Downfall
Lim Tae-hyun's face twisted at Lee Joo-sung's answer. How long had it been since anyone had dared to treat him like this?
He glared at Joo-sung, eyes blazing.
"What did you just—"
The shout died in his throat. He flinched.
Joo-sung's gaze was burning. The look on his face said he would genuinely tear Lim Tae-hyun apart.
What kind of face is that...?
The sheer intimidation made Lim Tae-hyun hesitate. Watching him squirm, Joo-sung let out a sigh.
"Leave. Hyung-nim will be coming down any minute. If you pull a stunt like that in front of him too... I don't think I'll be able to hold back."
Under that ice-cold threat, Lim Tae-hyun slowly backed away.
...Damn it!
Joo-sung's reaction had been nothing like what he had expected.
Kim Se-jun's van rolled toward the next schedule. Even on ordinary days, the two of them were never exactly chatty. Joo-sung was not the talkative type, and Se-jun had never been one for idle chatter. Today, though, the silence was so bleak it felt almost suffocating.
Joo-sung's face was drawn tight. He fidgeted in the driver's seat like a puppy that desperately needed to go.
Did something happen?
Se-jun glanced at him, then spoke slowly.
"Joo-sung. Something going on?"
"Sir? Ah..."
Joo-sung startled, his voice trailing off.
I should tell him.
At first he had thought of reporting it to the CEO. But Se-jun needed to know as well — that Lim Tae-hyun was hunting for his weaknesses.
"Hyung-nim... there's something I need to tell you."
"Hm? What is it?"
Se-jun leaned in toward the driver's seat.
"The truth is... Lim Tae-hyun came looking for me earlier."
"Lim Tae-hyun? What did he want?"
The van stopped at a red light. Joo-sung turned to look at Se-jun.
"He showed up and told me to become his manager."
"...Come again?"
What was this now? Suddenly trying to poach his own manager? It was a baffling move — until the rest of what Joo-sung said made everything click at once.
"And then he asked me for your weaknesses. He said if I brought him dirt on you, he'd pay me even more..."
Well, well.
Se-jun shook his head. How petty could one person get?
"But... the fact that you're telling me this means you turned him down, right?"
Se-jun narrowed his eyes, the question playful. Joo-sung nodded in a hurry.
"Of course I did! How could I ever betray you, Hyung-nim?"
The steel in his voice was absolute. A small smile tugged at the corner of Se-jun's mouth.
He's the genuine article.
That loyalty. It was enough to make anyone fall for him.
"Thanks for being honest with me."
"Not at all. Of course I had to tell you. I'll report it to the CEO separately—"
"Hm? No. You don't need to tell the CEO."
"Sir? But—"
Se-jun cut him off with a wave of his hand.
"It's fine. I'll handle it."
"...Understood."
Joo-sung swallowed a sound of protest and nodded.
Hyung-nim will take care of it himself...
When Se-jun put it that way, pushing any further would only have looked strange. The van started moving again. Joo-sung snuck a glance at Se-jun in the rearview mirror.
He was leaning back in his seat, perfectly at ease. A quiet smile had settled deep into his face.
Late that night — the same day Kim Se-jun had taken first place on a music broadcast — Kang Su-ji was still at the office, working overtime.
"God, I hate this miserable company... One of these days I'm actually going to quit."
She was the only one left in the empty office. Still, if she could just wrap this article cleanly, it would make for a decent showing on her record. She was hammering away at the keyboard without pause when a message popped up in the corner of her screen.
"Hm?"
Kang Su-ji clicked it with her mouse. A message from Kim Se-jun.
Attached was a single document file.
"...!"
Kang Su-ji's eyes flew wide, flooding with shock. It was about Lim Tae-hyun — specifically, a gossip sheet on his crimes. Drug use, drug distribution, scandals with female executives at major corporations.
— Drug abuse
— Drug distribution
— Illicit scandals with female executives at major corporations
"What the hell is this...?"
She rubbed her eyes at words she could barely believe even as she read them. Then another message from Se-jun arrived.
Come to think of it, rumors like this used to circulate years ago... the Lim Tae-hyun sponsor stories...
The shock in Kang Su-ji's eyes slowly gave way to a thick, hungry desire — the look of a predator that had just spotted a very appetizing meal.
A few hours later, Kang Su-ji's reply came through. Standing in the cold wind, Kim Se-jun read it and let out a quiet snort of laughter.
"I knew she'd take the bait."
He had figured Kang Su-ji would snap it up without a second thought. She had the hunger of a reporter and the skill to match. Throw her a lead this size, and she would come running with fire in her eyes. That much was certain.
Lim Tae-hyun...
Se-jun thought of him, and felt something almost like pity. The man's downfall was not far off.
Simcheongga held a firm grip on first place on the music charts, and the number of broadcast PDs looking for Kim Se-jun multiplied right along with it. Ares Music was not the kind of agency that forced its artists onto every show that called. They respected their people's wishes and simply steered them toward the appearances they actually wanted. In other words, Se-jun could pick and choose from the flood of love calls however he liked.
And what he chose, naturally, was a cable program where idols appeared as guests alongside him.
"Alright, I hear our special guest Kim Se-jun has prepared a special present for us today?"
The show was well underway when a fairly large MC — a former comedian — picked up the writer's cue and tossed the line out.
"That's right. Apparently it's a gift for our guests from Luzvia. Se-jun, can you tell us what it is?"
The female MC, an idol herself, picked up where her co-host had left off and turned to Se-jun.
"Oh, it's nothing too fancy. I play the gayageum, right? I thought I'd perform Luzvia's hit, I Only See You, on the gayageum."
"Wow!"
"Thank you so much!"
The four-member girl group Luzvia bounced in their seats, delighted. Across from them, the boy group Titan watched with naked envy.
"Hyung! What about our song?"
One of Titan's members threw the line at Se-jun with all the shameless charm he could muster. Easygoing, ingratiating — the kind of bit that usually landed. Se-jun, though, let a faint scowl flicker across his face, too quick for the cameras to catch.
Not interested in the guys, pal.
"Ah, I only prepared Luzvia's song for today. I'll do yours next time."
He deflected smoothly, then brought over a gayageum that had already been tuned.
"Wow. Luzvia, you all really lucked out today."
"I know, right? I'm so excited!"
The MCs worked the crowd, stoking the atmosphere, and Luzvia watched him with bright, expectant eyes. Even Titan looked on with a mix of disappointment and anticipation.
Then Kim Se-jun began to play.
"Whoa..."
I Only See You was a fast song. To match that tempo, his hands moved with dazzling speed, and the gayageum poured out a bright, racing melody in perfect time with every flick of his fingers. As if they had rehearsed it, everyone in the studio let out a gasp at once.
This is too good.
The members of Luzvia glanced at one another and whispered it, and every one of them nodded.
I think this is better than our original...
It was not only the girls. Even the staff had gone slack-jawed, staring at him. They had all heard the rumors about Kim Se-jun's playing. That his singing and his performance were things you had to see live — that a recording would never be enough.
So the rumors were true...
One staffer who had written the whole thing off as exaggeration shook his head, then snapped his eyes straight back to Se-jun. It was a performance so intoxicating that losing even a second of it felt like a waste.
The brutal heat had broken, and mid-October had turned genuinely cool — and still the popularity of Simcheongga showed no sign of fading. The song held on to first place as if the spot belonged to it, and perhaps because of that, the conversation about Kim Se-jun online climbed higher by the day.
Kim Se-jun and Lim Tae-hyun split first and second on the music charts between them. Perhaps because they were both men in their twenties, the internet was full of people lining the two of them up against each other.
Lim Tae-hyun's standing was still the higher of the two. For now.
"Heh heh heh. My little cousin's a real celebrity now."
A big, burly man snorted with teasing laughter as he scrolled through the online chatter. Across from him, a man in a pulled-down cap tipped back his glass and let out a quiet laugh of his own.
"Well, yeah. I'm the guy who hit number one on the charts."
Kim Se-jun's boast earned a conceding nod from Kim Se-hoon.
"Right. You remember what I said in this bar? Back then?"
"Hm? Said what?"
Se-jun tilted his head. Se-hoon pointed a finger at the speaker.
"That. I said it'd be so weird if your song came on in here."
"Ah... yeah. You did say that."
"It's playing right now."
The sound of a gayageum rose with Se-jun's voice over it, and Se-hoon grinned. His cousin. Who would have thought the kid would actually become a singer? It felt like only yesterday he had been celebrating over a business card from an open mic, and now here he was, rubbing shoulders with the top names in the country. Even indoors, he still had his cap mashed down over his face to dodge people's eyes. They had always been close as brothers — and still, a strange sense of distance had started to creep in.
"Hyung. Look at this."
Se-jun held out his phone with a proud little smile.
"What the— wait. Wait!!"
The curiosity in Se-hoon's eyes vanished in an instant, replaced by raw envy. He snatched the phone, both hands trembling.
"Ch-Childhood Friend?! How did you—!"
Five beautiful women, and right in the middle of them, Kim Se-jun grinning like an idiot. Se-hoon stared at him, aghast.
"We took a picture together last time. You're a Childhood Friend fan, right?"
Se-jun's eyes curved into crescents. He was clearly enjoying himself at his cousin's expense.
"Wow... I am so jealous. I mean that from the bottom of my heart..."
Se-hoon stared at the phone for a long time before handing it back.
"Next time you see them, just get me one autograph..."
His voice had gone gloomy. Se-jun took the phone and said nothing — did not even answer, just stared at the screen as if he could bore a hole through it. Se-hoon called him again.
"Hey. What are you doing? You don't want to get me a signature?"
"Ah... no. It's not that. I'll get it for you. But hyung. You said you had stock in Stein Entertainment, right?"
"Yeah. The place with Lim Tae-hyun."
"How much do you still have?"
"Sold most of it a few days ago. Why?"
Se-jun huffed a quiet laugh and shook his head.
"No reason."
Good call.
He had come within a hair of getting stuck holding at the peak — waiting for a rescue that would never come.
A message had just landed on Se-jun's phone.
I knew she'd pull it off.
That infuriatingly handsome face of Lim Tae-hyun's rose in Se-jun's mind. He murmured to himself. He would never have to look at that face again.
"Hyung. Shall we have a drink?"
Se-jun held out his glass. They clinked, and he knocked the whole thing back in one go.
"Khh. Sweet. So sweet."
It felt like the sweet relief of a rotten tooth finally pulled.