Don't Pity Me
Things moved quickly after that.
CCTV footage of my parents showing up at the company to make threats was submitted, and a formal restraining order followed soon after. However they'd gotten their hands on my number, they raised hell about it—I wasn't even their son, was I trying to sever the sacred bond of blood—but once I changed my number, the contact stopped.
I'd figured they wouldn't give up so easily. Become a celebrity and you start pulling in enormous settlement payouts as a matter of course; they weren't the type to walk away from that kind of money.
It cut off easier than I thought.
I had no idea why. They never contacted me again after that. It was irritating, but it was also a relief.
The members came to find me, offering comfort.
"That must've sucked."
"Yeah. If they show up again, we'll be the ones protecting you."
But after that incident, the atmosphere in the practice room wasn't great. Not bad, exactly—just subdued all around. Which made sense. A member's parents had shown up, caused a scene, issued threats, and ended up with a restraining order slapped on them.
Nobody was going to be laughing and joking after something like that. Even if I insisted I was fine, everyone couldn't help but walk on eggshells around me. The whole environment had shifted that way on its own.
...Damn it.
Was I going to be branded the pitiful kid of the group before we even debuted?
Having a "poor thing" reputation wasn't going to do me any favors. The kid from a broken home, on bad terms with his parents, carrying around some vaguely dark and melancholy air.
I don't want that kind of image.
More than anything, I hated the current situation. Even when I said I was fine, everyone was still watching me out of the corner of their eye.
Well. The fact that Do Won-woo's family is a complete disaster has been fully exposed now...
I chewed on my nail with a crunch, then leaned back against the wall. It was a break in the middle of practice.
I was staring blankly, drinking water, when someone sat down next to me. Lee Hyo-seop.
"How are you holding up?"
"Sorry?"
"You doing okay these days?"
This. This was exactly what I didn't want. Randomly asking if I was okay out of nowhere.
"I'm fine."
I was grateful they were worried about me, of course. But being treated like some pitiful charity case felt strange. The truth was, aside from this one incident, I hadn't actually suffered anything at the hands of Do Won-woo's parents. There was no real damage. If anything, I'd gotten rid of them so fast it felt almost anticlimactic.
But the company and the members saw it differently. They were treating me like some tragic protagonist—an unloved child, a parentless orphan.
"Nothing's been hard lately, right?"
Hyo-seop's excessive concern was especially burdensome, considering we weren't even that close yet.
"Ah, no. I'm seriously fine."
I waved him off. Hard? How could it be hard? I'd taken out one of my biggest lingering threats—Do Won-woo's parents—way more easily than expected. I was practically flying. Having parents around would only have been a nuisance anyway. They weren't even my real parents.
"Won-woo."
"Yeah?"
Hyo-seop called my name. I looked over and found him watching me with something like pity in his eyes.
He said it, patted my shoulder, and stood up.
I was wondering what he was going to say, and he just... wishes me happiness?
I don't know. I'd been grateful for the concern this whole time, but the feeling was... something else.
"Haha. Yeah."
Why? I was starting to feel annoyed. To be precise, it was a complicated mix of things. Gratitude and irritation tangled together into something I couldn't quite name.
I fell into a dead sleep the moment we got back to the dorm after practice. When I woke up early the next morning, my head was spinning.
"...?"
My whole body was burning. I put a hand to my forehead. Fever. A cold, probably.
Ugh, a cold? Now of all times...
Irritation surged the second I opened my eyes. Catching a cold in the middle of debut prep. It wasn't my fault, but I was starting to resent this body—the kind of feeling where you miss how you felt before you got sick.
"You caught a cold?"
Lee Hae-won, having heard the news, came running straight to my room.
"Yeah, you really did. You've got a fever."
"Yeah. Feels like a nasty cold."
Soon Kwon Hak-jin showed up with a cold towel.
I was already being treated like a charity case, and now I've caught a cold on top of it. I'm officially the group's pitiful mascot.
The members gathered outside my door. All because of a cold, and I suddenly felt like a monkey in a zoo.
"You can all go now."
"Yeah. Let us know if you need anything."
"Got it, got it. Haha."
Hak-jin opened the door to leave, then came back in.
"The manager's going to call soon. Go to the hospital then. If you can't get up, just call me. I'll help you."
"It's just a cold. I don't need to be carried. I'm fine."
"Alright."
Hak-jin turned away with an awkward smile.
"Hyung."
"Yeah?"
"Thanks, though."
Being worried over was irritating, and yet somehow it also felt... good.
I went to the hospital with the manager, got my medicine, and came back to the dorm. I was dizzy. This cold wasn't going anywhere. Practice went on without me today because of it.
It was only one day of missed practice, but it still nagged at me. I knew how tight the schedule was until debut.
"Won-woo."
"Yeah?"
"Want some water?"
Won Ji-an came in with a glass of cold water, apparently determined to play nurse, and sat down.
"Water? I'm okay."
"I'll just leave it here, then. Drink it if you want it later."
A nasty cold had a way of making you sound pathetic without even trying. The sound of the glass being set on the table, then silence. I turned my head. Ji-an was still there.
"You can go now."
"I think I'll stay."
"Why?"
"Just. Figured you'd get bored sitting here alone."
I stared at the ceiling with a towel on my forehead, rolling my eyes around, then looked back at Ji-an.
"I'm not bored."
I was, actually. I could've used someone to talk to.
"You are bored."
"Am I?"
"Yeah. You look bored."
Ji-an said it, looking down at me steadily.
"When you're sick and nobody's paying attention to you, it feels pretty awful, right?"
"Hmm. Does it?"
"Don't people usually feel miserable about that?"
I thought about it, then shook my head.
"No?"
"No?"
"What's there to feel miserable about? It's not like I'm the only sick person in the world. There are people way sicker than me. It's just a cold."
Ji-an stared at me with a look of disbelief, then squinted.
"Have you always been this much of a T?"
"Me? Maybe."
"It's not about how sick you are. It's about how sad it is that nobody's taking care of you."
Watching him say that, I suddenly wanted some water. The truth was I just didn't have anything to say, so I pretended to drink.
"You're sad too. Right? You can pretend you're fine all you want, but miserable is still miserable."
The cold water slid down my throat.
"Yeah. Thanks. For taking care of me."
Ji-an coughed awkwardly.
"That's not—I wasn't fishing for that. But as long as you know."
What even was this conversation?
Looking at it, we both seemed to worry about each other a little too much. Was it the bond of being fellow possessors—people who'd both survived a brush with death? The sense of kinship that came from that?
It was closer to camaraderie, really. After everything we'd been through in that blood-soaked stretch of time, it was hard not to feel that way.
"Get better soon."
"That'd be nice."
A thought crossed my mind. If I'd still had the System, could I have bought some item that would make me recover faster?
"Ha..."
I shook my head and laughed.
"This must be a side effect of the System. Once you've used it, you know how convenient it is, and without it everything feels so frustrating."
"What?"
Ji-an, who'd been listening, frowned.
"Don't say that. Did you forget how the System controlled us and tormented us? All those abilities that 'helped' us were just bait to reel us in."
"Yeah, yeah. I know."
I couldn't even joke around in front of Ji-an.
"Don't get impatient. You'll get better eventually. Everything will."
I nodded. I'd try not to get impatient, like he said.
That evening, still sick with the cold and having eaten nothing, I lay in bed groaning. Then the door opened. Lee Hyo-seop came in carrying a tray with a bowl of porridge.
"I made egg porridge."
"Porridge? You didn't have to. I can skip eating."
"You won't sleep on an empty stomach."
I'd been receiving the full VIP nursing treatment from the members all day.
"Man... I feel bad, but this almost makes me want to stay sick."
Hyo-seop burst out laughing as he set down the tray.
"You want to stay sick? Fine, go ahead."
"Ah, come on."
He'd been wishing me happiness earlier, and now this. Not even funny.
"Anyway, I'm heading out. I'm not gonna sit here and spoon-feed you or anything, so..."
I nearly had a fit.
"Spoon-feed me? Seriously, it's not that bad. It's not like I lost the use of my arms."
I moved my arms around to prove they were in perfect working order.
"Alright."
Hyo-seop gave me a thumbs-up.
Now that I look at him, his personality is kind of weird?
Hyo-seop's personality was a little different from what I'd read in the character profile. Unexpected.
He handed me the tray and started to leave, then stopped.
"Won-woo."
"Yeah?"
I was about to take a bite of porridge when I heard him, and I looked up without eating.
"Honestly, just saying this out of nowhere—I'm not on good terms with my family either."
I froze with the spoon in my hand. I hadn't expected him to bring this up. Not now.
Wait. This wasn't in Lee Hyo-seop's character profile, was it?
I was still processing that when he continued.
"You're probably wondering why I'm dumping this on you all of a sudden. I just... wanted to say it in passing, rather than making a whole thing out of it. It's not like having a bad relationship with your family is some big dramatic story."
I sat there listening, porridge uneaten. If that was the case, the way Hyo-seop had been acting toward me suddenly made sense. Why he'd been so concerned.
Did he see himself in me?
I suddenly felt guilty. I'd gotten annoyed at him for pitying me, without even knowing why.
"I'm sorry."
"Huh? For what?"
"Just... I don't think I was as grateful as I should've been, considering how much you were worrying about me."
Hyo-seop shook his head and smiled.
"It's fine. Don't worry about it."
I felt like I'd gotten a little closer to him. I'd make a note of this later—it wasn't in the character profile. Then I quietly ate the porridge.
It's warm.
My body ached, but somehow, it had been a decent day.