time at their family homes, but this quickly?

…In the Arrows days, everyone only moved in on the day of the reality show filming!

Didn’t this make me, the one who hadn’t moved in yet, look really weird?

“Everyone came so fast, seriously. Maybe I should move in today too….”

“Huh? Ha, haha!”

Thrown off by how different this was from my memories, Yu Chan hyung laughed out loud, then continued in that characteristic upbeat voice of his.

“Take your time, no rush. Come in for now. At least eat with us before you go. Logan! Logan, hurry over. Are you off the phone?”

“Just got off! Wow, everyone’s here already. This is really exciting, isn’t it?!”

A familiar passcode, a familiar door. And beyond it, familiar faces.

And just like that, somehow…

The members all gathered far earlier than the original move-in date that had been scheduled alongside the reality show.

A large TV, and a sofa perfectly sized for six people to each claim a spot.

Sitting in a circle on the floor beneath it, the six of us were…well, how should I put it?

“Chunyong’s here too. You came here fast. I mean, I got here early too, but still.”

“Uh, yeah, Jae Ha hyung. Well… I haven’t actually brought my stuff yet. Um. Something like that.”

“Mate. I have a quick question. Why are we all sitting on the floor?”

“……”

“Hm, that wasn’t a good question, was it….”

Everyone was slightly sheepish, slightly nervous.

“Guys, what’s there to be nervous about? It’s the same as the Targeting Star dorm. Just think of it as a dormitory!”

Yu Chan hyung, who was used to situations like this, was a bit different, but the rest were mostly the type who weren’t.

“…Phew.”

No, more than that.

Watching the air flowing through this space, I quickly picked up on something.

Normally, the one who took charge of the mood in situations like these was always Hwa Sung.

He liked doing it, and he couldn’t feel satisfied unless he did.

But….

“……”

He was nursing the wound that had formed because of Liu Wei, sitting slightly apart from Jae Ha.

“…Tsk.”

Not being able to spend more time with my family was disappointing, but judging by the atmosphere, I needed to move into this dorm as soon as tomorrow.

What Jae Ha had said in the dream.

The things I knew about but had pretended to ignore because of my own circumstances—to resolve them, I needed to start moving fast, right now, before the reality show filming began.

“Sigh….”

My atonement express.

The starting point for becoming the greatest idol in K-pop history was looking to be at least twice as rough as before.

The Malicious Member is Back! — End of Part 1