The dorm at four in the morning was quiet.

It was the hour when everyone would be asleep—everyone except me, who lived like a bat.

“This is exactly the time that’s best for monitoring.”

I turned on the spare phone I’d picked up from the living room earlier and lowered the brightness as far as it would go.

Choi Jeho or Lee Cheonghyeon weren’t the type to wake up from a little light, but using a phone in someone’s face while they slept made me uncomfortable.

If not for Jeong Seongbin, I would’ve just turned on the side lamp in the living room and watched comfortably.

If you’re lurking in the living room at dawn and get caught by Jeong Seongbin, you spend the entire next day under “worry,” which is just another word for surveillance.

Better to look pitiful and rely on the bare minimum of light than end up like that.

The only thing I’d ever been proud of was being able to read every soju label in the dining hall fridge without glasses. I could feel my eyesight wearing down by the second.

What I had to do on the dark bed was dive into the comments under Jang Junhu’s MV.

The goal was to see the reaction to Choi Jeho. Contrary to the original plan, I’d been so busy I hadn’t managed to check for a long time even after the MV dropped.

Fitting for a singer with only moderate name recognition domestically, every comment was in Korean. Be great if the whole thing tanked and dropped to zero comments soon.

I skimmed only the comments that mentioned Choi Jeho.

The song is so good I turned my screen brightness up to watch

Who’s the guy who appears in the MV?

The algorithm recommended this and I put in the work to enjoy that face

That was almost all there was referring to Choi Jeho. And since no one recognized him, there weren’t even any replies.

There weren’t many comments to begin ~Nоvеl𝕚ght~ with, so it was hard to find anything meaningful.

At times like this, you had to go to the communities.

Thanks to the Production Chief Nam’s daughter, I knew a decent number of the big forums and boards where celebrity info got posted.

Sure enough, there were far more raw posts over there.

jjh MV “tragic handsome” guy who is he?

F***ing handsome lol is he an actor?

Who’s jjh

└ Jang Junhu

└ Why give a write-up to a guy who’s not even an idol

Isn’t he a rookie male actor? First time seeing that face tho

└ Wow, are we finally getting a young good-looking male actor

└ Please please;;;;; good-looking male actors are in short supply, face passes, as long as he’s not a total wooden actor

I heard he’s a UA trainee

└ Singer?

└ No no, idol

└ Huh, doesn’t UA not have idols?

“They’re fast with info.”

UA had never released any profiles for trainees, but people were already posting that “UA has trainees.”

Considering the time left until debut, the timing of those comments was on point.

When I switched keywords and searched “UA” in turns, I could find posts with more specific info.

Looks like UA really is putting out an idol group

Six-member boy group, lineup fixed

Debut scheduled for the first half of next year, self-producing idols they say

The kid who appeared in Jang Junhu’s MV is in the same group ㅇㅇ

└ These days every label and their dog is launching idols;;

└ Easy way to make money lol

└ A company that can’t even run one normal concert for their own singer is doing an idol business lol has the CEO lost it

└ Is that official?

└ [OP] A friend of an insider account told me

└ Why are there so many “friend of an insider account” people only on these forums? I seriously don’t have a single one around me, but there are like five hundred of them here—the real kicker is none of them can provide proof

There were some abbreviations I didn’t recognize here and there, so I spent a fair bit of time looking things up.

Even so, I could more or less read every post that had gone up. The overall firepower from the Jang Junhu MV wasn’t that big, which made it possible.

Someone had already compiled the dance-competition footage and awards that Choi Jeho had appeared in. I followed the link into the post and checked the videos carefully.

I made sure there was nothing that could cause a problem, then cleared my search history before turning off the phone.

And I stepped into the living room to put the spare phone back where it belonged.

But something was off.

The bathroom light was off, and there was no sound of water, yet I could hear a faint human voice from somewhere.

“Is someone awake?”

The voice got clearer as I moved toward Jeong Seongbin’s room.

Hearing someone groaning like they were in pain, I tapped lightly on the door a few times and opened it.

When I shone the phone’s light into the dark room, one particular blanket was curled up into a ball.

I didn’t know which bed belonged to whom, but just from the voice I could guess who it was.

“Park Juu?”

I quietly called Park Juu’s name. But there was no answer.

I set my hand on the blanket and gave it a gentle shake as I called his name, but Park Juu stayed silent.

“What is this. Is he sick?”

On a hunch, I turned the blanket back a little and checked his forehead with my hand.

His forehead was far too hot. It was even damp, probably from cold sweat.

I shook Park Juu’s shoulder, which was burning up, and called his name.

“Juu, try getting up for a second.”

“Who... Is that you, Iwol?”

Thankfully, he woke up before I called him for a fourth time.

His voice was as wrecked as mine had been a few days ago.

“Yeah, it’s me. You’ve got a really high fever, so I woke you. Do you feel really bad? Want to go to the ER?”

“...No, it’s not that bad...”

Contrary to his words, he couldn’t even open his eyes properly. Looked like dizziness.

It was good that he was conscious, but staying in a high fever isn’t good.

If we weren’t going to go to the hospital immediately, he should at least take a fever reducer.

“I don’t think this dorm has a med kit.”

The pharmacies would have closed long ago.

I pictured the convenience store near the dorm and hurried to wake up Jeong Seongbin.

“Hyung? What brings you to our room...?”

“Sorry to wake you. But Juu’s sick right now.”

“Juu?”

Still mumbling from sleep, Jeong Seongbin shot up.

“I’m going to the convenience store right now. Can you watch Juu until I get back?”

“Right now? It’s really late...”

“You can’t tell a kid to just hold on till morning. High fever is dangerous if you leave it. I’ll be quick.”

I grabbed only my wallet and bolted out of the dorm.

Then I ran like mad. It wasn’t like a convenience store would be closed, but I felt anxious.

“They make such a fuss and dote on me just because my voice wouldn’t come out for a bit.”

Considering that Park Juu, whose base fitness lags behind the others, had been flopped on the floor every break, I should’ve anticipated this situation to some extent.

Even if I hadn’t, at the very least we should have stocked a basic med kit. That’s basic common sense.

Especially since that used to be one of my jobs at Hanpyeong Industries.

“Just because my own life got easier, I stop thinking about others? At my age? F***, what a pathetic son of a b****.”

A stream of curses pounded in my head.

By the time those curses and my breath had both climbed to my throat, I could see the convenience store. My mouth was bone-dry.

“Where are the fever reducers? The kind kids can take when they have a fever.”

“Ah, over there...”

I swept every kind of fever reducer from the indicated aisle into the basket.

I also tossed in painkillers and antacids we didn’t need immediately. My hands kept shaking; I was in a rush.

While the clerk scanned barcodes, I looked around and asked,

“Is there a big hospital near here? I just moved to this neighborhood.”

“Yes, five minutes by taxi.”

“...Thank you.”

Hearing that a hospital was close by let me relax for a moment.

My legs nearly gave out along with the tension, but I barely held it together. I felt hollowed out.

The walk back to the dorm felt longer than the trip to the store.

I hurried back lugging a bag with every kind of medicine, and all the lights in the living room were on. Looked like Jeong Seongbin had turned them on.

“Hyung!”

“There’s a fever reducer in there. Let’s get him to take one first.”

Jeong Seongbin sprinted to the entryway and took the bag from me.

When I looked down to take off my shoes, I realized I was wearing sneakers I didn’t even know whose they were.

Between the two of us, we helped the barely-sitting Park Juu up, gave him the medicine, and laid him back down.

Before long, he fell asleep with his face flushed bright red.

He scared people half to death and then went off on a dreamland trip himself? Annoying, but he’s the patient, so I’ll let it slide.

Once we finally had a moment to breathe, my head started to clear.

At the same time, I remembered the sky I’d seen on the way back from the convenience store, just starting to lighten. 𝕗𝐫𝚎𝗲𝘄𝐞𝕓𝐧𝕠𝘃𝕖𝐥.𝐜𝚘𝚖

“Wait.”

“Huh? Why, hyung?”

“What time is it right now?”

“Five.”

“Five?”

I’d wondered, and it really was morning already.

I can go with a little less sleep for a day, but once morning comes, Jeong Seongbin has to go to school.

I motioned for him to lie down and said,

“You go sleep. I’ll watch Juu.”

“What about you, hyung? You should sleep too.”

“I’ll sleep after you leave for school.”

I didn’t know the details, but I remembered hearing that too high a fever could be dangerous.

We weren’t sure whether his fever would go down; I couldn’t be the only one to lie down and pass out.

I told Jeong Seongbin good night, turned off all the lights in the living room, and went back to Park Juu’s bedside, relying on the phone’s light.

Somehow, it felt like I’d be staying up all night.

Thankfully, Park Juu improved as time passed.

Only after I checked every thirty minutes that his fever was dropping could I relax.

As soon as the manager saw my message, he came at the crack of dawn and took Park Juu to the hospital early in the morning.

After we got Park Juu off to the hospital—

Since I was a lost cause anyway, I picked up the bag Jeong Seongbin had dumped out in the living room and decided to sort the meds I’d bought.

The bag had all sorts of things in it.

Including things that barely qualified as medicine.

“...Why did I buy a hangover remedy, seriously?”

I must have grabbed it because it looked vaguely like an antacid.

Lucky the bottle didn’t break even though I ran with it in the bag.

What came out next was just as ridiculous.

“Children’s fever reducer? Did I not read the label at all when I bought this...”

I let out a hollow laugh at my own stupidity. It had been a frantic morning.

“So that’s why the manager came by this morning?”

With Park Juu gone, I ended up eating breakfast alone with Choi Jeho, who asked me that.

I nodded, with a face gaunt from not sleeping a wink.

“How’d you even notice? You said it was dawn.”

“I was up late looking at something.”

My eyes ached; I hadn’t managed to keep them open for even thirty minutes at a time last night.

As I rubbed my eyelids with a fingertip, Choi Jeho said,

“Hey, at this rate you’re the one who’s gonna actually die.”

“Didn’t I tell you to watch your language?”

Whether I asked nicely or not, he was more interested in inspecting the neatly arranged meds inside an empty side-dish container.

In my rush to tidy up, I’d ended up turning the container that Seongbin’s mother had used for young radish kimchi into a medicine box.

“You even organized the meds like s***.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment.”

At my words, he told me to do whatever I wanted and closed the lid on the side-dish medicine box.

Should we hold roll call morning and night and check on the patient or something. I feel older by the day.

Maybe because he picked up on my fatigue, at the next group meeting Jeong Seongbin made a praiseworthy suggestion: “Let’s promise to tell each other if we’re sick.”

I was so proud I nearly cried. It was a day that made my eyes sting.

Though it looked less like emotion and more like my nerves were shot and my intraocular pressure was up. Whatever. Please, let nobody get sick anymore.