Idol of the Heavenly One - vanish into fiction

Ding—

The elevator doors opened, and I stepped inside heavily. Standing alone in the narrow space, even the sound of my breathing felt unnaturally loud. As the red numbers marking each floor changed one by one, my thoughts grew more tangled.

When the elevator stopped faster than usual and the doors slid open, I found myself standing right in front of the dormitory door. The sensor lights in the hallway were off, leaving only silence in the air. I gripped the strap of my bag tightly.

I’d disappointed my parents again. Was it really right for me to come back here? What exactly was I doing right now?

I asked myself those questions over and over. For a moment, I felt the urge to just get back into the elevator, go down, hail a taxi, and return home. But my feet refused to move away from the door.

In the end, my trembling fingers pressed the passcode.

Beep— The electronic sound rang out, and the door unlocked.

The dorm was completely dark. The darkness that greeted me as soon as I stepped inside the entryway was deeper than I expected, and I hesitated for a second. Was he not back yet? Maybe he got stuck in traffic. Even if that were true, he still should have arrived before me, who had gone almost all the way home and come back. Feeling uneasy, I quickly took off my shoes and quietly stepped further into the living room.

Maybe Baek Jae-heon went to his family’s house too. The reason there hadn’t been any luggage earlier might have been because he didn’t have anything to pack. It was possible. He looked like someone from a wealthy family, after all. Maybe he didn’t need to bring gifts or extra clothes when his house had everything. In the end, I must have misunderstood. When he said he’d stay behind with just his phone in hand, it was only my imagination.

“Ha…”

A long sigh escaped on its own. I really was an idiot. I should have just gone home instead of lying to my parents. I could’ve been spending New Year’s in a warm house after the performance, but what was I doing here now? A wave of shame and self-reproach washed over me.

To think that a flutter I’d felt for the first time in sixty-nine years could make me this restless.

What was it, really, that had me so shaken at my age? If anyone knew what was going on inside me, I’d probably be too embarrassed to show my face for at least a year.

“I really am stu—”

Just as I was muttering to myself, there was a click, the sound of a door opening.

The door to the room Baek Jae-heon and I shared opened, and someone stepped out.

“Ji Myeong-hyeon?”

It was Baek Jae-heon, towel-drying his wet hair as he came out, apparently having just finished showering.

“What the—?!”

I was the one more startled. The shout burst out of me before I could stop it. He should have been the one asking me that, yet somehow I was the one yelling first.

Baek Jae-heon didn’t even blink. He calmly asked back,

“What? Did you forget something?”

I blinked in confusion, trying to process what he said. Did he think I’d come back because I left something behind? He glanced at the phone in his hand, then started walking toward me slowly.

“Oh, uh… yeah.”

I stammered, blurting out a vague answer. But he didn’t approach the way I thought he would. Instead, he headed toward the kitchen, picked up a water bottle from the island counter, opened the cap, and drank slowly.

All I could do was stare blankly at him. My gaze followed him on its own, and I didn’t know why.

“Want some?”

He asked, glancing briefly at me while holding the bottle.

“Huh? Oh, no.”

“Then what?”

“…What?”

“Why are you staring?”

I couldn’t answer. Yeah, why was I staring? Normally, I should’ve asked things like “When did you get here?” or “Didn’t you go home?” But seeing him in front of me made my mind go completely blank. I just fumbled for words like a fool, unable to say anything I wanted to.

But what I really wanted to ask was something else.

That thing he said that day—“See you in three days”—what did he mean by that? If it was just a joke, I wanted him to say so. But if it wasn’t… then what was it?