Chapter 155

Only three people gone, and the dorm felt more spacious than it ever had. Past spacious, honestly — the place looked half-desolate.

To keep from clocking the empty spots too hard, Hajin decided to focus on the situation in front of him. In the lounge, the surviving ten trainees were gathered, each with a suitcase packed with their belongings. This morning, they'd gotten word from Ji Suho to pack up because they'd be moving to a new dorm.

"Alright, everyone here? If you've left anything behind, don't worry — the managers'll sweep through here once, so if you remember anything you missed, just say."

""Yes.""

"The place we're heading to now is a temporary dorm where you'll be staying through to the finals. Per house, we've split you into two units — five of you and one manager each. It's not as spacious or as nicely outfitted as here. Still, we've set it up so nothing's too inconvenient — so let's do this well through the time we've got left too."

There were reasonable enough grounds for the move right before the finals.

For starters, this place was one floor of what had originally been slated to become Miro's new office building, temporarily converted into a dorm. Since the office move was slated to happen gradually once the finals wrapped and full-fledged debut prep began, right around now was roughly when they needed to clear out.

Also, Ji Suho had called it a temporary dorm, but in all likelihood, that dorm was going to become the dorm of the new group decided at the finals.

One week from now.

Some would stay in that dorm, receive a new group name, and debut,

and some would have to pack up in that same dorm and leave, all over again.

It really is a cutthroat competition society.

Hajin shook his head at the cold reality being carved yet again into his bones.

"Alright — let's move."

Even so, he had to survive.

Because debut, in the end, was only the beginning.

With that resolve, several suitcases started moving, wheels rolling out a steady rattle.

---

Having arrived at the new dorm and gotten his room assignment, Kang Hajin realized he'd briefly forgotten a certain very important fact.

When is this screw-Hajin arc going to end, seriously?

Hajin-nim, honestly — at this point it might be easier to just accept it and enjoy the ride.

Well, that's a real comfort.

Hajin, eyes gone dull and dead-fish flat, glared at Thirteen with more edged killing intent than Thirteen's own blue window. Flinching under that killing intent for a second, Thirteen then read the room, adjusted its own opacity down, and sliiiid away…..

"Hyung. Hun-hyung says whoever's going to the practice room needs to come down by 10."

"Got it."

No sooner had the thought crossed his mind than New Dorm-Mate #1 — currently taking point as the strongest player of the screw-Hajin arc — came bounding over. It was Dan Haru, whose rank had cratered to eighth at this cut ceremony.

Despite dropping so far he'd been pushed clear out of debut range, Dan Haru, contrary to Hajin's worries, didn't seem especially crushed by it.

If anything, he looked at peace?

Just like a baby-bunny hero in the peaceful daily-life chapter after the Demon King's been defeated….

Our baby-bunny hero, the Selreg.

Turning the proposition over again, it was still a shocking one, but hero, knight, prince — those were the character types that showed up in regression stories all the time anyway, so you could probably just pass it off as a genre convention.

Hajin patted the seat next to him, as if telling the bounding-toward-him Dan Haru to sit. Then, watching Haru scoot right over and drop down beside him, today just like every other day, he reached out and pinched the squishy cheek in front of him.

"Dan Haru."

"Yesh?"

"You okay?"

"Whash?"

"Your rank dropped."

"Ah, ah."

Ah, ah? Ah, ah~?

You have any idea how far my head went yo-yoing over that one ranking of yours, and all I get is ah, ah?

At the Selected Regressor (presumed)'s reaction — clueless about what the Fixed Regressor was going through and looking blithely untroubled all on his own — Hajin felt a stab of the nerve of this kid and cranked up the grip on the cheek-pinching hand. It didn't take a second for Haru's ah, ah~ to turn into an ah, ah…!

"Uh hertsh!"

"You're what's hurting my head."

"Whyzh?"

"That's what I'd like to know…."

When Hajin slowly loosened his grip, the resilient young cheek went red for a moment, then bounced right back to normal. Since Hajin had eased off the pressure on purpose, Haru didn't put on any more of a hurt act — just rubbed his own cheek and looked up at Hajin.

"Haru."

"Yeah."

"Are your parents coming to the finals this time?"

Hajin worked hard to keep the question as offhand as he could. It wasn't like Yugeon's truth-game moment last time where he'd just stumbled into it — pumping someone for information this deliberately just wasn't in his wheelhouse.

At Hajin's question, Haru blinked as if buffering for a moment, then shook his head.

"No, both of them are overseas so they said it'd be tough."

"What about your grandma? Didn't you say she lives out in the country?"

"Grandma's not in great health either, so…. Since it's hard for her to make it to Seoul and back, she said she'd watch from home on TV."

Meaning, in the end, no one was coming.

Watching Haru, unbothered face, spilling all that out with just a shrug of the shoulders, Hajin found his mood turning strange.

If this kid's life really was patched together out of nothing but lies, then those lies were probably things woven out of the wishes this kid had wanted with everything in him, and the yearnings he'd held onto most desperately.

Hajin ruffled Haru's hair and opened his mouth.

"…once the finals are over, if you don't have plans, want to grab dinner with my family?"

"With your parents, hyung?"

"Yeah. Mom said she'd get us galbi that day."

"Heol, I'd love to, but…."

At Haru trailing off as if asking whether it was really okay, Hajin pinched his cheek again and said:

"They're not going to make you chip in, so if you're okay with it, come along."

"Ngh. Yesh. Fank oo."

When Hajin let his cheek go again, Haru — rubbing his cheek — let out a small hehehe like he was pleased. That laugh looked like it belonged to any 17-year-old boy who'd grown up bright and unblemished, and the more Hajin looked at it, the more unsettled his heart got.

"Guys. Whoever's going to the practice room needs to head down now."

Another one — NEW! Dorm-Mate #2, Jung Siwoo — came out of his room holding his practice shoes, and spoke.

Having ended up saddled with the dorm-captain role for the week by virtue of being the oldest, Siwoo was checking what looked like a message from the manager, knocking on the doors to give the trainees inside the heads-up.

Haru, sitting next to Hajin, threw his hand straight up in reply the moment he heard Siwoo's voice.

"Ah, I'll go! Hajin-hyung, you going?"

"No. I'm gonna sort through my stuff at the dorm today. Have fun."

"Yep! Siwoo-hyung! Let's go together!"

At Hajin's shake of the head, Haru grabbed his bag from beside him and got up. At the same moment, one of the room doors opened, and NEW Dorm-Mate #3 — the other time bomb, Yugeon — came shuffling out. Siwoo, watching him, asked:

"You heading to practice too?"

"…yeah."

"Alright. We're going straight down — nothing to grab?"

"No, nothing."

The sharp adversarial dynamic between the two of them had been temporarily incinerated after Team Blue Flare, but whether that had done much for actually developing their relationship, the answer was no.

Conflict or whatever aside, the two of them just aren't close.

Jung Siwoo wasn't the type to actively seek people out, and Lee Yugeon — while he didn't turn people away — wasn't the kind of guy with time on his hands to go making the approach either.

On top of that, with him climbing into high ranks in a row lately, Lee Yugeon's head seemed pretty tangled up in a lot of different ways.

Now why is that…? Isn't debuting a good thing? (⊙_☉;) @◇@?

Debut is a nice word for it — end of the day, it's unpaid freelance work.

Miro's trainee welfare setup was on the better side, but debuting changed the terms.

Sure, tuition support to see you through high school kept going even after debut, but the living-stipend money that had come through under the trainee upkeep line got cut. Since basic room and board — housing, cars, food — got expensed for you anyway, that was fair enough.

But Lee Yugeon was the head of a household with two middle-school siblings right now, and cutting off the living-stipend money would inevitably take a chunk out of the household budget. Since he had to prep for debut, he couldn't exactly work a side job — and even if he debuted, it took time for actual net income to come in and hit his account after investment costs got deducted.

On top of that, no telling how long it'll take before those earnings even start, and no certainty on how much once they do. It's the kind of job that'd give anyone a headache — Lee Yugeon most of all.

Cold-eyed, someone would say the right move was to bow out right now and figure out how to make a living….

He's got a lot on his mind, that kid.

…but Hajin absolutely didn't think that was the 'right' answer.

Lee Yugeon's family situation wasn't Lee Yugeon's fault, and no one knew better than Hajin how deep it cuts into a person to give up their youth and their dreams, right in front of their own eyes, to take on responsibility for something that wasn't theirs.

Fixed-Regressor-nim, have you had that kind of experience too?

Not me.

Then…?

…yeah. People sad enough over dreams they'd given up like that, that they made sure — at least for their kids — money wasn't going to be a reason to hold back.

Recalling the faces of his own parents — who, with barely enough to go around, had put everything they had, materially and emotionally, into making sure their two back-to-back kids could do arts programs of all things — Hajin felt his eyes wanting to well up for no clear reason.

He couldn't presume to weigh in on Yugeon's situation with any of it's this or it's that…. but at the very least, he didn't want to slap the current Yugeon with a label like irresponsible or chasing a pointless dream.

"Seriously…. what is it with these dorm-mates, every last one of them's suffocating."

Honestly, the dorm next door — where Ju Eunchan, Jayden, and Park Jaeyoung would go off the rails while Lee Doha stood by watching and Seo Taehyun got the life drained out of him — was probably easier on the mind.

Hajin let out a sigh and headed for his own assigned room to sort out his stuff. And the moment he flung the door open, he remembered the reason he'd been camping on the living-room couch the second he got to the dorm instead of going to his room.

"…ah."

"…."

"You were, uh — sleeping?"

"Ah, no. Light's fine."

When Hajin opened the door, his eyes met Wonho's (Kim Wonho, NEW Dorm-Mate #4, Kang Hajin's biggest current worry) — Wonho lying on the bottom bunk of the bunk bed.

When Hajin flipped the light on, Wonho scrunched his eyes at the sudden brightness, then pulled the blanket over himself and rolled to face the wall.

…how did things between me and this kid end up like this.

He hadn't meant for it, but he and Wonho, somehow, hadn't exchanged a single word since the guerrilla concert.

Neither of them was avoiding the other, and from what Taehyun had been telling him, Wonho seemed to have worked through a lot of what was bothering him inside — and yet, the vibe was somehow this.

Originally he was the one who'd come up first, all Hajin-hyung this and that.

Honestly, casually being the one to start a conversation was, for Hajin, not that hard even now. But given the timing, even one very light remark had a way of turning into a careful one. Hajin himself had no hard feelings toward Wonho, but where Wonho's own head was at wasn't something you could just easily gauge.

Still, given that they'd ended up sharing a room, he didn't want to flat-out be awkward about it — so, opening his suitcase, Hajin lightly threw a line toward Wonho.

"Kim Wonho, you catch the round-3 behind-the-scenes that got uploaded this time?"

"…ah. No, not yet."

"There was some Kang-Lee-Kim-z content in it. Watching it kinda put me back in a weird place, thinking about our month-end evaluations."

"Yeah? I should watch it too."

Wonho was answering the lines Hajin was throwing solidly enough, but compared to before, the tension level itself had definitely come down. Even so, Hajin worked to notice Wonho's manner as little as possible, playing it cool, sorting through clothes while keeping the conversation going.

"Month-end evals were seriously fun back then."

"Yeah. Tough, but fun."

"If someone had told the you back then you'd make it all the way to Miro Maze finals, think you'd have believed it?"

"…no. Never."

At Hajin's teasing question, Wonho finally let out a soft laugh and shook his head, turning his body toward Hajin. That felt somehow like a good sign, and Hajin, with a mind lifted a little, blurted out at Wonho what he'd been thinking, quietly, all along.

"Would be even better if we just debuted together like this and kept being dorm roommates. Right?"

At those words, Wonho, for an instant, made a very strange expression.

Not crying, not disappointed, but also not looking happy, not looking proud…. a strange expression.

Over that face of Wonho's, one translucent blue window — as always with impeccable timing — floated up.

"…yeah. That'd be nice."

Even as Wonho nodded and gave that reply, Hajin, no matter how he tried, couldn't smile.

'Kim Wonho' is 'reacting' to you. (Reaction rate 37%) Reaction rate too low; Comrade recruitment unavailable.

One week to the finals.

Hajin found himself thinking that that week was going to feel very, very long — and very, very lonely.