Chapter 62 — Six Months Later
The sky outside their dorms was a pale shade of gold—soft, like old light, bleeding through the gauze of winter clouds. It was 5:47 AM.
Inside the AUREUS main apartment, the cameras were being set up for the 48-hour live broadcast.
The theme: "AUREUS: Behind the Rhythm — 48 Hours of Gold."
No scripts. No edits. No cuts.
Just real time.
But even reality couldn't show what they didn't know.
The Members
Minjae was brushing his teeth in a panic.
Hyunjae and Sungchan were fighting over who would cook breakfast for the fans.
Rin was trying to quietly iron his shirt and burn himself as little as possible.
The staff moved like bees around the living room. Lights were being checked. Mics prepped. Camera feeds calibrated.
It was chaos.
The kind that comes before a storm you don't see coming.
And Then There Was Jaeheon
He stood by the window in complete stillness, his phone in hand.
Unmoving. Expressionless.
The early morning light framed him like a painting—backlit, unreadable.
He wasn't checking for replies.
He never had to.
Because she had never replied.
Not for six months.
But he still sent her messages.
Every single day.
Without fail.
About everything—
What he ate.
What he wore.
What he composed.
The things he thought but never said out loud.
Every moment of his day, condensed into lines she never answered.
It had become a rhythm in his life.
An invisible thread.
A private ritual no one else would ever know.
They Had Their Assumptions
Minjae whispered to Rin once, months ago, "I think she replied. He just doesn't want to tell us."
Rin had only given him a look and said, "Would you? After how long he waited?"
So they stopped asking.
They didn't bring her up anymore.
They didn't joke about it. They didn't mention the ball.
They respected the silence.
That was all they could do.
Manager Lee's POV
Manager Lee had managed idols for over a decade.
He knew when someone was pretending. When someone was broken. When someone had moved on.
Jaeheon?
He hadn't moved on.
But he wasn't broken either.
He had simply folded that entire night—every second of it—into a part of himself no one could touch.
He carried it like a second heart.
One that beat only when he was alone.
Camera Light Blinks On
A red light on the ceiling blinked.
"Five minutes to live," a staff member called.
The countdown began.
The group gathered in the living room, dressed casually, acting like it was just another day.
But Jaeheon's eyes drifted to the phone one more time.
He opened the chat.
Unread.
Still no reply.
He locked the screen and slipped it into his pocket.
No one noticed.
But his smile—brief, almost imperceptible—was genuine.
Because he wasn't waiting for her reply.
He was waiting for her.