The chat window was updating incredibly fast—too fast for Seunghyun’s eyes to keep up.
‘How on earth…….’
He had thought that many people would have received a refund and unsubscribed.
It made sense; communication was an obligation and a paid service, and neglecting it for months meant breaking a promise to the consumers.
However, the bond between an idol and their fans seemed much deeper than his vague expectations.
Seunghyun pressed firmly on the window to pause it for a moment, roughly checking what was written.
Most of it was no different from the contents of the letters he had seen earlier.
Seunghyun flipped his phone over so the screen wouldn’t be visible, set it down, and sank into the sofa.
He let his head fall back completely against the backrest and stared at the ceiling.
A strange feeling made his stomach churn.
It felt like something was filling up his chest.
Is it pressure? Or…….
Seunghyun took a deep breath, exhaled, and completely relaxed his body.
As his body sank deeper into the sofa, the tension he had been painstakingly holding in his face melted away, revealing a natural expression.
The corners of his lips twitched and slowly turned upward.
Even his rigid cheeks lifted.
Seunghyun was smiling.
It was a kind of fulfillment he had never felt in his life.
He raised his hands to rub his face. He couldn’t stop the laughter that kept leaking out.
‘The feeling of being alive.’
It was a feeling he wanted to keep experiencing.
At the same time, a corner of his heart was afraid of losing it.
This was the moment he finally understood the fear of the original Joo Seunghyun.
“…….”
Some emotions are addictive.
Seunghyun dropped his hands.
He stayed like that for a while, lost in thought with his arms hanging over the plush sofa.
He had often thought he should keep a proper distance, but looking back, he wasn’t sure how often he had actually managed to do so.
With the members, he had already become excessively close just days after his initial intention, and in the past, with Han Kangwoo too…….
‘No, let’s not think about that.’
Why was he thinking of Han Kangwoo while feeling such a good emotion?
Bitterly mocking himself, Seunghyun picked up his phone again.
Had they said there was a limit to the number of messages one could send per day?
Chats were still arriving rapidly, but the speed had noticeably slowed down compared to when he first checked.
After hesitating, Seunghyun clicked on “Clouds I Sent.”
Messages that the past Joo Seunghyun had sent popped up in a row.
He intended to use them as a reference for Joo Seunghyun’s tone and conversation topics.
Contrary to his expectation that he would have used formal language, most were casual.
Selfies and photos of his daily life also made up a significant portion.
And then, Seunghyun’s finger froze when he belatedly discovered the very last chat sent.
4 months ago –
[Photo]
I love you. Let’s meet again tomorrow.
“Hey, Joo Seunghyun!”
“Ah, oh. Sorry. What did you say?”
At Chiyoon’s call, Seunghyun jolted and snapped back to reality.
“Don’t you need to rest more? Why are you so spaced out?”
He had only finished the first song, yet he was already breathless.
Even so, Seunghyun’s mind had been elsewhere.
“No. I’m okay.”
He said he was okay, but he couldn’t concentrate at all.
‘I can’t do this.’
This body was a new one he had received so he could start over.
He shouldn’t cause any shame for the original owner.
Seunghyun slapped both his cheeks hard enough to make a sound.
“Hey, what are you doing!”
Chiyoon quickly rushed over and grabbed Seunghyun’s hands to stop him.
Seunghyun painfully swallowed his dry, metallic-tasting saliva and finally managed to speak in a raspy voice.
“I need to pull myself together.”
“Does that mean you have to hit yourself like that?”
Chiyoon grabbed both of Seunghyun’s hands tightly and hugged him with his whole body, as if restraining him.
The place where they were rehearsing was indoors, but it was quite cold, and Chiyoon’s hot body temperature was tempting.
Subconsciously, Seunghyun pressed his skin against Chiyoon’s.
“Hey, hey. Forget it, just come over here.”
With Seunghyun in his arms, Chiyoon walked awkwardly toward the chairs.
While Seunghyun was undergoing check-ups at the hospital, the stage design and settings had been roughly completed by the members and the director.
Since there was still about a week left until the performance, they couldn’t install the stage right in the middle of Times Square, so they had rented a large studio and were practicing in a space the size of the actual stage.
Seunghyun gritted his teeth at his reflection in the mirror.
‘I thought I had let him go from my heart.’
The last words Joo Seunghyun left for his fans kept circling in his head.
Joo Seunghyun had walked into that sea of his own volition.
‘I love you. Let’s meet again tomorrow.’
Those two short sentences were read in the voice of Joo Seunghyun, who had begged to be saved while being swallowed by the dark ocean water.
And beneath that, the countless pile of love from the fans came to mind.
He had to live even better because of it.
He would live well, and he would succeed so as to show them all.
Seunghyun broke free from Chiyoon’s embrace and stood straight.
Then, he glared at his reflection in the mirror.
“Keep rehearsing. Finish it to the end, and then do it one more time.”
Joo_Geukseong @chxx_polar · Just now
Daebak ㅠㅠㅠ Is Seunghyun going to use Cloud-Me againㅠ?
ZooooH @hALo_JOO
OMG really???!? Did something happen?!
Joo_Geukseong @chxx_polar
Yes yes ㅠ It says he checked Cloud-Me
‘He’s crazy, he’s crazy!’
Seunghyun’s fan, ‘Geukseong’, let out a silent scream and rolled around on the bed.
For the first time in four months! Seunghyun had logged into Cloud-Me and checked the accumulated Clouds (the chat system).
There had been no new Clouds from Seunghyun during that time, but Geukseong would log in several times a day to leave Clouds asking after Seunghyun or to review the ones Seunghyun had sent in the past.
After he had finished reading all of Seunghyun’s past Clouds, he would never forget to visit the other members’ Cloud-Me pages to see if there was any new news about him.
Even if the other members weren’t as active as when they were in their prime, they had often shared updates after the Times Square performance was officially announced.
And while reading their messages, there was one worrying aspect.
Although the HALO members’ schedules were being confirmed one by one, none of the members had officially resumed their activities yet.
Still, unlike previous sightings, they all looked like their expressions had improved…….
Only Seunghyun had no news.
For such a Seunghyun to return to Cloud-Me like this.
But his joy was short-lived; as time passed, Geukseong grew anxious.
Half a day had already passed since Seunghyun, who would usually have started with a greeting, left only the trace of his log-in and disappeared.
‘He even took down his profile picture!’
Not long after checking the Clouds that had piled up over the four months, Seunghyun had also taken down his profile picture.
It seemed there had been some change in his state of mind.
It would be great if it were the mindset of wanting to start anew, but couldn’t he have taken it down with the opposite intention?
Considering Seunghyun, who had always shown only a perfect appearance—even to the point of causing concern—because he didn’t want to worry his fans, this surely couldn’t be a bad sign.
It shouldn’t be…….
‘They say people change after going through something big.’
There wasn’t a single person in the country, no, the whole world, who didn’t know that Seunghyun had gone through a major incident recently.
Meanwhile, an entire day had passed since Seunghyun checked Cloud-Me, and yet not a single Cloud had come.
It was a situation that inevitably made one feel anxious.
He said he loved them.
He clearly said let’s meet again tomorrow.
When he disappeared without a word, he had initially felt resentment and a fleeting sense of betrayal.
Maybe it was because he had a belief that Seunghyun would never disappoint his fans, regardless of the reason.
But now, he knew why Seunghyun had done that.
And it was a reason that was naturally understandable.
He even came to hate himself for having resented him, even for a moment.
However, Seunghyun wouldn’t want his fans to feel this way…….
So Geukseong tried to think as positively as possible.
They call it a ‘hope circuit,’ in slang.
‘This is clearly a clean foreshadowing that Seunghyun will return spectacularly this time.’
And it was exactly 24 hours after Seunghyun checked Cloud-Me and took down his profile picture.
“Oh!”
This time, a scream with sound erupted from Geukseong’s mouth.
[A new Cloud has arrived from ‘HALO_Seunghyun’!]
“Uh-uh?”
With trembling fingers, Geukseong tapped the notification that popped up on the screen.
After a few misses, he unlocked it, and the loading screen for Cloud Message appeared. And…….
