Chapter 19.2
Now that Iâd heard this, plenty of things started to make sense, and suspicion bubbled up inside me. Damn it⊠Here I was, thinking my image-making efforts were finally paying off, but it was clearly just Tae Rim going behind my back and asking everyone to treat me well.
All this time, I’d been congratulating myself for acting nicer and earning people’s favor, but it turned out theyâd just been influenced by Tae Rimâs secret meddling.
Nothing felt more humiliating than realizing my progress came from Tae Rimâs help rather than my own effort.
Getting help from another regressor wasnât the issue. Helping each other out as fellow regressors? That was normal. The problem was that Tae Rim still had no clue I was a regressor too.
Besides, no matter how I looked at it, Tae Rim didn’t hold any positive feelings toward me. It felt suspicious that he’d gone as far as buying meals for the others just to ensure theyâd be nice to me. He might have some shady plan, like subtly provoking resentment toward me among the other trainees to eventually drive me out.
âYou pay a lot of attention to Tae Rim hyung, too.â
âI have reasons for paying attention to him.â
âWhat reasons?â
ââŠItâs a secret, so I canât tell you.â
âCome on, seriously.â
How could I not pay attention to someone whoâd regressed like meâand someone who had died taking a knife meant for me?
Above all, Tae Rim was one of the most difficult people to understand. With most people, you could see their true nature easily without digging deep, but with Tae Rim, I often had no idea what he was thinking. Even after knowing him for so long, I barely knew anything about him.
And that was despite the fact we hadn’t always been on bad terms.
In our previous life, weâd actually gotten along pretty well during our first three years after debut. Among the nine members of Reverb, Tae Rim was the only one my age. Unlike meâoversensitive and wary about everythingâTae Rim was fearless and easy-going, and somehow we clicked well enough.
Saving him from elimination in the second round of “Pick Your Romeo” was entirely my decision. Back then, I genuinely wanted Tae Rim to debut safely with me.
I canât clearly remember why I felt that way. Maybe Iâd already been calculating the best possible member combination, as shameless as I was now. Tae Rim was handsome, danced well, and was my age, so Iâd probably thought it would be stupid to let him go.
Maybe deep down, I had even hoped weâd become closer friends. After all, he was one of the few people my age, and until my attitude changed, Tae Rim had treated me kindly.
There had been something shallowly resembling friendship. Since we’d endured the survival program together and debuted, I naturally felt a sort of camaraderie with him and the rest of our group members. Though I’d grown distant from everyone year by year, Tae Rim had smiled at me often in the beginning.
Then at some point, things between us completely broke down. Like what happened between Hyun Hee and me, Tae Rimâs turning away had most likely been my fault as well.
Even when Tae Rim chased after me hundreds of times, begging me to snap out of it, I never regained my enthusiasm. I was the first to grow tired, and because of that, Tae Rim also grew exhausted from constantly telling me to stop being like that.
The bonds between us had begun rusting away until eventually, they snapped entirely. Knowing Iâd been the one who pushed Tae Rim away first made me increasingly uncomfortable around him, too.
But still, he didnât have to hate me so intensely. Even though we eventually grew so indifferent toward each other that we didnât even exchange phone numbers, it hurt to realize he decided immediately upon regressing that he wanted me out of the group. And it felt especially bad that, despite how drastically my personality had changed, he still hadn’t recognized that I’d also regressed.
âAnyway, I really think Tae Rim hyung likes youâeven though youâre clearly ignoring everything I say.â
ââŠâŠâ
âYou should seriously sit down and talk it out sometime. He was fighting for you today, too.â
Having thoroughly disturbed my peace, Ha Ram coolly announced he was off to order chicken with the other hyungs. He ignored my request to save me a drumstick, pretending he hadnât heard me.
Left alone in the changing room, I stood blankly, staring at the sharply defined shadows cast by the overly bright fluorescent lights.
Why on earth had Tae Rim done that?
With my mind wandering, troubling thoughts suddenly crept in. The image of Tae Rim rushing forward without hesitation to shield me from the sasaeng holding a knife resurfaced vividly in my memory.
Back then, Iâd simply assumed heâd acted impulsively in a chaotic moment. But now, looking back, many details clearly didnât add up.
Tae Rim hadnât needed to put himself in danger at all. Even the sasaeng had explicitly shouted, âAnyone who hates fans, get lost!â clearly identifying me as her only target.
So why would he risk his life for someone he wasnât even close toâsomeone he clearly dislikedâonly to completely ignore me once he’d regressed after dying in my place?
I began analyzing Tae Rimâs intentions from various angles. The most plausible explanation was that he wanted to avoid encountering that knife-wielding sasaeng again by removing me, the cause of that incident. That made some sense.
Because Tae Rim wasnât inherently cruel, heâd impulsively acted to protect his (former) teammate in a life-threatening situation and accidentally ended up dying. To prevent repeating his death, he must have decided to eliminate meâthe root causeâearly on.
With that thought, everything became clear. Ha Ram had speculated that Tae Rim might like me, but Tae Rim likely saw me as nothing more than a cursed talisman, a magnet for knife-wielding sasaengs.
âWhat are you doing here?â
Just as I was about to solve the mystery of why Tae Rim hated me, the very center of all my worriesâTae Rim himselfâopened the door to the changing room halfway and discovered me standing there.
