My head felt like it was going to split. Every gaze trained on the pallid, limp Sihyeon brimmed with worry, and when Sanyoo, unable to watch any longer, asked, “Should we just go to the hospital?” the small shake of his head in place of an answer was adamant. He’d been fine just yesterday. When he’d gone into his room with a sour face at the words about a new song concept, they hadn’t bothered to stop him. He must have been wrung out from the shoot anyway, and he’d looked a little tired—we’ll just wake him when it’s time to eat, they’d thought. But when they actually went in, he was sleeping so deep they couldn’t bring themselves to wake him, and ended up backing out again that evening.The one who got up first the next day was, of course, Sanyoo. He was never one for sleeping in, and even his baseline sleep time was short, so he’d always known waking the members was his job. Remembering the CEO’s order that everyone be in the conference room by noon, he washed up quickly and changed, but in the bed beside him, Euihyun showed no sign of waking. He sure sleeps well….As if to prove his bad sleeping habits, he’d kicked off the blanket at random, and the bird’s-nest mess of his hair should have looked funny—but maybe his face was a tyrant of its own, because far from funny, he looked downright manly. Even as he smiled down at that unhideable handsomeness, something a shade sinister crossed Sanyoo’s face.Naturally, he reached for the alarm clock on the table by Euihyun’s bed, set it for four minutes later, and placed it near the head of the dead-asleep man. Still sleeping well, I see. He gave a short laugh—“Ha ha”—and finally slipped out of the room looking refreshed.After a polite knock, he went into the manager and Rajoon’s room to wake them. Moments later, with a huge blare of alarm from the next room, an avalanche of epic profanity thundered through the wall. “Lee Sanyoo, you son of a bitch! Fuck! Did I or did I not tell you not to do that, you psycho—why is it this shit every morning! I’m going to kill you, I swear…!” The unfiltered tirade went on and on, and the manager and Rajoon, forcibly awakened, stared at Sanyoo as if he were something else entirely. He only smiled as if nothing were amiss and offered one line: “Putting in the rap practice early today, huh, Euihyun.”Ignoring the two staring at him in fright, he left the room and last of all headed for the room a bit removed from theirs—Chan and Sihyeon’s.Knock, knock. He went in with the same courtesy; one bed was already empty.Turning his head in puzzlement, he saw Chan asleep on the floor in an uncomfortable position, leaning against the side of Sihyeon’s bed.Startled, Sanyoo hurried over and shook him. Maybe he’d only been dozing; Chan’s eyes opened at once. “Why are you sleeping here like this?” he asked, because the slight bloodshot made him look tired. Chan turned his head to look at Sihyeon.“…He cried too much last night….”“Huh? Sihyeon?”“Yeah….”He gave a tiny nod and showed the hand he was still lightly holding. In the middle of the night, he’d woken to someone groaning like they were in pain; the Sihyeon who’d been sleeping so prettily in the other bed was tossing and giving off pained sounds. He’d gone closer to see what was going on and nearly jumped out of his skin at that wrecked, silent-crying face. He’d tried to wake him, but he wouldn’t come around at all, so all he could do was keep wiping those wet cheeks over and over. Then, on a hunch, he took his hand—and only then did the crying ease a little, like he’d been reassured. So he’d stayed like that in the awkward position, and at some point he’d nodded off.Worry went to Sihyeon. Before discharging him, the doctor had warned about post-traumatic stress and had worn a thorny expression. He’d also had the look of someone who found the very fact of Sihyeon’s still being alive dubious. Because they all knew this, even the slightest oddness made worry rise first—and now he was crying in his sleep. The hand that smoothed sweat-damp hair took care.In the end, when it was time to go and he still hadn’t opened his eyes, Chan practically scooped him up and took him to the bathroom; only then did the barely-collected Sihyeon get simple help washing up. He got dressed, boarded the van with the members, and then just sagged the way he was now.“Do you want to lean? Yeah?”When Rajoon, seated beside him, patted his own shoulder, the Sihyeon who would normally refuse with a I’m fine slowly laid his head on Rajoon’s shoulder and leaned in. His head felt like it was going to split. It was like his brain was whirring furiously, overloaded—and the fact was, Sihyeon had a rough idea why he was like this.Fucking Lee Sihyeon.Hajin, tormented by dreams all night, felt like death warmed over.The first to appear were memories presumed to be Lee Sihyeon’s. A very small Sihyeon, then his school days, a smiling face—fragmented pieces he only watched, dispassionate. The footage aged, and the bright screen lost its light, grew dim, then turned murky and black. The face, dwindling frame by frame, wore a smile. The Sihyeon barely forcing breath in and out resembled something slowly dying.A face inching toward death.At some point, the screen cut to a jumble of porn without story. Sihyeon, undergoing one-sided intercourse akin to rape, looked as if he had no arms, but when the angle slid as if the camera moved, his arms came into view behind him—tied so tight behind his back the blood couldn’t flow. The pale forearms were twisted enough to make pain rise just to see it, yet the face of the person it was happening to showed nothing at all.The old man, panting hoarsely on top of him like he was out of his mind, would fling up his hand and slap whenever the arms tied behind came into his line of sight. That vicious backhand, those thick hands, the sticky, foul air, the bodily fluids without meaning.It went on a long while after that, and with a final phlegmy “Hhk!”—the old man’s rattling groan—it ended. The thick hand that picked up his pants scooped a white check from his wallet and, in slow close-up, shook it out over the wreck of Sihyeon’s semen-soaked body. The meaning was unmistakable: mockery. Sihyeon stared into the distance, refusing even to open his mouth.Scenes like that replayed before Hajin’s eyes all night long.Sometimes he was dragged by the hair, sometimes blindfolded and made to endure while someone watched. Acts closer to sexual abuse than sex never tired of reinventing themselves in different forms, and then, at some moment, Hajin met Sihyeon’s eyes.Sihyeon didn’t cry.The dry face only knew despair.It was a sight so familiar and common that Hajin, silently blinking, pulled the skin of a bystander over himself.He had never once thought his stance was justified. He’d always stood alone in the middle of despair. An entire life of countless people sobbing and clutching at his legs or his shoe toes, begging or raging. Not crushing them brutally was the only mercy he could grant—but he knew better than anyone that even that lone mercy was paltry. Lee Hajin didn’t make excuses. That was the life he’d led.Sihyeon opened his mouth.He was searching for something.When unmoving Hajin took one step closer, the lips parted small and moved with words. He couldn’t hear them. One more step, and a voice like sediment crawled out, sodden.── …What did I do wrong?A voice that scraped like a dry twig.── Tell me, tell me, tell me, tell me, tell me…….Like something broken, the repeating sound kept groping for something. Sihyeon still didn’t cry. Hajin knew these things. What Sihyeon was searching for, hoping for, wanting to believe. Where all of that began, and where it lingered.You can’t endure it.Not unless there’s a reason—unless something’s wrong.Not this hell before your eyes, he thought—and yet.With Hajin still refusing to open his mouth, Sihyeon kept asking, asking, asking, asking again. Even as darkness poured down again, even as water rose from the floor. The questioning didn’t stop; it rolled on like waves. Like something broken somewhere. A little bit sadly.“───Hey!”At the voice calling him, Sihyeon’s eyes opened slow. He must have dozed for a moment; he blinked a few times through the haze, and the first thing he saw was Sanyoo’s worried face. When he closed his eyes again, a careful hand stroked his hair. It was Rajoon’s hand.“Are you really okay? Should we just go to the hospital?”They looked ready to haul him in right now, so Sihyeon opened his eyes again, pushed himself up from Rajoon’s shoulder, and shook his head. Rajoon hesitated like he hated to let him go. After catching a little sleep, his body felt somewhat better; he kneaded his stiff neck with one hand and looked ahead, and the van had stopped. Maybe catching his puzzled look, Sanyoo spoke up.“We arrived, but the CEO suddenly said we should all just get lunch together.”“That lunatic, seriously…….”“Ha ha, watch your mouth, Kang Euihyun. …Ah. He said he made a reservation in advance, so we came straight here. You skipped dinner last night and breakfast this morning. I figured it’s better to get some food into you.”“Do you think you can eat a little?” The worried question made him feel like a patient; Sihyeon spoke. “Ah, I’m fine now.” At that, everyone looked relieved, like they’d let out a breath.…That’s what he said, but he’d never once said this was fine. Staring at the food laid out in front of him, Sihyeon openly pinched the corners of his eyes.“Ha ha! Eat up, my little moneybags—eat a lot and go earn us some more this time too!”He tossed out words to make you choke right there at the table. Sihyeon clicked his tongue inwardly at the man in his late thirties seated furthest from him. The man named Lee Seonjin had a neat face that made him look younger than his years; his smiling face was quite handsome, but everything he said was blatant. Put nicely, he was frank; put bluntly, you could see right through him. He didn’t seem malicious, thankfully, but Sihyeon couldn’t shake a certain chafing feeling.Still, for all that, he was the president of MR Entertainment, a man who’d put out a slew of famous celebrities at a young age.He’d “risen on a special knack, sharp eye, and connections” (his own words), but Sihyeon didn’t care about that.What bothered him was the platter of high-end sashimi flaunting a lavish gloss as it bared its pale pink flesh right in front of him. He wasn’t a picky eater, but Hajin was exceptionally weak to anything fishy. He wouldn’t touch cooked seafood, and now raw fish, untouched by heat, was spread before him; he didn’t even have it in his mouth yet and he could taste the fishiness, and the headache that had eased started to throb again.The others, delighted by the first sashimi time in a while, chorused a bright “We’ll eat well~” to the president and were quickly polishing off the fish, but Sihyeon couldn’t bring himself to join in. He only went through the motions with his chopsticks, and Chan, seated quietly beside him, tapped the back of his hand. Tap, tap.“……?”He looked over—What is it?—and Chan flicked his eyes toward the sashimi. He’d noticed Sihyeon wasn’t eating.When Sihyeon’s face turned awkward, Chan stared a beat and then suddenly dipped his head close to Sihyeon’s ear and asked in a low voice.“…You can’t eat it?”“Mm.” After a brief pause, he gave a small nod. Chan fell quiet like he was thinking for a moment, then asked low again. “What about tempura?” That, he could manage; he nodded, and Chan whipped his head around to Lee Seonjin and spoke up.“I want tempura. A set.”“Huh?” The ones who jumped were the others.Normally, Yoo Chan ate anything without fuss. He wasn’t picky; he was the type to eat in silence whatever you put in front of him, not the type to ask for things—so it was strange to hear him suddenly say he wanted tempura, and a set at that.But Lee Seonjin, who didn’t know any of that, said, “Yeah? Then order,” with cool ease, and as soon as the words were out, Chan pressed the bell. When the server appeared quickly, he ordered the special tempura set, the large. If the flustered Sihyeon hadn’t hastily corrected it to regular, an absurdly lavish platter would surely have landed on the table.Not long after the order, a plate of golden, perfectly crisp tempura arrived with careful garnishes, and Chan naturally slid it in front of Sihyeon. He could have skipped a meal; it wouldn’t have mattered. But Chan’s actions made it plain he intended to feed him one way or another. The plate offered variety—from vegetable tempura to shrimp, squid, even fish—and before Sihyeon could lift his chopsticks, Chan’s chopsticks moved first.Sihyeon looked down at the squid tempura placed on his plate and felt awkward all over again. Even fried, seafood was still a weak point. But he went to the trouble of handing it to me… He hesitated—and Chan, ghost-quick to notice again, picked up the squid he’d just placed and moved it back to his own plate, then set a piece of vegetable tempura on Sihyeon’s instead.With that second-sight level of awareness, Sihyeon felt like clapping. Is the side gig spirit-medium? The tempura was good.Across ➤ NоvеⅠight ➤ (Read more on our source) from them, Kang Euihyun, who’d watched the whole thing from start to finish, muttered with a face like he’d bitten shit, “Fuck, are you two dating…?” No one answered, and maybe he hadn’t expected an answer, because he said nothing more and started destroying the sashimi at speed. “Ha ha, I guess Euihyun’s got a little beggar living in his belly,” Sanyoo said with a sunny smile—up until then.You don’t even bother a dog while it’s eating, but that less-than-a-dog bastard Lee Sanyoo—! The perfectly rhymed curse, about to explode out of him, slid back down Euihyun’s throat thanks to the president beside him, who was cheerfully dining.While Euihyun trembled with rising irritation, Lee Seonjin, having finished eating to some degree, washed his mouth with soda and said lazily, “Ah, it’s a pain to go back to the office—let’s just have the meeting here.”“……….”In a sushi joint…? A goddamn my-way king.

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