And so, as time passed, the news kept coming. Sprouting up one after another, relentless and unstoppable, like mushrooms after heavy rain in a dense forest. Some were edible — nourishing, satisfying, the kind that made you feel full and informed and righteous.
And some were toxic. The kind that made you gag. The kind that, if consumed without proper discernment, could send you spiritually, emotionally, and possibly literally to the morgue.
The internet sorted through them with varying degrees of success.
And then — someone mustered up every last molecule of courage they possessed, took a deep breath, and posted.
@Nerdgasm: I risked my WHOLE ussy for this. You had all better be grateful. Light a candle for me. Say my name in your prayers.
Below the caption — a clip.
Shaky. Clearly taken covertly, on a phone that someone had the good sense and the audacity to pull out at exactly the right moment. The location was unmistakable — backstage at the Golden Disk Awards, all controlled chaos and hushed urgency and the particular electric tension of a live event running on borrowed time.
And there he was.
Kang Seo-yul, being swiftly, efficiently, and very deliberately escorted away by the men in black — right there, minutes before E:Den was supposed to take the stage.
The men in black were careful. Measured. Speaking in low, controlled tones, every word deliberate, the whole operation designed to be invisible.
Kang Seo-yul, however, was not thinking about volume control. Was not thinking about optics. Was not thinking about the fact that sound travels, that phones record, that the internet is forever and absolutely merciless.
He was thinking about himself. As he always had.
And so, clear as day, caught on camera and now available for the viewing pleasure of millions — his voice, his words, his casual, reflexive suggestion to simply pay someone off. Like always.
If that wasn't a confession wrapped in entitlement and delivered gift-wrapped to the public, then nothing was.
@FriedBrain: Okay. If you heard this from me? You absolutely did NOT. I was never here. This account doesn't exist. But a little birdy told me something — and this birdy is a very, very reliable source. So.
"Allegedly." For legal purposes. "Allegedly."
The man at the Blue House apparently sent a quiet, private little heads-up to the Kang family. A warning. A courtesy extended between old friends — because the other nations had already begun applying significant pressure on the Blue House, pressure that had been building for some time, because the man currently sitting in that seat has a very deep, very longstanding, very financially significant connection to the Kang family. The same family, allegedly, that played no small role in putting him in that seat to begin with.
He had, up until that point, refused to investigate them. Couldn't find it in himself, somehow.
But the pressure became too great. And so rather than simply letting the investigation proceed, he did what a man of his particular character does — he warned them. Gave them a head start. Sent them running.
What he failed to account for — and this is the part that is either divine comedy or divine justice, depending on how you look at it — was that in warning them to flee, he sent them running directly into the arms of every international authority that was already waiting on the other end.
He didn't help them escape.
He delivered them personally to the slaughterhouse, gift-wrapped, with a bow.
The road to consequence, it turns out, is sometimes paved by the people trying hardest to prevent it.
↳ @LegalEagleKween: Those are genuinely staggering allegations. And yet — and I say this as someone with professional experience in exactly these kinds of jurisdictional entanglements — I would not be the least bit surprised if every word of that turned out to be accurate.
↳ @MarriahChickenCurry: the Blue House is giving Ohio right now. Full Ohio. I can already smell the impeachment proceedings from a considerable distance. Korea's presidents really do exist on a completely different spectrum — if they're not ending up in prison, they're in exile. It's a pattern at this point.
↳ @hells_swarm: I'm not going to sit here and comment on how another country runs its government — that's not my place, I'm not even from there. What I will say is this: politics has always been a shadowy, grimy, deeply untrustworthy business, in every country, on every continent, in every era of human history. No exceptions. The only thing that changes is the names and the currency. And Korea's own historical record paints a very vivid, very detailed picture of exactly that. Draw your own conclusions.
↳ @FriedBrain: I was never here by the way. I don't have a Z account. Goodbye.
↳ @Nerdgasm: we're both ghosts. this never happened. pray for us.
↳ @404BrainNotFound: the way both of you posted career-ending information and are now collectively pretending to not exist
↳ @LegalEagleKween: For what it's worth — whistleblower protections exist. Just putting that out there. Academically. As a prosecutor. Who is definitely not on Z right now.
****
Now. Hear me out.
This overcaffeinated, slightly unhinged, deeply fried author has just looked up from their keyboard and realized — we have been diverging. Significantly. From the actual plot.
Guys. Guys. This is a music story. A fun story. A feel-good, found family, occasional romance, people-doing-their-best-in-the-industry kind of story. It was never meant to become an international criminal law symposium. I did not sign up to research the jurisdictional complexities of multinational RICO cases for the sake of people I fictionally invented and do not even fictionally like.
My brain is already running on fumes and sheer audacity as it is. I cannot afford the additional overhead.
As someone once wisely said — "if you're happy and you know it? It's the meds."
...
Huh? Wha—?
See? Fried. Completely and totally fried. The yolk is gone. There is nothing left.
Anyway.
I understand that some of you — and I see you, I acknowledge you, I respect the niche — find the international court proceedings genuinely thrilling. The jurisdictions. The extradition treaties. The UN sanctions. I get it.
But that is simply not my lane. It never was. And I refuse to pretend otherwise in the name of narrative thoroughness.
So here is what we're going to do. Your beloved, slightly coco-bananas, perpetually overcaffeinated author is going to give you the fastest, most efficient, most spiritually complete TLDR in literary history, and then we are going to move on. Together. Into a better, brighter, music-filled chapter.
Are you ready?
Here we go.
JAIL.
Jail for everyone.
The international court woke up and chose Oprah.
You get jail. You get jail. EVERYBODY gets jail.
Every single arrested individual — every last one of them — is currently behind bars. For life. No early release. No good behavior credits. No quiet little deals whispered in back corridors. Given the absolute, staggering, historical heinousness of their collected crimes, frankly, life imprisonment almost feels like the universe being generous. Make of that what you will.
All assets? Confiscated. Every last one — legal, questionable, and aggressively illegal alike. Every account drained, every property seized, every carefully hidden financial instrument located and liquidated. The money, in its entirety, redirected toward the people these individuals spent years exploiting, harming, and erasing. Equally. Fairly. As it should have been from the beginning.
Justice, when she finally shows up, does not do things halfway.
And Kang Seo-yul?
Oh, Kang Seo-yul.
You see, there is a thing about prison that people who have never been there don't always know — inmates have their own moral code. A hierarchy of sins, rigorously maintained, deeply understood by everyone inside those walls. And at the very bottom of that hierarchy? People exactly like Kang Seo-yul.
It didn't take long for word to travel. It never does. The other inmates learned who he was, what he'd done, and — perhaps most infuriatingly to them — the kind of life he'd lived while doing it. The abundance. The immunity. The casual, reflexive cruelty of someone who had never once faced a consequence in his life.
It started small. Stares that lasted a beat too long. Smirks from across the yard. The occasional catcall drifting over from a corner.
"Hey pretty — dance for us!"
"It's boring in here. Come entertain us, yeah?"
"Sing something!"
And Kang Seo-yul, still operating on the firmware of a person who had power, who had always had power, who had never once been without it — glared. Told them, with characteristic eloquence, to "fuck off."
Which, as one might predict, did not go well for him.
And then came the unfortunate incident during bath time.
Kang Seo-yul — a man whose entire skincare and bathing routine had, up to this point, involved body washes, bath bombs, and products that cost more per bottle than most people's monthly grocery budget — was not accustomed to bar soap. The physics of bar soap. The particular, unforgiving, floor-level consequences of bar soap.
The soap slipped.
He bent down to pick it up.
And — well.
If you know, you know. 👀
Let's just say the rest of that bath time was a very communal experience that Kang Seo-yul did not particularly enjoy but had absolutely no authority to object to. We'll leave it right there, sealed in that sentence, and move on with our lives.
As for Merth?
Right. Him.
He's dead.
Arrested in Korea. Deported to the US. Processed. Incarcerated. Got caught in a prison brawl approximately four days in — as one does, apparently, when one has made the specific life choices Merth made — and was stabbed multiple times in the neck with a piece of broken glass by someone who had their own reasons and zero hesitation.
Dead.
That's it. That's the whole update.
And that, dear readers, is what we call consequences.
Actions have them. They always have them. They are patient, and thorough, and they do not lose your address.
So if you ever find yourself standing at the crossroads of a decision that is tipping toward "this might be a jail situation" — pause. Breathe. Think it through. Make the other choice.
This has been a public service announcement, brought to you by your beloved, slightly coco-bananas, perpetually overcaffeinated, genuinely fried but trying their best author.
We now return to your regularly scheduled program.
...In the next chapter.
Okie? Okie. 🫶