[
Please answer the call. Are you okay?
]
[
I just want to make sure that you’re okay. I won’t say anything else. So, please just pick up the phone once.]
As soon as I recalled that scene, I stood up, made an excuse to go to the bathroom, and rushed straight to the nearest window. I remember sticking my neck out into the cold breeze blowing through the open window and exhaling slowly.
I did that because breathing felt uncomfortable, and I wanted to take in some fresh air. But I also felt like I subconsciously did it as a distraction because I didn’t want to recall that scene any further.
“…….”
It was definitely my memory.
Even if I didn’t know why it happened, I couldn’t deny that it was my memory because I could feel the emotions I felt at the time more vividly than anything else.
“Thank you, Muses, for joining us on the livestream today. See you again soon at the upcoming music show!”
“Myumyu, byee!”
The livestream wrapped up successfully thanks to Woo Kangwon’s efforts, but I didn’t have time to feel any sense of pride about it. Instead, I went straight to my room and mechanically reviewed the songs I had worked on. I simply felt like I had to keep myself busy somehow.
Bam!
I had been at it for quite a while when the door suddenly swung open, and the dry scraping sound of indoor slippers approached and stopped in front of me.
In this dorm, Baek Kiryang and Lee Hwayoung were the only ones who wore indoor slippers. Baek Kiryang didn’t have such a neat stride and wouldn’t open the door without knocking, so it was clear that the person was Lee Hwayoung, who had just returned from a late-night personal schedule.
“Why aren’t you answering your phone?”
Sure enough, a refined voice fell over my head. He seemed to be commenting about my phone, which was completely powered off and shoved into the drawer.
I slowly looked up from my laptop, faced him, and replied dryly.
“I turned my phone off because of sasaengs.”
It was a lie.
I had already set up a feature to forward calls from unknown callers straight to voicemail, and I had even blocked numbers that called me frequently, so I didn’t get any more strange calls.
It meant that turning off my phone because I was concerned about sasaengs didn’t make sense in the first place.
I could have said, ‘
My battery ran out
’, but in that case, I would have to turn my phone back on if people around me told me to, so I wanted to avoid saying that if possible.
For most people, this would have been an explanation they would have believed without much thought. There were plenty of celebrities who would turn off their phones due to stress from receiving one or two calls from sasaengs.
“…You turned off your phone because of sasaengs.”
But the problem was that, unlike most celebrities, I had an unusual personality, and the person in front of me was not an ordinary person.
“Yeah.”
“…….”
He didn’t seem to believe me.
I didn’t say it because I expected him to believe me, so I sighed and quietly looked away.
“Why are you acting like this all of a sudden?”
At first, Lee Hwayoung had come into the room clearly irritated because I hadn’t answered the phone, but now it seemed like he didn’t care about that anymore. What mattered to him most at that moment was figuring out why I was suddenly acting out of character.
Even under Lee Hwayoung’s urging, I kept my mouth shut firmly.
The situation I was in was filled with things I couldn’t tell Lee Hwayoung, and I also felt that it wasn’t something he needed to be so concerned about.
I had no problem at all.
Something happened that I couldn’t remember, and because of that, the people around me contacted me. That was all I had—a brief memory of it. So, what kind of problem could there possibly be?
If I had to point out something that changed, it was that ever since seeing that, I started feeling strange every time I checked the notifications that had piled up or received a call on my phone. That was the reason why I turned off my phone. It bothered me.
“Something happened, to you.”
I couldn’t understand why Lee Hwayoung was reacting so seriously to something as trivial as that.
Tiling!
As I quietly faced Lee Hwayoung, suddenly a notification sound rang out near him. Without even realizing it, my gaze quickly shifted toward Lee Hwayoung’s hand and pocket, looking for the phone.
“…….”
It wasn’t until I came back to my senses and saw Lee Hwayoung’s face staring at me that I thought, ‘
Oh, no
.’
“Han Seungbeom.”
The voice called my name, much calmer and clearer than before.
The words, clearly meant to point out my current appearance and actions, along with his gaze that held no hint of hostility towards me, gradually started to crack the composure I had been desperately holding onto.
In response, I moved my hand, which was still clutching my throbbing head, and ran it across my face. That’s when I felt the coldness of my skin. I suddenly realized that, although the room had proper heating, the warmth was strangely not reaching me.
“…….”
In the very short time that I kept my mouth shut, I could feel my increasingly sharpened nerves gnawing at me relentlessly.
The sound of the clock ticking, the wind tapping on the window, my own breathing, even the bright light of the lamp—everything was irritating. Nothing in this room, except for Lee Hwayoung, didn’t irritate my nerves. Even my own presence felt irritating.
And the cause of this condition was clear.
‘.…I was fine until I saw that memory.’
I wasn’t sure if this was the price I paid for regaining some of my memories, or if I had always been in this state before I lost them, but what was clear was that the memories had led me to this state.
Normally, after feeling a headache, I would have no thoughts or memories, as if my mind had been wiped clean, so why did the memory remain so clearly this time? And would this memory stay with me in the future? I was bothered by that, but the laptop and status window, the cause of all this, wouldn’t tell me anything, because
I’m not Han Seungbeom
.
‘Is this the effect of what it said about insufficient cost?’
In the haze of my consciousness, clouded by the pain that felt like it was tearing my mind apart and the constant questions arising, I looked at Lee Hwayoung. For a moment, in his still youthful face, I saw Choi Jeokhyeon. Unconsciously, I spoke to him casually, as if I was dealing with that guy.
“…My head hurts.”
“…What?”
“My condition is strange, but I don’t even know why I’m like this. I just turned off my phone because of that.”
This time, it wasn’t a lie.
Lee Hwayoung, who was looking a little surprised, seemed to have realized this as well. He returned to his usual sullen face and remained silent, lost in thought. Then, he suddenly pressed my forehead with his fingertips, forcing me to lie down on the bed. My eyes widened as I looked at him, startled by this unexpected action, and he opened his mouth in a furious tone, looking a little angry.
“Who works when they’re in such bad condition?”
Before I had a chance to react, he turned off the light and scolded me.
“Alright. You’re in a terrible state right now.”
“If you get some sleep, you’ll be okay when you wake up.”
I felt a sense of deja vu from Lee Hwayoung’s words.
When I thought about it carefully, I had a feeling that Choi Jeokhyeon had said something like that to me once.
As I had that thought, a vague guess crossed my mind. Could the sender of that message I couldn’t remember have been Choi Jeokhyeon? But my mind couldn’t dwell on it for long, as my body, drenched in exhaustion, fell into sleep as if I was fainting.
“….Choi Jeokhyeon.”
Without even realizing that Lee Hwayoung was leaving the room and making a call to someone.
***
When I opened my eyes, I could feel that the memory from yesterday had become quite blurry. If I were to compare it to a dream, yesterday I could picture the scene clearly as if I had just woken up from a dream. But today, I felt like I had forgotten most of the details of the dream as I carried on with my daily life. My condition was similiar to that kind of feeling.
‘Now I feel like I can finally breathe.’
It really felt like I could finally breathe a little easier.
I wasn’t sure if I would be able to maintain my daily life if I stayed in that state, so I was relieved that it didn’t happen.
The strangest thing was, when Lee Hwayoung saw me going out and doing activities, in contrast to yesterday when I locked myself in our room, he didn’t question me at all. I had expected him to say something like, “
Now explain what happened
”, but instead, he just threatened me to go to the hospital and didn’t do anything else.
Since I was in a situation where I couldn’t explain what had happened, and he was graciously acting like nothing was wrong, I didn’t want to push the issue by asking why he wasn’t asking me questions. So, I also didn’t bring up yesterday’s incident to Lee Hwayoung.
And even though I knew the hospital didn’t make much of a difference to me, since I had worried Lee Hwayoung, I felt like I should at least pretend, so I got a prescription for a mild headache medicine.
After returning to the dorm, I turned on my phone after quite a while. I couldn’t live with my phone off for the rest of my life, so it was something unavoidable.
“…What is this?”
Then, I noticed that I had a bunch of missed calls piled up again. I didn’t react as strongly as I had yesterday, but I let out a heavy sigh, feeling a bit suffocated. I checked my recent call history and frowned.
‘….Choi Jeokhyeon.’
It was all from Choi Jeokhyeon.
From the time the livestream ended until Lee Hwayoung returned from his schedule, Choi Jeokhyeon had been calling me relentlessly.
As I stared at Choi Jeokhyeon’s name filling up the call history, I once again felt a sense of deja vu and an uncomfortable feeling. As the hypothesis that the sender of the message from the scene I saw yesterday was likely Choi Jeokhyeon gained more credibility, I tapped my phone and dialed his number.
[Young Master 1]
I wanted to ask him directly.
There was no need to keep my mouth shut to someone who already knew my identity.
“Hey, Yutae-ya.”
As I held the phone and waited, the call tone hadn’t even lasted long when the other person’s voice was heard.
“Did you call me?”
“Yeah, I did. But your phone was turned off.”
Choi Jeokhyeon’s soft voice, just as usual, flowed through the phone’s speaker. It was really ridiculous that despite having made so many calls, he sounded calmer than anyone else.
“Why did you call so many times?”
“I just thought you might have been kidnapped somewhere, since you weren’t answering your phone, haha.”
I thought there might be something urgent, so I went to the trouble of asking, but all I got in return was this kind of nonsense. That guy’s way of thinking has flown to Andromeda, so I couldn’t tell which one was a joke and which was not.
I sighed, imagining the smirking face on the other end of the phone, and got straight to the point.
“You, have there been any times when you couldn’t contact me?”
“Of course. You’re so obsessed with work, and you ignore my calls whenever you get the chance. Are you finally feeling like reflecting on it? I’m really happy.”
“…….”
‘This bastard, why do I feel like you’re being so talkative today?’
He was originally a guy who always talked a lot in front of me, to the point where he was being extremely noisy, but today it seemed particularly worse. It was as if he had prepared what to say in advance.
But since Choi Jeokhyeon being strange wasn’t just a one or two-day thing, I had already gotten used to it. I didn’t show any signs of surprise and asked again.
“Not that. I’m asking if there was ever a time we completely lost contact.”
“…….”
This time, the answer didn’t come back right away, and there was a brief silence. Before I could even think that it was strange, Choi Jeokhyeon asked in a calm voice.
“Why are you curious about that?”
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Translator’s Corner:
He mistook Nicholas as Choi Jeokhyeon and immediately told the truth, the CHEMISTRY IS INSANEEEEE
I have been trying to watch movies for hours but asdfghjkl I just can’t do it. My mind is too easily wander to focus on a movie. I’m the type of person whose brain working too fast without my consent (this is very convenient in my entire academic journey since I always got the best results even without studying, but tbh in daily life, it just makes me depressed lol i really envy people with simple thought). I can’t read books too because I’ve been in a very serious reading slump ever since I finished this series (even if I tried to read something, I’ll just reread this whole series from chapter 1). IN SHORT, I HAVE NOTHING TO DO T_T So, here’s a chapter to ruin your new year eve.
Anyway, I recently listened to
JJ Project – Tomorrow, Today
and it’s so good and makes me cry. You guys, listen to it once before 2024 ended.