Lee Cheonghyeon jerked in surprise and jumped to his feet.

‘How did he find me?’

He had thought they might look for him if he didn’t get home on time. He only thought it.

But he hadn’t expected someone would actually come to catch him. How do you find a person in the middle of Seoul without a single call?

What was even scarier was Kim Iwol’s utterly matter-of-fact reaction when he found him.

‘He said “figured you’d be here”?’

That meant Kim Iwol finding him wasn’t a coincidence. That was even more terrifying.

He was dying to break the mood by asking, ‘Hyung, did you maybe work part-time at a private eye’s office before you were a trainee?’

But he couldn’t. Because the look on Kim Iwol’s face as he stared at him was, quite literally, grim.

From the first time he saw him, the coworker who had come looking for him had carried a different kind of aura.

Call it bleak, or call it cold.

Or like the two combined—when you looked at that face with chill streaming off it, you couldn’t help but think, ‘Ah, this hyung isn’t ordinary.’

When he stood there expressionless, the pressure he gave off was such that no one but Choi Jeho could easily strike up a conversation.

If anything, it was only that the fact Kim Iwol was weird in personality contrary to his looks lowered the barrier a bit; facing him one-on-one was no easy thing.

It was to the point his friend Kang Giyeon earned respect just for doing self-practice with this hyung every day.

For someone like that, facing Kim Iwol, who had come all the way out here—a one-hour bus ride because of him—felt close to fear.

He had run away without a word to the company that had even seated him in the debut lineup.

And then there was the situation he would have to face when he went back—his shabby first creation being discussed as the debut track.

To Lee Cheonghyeon, everything felt unbearably heavy. It felt like taking a test that wouldn’t end.

So he chose to run.

While imagining something so dreadful he’d later wonder, thinking rationally, why he’d gone that far—like he’d die if he got caught.

“Lee Cheonghyeon!”

He heard a voice call his name from behind.

In his head, he shouted, ‘I’m sorry, hyung!’

It was an action unlike him, not thinking about the aftermath.

He had forgotten that, among the trainees, Kim Iwol was the one with the best stamina and that catching him would be nothing.

Charging blindly up the hiking trail, Lee Cheonghyeon was grabbed by the forearm at a spring halfway up the mountain in just twenty minutes.

The grip twisting his arm was so strong he barely held back an involuntary yelp.

“Cheonghyeon.”

At the same time, he heard Kim Iwol’s voice from much closer than before.

If there had been urgency in it a moment ago, now the call was filled with anger—nothing but anger, he felt that keenly.

It was right when Lee Cheonghyeon was thinking something like, ‘I’m gasping up to my chin and that hyung is totally fine?’

Maybe that earlier grip hadn’t even been his maximum, because Kim Iwol tightened his hand on Lee Cheonghyeon’s arm and asked,

“Is being an idol a joke to you?”

The words out of Kim Iwol’s mouth were something Lee Cheonghyeon hadn’t even slightly expected.

‘What’s with this kid’s expression.’

I thought as I finally managed to get a hold of Lee Cheonghyeon right in front of me.

I was dead serious, and the kid had a face like he didn’t know what was going on.

‘Does he not get how close this came to being dangerous?’

If he did, he wouldn’t be standing there with that blank look.

My chest felt tight. I probably needed to start taking my stomach protector again.

Keeping calm, I thought of my list of “thirty scenes I recall when I need peace of body and mind,” and asked Lee Cheonghyeon,

“What were you planning to do if you got that gold-bar face of yours hurt, running around on a mountain? Can you get your head on straight? Can you not spare a thought for the fans who’ll laugh and cry over a single high-definition photo of you and feel full without eating?”

Given a face like that, Lee Cheonghyeon needed to recognize the impact of his own looks.

I wasn’t a looks-supremacist, but the world wasn’t like me.

‘There were so many comments like “Even if Spark messes up, I forgive them because I see Lee Cheonghyeon’s face.”’

Not everyone in the world would forgive controversies around Spark just because they looked at Lee Cheonghyeon’s face.

But at least in terms of keeping a fan from walking away even once, preserving Lee Cheonghyeon’s face was, in effect, work for the team.

I had to take three deep breaths to keep my anger from bursting. My head throbbed.

Some of us were busting our heads from morning to night just to manage a safe debut without incident.

This feeling—of getting zero cooperation from the surroundings—was one I hadn’t had since the time Deputy Manager Nam randomly moved only my desk in front of the restroom.

So I forced myself to remember that the Lee Cheonghyeon in front of me was still a minor and that, in the eye of the typhoon, he could be sufficiently unsettled.

Then the boiling anger subsided somewhat.

“You’re not mad because I ran away...... right?”

“Why would I be mad about you running when I already caught you?”

For someone who survived several years at Hanpyeong Industries, this didn’t even count as having run errands.

“It’s not that I’m not mad. At most it’s like my meal got snatched away, that level.”

“Lucky it’s a meal and not my jjolmyeon......”

“What ticked me off is that you were running around a mountain with no safety gear. If you’d just come along quietly, we could have sat at a horizontal negotiation table.”

Right as I was about to regret rambling on pointlessly out of agitation, Lee Cheonghyeon muttered,

“I’m sorry.”

It was an apology with the wind knocked out of it.

I hadn’t known him up close for long, but he didn’t seem like a kid who’d normally be like this. He must be really cornered mentally.

‘Rationally...... better to talk it out.’

Especially after learning what happened to Jeong Seongbin, who’d been pressured by a burly adult, the idea of bearing down on a kid didn’t sit right with me.

No matter how much good will we had, in Korean society it’s hard for a younger person not to be conscious of the age gap.

In the end, I held it in and decided to break the mood first.

“No. I knew you’d want to be alone, and I came looking one-sidedly—sorry for that. But I came because I was worried about you, so I hope it doesn’t make you too uncomfortable.”

At my words, Lee Cheonghyeon gave an awkward smile.

It didn’t feel like he was truly trying not to be uncomfortable; it felt like he hated the scolding vibe and was forcing himself to act like everything was fine.

“I was going to stay just thirty more minutes and leave. But I got caught, so I guess that’s that. What a shame, what a shame!”

Then he stood from the bench and brushed off his pants.

“Then finish your thirty and go.”

“Huh?”

“Just do some more self-practice and then go. You’re late anyway, so cut class the amount you planned.”

I checked that there wasn’t anyone nearby who needed the seat and sat down next to where he had been.

Glancing sideways at me, Lee Cheonghyeon awkwardly sat back down too.

“Why are you looking around so much?”

“If you get caught skipping practice, of course you have to look around.”

“If you’re going to look around like that, why skip? You’re getting an extra count for impudence.”

When I looked at him, he swallowed.

I kept my gaze somewhere down in the city spread out below the mountainside and asked,

“You wrote a song that good and you’re still worried?”

Lee Cheonghyeon shot back,

“How did you ✧ NоvеIight ✧ (Original source) know?”

There was no need to answer that.

I didn’t feel any necessity to go through every step of the process I’d taken to reach that conclusion, and I didn’t think it would be important to him either.

Instead, I decided to touch on the part he was probably most torn up about.

“I get worrying what if it doesn’t chart well, but that’s not your problem to worry about.”

“Huh?”

“There’s the difference between digital and physical markets, group recognition matters, it changes depending on promo and music show exposure...... There are dozens of factors that affect results; there’s no way all that responsibility lands only on the composer.”

It was something even Lee Cheonghyeon would agree with in his head. His heart was another matter.

No matter how good the members were or how great a concept they brought, if the song wasn’t attractive, they couldn’t even appeal—that had been proven by countless cases.

And Lee Cheonghyeon himself was a kid who hadn’t neglected either music or studies when he was younger.

Among people who’ve done everything well like that, there are more than a few who feel pressure about performance.

If you’ve never failed, you’re afraid of failing.

They’re all hyped up normally, then suddenly at some moment they watch others’ reactions to an extreme, or they show off what they’re already recognized for doing well without hesitation, but in the field where they’re challenging themselves they get overly timid.

Just from that, you could read Lee Cheonghyeon’s disposition well enough.

“Of course it’ll weigh on you. But even if the outcome isn’t great, we’re not going to pin it on one person. I don’t allow anyone to get stuck holding the bag.”

Even as I said it, the thought made me grimace.

But all more wrinkles would do is increase the amount of money that would get shaved off the settlement along with my aesthetic shop booking, so I hurried to smooth my brow.

“It’s hard. Not long ago, all I had to do was be ready to answer how far along I was for you.”

“Well, if you’re really worried, I can hold feedback meetings as doggedly as when I check your progress.”

“Wow. I only imagined it and I already feel my energy getting sucked out......”

Lee Cheonghyeon ran his hands down both arms.

‘I’ve thought this before, but he must be extremely weak to negative evaluations.’

Up until he went to the A&R team with his work, I’d thought he didn’t have any resistance to that kind of thing.

But I guess from a creator’s standpoint, you can’t help but care about evaluations.

There isn’t a person who only ever gets praise.

Naturally, humans grow by being pointed out and critiqued at least once.

But for Lee Cheonghyeon, that “critique” seemed to have quite an impact.

If others heard that, they might literally say, ‘Are you not going to make soybean paste because you’re scared of maggots,’ but what people consider important varies wildly.

Just as there are people who loathe maggots to the point of shuddering, for Lee Cheonghyeon, maybe bad evaluations were that kind of existence.

That much wasn’t a feeling I couldn’t understand.

“In the first place, neither I nor the guys are experts. At most we’ll be talking impressions, right?”

“That’s...... true. Hm.”

An unnameable expression flickered across Lee Cheonghyeon’s face. But he hid it right away.

I kept my gaze on the roof of the tallest building below our feet and said,

“What’s there to get drained about. You always do well.”