Chapter 292

Jo Inchan normally didn’t get angry easily with people he was close to.

“Come on, all seven of us are about the same size, and we’re all wearing plain black. How am I supposed to tell whose is whose? If it bothers you that much, go wear leopard-print underwear by yourself.”

Even when Nam Yihwon got confused and wore his underwear.

“…Chan-ah, change your toothbrush. Hwon dropped it this morning.”

Even when he found out that Nam Yihwon had dropped his toothbrush on the bathroom floor and then just put it back without saying anything.

“Hey, Nam Yihwon! How many bottles did you drink! Come to your sen…….”

“Blegh!”

“Ah.”

Even when Nam Yihwon drank for the first time and vomited on his sneakers.

“…Are you serious? The plane’s about to take off?”

Even when Nam Yihwon played a prank on him by hiding his passport at the airport…….

‘…What the hell is wrong with Nam Yihwon?’

Anyway, no matter what Nam Yihwon did, Jo Inchan never yelled or sulked. At most, he would shoot him a slightly disdainful look or mutter, “ Get your act together and live decently ”. But it rarely escalated into a serious conflict.

‘Since they knew he wouldn’t get seriously angry, the people around Jo Inchan started acting more and more childish toward him.’

He had always been that way. Even back in our early days, when the members were locked in fierce battles of nerves and power struggles, he was often the only one who would quietly sit beside me and start a conversation.

“Why do you keep putting up with everything like that? You’re going to make yourself sick.”

“Hmm, I’m not sure. Maybe I just don’t have the energy to get angry? I guess … I just don’t want to…….”

Watching him just put up with everything day after day frustrated me to no end. I even asked him about the reason once, but I never got a proper answer.

“…Seriously, if people knew what you were really like, they’d be shocked. You’re the total opposite of your appearance.”

“Haha … really?”

In my opinion, Jo Inchan was just the kind of guy who was pretty clumsy when it came to getting angry at someone.

“You, you crazy bastard!”

To Prism, watching Jo Inchan lose his temper like that was an uncommon sight.

“…….”

“…….”

The moment Jo Inchan’s furious voice rang out, the space that had been total chaos just moments before fell silent in an instant.

‘When someone who normally doesn’t get angry loses their temper, it just hits different somehow.’

After a long stretch of silence, I noticed Cha Woon lowering his gaze awkwardly and glancing at me. It was his way of asking if it was okay to just leave him be.

‘Just leave him be.’

I blinked quietly. Given that Jo Inchan was the biggest victim in all this, I figured he might be the best person to reason with Yoo Jay. Cha Woon immediately picked up on what I was thinking and gave a small nod with a slightly worried look.

‘Let me go.’

A moment later, I tapped his arm lightly to signal that he could let go now, but Cha Woon only tightened his grip around the back of my neck.

‘You caught on to that pretty quick earlier.’

I tried signaling him a few more times after that, but Cha Woon just clenched his jaw and stubbornly refused to even glance my way. Convinced he was deliberately ignoring me, I gave him a good smack on the butt.

“Ouch.”

Even as he let out a small groan, he still refused to put me down, so I gave up. Lifting my head, I turned to look at Lee Chise on my left.

But that guy just kept his mouth covered with the hand that wasn’t holding me, his gaze fixed on Jo Inchan and Yoo Jay. His eyes were practically sparkling, like he was about to start munching on popcorn, but for the dignity of Prism’s hyung line, I decided to pretend I hadn’t seen it.

“Ha…….”

In the end, I ended up watching the situation play out while still dangling in their hands.

“…This is none of your concern, hyungs. I’ll take care of it myself, so go back.”

The buttery scent of butter cookies tickled my nose. It was because the tin case that was on the very top of the shopping bag had its lid come open from the impact of hitting the floor, causing its contents to spill out with a clatter.

As I quietly took in the scent of butter and looked at Yoo Jay, he seemed even younger somehow. It reminded me of the milky scent from a baby’s cheek. To others, he might have looked like a fully grown adult, but to us, at least, Yoo Jay always came across as a child. It was just how it was.

‘Jo Inchan is just being Jo Inchan.’

Even if he said he liked them, all he ever did was sip a bit of coffee and nibble on a cookie or two. But whenever he happened to spot something Yoo Jay liked, he’d buy so much of it that it barely fit in the shopping bag.

‘Even when he was being gaslighted by Kang Hyuk Woo, he still kept doing that…….’

To put it negatively, it was treating him like a child, but to put it positively, it was just the kind of affection an older person has for someone younger.

It was an item that clearly reflected the way the Prism members treated Yoo Jay.

Normally, Yoo Jay would’ve been more than happy about it, but it seemed like he didn’t have the mental space for that right now; he was completely on edge. Maybe it frustrated him that no matter how much time passed, he’d never catch up to his hyungs in age. His face looked just like a child standing in front of the toy section, lips pressed tightly together, refusing to move.

Even when Yoo Jay acted like that, Jo Inchan didn’t get any angrier.

Instead, he hit Nam Yihwon, who was standing next to him, in the chest.

“Ah! Why did you hit me?”

Nam Yihwon, who had suddenly been punched, curled his upper lip in annoyance and grumbled. Then, after looking back and forth between Jo Inchan, whose eyes had gone red as he muttered “I can’t hit him”, and Yoo Jay, who looked completely dejected, he let out a heavy sigh and mumbled, “Fine, I’m your punching bag. Hit me all you want until you feel better.”

“…We should talk inside.”

Jo Inchan took Yoo Jay by the wrist and led him inside. Just like always, it wasn’t all that surprising to see the members of Prism enter the passcode like it was their own home.

As the two of them, along with Cha Woon and Nam Yihwon, went into the house one after another, Lee Chise grumbled, “Oh my, what a waste”, while picking up the biscuits. Then he took out one of the cookies that hadn’t fallen on the floor and held it up to my mouth.

‘Ah, come on!’

I shook my head irritably in response, but he didn’t back down and just kept waving the cookie playfully in front of my mouth. It felt like he wouldn’t stop this nonsense unless I just ate one, so I finally opened my mouth, and sure enough, the cookie went right in.

Crunch, crunch. It wasn’t until I’d chewed and swallowed what was in my mouth that I was finally able to stand on my own two feet. I headed straight into the house after the two.

Lee Chise was the last to enter the house, and as soon as the door closed firmly behind him, Jo Inchan started yanking off Yoo Jay’s coat like he was tearing it to shreds. Yoo Jay hadn’t said a word about what he’d been holding onto the whole time, but it seemed Jo Inchan had already figured it out.

Was it because he had imagined himself doing that so many times before?

At the very least, I had.

“…….”

Yoo Jay could’ve resisted if he really wanted to, but maybe seeing Jo Inchan pull off his coat while rubbing at his tear-filled eyes with his sleeve stopped him. All he did was clench his fists tightly.

Eventually, Jo Inchan managed to snatch the knife from Jay’s hand, and after barely letting out a shaky breath, he burst into tears and threw the coat to the floor. As if his legs had given out too, he staggered before slowly collapsing to the floor.

“Huh, ugh … ugh…….”

It wasn’t loud sobbing; just a choked, stifled sound escaping little by little as his breath hitched from crying. And the tears that wouldn’t stop streaming down clung heavily to the tip of his chin before falling, one by one, with a quiet drip, drip .

The more Yoo Jay watched his hyung trembling like that, shoulders heaving and head bowed low, the darker his expression grew. The other members were no different. After a long while of crying so hard he couldn’t even speak, the first words Jo Inchan finally managed to get out were these,

“If you kill Kang Hyukwoo … then what about me? What are we supposed to do?”

It was a single sentence that rendered completely useless the excuse Jay had given me, ‘ I’m not doing this to make the members of Prism happy, so there’s no need to listen to the hyungs’ opposition ‘. A flimsy excuse, full of lies, but one he’d stubbornly held onto.

“What the hell do you think I’ve been putting up with all this time for? Do you really not get why I kept my mouth shut and endured all those awful things those bastards did to me?”

Jo Inchan was right.

It didn’t matter who or what it was for; in the end, the motive meant nothing.

“…Because I want us to stay together as Prism for the rest of our lives. Isn’t that what’s kept me going all this time?”

‘At the end of the day, we can’t go on without Yoo Jay by our side.’

Jo Inchan was asking Yoo Jay why he was pretending not to know such a simple and absolute truth.

“If it meant we could be together again, I could endure being toyed with by Kang Hyukwoo dozens, even hundreds of times more. But this … this isn’t it. What you’re doing now is hurting us even more than anything Kang Hyukwoo ever did to me … why can’t you see that?”

“…….”

“…Why are you trying to repeat the same mistake I did to our hyungs?”

Jo Inchan referred to what Yoo Jay was doing now as ‘ the same mistake he did to us’ . It seemed that after finding out Cha Woon and I had been blackmailed with that video, framed to make it look like he’d committed some kind of moral wrongdoing , he’d been weighed down by guilt.

Having witnessed Yoo Jay actually attempt to commit a real crime in that situation, he must’ve been pretty shaken up.

“Jo Inchan, I told you not to think that way. No one thinks this is your fault.”

Hearing the guilt in his voice, Cha Woon, who had stayed silent until now, finally spoke up, and Lee Chise nodded in agreement.

The video had been edited into fragmented clips from the start, and the one at the center of it all was Jo Inchan; the guy who’d always been honest and responsible, and would never even dream of indulging in nightlife. There was no way the members of Prism, with their sixth sense for stuff like this, would fall for something that flimsy.

I trusted him from the very beginning. That’s why I did everything I could to keep the original video from ever ending up in the hands of the Prism members, right up until the very end.

But Jo Inchan, perhaps not wanting to lean on the members’ affection, slowly shook his head and continued.

“Everyone, I’m truly sorry. I’m sorry for making you go through all this…….”

I went over to Jo Inchan and, without a word, massaged the back of his neck before gently brushing his cheek with my thumb. I figured he wasn’t looking for the kind of comfort that came with an “ It’s okay ”. With his head still hanging low, he let his face rest against my palm.

“Hyung, you’ve had to suffer so much because of me ……. I’m sorry.”

The faint voice that barely reached my ears and the drops of water falling onto my hand made it feel as though the weight in my chest, which had been held in place all this time, was finally lifted.

Yes, this is what I’ve been running toward all along.

To break the shackles that bound Prism.

I clutched the small key in my pocket tightly and said, “It’s okay. As long as you guys are happy, that’s enough for me.”

Those words made Jo Inchan fight back the tears that welled up again, and with his gaze fixed on the floor, he spoke to Yoo Jay once more.

“…This is what it means to make a mistake. It’s never just something that ends with me. We’re a family. This time, thanks to Yutae-hyung, we got the chance to rise again, but what guarantee is there that we’ll have the same chance next time? What you were trying to do earlier was on a completely different scale.”

“…….”

“Please cherish yourself a little more…….”

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Translator’s Corner:

I have no comment for this chapter (my heart hurts)

Sorry this is super late. I was busy being sad all day while listening to Paramore – Still Into You for 6 hours ….

Thank you Jieshika for the lightsticks!

(Actually, the name is shown as ‘Anonymous’ in the general view, but the name appears when I logged in … perhaps because of the chosen setting … but I don’t think it’s right to write it as Anon when the name appeared for me …… I hope you don’t mind…..)

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