Grab the Manual and Debut!-Chapter 29: ✦Scandal [7]✦
The hallway was a tunnel of amber light and long, stretching shadows. Building 15 was an old structure, designed with high ceilings and heavy wooden doors that usually felt prestigious. Tonight, it felt like a labyrinth.
Kang-joon gripped the USB drive in his palm, the sharp edges digging into his skin. The cold metal was the only thing grounding him. Behind the locked door of the research office, he could hear the heavy, rhythmic thud of a shoulder hitting the wood.
Thump.
"Go," Kang-joon whispered to Ji-hye.
She was staring at him, her eyes wide with a mixture of terror and a fierce, stubborn loyalty that he didn’t know how to process. She was clutching her laptop bag to her chest, her knuckles white.
"The emergency stairs are behind the elevator bank," she said, her voice trembling but hushed. "There’s a service exit that leads toward the dormitory hill. It’s dark there. They won’t be able to see which way you go."
"I told you, Ji-hye-ssi. You need to be the one who leaves safely," Kang-joon said. He reached out and grabbed a heavy rolling chair, jamming it under the door handle. It wouldn’t hold them forever, but it would buy seconds. "If they catch us together, they’ll say I’m manipulating a student. They’ll ruin your life to protect their lie."
"My life is fine," she snapped, a sudden spark of "fangirl" defiance cutting through her fear. "I’m a law student. I know how to argue. You’re the one who’s actually in danger. Just... don’t get caught. Please."
She didn’t wait for him to respond. She turned and bolted toward the back of the office, disappearing through a small side door that led to the faculty lounge.
Kang-joon stood alone in the center of the room.
Thump.
The wood groaned. A splinter appeared near the top hinge.
He didn’t have a plan, not a 97-loop-perfect one. He just had the drive and a body that had been trained to move until it collapsed. He stepped toward the window. They were on the third floor. Outside, a thick ivy trellis clung to the stone facade, slick with rain.
In Loop #14, he had taken an acrobatics elective during a brief stint at a performing arts school. He remembered the feeling of centering his weight. He opened the window, the freezing rain immediately lashing his face.
The door finally gave way with a sickening crack.
Kang-joon didn’t look back. He climbed onto the ledge, gripped the thick, gnarled vines, and swung himself out into the dark.
The descent was a blur of scratching leaves and the smell of wet earth. His sneakers struggled for purchase on the slippery stone, and twice he felt the ivy groan under his weight. He dropped the last six feet, landing in a muddy flowerbed with a heavy thud that rattled his teeth.
"There! By the garden!" a voice shouted from above.
Kang-joon scrambled to his feet. He didn’t head for the main gates. He knew the men in the black sedan would be waiting there. Instead, he sprinted toward the SNU forest—a dense, hilly area of the campus that bordered the residential neighborhood of Gwanak-gu.
His heart was a drum in his ears. Every step was a battle against the exhaustion that had been building since the police first walked into the Starline studio.
I am an orphan, he thought as he ducked under a low-hanging branch, the thorns catching his hoodie. I have spent my whole life running. From hunger. From loneliness. From the fear that I would never be enough.
He realized, with a sudden, stinging clarity, why he had been so obsessed with being "The Professor." If he was the smartest, if he was the best, no one could look down on the boy who grew up in a group home. He had built a fortress of logic to hide a child who just wanted to be safe.
He broke through the tree line and found himself on a narrow, winding road that led down the hill. A set of headlights appeared at the bottom of the slope.
Kang-joon dived into a ditch, pressing his body into the wet leaves. He watched the car—a silver SUV this time—crawl slowly up the road, a spotlight scanning the brush.
He held his breath. A single leaf drifted onto his cheek, cold and wet. He thought of Ji-hye. He wondered if she had made it to the subway. He wondered if she realized that by giving him that drive, she had given him more than evidence. She had given him the first real piece of "Home" he’d had in a century.
The SUV passed.
Kang-joon waited sixty seconds, counting the beats of his heart. Then, he stood up and began to walk in the opposite direction, staying in the shadows of the stone walls.
Ji-hye’s POV
Ji-hye’s heart didn’t stop racing until she was two stops away on the Green Line. She sat hunched over her laptop bag, her hair dripping onto the floor of the nearly empty carriage. An elderly man across from her stared, but she didn’t notice.
Her hands were shaking so badly she could barely hold her phone. She opened her private cloud storage. She had uploaded a duplicate of the traffic logs before leaving the office, just in case.
"Think, Ji-hye. Think like a lawyer," she whispered to herself.
If she went to the police now, they would just confiscate the drive. If the "Director" had enough power to influence a detective like Han, the evidence would disappear before the sun came up.
She needed a platform that was too big to silence.
She opened her contacts and scrolled past "Mom," past "Study Group," and stopped at a name she hadn’t called in three years.
[Senior Song Min-hee - SBC News Investigative Desk]
Min-hee had been her mentor during a short-lived journalism internship before Ji-hye switched to Law. She was known as the "Bulldog." She hated corporate corruption more than she loved sleep.
Ji-hye hit dial.
"Hello? Min-hee unnie?"
"Ji-hye? Do you know what time it is? I’m in the middle of a script for the morning—"
"I have the Lee Kang-joon evidence," Ji-hye said, her voice cracking. "The real 2019 logs. It’s a deepfake, unnie. The Consortium is behind it. I have the IP logs and the forensic breakdown of the lighting inconsistencies."
The silence on the other end was absolute.
"Where are you?" Min-hee asked, her voice suddenly sharp and professional.
"On the subway. Heading toward Yeouido."
"Get off at the next station. Take a taxi to the back entrance of the SBC building. Don’t use your own credit card. Use cash. I’ll meet you at the security desk."
Ji-hye hung up. She looked at her reflection in the dark window of the subway. She looked terrified, but for the first time since the scandal broke, she felt a sense of purpose that surpassed being a fan.
"I’m not just voting for you anymore, Kang-joon-ah," she whispered. "I’m fighting for you."
Kang-joon’s POV
Kang-joon had reached a small, 24-hour sauna in a quiet corner of Gwanak-gu. It was a place for laborers and travelers, somewhere he could disappear for a few hours for ten thousand won.
He stripped off his soaked clothes in the locker room. His body was covered in scratches from the forest, and a large bruise was beginning to form on his hip from the fall. He showered in the communal bath, the hot water stinging his cuts, but he welcomed the pain. It reminded him that he was still here.
He put on the oversized, orange sauna clothes and found a quiet corner in the sleeping room. He curled up on a thin mat, the USB drive tucked securely into the waistband of his shorts.
He pulled out his phone. He had 15% battery left.
He logged into a social media site, using a burner account. He didn’t look at the news this time. He looked at the fan forums.
The "Starlight" boards were in mourning. Most people had turned on him, but there was a small, dedicated group of fans who were still holding out.
– [User88]: I don’t care what the video shows. I watched him for 20 hours a day on the 24-cam. A person who cares that much about the details of a dance move doesn’t leave a person to die in the rain. It doesn’t fit the logic.
– [LuvJoon]: Everyone is talking about his background like being an orphan makes you a criminal. My brother grew up in a home too, and he’s the kindest person I know. This feels like a witch hunt.
Kang-joon felt a lump in his throat. He had spent 96 lives thinking that the only way to be loved was to be perfect. To have no flaws, no past, and no needs.
But they were defending the parts of him he hated most.
He turned off the phone.
---
[Humanity Metric: 15%.]
[Synchronicity: 88%.]
[New Skill Unlocked: ’The Truth-Teller’s Resolve’.]
