The Idol Who Returned from Hell Chapter 164

“Huh? What’s going on?”

“Well……”

Ma Si-hyeok, who had slept soundly in the car and woken up, looked at his manager brother with bright, sparkling eyes.

In contrast, the manager’s expression was getting worse in real-time.

His hesitation was so obvious that you could clearly see how much he was struggling to find the right words.

As if he had finally made up his mind, the manager took a deep breath and opened his mouth.

“There’s someone in the company lobby right now looking for you.”

“Someone looking for me?”

“The problem is… that person says they’re someone who did you a great wrong in the past, and they keep asking to find Si-hyeok because they want to apologize.”

Everyone froze for a moment upon hearing those words.

Yu Ha-woon, whose emotions were always clearly visible on his face, looked even more terrified than the manager as he watched Ma Si-hyeok’s reaction.

And I could immediately understand why the company people had found it difficult to bring up this topic.

‘Of course. I thought things had been going too smoothly lately.’

This was during the peak of filming for 〈Idol Stove League Season 2〉.

Ma Si-hyeok had been falsely accused of being a school violence perpetrator.

Originally, he was actually a victim of school violence who had been tormented to the point of self-destruction, but he had been attacked in reverse by empty-headed people.

Thanks to finding evidence of the false accusations, Ma Si-hyeok had quickly been cleared of the false charges he had been saddled with.

After that, his original agency Vex Entertainment had tried to sue the false accusers, but Ma Si-hyeok, who didn’t want to affect the program filming, hadn’t wanted a legal battle.

He had managed to forget the memories of school violence as much as possible and had even stopped taking the psychiatric medication he had been relying on to sleep.

For some reason, that perpetrator had come looking for Ma Si-hyeok to ask for forgiveness.

I silently placed my hand lightly on Ma Si-hyeok’s back.

I could feel his body trembling slightly through his thick clothes.

‘No, I know the reason is obvious.’

As days went by, CENTIX’s media exposure increased.

Thanks to timing their comeback quickly, they had no major competition during this period, so they brought home trophies from not only KNet but also all three major broadcast networks.

They had also performed well repeatedly on variety programs like 〈Memory Time Traveler〉 and the reality show 〈Re:Meet with Centix〉, and their album and music chart performance were undoubtedly good.

It’s embarrassing for me to say with my own mouth, but entertainment articles often praise us as the next generation K-pop representatives who are steadily growing.

In that sense, the perpetrator who wrote the false accusation post about Ma Si-hyeok must have been getting more and more scared.

They must have strongly felt the reality that they had poked something they shouldn’t have touched, like disturbing the whiskers of a sleeping lion.

Among the crazy people who spread false information about others, very few are actually gutsy enough to go all the way.

Rather, they lower their tails and beg without any pride left because they’re afraid of the law’s judgment or public finger-pointing coming late.

This bastard who came looking for Ma Si-hyeok is probably the same.

“……Si-hyeok? Are you listening?”

“Oh, yes. Yes. I was listening.”

Ma Si-hyeok startled and answered the manager’s question.

His voice came out properly without breaking, but his pupils started spinning around.

It seemed like leaving him in this state would lead to big trouble.

Seong-hwi, who seemed to have the same thought as me, smiled quite differently from usual.

“Brother, we’re all pretty tired as a group today, so could you tell that bastard—no, that person—to come back tomorrow? Si-hyeok probably doesn’t want to see that dirty face when he’s already drained of energy. Right?”

“Y-yeah.”

“Phew, got it. I’ll go handle the situation for now, so you guys follow Manager Hong and go in through the back door. I’ll contact you later.”

By the time we were entering the Rave Entertainment annex building where CENTIX’s dorm was located, a heavy silence hung among the members.

Kang Seon-woo, who had been massaging Ma Si-hyeok’s arm for a while, broke the silence in the elevator.

“Si-hyeok, let’s not think too hard about this.”

“……Yes?”

“From what the manager said, he came here pissing himself in fear. Since we’re doing so well, he’s probably scared that fans will bury him alive later. So that person is the powerless one and you’re in the position of power. Haha, he was already powerless from the beginning since he wronged you in the first place, though.”

“That’s right, Brother.”

There was a slightly rebellious light in Chae Ha-ru’s previously lifeless eyes.

It was the most excited he’d looked since catching real fish with traps on the deserted island.

“He probably came because he knows he’ll get in big trouble if this continues. If Brother goes there tomorrow and immediately says you’re filing a lawsuit, the game is over. Honestly, it would’ve been better if we had filed suit right away during 〈ISL 2〉.”

“Back then, Si-hyeok, you said you didn’t want to make a big issue out of it. And I believe you’ll probably feel the same way now.”

When I spoke in a low voice, Chae Ha-ru blinked and looked at Ma Si-hyeok, who had frozen like a stone statue.

Eventually, he nodded.

“I was being too aggressive. You’re right, if we sue now, the impact would be much bigger than back then.”

Even after returning to the dorm, we gathered in the living room and racked our brains about what to do.

Actually, the answer is very simple. As Chae Ha-ru said earlier, if we immediately use the power of the courts, there’s no need to worry like this.

However, Ma Si-hyeok’s case won’t be resolved as easily as it sounds.

I stared at Ma Si-hyeok, who was still sitting on the sofa with his eyes tightly shut.

‘The biggest obstacle is the trauma, more than anything else.’

If Ma Si-hyeok were simply revealed to be a victim of false accusations, that would be fine.

But he’s not an ordinary victim—he’s someone who was actually unjustly bullied at school.

If we enter the process of filing a lawsuit, the relationship between him and the defendants will attract attention.

If that happens, there’s a very high possibility that the trauma that had been eating away at Ma Si-hyeok will resurface.

If the memories of those difficult times when he hurt himself to the point of self-harm come back again, it would cause tremendous disruption to CENTIX’s future activities.

‘His condition has been okay for the past few months.’

It seemed like he had said goodbye to the days of falling asleep dependent on medication, but then this variable occurred again.

I wish they had just never appeared in front of Ma Si-hyeok again.

I can’t understand why they’re creating this situation by making their own feet numb.

“Let’s organize the situation. The important thing for us is not to make this matter as public as possible. For Si-hyeok’s sake too.”

“If it becomes known that he was a victim, it could be troublesome in various ways……”

Even Kang Seon-woo and Yu Ha-woon, who usually played the role of lifting the mood, seemed unable to figure out how to clear away this dark shadow that had returned.

Meanwhile, Seong-hwi, who had been swirling a glass of cold water, presented a straightforward solution.

“Either way, the decision is Si-hyeok’s to make. To be honest, if you don’t want to meet face-to-face, you don’t have to. You don’t have that kind of obligation to him. Knowing it’ll obviously trigger trauma, I want to oppose going to see that disgusting face as much as possible.”

The two same-aged members who had shared a room and spent a lot of time together.

Although their personalities are almost polar opposites like the North and South Poles, the distance between them must have narrowed considerably.

Seong-hwi threw his opinion toward protecting Ma Si-hyeok’s mental health as much as possible.

Emotionally, I also thought it was right to refuse the meeting entirely, but……

“But what if he posts another article later?”

“Huh?”

“Those kinds of people have a certain characteristic. Attention seekers never change. It’s better to settle things when he came here to the company building, rather than sending him home and then not knowing what kind of post he might write. If it goes up on the internet, we don’t know what kind of situation might unfold.”

Things that can be finished internally are best settled here.

If an article gets posted on the internet carelessly, not only MILLENNIUM but other group fandoms might latch on and we don’t know what kind of chaos might be created.

But even if we discuss it among ourselves like this…

I laid out the key answer in a low voice.

“Still, the final decision is Si-hyeok’s.”

All our gazes focused on Ma Si-hyeok.

Ma Si-hyeok, who had been continuing his silent meditation with his eyes closed, trembled his lips.

Cerberus, who had been watching CENTIX’s unusually serious discussion from a distance, added a comment.

{Still, that kid has gotten much stronger than before.}

‘Stronger?’

{I can smell that he’s made some kind of resolution.}

“I’ll go meet him tomorrow.”

“R-really?”

“Hey, you really don’t have to go. Don’t push yourself—”

“I know it will be a difficult situation. But still……”

Ma Si-hyeok’s pupils still trembled unsteadily, but his voice held firm resolve.

“Still, I want to move forward now too. I can’t keep avoiding and hiding like this forever. I want to move forward so I don’t become a burden to the team.”

My gaze met Kang Seon-woo’s momentarily.

We’re probably thinking the same thing.

We understand the desire to shake off trauma, but it’s not something that can be done easily just by talking about it.

Is it really right to allow him to face the person who hurt him?

‘I have to trust him.’

Since I said the decision is his to make.

I stood up from my seat and smiled faintly at Ma Si-hyeok.

“Hang in there. I’ll be rooting for you.”

“……!”

“That’s all we can do. Go and wrap things up well. I’ll be waiting.”

Ma Si-hyeok, who had been trembling as if he might burst into tears at any moment, soon regained his composure.

With a much more determined attitude, he nodded briefly and made eye contact with each member one by one.

“Thank you, everyone.”

Once the situation was roughly settled, we each returned to our rooms.

After showering, I casually asked Chae Ha-ru, who was lying down watching NeoTube as usual.

“……It’ll be okay, right, letting him go meet that person.”

“It’ll be fine.”

On Chae Ha-ru’s phone screen was the British explorer whose face had become familiar to me too, looking at a beautifully burning sunset.

It seemed to be a scene wrapping up 10 days of survival.

“The fact that Brother Si-hyeok said that much means he has that much will, so there’s no need to worry too much. You know too, Brother? No matter how timid Brother Si-hyeok is, when he does something, he does it properly.”

“I know better than anyone.”

“Looking at it this way, you seem to have the most worries among all of us.”

“Is that so?”

I didn’t try to deny Chae Ha-ru’s observation.

During 〈Idol Stove League Season 2〉 and even after debuting, the awareness that we absolutely must not fail had been deeply embedded in my mind.

‘But now I don’t need to think so extremely about it, right?’

Even as I fell asleep, my mind was on Ma Si-hyeok’s situation, but I felt relatively less worried.

Because I believed he would overcome it well.

However, unexpected situations always tend to occur in the most surprising places.

[But did only I notice this?]

This is Si-hyeok’s fancam from yesterday…… (link)

(Photo) This is a screenshot from the fancam. I could never see it before because Si-hyeok always wears so many things around his arms, right? But this time during styling, one of the bracelets came loose or something and I feel like I can see red lines below it. Isn’t this a scar? Am I the only one who thinks so?