Chapter 178. The Earth is Round (2)
‘I knew this would happen someday.’
Still, I’m a character in a **#returntoearlierlife** story, so having experienced and even conquered such a scenario, I should have anticipated this much.
Ever since I heard that personalities were separated, I figured the day would come when I’d face another version of myself.
‘…I just didn’t expect to meet this way at this time.’
‘We’ stared at each other in silence for a while. I briefly wondered if calling us ‘we’ was accurate, but there wasn’t a better way to describe it.
The fact that I could access the timeline of my comrade ‘Kang Hajin’ was thanks to Thirteen’s ability, and it must have been his intention to make us face each other like this. That guy who tenaciously chased me, even creating quests to catch me as I persistently ran away from myself—this time, too, it was obvious that this moment was created for ‘us.’
I quietly looked at myself. Very quietly.
‘You were… younger than I thought.’
The ‘me’ standing before me should be identical to my reflection in the mirror, but viewing myself from a third person’s perspective was a much stranger feeling than I had imagined.
I was often called an old soul from a young age, and I thought I matured quickly, both emotionally and in other aspects. But now, looking at the version of me in front of me, I couldn’t help but laugh at how he seemed like just another twenty-year-old kid, no different from the younger siblings I found adorable.
‘…I really was young.’
How was I at twenty?
It wasn’t as depressing as the past I had just seen.
It was just normal.
Preparing for my second chance at college, working part-time jobs, saving money to go on trips with friends, and after getting accepted into university, sleeping in as much as I wanted….
I kept recalling and recalling more memories.
“Was it tough for you?”
My first words, which broke the long silence, filled the empty space.
“Were you lonely?”
I had been lonely for a very long time.
I think I was terribly lonely.
Looking back now, it seems that way.
All those moments I couldn’t fully share with my parents now surfaced faintly. I thought the wounds had healed, but it seems the scars were still there.
I took a step closer to ‘myself’ and spoke again.
“You held on well, though.”
If you could go back ten years and meet your past self, what would you say?
The common answers to this question were usually jokes, like giving the winning lottery numbers or telling them to buy TeXla stocks.
But now that I was actually facing my younger self from ten years ago, what I wanted to say most was….
“It’s okay.”
I just wanted to comfort the me who had endured and survived up to this point.
“I can’t say everything will work out perfectly…. But I think I’ve lived a fun and decent life.”
The reason I can now calmly accept those old wounds is solely because the me back then endured and grew from all those scars.
And now, I could clearly see what I, as my current self, could do for my past self.
“…So this time, I’ll be on your side.”
I regretted hesitating, considering the people who might have been hurt because of me.
Just as the twenty-nine-year-old me remained in that small bed for so long, I now realized that somewhere deep in my heart, the lonely Kang Hajin, who was left alone in that dark and cold practice room, was still there.
“A Kang Hajin team without Kang Hajin would be strange, wouldn’t it?”
When I made a joke, the ‘me’ in front of me also faintly smiled.
Before I could ask what kind of positive resolve that smile meant, the surroundings turned white again, and my vision blurred once more. Guessing that I was waking up from a dream, I slowly opened my eyes.
At the exact moment I fully opened my eyes, thinking, ‘This is where the narration goes, *‘A dark room. A familiar ceiling…’*’…
“…Huh.”
“Aaaaaah!”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa?”
…I made eye contact with Lee Doha, who was staring down at me in the pitch-black darkness, and ended up screaming loud enough to shake the building. Surprised by my scream, Lee Doha also flinched and stepped back, slipping from his chair and landing on the floor.
As I scrambled to get up, a wet towel plopped off my forehead. Seriously, such clichés are so unnecessary.
“I, uh, your fever was really high. I was just checking if it went down.”
“Oh, right. Thanks. Sorry for yelling.”
“No, I’m the one who scared you. I’m sorry.”
It looked like we were about to start an awkward apology battle in the middle of the night.
I just nodded slightly at Lee Doha and thought to myself.
‘Does life really need to be this much of a sitcom?’
Just a moment ago, I was in a deeply emotional and touching scene, as if straight out of a *CasTella* commercial.
“Give me back my feelings….”
“Huh?”
Dear Creator, could you please stick to one genre for my life?
* * *
“Your fever was 38 degrees.”
After things had calmed down, Lee Doha insisted that it wasn’t time for me to get up yet and made me lie back down on the bed. When he placed the tightly wrung, cold towel back on my forehead, I felt a chilly and soothing sensation that made my entire body relax, realizing that I must really be sick.
“You’re not coughing or anything, so it seems like it’s just stress and exhaustion. Take your meds and get a good night’s sleep.”
“Yeah… thanks.”
When I awkwardly thanked him, Lee Doha, as if it were nothing, didn’t bother to reply and returned to his bed across the room.
With the towel on my forehead, I rolled my eyes around, scanning the room. It looked like they had redone the wallpaper in the past few days, replacing the old soundproofing material with clean silk wallpaper. Most of Lee Doha’s equipment, which used to take up an entire wall, was also nowhere to be seen.
Normally, I would have just thought, *Oh, I see,* and left it at that.
But maybe because I felt a bit lonely earlier, or perhaps it was the late-night emotions getting to me, I suddenly wanted to talk to Lee Doha.
“Lee Doha, are you awake?”
“…Yeah.”
“Did you move all your equipment?”
“Yeah.”
“Where?”
“I moved it back to the company studio.”
“The old one?”
“No. They gave me a new room in the new building.”
“Oh.”
The conversation paused there.
I briefly recalled Lee Doha’s old studio at the company, which was like an ant’s nest.
After blinking a few more times, I spoke to Lee Doha again.
“Lee Doha.”
“Yeah.”
“Aren’t you going to ask me anything?”
There was a brief silence from Lee Doha.
Then, in a slightly sleepy, hoarse voice, he replied clearly.
“Should I?”
It was now my turn to be silent at his question.
Perhaps taking my silence as agreement, Lee Doha asked me again.
“Is it true? The things written there.”
“…Some of it’s true, and some of it’s not.”
I rested my head on my arm and stared up at the empty ceiling as I slowly started sharing my past with Lee Doha.
It was long and likely tedious, but Lee Doha listened to everything without any particular reaction. Occasionally, when I wondered if he’d fallen asleep, he would shift slightly as if to let me know he wasn’t.
“Anyway, so… It’s hard to really explain. This is the kind of issue where the public only sides with you if you flat-out deny everything.”
“……”
Even after I had finished telling my entire story, Lee Doha didn’t say anything.
This time, I really thought he had fallen asleep, so I lifted the towel and started to turn my head when his second question came through the darkness.
“Do you want to meet them?”
“Them?”
“The people you used to train with at KD Entertainment.”
It was a typical direct question from Lee Doha, who always threw curveballs.
Do I want to meet them? And do what? Fight them?
After pondering for a while, I opened my mouth.
“Honestly, I didn’t think about it before.”
“……”
“But now I’m thinking maybe it’s better to meet them. I’m curious what they were thinking when they posted that.”
Was it written just to mess with me? If I reveal that I was bullied, it’s a lose-lose situation for both sides in this chicken game, right? Did they hate me that much? Or do they truly believe they were the victims?
These lingering questions remained. Moreover, when it came to conflict, I preferred facing it directly, talking it out, and getting to the root of things.
‘Should I really do it? If I ask Thirteen for help, maybe he can find out who wrote the post.’
No, maybe I could sue them for defamation for revealing the truth… But that would mean admitting everything, and public opinion would crash, so I can’t do that. Maybe just for spreading false information… But some of it’s true, so it might backfire….
As I was lost in thought, considering various options, Lee Doha asked again.
“Do you want to meet them?”
“But I don’t have any contact information right now… Or wait, isn’t it easy to find people these days?”
“I have it.”
“What?”
“I have the contact info for the people who trained with you at KD Entertainment.”
“…What?”
What kind of
development is this?
I quickly sat up, startled by Lee Doha’s unexpected words.
Following my lead, Lee Doha also sat up, turned on the bedside lamp, and showed me a contact on his phone.
<Lee Hyun-il (Raon Practical Music Academy)>
And that name was indeed someone I knew.
“Actually, when I went out earlier, I met with him.”
“Why… Why would he meet you? How do you know him?”
“We’re not directly acquainted. He’s a friend of my younger sibling from when I briefly attended a practical music academy. It seems he was trying to find a way to contact you and eventually reached out to me.”
“Lee Hyun-il wanted to contact me?”
“Yeah. He said he has something to tell you. And he knows who wrote the exposé post.”
He even knows who wrote the exposé?
Slightly bewildered by this sudden information, I looked at his phone again.
Lee Doha’s phone indeed showed call records and texts exchanged with Lee Hyun-il.
“I thought it was better to ask you first, so I told him to wait. I wanted to make sure he really knows what he’s talking about and isn’t just a busybody pretending to be in the know.”
“…Lee Hyun-il was part of the group back then, trained with me a lot.”
I recalled memories of Lee Hyun-il, chuckling bitterly.
“I helped him a lot when he first joined since he was having a hard time adjusting… But after that incident, he stopped acknowledging me, so it’s surprising. I wonder what he wants to say now.”
Suppressing the slight resurgence of betrayal and resentment, I looked up and met Lee Doha’s eyes.
“But I should meet him, right?”
“If it helps you.”
“Then I’ll have to inform the company as soon as the day breaks.”
After sending Lee Hyun-il’s contact information from Doha’s phone to mine, I handed the phone back to him. Suddenly, an impulse struck me.
“Lee Doha.”
“Yeah.”
“Want to come with me when I meet him?”
“…Me?”
Lee Doha tilted his head, genuinely puzzled.
Feeling slightly embarrassed, I rubbed my legs with my empty hands and said,
“It’s just, I think I’d be less nervous if I had a friend with me.”
“……”
“…I mean, whatever. Forget it if you don’t want to.”
This guy always takes his time answering at moments like this.
It felt like he was about to give me some huge T-type advice like, *“Isn’t this something you should overcome on your own, Hajin?”*
Just as I quickly covered my eyes with the towel and lay back down, the bear-like guy finally responded.
“Okay. I’ll go with you.”
“……”
“I’ll contact the company.”
“…Do as you like.”
Perhaps because I hadn’t fully recovered from my fever, I fell asleep again shortly after lying down on the soft bed.
Whether it was because I fell asleep too quickly and deeply or because I had been having all the good dreams lately, I slept without dreaming at all, enjoying a sweet, restful slumber.
I slept so well that when I woke up the next morning, I wondered, *“Wait. Was that conversation with Lee Doha last night just a dream?”*
“Are you awake?”
“…Yeah. Did you sleep well?”
But thankfully, I had clear evidence that the late-night conversation wasn’t a dream but reality.
[System Alarm: ‘Lee Doha’ has ‘responded’ to you. (Response Rate: 87%)]
I still didn’t know why…
But Lee Doha no longer felt awkward to me.
That alone made my morning feel refreshing.