Chapter 140

Destis, Daisti

Late afternoon, the sunlight losing its blazing heat, a cool evening breeze starting to come in.

Through the earlier draw, the first team to take the stage was the one Seo Taehyun was on as leader.

The team name was 'Daisti.'

Diving + Desti — put together to mean 'diving into the Destis' arms.' Ju Eunchan came up with it.

And that Seo Taehyun layered one more meaning on top of the plausible-sounding name.

—Destis!! Daisti♡

He'd made them all chant the team name in the flawless daisuki (ダイスキー) pronunciation Yuki — their Japanese member — had taught them. Complete with expressions and gestures bubbly enough to make you want to — chomp — take a bite out of them.

Only doable because Seo Taehyun, Yuki, and Park Jaeyoung — who'd already put every ounce of lovability on display last time on Team Candy Crush — were all on the same team.

—Dai… dai, Daisti!

Even if the one giant black panther (Ju Eunchan) and one eagle (Kim Wonho) wedged in among all the tiny small-animals were visibly in agony….

—AAAAH! Kim Wonho, you're so cute!!!!!

—Eunchan!!!! My not-so-little baby king cat!!!!!!!

…the Destis loved it, so let's roll with it.

Anyway. Back to the stage.

"……."

"……."

A cold tension cut sharply into the stage.

Ju Eunchan, looking more serious than anyone had ever seen him, lowered his thick lashes and, finger held to his lips, deliberated.

Across from him, Kim Wonho stood locked stiff with nerves, staring back at Ju Eunchan.

To one side of the pair facing each other, Seo Taehyun, Park Jaeyoung, and Yuki stood in a row, both hands clasped tight.

Everyone onstage waited for Ju Eunchan's answer, eyes shining like puppies begging to be fed.

"Alright, Trainee Eunchan. Time for your answer."

Choi Yeonwoo, taking all of this in with a fascinated look, started the countdown.

Eunchan — who'd been scanning Wonho over inch by inch this whole time — lifted his mic.

"Answer."

"Yes, your answer is?"

"Um…. I think his wristband got switched out for a different one."

At Ju Eunchan's careful answer, Choi Yeonwoo, face knowing up to that point, broke into a wide grin and shouted.

"The wristband got switched…. Correct!"

"AAAAH! We did it!"

"Eunchan!!!!!"

"Chan-hyung! I believed in you the whole time!!"

The livestream feed caught the proud grin breaking across Ju Eunchan's face the moment the verdict landed. The rest of the team rushed at him as one and piled on.

Cheers erupted from the Destis at how well the team was clearly getting along. Choi Yeonwoo deliberately waited for the roar to ease off a little before delivering the closing line.

"Yes, Team Daisti. Having cleared all your Desti missions, today you've earned the special effects, stage LED, and stage lighting — every one. Congratulations!"

"Thank you!"

That was it.

All of the goings-on onstage were, in fact, the 'earn-back-your-stage-direction mission' Park Woong had teed up.

Based on a survey run before the guerrilla concert, every trainee had been assigned one personal mission and one team mission each.

—The team gets three shots at the team mission in total. For personal missions, you clear as long as a majority of members pass theirs.

—But unlike personal missions, whose outcomes are cut and dried, whether a team mission succeeds is judged entirely by the Destis.

—Which means you'll want to think carefully about which item to stake on which mission.

Since the missions weren't revealed until you were onstage, the whole game came down to how you distributed the three items across them.

Team Daisti, one member ahead of the other teams, staked what they judged the most important item — stage lighting — on the team mission, and put the other two on personal ones.

Team Daisti's team mission — the one with actual stage lighting on the line — was 'relay aegyo.'

Seo Taehyun offered Kim Wonho's and Ju Eunchan's dignity up on the altar as sacrifice and cheerfully walked off with the stage lighting.

"Watching them, I honestly can't even imagine what our missions are going to be."

"Yeah. Definitely feels like they built each one around the trainee's personality."

Sitting on a waiting-room chair, watching the livestream feed on the monitor they'd set up, I started guessing at Desti missions with Jung Siwoo.

"What all did they end up doing?"

"Yuki did a speed quiz in Japanese and the team had to guess. They cleared that one."

"Wonho's was… guess the ice cream?"

"Yeah, since he's big on ice cream. But he mixed up {Bibibik}(#tb6bvsfcg6t6) and {Babamba}(#h89gyzd6ovlm) and blew it."

"Those two really aren't easy to mix up though…. Wonho must've been seriously nervous."

Jung Siwoo tilted his head, apparently still unable to make sense of anyone confusing Bibibik and Babamba.

For the record, those two happened to be Jung Siwoo's favorite ice creams.

TMI I'd picked up over the two rounds we'd been on the same team.

Anyway — the Desti missions were all roughly along these lines, it seemed.

Ju Eunchan, famously unobservant, got spot-the-difference: while his eyes were closed, small things about his teammates would change, and he had to find them.

Amazingly, Ju Eunchan actually got the answer right, so they never ran it — but Seo Taehyun's mission was 'find the camera, fast.'

He'd have had to spot the one camera with the red light on among a whole rig of them and lock eyes with it within three seconds — which, honestly… he'd have nailed it without even needing to try.

"Why on earth hasn't Seo Taehyun debuted?"

"…what am I supposed to say to that."

"No, seriously — watching him, don't you actually wonder?"

I'm dying to know.

Why the hell hasn't this guy blown up?

However you looked at it, Seo Taehyun wasn't the type to end up buried on that brutal idol stone-plaza.

Next time I go into the Unconscious Space, maybe I'll check his past timelines again too.

What if that bastard's a time bomb carrying some enormous scandal I still don't know about?

At this point stopping Seo Taehyun from debuting was a lost cause, and Hajin didn't particularly feel like doing so anyway.

So — if Taehyun really was a time bomb, Hajin resolved to methodically snip the wires from here on and dump it out at sea (the bomb, obviously — not Taehyun) — and kept his eyes on Taehyun on the monitor.

—Thank you! We really worked hard on today's stage, so please watch closely and enjoy!

For all his nonsense, as team leader Seo Taehyun wrapped up his lead-in remarks with impressive polish.

While the brief stage introduction and pre-interviews ran, behind the scenes the crew set up for Team Daisti's performance.

All that was left was closing the interview cleanly and pulling off the stage successfully.

That was when it happened.

"……?"

"What?"

Coming through the livestream feed it didn't quite come through, but someone in the crowd seemed to have shouted something at the top of their lungs.

Of all times — it was Kim Wonho's turn to be interviewed, so his solo shot was up. When Wonho's face twisted in an instant, the feed hurriedly cut to a full shot.

"What is it? What's going on, PD-nim?"

"Ah…. we're looking into it now too."

Sensing something was off, I asked the PD assigned to us — but he answered, flustered, apparently not yet up to speed on the situation over at the stage either.

Thirteen. Come out.

Figured you'd ask, so I've already been. (◉_<)☆

…is this a Time Administrator or an all-purpose AI assistant.

Our Thirteen — who apparently now had an in-house livestream system on top of his cheat sheet — quickly relayed what was happening at the stage.

Um…. it seems there was someone in the audience who dislikes Wonho-nim.

What did they say? Just tell me that.

Um…. they said 'Kim Wonho, step down.'….

The moment I heard it, my face went rigid — I knew the camera was still on me, and I couldn't help it.

I already knew perfectly well that this was the exact line antis used to mock and attack Kim Wonho for landing high in this round's ranking cut — which only made it that much harder to hold the anger in.

…did they come alone?

Ah. No. Looks like they came in a group of a few. They were whispering and plotting among themselves, and the one who lost at rock-paper-scissors was told to yell it. The one who yelled has been dragged out by security by now, and the rest of the group is still there acting like they don't know each other….

Thirteen, relaying it for me, blew out a sigh (=3) CG as if he were the one more incensed by it.

Watching Kim Wonho on the monitor smooth his face out and get ready for the stage as though nothing had happened, I let the tension out of my furrowed brow — for the moment.

Then, keeping the tight, uneasy thing sitting in my chest hidden, I asked Thirteen one more thing.

Thirteen.

Yes?

…whose fans are they? Those people.

Not even Seoul proper — the outskirts, on a weekday afternoon. People who came all the way out here weren't passing-through trolls. They'd come to see somebody, definitely.

I felt an instinctive hunch pressing down on the back of my neck as I waited for Thirteen's answer.

Thirteen hesitated over something, then finally came out with the answer he'd brought back, like a confession.

Well, for starters — the slogan they were carrying was…. yours, Fixed Regressor-nim.

…yeah. Got it.

B-but still! They could've picked it up as a giveaway at an event…. or been holding it as a smokescreen! Or, or maybe they're just brain-broken trolls with rotten heads to begin with!

Thirteen scrambled to come up with some other explanation, but both of us knew all of it was wishful thinking.

Even if those people weren't actually my fans, they'd still be fans of somebody here —

and I knew perfectly well there were plenty of my actual fans who looked at Kim Wonho with resentment.

"……."

That's the thing — that feeling is genuinely complicated.

Of the members in the debut zone, Kim Wonho had the weakest standing and the weakest fandom, and for some people that alone was reason enough to attack him.

If they were all just lumps of inferiority complex whose lives held no meaning or joy beyond trashing celebrities, I could just cover my ears and my eyes….

But some of them were the kind of office workers well-regarded in society, living their lives just fine; some were precious fans some artist out there couldn't do without; and sometimes they were the very people living right next to me.

My fan, cheering me on — and, at the same time, an anti-fan publicly trashing and attacking my precious dongsaeng.

That behavior was unquestionably morally and ethically off — and at the same time,

clearly a piece of bravado born of the cowardly safety of being tucked inside a crowd, inside a group that felt the same way they did.

But…

If I ever met those people as my fans somewhere, would I owe them thanks?

No — maybe I already had been thanking them.

Some of them might have been the ones behind comments I sometimes read during my monitoring rounds.

They might have been anonymous accounts that had stepped up to defend me during the 'Kang Hajin favoritism controversy.'

Or one of the countless names who'd scraped together allowance money to chip in on the subway and supporting me not long ago.

"Oh, the stage is starting."

At Jung Siwoo's words, I turned my eyes back to the monitor.

Of all the timing — the choreo apparently started with him at center, and there was Kim Wonho holding a pose right in the middle of the stage.

…what's going through that kid's head right now.

Comrade recruitment still hadn't fired for him, so there was no way to read where Kim Wonho was mentally.

A stage he had to perform in front of people who didn't like him.

I carefully brought my hands together and, wishing hard, prayed for Kim Wonho.

Please…. just show them what you practiced, no regrets, and come off that stage.

Please, please don't let it have rattled him too badly.

Amid the worry and unease, Team Daisti's stage began.