Chapter 141

Destis, Daisti?

Purple lights swept across the stage in slow circles.

The Daisti trainees took their opening position, both hands folded in front, heads bowed.

The moment a slick hip-hop beat kicked in, the trainees started nodding in time as one, catching the rhythm.

Zziiiiiing—!

An intense electric guitar sound came slicing in — and at the same instant, Wonho, the tallest of them, bent sharply forward at the waist.

Eunchan — in a rider jacket and ripped black jeans — planted a hand on Wonho's back and vaulted him like a pommel horse, cutting across center stage.

Already striking-looking to begin with, Eunchan had eye makeup layered on to play up his long, dark lashes and sharp gaze — and he flashed a grin, teeth just catching his tongue.

Deep, Crush, Dive.

Like ticking off a one, two, three count, Eunchan whispered it.

As the beat dropped, the trainees launched into the performance, hitting hard.

This pop song was one where the short-form challenge remix had eclipsed the original — and its strength was the rich instrumental layering over a hip-hop base beat.

Every member of the team was more confident dancing than singing, so Taehyun's plan was to pick a song the public already knew — steering attention onto the performance rather than the vocals.

"Eunchan's rapping? Wasn't the rap part originally Yuki?"

"Originally Yuki, but they swapped after mid-check."

"Why?"

"Looks like memorizing the lyrics was giving him a hard time. Given it's an English rap."

…the actual reason being that his Japanese-accented English had been deemed a lost cause, and they'd swapped him out.

Not something you could say honestly in front of a camera, of course.

Fortunately, whether Jung Siwoo had bought it or picked up on the subtext, he just nodded — no follow-up questions.

Siwoo and I kept watching Daisti's stage on the monitor for a good while longer, in silence. During that stretch, Haru and Gong Seok — who'd stepped out for interview filming — came back to the waiting area.

"Oh, hyung — did the stage start already?"

"Yeah. Come on over."

While Haru and Seok pattered over and settled into chairs, Daisti's stage was rolling along cleanly.

The performance nailed every little detail of the song — enough that you couldn't even remember what the original challenge choreography had looked like.

Dressed in what you'd call rock-chic looks, the trainees ditched razor-sharp unison for playing up each member's individual personality and dance line, freely working their charm.

Ju Eunchan's tone made even a pop song sound like it belonged to him, and Seo Taehyun's steady live vocals carried the chorus smoothly — both pushed the stage's quality up.

"Choreo's seriously well put together — the composition is really something."

Since when does this hyung do this?

Today, of all days, Siwoo was full of remarks about somebody else's stage.

And commenting on the choreography at that, not the singing.

Siwoo's dance wasn't unwatchable, but you couldn't call him a good dancer either. Grind through practice late into the night and he could pull his weight on stage — about that level.

Someone could take a shot at his dance chops if they really wanted to, but this was Jung Siwoo we were talking about.

Even if he just did one runway walk across the stage and went back down, the visual alone would spike team recognition — and on top of that, he had main-vocal-tier singing chops. This Jung Siwoo.

We should be bowing and saying "thank you" just for him being alive and moving — and he's out here grinding late every night to pull his weight on choreo too?

Practically national-treasure grade.

Anyone calling that guy a bad dancer wouldn't even register as a troll.

Anyway. Being solidly self-aware, Jung Siwoo knew perfectly well he was weak at dance.

Which was why he didn't usually get into dance talk when watching stages — but today, for some reason, he had a lot to say and kept showing interest, and it was suspicious.

There's no way this hyung would be doing this for no reason.

Wondering what he was up to, I turned to Siwoo, eyes full of suspicion — and sure enough, Siwoo lobbed a question with unmistakable intent at me and Dan Haru.

"Who put this together? The kids themselves?"

"Wonho-hyung did it, he said! With ideas from the rest of the team, he had the whole thing done in about three hours? Something like that. Isn't that seriously impressive."

"Wonho definitely has a knack for that kind of thing. Back on A-team too, his little in-the-moment ideas were really distinctive."

"Yeah. And Wonho-hyung teaches choreo so easily…. He's really good. He's cool."

Haru — who, thanks to being off filming interviews, didn't know about what had just happened to Wonho — beamed and threw a thumbs-up.

I just kept nodding hard along with what Haru was saying.

Because I'd caught what Siwoo was doing: deliberately teeing up a moment for Wonho on air.

Should I help push it a little more?

To make it easier for the Haru next to me to chat with Siwoo, I leaned back off my forward hunch and rested against the chair back as I added:

"I like Wonho's voice too. If his confidence just went up a bit, I think his singing would come along a lot too."

"Back on the Cinderella team, I was actually surprised at how soft his voice was. Kind of like…. it seemed he hadn't realized the genre he likes isn't the one that suits him."

"With everyone getting to try different kinds of stages this time around, it feels like they're all growing and coming along a lot. Our team included."

"Right!! It's really been so good. This time we've finally even done aca—mmph."

"Dan Haru. No more spoilers."

I clamped my thumb and finger over Haru's mouth in a pincer grip as, once again — after the last major spoiler incident — he beamed his way toward spoiling our team's format. Haru gave me a why are you doing this look, then realized he'd been about to spoil something and gasped, exclamation points erupting across his whole face.

Then he nodded firmly, sealed his own lips shut like he'd sworn silence, and I released the grip on his mouth.

Word had it he'd been getting cornered and lectured in rotation by production, Ji Suho, and Seo Taehyun ever since the last spoiler — and the training had clearly taken.

"…huh?"

While I was busy with Haru, Seok — sitting quietly next to Siwoo, watching the stage — let out a small startled sound.

Everyone's eyes snapped to the monitor at once, wondering if something had happened again.

The performance was heading into its final stretch with Kim Wonho now front-and-center — but nothing looked visibly wrong.

Still, Seok wasn't the type to be startled over nothing, I thought — so I leaned down a little to meet his eyes and asked:

"Seok-hyung, what is it?"

"Ah, it's just…."

Face troubled, Seok glanced back and forth between the camera and us, then answered in a hesitant voice.

"Looks like Wonho isn't singing…."

"What?"

"That part right there is Wonho's. He asked me to help him with the English pronunciation back at the dorm, so I helped him with it — I know his line. But…. it's Jaeyoung and Taehyun singing it together, not Wonho."

At that I turned my head back to the monitor.

The group choreography section passed, and a one-shot came back to Wonho.

Face slightly pinched, Wonho opened his mouth and started singing — but in the end couldn't get all the way through even one line, and closed his mouth partway.

Luckily the section overlapped with the next part, and Ju Eunchan — up next — naturally covered the gap, so it didn't turn into a full-blown stage accident, but….

Something had definitely gone wrong with Wonho.

"……."

"……."

The waiting area — chatty just a moment ago — filled with a strange tension and quiet.

Right up until stepping on stage, this was a kid who'd been going on about how thrilled and nervous he was to perform in front of people. So if something had happened in the meantime, the cause could only be that earlier incident.

"Youth-Never-Dies team, standby, please."

"Ah, right. Guys, let's get ready."

At the AD's call, Siwoo pulled himself together, belatedly, and rounded us up.

We stood up, gathering our things, and even as the stylists came around fixing wrinkled clothes and touching up hair and makeup, our eyes never left the monitor.

Daisti's stage was heading into the home stretch now — but Wonho, in the end, never managed to sing his own part through to the finish.

"We're going to move now — the path's a little dark, so keep your eye on me and stay close, okay~"

"Yes. Hajin, look after Haru. Seok-ah, let's go."

"Mm."

Out of the tented waiting area in the parking lot, down the path toward the stage.

As the thumping music and the heat of the crowd got closer, somehow my feet grew heavier.

My head was full of worry about Wonho.

The fact that one of the many causes that had put him in that state was a fan of mine — someone who loved me — even had me feeling a small twist of guilt.

Just then, someone came up beside me and tapped my shoulder.

"……."

"I know you're worried, but right now — let's focus on our own stage."

"…yes."

"Wonho'll be plenty disappointed in himself already. If you show it too obviously, it'll only hurt him more, so keep your face steady."

"Yes."

"Good. Path's dark — watch your feet, don't get hurt."

Deliberately fluttering his mic'd shirt a little so the audio wouldn't pick him up, Siwoo passed me the quiet advice, then quickened his pace and moved ahead of me again.

He'd been in front of me from the moment we stepped out of the tent — so he must have deliberately dropped back to speak to me once he saw I'd gotten stuck in my head. Siwoo didn't know that the person who'd said that thing to Wonho earlier was a fan of mine, so from his side it probably just looked like me worrying about my close dongsaeng Wonho.

But it wasn't just that Wonho had flubbed the stage that had me worried.

What scared me was that he'd had to hear something no one should ever have to hear in their life — because of me — and that his mental state might now be shaky enough for it to have wrecked his stage.

…once tonight's taping wraps, let me have a proper talk with Wonho. For now, just think about the stage.

My head was still tangled, but wrecking our own stage on top of everything else would be its own unforgivable outcome — so I forced my thoughts back into order.

By the time we reached the backstage tent behind the stage, the Daisti team was just finishing up and coming down.

Handing back in-ears and mics, none of the members had exactly bright faces.

Even after pulling off that kind of performance in front of that huge a crowd, no one was clowning around with we killed it or anything. Not even the youngest ones, Park Jaeyoung and Yuki.

More than a sense they'd bombed the stage, it looked like everyone was too worried and preoccupied about Wonho to react easily.

"……."

Wonho — the source of the whole mood — was hunched off in a corner of the tent by himself, quietly pulling out his in-ear pack, head bowed like he was a criminal on trial.

Beside him, team leader Seo Taehyun was subtly waving off the PD filming them, shaking his head don't shoot this, turning Wonho's face away from the camera as he tried to comfort him.

"Alright, Youth-Never-Dies team. In-ears on, please."

"These are all hand mics, right?"

"Yeah, that's right. Guys, let's run the intro greeting once before we go up."

I wanted to go over to Wonho, say something, anything — but I couldn't.

We were tight on time just to prep for our own stage. And even if I did carve out a minute and go to him, I couldn't decide what I should say — or, more accurately, whether I even had the right to say anything.

"Hajin-hyung. In-ear."

"…yeah."

The Daisti members, done sorting themselves out, all crowded around Wonho in a rush; and even from a distance, I could see Wonho — unable to hold the tears back any longer — start to cry.

Seo Taehyun, pulling that bigger, taller Wonho into a hug to comfort him, caught my eye.

Taehyun gave me a little wink and, silently mouthing the words, told me, Do great up there.

I couldn't manage much of an answer — just nodded, and with a small look silently asked him to please take good care of Wonho, then turned away.

"Alright. Youth-Never-Dies team! Up you go!"

I climbed onto the stage, feet heavy.

Cheering for someone, hating someone, loving someone, resenting someone.

A stage packed full of 'someones' whose names you'd never even know, waiting for us —

up onto that stage.