Chapter 131

The start of all of it, when you got right down to it, had been that damn back of his.

Like an in-season soy-marinated crab stuffed to the shell with roe, Miro Maze episode 6 had gone out packed to bursting with the third mission.

Hajin's Blue Flare team had already been hot from the moment the team was formed.

- yo guuuys is this lineup even okay?;;; > dunno tlqkf i can't breathe just watching

Sure, the spoilers had already dropped and everyone knew, but knowing it in your head and seeing it with your own eyes hit a little differently.

Jung Siwoo, Kang Hajin, Lee Doha, Kim Wonho, Lee Yugeon, Ju Eunchan.

Half of them were the trainees who'd been tangled up with Yugeon in the live-fire uproar,

and the other half were the trainees who'd quietly served as the backdrop for that same uproar!

title: [now let me just say...] the blue flare lineup... is kinda good.... guys, this is kinda good average height 180 visuals + harness?? are you fucking kidding me - who, me? lolololol yo the visuals are insane - kim wono has visuals...? hmmm...wono stan?ㅎ > haa what's this asshole's problem now - the "they wrecked the stage" reviews — full understanding

But the uproar had already been sorted out, and it wasn't like anyone was about to pull hair over it again at this point.

Most viewers pretty quickly flipped over to the "let's just kick back and enjoy this eye-candy lineup" camp.

Once the eagerly-awaited "Truth Game With a Collar" hit the broadcast, the good mood only kept rolling.

- what the hell did nam daun teach these kids before he left - i want to go on a school trip with a guy named kang, forget the romance stuff or the something-like-a-thing, i just feel like he'd hang out with me and be crazy fun for three days two nights - wait why do the rules keep multiplying lolololololol - the kids keep calling it a leash so now it's registering as a leash to me, technically it IS a leash but now saying leash out loud it feels weird, ha

The final turn — where Yugeon's parents had been brought up — got tastefully snipped by production.

After the truth game, cleanly boiled down to just the good stuff, came the Blue Flare team's prep sequence — compressed, exactly as Hajin had intended, into nothing but the fun story beats.

Yugeon becoming Doha's dance teacher, and Doha becoming Yugeon's rap teacher.

The main-vocal showdown that had been Hajin and Siwoo's first encounter.

Eunchan — whose rap position everyone had been iffy about — getting his official vocal debut.

Every trainee except Wonho got introduced with a personal story arc of their own.

Wonho did get a scene aired of him working on the choreography and stewing over it in his own way,

but even that turned out — as an interview later revealed — to have been put together with Yugeon and Hajin, and unfortunately didn't end up landing much of a spotlight on him.

Not that it mattered much.

The stage itself was too damn huge!

handle: @strongjin name: Kang Captain REST yeah right, "REST" nobutlikenoneofyoutoldmethatkanghajin was gonna bare his back and sing 'let me go' rescinded. ptooie ptooie ptooie handle: @strongjin name: Kang Captain REST … handle: @dohajin_luv name: Harang wow the entire blue flare team is trending across the board ㄷㄷㄷㄷㄷ but seriously, yah kang hajin back is a stage like this really allowed to be #1 ㅠ [photo]

The daring outfit was one thing, but the stage itself was just too damn good on top of it.

The sight of Kang Hajin — bare-backed in a see-through top, belting out that third-run high note — had the named accounts that had gone dark slowly cracking their coffins open and rolling their shutters back up.

And the peak of it had been the post-stage talk.

- OMG kang hajin's crying - yo kangg hjaajn i s cry\ - augh hajin plz dont cr ㅠㅠㅠㅠ - aaaaaaaghh we're debuting our puppy no matter WHAT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It started with Hajin's story — how he'd been so moved watching the first performance video that he'd become a full-on subway-crying-guy.

Then came the interview where he talked about going through trainee days at his old agency, missing the debut cut twice, and finally almost giving up on the idol dream altogether.

> Trainee Kang Hajin: To be able to meet all of you today, like this…. > Trainee Kang Hajin: I really can't even tell you how grateful I am. > Trainee Kang Hajin, tears at last

When Hajin finally welled up along with his heartfelt closing remarks, people started screaming and tearing at their hair.

title: [yo guys so hajin crying in ep 2 was also—] he'd missed the debut cut over and over right at the doorstep, gave up on the dream, barely got himself back together and came into miro, and then right off the bat on the survival's first mission he ended up feather class (was supposed to be wings but got shoved into feather when the numbers got adjusted) and then on top of THAT of the top 10 he alone got shoved onto B team... and even then he didn't give up or spiral, took on the B-team class-rep role and pulled off the B team victory somehow... ah just thinking about it right now i'm suddenly tearing up and my chest hurts this whole time i've been thinking of him as some rich, carefree, everything-comes-easy golden boy isn't this saying he wasn't, so like — what was kang hajin even thinking through every single day of this survival haaa i'm debuting kang hajin no matter what, i mean it honestly if kang hajin doesn't debut who does - all the people who said pd-pick agency-pick he'll-debut-anyway about a kid like him — i want to tear them apart, thinking about how desperately hajin needed this survival is making me cry ㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠ - honestly ㅎㅈ HAS to debut, no matter how you look at it hajin is the only leader material - kang-stans let's really please get hajin debuted for real....ㅜ

…in the process, a little — just a little — information that didn't quite match the facts got spread around along with it, but.

Well, apart from the fact that those tears had been purely crocodile tears, engineered to farm attention….

Nothing they'd said was really factually wrong, so let's just let it slide.

Anyway, thanks to that shocking "Kang Hajin Tear Incident," Hajin's scattered fans started rallying with terrifying firepower.

Communities, SNS, everywhere started to link up, uniting around the single goal of "Kang Hajin's debut."

In the face of "my kid's tears," the daily nonsense the trolls churned out could be beaten back with a healthy dose of don't-feed-the-trolls and some solid receipt-collecting.

And the timing was uncanny too.

The one who had originally spread the doctored post about Yugeon — and had kept dropping malicious comments since — had gotten caught.

title: [ㅁㅊ they caught the person who wrote that yubbang post] turned out to be an employee miro had fired article says no leniency, they're going to make an example - who was yubbang again > lee.yu.geon - miro takes zero shit from anti-fans, they got so much of it during the upia era they're basically pros at nailing these people - the comments getting deleted in real time lolololololol yo guys this is disgraceful, disgraceful - hopefully this'll get everyone who trashed the other trainees on top of yubbang also caught and locked up...

Once the article about the false-info spreader actually getting sued went up, the people who'd been hiding behind anonymity started scrubbing their tracks fast.

With the activity of people trashing Hajin for no reason dying down, normal Hajin promo posts and swooning fan-love posts finally started filling in, one by one.

And the result was — right now.

"The ninth trainee to advance to the next mission is… Trainee Kang Hajin!"

The venue of the first eliminations and the fourth-mission announcement.

Hajin had, just barely, been called in ninth as a survivor.

Moving his feet toward the block where the survivors were standing, Hajin quietly let out a sigh of relief.

If I hadn't gotten the third-mission benefit and the votes hadn't concentrated at the end, I could have genuinely gone down this round.

Not eighth — ninth.

A jolt of this really could get dangerous went through him and pulled him up short.

Wrapping his closing remarks quickly, Hajin took his seat and checked over the survivors who'd made it up ahead of him.

First is Seo Taehyun, obviously. And second, no upsets — Jung Siwoo….

Eunchan, whose core fandom had been strong from the start, was third.

Haru — quietly mentioned all along for his cute, sunshiney image — was fifth.

Yuki, who'd almost certainly had a mountain of votes dumped on him by Japanese fans, was eighth.

Lee Yugeon and Lee Doha shot up at an insane speed, huh.

Apparently, ever since the second mission, both had solidified a genuine core fandom — Yugeon and Doha, previously Feather class, had taken fourth and sixth.

Both had clearly not seen the rankings coming; even when Seo Taeil asked them for closing remarks, all they could do was open and close their mouths.

And seventh….

Hajin's eyes moved to the trainee in seventh.

To Wonho — who, even inside the debut zone at seventh, didn't look happy in the slightest.

…that kid caught some flak this round.

When the fact that Wonho had been in Wings during the third mission aired, complaints about him started popping up in certain corners.

With the article about the lawsuits against the anti-fans out there, they couldn't openly trash him — so it was done cleverly, subtly.

- i genuinely like 1-ho and find him charming and all... but honestly i don't know about him debuting - like what are they even gonna have 1-ho do if he debuts. his dance loses to the other kids, his singing isn't there, his looks are middling... what, variety chops? > 1-ho's not the kind of face that'd get roasted for looks anywhere else honestly ㅇㅇ, it's just... he happened to land in a lineup where the s-class visuals are all clustered around him ㅠ > 1-ho fans keep going "if there's no 1-ho who's gonna do the choreo" lolololol > ㅅㅂ then tell him to be a choreographer, why is he saying that he wants to be a singer... apparently blue flare's choreo was also put together by stjin and yubbang - honestly he does feel a little overrated for what his skill actually is, even sarin said his live vocals were weak - come on stjin is feather class too and who is 1-ho to be wings.... honestly guys ㅠ this isn't just a 3-year thing we're gonna finish and be done with, it's a real group ㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠㅜㅜㅜㅠㅠ

He'd probably held that seventh spot on a mix: anti-picks from Yugeon-hating fans, a decent stash of mission benefits, and a mild personality that had pulled in some "he's likable" votes.

By the time these results actually aired, the voices going after Wonho might get louder still — with that in mind, Hajin looked over at him with a worried glance.

…somehow, when I look at that kid, I keep flashing back on who I used to be, and it puts me in a mood.

That fear of having felt one's own limits too soon.

Every time Hajin caught the flash of that fear in Wonho's eyes, it hit him harder than it seemed to hit Wonho himself.

He's got way more in him. …And honestly, if I had my choice, he's one of the ones I'd want to debut alongside.

Solid social skills, upbeat, quick on the uptake.

And more than anything, when it came to actually getting things done, Wonho was the kind who slotted right into rhythm with Hajin. Having one kid like that in the group would mean, at the very least, that Hajin wouldn't be stuck doing and explaining every single thing on his own.

Better get the Kim Wonho Comrade-recruitment plan into gear a little faster.

The way Seo Taehyun would occasionally throw up a Deeply Depressed tag on his stat window — if Wonho got recruited as a Comrade too, maybe Hajin could get a clearer read on what was going on inside that head of his.

Hoping he could offer Wonho comfort and encouragement that would actually help, Hajin turned his head and refocused on the recording.

Somewhere along the way, the tenth surviving trainee was in the middle of his closing remarks.

"R-, really, hup, I really never expected — sob. Uh, uhm, that I really, ha, shit, started here in dead last. Hic, uh, that I've — that I've come this — this far is, hup, really, sniff, really all thanks to the Destis, the Destis, is what I th-think…"

Oh, boy.

The first ranking had been no less than dead last (originally 19th; 18th after Yoon Taehee dropped out; and automatically 17th when Han Seongwoo also left the show) — Park Jaeyoung.

Jaeyoung had etched himself into viewers' minds with the growth arc from 'To You I Declare,' plus the rambunctious maknae chemistry he'd shown with Haru and Eunchan during the sports day.

Add to that the fact that this week's 'I'm Gonna Tell You!' had racked up the record-breaking review of being the freshest-brightest-cutest stage in boy-idol survival history, and it looked like he'd properly caught the noona-fans' picks and shot up in the ranks.

"R-really, thank you so much…!"

"Yes, Trainee Park Jaeyoung. Good work. Please head up to your seat."

Seo Taeil pulled the overcome, sobbing Jaeyoung into a warm hug and pressed a tissue into his hand to help him settle.

Spotting Jaeyoung sniffling his way toward him, Hajin cracked a small grin and stretched out an arm like he'd been expecting it.

"C'mere, Little J."

"Sniff…."

"Good work. Big J had better make it up here safe too."

"Snrgh…….."

Jaeyoung came trotting over and tucked himself into Hajin's arms, sniffling. Hajin patted his head, and looked out at the remaining trainees who hadn't yet made it up to the survivor block.

…honestly, can't guarantee Seok-hyung either.

He'd gotten attached to every single one of them by now — when the moment came for someone to actually leave, the tears would probably come whether he wanted them to or not.

Even if it was Kyungho — his one wayward lamb — who got eliminated, his brows would probably crease into a worried arc at the very least.

"Alright, then. Of the remaining seven trainees, we will now announce the first to be eliminated."

Man, this really is unbearable.

His nose already prickling, brow scrunched tight, Hajin locked in on Taeil's announcement.