Assistant Manager Kim Hates Idols Chapter 529 - Like-minded Partners / The Children of Rock

Choi Jeho wanted to explain everything. He wanted to scream that, just as Lee Cheonghyeon said, Kim Iwol’s mental state was in absolute tatters—that he had been spouting ominous nonsense only for it to turn out that he’d planned this departure a long time ago. 

 

But he couldn’t bring himself to speak. The image of Kim Iwol, his face drenched in blood, remained etched in his mind like a photograph. The sensation of the t-shirt turning damp and heavy in his grip was still vivid.

 

No one could know what kind of disaster a single slip of the tongue might trigger. The fear that a wrong word might cause Kim Iwol—wherever he was—to end up in that state again shackled Choi Jeho’s tongue.

 

At the same time, he fully experienced the crushing weight of ‘circumstances that couldn’t be spoken’. Amidst the reality of being unable to explain anything and the terror of not knowing what would happen next, Choi Jeho thought of Kim Iwol. He remembered his own ugly inner thoughts, how he had inwardly criticized Kim Iwol for living such a frustrating life while Kim Iwol was busy dodging the members’ interrogations.

 

If you live like that, of course you’d go crazy.

 

He had badgered someone who couldn’t possibly have been living with a sound mind, asking why he never discussed things with them. He had snapped at him, asking if it was because he didn’t trust him, telling him that there was a limit to how much he could make a fool of other people.

 

With that bastard’s personality, he wouldn’t have even felt it was unfair; he would have just felt guilty. Now that Choi Jeho understood what it felt like to want to say something but be unable to, the frustration was unbearable.

 

“I’m sorry.”

 

“I’m not trying to be angry at you, hyung. Don’t say sorry, just give us an explanation.”

 

To Lee Cheonghyeon, who was desperately suppressing his anger, Choi Jeho couldn’t offer any explanation.

 

“…I have nothing to say.”

 

More precisely, he had nothing he could say. Just as it had been for Kim Iwol, who was in the same position. Finally, Choi Jeho understood exactly how Kim Iwol must have felt all this time.

 

 ***

 

The argument reached a lull thanks to the mediation of Jeong Seongbin, who had rushed in upon hearing Lee Cheonghyeon’s raised voice. Choi Jeho, led back to his room by Park Joowoo, slumped down onto his bed.

 

When Park Joowoo left the room to get some water, Choi Jeho was left alone. The silence was heavy. His head was filled with jumbled thoughts that he couldn’t put into order.

 

‘What went wrong?’ 

 

Choi Jeho asked himself.

 

Was it a mistake to try and watch over Kim Iwol from a distance? Even if there were reasons, perhaps it was a premature and complacent judgment.

 

Maybe the right answer was to interrogate him further. Regardless of whether he spilled blood from his nose or his eyes, perhaps the outcome would have been different if he hadn’t cared and had pried further to grasp the situation. But Choi Jeho had only rebuked Kim Iwol when Iwol told him to ask anything he was curious about. He had essentially kicked away the opportunity himself.

 

There had been plenty of things that didn’t add up. Kim Iwol had cleverly dodged the question about whether something would go wrong later, and while he claimed nosebleeds happened when talking about the future, he had been perfectly fine when he claimed he’d be okay.

 

He should have dug deeper into that. Just like Kim Iwol had said, Choi Jeho had gotten scared and backed down, and now it had come to this. F*ck. After seeing the guy in that state, was he supposed to act like nothing was wrong? It was Choi Jeho’s fault for forgetting that Kim Iwol was an expert at deceiving people with his words.

 

He shouldn’t have fought with him in the first place. Even if he couldn’t pinpoint exactly where the problem lay, given the circumstances, it was right to assume responsibility for the friction between them. Excluding the time that incident occurred, Kim Iwol had been getting better and better.

 

He shouldn’t have believed that he had cleared the misunderstandings and reconciled with a guy like Kim Iwol. He knew how complicated that bastard was, yet he let his guard down.

 

Feeling as though his head might explode, Choi Jeho lay down on the bed. A sigh that never quite became a sound escaped him like a lament.

 

He regretted not speaking more kindly. Kim Iwol had told him to fix his way of speaking, so he had changed how he talked to the members, but he hadn’t been able to do the same for Kim Iwol himself. He had seen for years that Kim Iwol was someone who couldn’t even get angry at others, yet Choi Jeho had acted twice as rude to him. If they had both acted like equally shameless punks, at least he wouldn’t have felt so guilty.

 

He started to bring his fist down on the innocent mattress, then stopped. He didn’t have the energy to do such a pointless thing.

 

Something caught his heightened senses. His heel grazed against a corner that wasn’t sharp. Both Choi Jeho, who had poor night vision, and the considerate Park Joowoo usually avoided leaving things on the floor. It was strange.

 

Sitting up, Choi Jeho reached under the bed. His fingertips caught a mysterious string.

 

It turned out to be a shopping bag he had never seen before. It was too clean to have simply ended up under the bed by accident—not a speck of dust was on it.

 

Without realizing it, both of Choi Jeho’s hands opened the shopping bag. Inside were two boxes of the same height and color.

 

He took out one box and opened the lid. A new blue t-shirt revealed itself. Choi Jeho stared blankly at the neatly folded garment. His movements grew slower as he set the opened box aside and opened the second one.

 

The second box also contained a t-shirt. It was just a shirt with a slightly less vivid color. Nevertheless, Choi Jeho couldn’t take his eyes off the plain, unprinted fabric.

 

‘I’ll buy you new clothes.’

 

Kim Iwol’s words came back to him with eerie clarity. His grip on the box tightened. To think that Kim Iwol, who once handed over gift certificates telling him to buy whatever he wanted, had now left behind two physical shirts as repayment—how was he supposed to take this?

 

Looking at the shopping bag that didn’t even contain a single note, Choi Jeho let out a hollow laugh. He couldn’t believe there was none of the incessant nagging that had been thrown at him in a chaotic stream—things like how he needed to take several photos as proof, or how a dust bag was for storing, not actually for use, so please, for the love of God, keep it together with the shopping bag.

 

“Jeho hyung.”

 

Park Joowoo, returning to the room, held out a cup of water. As Choi Jeho hesitated, Park Joowoo hovered in front of him with an indescribable expression. With a face that looked like it might crumble into tears, Park Joowoo spoke:

 

“Happy birthday.”

 

It was the first time a birthday greeting had felt so much like both the best and the worst thing at once.

 

 ***

 

Park Joowoo left the room, leaving the distraught Choi Jeho behind. Choi Jeho seemed to need some time to think.

 

In the living room, Jeong Seongbin was on the phone. He was writing something down in a notebook while continuously nodding. Even offering to help felt like it would be an intrusion.

 

So, Park Joowoo quietly headed to the balcony. He decided to wait patiently for Choi Jeho to calm down and for Jeong Seongbin’s call to end. When he turned on the faucet, water poured into the watering can. The tap let out a metallic screech every time he turned the handle.

 

In the middle of the pitch-black night, Park Joowoo watered his plants, relying only on the light leaking from the neighboring building and the dorm’s living room.

 

Others might call him crazy if they saw him. A member had vanished, and a fight had almost broken out in the dorm because of it. That person’s whereabouts were still unknown, and because their profession was being an idol, they had to worry about how to break this news to the public.

 

It was precisely because he understood the gravity of the situation that Park Joowoo retreated into this comfortable space. He needed to regain his composure as quickly as possible. As a hyung with two dongsaengs, Park Joowoo had to pull himself together. Thinking of Choi Jeho, whose mind must have been in turmoil over what had happened to his friend, he wanted to stay strong and support his hyung. As long as Jeong Seongbin was running around doing his part, Park Joowoo had to do what he could as well.

 

Pretending everything was fine wasn’t easy. It was hard to believe that Kim Iwol, who had given them unlimited trust all this time, had vanished, leaving behind only a single promise: that he wouldn’t hurt himself anymore.

 

If Kim Iwol had expressed his desire to leave sooner, Park Joowoo wouldn’t have let him go with a simple goodbye. He would have tried to persuade him somehow. He definitely would have held onto him, asking him to reconsider.

 

Did he leave so quietly because he didn’t want to go through all that? Kim Iwol was a smart man, so he would have easily guessed what even Park Joowoo could predict.

 

Still, no matter how tedious the process might have been, he could have at least spoken up. He felt that if Kim Iwol had given them a chance to worry together, Park Joowoo wouldn’t feel this hurt. Then, he would cycle back to blaming himself, wondering if the problem was that he hadn’t paid enough attention to Kim Iwol despite the guy carrying such heavy burdens. He crouched down in front of the flowerpots.

 

He was heartbroken. He wanted to throw a tantrum and demand, ‘How could you run away after making a promise?’ If Kim Iwol had found it burdensome that Park Joowoo always listened to his hyung too readily, to the point that it felt like he depended on him too much, then Park Joowoo wished he had at least been given the chance to promise that he wouldn’t do that anymore.

 

But Park Joowoo couldn’t bring himself to resent Kim Iwol. Even though Kim Iwol had vanished without a word, he didn’t feel like Kim Iwol was being irresponsible or had betrayed them.

 

Because Kim Iwol had neatly organized the medicine Kang Kiyeon had gotten from the hospital into a container on the dining table before leaving. Because he had procured an arranger for the repackage album so as not to burden Lee Cheonghyeon with the composition. Because he had set all the social media posts and communication plans with the company for the sake of Jeong Seongbin, who would now have more to handle. And he hadn’t forgotten to prepare a birthday present for Choi Jeho.

 

Because he didn’t leave behind the bottle of quince preserve the members had made for him.

 

Park Joowoo discovered that a bottle was missing when he opened the refrigerator to get water for Choi Jeho. The one with ‘Kim Iwol’ written on it had vanished as if by magic.

 

Park Joowoo suppressed his pounding heart and checked the kitchen sink. He was afraid Kim Iwol might have thrown everything away, saying that he wouldn’t have any reason to eat it anymore.

 

The sink was clean. There wasn’t a trace of quince peel. The pager that had been attached to the living room wall and the jellyfish sun catcher—which Kim Iwol had moved to the living room the moment they moved in, saying it needed to be in a place with good sunlight—had also disappeared.

 

Before Park Joowoo even had time to think ‘Isn’t this too much?’, the thought scattered. The worry of why he had to go this far if he hadn’t left out of hatred for the members overwhelmed Park Joowoo. To have a precious person leave his side due to something he didn’t know about was too much pain for Park Joowoo to bear.

 

Kim Iwol was someone who, having nowhere else to go, had stayed at the dorm even during holidays since his trainee days. His relationship with his family was stained by legal battles, and there was still no news regarding his sister. His university admission had been canceled long ago, and they didn’t even know the location of his parents’ home.

 

Outside of Spark, Kim Iwol was truly alone. His situation was worse than a kite with a broken string. A kite was at least light enough to fly away, but Kim Iwol was so full of affection that he had taken everything the members had given him.

 

Park Joowoo, who had been alone from an early age, knew that weight all too well. He was starved for affection, but to survive, he had to accept that he had no family left. He was so busy clinging to any connection he happened to make using the word ‘promise’.

 

That was why he could imagine what Kim Iwol must have been feeling when he left the dorm. If a member was setting off on a journey that clearly wasn’t a happy one, who could possibly welcome his choice?

 

As he watered the plants that Kim Iwol had been particularly fond of, tears began to fall. He hated that he cried like a child every time something happened, but he couldn’t control it. He bit his lip to keep from making a sound, causing his body to tremble.

 

The worry wouldn’t go away. If he could, he wanted to stand in front of the police station until a report could be filed.

 

‘Wherever you are, I just hope you can at least sleep well.’

 

He remembered Kim Iwol in that one year when he particularly couldn’t sleep at night. There hadn’t been many times when Kim Iwol had fallen apart, but those moments were especially etched into Park Joowoo’s memory and refused to disappear.

 

Park Joowoo prayed that wherever Kim Iwol sought sleep, he wouldn’t break into a cold sweat, and that he wouldn’t wake up multiple times in the middle of the night gasping for breath.

 

From the watering can that had tumbled to the floor, the water he had worked so hard to collect spilled out. The balcony floor became soaked.