Chapter Text
Once there was a star too bright for the world to look at directly—untouchable, adored by millions. And then, the light dimmed. The beloved star was no longer beloved. Scandals swirled, whispers chased him down every street, and the young boy who had sung from the heart vanished behind the quiet of his own choosing. Years passed, and the same star no longer shone among those who had once watched him fall—but he remained, somehow, untouchable, unattainable… and impossible to ignore.
A story left hidden. A past left to unravel.
A scandal. And the fallen star.
An article was published on the page, abandoned for months—a hoax of its former glory.
Post Title: Update
*"I was once Anxin's fan and very saddened by what happened to him. But a week ago, I went on a trip with some friends, and I saw someone who seemed familiar. I looked closer… and it was Anxin.
I wanted to go talk to him, but he was surrounded by a bunch of kids. I saw his face, and he looked really happy. I just left. I didn’t want to post about it here, but I thought fans like me would want to know that he’s okay.
P.S. I won’t be posting any location—not wanting to repeat the past cases."*
Comments:
- @LunaWings: OMG… Anxin?? After Two years?? 😭💖
- @Anxin'swife: I can’t believe I am hearing a update… I thought we’d never see him again.
- @MelodyFangirl: I’m so glad to hear he looks happy 😭 even if we can’t reach him.
- @Blahahaha: I wonder if he even remembers the fandom…
- @imfrying: This makes me both happy and sad. Happy he’s okay, sad that he’s so distant now.
- @xin1225: I’ve been waiting for any news about him for months! This post made my week. 💫
- @FadedLyrics: He must’ve really needed peace. I’m glad he found it, even if it’s away from us.
- @MoonlitEcho: I’m crying… I still remember the first time I heard him sing.
- @Xinwhereru: Please, everyone, let him live his life. We’ve waited too long to drag him back into the spotlight.
- @Anxin'slefteye: Can we just take a moment to appreciate that he’s smiling? That’s all we ever wanted.
- @Y: I hope someday he knows we still love him, even from afar.
- @youknowwho: I didn’t think I’d feel this emotional hearing about someone.
- @Anxinupdates: Guys there is actually a recent video of him circulating too.
>@wantu: [replied to @anxinupdates] omg! Yess I saw that video. He looked so relaxed.
Cheers erupted across the stadium as the final note of my encore rang out, bright and lingering in the air. The lights burned hot against my skin, and for a moment, everything felt unreal—thousands of voices calling my name, hands raised, phones glowing like scattered stars.
I bowed deeply, pressing a hand to my chest in thanks. Years of grinding—endless rehearsals, missed sleep, quiet sacrifices—had all led to moments like this. As I straightened, the applause swelled again, louder this time, almost overwhelming.
When I finally stepped offstage, the noise dulled into a distant roar, as if the world had been sealed behind thick glass. Staff rushed around me, practiced and efficient. Someone unclipped my microphone pack. Another slid the in-ear monitors free. A cold bottle of water was pressed into my hand, condensation soaking into my palm.
That was when my manager appeared. He looked wrong—too pale, too tense for a night meant to end in celebration. His usual smile was gone, replaced by a tight line as he shoved his phone toward me.
“Call. Now,” he said, breathless.
I glanced at the screen.
Leo Lee.
My chest tightened.
Leo—once the leader of our band. My band. The one we built together before everything fractured. He’d gone on to release solo albums, then quietly moved into producing. Recently, he’d launched his own label and debuted a boy group the industry wouldn’t stop talking about.
Leo never called without a reason.
I answered immediately. “Leo? What happened?”
The silence on the other end lasted a second too long. When he spoke, his voice was strained, fraying at the edges.
“Check social media,” he said. “The post—from the account @glasshalo_official.” My stomach dropped. “And then,” he continued quickly, as if afraid I might interrupt, “come to Sangwon’s house. As soon as possible.”
“Leo—what’s going on?” I asked, already stepping away from the staff, the celebration evaporating from my mind.
“Just—please,” he said. “Don’t wait.”
The call ended before I could say anything else.
I stood backstage with the phone still pressed to my ear, the echoes of the crowd bleeding faintly through the walls. A night that had begun in triumph now felt heavy, like the air before a storm. Without another word, I did exactly as he asked.
My manager watched me for a long moment, as if gauging whether I was ready. Then he handed me his phone.
“A video,” he said quietly.
I took it, my fingers suddenly cold. The screen was already playing.
My breath caught.
“Anxin…”
It was unmistakably him.
The footage was shaky, clearly filmed in a hurry. Anxin stood on a crowded street, the background blurred with passing figures and unfamiliar signs. He looked different—lighter somehow. Not just thinner, but softer, like a weight had slipped off his shoulders without anyone noticing.
His hair was longer than I remembered, falling into his eyes when he tilted his head.
Someone off-camera said his name.
Anxin looked up. And he smiled.
It wasn’t wide or bright. It was small—reflexive. Like he hadn’t meant to be seen. Like the smile had escaped before he could stop it. He stepped closer to the people filming, said something I couldn’t hear over the noise bleeding from the backstage speakers, and nodded politely.
The video ended.
Below it, the caption sat stark and careless in its simplicity:
“I was recently abroad with my friend when I spotted him. He looked lighter somehow, so we went up to him. He smiled at us.”
(Location not disclosed.)
My throat tightened.
Abroad.
Spotted.
As if Anxin were a passing stranger and not someone the world had been quietly searching for. As if he hadn’t vanished without a word. As if his absence hadn’t been dissected into theories and headlines and blame.
I scrolled down numbly—likes climbing by the second, comments flooding in faster than I could read. Shock. Relief. Speculation. Names dragged back into the open without mercy.
Behind me, the stadium was still cheering.
I lowered the phone slowly, the noise around me suddenly unbearable. My manager watched my face, his expression tight and unreadable. That was when I understood why Leo had sounded the way he did.
Anxin hadn’t just been seen. Anxin had been found.
But, oddly nothing about that felt like relief.
Sangwon sat on the couch, hands clasped loosely in his lap, staring at a spot on the floor as if it might offer him answers. He was too still. The kind of stillness that came from holding something in so tightly it threatened to spill out if he moved even an inch.
If Sangwon was still Leo was opposite.
Leo couldn’t stay in one place. He paced the length of the living room, running a hand through his hair, stopping only to mutter half-formed sentences under his breath—plans, regrets, fragments of blame that never quite surfaced. Every few steps, he glanced at his phone, as if willing it to change, to undo what had already been posted.
I stood just inside the doorway, feeling like I’d walked into the aftermath of something that had already shattered. I didn’t know what to say. I wasn’t even sure there were words for this.
My gaze drifted to the coffee table. A photograph lay there, slightly crooked, as if it had been picked up and set down too many times. Four of us—Sangwon, Leo, Anxin, and me. We were younger then, bundled in coats too thin for the cold, shoulders pressed together like the world hadn’t yet taught us how to drift apart.
The first snow had fallen that night.
I remembered how Anxin had laughed, breath fogging the air as he tried to catch snowflakes on his tongue. I remembered Sangwon standing just a little too close to him, pretending it was only because of the cold. Leo had complained the entire time—about the weather, about schedules, about how snow ruined everything—yet he’d been smiling in the photo anyway.
That was four years ago.
Before Anxin left the industry. Before he disappeared without explanation. Before silence became the loudest thing he left behind.
The room felt heavy with it now—the past sitting between us, unspoken and undeniable. Sangwon didn’t look up. Leo kept pacing. And I stood there, watching the way Anxin’s absence still shaped the room, wondering how someone who wasn’t here anymore could still be the center of everything.
Lee Sangwon was an actor now.
He had left the music industry entirely, trading stages and recording booths for film sets and red carpets. His face was everywhere—posters, billboards, screens I couldn’t escape even if I tried. He smiled easily for cameras, slipped into roles that demanded emotion on command. And yet, sitting there on the couch, he looked nothing like the man the world thought it knew.
Lee Leo had started his own label.
Successful. Respected. Untouchable, according to the articles. He ran companies now instead of bands, spoke in boardrooms instead of harmonies. People listened when he talked. People believed in him. Watching him pace the room, I wondered if any of them knew how often his hands still shook when Anxin’s name came up.
And I, Geonwoo, stood there as a soloist.
Alone on stages that once felt too big for all of us, singing songs that were never meant to be solitary. Fans called it growth. The industry called it evolution. Sometimes, late at night, it felt more like survival.
And Anxin…
Anxin, our youngest.
He was lost.
Not gone—because gone would have meant certainty. Lost meant unanswered questions. It meant holding onto a presence that lingered like a ghost, one that could still, somehow, be alive. Lost meant waiting without knowing what you were waiting for.
This hadn’t begun with his disappearance.
It had started almost a decade ago, with the rise of a star who was too young, too bright, and burning far too fast. We had watched it happen, standing close enough to feel the heat, foolish enough to believe it wouldn’t hurt him.
Or us.
The room was silent, heavy with everything we had become—and the one person who left everything behind.
Nine years ago.
The stadium roared as a fifteen-year-old danced across the stage, light clinging to him like it had chosen him on purpose. He moved as if the music lived in his bones, singing like his life depended on it—like this moment was everything he was and ever would be.
Zhou Anxin.
The brightest star.
The beloved star.
A foreign name in a foreign industry, a Chinese trainee who had slipped out of a company just months earlier in another country, only to reappear here and captivate an entire nation. His visuals were flawless, yes, but it was his skill that held people hostage. His voice didn’t ask for attention. It commanded it.
Every bow was too deep. Every thank-you sounded sincere, breathless with awe, as if he couldn’t believe the cheers were real. As if he were afraid they might disappear.
Somewhere else, in a different building across the city, five trainees were still in practice clothes, sweat-soaked and exhausted, gathered around a cracked screen balanced on a table.
The video lagged. The cheers still came through.
The youngest of them, Sanghyeon, bounced on his heels, eyes wide and shining.
“Wow,” he chirped, clutching his towel like a lifeline. “Anxin sunbaenim is awesome.”
No one disagreed.
They watched in silence as Anxin smiled into the crowd, too bright, too young, burning like something that didn’t yet know it could be consumed.
None of them knew it then. Not Anxin, standing beneath the lights. Not the fans screaming his name. Not the trainees watching from afar.
But that night was the beginning of everything.
Back in the present.
A soft ting broke the silence. Leo stopped pacing. He checked his phone, fingers moving quickly as he typed something out. When he looked up, his expression had changed—focused, resolved. He met Sangwon’s eyes. Then mine.
“Clear your schedules,” Leo said. “All of them. If possible—for a month.” Sangwon straightened instantly. My eyes widened. “We’re going to find Anxin.”
“But the fan didn’t reveal the address,” I said. “She was careful.”
“I asked my manager to reach out to her,” Sangwon added, standing now, tension sharp in his voice. “She never replied. What did you do?”
Leo’s mouth curved into a small, knowing smile. “I contacted Mr. Han.”
Sangwon looked at me, realization dawning.
Mr. Han had been one of Anxin’s first managers—before he was replaced by the last one. The man who had seen Anxin as a teenager, wide-eyed and burning with hope. The man who had watched him grow into the beloved star the world adored. And the man who had been there when everything started to fall apart.
If anyone still knew where Anxin might be, it was him.
But after everything why had he revealed it now and not before?
The room felt different now. Less heavy. Sharper. Like the quiet before movement. Anxin wasn’t just a ghost between us, now. He was a destination.
The room was cold. Not the kind of cold that came from winter, but the kind that settled into walls after years of silence. Fluorescent lights hummed overhead as a man stood alone, files clasped tightly in his hands.
They were thick—too thick. Contracts, reports, timelines that told a story no one had wanted to hear until it was already too late.
He had submitted them to the legal team only minutes ago. This was the final step.
The boy had worked too hard. Had endured too much. Had given pieces of himself away long before he’d understood what they were worth. Mr. Han had watched it happen—first with pride, then with worry, and finally with something dangerously close to guilt.
He knew what this meant. Once these papers moved forward, there would be no turning back.
That was when his phone rang. The sound cut through the room sharply, almost startling in its insistence. Mr. Han glanced at the screen.
Leo Lee.
He stared at the name for a long second. Then he answered. “Yes?” he said.
“Mr. Han,” came the voice on the other end—steady, but unmistakably tense.
The past had finally called back.
An announcement, posted without ceremony.
Soloist, Kim Geonwoo has postponed all remaining tour stops for the month of November and will be taking a sudden hiatus. Further updates will be shared at a later date.
Fans were confused. The comments filled quickly, questions stacked on top of worry, speculation buried under well-meaning concern.
Is he sick?
He was fine last night??
Please rest, we’ll wait.
This was so sudden…
No explanation followed.
That same evening, another post surfaced. This one from an agency account.
Lee Sangwon will most likely not be attending the upcoming movie premiere due to sudden personal matters. We ask for your understanding and continued support.
The tone was gentler. Softer. The response reflected it. Fans were sad, but kind.
Take care, Sangwon.
Health first, always.
We’ll see you when you’re ready.
And then, buried somewhere deep in the replies, someone pointed it out.
Wait… isn’t Geonwoo on hiatus too?
Weren’t they from the same band?
This feels connected.
The comment gathered likes. Screenshots. Quiet agreement. Nothing was confirmed. No statements followed.
And then there was Leo. No notice. No post. No explanation.
One day he was in meetings, spotted leaving his company building, fielding questions about his newest group. The next, he was simply gone. Flights were booked. Schedules cleared. Offices left quiet. Three lives paused at once. To the public, it looked like coincidence. To fans, a mystery. To them, it was the beginning of a search.
The flight was silent. Sangwon sat beside me, shoulders tense, hands folded neatly in his lap. He stared out the window without really looking, the reflection of clouds passing over his face like thoughts he refused to voice.
Leo was seated up front. I could see the back of his head between the seats—still, unmoving. He hadn’t turned around once since boarding.
I looked down at my phone. The theories were everywhere. Screenshots of announcements stitched together. Timelines drawn in comment threads. Fans connecting so-called dots, whispering about a possible reunion, about something big moving behind the scenes.
And then, crushed almost immediately.
Sanghyeon’s post. A smiling photo. A casual caption. Reassurance wrapped in friendliness.
Don’t overthink it. Everyone’s just taking a break. Please wait patiently, for my new drama.
Right, the kid was doing an acting debut. I checked the comments.
Disappointment replacing hope. Speculation dying quietly under official words.
I locked my screen.
They didn’t know. They couldn’t.
We were flying toward the location Mr. Han had given us toward a name on a map that meant nothing to the world and everything to us.
Sangwon finally shifted beside me, exhaling softly. He finally spoke. “This is our first flight together after the disbandment.”
He was right. We had taken countless flights back then—tours, showcases, schedules stacked so tightly they blurred into each other. Airports had once felt like a second home.
“Oddly,” Sangwon continued, voice low, “this is only our second trip abroad that doesn’t involve work.”
He was right about that, too. And the irony didn’t miss me. Our first personal trip had been for Anxin.
And now—years later—our second was for Anxin again.
I glanced at Sangwon. He had gone quiet once more, eyes lowered to the book resting in his hands, fingers tucked between the pages as if he wasn’t really reading, just holding onto something familiar.
I looked ahead. Leo was asleep in the seat in front of us, head tilted slightly to the side, exhaustion finally catching up with him. For once, the lines of tension had eased from his shoulders.
The cabin remained hushed, the steady drone of the engine filling the space between us. Three people moving forward. For the same reason.
Nine years ago.
Anxin staggered backstage, breath coming in sharp, uneven pulls. His chest burned as he bent forward, hands braced on his knees.
“Oxygen,” someone said.
A mask was pressed to his face before he could respond. He inhaled deeply, the cool air filling his lungs, grounding him just enough to stay upright. The cheers from the stadium still bled through the walls—muffled now, distant, as if they belonged to someone else entirely.
Hands were already on him. Someone helped shrug his Jacket off while another slipped a soft cardigan over his shoulders for the next stage. The fabric was warm, comforting in a way nothing else was. He barely noticed. “Lift your chin.” A stylist fixed his hair, fingers quick and practiced. Another dabbed at his makeup, touching up sweat, smoothing away exhaustion like it was something that could be erased.
“Five minutes,” a voice called out. Anxin nodded automatically, oxygen mask still pressed to his face. His legs trembled, but he stayed standing. He always did.
No one asked if he was okay. They didn’t need to. He was breathing. He was smiling. He was ready.
The first comeback. Had been a massive success.
Articles flooded every platform, praise stacking upon praise as if the world had decided all at once that this was what it wanted from him. Headlines called it a triumphant return, a record-breaking moment, proof that the hype had been deserved all along.
The song charted higher than anyone had predicted. Number one came easily. Records followed. His name trended for days, then weeks, cemented into conversations that spoke of him as if he were inevitable.
The beloved star.
That was what they called him. The boy who smiled easily. The voice that healed.The face the public trusted.
Fans wrote letters about how his music had saved them. Comment sections overflowed with devotion. The industry nodded approvingly, satisfied.
Anxin stood in the center of it all, bowing deeper each time, thanking everyone with hands clasped and eyes bright.
No one noticed how carefully he moved. How often he went quiet when the cameras were gone. How success had begun to feel less like celebration—and more like a promise he could never afford to break. The light was brighter than ever.
At sixteen, Anxin won Best Solo Artist.
The trophy was heavy in his hands, cold against his palms as cameras flashed endlessly. He bowed until his back ached, smile unwavering, voice steady as he thanked everyone who had made it possible.
The company celebrated. They announced a tour—his first. Fan signs filled the calendar, dates stacking so tightly there was barely space to breathe between them. And then, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, three comebacks were scheduled for the following year.
It was framed as opportunity. Proof of trust. Proof that he was loved. But anyone could see, it was a cash grab opportunity.
Fans were ecstatic. Articles praised his work ethic, his dedication, his ability to “handle it all at such a young age.” The word genius was used often. Monster rookie. Born star.
Anxin nodded through every meeting, every announcement, every plan laid out for him. Sixteen and already exhausted. Sixteen and already indispensable. The applause grew louder. The schedules grew tighter. And no one thought to ask how long a star that young could keep burning without breaking.
As the fandom buzzed over Anxin’s first anniversary since debut, celebration posts flooding timelines and trending tags filled with gratitude and pride, another group was being released—this time from a different company.
Unlike Anxin’s meteoric rise, their debut passed almost unnoticed. The music wasn’t bad. The performances were solid. The members worked just as hard, trained just as long. But success didn’t come. The charts barely shifted. Articles were sparse, mentions fleeting. Their debut stage ended not in roaring cheers, but polite applause that faded too quickly.
Backstage, five boys stood together in borrowed confidence, smiling through disappointment they hadn’t yet learned how to name. They were told it was normal. That things would improve with time. That not everyone could shine immediately.
Somewhere else, Anxin’s anniversary banners glowed brightly across the city. Two debuts. Two paths.
Back in the present, Geonwoo stared at the photo glowing on his phone.
Five people stood shoulder to shoulder, arms thrown around each other, smiles too wide to be anything but real. He still remembered that night, how they had cried after their debut, overwhelmed and terrified all at once. How their first comeback had tanked on the charts, numbers dropping faster than anyone had expected.
He remembered the silence that followed. Then he swiped. Another photo appeared. Their first award, one year after debut. Trophies clutched tightly, eyes red from crying, disbelief written across every face. Things had finally started to turn then. Slowly. Earned the hard way.
Geonwoo let the memories linger a moment longer than necessary.
We survived, he thought.
The announcement chimed overhead. “Ladies and gentlemen, we will be landing shortly.”
He locked his phone and slipped it into his bag.
Sangwon sat beside him, shoulders slumped, gaze fixed on nothing at all. He looked exhausted in a way sleep couldn’t fix—like someone carrying too many unsaid words. Geonwoo studied him quietly. All he could think was this:
They would find their beloved star.
Not the one the world had named. Not the one frozen in headlines and memories. But the one they had lost.
Because to them, The beloved star, was not someone untouchable, but someone they loved.