Chapter 189

title: [holy shit y'all our sept debut is CONFIRMED] article's out seo taeil sunbaenim is producing insaneinsaneinsaneinsane - september???? fucking fast - damn FINALLY ㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠ - my savings mature in september. this is fate. - the schedule looks genuinely brutal...but i love it....

Kairos's debut had been officially announced.

The Destis — hearts hollowed out since Miro Maze wrapped — felt the thrill of finally having something to wait for and at the same time were a little startled by a debut schedule tighter than they'd expected.

handle: @malang2 name: Squishy Bear???? wait is this for real the boy group scene is dead empty rn anyway they could've just prepped this with some breathing room ㅠㅠ rushing for no reason polish drops, fans peace out in like two seconds i'm telling u ㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠ

Concerns like don't tell me these Miro bastards can't shake their scrappy small-agency habits and are winging it again (with about 30% troll bait dressed up as concern) came up too, but most Destis were happy enough with the simple fact that something had dropped.

And Miro, wanting to keep the fandom's momentum rolling even harder, went ahead and dumped a whole new piece of bait on top of it.

〈[K:LOG] EP.01 ☆Congrats Kairos's First Vlog Yay☆ 1st Kairos Bonding Meetup, Fully Unveiled ∥ K:RUS〉

Kairos's vlog (K:LOG for short) — which included Kang Hajin and Lee Doha's self-styled "escape room (?)" — had gone live.

Being the first piece of content to drop since Miro Maze was reason enough to be grateful; on top of that, seeing a vlog with the word "bonding" right there in the title, the Destis clicked the link the moment the official notice went up on SNS.

Kangha-D — one of Kang Hajin's named fans, jammed onto the hellish rush-hour Line 1 train home from work — was no exception.

Hey, Destis.

"Ah, no way. Fucking cute. …ah."

At Hajin's face showing up right at the top, Kangha-D let an exclamation slip before she could stop herself and paused the video.

Then, realizing she wasn't back in her own bedroom but in the middle of a Line 1 car packed with commuters heading home from work, she hastily shut her mouth and looked around. Fortunately, everyone had earphones in and was staring at their own phones like a zombie — no one seemed to care about her.

Reining in her rising excitement, Kangha-D went back to watching the K:LOG with a properly reverent mindset. To feel the impact of the opening again, she'd turned the volume up and rewound the playback bar to the very start.

Hey, Destis. …pfft.

When Hajin, riding in the passenger seat of the car, greeted the camera, a small laugh came from beside him. On screen, Hajin flinched at the reaction from the person beside him but doggedly carried on.

Right now it's 4:20 PM. I'm on my way to Ju Eunchan's place. Today happens to be the 1st Kairos Bonding Day. > Today, the Kairos Bonding Day Hajin himself put together!

Along with the caption, a group-chat screenshot flashed up alongside it as source material — labeled 〈Hajin's actual KakaoTalk original, as tipped off by Taehyun〉:

@ Kang Hajin - Purpose for Convening: We — now a fated community bound to eat out of the same pot for at least 7 years, hopefully 70. Before the brutal practice hell and debut prep begin, so we can meet at least one more time and…

And once the screenshot faded, one more line flashed on: 〈※Not a school newsletter. Not a company announcement post.※〉

"What… is this?"

Since Hajin had posted the message himself, Kangha-D had actually paused the video to read the whole thing — and now she couldn't get over how absurd the whole thing was.

She screenshotted the frame, then quickly opened Bluebird and composed a mention.

handle: @kang_HD name: Kangha-D seeking a kang hajin who can explain why an idol's announcement gives off school-principal energy. [photo] [photo]

"Excuse me, getting off! Sorry!"

"Ah!"

The moment she posted the mention, the train must have pulled into a station — people started disembarking. With a long way still to go, Kangha-D got shoved this way and that until she'd been pushed all the way to the door. She wanted to keep watching, but at this rate she'd end up motion-sick without ever properly taking any of it in.

Ugh…. should I just save it for home and watch over dinner?

While Kangha-D was still weighing it, a DM landed from Kang-Captain — her Bluebird friend and IRL friend both.

@ Kang-Captain Hadi-ya ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ y'all seen the guys' log?ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ @ me nooo ㅠㅠ still not yet ㅠㅠ on the c-ommute rn so tooo hectic thi-nking i'll ju-st watch late-r ㅠㅠㅠ

Squeezed among the crowd, Kangha-D managed to tap out her reply with some effort, and Kang-Captain fired back fast.

@ Kang-Captain watch it once you're home ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ i was watching mid-shift and almost fckin cackled in front of a customer ㅜㅜㅜ @ me ah ㅠㅠ i wanna watch too ㅠㅠㅠ is it fuuu-un? isn't it j-ust a vloooog? ah typos fuck @ Kang-Captain want me to spoil? @ me yea

A vlog was still a vlog, no matter what, right?

Picturing all the #MOOD-genre daily-vibes vlogs she'd ever seen, Kangha-D waited for Kang-Captain's response. Not long after, DMs came pouring in.

@ Kang-Captain so i'm about halfway through and the wall-jumpers are locked in a room banging on the door seo-ju-dan broke a frying pan cooking ㅠ siwoo hit an MT and has now sent 5 people to their graves in drinking games yugeon got dragged to a village festival by his grandpa and is currently breakdancing to a trot number @ me ? thought it was a vlog; @ Kang-Captain right?????ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ daily life = fucking sitcom nowㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ holy shit the wall-jumpers are calling siri now ㅠ fckin hilarious i swear

What in the world was going on with Kairos…?

In the end, Kangha-D couldn't hold out against her curiosity and found herself back on iTube.

---

Kairos's first vlog was quite a success.

title: [Kairos first vlog — reactions] tried to act normal, in the end you guys were miro through and through - is it that miro only picks kids like that, or that once picked they turn into kids like that - i almost passed out during their mafia session, immersion was fucking off the charts ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ - watching yesterday i almost cried laughing ㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠ title: [thread arguing kang hajin VS jung siwoo, who's better at drinking games] my vote for jung siwoo - can't you see the crazy in kang hajin's eyes? hajin wins by a landslide - hajin knows more games, siwoo plays them better, seems like ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ > 222 isn't this the answer ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ > 3 honestly hajin looked like he got carried a lot because the other kids were just so bad ㅠ handle: @tae_day name: Tae-Day save me a cherry over here is withering... [photo] [photo] title: [where can i see the kairos clips going around rn??] i was watching shorts on itube and it was too funny ㅠㅠㅠㅠ i wanna see the full version, is it just on itube???

Being the first official content to drop under the Kairos name since Miro Maze, fans reacted red-hot and threw the fandom into full overdrive. Even at a bold near-thirty-minute runtime, Destis rewatched scenes over and over, made memes, and went out recruiting.

Then, one day.

Someone watching the vlog for the Nth time and picking through it at nano-level detail put up a post on the community.

title: [y'all what does this look like????] the guys' vlog ends on a blackout, right? i was slowing the playback down to grab clip material doesn't this look like…some kind of barcode?? it's not just a black screen, i feel like there's something showing - ? what is that - omg yeah, i thought this was a bit weird too!!! kinda like some noise?? something whooshes past really fast - ???? - ??????????? - wasn't it just a vlog? - why are y'all like this i'm scared

The final scene of the over-thirty-minute vlog was the five members gathered at Eunchan's place waving at the camera with a bye~ and flopping straight down onto the covers. That was the last image before the video slowly blacked out, as if drifting off to sleep — and, apparently, if you slowed down the playback at that moment, something white would briefly flash in and out.

- normally i'd chalk this up to an editing-team mistake but this one's kinda interesting

At the prospect that a vlog they'd only been running back for entertainment might have a hidden Easter egg tucked inside, the Destis' eyes started to gleam. Since there was still a long stretch left before debut and nothing else to do anyway, people started pouring every last ounce of talent they had into cracking this three-second blackout.

title: [blackout, frame by frame] [photo] okay so this is definitely some kind of teaser?? looks like something was slipped in on purpose handle: @2uuu_gunn2 name: Reason Yugeon inverted the blackout noise looks like a barcode for sure a zigzag in white and black engagement: shares 576 · quotes 103 · hearts 431 title: [y'all i solved it insane long post warning] [photo] so i played around with the images that have come out so far and this isn't a barcode — it looks like piano keys there are white keys and black keys but a few keys are missing when we normally talk about the scale we say do-re-mi-fa-sol-la-ti-do right? but in music theory you swap it out into english and it comes out CDEFGABC right so i put the missing keys' notes together which gives you la-do-mi, meaning ACE but like now what??? then on a hunch i tried typing ACE onto the end of the guys' itube link and then.... sorry for baiting but this is an unlisted video so it's probably better if you all see it yourselves one thing's for sure — it's a debut teaser

Now that the answer had finally dropped, people rushed straight over to iTube.

Just as the post had said, when the end of Kairos's official iTube URL was changed to ACE, the screen reloaded to a specific video.

The video's title matched the hint word — ACE — and inside, a lavish metallic pendulum clock was ticking away.

What is this? Just a clock video?

After the clock had been ticking for a long stretch, the moment it struck 9:15, it shattered apart to the sound of a strange, eerie melody.

Where the clock had vanished, a single Ace of Spades card was left behind.

A moment later a gust of wind blew through, and where the card had been carried off, a short line of text was engraved.

The dazzling debut rollout had begun.