The Sunbae Who Paves a Flower Path

“Um... Hanzel.”

“What?”

As though perfectly timed, the car jolted over a speed bump. Had he finally remembered something?

“I learned how to connect my phone to the car’s Bluetooth... Should I play something?”

“...Sure. Become the greatest DJ alive.”

DJ Gowon pressed various buttons and successfully connected his phone. By that point, however, the car had already passed through the main gate of his accommodations. Since we had driven a distance that took only ten minutes on foot, naturally....

“...I’ll play it next time.”

Gowon, who had practically buried his nose in the control panel, straightened awkwardly. I switched on the hazard lights and pulled as close as possible to the building entrance.

Even then, nothing happened.

Could this be a prolonged crisis too? The kind that had to be resolved gradually over a long period...?

Whatever it was, I had no excuse left to keep him here.

“Go inside.”

“Yes. Thank you for dinner.”

His large frame bent in a deep bow before straightening again. I watched his back disappear, then opened my phone.

Had I completely missed the mark?

A celebrity’s crisis did not arise solely in the real world. The instant rumors, slander, misunderstandings, and all sorts of other things spread online, they could inflict tremendous damage on their image.

Then perhaps the problem was not Gowon himself, but his reputation....

I sat there with the car parked and started typing Gowon’s name into the search bar, only to close it again.

No.

It was not that kind of crisis.

The instincts of someone who had already experienced a Quest Scenario once told me so.

Some kind of danger was still ongoing.

When I opened the car door and stepped out, I saw the hallway light come on somewhere inside the accommodations building. A large shadow flickered across it.

The moment I entered the building, I heard a commotion.

“......! ......!!!!”

The fourth floor? The fifth?

There was no time to stop and calculate. I simply charged up the stairs.

The hallway sensor lights switched on one after another as they detected my movement.

“Let go of me, you fucking bastard! I’ll ruin your fucking life!”

The scene before me more than justified the quest window’s bloodred warning.

“......!”

A person with disheveled hair screaming at the top of their lungs—and Gowon, looking bewildered and at a complete loss as he restrained the assailant by the wrist.

The stranger was gripping a rock the size of a fist.

They kept trying to swing it at Gowon, and the backs of his hands were already covered in scratches from stopping them.

The difference in size between Gowon and the assailant was enough that he could easily have fought back. But Gowon was afraid something might go wrong, so he did not know what to do with them.

“Gowon!”

I strode straight into the chaos. The assailant saw another person arrive and thrashed hard enough to wrench free of Gowon’s grip.

“Ugh...!”

At the same moment I yanked Gowon backward by the nape, the stalker hurled the rock at knee height. It struck the hallway floor with a deafening clatter. Using the opening, the culprit practically tumbled down the stairs in their rush to escape.

“Ah....”

“Don’t chase them.”

I grabbed Gowon and pulled out my phone.

“You can’t be the one who catches them, and you can’t be the one who reports this.”

I called Chief Manager Park.

“Jonghyeok, there’s a fucking lunatic outside Gowon’s place. They came with a rock.”

After an appalled reaction, he said he was coming immediately.

...So this was it....

Should I be grateful that the system had warned me...?

First place on an audition show, followed by a successful debut. It was exactly the right time for him to attract a vicious obsessive fan.

I had overlooked that possibility.

“Gowon, are you hurt anywhere?”

When no answer came, I turned around and found him staring somewhere with his eyes wide open. The moment I followed his gaze, my own eyes widened too.

Filthy fucking beggarXXXXX.......

Abuse filled with contempt, sexual harassment, and insults aimed at his family, company, and everyone around him.

So that was what the rock had been used for. The culprit had scratched words into the door with it. Every inch was packed with malice even more vicious than what they had screamed at Gowon earlier.

His breathing trembled sharply beside me.

“Don’t look.”

I covered Gowon’s eyes with my palm.

“......”

There was no reason to face words written for the sole purpose of carving someone apart from the inside.

Especially not in a situation like this.

“Don’t look. Think about something else. Something that made you laugh recently, a meal you enjoyed....”

“......”

“When practice went well and someone praised you.... Keep breathing. You’re doing well.”

Becoming the target of someone’s hatred was something an ordinary person rarely experienced.

But celebrities were loved by complete strangers, and that meant they were just as defenseless against the opposite emotion.

The person who had fled probably did not even have any great reason.

Some people loved Gowon because he was handsome, because he danced well, because he had won first place on a survival show.

And others hated him for the exact same reasons.

At that moment, I felt the inside of my palm grow damp. Gowon seemed to notice too and tried to turn his head away. But I cupped the back of his head first and stopped him.

“It’s okay.”

“......”

“I can’t see it either this way.”

Gowon bit down hard on his lip. His shoulders trembled for a moment, and at last, a faint trace of moisture touched my palm.

He steadied his breathing in far too little time for it to be called crying, then took my wrist and slowly lowered my hand.

Perhaps he was fairly strong in a crisis, because he regained his composure quickly.

Even so, whenever his gaze drifted toward the door, I tried to block it again. But Gowon was not looking at the door.

He was looking directly at my face.

Up close, a faint trace of terror still remained.

“There are plenty of security cameras in front of this building, and the company should already be responding by now.”

“...Yes.”

“Don’t look back.”

What good would come from dwelling on it?

“How did you know?”

“Instinct.”

“......”

It’s not like you’d believe me if I said the quest window told me.

More importantly, this fucking quest window....

For something like this, it should have warned me in advance. Was flashing one red alert all it could do?

It had spent all this time hounding me to take care of Gowon. What would it have done if I had relaxed after driving him home and simply left?

And there was another problem....

Q Emergency. Detect HBN’s Crisis

Resolve the crisis

Success: Unlock HBN’s slot selection

Failure: Quest Scenario progression suspended

The warning indicator had disappeared, and so had the urgently empty field, but the quest still had not been marked as complete.

I could not tell whether that meant there was more danger left, or whether Gowon’s Mental Strength had been shaken so badly that he was still in danger despite pretending to be calm.

“What the hell happened here?!”

Chief Manager Park and the staff arrived just then. They turned pale with shock at the sight of Gowon.

Then they saw what had been written on the door and narrowed their eyes exactly as I had.

“This is....”

“Jonghyeok.”

I quietly pointed at Gowon with my chin.

“Take care of him first. Did they catch the culprit?”

“Yeah. Apparently they ran off like a lunatic, crashing into everything, so someone must’ve reported them. They were caught right away.”

While another manager examined Gowon’s injuries, Chief Manager Park lowered his voice.

“Rather than an obsessive fan... they seem more like a fan of another singer.”

That made sense. It had felt more like genuine resentment than excessive affection.

“Yeah, I thought so too. Is there a fandom that hates him this much?”

“Well, things have been tense with Newton lately. Some fans of the trainees apparently call him a traitor too. And, uh... it seems some Young Ace fans resent him as well.”

“Damn.”

“There are seriously so many strange people in the world. Isn’t that right, Gowon? Good grief, what happened to your hands? Are you hurt anywhere else?”

“No. Hanzel came right away, so....”

“We’ll handle everything here now. Go wait in the car. Myeongho is on the first floor.”

“No. I’ll take care of him. Tell Wonjong to come up too and deal with this door immediately.”

The company would soon be thrown into chaos, so I did not need to worry about this place.

But Gowon....

Even if only to ease my own anxiety, I needed to watch him personally until the quest ended.

Ignoring everyone’s concerned protests, I took Gowon down to the first floor.

“It would be better to go to your family’s home, wouldn’t it?”

“......”

“Tell me the address. I’ll drive you.”

I thought he might want to calm down with his family, but he pressed his lips tightly together and did not answer.

He did not seem enthusiastic about that option.

“Then I’ll take you to a nearby hotel. Sleep there tonight.”

“No.”

“Is there somewhere else you could go...?”

“I’ll return to my accommodations in a little while.”

“What?”

Had the shock driven him insane?

The instant I turned to look at him with that thought, I came face-to-face with a solid wall.

“I can just lock the door and sleep. They’ve already been caught, so they won’t come back anyway.”

“......”

“...Thank you for helping me. I’ll handle things myself now without causing you any more trouble.”

Ah. Was this it?

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