Chapter 136

Hajin opened his mouth a few more times without anything coming out, rubbing his hand along his thigh hard enough to start a fire. It was a nervous habit.

Either his thigh was going to burn through from the friction, or Jung Siwoo's eyeballs were going to burn out black.

At the very instant one of the two seemed set to lose its light and combust within seconds, Hajin scraped an idea together and threw it out.

"So! Uh! Um, well… how about a mashup?"

"…mashup?"

"Yeah — the lyrics are gloomy, sure. But if you just look at the core of it, it kind of feels like it's asking a question, right? To this drifting generation, these young people out here struggling to get through it — like…. where did we come from, where are we going, that kind of…."

For the record, the only lyric Kang Hajin had actually caught in this song was the single phrase 'Where are we?'

Not even properly knowing the lyrics — at this point not even knowing what he himself was saying — Hajin just started running his mouth on whatever came out.

"So then the thing is, if it ends here on nothing but a question mark, it's too sad. And, uh, the song itself's kind of plain, too. So we pick another song along the same youth-vibe lines — one that goes chin up! Or cheers you on, or has a this is what life's like kind of message — and we mash those together!"

But as he was saying it…

…hold on, this actually tracks?

Marveling at his own idea in real time, Hajin kept going.

"So then this ends up kind of like a youth Q&A…? Plus you show off some arrangement work with the song-mix element, and on top of that you get this sense that you've broadened the range of the piece…. Hup."

"…why are you both the one talking and the one getting shocked at what you're saying?"

Eventually Hajin cut himself off mid-sentence and clapped a hand over his mouth.

And then he stood back and admired.

"Oh no. I might be a genius."

"……."

The light that had almost come back to Siwoo's eyes drained right out again — back to lifeless statue eyes.

Ah — maybe that was pushing it. My bad.

"Anyway, that's my idea. Finding two songs that mash up well and blending them, sure — that'll take some time…. But we've freed up choreo time either way, so I think it's worth the investment."

"I-, I like it! I think it's a great idea!"

Haru — who by any means necessary wanted to breathe some life into this meeting — quickly raised a hand in support.

The idea Hajin had thrown out wasn't actually a bad one, sure….

Still — no questions, no pushback, straight to yes? Isn't that a bit too quick?

Once he'd started suspecting Haru as the Selreg, every move now looked shady.

Hajin fixed his gaze on Haru — hand up, eyes twinkling bright.

Haru, feeling the stare, looked right back.

At which Hajin, once again, reached over and pinched that squishy-looking cheek.

"AAGH! Wud'r'yuh doon'!?"

"That's a cheek that just cries out to be pinched."

It's because you're being suspicious, brat.

If Haru really was the Selreg, then on the day he could confirm it, he was going to pinch both cheeks. That's a promise.

Hajin let go of Haru's cheek with grim resolve.

"……."

As if organizing his thoughts for a moment, Siwoo spun a black ballpoint pen in a smooth loop across his neat fingers.

The pen turned a few more times, then, without warning, stopped.

Tak—.

Setting the pen down on the notebook, Siwoo let out a sigh and opened his mouth.

"I'm good with it too. Seok-ah, if it doesn't clash too much with the message you wanted to carry, I'd like to go this way — how about you?"

"Ah, yeah. I'm good with it. …Thanks. I just hope you guys aren't going out of your way to do something harder because of me."

"……."

At Seok's answer, confidence dragging along the floor, one of Siwoo's eyebrows gave a brief twitch — something that plainly signaled discomfort. Siwoo's lips parted as if to say something in reply, then in the end closed tight without a word.

Deftly hiding his expression and his emotions, Siwoo picked the meeting back up in a businesslike tone.

"So — we'll need to find songs for the mashup. We've got to lock this in tonight, since we need to hammer out the structure and start making progress tomorrow. Everyone start searching on your own for now."

"Yep."

"Yes!"

"For songs, if at all possible, focus on ones that fit these criteria."

Siwoo laid out the factors to consider when picking mashup songs and posted them to the group chat.

"Let's lock in song selection tonight, no matter what."

Siwoo saying it crisply. Gong Seok nodding along.

Hajin caught the subtle tension flickering between the two — but, like Siwoo, he just kept his mouth shut and nodded.

---

Mixing two completely different songs into one is easy to say — but when you actually go to do it, even the song selection alone is no simple thing.

This one's key doesn't line up. This one's tempo is off. This one's lyric message doesn't connect.

After trashing ten-plus songs on grounds like those, a certain thought naturally starts to creep in.

…screw the mashup, why not just do a song that belts out a ton of high notes and lays the emotion on thick. That'd be easy.

Kang Hajin — man in crisis, currently paying dearly for shooting his mouth off before he thought.

Now well past midnight, he looked around the practice room — production crew already gone home, only the self-cam and the fixed cam left behind — and quietly clutched his head. Today, unusually, he felt like he was running out of gas faster than normal.

Maybe I ran the brain too hard on the Selreg deductions….

It wasn't as if some specific system penalty had been applied, and the military-service stamina he'd absorbed a while back wasn't going to buckle to a schedule at this level either…. Conclusion: this was purely a mental problem.

Hajin had a tendency, whenever he ran into a genuinely thorny problem, to shelve it a bit until a solvable angle came into view.

Sleep on it, eat something good, or throw himself completely into some other task and clear the stress trigger out of his head for a while — those were the routes he took.

Back in his PD days, whenever an edit wouldn't come together, he'd just buy a monthly pass at the manga cafe near the office and pull all-nighters there.

Ah, so that's why…. No wonder….

Having realized the origin of Kang Hajin's fearsome otaku power, Thirteen popped up an exclamation-point emoticon. This time Hajin didn't even have the energy to Alt+F4 him, and just let him be.

I want to go home.

Sprawled on the practice room floor, Hajin turned just his head to spy on the rest of the teammates.

Dan Haru — unable to fight off exhaustion, curled up asleep where he'd been sitting propped against the mirror.

Gong Seok — hunting for songs like something was chasing him, eyes never leaving his laptop.

Jung Siwoo — glancing over at Gong Seok now and again, but not saying a word, just quietly focused on his own work.

Those two…. is something going on with them?

…well, it's pretty obvious.

Hajin laced his fingers behind his head.

Gong Seok finding Jung Siwoo hard to be around, and Jung Siwoo finding that awkward — the shape of that relationship wasn't exactly surprising.

They were like this from the second mission, weren't they?

Just hadn't gone out on air.

Back in the second mission, when they'd been on the same team for 〈Cinderella〉, the two of them hadn't been on even ground either.

In his episode 4 interview, what had prompted Gong Seok to say —

'Honestly, I'm feeling the limits of my abilities in the most vivid way. My confidence just keeps sliding. The plain fact that we have to compete scares me.'

…was Jung Siwoo. Among the trainees themselves, everyone had known that.

Well — maybe not every one.

Hajin paused as two faces flickered up in his mind.

Then he silently amended it to 'every trainee except Lee Doha and Ju Eunchan.'

Th-, then… shouldn't you be doing something about it? They're on the same team right now!

Me? Do what?

This time, once again — an icebreaker to smooth the two of them out…!

Thirteen was hyping him up like Go, Kang Hajin!

But unlike the time he'd fretted himself sick trying to broker peace between Jung Siwoo and Lee Yugeon, this time Hajin simply closed his eyes.

You don't just barge into other people's business.

Σ(・Д・)!? You've been driving the whole story on barging into other people's business up to now — and NOW you say that!?

…your vocabulary's getting weirder by the day, you know that? 'Story'?

The foundation of any #idol story is the deep friendship and loyalty forged through the members' conflicts and their resolution — growth, reconciliation, all that! Isn't it!? Please carry out the regressor's proper duties!

Yeah, sure. Slapping genres onto and off of other people's lives is nothing to you anymore, huh.

Watching Thirteen casually toss out the kind of thing a fantasy-novel character would clutch the back of his neck at going what kind of unhinged meta comment IS this, Hajin shook his head.

Looks like I've ruined a perfectly functional Time Administrator. Should've seen it coming the moment he started searching up comment reactions on my performance videos.

Wait — no, so! Why! Why! Why won't you fix our eldest No-Hoper's problem!? He's sitting there like that, all shrunken….

Maybe he'd gotten especially attached to Seok, or something.

Even as Thirteen whined and wheedled like he was throwing a tantrum, Hajin had no intention of moving.

He just took in the back of Gong Seok — looking especially small tonight — once, and let out a small sigh.

It's not as simple as words make it out to be, that.

Gong Seok and Siwoo's dynamic — realistically — wasn't the kind of thing a third party could just come along and fix.

The inferiority Gong Seok felt about himself, the pressure of the competition — that was purely his own problem to work through,

and Jung Siwoo not going out of his way to be especially warm with Seok, not treating him with extra kindness — that was the maximum consideration Siwoo could show him.

Treating him coldly is actually being considerate? (° ヘ°) ??

You think Jung Siwoo-hyung's exactly comfortable right now? He's deliberately not letting it show. Playing off like nothing's wrong.

Jung Siwoo was deliberately refusing to be conscious of Gong Seok's inferiority complex at all — treating him just like anyone else. That was, in his own way, how he was handling the rift.

On that front, Hajin genuinely thought Jung Siwoo was in a class of his own.

If it were me, I'd have pulled him aside long ago and asked, hyung — have you got some kind of problem with me?

Even inside the pressure cooker that a survival was, how did he manage to draw a hard line between work and personal, and handle his own feelings that deftly?

Hajin was starting to grasp — just a little — why he found Siwoo so hard.

Jung Siwoo was, for Hajin, the kind of person he could never — probably not in a full lifetime — hope to imitate. Something like Hajin's own 'ideal.'

Calm, cool-headed, with an understanding of people.

Someone who gave his all to his work and to what he was tasked with — thorough, and, on top of that, good at it.

Someone who, in dealing with people, never leaned too far into feeling or reason —

Someone with the backbone to hold his own inner ground steady, no matter what.

…isn't that what a real leader looks like?

Jung Siwoo knew everything.

Whether Kang Hajin was lying or not.

Whether the words he was saying at the moment had heart in them or not.

What the actions he was taking right now were for, what he was hoping to get out of them — all of it.

Because Hajin and Siwoo were very alike — but also very different.

And that was why Hajin found Siwoo so hard.

Just like when he'd first met Suho.

Back then — how uncomfortable he'd been that that pure passion might lay bare how empty he was inside.

"……."

Maybe I've been feeling a bit inferior to Siwoo too, without realizing it. Thinking that, Hajin closed his eyes and rolled onto his side.

Either way, that dynamic between those two wasn't one Hajin could rashly wade into.

Gong Seok was more at ease with Hajin than with Siwoo — leaned on him emotionally.

But it wasn't like Hajin himself was as comfortable or as close with Siwoo as Seok was with him, either.

If Hajin barged in trying to broker peace between them here, all he'd do was make things worse.

Gong Seok would only feel the distance from Siwoo grow —

Jung Siwoo, for his own part, might get pulled into a subtle emotional tangle where he ended up the one being frozen out.

And it's not like Seok even asked for help because he couldn't hack it on his own, the way Eunchan once did…. One wrong move and Jung Siwoo-hyung's pride could get cracked too. Even if I were still the team leader, this would call for care — and right now hyung's the one running the team.

Haaa…. it isn't easy, is it. The life of a #idol-story protagonist….

…thanks for considering me as the protagonist. Though technically, isn't the Selreg bastard the protagonist? I've got way too few buffs to be one.

At Hajin's grumbling — code for hand over more buffs — the previously chatty Thirteen read the room for a second and quietly slipped away again.

Next time I get a spare moment, I'm dragging him into the Unconscious Space and shaking him down.

Just as Hajin was thinking that, someone came up and tapped him lightly on the shoulder.

"AGH! Scared me! …hup."

Hajin, startled hard enough to have half a seizure as he bolted upright, hurriedly clapped his mouth shut.

Farther back behind him, Haru and Seok — finally beaten by sleep — lay sprawled side by side.

Seeing that, Hajin thought:

…wait. Then whoever just tapped my shoulder is…?

Hajin turned his head, creaking like an un-oiled robot.

A dim practice room with only the sparsest of lights on.

Past midnight.

The one standing behind him is either Jung Siwoo or a ghost!

And either way, that was way too scary!