CH 10

When he opened his eyes, he was in the dorm. ‘Parkha’’s unfamiliar ceiling was the first thing he saw. He made eye contact with a cute cat sticker that ‘Parkha’ had placed by himself. 

Before he could think about what happened, he heard Ilhyun’s voice asking calmly, “Are you up?”

As Haeun suddenly turned his head, he saw Ilhyun holding a book while sitting on a chair next to his bed. What is that? 

Meanwhile, Haeun was unfamiliar with the book Ilhyun was holding and mumbled in an idiotic voice, “What…?”

He knew it was his room, but he glanced around his surroundings. Fortunately, he quickly remembered what happened before he passed out. 

Haeun scratched the back of his head in embarrassment and simply apologized right away. “Ah, sorry.”

Ilhyun didn’t reply. Instead, he placed the book he was holding on the small, round table next to the bed. How could he be looking at a book, not a phone? It was a refined hobby that Park Haeun couldn’t even imagine.

“I guess you weren’t feeling well,” Ilhyun spoke slowly. It didn’t seem like a reply to his apology.

Haeun was glancing at the title of the book he’d put down. He’d identified it as a dark monochromatic hardcover with a title roughly about ‘something’s history,’ but it was too difficult to see the exact title. When he was about to stick his neck out like a turtle, Ilhyun moved his chair slightly backward. Park Haeun felt a prick in his conscience at the sound of scraping and raised his head. 

As if it wasn’t an intentional action, Ilhyun continued calmly, “No wonder. You’ve never done that before, so I wondered what happened to you to skip practice and act strange.”

Compared to his calm voice, the content was quite sharp. It didn’t feel like something said to express that he understood Haeun. It felt like he was trying to make himself understand. 

“Well, since people can act differently if they don’t feel well.”

His expression was full of doubt, but he seemed to be concluding it in any way he could with those words. Ilhyun wouldn’t want to hold back and scold or question someone who’d lost consciousness because they were sick. Since he was originally a character with a good personality.

Ilhyun shrugged his shoulders as if to say he wouldn’t say anything more and changed the subject. “We don’t have any more schedules today, so rest.”

“Youp- w-wait, what about you, hyung?”

Haeun carelessly almost asked ‘You?’ and corrected himself with a strange sound.1 Fortunately, it seemed that Ilhyun thought that Haeun had made a strange sound because he’d just woken up. 

Ilhyun replied unaffectedly, “I’m going to start monitoring.” 

“Ah.”

They weren’t going to be monitoring together, so there was nothing for Haeun to say any further. Haeun nodded and slightly scanned Ilhyun. After hearing about schedules, he was curious about the details. In the game, all he did was press the drawn ‘Practice’ or ‘Routine’ buttons. He knew absolutely nothing of what tomorrow’s schedule was or what they were going to do.

However, he was too uncomfortable to openly ask about tomorrow’s schedule because he’d definitely look like a lazy member who didn’t memorize his schedules.

“…”

As Haeun was awkwardly silent, Ilhyun didn’t say anything else. Thinking that he could have some alone time, Haeun rejoiced. However, instead of leaving, Ilhyun approached Haeun with his phone in his hand. 

With his butt, Haeun scooched backward. He obviously wasn’t trying to threaten him, but for some reason, it was uncomfortable to close their distance. There wouldn’t be anything good from sticking close to a male, especially someone set up to be capturable. 

Ilhyun calmly asked an imperative question as if he didn’t care about Haeun going away. “Will you lay down again for a moment?”

“Huh? Why?”

At the question that felt impure, his mask broke for a moment, and a sharp question came out. Park Haeun didn’t notice that his way of speaking wasn’t ‘like Parkha’ and continued grumbling.

“I’ll sleep well on my own when you leave, hyung.”

As he added those words, he lay down. At the thought that he’d punish him if Ilhyun did anything, he clenched his fists under the blanket. 

Ilhyun shook his phone and replied lightly, “That’s not why.”

What would he show? Haeun waited, but Ilhyun only looked at the phone screen by himself. Haeun realized his intentions after he sat on the edge of the bed and raised his phone up high.

‘Ah, he wants to take a picture? But why’d he ask me to lie down?’ Haeun thought as he brought the blankets up to his neck. 

As Ilhyun touched the screen and adjusted the brightness, he ordered Haeun behind him, “Pretend like you’re sleeping again.”

“Wait, why?” At the continuing frustration, Park Haeun asked again. Ilhyun’s voice was kind, but this was just an order. 

Ilhyun finally looked down at Haeun and spoke as if he found him strange, “Didn’t you hear what the director said? She said to take a picture to post on SNS.”

“What does that have to do with pretending to sleep?”

Seeing Haeun’s expression still full of questions, Ilhyun replied kindly again, “Since I can’t take it when you’re actually sleeping.”

Of course, there was no way Haeun could understand Ilhyun’s consideration of not secretly taking a picture of someone sleeping or the reason they had to go this far to take a picture of him (pretending to) sleep. He just closed his eyes without knowing anything.

For a moment, he didn’t hear anything, so he opened one eye. Ilhyun must’ve used a selca2 app that was silent because it seemed that he’d finished taking pictures. He continually swiped his finger as he looked at his album.

Haeun couldn’t be patient and got up again. He began to look at Ilhyun’s phone screen out of the corner of his eye. As if to let Haeun see, Ilhyun adjusted the screen to an angle he could see well and lightly mumbled.

“I think that’s good.”

The picture looked alright even to Haeun. Ilhyun chose one picture, lightly edited it with a few touches, and opened an SNS app on his homescreen. He typed in a flash with a calm expression and quickly uploaded the picture after checking the contents one more time.

Haeun blankly looked at the loading screen and suddenly began showing interest when he saw it had successfully been posted. “Let me look. How many followers do we have?”

In the game, it only said they were flop idols that the general public was unfamiliar with even their group name; it had never shown the exact amount of followers they had. Although Haeun knew nothing about the idol environment, he knew that there were flop idols in flop idols. He thought he should know where the group he was in was.

Ilhyun turned around to Haeun and showed him their follower page without a word. Unlike the single-digit following count, 58.3k was written on the followers. 

“I think it was less when we checked the other day. Maybe it rose?”

“…”

Haeun could not reply to that rhetorical question. He thought the rising number of followers was because of the trouble he’d caused today, and it was also because he couldn’t sense at all what the exact number was.

How much was a k? He was very curious, but he felt it would be weird if ‘Parkha,’ an idol, didn’t know, so he couldn’t possibly ask. 

Anyway, it was clear that it was more than he expected. He’d thought the amount of SNS followers would be around the 1000s because of how much the game had emphasized they were flop idols, but it seemed that they’d written it with a letter because it was more than that. 

Haeun was staring intensely at the follower screen when a few notifications began to appear at the top of the screen.