Chapter Text
The eighty-year anniversary concert was supposed to be a celebration.
Instead, Jeongyo had decided it would be a trial.
The lights of Loband Stadium burned white against the night, eighty years of history projected in gold across the enormous screens. Tens of thousands of people filled the seats. Cameras hovered above the stage. The broadcast was live across the country.
And somewhere behind the curtains, Jeongyo was thinking about revenge.
He had spent months arranging everything.
The carefully planted questions. The conversations designed to draw Pio closer. The recording equipment hidden where no one would think to look.
He had convinced himself that Pio was going to confess tonight.
Confess that he had known.
Confess that he had been part of it.
Confess that all those years of friendship had been a lie.
Jeongyo would let the world hear it.
Then he would confess everything himself.
And when the truth came out—that he had manipulated Pio into exposing himself, that he had deliberately engineered the broadcast—Jeongyo would accept whatever came afterward.
He had already imagined the headlines, and the downfall of the only friend he's ever had.
He had even imagined prison.
It seemed fair.
Nothing about what had happened to him had ever seemed fair.
So when Pio stepped onto the stage, smiling nervously as the applause rose around him, Jeongyo watched from the shadows and thought:
Tonight.
The concert passed beautifully, with Pio smiling after completing the solo pianist position to Jeongyo's composition on love and loss.
Pio was radiant beneath the lights. All dark, doe eyed and delicate face set in a serious yet almost naive expression.
Jeongyo hated how easy it still was to notice that.
They came together, hands held as they bowed. The closeness Jeongyo fostered in Pio after they were reunited, even while Jeongyo pretended he still didn't remember him. Pio was so pleased to see him. Turning down his hug at first felt like kicking a puppy.
After the finale, the stage darkened.
Pio stood alone behind the curtains until Jeongyo walked towards him, and Jeongyo gave the signal for the recording to begin.
Pio's voice came through the stadium speakers.
At first, there was only silence.
Then-
"I know you can't remember."
Jeongyo stopped breathing.
Pio continued.
"So it's okay."
The stadium listened.
Jeongyo stared at the monitor.
This wasn't the confession he'd expected.
Pio sounded almost shy.
Almost embarrassed.
"I don't know if you ever will. I don't know if there's anything I can do about that. And I'm not asking you to."
Jeongyo felt cold.
Pio smiled faintly.
"I just wanted you to know that I never gave up on you."
Jeongyo's fingers tightened around the edge of the console.
No.
That wasn't right.
The recording continued.
"I tried to."
A little laugh.
"It would probably have been easier if I had."
Pio's voice softened.
"But I've loved you since we were teenagers."
Jeongyo was staring at Pio.
Pio hadn't known.
He genuinely hadn't known.
The next words made something inside Jeongyo collapse.
"When the investigator told me you were dead, I believed him."
Pio swallowed.
"That's why I disappeared for a while. That's why I couldn't—I couldn't be around everyone. I thought I'd lost you."
Jeongyo's face went numb.
The investigator.
Not Pio.
Not some elaborate conspiracy.
A lie told to Pio.
A lie that had broken him.
"And then you came back."
Pio smiled.
"And I realized that even if you didn't remember me, I remembered you."
The audience was silent.
Pio looked down.
"You've always been my only real friend."
Jeongyo shut his eyes.
There it was.
The cruelest part.
Because Pio wasn't confessing guilt.
He was confessing love.
And Jeongyo knew him well enough to hear how frightened he was.
"I know this probably sounds selfish."
Pio laughed softly.
"I know you don't owe me anything. You don't have to love me back. You don't even have to remember."
His voice shook.
"I just wanted you to know that I loved you anyway."
The recording ended.
For three seconds, there was absolute silence.
Then the stadium exploded.
Applause.
Crying.
Shouting.
Jeongyo no longer wanted this but he couldn't explain to his old friend, who followed the plan and raised the curtains. Thousands of people were standing and looking at Pio like he was something precious.
Pio looked around in confusion.
Then he saw the audience. The screens.
His own face.
His own confession.
His expression changed.
Slowly.
Understanding arrived.
He looked toward Jeongyo.
And Jeongyo knew immediately what Pio saw in his face.
Not triumph.
Not satisfaction.
Horror.
Pio's smile disappeared.
He had thought Jeongyo liked him.
Maybe not romantically.
Maybe not in the way Pio had secretly hoped.
But he had thought Jeongyo cared.
That their friendship was real.
That whatever complicated thing existed between them belonged to the two of them.
And now thousands of people knew.
A confession he had never agreed to make public was playing across every screen in the country.
It was beautiful.
It was sincere.
It was going viral before the song even ended.
And it was a violation.
Pio looked devastated.
Jeongyo couldn't move.
His entire plan had worked.
Except it hadn't.
He had wanted Pio exposed.
Instead, Pio had been made beloved.
He had wanted the world to see a monster.
Instead, the world saw a beautiful man who had loved someone quietly for decades.
And Jeongyo—
Jeongyo finally understood the worst thing of all.
Pio hadn't known.
Not about his mother.
Not about the investigation.
Not about what Jeongyo remembered.
Nothing.
He had simply loved him.
All this time.
Jeongyo's revenge had been built on a lie.
And beneath the rage, beneath the betrayal, beneath every vicious thought he'd carried for years, something old and horribly tender was still alive.
He loved Pio too.
He always had.
He just couldn't say it.
Couldn't interrupt the confession.
Couldn't tell his friend that he was wrong.
Couldn't take back what he'd done.
The curtains began to close.
Pio was still staring at him.
And for the first time, Jeongyo wished desperately that he could undo something.
Just the moment when Pio looked at him and realized that the person he'd trusted had been the one who had put his heart on display for the entire world.
Pio whispered, barely audible beneath the applause.
"Why?"
Jeongyo had no answer.
For once, there was nothing he could say that wouldn't make it worse.