Seo Hoyun, murmuring the English lyrics softly, let out a faint chuckle at the stream of comments flying in.
“What song is this, you ask?”
Replying that it was a pop song by an overseas singer, he even stood up at someone’s request for a bass line to go with it. He pulled a bass guitar from the corner of the studio, hooked it up to the amp, and plucked at the strings as he sat back down.
【—If you kiss me, I just melt away
If you smile at me, it feels like a movie】
[He’s singing now]
[He just pulled out a bass out of nowhere]
[Wow shit this is so good]
[No but the way everyone’s just making comments while watching him is so fucking funny LOOOOOLLLLLL Like Hoyun’s some kind of pet]
[Welcome to Hoyun’s forest... feels like healing]
Unlike the dazzling performances he put on under blazing stage lights, the sight of Seo Hoyun relaxing in a dim studio, humming in ❀ Nоvеlігht ❀ (Don’t copy, read here) a gentle whisper, felt like a scene straight out of a movie.
Just as the song was building to its climax, the door behind him suddenly flew open.
“Hey, Seo Hoyun, what are you doing about lun—”
It was Kim Sunghyun barging in.
But the moment he saw Seo Hoyun — strumming the bass and singing — he flinched like he’d stumbled upon something unbearable.
“Our Sunghyun, hello?”
Hoyun flashed a bright smile at The Dawn’s leader.
Kim Sunghyun’s eyes narrowed further as he scanned Hoyun from top to bottom — from the fluffy white sweatshirt, down the pale jeans, and all the way to the white sneakers. Without hesitation, he grabbed the doorknob.
“Stay well.”
And with that curt farewell, he slammed the door shut and bolted.
[LMAOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO]
[Kim Sunghyun why’d you run out immediately LOOOLLLLLL]
[That was the look of someone sensing danger LOLOLOLOLOL]
“Tsk.”
Hoyun laughed, setting the bass down, then walked out only to drag Kim Sunghyun back in by the scruff of his neck. Forcing him into a chair, Hoyun picked the bass back up and began a private concert, just for him.
【love is not that far away...】
[Sunghyun, are you seriously this bad at controlling your face LOOOOLLLLLLLLL
└He looks like he hates it and wants to escape immediately LOOOOLLLLLLLLL His legs shaking like crazy makes him look so anxious LMAOOOOOOO]
[“This concert is for you, Kim Sunghyun. And only you.” He’s gonna say that any second now
└LMAOOOOOOOOOO
└└LOOOOLLLLLLL Aaaagh!!! He really did throw in a serenade just for him at the end LOOOOOOOLLLLL Fucking hell LOLOLOLOLOLOL Hoyun’s sex appeal is so fucking funny T_T LOOOOOOOLLLL]
Ten minutes passed, three songs later, and only once the main dancer’s cheeks had grown hollow with despair did the lead vocal finally end the live, satisfied.
[Has he lost his mind? Why’s he doing this out of nowhere? Did Seo Hoyun just get news that The Dawn won some grand prize or something? Why’s he acting like this?]
[No but even when Hoyun puts on an act in front of Noeul he doesn’t go this far;; he seriously looks like he’s in a good mood for real]
[Usually without Noeul around you walk around like, ‘Ah, fucking bastards, what’s there to laugh about...’
└LOOOLLLLLLLLL FUCK LOOOLLLLLLLL No expression has ever described him better. Totally unfit for an idol but dead-on accurate]
A few hours later, eyewitness accounts of seeing Seo Hoyun at a department store started popping up on SNS.
[Hoyun, buying a ton of gifts for his girlfriend, huh? Anniversary today, is that why you’re in such a good mood? HAHAHA #TheDawn #SeoHoyun #SaveNoeul]
Malicious posts spread quickly, but longtime fans of The Dawn weren’t stirred.
[Hoyun at a department store, that’s wild]
[Exactly, this is the guy who only ever went to the neighborhood convenience store]
There was trust built up over years. And sure enough, the items he’d purchased weren’t suited for a girlfriend’s gift at all.
[Another witness said he was buying pens. Who gives pens to a girlfriend for an anniversary? I mean, I guess you could, but as an anniversary present that’s way too cheap???]
[And not just pens, he bought men’s sneakers too LOOOOOLLLLL Same shopping bag. A girlfriend? Yeah right. Might as well say he bought them for all of Korea]
[Wow, Seo Hoyun’s really hitting peak celebrity if even these kinds of bait posts are chasing him LOLOLOLOL]
Noeul, realizing it was nothing serious, got hyped and kept retweeting. Later, when people even started scribbling today’s to-do list on quote retweets like a memo pad, the original posts vanished altogether.
Meanwhile, no one knew that Hoyun, having finished shopping and returned to his own home — not the dorm — stuffed the groceries into the fridge and burst into laughter as he scrolled through the live reactions.
.
.
.
‘Ah, this feels good.’
The luxury brand perfume ad meeting that had been scheduled early in the morning ended much faster than expected. Even after doing a fan livestream, he still had time before the evening practice session. Thanks to that, he’d been able to stop by the department store to prepare a congratulatory gift for Seo Hojin’s acceptance.
He placed the perfume he’d received at the meeting and an unreleased diffuser on the living room shelf, his gaze naturally falling on the family photo beside it.
Crouching down, he tapped the neatly kept frame with a fingertip and smiled.
“How about it? I really raised him well, didn’t I?”
Scholarship, top of his class, even passing the bar exam.
He’d vowed to raise him without lacking in anything, and that resolve hadn’t wavered. Now, in the blink of an eye, the younger brother was becoming a self-reliant adult.
Feeling joyful again, he hummed a tune, pulled back the curtains, and opened the balcony window wide. He’d already told Seo Hojin to come over, so he figured he’d sort his thoughts while waiting.
‘I’ll have to check it out at least once.’
He couldn’t just go to the company and say his uncle was suspicious. He needed at least some evidence to give them a reason to step in.
For celebrities, having relatives leech onto them wasn’t unusual. From what he’d heard when dealing with malicious commenters through the legal team, WH Entertainment was already well-versed in this area.
Besides—
‘I need to know exactly what that bastard knows and how far it goes.’
If the guy had stayed away, maybe he’d let it be. But since he’d shown up, there was no way he’d let him live comfortably.
A sharp sting in his palm made him realize he was clenching his fist. He loosened it, sighed at the deep nail marks left in his skin.
Just remembering that time made him feel filthy.
Trying to shake it off, he ruffled his hair and glanced down—just then, alarms blared as system windows flooded into view.
Dding!
Dding!
Dding!
Dding!
Dding!
Dding!
As if something had gone terribly wrong.
“......”
Hoyun tore his eyes away from the windows and scanned outside. At the apartment entrance, on a bench, sat a man with a familiar profile.
“...Wow.”
His head darted nervously, legs trembling nonstop.
“Hah, haha, ha...”
Yeah. He’d wondered why the man hadn’t shown up sooner.
Rage surged from his toes through his veins.
“Wow...”
At this point, should he thank him for showing up on his own?
Seo Hojin was just entering the complex.
As it was, the two were bound to run into each other.
Hoyun didn’t think twice. He immediately pulled out his phone, fingers dialing out of instinct even as his heart pounded.
[Hello? Hyung?]
“Hey, stop.”
Hojin froze mid-step, glancing around.
[...Why, why are you being scary again? Hyung, are you already home? Why aren’t you saying—]
“...Did you buy cake?”
Thrown off, Hoyun just blurted the first excuse that came to mind.
[What?]
“I told you I wanted some.”
[...When??]
Hoyun flicked his gaze at the bench, then back again.
“...Buy pumpkin cake.”
And he hung up without waiting for a reply.
Hojin stared at his phone a moment, then turned back and walked out of the complex. From this height, Hoyun couldn’t see his face, but he could guess the expression—definitely dumbfounded.
Closing the window, grabbing his coat, Hoyun stormed out.
‘Two weeks to deal with this, my ass.’
The moment you spot a bug, you deal with it immediately or regret it later.
Mashing the elevator button, then cursing at its slowness, he veered to the emergency stairs instead. All the way down, his thoughts spun on how best to dismantle that bastard.
With no concrete evidence, a restraining order wasn’t possible. And since he didn’t know what the uncle might have already done to Hojin, he couldn’t risk delay.
‘So I just have to avoid the straight path.’
Old habits die hard. If he was the same ‘uncle’ as before, just shaking him a little would make the dust come pouring out.
But then a darker thought surfaced.
‘What if there’s no flaw? What if he keeps circling endlessly...?’
Back as a PD, he never needed thorough investigations. Threats and intimidation were enough.
But now, he couldn’t use the same tactics.
Reason was simple. He was a public figure.
‘Fuck, this is really pissing me off.’
Being an idol had been uncomfortable at times, but never this aggravating.
“Hey. Come out.”
Hoyun slowed his steps, addressing the air.
“The alarms rang. You know what’s going on.”
He was talking to the system window.
“What did you do this time?”
Dding!
[What do you mean, ‘what did I do’?]
A sharp blue glow flashed as if offended.
“An uncle suddenly showing up after all this time—it feels exactly like when something went wrong before, doesn’t it?”
Before he finished, the system flared again.
[No, I swear, I didn’t do anything this time. I even reformatted. But once a system glitches, it can never work perfectly again. I’m trying to stabilize it, but there’s no predicting what variables might appear.]
He skimmed the wall of text, descending another floor.
“There’s nothing you can do?”
[If I could, this situation wouldn’t exist at all. ...Absolutely not.]
The window flickered, then vanished.
Provoking it had just been Hoyun’s way of testing—seeing if the system was responsible and confirming his suspicions.
‘Still, it’s strange.’
Why show up only now, after three years, when everyone else stayed gone?
No classmates, no PD colleagues, not even greedy relatives who once hounded him for insurance money—none of them had appeared. Only this uncle.
‘When the glitch happened, Jeong Cheongyeon’s memory briefly awakened...’
If another unseen error had emerged then—
The system’s admission that it couldn’t function “perfectly” anymore, that it couldn’t predict variables, seemed to support the theory.
If only he could erase the “uncle” from his life again, he’d pay any price.
In the end, it all came back to memory—
“—Ah.”
Reaching the thought, Hoyun’s hand went slack on the emergency door handle at the first floor.
...There was a way.
One he’d repeated so often that the command surfaced in his mind automatically.
RESET
A chance to revert part of the system
Required points: 300,000
Part of it...
[With a partial reset, you can revert a specific part. For example, Seo Hojin’s memory. But even for something that small, the price is steep. Because it’s not just altering—it’s restoring it perfectly!]
...And that meant—
‘—Reset.’
What he’d thought of as a tool to restore Hojin’s memory was in truth a reset, an erasure.
The example had been Hojin, but it wasn’t limited to him.
Pay the points, and anything could be designated for erasure.
...For example.
“...Wow.”
Like erasing the memories of that fucking uncle.
“Right. I had this all along.”
Hoyun’s lips curled upward on their own.
The more he mulled it over, the more it felt like the most practical solution.
