Grab the Manual and Debut!-Chapter 28: ✦Scandal [6]✦

The Seoul subway at 11:30 PM was a liminal space, filled with tired office workers and the smell of rain-drenched wool. Kang-joon sat in the corner of the last carriage, his face buried in his hoodie. Every time the doors slid open, he felt a jolt of electricity shoot up his spine.

He clutched his phone in his pocket. JH_Law_99. For ninety-six lives, the word "fan" had meant a data point. It was a vote, a scream in a crowded arena, a digital number that determined his survival. He had never thought of a fan as a person with the sheer audacity to challenge a police investigation for a stranger.

His phone buzzed. He pulled it out, shielding the screen.

JH_Law_99: [I’m at the back entrance of Building 15. The security guards here are mostly students on part-time shifts, they won’t recognize you. Just hurry. I think someone followed me from the library.]

Kang-joon’s heart skipped. He looked at his own reflection in the subway window. He looked haggard—dark circles under his eyes, his hair matted from the rain. He didn’t look like an idol. He looked like the orphan the news said he was.

"Next station: Seoul National University," the overhead voice announced.

Kang-joon stood up, his legs feeling like lead.

Ji-hye’s POV

Ji-hye stood in the shadow of the massive stone pillars of the Law Campus, her laptop bag clutched to her chest as if it were a shield. The rain was coming down harder now, a steady roar against the concrete.

She kept looking back at the parking lot. A pair of headlights had been idling there for ten minutes. They hadn’t turned the engine off. They were just watching.

"Please be real," she whispered, her breath hitching. "Please don’t be a trap."

She had spent the last two hours second-guessing herself. What if the message didn’t reach him? What if he thought she was a sasaeng? What if the men who deleted her forum post were already on their way?

Then, she saw a figure.

A young man was walking up the steep incline toward the building. He was slight, his shoulders hunched against the wind. He moved with a strange, rhythmic grace that Ji-hye recognized instantly from the "Event Horizon" practice leaks.

It was him.

As he got closer, the light from a nearby streetlamp caught his face. He looked smaller than he did on TV. More human. The "Professor" was gone; there was only a boy who looked like the world had tried to break him and almost succeeded.

"Kang-joon-ssi?" she called out, her voice barely a whisper.

He stopped. He looked at her, his eyes wide and filled with a defensive, animal-like alertness. He looked ready to bolt.

"I’m Ji-hye," she said, stepping into the light and holding up her SNU ID card. "I’m the one who messaged you. I have the files. I have the 2019 logs."

Kang-joon’s POV

Kang-joon stared at the girl. She wasn’t what he expected. She had messy hair tied in a frantic bun, a sweater that looked like it had been lived in for days, and eyes that were brimming with a terrifying amount of empathy.

"You really found it?" Kang-joon asked. His voice was hoarse, cracking from the cold.

"The car in the video is a fake, Joon-ah," she said, using his name with a familiarity that made his chest ache. "The real 2019 accident involved a car with a dented bumper. The one in the leak is brand new. And the lighting... it’s all wrong. It’s a deepfake."

She beckoned him toward the heavy wooden doors of the building. "Come inside. My research lab is on the third floor. We can’t stay out here. Those headlights in the lot... they followed me."

Kang-joon looked back. The black sedan was still there, a silent predator in the rain.

He followed her into the building. The air inside was warm and smelled of old paper and floor wax. They moved quickly up the stairs, the sound of their footsteps echoing through the empty halls.

Ji-hye led him into a small, cramped office filled with stacks of case files. She slammed the door and locked it, leaning against the wood for a second to catch her breath. 𝐟𝕣𝗲𝕖𝕨𝗲𝐛𝗻𝗼𝐯𝗲𝚕.𝗰𝚘𝐦

"I’m sorry," she said, looking at him. "I’m sorry they’re doing this to you."

Kang-joon stood in the center of the room, water dripping from his hoodie onto the carpet. He felt a sudden, overwhelming urge to cry—not out of sadness, but out of the sheer shock of being seen.

"Why?" he asked. "You don’t even know me. You’ve only seen me on a screen."

Ji-hye sat down at her desk and flipped open her laptop. "I saw you tie that kid’s shoelaces in Chapter 4," she said, not looking up. "And I saw the way you look when you think the cameras are off. You’re not a monster, Kang-joon. You’re just someone who’s had to fight for everything he has. I know what that’s like."

She turned the screen toward him. It was a side-by-side comparison of the two videos.

"Look," she said, pointing to the rear bumper of the car in the 2019 traffic log. "That dent. It’s not in the police video. And look at your glasses in the frame... the reflection is white. LED. This was made recently."

Kang-joon leaned over the desk, his eyes scanning the data. For the first time in the 97th loop, he wasn’t looking at a failure. He was looking at a weapon.

"This is enough to prove the video is a forgery," he said, his brain finally starting to spark back into its analytical mode. "But it doesn’t prove who did it."

"I found that too," Ji-hye said, her voice turning grim. "The IP that uploaded the leak to the forums? It’s registered to a holding company called ’Apex Media’. They’re a subsidiary of the Consortium."

Kang-joon’s blood ran cold. The Consortium. The people who wanted to buy Starline. They were using him as a sacrificial lamb to tank the agency’s stock price and cancel the show.

Suddenly, a loud thud echoed from the hallway. Someone was testing the door handle.

Ji-hye’s face went white. She grabbed a USB drive and frantically started copying the files.

"They’re here," she whispered.

Kang-joon looked at the door, then at the girl who had risked everything for a boy she didn’t know. He realized then that he couldn’t just run anymore. He had a witness. He had a fan.

He had a reason to debut that had nothing to do with the System.

"Give me the drive," Kang-joon said, his voice turning steady and cold. "And find a back way out of here. If they find you with me, they’ll ruin your career before it starts."

"I’m not leaving you!" Ji-hye hissed.

He looked at her, and for the first time in any of his lives, he gave a fan a real, genuine smile.

"I’ll see you at the finale, Ji-hye-ssi."