Chapter 121

The words he had just overheard slowly came apart in his head, then pieced themselves back together again.

If the quest fails instead, both Gowon and Yeban will be safe.

And things Baek Hanje had once said.

It wasn’t until I ended up having to help you that I learned who you were....

It’s true that I was forced into this at the beginning.

There are still quite a few things I have to do with you.

Putting all of that together, the current situation was probably—

“...There was something I was supposed to accomplish with Hanje’s help....”

It had not only been about raising his stats. There had been obligations attached as well.

And failure to fulfill them came with a price.

Yet throughout the lawsuit, Gowon had been unable to do anything at all as an entertainer.

There was only one conclusion he could draw.

Gowon had failed to do his part.

That’s why he said a price like this was fine.

Baek Hanje had taken responsibility for the failure.

The past six months had been one miracle after another for Gowon, like magic, but only now did he realize that every last bit of it had been hardship Baek Hanje never should have had to endure.

The sunlight pouring down on him had been so impossibly warm that he had become drunk on it, too dazzled by the light to consider Baek Hanje’s side of things.

His faltering backward steps turned into flight as shame overwhelmed him at the realization of just how shameless he had been.

“Oh, Gowon....”

He did not even hear someone calling out to him as he passed.

“...He looks pretty upset. Let’s leave him alone. We already figured something difficult must’ve happened to him.”

“Yeah....”

Jeongho soothed Yusang, but both of them stared worriedly in the direction Gowon had disappeared.

Gowon entered the practice room tucked into the farthest corner of the building. Without even turning on the lights, he opened a DM window.

Was what happened to Hanje because of me?

The other person read the message immediately, but took a little while before replying.

@Yooonjiiin

He wouldn’t think of it that way.

...So it really was because of me.

“.......”

Even if I was out of my mind because of the lawsuit, he could’ve made me do something. Anything.

What Gowon felt toward Baek Hanje was admiration, gratitude, exhilaration—

and, in the end, a love that had grown into genuine romantic feeling.

If “liking someone” meant recognizing that no one in his life held deeper meaning than this person, then Gowon liked him.

But every emotion he held had now become something he had no right to feel.

How could I dare like someone when I drove the person who shared his own good fortune with me straight into ruin?

His life had contained far more loss than gain from the moment he was born, so he had thought he was used to losing things.

And yet this still hurt so much.

Gowon no longer had the right to want anything from Baek Hanje ever again.

“...I’m sorry.”

And even then, you protected me.

“Thank you....”

But in the end, there was still one thing he wanted to say.

“I like you.”

After forcing out the confession in the smallest voice imaginable, he immediately added the first words again.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry....”

As he murmured with his face buried between his knees, his phone vibrated.

There were not many things Gowon had set his phone to alert him about.

Messages from important people—family, his manager, Division Head Kwon Taeyoung, Baek Hanje.

And...

the banking app that had spent years reminding him in real time of the reality in which he had been forced to claw his way through poverty.

The brief vibration showed a deposit into his account.

“...Ha....”

They said the earnings payouts would be starting soon....

Apparently, that meant now.

The amount displayed in the notification was larger than anything he had ever seen in his bank balance before.

The string of digits was long enough that even the debt that had always seemed unfathomably huge could probably be paid off before long.

With this money, his elderly grandparents, whose health was already failing, would no longer have to work. They could go to the hospital whenever something hurt without worrying about the cost.

He could buy new study books for his younger sister, who had a gift for academics, and send her to an academy.

He could give his younger brother—who had become heartbreakingly subdued after everything that happened—a better environment to grow up in.

Like everyone else.

They could live that way.

A life that had begun far behind everyone else’s average was finally over.

The life he had wanted so desperately, one where tomorrow did not have to be feared, would begin now.

He could live without worrying about debt.

Without worrying about money.

The shackles his father had fastened around him had finally come loose after years of desperate struggling.

“Ah... ngh... haah....”

The problems caused by humiliating, miserable poverty were finally over.

The last thing poverty had taken from him was his first love.

***

Even though the company urged him to rest a little longer, Gowon actively accepted the programs that approached him with appearance offers.

He spent most of his time with his family at the new family home they had found.

It was closer to Seoul than their old home, so commuting was manageable.

He only went to places where there was a chance of running into Baek Hanje—including the company—when he absolutely had to, and stayed for as little time as possible.

Even the problem of where to sleep when his schedule became too packed for him to return home ended up solving itself.

“Gowon, we got addicted to everybody sleeping together in the living room while we were doing The war of Crown! So we actually have rooms sitting empty now! Seriously. There are beds nobody’s even using!”

Whenever he only had three or four hours to sleep, Newton helped him out by letting him borrow one of the rooms in their dorm.

“...We don’t know all the details because it’s your private life, but... things will be okay. We went through something similar too, remember?”

Nam Jeongho said that while seeing Gowon off as he quietly left the dorm at dawn.

Looking at his face, Gowon could see the difference between the inexperienced Jeongho from <Debut Chart! 100>, the Jeongho from Newton’s previous promotions, and the person he had now grown into.

“.......”

It was something worth celebrating.

But right now, even seeing someone who had grown proudly through his own strength was painful.

A little over a month passed as if sinking slowly underwater.

Miracle Label finally getting its engines running is nice to see

Anonymous Young Ace Girl

Like they’re saying some fucking hacker can’t do shit to them

Gowon is hitting two or three fall festivals a dayNewton’s variety stuff has gotten crazy good. Their self-produced content is fucking hilarious even for non-fansHanje made a new work accountActually I only wrote 1 and 2 so I could talk about 3

He said he’s just going to communicate with fans and let us listen while he works, so he made a YouTube account and he’s uploading his work one piece at a time

There’s new stuff too, and sometimes he shows the actual work process on livestream, so it’s genuinely fun to watch lol

I love the attitude of hacker? leak? fuck you, I’ll just release everything myself lol

Glad he didn’t get too hurt and came back??

Comments

Anonymous Young Ace Girl 1

This whole thing made me even prouder of my favorite. Real art seriously doesn’t break

Anonymous Young Ace Girl 2

Hanje fighting ????

Anonymous Young Ace Girl 3

Girls, make sure you listen to all the ones on YouTube with half-assed titles like Warm-Up / Whatever / Untitled too. They’re so good I want to grab him by the collar and demand the official tracks right now lolllll. Turns out there was never any reason to worry about a freakishly talented bastard like him

Gowon

anyone see the fancam from Korea University festival

maybe it’s because it’s fall

DEEP was already maxed out on wistful tragic yearning

but now it seriously feels like love so painful it’s killing him and making him crumble into pieces, absolutely legendary

They could repackage it as DEEP (Autumn ver.)

Comments

“Crumbling into pieces” is exactly it. Is he playing some mer-prince who turns into sea foam or what...

Just rumors, but didn’t people say he had some complicated family situation?

? That was proven to be a rumor ages ago

K-pop General

Are all the Young Ace members lying low because of the Hanje leak incident?

dunno about the others

but Kim Yeban and Big Room used to be active outside the group and there’s been zero news from either of them

Comments

It’s barely been half a year since Kim Yeban hit a home run with Green Winter lol. This is exactly when an actor normally takes a break and reviews scripts, what the hell does Hansel have to do with it?

And Hanje didn’t commit a crime, he’s literally the victim here, why would anyone need to lie low??

? He did do something wrong though. Composers are already losing their minds over AI and he just made the whole creative ecosystem worse

?? You fucking idiot, how many songs has Hanje released over the years? By that logic he’s a criminal for providing all those as AI reference material too, and we may as well go all the way back and call Mozart and Beethoven evil bastards while we’re at it. It’s always morons who don’t know shit saying this crap

StrawberriesInSeason @s_t_r_a_w_berry

Freezing this account for a while..

I’ve lost all motivation to be a fan (crying)

Even if Young Ace comes back or Hanje releases a solo or whatever song comes out from now on... I feel like I’m just going to think, would this have been better if it came out before everything got stolen?..

Sigh. There goes another fun part of my life, forcibly taken away..

? ILoveHanje @howeverHeIs

You insane bitch, censor his name properly. You didn’t contribute one damn thing to ten years of his creative work but now you’re acting like you had the fandom experience of the century. If you’re leaving, shut your fucking mouth and get the hell out quietly

***

“Gowon, is this company clothing?”

Gowon looked at the clothes his grandmother was holding up.

He immediately understood why she had sounded hesitant when she asked. One glance was enough to tell that they were expensive.

And they were clothes Baek Hanje had lent him during the period when Gowon had been staying at his place.

Though “lent” was not quite right. Hanje had taken away the shabby sweatshirt Gowon had been wearing and practically forced the clothes on him instead.

“Yes. ...I’ll return them tomorrow.”

His grandmother seemed to have expected that answer. She folded them even more carefully and placed them inside a clean bag.

For the first time in a long while, Gowon let himself think about Hanje’s home.

In truth, he thought about that place often.

He simply forced himself to erase the thought whenever it surfaced.

...Come to think of it, what happened to the things I left there?

He had no room to complain even if Hanje had thrown them away, and none of them were particularly valuable anyway.

“.......”

Except for one thing that lodged itself stubbornly in his mind.

The Baek Hanje photos and plush he had received from Young Ace fans at the Han River Jazz Festival.

Gowon had only imagined that he had gone there secretly. Countless people attending the festival had posted eyewitness accounts afterward.

And Baek Hanje had signed the photo card.

The plush’s foot.

Even the back of the sticker.

The merchandise Gowon had privately sworn to keep for the rest of his life....

He looked down at the clothes in his hands.

Couldn’t I use returning these as an excuse to go there... and pack up the rest of my things too?

The period Hanje had set for them living together—“until the earnings payouts start”—had already passed anyway.

Disgust rose in him at the fact that even now he was inventing an excuse simply because he was desperate to retrieve objects that carried traces of Baek Hanje.

But greed won in the end.

Gowon left the family home and headed toward the company.

...This really does make me look like a stalker.

He stood across the street from K-Dom Entertainment headquarters and confirmed that the lights in Hanje’s studio were on.

Now’s my chance.

Pulling his cap low over his face, Gowon grabbed one of the public bicycles parked along the street and pedaled toward Baek Hanje’s home as fast as his legs would carry him.

Then, with trembling hands, he entered the door code.

...the front door opened.

He could sense no one inside, but he moved carefully anyway, like a burglar.

The room he had used was located at the very back of Hanje’s home.

“Ah.”

Thankfully, all of the merchandise was still exactly where he had left it.

Gowon carefully placed it into the front compartment of the bag he had brought.

His own clothes and things, meanwhile, he practically shoved inside.

The room Baek Hanje had given him became empty in no time.

...This probably suits an expensive, beautiful apartment better anyway.

At the very end, lingering attachment surged through him as Gowon looked around the room one last time.

Then he turned away.

“Hello, junior?”