Chapter 135

Dan Haru had joined Miro at most two years ago.

And Cha Minseok had moved over to Rene three years ago.

"…so how did Dan Haru know Cha Minseok?"

Hajin cast his mind back and pulled up the conversation he'd had with Haru and Eunchan during what was already, by now, a months-old event — the 'Seo Taehyun runaway incident.'

—Remember that place we all went together before? Back when Minseok-hyung was around, too.

—Ah, so maybe…?

—You said that was the guesthouse Taehyun-hyung's uncle runs. He must have gone there. Taehyun-hyung's close with his uncle.

When Cha Minseok had been at Miro, Dan Haru hadn't been at Miro.

So how did those four have a memory of going on a trip together?

"Ugh — no. Goosebumps."

Am I… trembling…? System is quaking at the sudden genre shift….

Hajin ran a hand down the forearm that had suddenly broken out in goosebumps. Thirteen, too, had his system window quivering faintly.

#regression story, #idol story, #misunderstanding-type — and now on top of all that, #horror?

Praying — please, anything but the Cthulhu mythos — Hajin steadied his breath and picked up the reasoning again.

"For starters, I need to nail this down with Seo Taehyun and Ju Eunchan directly. Cha Minseok didn't cut ties with Seo Taehyun the second he went to Rene, so it's possible the four of them went on a trip together somewhere in between."

Hajin made an effort to hold his composure.

But that faint tug of unease wasn't the only thing needling him.

Once one piece slotted into place, other memories started clicking in after it, in a chain.

"When I first came here, there were two trainees the department head was trying to poach — Ju Eunchan and Dan Haru. Between the two, Ju Eunchan was one he had a clear use for."

Ju Eunchan had a family background you could hang a nepo-hire smear on.

But Dan Haru?

Why, of all the many trainees, had the department head tried to take Dan Haru?

Dan Haru — who'd only just come in, hadn't even had a chance to prove anything yet as a trainee.

Might he have seen potential? Even at intake, Dan Haru was rated as a talent overflowing with promise, or so I hear.

"So it was just the department head's eye…. Yeah, put it that way and there's not much I can say back."

Hajin sank into thought.

There was no solid proof, anywhere, that Dan Haru was the Selected Regressor.

But once the sense of wrongness had caught hold — once suspicion had a spark — it grew, uncontrollably.

"It's weird though, isn't it. That every single one of them was Sparkles."

The one who'd first told him about the department head incident.

The one who'd told him Seo Taehyun had gotten into a fight with Cha Minseok at Rene.

The one who — after the fight with the A-team members — had opened up a chance for Hajin to talk with Gong Seok, when Seok was looking for him.

The one who'd led him to the convenience store where Lee Yugeon was, when Lee Yugeon had gone missing.

The one who'd witnessed the Seo Taehyun-and-B-liver business at A Countdown this time —

Every last one.

"…all of them Dan Haru."

At the center of every incident, Dan Haru.

And that wasn't the only faint wrongness Hajin was feeling.

"But why — why had it never once struck me as strange, up till now?"

The foundation of any #mystery story is suspicion and vigilance.

He'd suspected the name Dan Haru, sure — but he'd never once put a question mark against the way Haru had actually moved through things.

"Me? Kang Hajin? Missed this?"

Me — the kid who saved up every last coin of allowance to buy the complete Sherlock Holmes set, who read so much boy-detective manga that for a stretch there he was giving even coat hangers the {side-eye?}(#famcf1ov2b00)

Ha ㅠ so our very own genre-savvy regressor is an otaku….

Shut it, you punk.

Hajin snapped Thirteen's window shut in a single clean stroke, like he'd hit Alt+F4.

In the meantime, Hajin's memory rewound once again.

—My grandma told me, you know? When you've got so much on your mind that it starts to scare you, at times like that — just don't think.

Who had said that, again?

No — after that.

During the whole infinite-regression business — how had he known Candy Crush had been practicing right at that time?

Because it wasn't like Candy Crush had been practicing then in every single loop.

No — earlier than that.

Through every one of those countless repeated loops — through all that time he'd been running himself ragged trying to stop the regressions—

"—where was Dan Haru, doing what?"

In Hajin's head, image after image of Haru rose up and slipped away.

But in the end, Hajin couldn't pull up a single memory of Haru.

As if someone had, cleanly, snipped the memory out of him.

---

Dinner was over, and the late-night meeting on the fourth mission was underway.

The four trainees, Hajin among them, sat around on the floor of the practice room.

For this meeting too, Siwoo was leading the discussion.

"Heard while we were eating — Doha's team's apparently going full hip-hop. Us going the vocal route was a good call, I think."

"Ah, I heard something too. Taehyun-hyung's team's doing 'Deep into you.' Sounds like they're going dance-focused."

"Yeah? Even better, then."

"Y-, yeah. I think we chose well."

Siwoo and Seok nodded along with Haru's comment.

Not that anyone had planned it, but each team had landed on its own focus — rap, dance, vocal.

"That also means we've really got to win this on our voices alone, so for this stage too, song choice is what matters most. First — let's go back through the songs we shortlisted earlier."

Jung Siwoo's way of running a meeting was clean, no fat on it.

Even Haru and Gong Seok — who earlier hadn't been able to hold their emotions together — were clearly determined to focus as best they could and put out ideas.

Siwoo pulled up iTube on the tablet PC production had provided and played each of the candidate songs in turn.

"Hmm, this song might be a little tough for us."

"This one's kind of awkward to arrange as an acoustic version, so — I'll pass too."

"Ah…. th-, then how about this song? I was looking it up while we were eating…."

Fumbling, Gong Seok searched for the song he'd found.

His shoulders were locked up tight — he kept mistyping — and something about it made him look even more nervous than usual.

Watching Seok, who was sweating buckets just trying to find one song and play it, Siwoo gently patted his shoulder.

"Seok-ah. Take your time. We're not on a killer deadline right now."

"Uh, y-yeah. Ah, my hand keeps slipping…."

Cracking an awkward smile at Siwoo's words, Seok finally managed to pull up a song and play it.

It was the OST from a campus-romance drama that had just wrapped — striking for lyrics that captured the anxieties of a drifting youth.

"Since we're going for a lyrical vibe anyway, I thought at least the lyrics could carry a bit of meaning…."

At Seok's comment, Siwoo quietly took in the song, thinking.

Siwoo's gaze slid past the lyrics on the tablet screen and landed on Seok — hands clasped tight and working over each other, as if he were on trial.

Siwoo's lips parted, worked once like he was debating whether to say something — and in the end, closed again in silence.

It was only after Seok's chosen song had finished that Siwoo spoke again.

"…the song's good, but for a mission stage, it feels too quiet and dark to me — I'm a little worried about it. And there isn't much in the way of variation, so there's not a lot of arrangement room to work with either."

"Ah, i-, is that so? Haha, I guess I was too locked into my own taste. Sorry."

Under Siwoo's assessment, Seok's shoulders sagged again, dispirited. When Seok hurriedly tacked on the apology, one of Siwoo's eyebrows gave a small twitch. As Siwoo quickly smoothed his expression, Haru — trying to head off the mood sliding gloomy — deliberately pitched his voice a little brighter.

"Hyung, what if we build the harmonies out a bit more dynamically? The melody's simple, so if we drop in something like an a cappella arrangement, the whole feel could shift a lot more, I think."

"That's not wrong, sure…. But the message of the piece is on the depressing side, so it feels like a gamble."

"Uhh, um, well then…."

"Ah, Haru-yah, we don't have to do this song. …It's okay. We can just find another."

Realizing that the reason Haru was straining to speak up like this was him, Seok waved his hands and signaled it was fine.

But Haru — already reading the shadow across Seok's face, and the something-uncomfortable in Siwoo's expression as he looked at Gong Seok — was casting around for some way, any way, to break the mood.

"Th-, then… what about you, Hajin-hyung!?"

"…huh?"

After a quick scan of the room, Haru grabbed hold of the lifeline he'd just barely spotted.

Like a baby-rabbit warrior who'd found the one absolute-carrot he could never let anyone take from him, Haru latched onto Hajin's arm, wide eyes shining.

"Hyung, what do you think of this song? Or, uh, any other opinion, or—"

Kang Hajin — man in crisis — face-to-face at point-blank range with Sparkles' desperate SOS of please, someone, do something about this brutal mood.

Hajin looked around, stunned. Teammates and — from a distance — even the camera director and the assigned PD, all of them were now trained on him, waiting for his answer.

Under that oppressive spotlight, the man in crisis, Kang Hajin, thought:

Oh shit. I'm screwed. Didn't hear a single thing.

Apparently, in the moment his attention had wandered off chasing the damn Selected Regressor, something had gone off the rails.

Hajin thought for a beat, then looked down at Haru, who was still gripping his forearm.

"AAGH! Hyung! Wud-r-yuh doohn'!? (What are you doing!?)"

"Your cheeks are so round-looking, it made me want to pinch them."

"WAAH! Ah-hurhs! (That hurts!)"

—and, without warning, he pinched Haru's cheek.

Can't focus for one second thanks to this damn Sparkles brat…. And of course he's built this harmless-looking, so you can't even properly get mad at him.

…? You're — pinching his cheek?

Want yours pinched too?

No. (Alt+F4)

Out of pure dread that this madman might actually be capable of pinching a system window, Thirteen closed his own window himself.

In the meantime, Hajin let go of Haru's cheek and finally took proper stock of the mood in the practice room.

"Right, my opinion is…."

Whether Sparkles — who in one instant had rocketed up to top-tier suspect — was clutching his cheek and whimpering, or not.

Siwoo and Seok were waiting, silent, for Hajin's answer.

The problem was: Kang Hajin hadn't been listening to a single word of the meeting up to this point.

How do you answer a question when you don't know what the question is?

Of course, telling the truth to a Jung Siwoo currently wearing that expression — cold as a freshly-whetted blade — was a fast track to getting stripped clean of every last bone, so for now he zipped it.

"Haha, honestly. Looks like Miro's very own Zhuge Liang is needed once again. This idea-bank thing — it's a bit exhausting."

Yo, yo, yo. Thirteen. Get out here quick. Give me a three-line summary of what's going on.

Now he's using the system as a cheat sheet…?

Be glad I'm not using you as a farewell scroll instead, hm?

Legit lunatic…. ヽ(●ﾟ´Д｀ﾟ●)ﾉﾟ

Thirteen, who no longer seemed to bother hiding what he actually thought, reluctantly gave him a summary of the situation.

So the situation, in rough shape:

Gong Seok was depressed,

Jung Siwoo was depressed because of the depressed Gong Seok,

Dan Haru was depressed because his hyungs were depressed, and in the middle of all that,

how do you sing this depressing song without being depressing,

or rather, how do you escape this depressing mood in the first place —

— a Möbius strip of gloom, essentially. Hajin took it in and clicked his tongue.

"Uhhh, so. What I think is — well. This song's plenty gloomy, right, gloomy as it is. Hmm, but the song itself has some solid elements going for it too, right? So, uh, therefore."

"If you don't have any thoughts, just say you don't."

"Huh? I have thoughts. I do. I thought about it hard, hyung-nim."

This was entrapment.

If he answered here with something like Yes! I don't have any thoughts! Because during the meeting my mind was elsewhere! Actually, I didn't even listen to the whole song. What was supposed to be depressing about it? Haha, I couldn't tell you!, Jung Siwoo would look at him the same way he'd look at a Han Seongwoo who'd skipped practice.

…wait. For some reason, that's kind of pissing me off?

Picturing the look in Siwoo's eyes, Hajin's mood took a small dip. That, of all things, he somehow couldn't allow.

"So then, my opinion, right. …which is!"

Roll, brain. Roll.

If he couldn't dig up an answer here that satisfied both hyungs, this team project had no future…!