Chapter 4

“I’m home.”

Mugyeong forced himself to greet brightly as he opened the dorm door.

Still, he couldn’t stop the corners of his lips from drooping after having been lifted so high moments earlier.

At his greeting, the bedroom door to the left of the entrance creaked open slightly.

“Daeseung-ah, hyung’s back.”

Bloodshot eyes glared at Mugyeong through the dark crack in the doorway.

Before Mugyeong could even say anything else, the door slammed shut again.

With a sigh, Mugyeong kept walking.

Im Daeseung, the member in the room beside the entrance, was twenty-four years old— a year younger than Mugyeong— and Hexatonic’s main dancer.

Originally, he’d been diligent, passionate about work, and strict with self-management. But after a major traffic accident, it was as if his personality had completely changed. He became gloomy and full of anger at everything.

Two years ago, on a day of heavy rain, the company van skidded on Gangbyeonbuk-ro and crashed into the guardrail.

Daeseung had fallen asleep without wearing a seatbelt that day, and the impact threw him straight through the car window.

He remained in a coma for three whole days before miraculously regaining consciousness.

Compared to how far he’d been thrown, his injuries were surprisingly minor. Aside from a fractured leg, he’d only suffered a mild concussion. The surgery on his leg went well, and he was discharged after just ten days.

But strangely enough, after that accident, Daeseung started skipping team practices under the excuse that his leg hurt.

Mugyeong worried the surgery might have gone wrong and urged him to go back to the hospital, but Daeseung only exploded in anger and refused all examinations.

Not long afterward, he began missing official Hexatonic schedules and events altogether.

Every day, he locked himself inside the dark dorm room without even turning on the lights.

The members and company staff tried knocking on the door repeatedly to talk and persuade him, but nothing worked.

In the end, the company had no choice but to announce an indefinite hiatus from activities.

At this point, you’d think Daeseung’s roommate, Kwak Namgwon, would’ve had complaints.

But Namgwon barely came to the dorm at all.

The same age as Mugyeong, Namgwon was Hexatonic’s main rapper— 183 centimeters tall with broad shoulders and a heavily muscular physique, a rare “muscle idol” type in the industry.

The problem was that Namgwon had absolutely zero interest in actual idol work.

Instead, he spent all his time using his body to satisfy personal desires.

Namgwon loved alcohol, nightlife, and one-night stands.

More specifically—

he was obsessed with women.

He dated female fans from Hexatonic’s fanclub, Tonic Water, but also company staff, investors, production crew members, women he met at clubs, women he met on the street—

Basically, if the target was female, age and occupation didn’t matter.

The real problem was that Namgwon didn’t date women one at a time.

The incident where five female fans he’d been simultaneously dating got into a hair-pulling fight at a fan-signing event had only been the beginning.

The following month, he dated both a company staff member and an outsourced production staffer at the same time, gifting them identical keychains.

Eventually, both women arrived at a pre-production meeting carrying the same keychain, exposing his cheating and nearly ruining an album jacket photoshoot.

It was still legendary gossip within the industry.

Namgwon rarely came back to the dorm and almost never answered calls.

Instead, he floated between the homes of countless girlfriends and female acquaintances.

As far as he was concerned, the Hexatonic dorm existed merely as a storage space for his underwear and stage outfits.

Which meant he neither knew nor cared what Daeseung did at the dorm.

If Namgwon had one redeeming quality, it was that unlike Daeseung— who even skipped official schedules— Namgwon somehow always showed up on time whenever there was a filming or event, no matter how drunk or unreachable he’d been beforehand.

Of course, this wasn’t because he treasured Hexatonic.

It was simply because filming locations and event venues provided opportunities to meet new women as an idol.

Still, Mugyeong’s expectations for his members had already sunk so low that merely having Namgwon show up to schedules felt moving enough.

When Mugyeong entered the living room, Hexatonic’s final member, Seok Heechan, was once again livestreaming in front of the computer.

Heechan sat with his back facing Mugyeong, but after spotting him through the webcam, he spun his chair around.

“Heechan-hyung, you’re streaming?”

Instead of answering, Heechan formed a rectangular frame with his thumbs and index fingers.

Then he stared at Mugyeong through the “window” made by his hands while muttering something under his breath.

His voice was too quiet for Mugyeong to hear clearly, but the entire thing felt deeply unpleasant.

“…Hyung. Why are you acting so creepy?”

“What’s creepy about it? I was casting a little spell so our superstar gets lucky. How’d the broadcast go today?”

Heechan welcomed him in an exaggeratedly friendly tone.

His mouth stretched into a huge grin.

But his eyes gleamed strangely.

Seok Heechan was Hexatonic’s main vocalist and one year older than Mugyeong.

He was extremely jealous by nature and couldn’t stand any other member receiving even slightly more attention or popularity than him.

This time too, after Mugyeong gained attention through the ghost story broadcasts, Heechan abruptly announced a switch to a “supernatural concept.”

Since then, during personal streams, Heechan occasionally muttered strange chants to himself or made bizarre hand gestures toward Mugyeong.

Whenever Mugyeong asked what he was doing, Heechan always claimed they were “good luck spells.”

Mugyeong thought he was lying.

If Heechan were ordered to die on the spot, he’d probably obey before sincerely wishing luck upon another member.

Of course, Heechan didn’t possess even a drop of spiritual sensitivity. On the supernatural spectrum, he stood at the complete opposite end from shamans— painfully worldly and materialistic.

The “spells” were probably just nonsense superstitions he’d found online.

Even so, Mugyeong couldn’t shake the creepy feeling.

“Uh… is the stream still live?”

The moment Mugyeong appeared on screen, the chat speed accelerated dramatically.

A stream that had been dead silent suddenly received donations and donation messages.

[(1,000 won donation) “Mugyeong oppa, it’s been so long!”]

[(5,000 won donation) “Mugyeong-ah, looks like you filmed something today. What show was it?”]

Heechan’s face subtly twisted, clearly displeased that Mugyeong’s name was being mentioned on his broadcast.

Pretending not to notice, Mugyeong waved toward the monitor.

“Hello, Tonic Water! Yep, I filmed something today. I’ll post the YouTube link in the group chat later once it’s uploaded.”

Regardless of Heechan’s hostility, Mugyeong had no intention of staying on the stream longer anyway.

Most of Heechan’s viewers were personal fans, and they tended to make fairly intense requests. Maybe because they resembled their favorite idol, they were also openly hostile toward other Hexatonic members.

Mugyeong had no desire to get tangled up and suffer for no reason.

Thankfully, his phone began ringing.

An unfamiliar number appeared on screen.

Right— Unho had said the PD of the new show would contact him.

Using the call as an excuse, Mugyeong quickly said goodbye to the fans and escaped into his room.

“Hello?”

— Hello. I’m PD Park Nayeon. Teacher Cheongun gave me your contact information.

A young woman’s voice flowed from the phone.

Calm.

Firm.

— The program is called 108 Ghost Stories. We’ll collect reports of ghost stories and paranormal phenomena, verify whether they’re real, and then provide solutions.

While listening, Mugyeong searched Park Nayeon online.

Park Nayeon was occasionally mentioned in occult and paranormal filming circles as an independent director.

She wasn’t affiliated with a major studio and hadn’t produced any massive hit programs yet, but people consistently praised her work for its quality and effective horror atmosphere.

Especially in an era where plenty of nighttime cameramen couldn’t even handle basic noise correction.

“PD-nim, but I’m not a shaman and I can’t see ghosts. What exactly would I do?”

— While Teacher Cheongun analyzes things from a shamanic perspective, Mugyeong-nim will verify paranormal phenomena from the perspective of an ordinary person using scientific equipment. Since viewers can’t personally see ghosts, I think they’ll enjoy observing things through equipment instead.

Park Nayeon promised to lend Mugyeong occult investigation equipment she already owned.

Color immediately returned to Mugyeong’s face.

He’d been worried he might end up just a useless side character, but thankfully he had a clear role just as important as the shaman’s.

And role meant screentime.

Screentime meant opportunity.

— I’ll send you the detailed contract shortly, so please review and sign it.

“Okay, understood.”

Soon after, an electronic contract arrived through his messenger.

After reading only three or four lines, Mugyeong’s eyes rapidly lost focus.

Mugyeong was especially weak when it came to documents.

It was obviously Korean, but somehow he still couldn’t understand a word.

At least there didn’t seem to be anything about signing away bodily rights.

Probably.

Looks like good words are written here anyway. I’ll just sign it.

It’s not like I’m in a position to refuse.

Right now, becoming a hot topic on YouTube mattered far more than contract details.

People always said algorithms were like lottery tickets.

You’d never know until you scratched them.

As Mugyeong pressed the “sign” button on the electronic contract, a thought suddenly crossed his mind.

“If an offer seems too good to be true, you should probably suspect it’s a scam…”

…Nah.

How much worse could things possibly get from here?