Chapter 102

The scene at the center of the trouble was the one the girl had breezed past without a second thought — Yugeon's team selection. To be more precise, the moment 'Yugeon used his battle benefit to designate Wonho's team.'

Hey. Huh? > Before making his pick, Yugeon suddenly calls Hajin over? Kim Wonho — what do you think he'd like? Quick. You're close with him, right, hyung?

The scene of Yugeon asking Hajin about Wonho's taste to figure out which team to put him on went out on air exactly as it had happened. Up to there, there was no problem.

……? Kang Hajin-hyung recommended it, I heard?

Right after that came a one-shot interview clip — a line delivered in a 'no big deal' tone.

That right there was the clip that became the problem.

handle: @dldbrjsgkckgo name: LeeYugeonDropOut #Yugeon-ah_You_Having_Fun? can't sing can't handle his parts and still busy flexing so hard he starts controversy over another teammate hyung's personality genuine-scumbag-class doesn't quitㅋㅋㅋㅋyugeon-ah if you're the one that's bothered why blame it on hajin? handle: @odlfkkja name: OX making all the fans who shielded him look like idiots stop stealing chances from the other kids and drop out #Yugeon-ah_You_Having_Fun? handle: @fxckinggun name: Yuckgeon so 2geon and Evil-jin really did collude to make 1-ho look like a fucking idiotㅋㅋㅋㅋhe's openly holding his hand up asking for song 1 and getting blown off to his face the nerve on this kid [photo]

Yugeon picking the candidate song his rival Wonho wanted was getting twisted into the exact opposite meaning and spread all over the internet. Malicious screencaps — no telling who'd started them — combined with the attitude controversy from episode 2, spread across countless sites, and the rumors ballooned out of control.

title: [Kim Wonho isn't he making the number 2 with his hand?] [photo] isn't he showing kang hajin '2' to ask for song 2? why is everyone saying wonho said number 1? - go watch the video again > YOU go watch it again;; looks like 2 to me - [i went to school with Lee Yugeon that kid was famous at school tooㅋㅋㅋ] we were at HM High at the same time he had fucking tons of rumors flying around back thenㅋ like there were stories he hit clubs every night and rumors he rode a motorcycle someone saw him and that got famous too ㅋㅋㅋ - (BEST) fuck so you drag out every hearsay saying evidence yes evidence no and then confidently spread rumors at least show enough sincerity to put up a school ID - (BEST) ?? lee yugeon's coming up as Sinah Arts High though? ㅎㅁ high, where? > he transferred out partway through second year of high school when he signed with miroㅇㅇ he was at HM High originally yeah - (BEST) honestly whether lee yugeon was a delinquent or had a personality problem or whatever, i don't know about all that but he should just drop the survival. he looked completely unmotivated so why is he even on it? - (mixed reactions) once you can chalk it up to editing and let it goㅋㅋ twice and it's personality. you can tell he wasn't raised right… this time on the team round he's doing that ego thing with the main-vocal kid too, uncomfortable to watch, i just wish he'd quit on his own or is the agency crazy? it's an in-house survival anyway so why the hell did they stuff him in > that kid's the type miro likes yeah. presence, edge, dances well ㅇㅇ...but they probably didn't expect him to show scumbag energy this openly on air.

Episode 3 ended after showing about one verse of the 〈Cinderella〉 stage — the one where Jung Siwoo, Ju Eunchan, and Kim Wonho were on a team — but on the internet, the indiscriminate cursing and rumor-mongering aimed at Yugeon spread far faster than anticipation or praise for the stage.

'Why did it suddenly get this hot?'

There was no denying that the attitude Yugeon had shown on air was unprofessional. But at some point, truth had stopped mattering — it was rumors for the sake of rumors and hate for the sake of hate.

title: [MRMZ Lee Yugeon attitude controversy is nonsense.jpg]

Explanatory posts had gone up quickly, but calming a controversy that had already boiled over was a tall order. Even with the interview scene explained away, the fact that Yugeon's attitude across episodes 1 through 3 had rubbed people wrong didn't change.

And knowing all of that, Hajin had come looking for Ji Suho to talk about the situation.

"You said when trouble's about to hit someone, you can see the aura on them. Didn't you feel anything watching Lee Yugeon?"

At Hajin's tone — sharper than usual — Suho pulled off his glasses and pressed hard at his throbbing temples, brow knitting.

"First — sit down. Sit and let's talk."

"Didn't you catch the problem at the episode 3 preview screening? No, there's no way you and PD Kwon missed this. I deliberately drew all the aggro away from Lee Yugeon and onto myself — and now, suddenly…!"

"Kang Hajin! Calm down."

With Hajin firing off accusations without leaving him space to reply, Suho raised his voice at him for the first time.

Hajin stopped mid-sentence, face startled, and Suho ran a dry hand down his face and gestured once more at the couch across from him. A signal: for now, calm down and sit.

"……"

Hajin, fist clenched tight, sank quietly into the couch this time. Suho brewed him a warm cup of tea, handed it over, and started explaining what he knew to Hajin, whose face was still set hard.

"First off — yeah, when someone's about to run into trouble, a black light does show up on them."

"Then why—!"

"Hear me out. The catch is, that's only when the person is 'genuinely' the source of trouble. Celebrities live and breathe scandals and gossip as part of the job. There's no way a black light would show up every single time some controversy actually breaks."

"……"

"The light I've been seeing on Yugeon has always been purple, and when I checked again recently it was faint but leaning toward red. Which means — nothing blowing up online right now is trouble that actually started with Yugeon."

Separate from the attitude controversy, malicious 'hearsay' rumors about Yugeon were spreading online. School violence, delinquent-gang rumors, drinking, smoking — everything you could easily jump to on Yugeon's looks alone was settling in as autocomplete keywords.

The fact that the light Ji Suho had been seeing showed no problem meant, at the very least, that Yugeon was clean on those rumors.

"Even that scene from episode 3 — no one flagged it at the preview screening. And when it actually aired, nothing was wrong with it at that time either."

"……"

That was true. Hajin had watched episode 3 together with the trainees too, and no one had thought the scene looked off. But that might have been because they already knew Yugeon's personality and circumstances too well to judge it objectively.

As that thought had Hajin unconsciously chewing at his lip, Suho turned on his tablet and showed him something.

"That scene only turned into a problem when someone on a forum uploaded a maliciously screencapped post. They blurred out Wonho's fingers in the cap, and completely rearranged the captions and the sequence from the broadcast. Made to look, by anyone's read, like Yugeon was freezing Wonho out."

Meaning: someone had deliberately smeared Yugeon.

But who? To what end?

Hajin knew he could go his whole life without an answer to that meaningless question. He knew better than anyone that people didn't need much of a reason to hate other people.

"For now, staff are tracking down the original poster, and the legal team is preparing a statement on things like the malicious rumor-mongering against the trainees."

"…that's a relief, at least. Once a notice of legal action goes up, plenty of people shut up and slink off."

"The production side said they'd move aggressively against the malicious edits, and our PR team's rolling out clarification posts one after another too, so you don't need to shake this hard. You know as well as anyone — this industry is like this by nature."

Suho, who'd kept the explanation steady, seemed to feel his own throat go dry and knocked back his coffee.

Yugeon was just one example — under the surface right now, the rumors and hate directed at Hajin were no slouch either. Some were forcing the line that Yugeon and Hajin were teaming up to freeze Wonho out; others were flat-out making up that the production company was taking money under the table to push Hajin.

There was no way, in the middle of all that, that there hadn't also been every kind of speculation and slur about Hajin's character, personality, past — and no way Hajin didn't know what was being said.

In a slightly softer voice, Suho carefully asked how Hajin — suddenly sharp-edged and strung tight — was doing.

"…you okay?"

Working as a manager, the hardest moments were ones like this.

The moments when he had to say 'nothing to be done' to someone struggling under a certain volume of insults or lies.

Knowing full well how irresponsible 'just ignore it' sounded, he had nothing else to offer.

Hajin brushed a hand lightly across the dry, papery skin under his eyes and let out a deep sigh.

"…Lee Yugeon says he's dropping out."

"What?"

"Says he doesn't care about being cursed at himself, but he can't stand by while his grandfather and younger siblings get dragged because of him — he's insisting on quitting. Siwoo-hyung and I barely talked him into sitting still in his room."

The Hajin saying that had none of his usual light — his eyes were sunken and hollow. The low pitch of his voice, the sharpened line of his jaw as he clenched his teeth, the vein standing out at his neck — all of it hinted at the state he was in.

In that moment, Ji Suho felt something was wrong.

—You absolutely cannot let Lee Yugeon drop out!

'What is this?'

Memories that had never existed flashed through his head like déjà vu. Even though this was the first he'd heard of Yugeon wanting to drop out, scenes in his head — each with a different-looking Hajin telling him about Yugeon's quitting — played through over and over.

Suho watched Hajin with unsteady eyes. Looking at him now, Hajin's state was — for something you could chalk up to a rough late-night practice alone — just too—

"…Hajin-ah, you—"

"If I can't finish the third mission with Lee Yugeon, I regress."

"…what?"

"Selreg, Retty, whichever crazy bastard we're talking about — he's set on wringing every last drop of blood out of me. That bastard, I swear if I ever meet him I'll tear him apart, fucking son of a—"

Raw, unfiltered language poured out of Hajin in a stream. Faced with a side of Hajin he'd never seen before, Suho was thrown.

The problem was — even this version of Hajin came with the faint sense he'd been here before.

"Haha, that threw you, didn't it? It's fine. You won't remember it anyway."

"You — then don't tell me…."

"Team Lead."

Hajin — looking like his mind had checked out entirely — met Suho's eyes with pupils drained of light. Suho noticed the rims of Hajin's eyes had gone slightly red. Stripped of the vitality he'd had the day they'd first met, Hajin looked coldly at Suho and said,

"How many times do you think I've had this conversation with you right now?"

"……"

"I can't remember either, really. About twelve…? Past that, counting stops meaning anything. Haha!"

At that laugh, every word Suho might have said back left him.