Top Girl Group Scenario Rewritten with My Own Hands - Chapter 59

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Episode 59
“You knew, didn’t you.”
“……Huh? Why is my senior suddenly like this?! What is it?”
“Don’t pretend you don’t know.”
“What is it, really?”
This kid.
I’d already asked the team leader about it and heard that she was planning to file a lawsuit soon based on the PDF Report she’d received.
At Hyun Jae-yi’s feigned ignorance, I furrowed my brow in exasperation.
Lee Su-bin, the team leader, said this wasn’t something I needed to worry about.
She was right. Usually, an idol member doesn’t need to fact-check another member’s rumors.
But things are a little different now.
“Jo Eun-bin contacted me. It looks like PN won’t get involved, but she said she wanted to help personally.”
“…How did she get your phone number?”
“I don’t know either. I’m planning to ask her tomorrow.”
“But what…….”
“So why didn’t you tell me.”
Hyun Jae-yi pouted a few times, then just climbed up to the top bunk.
She really has a talent for getting under people’s skin. Now that I think about it, this whole thing must be because of that Rookie Award nonsense she’s been acting smug about. The pieces are finally coming together.
“That comment you made to me—the one you didn’t have to—you did that because you were reading the internet that whole time, didn’t you.”
“You wouldn’t know, senior, but just let it slide. They’re going to file a lawsuit anyway, so it’ll all be resolved.”
Oh sure. Now she’s turning her back and lying face-down in bed.
Is she protesting by refusing to talk?
“I told you to sleep in Go Hyun-seo’s room next door. When I said I was talking to you, she said she understood. Come down. We won’t have time to talk about this after today.”
“…….”
“I’m not asking you to say something you don’t want to say. I need to know three things: why Jo Eun-bin stepped up to help, why the internet keeps linking you two together, and if you have any idea who started the rumor originally. Just those three.”
“…….”
“Why did you hide it? I’m not sure how far you’re monitoring, but monitoring should only go so far as to be useful for feedback—you shouldn’t be digging through garbage dumps yourself.”
The rumor is circulating on one of the harshest, most explicit sites on the internet—what people call a trash site. The rumor started elsewhere, but it’s on that site where it got inflated, expanded, and turned into fiction.
Personally, I don’t visit that place because I believe monitoring should have limits, but I never expected Hyun Jae-yi would go that far.
It’s not impossibly hard to access, but just looking at the titles on one page makes it obvious it’s a low-quality trash heap where people with nothing to do gather—there’s no need to deliberately.
“How far do you go when you monitor? I wasn’t planning to nag you, but you should start learning what ‘moderation’ means. You don’t need to know about that place. It’s for people with nothing to do, with too much time on their hands, who dump their inferiority complexes onto the internet……. You don’t need to see that yourself.”
“I don’t really look. I only see it if it comes up in a search by accident…….”
“I heard everything from the team leader. I also heard that when the PDF Reports started coming in, you were the first to say you’d file a lawsuit once you had enough material.”
“…….”
“You don’t have to go looking for that kind of garbage. There’s plenty of trash on the internet anyway. Even just YouTube’s comment sections are garbage dumps sometimes, but why would you deliberately go find and look at an even worse cesspool than that?”
I hadn’t meant to get angry, but somehow that’s what happened.
No one in this era doesn’t use the internet, but the internet is poison to that degree. She’s the one in the team who’s fastest at filtering information and separating what to take and what to throw away—so why would she wade into that kind of darkness…….
“…Sorry, sorry for being angry. We don’t have to talk about this.”
I was too emotional. I could have asked about this slowly and gradually, but instead I let emotion take over and ended up using a sharper tone than necessary.
The room filled with silence.
Hyun Jae-yi watched my expression, and after a while finally climbed down from the top bunk awkwardly. She wouldn’t meet my eyes—as soon as she came down, she turned away and lay down in bed, which was the point where I couldn’t help but let out a hollow laugh.
“If you don’t mind, can we talk about it?”
“…….”
“If you don’t want to say everything, just answer one thing. I need to know before I talk to Jo Eun-bin tomorrow.”
“……, What is it?”
“A summary of what actually happened, from your perspective.”
The story as it’s been reproduced and inflated online has strayed far from the facts.
Combining what Jo Eun-bin said, what the team leader told me about the internet rumors, and what Hyun Jae-yi mentioned in a moment of weakness, the only thing that seems true is that Jo Eun-bin was harassed by someone. Everything else is probably a lie.
So what matters is why Hyun Jae-yi got dragged into this. From what Jo Eun-bin said, it sounds like Hyun Jae-yi was trying to help her…….
I need to hear Hyun Jae-yi’s side before I talk more with Jo Eun-bin tomorrow.
“You don’t need to go into detail. Just explain it enough so that when I talk to Jo Eun-bin tomorrow and she says something, I’ll understand what she means.”
“You said I didn’t really like Jo Eun-bin.”
“Right.”
“There were some other people who didn’t like her for similar reasons.”
As Hyun Jae-yi mumbled from the bed, hugging her blanket, I quietly nodded.
“In the Dormitory and the Practice Room and places like that, there were seniors who subtly excluded her and picked on her. But I don’t think those seniors were originally bad people. They weren’t like that before…….”
“I’m listening.”
“But……. One day, there was a senior who got really annoyed with her, really harshly. All I remember is telling that senior to stop……. No matter how much I think about it, the only way I could be connected to this is that.”
“I understand. That’s enough.”
To sum it up: a producer openly favored Jo Eun-bin, which made her a target of workplace bullying, and Hyun Jae-yi told them to stop—and that’s how she got dragged into this mess.
That’s enough. I can ask Jo Eun-bin about the rest.
“You must be tired, but thank you. And I mean it when I say you should moderate your monitoring.”
“……Yes.”
“If there’s something you don’t need to see, it’s better not to. And for the lawsuit, we can just hire a lawyer to handle it, so don’t look at it yourself. Just promise me that.”
Hyun Jae-yi reluctantly nodded.
If I’m being strict about it, this is also something that hurts the group’s reputation, so it is a problem I need to solve…….
There are too many problems in front of me right now.
***
The next day, after clearing customs at Incheon Airport, we were waiting for our flight check-in. Since we weren’t as high-profile as a big boy group, we were able to use the airport quite comfortably.
It’s a relief that Hyun Jae-yi seems to be in good condition. Once she woke up, she’d returned to her usual self—playful and bouncy.
“There aren’t any fans who’ve followed us inside, are there?”
“I don’t think so. We haven’t had any saesaengs following us yet…….”
“Right. Then……, we should have time to talk a bit.”
In a corner of the Airport Lounge where people rarely passed, I spent a moment talking with Jo Eun-bin.
“Hyun Jae-yi didn’t really want to talk about it.”
“That’s because, actually……. After Hyun Jae-yi helped me, the other trainee seniors didn’t get along with her. It felt like she got marked by them because of me. There were about four or five of them…….”
“…What, did you go through trainee life to play cliques? Do you know what happened to those kids? Do you have a sense of who started the rumor?”
“I think most of them got kicked out. Besides me, they got caught bullying one of our members…….”
That’s infuriating. It wasn’t just one person doing the bullying.
“The one who started the rumor is probably among the trainees who got kicked out. …The company told me that since they’ve already kicked out the trainee and there’s no reason for the lawsuit besides me being mentioned, there’s nothing they can do on their end. I understand their reasoning, but…….”
Jo Eun-bin’s expression took on a bitter tint. That look and tone you see when the justice you’ve believed in breaks apart.
“There’s something called moral responsibility, though. It happened inside our company, and it’s based on complete lies, and it involves people who got kicked out of the company, but if the company just stays silent…….”
“I understand. So in the rumor posts going around now, the only thing that’s false is the perpetrator?”
“…Yes. They just changed the subject from what actually happened and posted it online. I don’t know exactly who, but…….”
“Were you very close with Hyun Jae-yi?”
“……What?!”
Jo Eun-bin seems pretty bitter about this situation. The way she bites her lip and speaks with frustration suggests that even though Hyun Jae-yi doesn’t realize it, she feels a fair amount of affection on her side.
This would be a good opportunity for Hyun Jae-yi to make a friend in the entertainment industry too. Even if right now there’s a feeling of being kind of rivals over the Rookie Award……. Female idols tend to have relatively limited social circles among fans.
“If you were close? It seems like you care a lot, but the fact that you contacted me instead of Hyun Jae-yi directly suggests you weren’t that close. Is there a reason you care this much?”
“It’s not so much that we were close as……. I just followed her around. We’re the same age, but she dances so well and sings so well, and I wanted to be friends with her, but it felt like too much to call it friendship……. But Hyun Jae-yi took really good care of me. Even though we couldn’t be friends, I couldn’t just ignore someone who cared for me and helped me out, and……. I couldn’t do that.”
Ah, that kind of relationship. One-sided admiration.
Well, even though Hyun Jae-yi said she disliked Jo Eun-bin, hearing that she took care of her suggests that the situation created the feeling rather than them being fundamentally incompatible.
Besides, Hyun Jae-yi isn’t someone who easily dislikes people. When you hear her say she can’t bring herself to call people bad even when they bullied others and bullied her too, the answer is clear.
I understand, or at least I think I do. I gave a light nod and spoke in a fairly light tone.
“Be friends with Hyun Jae-yi later, okay? The maknaes are the same way, but she doesn’t have many same-age friends either. I bet if you asked her now if she wanted to be friends, she’d say yes?”
“Yes, huh?”
“The rumor issue will be resolved once the company files a lawsuit. It seems like PN doesn’t want to get involved because they’re worried a negative image might stick to you, but if we confirm the facts and ask their company to release an Official Statement, that should be enough.”
In a case where the causation is this clear and the place and perpetrator are this certain, when we ask them to confirm the facts, PN won’t refuse.
And already online, as rumors from the dark started spreading, fans started countering with old rumors from before. It wasn’t someone going public with the story—it was backstabbing that got inflated and stitched together.
A notice about filing a lawsuit for false statements will go up soon, and once the spreader is identified, we can ask PN to verify the facts and have them post a notice as well.
“Malicious rumors are risky, but like you’re worried, our team doesn’t fall apart easily. I understand the betrayal you feel toward the company, but they moved the way they did to protect you.”
“Yes…….”
“So going forward, stay close to Hyun Jae-yi and don’t give anyone any reason to gossip. …You still want to stay close to her, right?”
“Y-yes. If I can stay close to Hyun Jae-yi……, then I’d be really happy.”
“Okay. Let’s do that then?”
“Yes, thank you so much. Senior…….”
Clean.
It’s a problem that will resolve cleanly, except for the unfortunate timing of the rumor spreading right before the VMA.
Actually, even that won’t be a big issue. It’s not like there was huge public uproar, and there’s no voting involved…….
“Oh, and by the way, how did you get my phone number? I never gave it to you.”
“I’m s-sorry……. I was in such a rush that I…….”
“No, it’s fine. It’s fine. But how exactly did you find out?”
“Yeo Eun-jae from DAYLITE gave it to me. I was asking her how to handle things, and she suggested I try contacting you…….”
Of course……. It was those DAYLITE kids. There was no other way it could have happened, but still.
More precisely, Yeo Eun-jae acting on her own……. Yeo Eun-jae does things like this sometimes—she can really startle people.
“That girl really does whatever she wants……. So you trainees have mobile phones now, right? If I save it under the number you called me from, would that work?”
“Yes, that’s my number. …Would it be okay if I contacted you sometimes?”
“……Well, I don’t mind. Feel free to contact me.”
I’m not sure what she’d want to contact me about…….
I went back and sent Lee Su-bin a text summarizing what I’d heard from Jo Eun-bin. Lee Su-bin thanked me and told me not to worry about it anymore since the company would handle everything from here on—just focus on the performance.
Once we boarded the plane, I finally felt the reality of the VMA being right around the corner.
……Oh, I should have asked Jo Eun-bin if she’d prepared an acceptance speech for the Rookie Award.
Then at least I would have been mentally prepared in case she didn’t win.
Rewriting the Top Girl Group Scenario by My Own Hand
Author
: Nam Seo-rang
Production Date
: February 11, 2026
Publisher
: AcesMedia Inc.
Editor
: AcesMedia Editorial Team
Address
: 4F Urban Bench Building, 325 Teheran-ro, Gangnam District, Seoul
Email
: [email protected]
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Without permission from this company and the author, the content cannot be used in any form or manner.
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UCI
: G720:N+A129-20260102083

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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