Sweet Shot

#131

Tae-in arrived during a quiet time after lunch, ordered an Americano right away, and took a seat.

“Hey, have you ever thought about using social media?”

Tae-in suddenly asked while sipping his coffee.

“Why are you asking that all of a sudden?”

Since it was during work hours, Ha-min couldn’t sit down to talk, so Tae-in followed him around as he worked, explaining the reason for his visit.

“Didn’t you see the comments on my video?”

“What comments? I don’t usually read comments.”

When Ha-min asked with a puzzled look, Tae-in clicked his tongue in frustration.

“The video we shot together. It’s already over 700,000 views. In less than 3 days since posting.”

“Is that… a lot?”

“It’s a huge hit. There are over 10,000 comments too.”

“Oh, that’s great. Congratulations.”

Ha-min clapped his hands, seemingly impressed by Tae-in’s excitement. Although he wasn’t sure what constituted a high view count, seeing Tae-in so happy made him applaud.

“No, that’s not the important part.”

“Huh?”

“Almost all of those 10,000 comments are about you and hyung.”

“Um, what?”

“Hyung was already kind of known on social media, so that’s expected, but people are going crazy even over you, who just appeared briefly a few times.”

“But I was barely visible…”

“Exactly, you were mostly hidden behind hyung, but people are going wild saying how handsome you are even from those brief moments.”

“Come on, it can’t be that much.”

“I’m telling you, it’s true. Want to see the comments?”

Tae-in, excited as if it were his own achievement, held out his phone. Ha-min, with a bewildered expression and a rag in one hand, slowly checked the comments.

[Comments omitted for brevity]

Ha-min could see at a glance how many mentions there were of Tae-rim. And as Tae-in had said, there were many mentions of himself, which made him feel a bit embarrassed. He had never thought of himself as handsome, but hearing compliments from anonymous strangers made him feel unexpectedly good. However, it didn’t feel real, so he let out a deflated laugh with a dazed expression.

“See? It’s no joke, right? I’m getting so many DMs asking for your Instagram ID too.”

“Well, it’s nice that they see me in a good light…”

That’s when it happened. Among the flood of comments, there was one that made Ha-min’s gaze stop.

-Isn’t that the XX High School pig?

His heart sank. It was the name of the high school he had attended.

[Negative comments omitted for brevity]

Ha-min stopped scrolling and read that comment carefully. Noticing Ha-min’s sudden change, Tae-in checked the comment as well.

“What the hell?”

Tae-in cursed, his face contorting in anger as he read the comment.

“Ah, there’s always someone like this. Hey, don’t pay attention to it! Just…”

“It’s true. I went to that high school.”

“Huh?”

“Class 3-8. It’s correct.”

Ha-min said with a calm face. Tae-in froze, realizing his mistake, and looked at Ha-min cautiously.

“Were you… one of the bullies?”

Surprisingly, there wasn’t much of a reaction. Ha-min closed his mouth for a moment and looked at the comment very carefully.

“Why are you looking at it? Don’t.”

Tae-in, with a disgusted expression, snatched the phone away.

“This is fucking ridiculous. How dare that bastard leave such a comment so brazenly?”

“…”

“I’m sorry. I’ll delete all these comments…”

“What are you sorry for?”

“…”

“I’m fine, don’t worry about it.”

Ha-min finally smiled at Tae-in, who was looking anxious and apologetic, and spoke calmly. Tae-in seemed a bit puzzled by Ha-min’s unexpectedly composed reaction, but he didn’t press the issue further.

“Want me to find out who this bastard is and what he’s up to?”

But separate from that, Tae-in couldn’t hide his anger and spoke quite roughly. Tracking the IP address would be easy with his family connections.

“No, don’t bother.”

“But it’s infuriating. What right does he have to come out and…”

“Forget about that. Just help me create an ID.”

“Huh? Suddenly?”

Tae-in looked at Ha-min with surprise at his sudden request to create an Instagram ID. He hadn’t expected Ha-min to agree so easily. With a slightly dazed expression, Tae-in nodded slowly. Why not?

“Does hyung have an ID too?”

“Hyung? Of course. His follower count is no joke.”

Ha-min naturally changed the subject and looked at Tae-in’s phone screen again. When he entered hyung’s ID in the Instagram app, a few feeds appeared.

[Description of Tae-rim’s Instagram feed omitted for brevity]

“The last post was from last year. Seems like he’s on and off with it.”

“I should make one too. Where do I go to do that?”

Ha-min took out his own phone and downloaded the app first. Then, following Tae-in’s instructions, he went to the registration screen and created an ID and password.

“Click this plus icon to upload photos and videos you want to share. And if you click this, you can edit photos and stuff.”

“Ah…”

“And if you use tags when posting, people who search for those tags can see what you’ve posted. Let’s start by following each other. This, this ID is mine. Yeah, press that follow button to send me a request. Yeah, that’s it.”

Tae-in, who had been calmly explaining everything step by step, glanced at Ha-min again. He seemed to be fully focused, not seeming to care about the comment they saw earlier. Is he really okay…? Tae-in was still bothered by it, but couldn’t easily bring it up, knowing what it meant to Ha-min.

“Wow, you have a lot of photos. Is this with your girlfriend?”

“Huh? Yeah. We went on a trip together recently.”

Tae-in answered hastily, as if caught lost in thought. Just then, a voice from the counter called for Ha-min.

“Ah, I should get going now. Thanks for showing me.”

“No problem.”

“Should I follow the others too? I’ll do that.”

“If you look at my follower list, you can see all the others’ IDs.”

“Oh, I can see it like this. Okay, thank you.”

Ha-min waved and quickly ran to the counter. It seemed he got scolded a bit by the manager for slacking off, but it wasn’t too serious. After a few words, he stood at the register and waved goodbye to Tae-in.

Tae-in smiled and said goodbye before leaving the cafe. Then he checked the problematic comment again. As much as he wanted to send someone to teach that guy a lesson, seeing Ha-min’s indifferent face made him think he shouldn’t. He just walked away, feeling uneasy.

By the way, does hyung know everything? He thought suddenly.

“He knows everything?”

Tae-in was in the middle of working on a song in the studio when he called Tae-rim, who was in America. He kept feeling bothered, and his older brother was the only person he could talk to about this. Since he was dating Ha-min and also someone who could easily resolve such issues, there was no one more suitable.

“How could I not know?”

“Did Ha-min tell you?”

“He didn’t give me all the details, just the general idea.”

“But you say you know who all those bastards are?”

After explaining the comment incident and expressing his desire to track down the culprit, Tae-rim said he already knew everything. When? How? Tae-in let out a deflated sigh, puzzled by his brother’s matter-of-fact attitude.

“It’s not that old of an incident, and when I looked into the school, it came up right away.”

“Ah…”

“It was an incident that led to a suicide attempt, so many people at the school knew about it.”

“That’s true.”

“I know everything about those bastards – their names, education, family background, where they live, what they do.”

Hearing his confident words, Tae-in once again recognized his brother’s true nature. Of course, hyung wouldn’t just sit idle. Even from their occasional meetings, Tae-in could feel how much his brother cared for Ha-min, so there was no way he would have ignored this incident.

“But why haven’t you done anything?”

Knowing that it wouldn’t be difficult for his brother to use his connections or completely ruin those people’s lives, Tae-in asked out of genuine curiosity.

“I just want to kill them all.”

Tae-in hesitated to respond to the fierce reply that followed. His brother was the type of person who would actually do it if he said he would.