Chapter 434: Goodbye and Promise - The Story of Three People (3)

Yoon-Chan coming to see me personally indicated that my crying must have really worried him.

"Yeah, come in."

He opened the door so quietly enough that I hardly heard it and peeked his head through. "Did I interrupt your alone time...?"

"No, not at all." I beckoned him over with my hand. Yoon-Chan looked around awkwardly as if someone was watching and then stepped into the room. I thought he had come to check on me because he was worried about me, but it seemed he had something to say.

"Is there something bothering you?"

"...Huh?"

Yoon-Chan was startled and looked around nervously again.

What was going on? It seemed like there was more than him having something on his mind. He had something to say.

"Well, that’s..."

"Why?"

If this were the usual Yoon-Chan, he would have first said something like 'Are you okay?' right after coming in even if there were other reasons for his visit. He was being weird.

Seeing him hesitate so much, I stayed quiet until he was ready to speak. After a long moment of fumbling, he finally opened his mouth. "Hyung, I actually..."

"..."

"I heard you guys."

Heard what? I raised my eyebrows in a questioning manner. Yoon-Chan again became visibly nervous. He was usually calm and gentle, but now he appeared different, as if he was afraid I would get angry.

He didn’t respond, so I asked again, "What did you hear?"

Yoon-Chan spoke a bit louder and clearer this time. "The... The conversation between you and the hyungs. I heard it."

I sighed. "...Ah."

What to do now... Yoon-Chan said he heard our conversation. It was clear without asking that by 'conversation' he meant the discussions we had while the Elated members were here.

"Ah, is that so...?"

Even if I tried to hide it, there was no way I could keep this a secret from a member living under the same roof as me.

Moreover, we had shared many conversations carelessly due to the urgency of having no time.

During the time the Elated members were here, I was worried that Yoon-Chan would feel left out, but instead of feeling excluded, it seemed he had heard our suspicious conversations.

"I’m sorry for eavesdropping on your conversations, but..."

"I understand. It was impossible not to hear us. We live in the same house."

"Yes... But when I asked the other members, they just avoided the conversation and said they didn’t understand what it meant."

That was expected since the other members probably genuinely didn’t know anything. It became apparent when the members were consoling me while I cried that they had lost several days' worth of memories. I would have to ask them about what exactly happened and how they remembered the past few days.

Even if Yoon-Chan asked them, no one would be able to answer him properly.

"Joo-Han and Yoo-Joon hyung seem completely unwilling to talk about it... So I came to you..."

"Ah, that’s why."

Seeing that there was no input from Jin-Sung, it seemed that Yoon-Chan had eavesdropped on our strange conversations after Jin-Sung left.

"If you guys were just joking around, that’s okay!"

But if our conversation seemed trivial enough to be waved away as joking around, Yoon-Chan wouldn’t have come to ask me directly. From the moment he seriously asked me what was going on, it was clear he had heard parts that couldn’t be taken lightly.

Maybe I could brush it off as a joke? Maybe Yoon-Chan would doubt me, but eventually let it go.

"It was just us fooling around."

"...Really?"

However, Yoon-Chan’s expression remained serious. There was a long silence after my response. He normally would laugh off at the prolonged awkward silence, but Yoon-Chan stayed still, seemingly deep in thought.

It even seemed like he was a bit upset with me. Had he heard too much of our conversation that he could not simply dismiss it as a joke?

I got worried, so I called his name. "Yoon-Chan?"

Without looking at me, Yoon-Chan spoke quietly. "I said it’s okay if it was a joke, but I’m sorry for being so adamant, hyung. I just can’t pretend I don’t know."

At this point, I started to sweat slightly. What exactly had Yoon-Chan heard? What had he heard that he couldn’t just let it go?

Before I could ask, Yoon-Chan spoke first. "I saw Joo-Han and Yoo-Joon hyung collapse at the same time."

Ah, this was getting serious. If he saw that too, no wonder he wouldn't believe me. This wasn’t something he could brush away, but members collapsing could be related to something seriously concerning their health.

In the end, I gave in.

"How much did you see and hear?"

Yoon-Chan’s eyes wavered. Was he anticipating that the stories he was about to hear would be too bizarre to comprehend with common sense?

Yoon-Chan chewed his lip and said, "I heard you saying thank you and take care. Something about creator gods or Elated... The things I heard sound pretty unrealistic..."

It seemed he had heard quite a bit. I listened to everything Yoon-Chan brought up. It appeared he had caught onto our suspicious conversations more than just once or twice.

"Were you guys talking about a game? A movie? But you seemed a bit too serious for that. Joo-Han hyung and Yoo-Joon hyung were also serious."

"..."

"Recently, Joo-Han hyung stopped working on his music, and Yoo-Joon hyung stopped joking around and sometimes looked at you with tears in his eyes. And lately, the members' behavior has felt strange to me."

Suddenly, having this conversation with Yoon-Chan felt utterly foreign. It felt wrong, like dragging someone innocent into something they shouldn’t be involved in.

"But suddenly both of them collapsed... Ah, I wasn’t spying, I just happened to be going into Joo-Han hyung’s studio..."

Yoon-Chan had nothing to do with this matter, so was I supposed to tell him everything because he was curious?

However, if I didn't explain, Yoon-Chan wouldn't understand what he saw. He might continue to feel left out.

"The members aren’t telling me anything. I've thought about it myself but I just can’t figure it out. And also..."

"Is there more?"

"Well, no." Yoon-Chan hesitated and shook his head. "I might seem strange if I say more. Whatever I think, it doesn’t make sense—"

Unwittingly, I scratched the back of my neck. What exactly did he see? Yoon-Chan wasn’t the type to tell everything he knows and sees. If I fumbled this, he might think this was even stranger.

Caught in an unexpectedly awkward situation, I was pondering what to do when Yoon-Chan said in a cautious tone, "Hyung, it’s okay." His face was resolute.

"What is?"

Was he saying it was okay because he didn’t hear anything concrete, or was he saying he would accept whatever I tell him?

Yoon-Chan quickly added, "Even if you tell me things that don’t make sense, I will accept it all. What I’ve seen just doesn’t seem realistic... I don’t know why such things would happen to our members, but I feel like I need to know."

It felt like Yoon-Chan and I slipped into a different reality. I thought these unbelievable events had ended. Frankly, having this kind of conversation with Yoon-Chan, who wasn’t supposed to be involved at all, was somewhat uncomfortable to me.

But despite my attempts to avoid the conversation, Yoon-Chan didn’t seem to want to back down. His words began to sway me.

"If you don’t want to talk, you don’t have to. But I will accept whatever you tell me."

"..."

"I will make sense of it."

Really? Could he truly understand that there was another timeline where I had died? Could Yoon-Chan truly be my confidant? What if he got angry and said, 'What nonsense are you telling me?'

Deflated, I said, "Are you really sure you can handle it without thinking of me as a weirdo? No one else would believe it."

Yoon-Chan spoke more assertively than ever before. "I will believe you. Just tell me. We can both be weirdos together."

Why was Yoon-Chan, who usually lived so carefreely, so insistent this time?

Before I could respond, Yoon-Chan looked quite anxious and began to tell me what he had seen and heard.

***

He noticed the oddities in the situation not long ago. The atmosphere within Chronos had become unnatural. There were signs of the members trying to forcibly lift the oddly subdued tension, or the dorm never getting noisy. While this could be attributed to fatigue from their schedules, Park Yoon-Chan was quite concerned about this.

'If it’s just because they are tired, that’s okay....'

But it wasn't that. Having been with them for about two years, he didn't think he couldn't distinguish between tiredness and something being off. The members seemed not just tired, but as if they had become completely different people.

Lee Jin-Sung no longer threw tantrums or clung to others. Yoo-Joon seemed lost in thought, quietly watching and hesitant to speak as if he was wary of Suh Hyun-Woo. Joo-Han had stopped working on music, and he seemed to be having more conversations excluding Yoon-Chan. And Suh Hyun-Woo looked anxious and depressed.

The members had changed overnight, and Park Yoon-Chan had found this deeply strange and suspicious.