Chapter 176

title: My dreams and my whole life have been trampled because of Kang Hajin — Kairos Kang Hajin character exposé — Miro Maze - Hello. I'm someone who trained alongside trainee Kang Hajin at KD Entertainment in the year 20XX. [photo] (KD Entertainment company sign) [photo] (screenshot from a few years back of a comment Hajin left on my private SNS) [photo] (a photo of Hajin with other trainees, the trainees' faces blurred) Honestly, I went back and forth a lot before writing this, but I couldn't just stand by and watch Kang Hajin-hyung — someone whose fellow trainees literally called him a tyrant, who made not just me but many other trainees suffer — go on to debut as an idol, someone teens are supposed to look up to, and stand on that stage. That's why I'm writing this. What follows is a list of what I, as his hoobae, had to put up with from Kang Hajin-hyung over two years, written down as it comes back to me. This was a few years ago, so the order or timing may not line up exactly — please bear with me. 1. Verbal abuse …….

The post that had gone up on an anonymous community had been uploaded as a long-form piece, together with fairly credible evidence.

With solid verification photos, detailed accounts of specific situations, Hajin's usual speech habits, and even messenger screenshots of exchanges with him, people hit the gas fast. Every one of Hajin's past behaviors, big and small, got dredged up and put on trial.

title: [not gonna lie tho he did look like he had a temper] - we all knew he came off intense right...? that was literally one of Kang Hajin's selling points - just mindless stan defense force what else would fans say - like just look at the stuff he flat-out says at guerrilla cons ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ > ㄹㅇ back then y'all were loving him for "saying what needed saying, so refreshing" and now all of a sudden... > got hyped up as a "principled idol" back then for his no-filter takes but turns out just like idol like fan ㅎ title: [what do y'all think of this] - [video] (Miro Maze rd 1 practice — zoomed-in replay of Hajin getting Kyungho's name wrong) did he actually not know the name or was he taking a dig at him ㅠㅠ like how do u practice w someone for months and not know their name?ㅜ i was kinda liking Myungho and now after watching this im all shaken up ㅠ... - hey u got the name wrong too; just go back to sleep - the ragebait doesn't even feel like any effort went into it which pisses me off more - u really are itching to start a fire aren't u - hm is it just me though...? this gave me hardcore ptsd his tone is fucking straight-up delinquent > Kang Hajin had only been at Miro for like two or three months at that point and after the start he was calling the name right obviously when you first join you don't know everyone's names who tf is spiraling all the way to delinquent-behavior in their head title: [opinion] i actually get why opinions are split on this - with Kang Hajin's personality he definitely would've been side-eyeing kids who slacked off in practice the Miro Maze trainee kids also said Kang Hajin was intense about making them practice he comes off as such a variety guy and social butterfly but if you watch the behind-the-scenes stuff you can tell he has a strong by-the-book streak ㅇㅇ 20XX means both OP and Kang Hajin were middle schoolers when this happened Kang Hajin was young too and probably couldn't handle his emotions well and said stuff like that and OP and the other trainees were at a super sensitive age so it must have really hurt them anyway the way i see it Kang Hajin did hurt this OP enough to be called a "perpetrator" but us as third parties really shouldn't be picking sides here... - yeah ok next desti - picking sides my ass ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ theres literally a victim right here you do know this is what actual secondary victimization is right? - wrote a whole lot of nonsense - the comments here are all fired up... i partly agree, since watching Miro Maze i could already see Hajin had that boldness/stubbornness typical of younger guys and that probably caused friction with peer trainees. this is on Hajin... > partly agree my ass ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ real destis don't talk like this~ you watched a whole ten-episode survival and now you think you know the kid ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ

Various opinions circulated about the behavior of Hajin's laid out in the post, but almost no one entertained the possibility that the post itself might be fabricated. The evidence was too solid, and the victim was too clearly a victim.

…

Among the hyungs I trained with, there was actually one hyung who quit trainee life and gave up on his idol dream because of his conflict with Kang Hajin-hyung.

…

The moment private conflict among peers turns into a good-versus-evil frame with a clear perpetrator and a clear victim, the people receiving the story take a very sharply defined stance. They defend the good and punish the evil.

The truth is: the earth is round,

nothing in the world can be cleanly split into just black and white,

and behind the letters on a screen there are deep shadows that can never be contained — but we forget this from time to time.

Still, no one could blame them. None of them knew the other truth — that Hajin had actually been the victim of ostracism.

So they simply made their choice within the clues they'd been given.

handle: @strongjin name: Kang-Captain acting like they're some tabloid trash reporter or something now they're even scraping bluebird accounts for interviews fuck i'm believing the Kang Hajin i saw ran your account through a lookup site, later^^ imma block u and pull ur ip just u wait

After all that character-based promo you did,
how does it feel to finally learn your fave's a school-violence perpetrator?

Refusing to believe it,

title: [just quit already Kang Hajin] - at least it's a huge relief this broke before debut ㅋㅋㅋㅋ i feel so bad for the kids who got cut because people voted for someone like you

or feeling betrayed and condemning him.

Now people were starting to see Kang Hajin as a "perpetrator."

Whether he debuted or not, if he didn't properly address this, the projected fallout was big enough that the situation just kept snowballing. Everyone was waiting on the official word from Hajin and Miro.

And at that hour.

The man himself — Kang Hajin — who'd been called back from the trip to the dorm and had rushed over to the office, answered Ji Suho's questions about the truth of the incident in a calm voice.

"I really don't know."

"…what do you mean by that."

"I don't really remember."

And that answer was so far from what Ji Suho had wanted to hear.

---

Human memory distorts and gets prettied up as time goes on.

Certain events lodge in your mind more and more sharply, more vividly — while other stretches of days evaporate from memory so completely you find yourself wondering was there even such a day?

Right now, mine was the latter.

"…around here it's only two, three years ago. For me it's well over fifteen years."

The events at KD Entertainment from more than a few years back had, sure, followed me like a ghost through every stretch of my life. But that didn't mean I remembered every one of those years down to the last minute.

Because in the long time since, I'd grown and stumbled through all kinds of people and incidents.

"What I'm left with now is basically just, 'I fought with the kids, and in the end they ostracized me,' and that's it."

I couldn't even remember what situation the group-chat screenshots posted in the original piece were from — I couldn't even guess who'd posted the thing. Sure, the guys I'd trained with back then didn't add up to that many, so if I really set my mind to it I could probably track him down. But still.

At my answer, Ji Suho put on a deliberately grave expression and hummed low.

"Honestly? That's the most devastating thing you've said to me so far. From the company's standpoint, 'I don't remember' is the worst possible response."

I knew. Of course I knew.

That's why I'd racked my memory the whole way here, but dredging up every last detail from more than fifteen years ago was a losing battle. And the few things dimly coming back to me as I read the post didn't exactly look like they'd help the company's statement either.

When I quietly kept my mouth shut, Ji Suho pointed at the printed exposé on the desk and spoke calmly.

"Then for now, let's start with what we can pin down as fact. This bit here — you said this part was a lie, right."

Ji Suho drew a highlighter straight down through one paragraph. Roughly, it was the part about the company's debut lineups having fallen through several times, with me as the cause. The original post's claim was that I'd thrown fits when the debut lineup I wanted didn't come together, or when I wasn't in it.

"Yeah. First off — the whole time I was at that company, I got cut from the debut lineup both times, and the reason the lineups fell through was entirely that the CEO couldn't secure investment. He even got scammed once along the way."

"So why do you think this person wrote it this way? Any guesses?"

"…I get the feeling you're hoping this whole post is a lie. But the stuff about the CEO getting scammed and the debut lineup falling through — only a real handful of people knew that, me included. So if the kid who wrote this joined the company after I did, they might genuinely not have known and could've misunderstood it like this. I was close with the company staff, y'know."

I shrugged as I said it, and Ji Suho, nodding like got it for now, jotted a brief summary of what I'd said next to that paragraph in pen.

The next paragraph he zeroed in on was the part about ⟨Kang Hajin discriminating against specific trainees and ordering them around⟩.

"This one?"

"This…. I don't really know what the 'discrimination' part is talking about, but the 'ordering them around' bit — I can guess what that is."

"Are you saying you actually did order the kids around?"

I let out a habitual heavy sigh and shook my head.

"Stuff like cleaning the practice room — honestly, at that age they don't do it unless you make them. The same kids did it every time, and the ones who didn't were never gonna, so I openly assigned it. …I yelled at them if they didn't listen, got mad — so yeah, some of them probably felt like it was unfair, and scared."

The me of now understood well enough the importance of dividing up roles, and the authority a person in charge of that division has to wield.

But the me of back then hadn't.

The me of back then was a punk kid whose flat-out command-mode tone and I'm the one who's right conviction sat on top of a feeling that of course it made sense for me — clearly better than the rest — to give the orders and run the show.

He was a clumsy, pitiful person who only knew intellectually the obvious truths — that the earth is round, that everything has a reverse side, and that not every color splits into just black and white.

"There was this one time — a day when we were all practicing together and doing a big cleanup — I think two of the younger kids showed up late. Everyone else had gotten there first and was busy practicing and cleaning, and these two came in late, and on top of that, came in carrying drinks."

"……."

"The second I saw it I snapped, got in their faces — right in front of the other kids, no less. Then it turns out those two had actually been the first to arrive at the practice room, one of the staff had asked them for urgent help, and they'd skipped their meal to go help out with company work. The drinks were bought for them by the staff."

The memory coming back made me so ashamed and mortified with myself that I dragged my hands down my face and kept going.

"So that's how it goes, all of it. Yeah, in the end I did get ostracized by those kids, and honestly there's plenty in what's written there I could push back on if I wanted to…. but I can't exactly turn around and claim I did nothing wrong either. That's what's mortifying."

Ji Suho listened to what I said and stayed silent.

Rereading the post as if turning something over, jotting something down with the pen, he soon held up an underlined sentence for me again and asked:

"Then what about this? Is this true?"

The sentence Ji Suho was pointing at was the one that had played the single most decisive role in shaping the current "perpetrator Kang Hajin" opinion online.

"That there's a friend who quit being a trainee because of you. Is this true?"

The company had been such a small, shabby place that guys who'd quit as trainees were more than plentiful.

But the second I saw that sentence, only one person came to mind.

—Hey, Kang Hajin! Let's go practice together.

Even though it was a face I hadn't thought of in more than a decade, not a single feature had blurred — and at how vividly it came back, I let out a hollow laugh and said:

"Yeah, exactly. This one — even I'd like to know."

Behind the image of him greeting me brightly, one memory always followed, without fail.

—From here on, we've all decided we're not practicing with you.

"Just how much must he have hated me, that after ostracizing me, he was the one who ended up quitting the company."

It felt like the moment to face a very old nightmare was drawing near.