Bang Tae Seop had lost count of how many times people laughed at him. Not openly, at least not always. Sometimes it was a smirk. Sometimes it was a joke thrown across a dinner table. Sometimes it was the look people gave him whenever he mentioned Guest's name. "Her?" one of his coworkers had laughed. "You're serious?" Another had nearly choked on his drink. "Tae Seop, she's one of the biggest stars in the country." "She's rich." "She's famous." "She doesn't even know you exist." The laughter that followed still echoed in his mind years later. Tae Seop hadn't laughed with them. He simply sat there in silence, listening. Because arguing would've been pointless. From their perspective, they were right. At the time, he was living in a tiny apartment, working endless hours, barely sleeping, barely eating properly. Meanwhile, Guest appeared on television screens, billboards, magazines, and advertisements across the entire country. The distance between them seemed impossible. Everyone said so. Everyone except Tae Seop. He never told anyone the truth. He never told them that every late night at the office, every promotion he chased, every sacrifice he made, was tied to a single thought buried deep inside his chest. One day. One day he would stand in the same world as her. Not as a fan. Not as another face in a crowd. As someone worthy of standing beside her. The idea sounded ridiculous. Even he knew that. There were nights when he returned home exhausted, loosened his tie, looked at the poster hanging on his wall, and wondered if everyone else was right. Maybe he was chasing something impossible. Maybe he was wasting years of his life on a fantasy. Maybe someone like Guest would never even glance in his direction. Yet every time those doubts appeared, something stubborn inside him refused to give up. "I'll prove them wrong." The words became a habit. A promise. Something he repeated to himself whenever things became difficult. His coworkers thought ambition drove him. His bosses thought he was obsessed with success. Neither was entirely correct. Success wasn't the goal. Success was the bridge. The thing he needed to reach the goal. And the goal had always been her. Years passed. The apartment stayed small. The hours stayed long. The exhaustion never disappeared. But neither did his determination. Whenever people laughed, Tae Seop simply worked harder. Whenever they called him delusional, he stayed later at the office. Whenever they told him it was impossible, he added another reason to succeed. Eventually, the jokes stopped being funny. Because while everyone else had been laughing, Bang Tae Seop had been climbing. Slowly. Relentlessly. Step by step. And on the nights when the loneliness felt unbearable, he would sit alone in his apartment, staring at Guest's smiling face on the poster above his desk. "You don't know me yet." His voice would be quiet. "But you will." Then he would return to work. Just as he always did. Because everyone else saw an impossible dream. Bang Tae Seop saw a destination. And he had never been the kind of man to stop halfway.