The Most Effective Way to Defuse a Bomb (7)

Head of Department Son Hyunggu was very late catching on to the strange mood that had been drifting through the company lately.

The feeling that every piece of information was moving in a wide arc around him, staying out of his reach. That he was missing something absolutely critical.

'On top of already having a rough time — what the hell is going on?'

Only recently had he noticed that his plant's father — the man handling his money — and the investors around him had started ducking his calls.

'And that infuriating Cherry brat is back too… tch, nothing ever goes easy.'

But the Head of Department, dulled by inertia, didn't notice that those strange signs were the opening thread of his whole future coming undone.

It started with the plant.

"Pulling the investment? What's this all of a sudden?"

"How would I know. You never actually debut me like I asked and just keep whining about money — guess dad finally got sick of it."

"It's coming any day now, I told you. You need supporting players to debut alongside, right?"

"You think that money was so you could launch my supporting cast? You were supposed to be launching me — not the other kids."

"……"

"Can't even properly get rid of one Seo Taehyun."

The plant had turned on him overnight.

Losing the biggest investor in his side project, the Head of Department got frantic. He'd already set too many things in motion for a company of his own, without thinking it through. To clean up all of that, this venture had to move forward, one way or another.

'Damn it! If they hadn't yanked Upia off me, at least that would've floated me for a while.'

Thinking of the Upia kids who'd been pulled from his portfolio last year, the Head of Department felt the pressure mount. He missed the life he'd been living — using Upia bookings as leverage for meals, money, favors. Even skimming company funds bit by bit was starting to hit its limit.

'At this point I have to lock down Ju Eunchan or Dan Haru — no matter what. Or at least that Seo Taehyun brat—'

Just as the Head of Department finished prepping his 'debut' leverage against the trainees this time around, his phone buzzed — belatedly. While his mind had been elsewhere, missed calls and texts had piled up in a mountain. Instinctively, a chill ran down his spine — something was off.

To find out what was happening, he tapped the messenger thread from the most recent sender. Someone he'd been running like an errand boy for their side scheming.

〈hyungnim we've got a huge problem Miro's next-group article dropped and investors are calling us it's chaos as soon as you see this call back quick…〉

'Miro's next group? An article dropped?'

Made no sense. There was no way Miro was running a next-group article without him knowing. And the next group was going to come out anyway, so what was there to blow up about—

〈Miro launches next-generation boy-idol debut survival… H2 debut in sight〉

〈Boys of the World's Seo Taehyun heads to Miro's survival… another Cherry Boy boom incoming?〉

〈Upia's Seo Taeil joins Miro's next survival as producer… "lots of promising kids," he says〉

The further he read, the louder the alarms went off in the Head of Department's head.

Then the office phone — the one that had been quiet for once — rang.

"…Hello."

—Come up.

The CEO. Something was going seriously, seriously wrong.

---

How to nail the Head of Department.

'For starters, going to the press was out.'

Media outlets went after public figures whose reputations mattered. A private citizen who wasn't even an entertainment CEO — what were they supposed to do with that?

'Sue him for fraud?'

An idol trainee getting tangled up in that kind of ugliness before debut had zero upside. Guilty or not, the best move was to make sure a story like that didn't turn up even two layers deep in the related searches.

'…Just crack his skull open and regress?'

Would be pretty satisfying, but cracking someone's skull wasn't that easy… and it wasn't a root fix. Rejected.

So how could he actually be nailed? The answer was simple.

'What if I just didn't do it?'

A bloodbath tore through Miro.

I scattered every scrap of evidence I'd gathered so far, each to just the right place. First target: Ji Suho. Thanks to Ji Suho, who took the evidence I'd handed him and marched it straight to the CEO, the CEO went on a raging warpath, foaming at the mouth.

Trainee poaching, plus the whole trail of company money he'd been chewing through under the guise of business entertaining — with all of that out in the open, the Head of Department got hit first with an embezzlement suit from the company itself.

Next: the press.

First, Miro made a huge, splashy announcement about the next survival.

Upia's Seo Taeil and Boys of the World's Seo Taehyun — the show's faces — got worked to the hilt. Along the way, I let just enough info about Miro's trainees slip out, and quietly showed pictures with the Head of Department entirely excluded — from there the quick-footed investment firms circulated the news on their own.

'Word is Miro's Head of Department Son is a kite with its string cut.'

At the right moment, I passed a few files to outlets that specialized in social-issue exposés. Topic: 〈Entertainment agencies' abuse of trainees — are we really okay with this?〉

The tips were anonymous, subjects carefully masked, but for anyone in the industry, plenty of hints were left to point out who the 'abuser' was.

In the middle of all this, an unexpected stroke of luck also landed in my lap.

〈Former Project W member Ato: "I was a victim too" — reveals abuse〉

〈"We have to prevent another Prep scandal"… Ato speaks up〉

The 'real victim' — someone who'd been debuted through the Head of Department's line and then run ragged on nothing but events and overseas schedules until the group fell apart — had shouldered the responsibility and stepped forward.

'Sounds like his side was preparing a lawsuit anyway and the timing just happened to line up, though.'

Had Ato sued the Head of Department in an earlier life too? I couldn't quite remember.

Once the spark caught, the rest burned on its own. Kicked out of Miro, the Head of Department became an enormous debtor overnight. Days spent getting questioned over embezzlement, nights spent taking calls from debt collectors.

'Too much going on — I won't have time to worry about who debuts or who regresses for a while.'

A few company staff got let go too. Miro tended to hold onto its people, but the CEO must have decided this case warranted it. Which had Ji Suho suddenly scrambling to line up the next survival and find replacement staff at the same time — 24 hours in a day clearly weren't going to cut it for him. That, however, was for the working man to figure out.

"But seriously, where the hell did that Seo Taehyun brat go."

He was supposed to be practicing in one of the private rooms. Just in case, I wandered near the A-rooms the special-class kids used exclusively. And I couldn't stroll around much longer either — my next class was starting soon!

"Oh,"

"Ah, sorry—?"

Too locked in on hunting Taehyun down, I didn't see the guy coming toward the practice rooms and walked right into him.

Normally when I bumped into someone like that, the other person went flying — so I'd reflexively started apologizing first. But this time, the one who bounced off was me.

'…What is this, a bear?'

Hadn't experienced anything like this since middle school, so I was blinking in disbelief when I finally focused on the face — a man taller than me (and I'm not short), looking down at me with a sheepish expression as he ducked his head.

"…I apologize."

"Ah… no, I didn't see you either."

I threw out a let's-call-it-even-and-move-on kind of line, and the man looked at me for a beat, then, seemingly acknowledging it, gave a small nod and passed me by. Never seen him before, so probably a special-class kid.

If the special-class kids I hadn't met yet were all built like that, was I basically done for on the debut front?

"Um."

"……?"

Marveling to myself, I heard the guy — standing at the practice-room door now — call over out of nowhere.

"Are you Kang Hajin, by any chance?"

"……? Yeah. I'm Kang Hajin."

"Ah."

"You know me?"

What, why does he know me?

"Taehyun's probably up at the rooftop garden. Said he was stepping out for a quick break earlier."

"Ah. Thanks. But how did you know I was looking for Seo Taehyun…?"

"He said if a dark-haired hyung with scary eyes came looking for him, to send him up there…"

Seo Taehyun, this little shit, seriously.

"Anyway, thanks. Practice well."

I set off fast, planning to go straight up there and give Seo Taehyun a knuckle to the head.

That the bear-shaped guy stood there watching me go for a long while after — that, I only learned much later.

---

Around that same time, Seo Taehyun — sitting alone in the rooftop garden — was thoroughly steeped in melancholy.

"What kind of life is this."

His life had flipped overnight. That all of this had happened in only a week was hard to believe.

The feeling was entirely good — and, somehow, also not.

"What're you doing."

"……"

"Sighing like that isn't going to make the ground cave in. Go bigger, punk."

Taehyun didn't bother turning his head. He didn't need to see the face to know it was Hajin.

"Shouldn't you be telling me not to sigh, not to sigh bigger?"

"Why would I? Sighing's good for you. There's even an article that says the bigger you sigh, the healthier it is."

"Hyung, you're seriously weird."

"Thanks. I'll take that as a compliment."

Hajin fired the response back easy as anything and dropped into the seat beside him, and Taehyun quietly scooted over to make room. And then this thought hit him again:

'A hyung he'd known for barely a week.'

Like they'd known each other for years — Hajin had a knack for putting people at ease. Weird as it was, unfiltered, easy words that Taehyun didn't usually let past his teeth kept tumbling out around him without a second thought.

Like right now.

"What, come to catch me? Worried I'd run again?"

At that, Hajin turned a face on Taehyun that read utter reproach. 'You seriously have the nerve to say that out loud, kid?' was written all over it — and Taehyun genuinely (a little) flinched.

"Taehyun-ah."

"……"

"If you're going to bolt, bolt within the metro area."

"…I'll try."

"Another Gangwon-do trip and you're dead. Seriously."

You know how much I dropped on train tickets that day? Hajin ground his teeth remembering the dizzying trip to Gangwon-do. (The tickets, of course, had been paid for by the rich Ju Eunchan.)

Anyway, Hajin had come looking for Taehyun for a specific reason.

Companion 'Seo Taehyun's current state is… "Rather Depressed.

That red light that had been up on the alert window since morning — wouldn't go away!

'And why is he "rather depressed" in the first place?'

Head of Department handled — check. Idol-trainee status restored — check. Even landed a giant splashy headline as the survival's headliner, buzz all over the communities lately. So why the hell was he depressed? And I mean — a red light, just for a kid being a little bummed? People get bummed sometimes, that's life!

At the end of that runaway chain of thought, Hajin made up his mind. He'd just ask the guy directly!

"So what is it."

"Wh-what."

"Why are you bummed?"

"Hyung, are you actually psychic?"

At the head-on question, Taehyun looked up at him with a face bordering on horror. Hajin, without another word, just settled into the spot Taehyun had cleared for him and leaned back against the bench with an expression that said, out with it.

And Taehyun kind of liked Hajin's 'how bad could it be' attitude. It was as if the weight of the feelings he was carrying dropped by exactly that amount.

"Just, kind of, you know."

"Get to the point."

"Cha Minseok. Because of Cha Minseok."

"That lunatic — what about him."

"…I was wondering if I should apologize to him."

Taehyun said it with a distinctly uncomfortable face, dropping his head. He'd been thinking about it the whole way back to Seoul.

"Honestly, I went on Boys of the World because of him. He was supposed to go on originally, but his parents were against it."

"And?"

"I just — I knew. That he was struggling because of his parents, anxious about getting bumped from Enderway's debut lineup, that his back injury was killing him — all of it."

"……"

"And it's true I went and made a scene at him last time. So I was wondering if I should say sorry, or…"

The way his voice trailed off softer toward the end was purely because he didn't want to. Having to face Minseok again was uncomfortable enough — actually apologizing out of his own mouth was worse.

Still, as someone who'd stepped into the entertainment world relatively early, Taehyun kept circling back to the thought that — for the sake of how his career would go from here, and various other practical upsides — patching things up with Minseok might really be the wiser move—

"What kind of bullshit is this?"

"Huh?"

"What are you sorry to that lunatic for? Going to tell him you're sorry he went crazy so gracefully?"

"No, but still. He did let me off for the scene I caused…"

"By that logic you should feel sorrier to me than to him. I went all the way to Gangwon-do to talk you down."

"Ah, that's true."

"So say thanks to me."

"Huh? Uh — thanks."

"Good. Do better from here on, kid."

"Uh, uh…"

Wait. Something felt off. Taehyun blinked his big eyes.