Chapter 146

By this point, even the Team Raebingyu members up on the stage had started to catch on that the crowd here wasn't especially glad to have them. And for boys still in their teens, that was a weight of malice too heavy to carry.

"…aigo. Yes, Trainee Jayden. In the end you've failed your Desti mission. Really unfortunate."

When Shin Kyungho and Jayden both went down on their Desti missions, not only did picking up every item slip out of reach — even locking down the one remaining piece, the stage lighting, became uncertain.

Only then did a wave of aww, what do we do sighs run through the Destis. The two-facedness of that reaction gave Yugeon a small chill — but maybe because he'd already been through it once, his head didn't get shaken too badly this time.

"Alright, then. Now — depending on how Trainee Lee Yugeon's and Trainee Lee Doha's missions go, we find out whether the stage lighting comes home. Since even one of them failing means no item, I imagine the pressure is on. Trainee Lee Yugeon — can I get a word from you on how you're going in?"

At the question landing on him, Yugeon hurriedly lifted his mic. And then, from one side, a small yelp went up. Yugeon turned his eyes toward it.

Just below and to the right of the stage, a fan who looked young at first glance stood holding up a slogan with his face on it, her hand clapped over her mouth. Probably startled at herself for shouting without meaning to.

…tops, she can't be older than our own kittens back home.

The moment their eyes met, the fan's eyes lit up and she waved the slogan so Yugeon could see it. Watching her, a smile broke out of him before he knew it.

This too was something he'd already lived through once.

The force of someone rooting for you, purely, with no conditions on it.

Ironically, it was that very force that had put Yugeon where he was standing now.

Still smiling, Yugeon spoke into the mic.

"I'm the worst rapper on this team. Which is why my teammates helped me out a lot while we were prepping this stage. So — I think it's time I paid that back."

Yugeon — famous for keeping his answers short (or, put another way, for having no drive) — was showing uncharacteristic engagement, and slogans with his name on them fluttered up all around as cheers erupted.

As if he'd expected exactly that reaction, Yugeon nodded and gestured at them to shout louder.

"Turning a crisis into an opportunity — that's another must-have skill for an idol, right? So then — Team Raebingyu's leader, Trainee Lee Doha. If the Desti mission ends up failing and you don't get the stage lighting, what will you do?"

Choi Yeonwoo — who'd been watching Yugeon's reaction with interest — smoothly shifted focus to Doha. Yugeon looked over at his team leader, standing beside him.

Even with all the time that had passed from the team mission until now, Doha was standing perfectly upright, no more movement than a tree rooted deep… no — than a column in a densely-built high-rise.

This hyung is a little… scary.

He'd sensed it back in the special class too — a hyung so opaque about what he was thinking that it came out scary.

Doha was a type of person Yugeon had never come across, and that made him a fascinating specimen whose reactions were always impossible to predict.

Jung Siwoo-hyung — at least I can understand why he does what he does. This hyung, though, I really don't get….

From what he could tell, even Kang Hajin-hyung — max-level at reading people, max-level at handling people — seemed a bit at a loss with this hyung. If even that hyung couldn't manage him, there was no way Yugeon could — and Yugeon had long since given up on figuring out how to deal with Doha.

But this hyung really put the work in for this one. If we don't even walk out with the stage lighting on top of everything else, I'm getting roasted to death, for real.

Ever since Miro Maze started, without a single miss, Yugeon and Doha had ended up on the same team every round.

Yugeon found Lee Doha uncomfortable to be around, but separate from that, no one knew better than he did how genuine Doha was about the stage.

What kind of answer will he give, though?

With a small flicker of curiosity, Yugeon looked over at Lee Doha. Doha — as if not even conscious of Yugeon's gaze — didn't spare him so much as a glance, and answered.

"It doesn't matter."

"Doesn't matter? Are you saying you don't mind whether or not you get the stage lighting?"

"Yes. I don't think it matters."

Just like the time he'd once floored Yugeon with a flat okay, I hear your situation — so what are you going to do about it now?, this time Lee Doha floored Choi Yeonwoo with an unexpected answer.

Yeonwoo pressed him again, and Doha, holding his ground, nodded and added flatly:

"The most important thing on our stage is us, anyway."

An answer paired with a we're the ones rapping — is the lighting gonna rap? {expression.}(#u19kham5w3jo)

At that ballsy answer, down in the audience below the stage, Enderway's main rapper Park Woong burst into loud applause and yelled THIS is hip-hop! at the top of his lungs. Voice cracking and all, Park Woong shouted it like he was genuinely bursting with pride, and laughter broke out among the Destis around him.

"If Yugeon repays me with the stage lighting, I'm not going to turn it down. But I think it's enough if each of us pours a hundred percent of what we prepared onto the stage."

Wait, why bring me into it out of nowhere?

Caught off guard at the unexpected mention, Yugeon looked at Doha again. Doha turned his eyes just enough to meet Yugeon's, then faced forward again — and, in a tone as calm as if he were saying what should we get for dinner tonight?, he spoke.

"All of us prepped really hard, and we're confident. About this stage."

Yugeon still found Lee Doha hard, still found him uncomfortable, but the moment he heard that line, he could feel it in his gut.

That was a threat.

I don't care if we don't get the stage lighting — on this stage, at least, pour out two hundred percent of what you prepped. A Lee Doha-brand threat.

If it had been Kang Hajin, a line like that would've been meant to lift the team's spirits;

if it had been Seo Taehyun, it would've been an add-on to sell his confidence in the team to the broadcast;

if it had been Jung Siwoo, it would've been picked as the safest, most bulletproof possible answer.

But the guy was Lee Doha.

"So — even if we don't win the lighting, it makes no difference to me at all."

That was a hundred percent sincerity with zero calculation baked in.

Fuck, that's cool.

Yugeon marveled at it internally, biting the inside of his cheek with his molars to keep any of it from showing.

Whether Doha's line had straightened out shoulders that had gone hunched, Jayden's and Shin Kyungho's faces looked a lot better than they had.

"Overflowing confidence — really nice to see. In that case, the Desti missions the two of you have to take on — let's reveal them right now!"

At last — the die had been cast.

---

A few hours later.

Having pushed through several rounds of extra filming and scheduling even after the guerrilla concert wrapped, the Miro Maze trainees only made it back to the dorm a little past pre-dawn.

Wiping his face down and taking a shower the second he got in, then changing into comfortable pajamas, Kang Hajin had no strength left to make it to his room — so, towel around his neck, he collapsed as if unconscious onto the lounge sofa the dorm used like a living room.

"Wow. I feel like I'm actually dying."

He could feel in his body that he'd been tense from morning to evening. He hadn't noticed until now, but the second he came into the dorm and lay down, various parts of him started to ache and throb. Back in his PD days too, on shoot days or after edit-cut screenings, he'd been reduced to sprawling out like this.

Keep this up and if I'm unlucky, I'm coming down with something.

Wondering if he should pick up a ssanghwatang or something, Hajin closed his eyes — and something cold went slap! right onto his face.

"Ack! What!"

"Hold still. That stuff's expensive."

Just as Hajin — startled — went to peel the mystery object off his face, someone smacked the back of his hand away. Unable to properly open his eyes because of the cold thing, Hajin figured out from the voice and the presence that it was Seo Taehyun. And once he'd registered that it was Seo Taehyun, he had a pretty good guess about the identity of the 'this' now sitting on his face.

"Why are you lying here dead instead of going to your room. Sofa's cold. If you're gonna sleep, go sleep in your room. You'll catch a cold."

"My grandson…. worrying about his old grandpa?"

"Grandpa, if you want to live a long life, you can't be lying around in places like this. Your mouth's going to twist right off."

Taehyun rolled naturally along with Hajin's joke, and slowly, gently smoothed the cold thing he'd tossed onto Hajin's face out to fit his features.

The identity of the slightly-slippery, cool-going-on-face thing was a sheet mask. On days like today — recordings with long stretches under hot lighting, or outdoor shoots with a lot of sun — Taehyun always made sure to take care of his skin with a mask like this.

"How much prettier are you trying to make grandpa's face here, offering up a sheet mask like alms….?"

Kang Hajin kept up the ham act, but the cool, tacky feel being smoothed onto his face felt so good that he closed his eyes and let his body go slack. Taehyun let out a snort as if Hajin's reaction was ridiculous, then meticulously scraped even the last remaining serum out of the packet and dripped it onto Hajin's face too.

Only after the sheet-mask business was wrapped up did Hajin crack his eyes open a little. Right in front of him, Taehyun — with what was probably a mask of the same brand pressed on identically — was leaning his back against the sofa Hajin was on and settling down on the floor.

"Why are you sitting on the floor? Come up on the sofa."

"Nah. Hyung's head is heavy."

"Ouch, hurtful…. I won't use your legs as a pillow. Come up and sit."

"There's no room, hyung's too long."

At that, Kang Hajin opened his eyes again, tilted his head up, and glanced along the length of the sofa he was lying on. A three-seater about two meters long, and 182-cm Hajin was laid out on it — fair enough that squeezing Taehyun in comfortably alongside was going to be tight. Conceding Taehyun's point that there wasn't room, Hajin closed his eyes again and settled his head back on the sofa.

Going for a shower, or off to take care of something else. The sounds of trainees passing through the lounge felt like pleasant white noise. Hajin's breathing had leveled out to where he seemed a second away from dropping off — but once the trainees had all cleared the lounge and the quiet came back, he spoke, voice drowsy.

"Grandson."

"Yes, Grandpa."

"If you've got something to say, say it. Grandpa's about to fall asleep at this rate."

Even before this, Taehyun had every so often dropped by Hajin and Eunchan's room and doled out toner or sheet masks like alms. But usually, he'd take care of whatever he'd come for and head back to his own room fast. If they held him back with stay in the room a bit, let's hang out, he'd sit right down and produce a topic to chatter about.

For that Taehyun to hand-apply a sheet mask onto him and then, instead of heading back to his own room, quietly sit down next to him — meant, unquestionably, that he had something to say.

Taehyun tended to take longer than most people to get things out of his mouth. Maybe because he'd been in and out of entertainment activities from a young age, and his real broadcast debut had been on a survival show — that had probably added to it.

This industry was, after all, the kind of place where a single word could easily upend somebody's life.

Taehyun stayed quiet a stretch longer even after Hajin spoke. Hajin's one-year-younger brother Hawon had also been the type who, before saying something like this, would spend a fair amount of time sorting it out in his head, and sorting it again, before he spoke. When they were younger Hajin had found it stifling and pushed Hawon to spit it out already — but now, Hajin knew perfectly well that these were moments you had to wait for.

Fighting off a mind that felt ready to drop into sleep any second, Hajin waited for Taehyun to speak. And soon, Taehyun carefully asked:

"Hyung."

"Mm."

"That thing earlier. What you said in your closing bit after the stage."

"Mm."

"…aren't you scared? Saying stuff like that, out loud….?"

Having faintly guessed this was the topic coming, Hajin let out a small hmmm… like he was mulling it over. How to put this. Taking a moment to pick his words, Hajin answered.

"Yup. Scared out of my mind."

"……."

Hyung's the one lying here without even bothering to switch on Bluebird — figure it out.

At Hajin's clowning, Taehyun was left at a loss for words — in a different way than before.