Chapter 41
Chapter 41
In the idol industry, a school violence scandal is a dead end. The data accumulated from past incidents has proven it time and again.
Specifically, the moment bullying or physical violence is added to the list, it’s over. I’ve never seen any other method work besides withdrawing from the group and enlisting in the military.
But of all things, it had to break out for a participant on my own team?
‘…Let’s verify it first.’
I clicked on the post. More comments had been added in the meantime.
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[3rd Place! Exposing Aju-sa’s Keun Se-jin for School Violence. (491)]
: I’m writing this because I feel like I’m going to die if I keep holding it in.
Lee Se-jin, a participant in <Re-listing! Idol Inc.> who goes by the nickname Keun Se-jin, bullied people throughout his time at Cheongsol High School.
Seeing posts online talking about how he ran for student council president in high school as if they were heartwarming stories about a model student makes me so resentful and tearful that I can’t sleep.
Lee Se-jin has been drinking and smoking since middle school, and he bullied me while hanging out with a crowd of delinquents while pretending to be kind.
…….
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The long post that followed detailed Keun Se-jin’s alleged subtle acts of school violence.
The descriptions of the one-on-one bullying were meticulous, even including specific examples. It was convincing enough that even I felt its weight as I skimmed through.
‘This isn’t just some attention-seeking rumor written on a whim.’
Whether it was true or not, the post was written with intent. There were even photos attached at the bottom.
One was the author’s own high school graduation album.
The other was a photo of Keun Se-jin with a cigarette between his fingers.
Below the photo, more text had been added.
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[I have plenty of other photos. If you have any sense of the situation, withdraw now. I don’t know about anything else, but I absolutely cannot stand seeing a kid like you become an idol.]
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‘…Even if it’s not true, once a label is attached, it’s hard to peel off. And they even posted a photo.’
On an audition program, this was practically a death sentence. It was also a massive disaster for this team.
Even if Keun Se-jin tried to endure it, the team’s screen time would be ruined, and even if he withdrew, it would be hell. We’d have to re-practice everything, from part distributions to formations.
“…….”
I held back a sigh and looked up.
‘Verification first.’
“I just saw the post.”
“…….”
A heavy silence fell.
Not a single person even asked what was going on.
‘It looks like the others have all seen it too.’
Keun Se-jin sat with his head hung low, staring at his smartphone screen in silence.
“Are you sure the person in this photo is you?”
“……I don’t know,” Keun Se-jin muttered in a dazed voice. “I’ve never taken a photo like this….”
But he couldn’t say for sure that it wasn’t him.
I asked again.
“Did you smoke?”
“Wait, in my freshman year… something happened. …But I quit right away. And I never did anything like this. Seriously, why would I do this at school….”
Keun Se-jin’s voice grew louder, but then he shut his mouth as if he were choking. He looked back down at his phone.
‘He’s reading the comments.’
It was bound to be horrific without even looking. Gold 1 noticed the situation and quickly tried to stop him.
“Hey, don’t look at that. Turn it off for now. Turn it off.”
“…I have to see them to respond. But… yeah, it’s already over.”
Keun Se-jin put his phone down. His hands were trembling violently.
“Honestly, even I wouldn’t believe me. If I say I smoked but never took the photo, and that everything except the smoking is a lie… it’s not very convincing.”
As he spoke, Keun Se-jin was gradually becoming calm. No, rather than calm… he was becoming resigned.
“…People won’t believe me, right?”
“…….”
With a photo attached, it did seem difficult to turn things around.
Separately, Keun Se-jin did look genuinely wronged. Furthermore, the behavior described in the exposure post was significantly different from the direction Keun Se-jin had shown so far.
‘Given his personality… even if he bullied someone, I don’t think he’d leave any room for repercussions.’
If he were to do it, he’d subtly manipulate the situation so the person suffered as if it were their own doing, without even realizing he was the one bullying them.
He wasn’t the type to use a method that could lead to such backlash later.
However, this was also just a guess. I couldn’t jump to conclusions since I hadn’t known him for long. People have many different sides to them, after all.
Haven’t we seen many cases where someone is a piece-of-trash, overbearing boss to their employees but a dependable father to their son?
“…….”
I pondered for a moment, then turned my smartphone screen back on. I began to read through the post exposing Keun Se-jin from the very beginning, word by word.
Meanwhile, Keun Se-jin and the other team members began to flounder in despair and sorrow.
Keun Se-jin muttered in a low voice.
“I’ll… withdraw tomorrow.”
“…!!”
“Hey, wait a minute.”
“C-c-calm down and th-think….”
“I’ve already thought about it enough. It’s true that I smoked…. If I keep holding out here, the controversy will only grow.”
Keun Se-jin seemed to be trying his best to steady his voice.
“After things settle down a bit, if I explain myself well, maybe I can debut in a year or two? And… it’s a bit scary because a photo I have no memory of taking just appeared.”
“…….”
Since Keun Se-jin, who always had a bit of composure to spare, was speaking like that, the other team members couldn’t seem to bring themselves to say anything else.
I replied to his words while still staring into my smartphone.
“I don’t think that’s a very good idea.”
“……Why?”
“The person who wrote this post said, ‘If you have any sense of the situation, withdraw now.’ If you withdraw now, those words will become an established fact.”
Since I kept talking back even though it wasn’t my business, Keun Se-jin seemed to be getting a bit heated.
“Stop it. It only makes me feel worse. Even if I refute it in this situation, the result will be the same.”
“The important thing is to pick the right subject for the rebuttal.”
“What?”
I lifted my smartphone and turned the screen toward Keun Se-jin.
The screen showed an enlarged view of the last photo included in the exposure post.
“This is a composite.”
“……!!”
Their eyes looked like they were going to pop out. Stop being so surprised.
Actually, if he had thought about it calmly, he would have guessed it was a composite himself, but it seemed he couldn’t because he was scared.
I handed the smartphone to Keun Se-jin. Then, I pointed with my index finger to the parts of the photo on the screen that gave it away.
First, the hand holding the cigarette.
“Here, if you enlarge this in a design program and align it… the pixels are slightly broken. They probably lowered the quality on purpose, but a few spots still show.”
And the cigarette.
“The brightness of the cigarette alone doesn't match. With this photo's exposure value, it should be brighter than this, but it looked too white, so they lowered it a bit more during the process.”
It was a mistake beginners often made when inserting white objects into a photo. White objects are supposed to stand out, but because it looks awkward, they end up blurring it.
My smartphone’s performance was quite poor, so it lagged a bit, but it was fine for this kind of verification.
‘…To think I’d benefit from the days I spent doing data correction work.’
I briefly recalled my past, where I’d take extra payments to fulfill requests like, “Please erase that damn pattern on the clothes, T_T.”
“H-how do you know this? Are you sure?”
“Yeah.”
Keun Se-jin stared at the smartphone in silence.
Just as I thought I saw a flash of hope in his eyes, Gold 1 shouted.
“Hey!! Then post a clarification right now! Say it’s a composite!”
“O-oh…. Right! I should post….”
“No, wait.”
Perhaps because he was someone who had been successful in the real world, he didn't seem to know the nature of the internet very well. I explained calmly.
“I’ve looked into it, and I’m sure some of your fans have already realized it’s a composite too.”
“Ah!”
“Th-then if we just wait, the f-fans will….”
“No, what I mean is… even if there are points that suggest it’s a composite, people won’t believe it because it’s fun to bash you. They’ll just sneer and say fans are claiming that because they like Keun Se-jin.”
“……Ah.”
I needed to add a further explanation immediately before the atmosphere in the room was destroyed.
“So, find it.”
“Huh?”
“The original photo. If you post it along with the original, they won’t be able to argue against the fact that it’s a composite.”
Seeing Keun Se-jin in the photo staring into the lens meant he was already aware of the camera’s presence.
If so, there was a high possibility that an acquaintance had taken it.
‘But it’s dangerous to contact all his acquaintances in this situation.’
Because an acquaintance might have been the one who posted it.
‘Given how confidently the person who wrote the exposure post included the photo, they seem certain that not many people have the original….’
No, wait. Since that would make it easy to identify them, it might actually be the opposite.
‘Hmm, if not that…….’
I fell into thought for a moment, then asked Keun Se-jin.
“Do you tend to save all the photos you take with other people?”
“If I’m in them, yeah.”
“Then for now… why don’t you start by looking through your albums for days when you took a lot of photos for some event or gathering.”
If they had cropped Keun Se-jin from a group photo and changed the background, they might have been arrogant enough to think he wouldn’t be able to find the original.
“Mundae, what on earth did you do before this? Are you actually an NIS agent?”
“Of course not.”
I quickly brushed off Gold 1’s nonsense.
The other team members had already crowded around Keun Se-jin, looking through the photos with eagle eyes.
“Don’t just look at solo photos; look at group photos too. It could be an enlargement.”
“Okay.”
Keun Se-jin, finally returning to his usual way of speaking, quickly opened the gallery on his smartphone.
And then, an eye-straining search followed.
Just how many photos did this guy take? Photos from his high school days appeared endlessly.
Half an hour passed before they even finished his freshman year.
“Se-Sejin, you have a lot of friends.”
“…Haha.”
It was to the point where Seon A-hyun muttered that in an exhausted voice. Keun Se-jin let out an embarrassed laugh and flicked through the photos.
And just as photos from the first semester of his sophomore year were appearing.
“Hyung, this one!”
“…!”
Kim Rae-bin pointed at a photo as it passed by. Keun Se-jin quickly checked the photo.
It was a photo of five or six people standing together, smiling at the camera. Before and after this photo, there were several other photos taken in the same place with different poses.
Keun Se-jin was slightly off to the side in a corner. And when his upper body was enlarged, it was clearly visible.
It was the photo included in the exposure post.
“……Ha.”
Keun Se-jin hung his head and let out a long sigh of relief.
Then, he muttered in a somewhat hollow voice.
“…It’s a photo from the election campaign.”
“Hmm.”
Come to think of it, the beginning of the exposure post mentioned something about running for student council president. Whoever it was, that must have really rubbed them the wrong way.
‘Maybe I should have told him to look for photos from that time first.’
Well, we found it anyway, so it’s fine.
“Whew…….”
Keun Se-jin sprawled backward as the tension left him. He almost hit his head on the wall behind the bed, but he clearly couldn’t care about that right now.
“Thank god. It was in my photo album.”
“I know, right?”
I nodded.
Beside me, Gold 1 spoke up energetically.
“Great! You have an agency, right? Send it to them! Tell them to release a rebuttal!”
It was sensible advice. Since the matter had already grown large, it would be cleaner to respond officially with the evidence.
However, the response was hesitant.
“To the agency?”
Keun Se-jin rubbed the back of his neck with a strange expression.
“Um……. That’s a bit.”
“…?”
That’s exactly what agencies are for, so why?