“Assistant Manager, are you feeling okay?”

Employee Song asked me one day while we were working through the night, eating nothing but cup ramen.

“I noticed you keep clutching your stomach...”

The inside of my abdomen felt scorched. Sometimes I felt like I was about to vomit; other times, it was a dull ache, as if I’d been struck hard.

“I think it’s just indigestion.”

But {N•o•v•e•l•i•g•h•t} it wasn’t uncomfortable enough to interfere with my daily life. I lived with constant headaches, so I figured a stomachache wouldn’t be much different. I remember thinking so carelessly back then.

A few days later, as soon as I arrived at work, I vomited violently in the last stall of the restroom. Saliva mixed with blood kept surging up my throat.

That was the day I crawled out on all fours. After a week of being unable to take even a half-day off, let alone annual leave, I desperately dragged myself to work and finally found a clinic open on Saturday. The diagnosis was a stomach ulcer.

They told me it wasn’t a severe illness, but I managed it diligently. The pain was too great to live with, unlike a migraine. After six months of intensive treatment, I said goodbye to it and thought I’d never see it again.

“It’s exactly the same as back then.”

I thought as I tried to hold onto my fading consciousness. I imagined this was what it would feel like if a hole were punched through an organ.

What on earth was the problem? Was it because I insisted on showing up to the press conference myself instead of leaving it to the lawyer? Or was it because I hadn’t eaten? But I knew if I ate, I’d just get indigestion.

It was unfair. This was 100% the system’s fault. If it wanted to turn me into an emotionless KPI-achieving machine, it shouldn’t have removed the function to adjust the Negative Emotion Perception Rate. Now I was getting stressed and having a relapse of a stomach condition for no reason.

“F*ck, it still hurts even when I try to think about other things...”

I thought talking some nonsense to myself might dull the pain, but it didn’t work. The agony remained.

However, I couldn’t just stay lying down. I didn’t know how much time had passed since I passed out, and I wasn’t even sure if I was still at the press conference hall. I couldn’t afford the luxury of resting peacefully.

As soon as I opened my eyes, Choi Jeho’s face came into view. I almost fainted again.

“Are you okay?”

“You startled me.”

I went to clutch my chest, but the back of my hand throbbed. There was an IV needle stuck in it.

“Am I at the hospital?”

“The emergency room.”

Choi Jeho sat in the chair next to the bed. Seeing him tapping on his phone, it seemed he was contacting the manager or Jeong Seongbin.

“What about the press conference?”

“It ended... reasonably well.”

Reasonably? No way. Would that even be possible unless the lawyer and Choi Jeho had put on a fantastic “Part 2” of the press conference after I was brought here?

“How much do you remember?”

Choi Jeho asked.

“The part where the lawyer suggested we take a break?”

I remembered wanting to run to the bathroom because I felt like I was going to throw up.

“Is that all?”

Choi Jeho asked back. I didn’t have the energy to press him for details on what happened afterward. My stomach hurt so much it was making me angry. When I tried to roll onto my side to curl up, Choi Jeho immediately pulled the arm with the IV away from the side of the mattress.

“Your vein will burst.”

“Thanks...”

“Does it hurt a lot?”

“Better than before.”

I thought a casual answer would suffice, but Choi Jeho crossed his arms and looked down at me for a long time.

“...What?”

“Since when have you been like this?”

Choi Jeho’s expression was grim.

“What do you mean since when? It’s acute.”

“You didn’t just endure it, did you?”

I’m sorry, Jeho, but this isn’t the kind of pain you can just endure. Look at how pathetic I am right now...

“Even when you hurt your head, you didn’t say a word about it being painful.”

It was only after hearing his next words that I realized why Choi Jeho was interrogating me. This guy suspected that I had been fighting the pain with superhuman strength and letting the illness grow until it reached this point.

Well, you see... when my head was being stitched up, I had the system’s protection, but now I don’t.

“My pain perception must have been paralyzed back then. Why would I hide being in pain on purpose? Look at me now.”

“...They ran tests a little while ago. The results will be out soon.”

“What kind of tests?”

The nature of the tests was soon revealed.

“Since the patient hadn’t eaten, we proceeded with a gastroscopy, and well...”

The diagnosis wasn’t that surprising.

“It’s a stomach ulcer. It’s progressed quite a bit.”

“Is it bad enough to need surgery?”

“We have to consider surgery, but for now, we’ll start with medication and monitor the progress...”

Choi Jeho listened to the explanation on my behalf. There was something else bothering me more than the diagnosis.

“What’s the synchronization rate right now?”

The migraines and heart pains appeared as the synchronization rate went up. Considering how the stomach ulcer in my past life had come with premonitory symptoms, this one was far too sudden. I couldn’t shake the suspicion that it was artificially induced.

The system appeared before my eyes.

[SYSTEM] The ‘Synchronization Rate’ is notified to the ‘Subordinate’

▷ Current Synchronization Rate: 75%

“It went up by 15%...”

Bad premonitions are never wrong. I felt complicated.

What exactly did I do wrong? My whole body throbbed. I wanted to act like I was fine, but even with Choi Jeho right there, I couldn’t help but groan in pain.

I didn’t stay hospitalized. Staying in a hospital bed wasn’t going to make me recover any faster. Instead, as soon as I returned to the dorm, I buried myself under the blankets and slept for five hours straight.

When I opened my eyes again, it was night. The dorm was quiet, with no sign of anyone else. It seemed everyone was still at practice.

“It’s still a bit early for them to be off work.”

I fumbled next to my pillow, but instead of my cold phone, I touched paper. A post-it note was stuck to the top of my phone.

We’ll be back before 10 PM.

Call us if you feel even the slightest bit of pain!

-Seongbin-

How kind. Our leader is working hard because of the older members.

More importantly, I didn’t have time to be sick. There was something I needed to check before the members got back.

≫ Spark Press Conference

When I typed the search term into MeTube, videos popped up one after another. Half of the thumbnails featured the high podium, and the other half showed the crowd swarming the ambulance.

“Reasonably well, huh.”

I picked the video with the longest runtime. I skipped the parts I remembered and started watching from where things got hazy.

It wasn’t a pretty sight. When I realized that if Choi Jeho hadn’t blocked the view with the podium, the sight of me vomiting on the floor would have been broadcast live across the country, I could only think I’d narrowly escaped a disaster.

“So when he asked if I remembered anything, he meant this part?”

I noticed Choi Jeho saying something to me. Seeing him spread out his jacket, I must have asked for a bag or something.

The cameras followed right up to the ambulance. With my mother and the MeTubers who seemed to have been waiting in the lobby joining in, the scene turned into total chaos.

I was annoyed at Choi Jeho for lying to me, but I decided to forgive him just this once. Didn’t he lose his jacket because of me?

It wasn’t just MeTube that was noisy. Everywhere was buzzing with talk about me.

≫ They said he was beaten until he was bruised so badly he couldn’t even wear summer uniforms.

To the people who said he could just take that 15 million won to find a rental and pay tuition—

Iwol’s problem wasn’t rent; he needed to go to the hospital first...

Let’s not throw around forced hate just because we don’t understand things from our perspective.

└ I was shocked enough when I heard about the neglect before, but the stories that came out this time are honestly news-worthy...

≫ The trash reporters are disgusting

Look at them swarming just to get a shot of someone collapsing.

How are they different from cockroaches, seriously?

└ I thought the wording was harsh, but then I saw the photos... Is everyone in their right mind? Is it right to shove a camera in the face of someone vomiting?

└ Wow, f*ck, it’s disgusting just to look at

└ But why did he collapse?

└ They say it’s stress-related.

└ Isn’t it acting? Kim Pep is good at acting, after all.

└└ Are your eyes just decoration? You’re really crossing the line.

≫ At first, the vibe was like, “Every family has its problems~”

But then it was like cold water was thrown on us...

I mean... no one said it would be this bad

└ The part about abandoning the sister and putting a tail from a private eye on a fellow group member is the most dark and chilling part.

└ How can you live in a house like that? If it were me, I wouldn’t be able to stay sane

≫ I’ve just been crying since earlier.

It’s so upsetting and heartbreaking...

Part of me thinks it’s better he drew a clear line with his family,

but I don’t think he ever wanted to have to show everything this raw...

└ Looking at the part where he mentioned the fans, it seems Iwol didn’t intend to talk to this extent either. The situation just got so bad that he had no choice...

≫ I was enjoying the weekend drama. I didn’t know there was such a story behind it.

Family... it’s a troublesome problem that you can’t just cut off.

He seems like a talented and sincere young man. I hope it gets resolved...

≫ Can’t we report this bastard

—

Kim Pep’s family history is quite colorful

Even a weekend drama would get roasted if it had this many plotlines ㅋㅋ

—

└ How is there nothing he hasn’t gone through?ㅋㅋㅋ

└ A buffet of family discord.

└└ ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ

└└└ Looking at the crowd, it’s definitely a whole restaurant

└└└└ ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ a restaurantㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ

└ If you send the link to the admin, they’ll delete the post immediately!

└ Are these people insane... there are things you should say and things you shouldn’t

└ Ignore them and just report

≫ The worst part about Kim Iwol’s press conference was that his absolute rock bottom, which he didn’t want to show, was exposed

He wanted to finish things at a reasonable line, but his biological mother and father kept manipulating public opinion with lies, and people kept putting pressure on him to clarify or drop out

Seeing him collapse on the spot, he must have been under a lot of stress, yet they shoved cameras at a person who collapsed...

Especially as a celebrity, he must be very sensitive about how he’s seen, so the fact that the reporters had zero sense of consideration is horrific

└ If I think about what I’d look like unconscious, I obviously wouldn’t want to expose that. What “right to know” are they talking about..

└ The “right to know” is a joke. Did Iwol commit a crime or something? It made no sense to swarm him like that over a family issue in the first place.

≫ At first, I felt so bad for my boy getting cursed at that I wanted him to sue quickly, clear his name, and shake it off

But now, I don’t care about any of that; I just want Iwol to take care of his own heart

Don’t worry about the Sparklers, just take a long break from activities if you have to. I want his mental state to recover first. I’m just so worried

└ Me too... He’s the kind of person who performed to the end, even when his head was injured. I can’t even imagine how hard it must be for him to collapse on the spot...

There were more people worried about me. Hardly anyone was saying I was being dramatic over nothing or that I was mentally weak.

“...It really was a messed-up family. Seriously.”

My mouth felt bitter. Just imagining how much noise the other side would make over this was exhausting.

However, there was a group that reacted even faster than the opposing side.

The people who had watched Kim Iwol since his debut days.