“Ah, this is embarrassing.”
He should’ve been the one flustered.
And yet Sung Jiwon had calmly accepted this situation that went completely against logic?
Rubbing his face with his palm as if mortified, he muttered quietly,
“I... no, I guess I misunderstood all this time. I thought you just avoided me because you didn’t like me, but to think you really didn’t know...”
Just avoided him? The system had been throwing insane warning messages nonstop.
Besides, right after Sung Jiwon hinted that he might have recognized me, a chain of system errors had occurred.
“Hey...”
It seemed it was too late to back out.
While listening to Jiwon’s excuses, I stayed tense and cautiously asked,
“Since when?”
“...That... since two years ago, on my birthday.”
Letting out a groan, Sung Jiwon lifted his head toward the empty air. But no system window appeared—only the silent fall of snow caught in our view.
He was openly confessing that he had recognized me from my PD days, that he’d believed it all along—yet no system error occurred.
‘Does that mean I’ve already taken all the penalties?’
“After that, a lot of strange things happened... You said you were healthy, but you kept collapsing. I figured something must be wrong this time too.”
“Then why are you so embarrassed?”
“Mm...”
Let’s say I accepted that he’d figured out the situation. But I had no idea why he was acting shy about it, so I asked, and he rubbed the back of his ear, avoiding my eyes.
“...Because you were pretending so hard. I thought we both knew, but agreed to forget everything and start fresh.”
“......”
“That’s what I thought.”
How much consideration does one need to misinterpret something like that?
I sighed in disbelief and replied with a hint of a joke.
“First of all, stop talking formally.”
“......”
“Are you Chulsu?”
“What?! N–no, I’m not!”
“You’re not.”
Watching him fluster and stiffen up, I couldn’t help but laugh. I reached for the umbrella he was holding and tilted it over his shoulder so it wouldn’t get wet.
We’d both misunderstood each other, but it didn’t take many words to clear away years of it.
“Jiwon, yeah. It’s a fresh start.”
That alone was enough.
Sung Jiwon nodded slightly, looking relieved.
As more people began to gather, we exchanged glances, picked up the souvenirs we’d left on the ground, and started walking toward the end of the bridge.
“...By the way...”
“What.”
“You’re quitting smoking, right?”
“Hey.”
Drop that already.
I grumbled with a frown, and Jiwon laughed like a kid. Just then, through the crowd, I spotted Kim Sunghyun and Jung Dajun waving proudly, having managed to make their wish at last.
When we asked what they wished for, both Dajun and Sunghyun firmly kept their mouths shut, saying it was a secret. Maybe Prague had its own superstition about wishes not coming true if you spoke them aloud.
“Where’s Kang Ichae?”
“Uh, right... where is he?”
“What do you mean ‘where is he.’”
No matter how far I stretched my neck, I couldn’t see him—probably buried in the crowd.
I started moving to look for him.
Pushing through street vendors and romantic buskers, I found a spot where people were particularly crowded.
According to Sunghyun, to make a wish you had to move around and touch several statues—it was apparently a whole process.
And there he was, Kang Ichae, among the crowd, eyes tightly shut with his hand on one of the statues.
‘I should be nicer to him too.’
When he behaved, I could still vividly remember the bratty kid he used to be.
I leaned against the railing beside the statue, crossed my arms, and spoke lazily.
“What did you wish for?”
“Mm.”
Without opening his eyes, he shot back immediately, as if expecting me.
“To never be bossed around again by those tactless, unlucky brothers who only care about themselves...”
“......”
Any goodwill I had vanished instantly.
I was seriously debating whether to just leave when he cracked one eye open, studied my expression, and smirked.
“Kidding.”
Having found his whereabouts, I turned to go back alone, but he followed right behind me.
“Well, look who’s talking to me first for once. I’m shocked.”
“Why are you following me? You’re creeping me out.”
“I’ve got a few things to ask.”
After avoiding me all this time?
“Go ahead.”
“You gonna die soon?”
What the hell was that?
I stopped walking, baffled, and turned around.
The sun had already set, and the orange glow of the streetlights shimmered across the water. Laughter and chatter filled the air as people passed by, but Kang Ichae just stood there, staring at me.
“You wrote in your letter that even if you came back safely, the game wouldn’t be easy.”
“So?”
“I took that to mean the new game would be so hard even you couldn’t handle it.”
“......”
“Are you really safe?”
After a pause, I tilted my chin slightly.
“Ask the next question first.”
He sighed, one hand shoved in his pocket.
“...Why did you leave me that email?”
I didn’t {N•o•v•e•l•i•g•h•t} answer, just looked at him. Snow had begun to pile on my shoulders when he continued.
“...You know there’s scheduled upload these days, right? You didn’t have to go through me. You could’ve spread the video yourself.”
Min Jiheon hadn’t been angry at me, Joo Woosung had simply avoided me out of fear of asking too much—and now I finally understood why Kang Ichae had kept his distance.
He’d been afraid.
Afraid I was still hiding something, that I’d recklessly do something stupid again and ruin the peaceful life we’d barely managed to recover.
‘Wow, who’d have thought.’
He still didn’t get it.
‘For someone so sharp, huh.’
It was me who gave Kang Ichae his memories back.
I thought he had a right to know—but more practically, without memories, he wouldn’t have understood anything I was asking of him.
“I had my guesses, but... I want to hear it from you.”
I could’ve come up with any excuse for that question.
But I knew he wouldn’t want a lie.
“Hey.”
And besides, that wasn’t even the real reason.
I adjusted my scarf and looked at him with a crooked grin.
“Then can I ask you something too?”
“...What.”
“When you made your wish, did you touch the dog on the statue?”
His face said, What kind of bullshit is that.
“That’s wrong. To make your wish come true, you’re supposed to touch the saint falling from the bridge. You actually have to go through five statues in order... Why’s it so damn complicated just to make a wish?”
“...Because there are different versions of the legend.”
“Then wish to me instead.”
He’d screamed his wish so many times that everyone—even Sung Jiwon and the others—knew what it was by now.
“I’ll make it come true.”
It’d have a better chance of success asking me than rubbing that grimy bronze dog.
And since we were at it, I decided to finally answer his first question too.
“The new quest I got... it’s seriously, fucking, unbelievably hard.”
When I came to and checked it, I nearly fainted.
Now, if I went down even once, I might really die for good. Maybe I should start aiming for international acting gigs if I wanted to survive this.
And Black Call? They were still thriving—no, hitting their peak.
To not get buried under the flood of rising younger idols, I’d have to work even harder... I’d been thinking about how to maintain long-term visibility for the sake of peaceful old age.
“I can’t do it alone.”
Not just because I needed a composer or teammates—without my members, my family to support, it wouldn’t work.
I felt a little guilty dragging someone I’d known since we were kids into this, but I also knew he wasn’t a kid anymore. So I whispered,
“Run with me.”
Kang Ichae’s lips twitched. I looked away and turned around.
“I came back like I promised... so you better not go back on your word.”
We started crossing the bridge slowly, his footsteps matching mine behind me.
Then, Jung Dajun came running over, grinning from ear to ear.
“Hoyun-hyung! Isn’t this view amazing?! So emotional, so aesthetic! Ichae-hyung!! Once we’re back at the hotel, let’s lie down and make snow angels—wait, why are you smiling like that, hyung?”
Kim Sunghyun, pressing a hot pack to his cheek, sniffled from the cold and waved his hand.
“Hey, let’s take a photo to remember this.”
He handed his phone to a passerby, asking them to take one for us. We posed several times, thanked them, and burst into laughter as we continued across the bridge.
At that moment, the accordion player nearby began a melody laced with the sound of wind. It was a familiar song. The crowd hummed along, and we joined in too. Standing here, everything unpleasant that had happened felt like a distant dream.
Far across the Vltava River, the reflection of the castle shimmered. The city lights glowed beneath the water’s surface, and the snow, falling harder now, began piling softly on the railings of the oldest bridge. Adjusting my scarf, I glanced toward the others.
Kim Sunghyun was handing his gloves to Jung Dajun, whose hands had turned red from touching every statue. Sung Jiwon, pretending to check photos, subtly watched Ichae’s expression. Ichae just wiped under his nose with his finger and gave a small nod.
When we returned, spring would come.
When the snow melted, there’d be a lot for us to do.
“Hyung.”
Walking ahead, Kang Ichae called to me in a bright voice.
Side by side, we followed the others, leaving our footprints on the street. He seemed genuinely excited for what was to come, as if every grudge had finally been let go.
“I was just thinking—since you said you’d grant my wish, that means we’ll come back to this bridge again in a few years, right? ...Whoa, what’s that face? Seriously?”
I didn’t deny it.
A bit late and embarrassing to admit, but I’d finally learned humility after all my arrogance.
You might lose your way sometimes in life,
“So that means we’ll do unit activities too? Live together in the dorm even thirty years from now?!”
“You really wished for a lot, didn’t you, you brat...”
—but in the end, someone would always come find me.
