he One Who Reaches for the Sun (2)

The moment we hit the top floor at speed, what was laid out in front of us this time was — again — a blue-black shrubbery wall and two doors.

"Doors?"

"Looks like we pick one of the two and go in."

Sure enough, the monitor set in the center flashed on.

〜〚Choose YOUR way〛〜

The first threshold on the path to your fate!

Trust your instincts!

Left? VS Right?

Coin flip right out of the gate? With no clue what the format was, I couldn't play a clean reaction or game the quest to pick the smarter option either.

'No audio, so they're probably just pulling the visuals rough.'

For something like this, just going with your gut saves you the headache.

"Which one you going for? I'm going right."

I made a quick call and turned to Doha, who furrowed his brow for a beat before asking,

"Do the two of us have to go through different doors?"

"Well, they didn't say otherwise. Shouldn't matter."

"Right, same. Feels safer to stick together at the start."

Is this a survival or something? I almost asked, and shut my mouth. It is a survival, right.

It's a TV show — they're not actually going to shoot us. I held back the joke and we opened the right-hand door.

And froze.

"Oh, dear god."

"……"

〈Each pick your own choices and escape the maze within the time limit! Benefits go to the fastest to escape, in order. Then — good luck!〉

These crazy bastards — they called it Miro, so they actually built a {maze}(#ffu1it1x9q68)?

---

"Hi, PD-nim."

"Ah, hi. Team Lead."

"Sorry for the early start. Have some of this, at least."

"Aigoo, thank you. You didn't have to."

Meanwhile, on Miro's fifth floor (behind that same fake wall Hajin and Doha had run into earlier), where all of this was being monitored.

Ji Suho, who'd made it into the production HQ with Assistant Manager Yun in tow, passed around the vitamin drinks they'd picked up on the way and read the room.

On monitors that let you watch multiple cameras at once, CCTV-style, you could see the trainees battling it out in their own ways inside Miro (not the company name — the actual maze!).

'They must've all been thrown, but they're adapting well.'

When Suho had first heard they'd be starting filming without giving the trainees any advance notice, he'd privately been a little worried. Couldn't help it. This was the trainees' first broadcast exposure — they had to be handled carefully.

Even so, this insane format had made it through sign-off entirely thanks to the all-in effort of the two people in front of him.

"First escape team's coming out. Get ready. Once the kids are out, mic them up and run the pre-shoot briefing."

"PD Kwon, I'll head up to run the MC's script read then."

"Yeah, yeah. The MC's got to be on standby by :30. Kids are coming out faster than I thought."

"I'll try to have him ready by :20. Taeil-ssi's an old pro anyway."

PD Kwon and Writer Ko.

The main PD-and-writer combo for this show. Of all the production companies they'd met with for the Miro survival, this was the team he'd trusted most.

'They were the last name on the list of recommended production companies Kang Hajin-ssi wrote up.'

The company was still new, so at first he'd been half-skeptical, but the founder was a PD who'd done a long stretch in a broadcaster's variety division before going independent, so the infrastructure was better than expected. Their portfolio to date wasn't bad either.

'Why didn't I know about a place like this, though?'

A place with this kind of potential had plenty of room to grow — and yet, from his first meeting with this production company right up till now, Suho had never once picked up any aura off the two of them.

'Stars aren't only in the entertainer bucket.'

It wasn't only entertainers — Suho could pick up the scent of 'star' on anyone headed for the big leagues. Getting in early with future star PDs like that, buying coffees and drinks by the dozen back in their rookie days — that had been a big part of building what people now called the 'Guardian Spirit of Miro.'

'The investor too… glad that worked out.'

Thinking of the top sponsor who'd made this crazy scale possible, Suho let out a sigh and looked at the monitors. Several trainee boys were battling it out, each looking for the answer in his own way. A wry smile came over Suho as he suddenly thought of the one, single condition the investor had put on the table.

'I'll have to talk with Hajin-ssi about that a bit more later.'

Even though he had over ten years on him, somehow Suho couldn't bring himself to drop the polite speech with Hajin. Out in public he still had to just call him Hajin, though — sigh. Muttering nonsense to himself, Suho dragged over the last remaining chair to settle in for a serious monitoring session.

"How's it looking? Our kids haven't had any broadcast exposure yet, so."

"Fun so far. Honestly, it's not really a segment we'd air as-is — I just got a little ambitious with the opening. But it's coming out better than I thought."

PD Kwon shifted slightly so Suho could see the monitors better. Across the several monitors, the trainees were trying to escape the massive-budget Miro garden, captured from every angle.

"Looks like these guys are in first."

—First!!!!!!!!!!!

The moment the flashy neon sign reading ☆EXIT☆ came into view, Dan Haru and Ju Eunchan tore past in a full sprint. And right behind them, having calculated every angle the follow-cameras would track, catching every single nearby camera with uncanny precision — Seo Taehyun came right after, flexing his broadcast experience for all it was worth.

Naturally that came with a furious tirade at the two younger ones who'd blown past every ounce of broadcast decorum and just gone flat-out.

—I said stop running!!!!!!!

Seo Taehyun's booming holler came through the headphones loud and clear.

Wait, they're not even mic'd — how are we picking that up? Watching the crew marvel at that, Suho got just the tiniest bit embarrassed.

"This side seems to be getting stuck… nothing hard about it, though."

At the angle PD Kwon pointed at, a fair number of the trainees had hit dead ends and were struggling.

Was the opening too brutal? PD Kwon was scratching his forehead with a pen when Ji Suho spat out the coffee he'd been drinking and stared hard at one of the monitors.

"……? Team Lead Ji, what—?"

Seeing Suho, choking on the coffee, dab at his mouth with a tissue, PD Kwon blinked wide, blank eyes.

And in that instant, a transmission came in from one of the assistant directors stationed at each spot for the sake of previewing the trainees' movements.

—S… Senior. Spot A2 here. That… trainee is climbing the wall.

"Huh?"

—He's climbing over the Miro wall… should we leave him? Do we step in…?

What is he talking about (well, no — more precisely, please tell me that isn't what I think it means) — PD Kwon checked the monitor again. He didn't need to hunt for where Spot A2 was — the shaky angle from the hidden camera director said it all.

—Hey, you got eyes on Kim Wonho?

—Not from here. Doha-hyung, you see him?

—I never even went up there.

"What kind of certified lunatics are these."

On screen, three grown boys had scaled a green wall that easily overshot their heads and were teetering along the top of it, balancing their way toward the exit.

While the camera scrambled to find people who'd vanished from view in a flash, the one out front — Lunatic No. 1, Hajin — spotted that same camera dead-on, locked eyes with it, and gave a small smile.

—To reach the sun, you go high first, right?

Then he leapt across to the next wall and dropped out of frame again. Normally something like this would be logged as a broadcast accident and cut wholesale from the final edit….

"Why would we step in. Hey — grab an ENG and go chase them, quick. Ceiling-mounted rig still rotating?"

—Yes! It's on.

"The other kids aren't escaping anytime soon anyway, gonna sit stuck another ten easy — put a second ENG on this."

—On it!

"Writer Yun, keep close tabs on them — we need those interviews later. This right here."

"Yes, I'll pass it to the interview writer."

Eyes bright like he'd just found something good, PD Kwon hit the intercom. The camera directors, writers, and PDs snapped into position at once. On another camera, Hajin popped his head up over the green wall, and Suho just blinked at the screen.

'What in the… what is that.'

So — the whole thing had gone like this.

---

Thirty minutes earlier.

Hajin (me) and Lee Doha, upon setting foot in the maze and getting a proper feel for how bad the situation was, decided we'd move together for now. In this kind of format, being alone was a guaranteed way to vanish from the edit, and two heads meant we'd think twice as hard, hopefully.

"Huh — Kangha-hyung?"

While we were at it, we ran into a guy who, with high probability, had 'gone missing from the edit while alone.' Kim Wonho, who'd used the break to violently bleach his hair blond.

"What are you doing?"

"So, they told me to spill my most honest secret, and I spilled — and the door won't open. I gave them everything I had."

"Watch how you phrase that."

Wearing the face of a man gloriously betrayed and glaring at the door, Kim Wonho complained in a way that wasn't like him. Doha, quietly scanning the perfectly square maze walls, then reached in and pressed a red button hidden inside the shrubbery.

Zzziiing—.

"I spilled five of my shameful, embarrassing secrets and this is nothing but a betrayal, huh?"

"Isn't having five of those in the first place the actual problem?"

"It said 'press the button.'"

At Lee Doha opening the door three seconds after arriving, Kim Wonho's face reached even greater heights of betrayal as he cried out. Wow — this is legit unreal. Grumbling and muttering, Kim Wonho just naturally joined up with us.

'Ah, right — that.'

Watching Kim Wonho and Lee Doha's backs as they walked ahead surveying the maze, something I'd forgotten came back to me.

'Reward panel.'

The reward from earlier, that Lee Doha had cut me off from checking.

Deciding this was the moment to actually check it, I opened the system window — and the alert I'd flagged as important, checked in red at the very top, unfurled in front of me.

title: Single Quest 03. 'Want to Be Special?' Description: The training staff isn't yet showing much interest in you, still a fresh chick of a trainee. Post an outstanding result in the month-end evaluation, make yourself stand out, and break into the special class! Quest complete. Success reward: Clues for tracking the regressions & companion recruitment Claim reward? (Select reward to claim) — Clues for tracking the regressions — Companion recruitment

Picking 1 in the middle of this pitch-dark maze would leave me a guy taking a visual-jam-flash to the face all by his lonesome — so I skipped that for now and hit 2. The problem-child alert window unfurled again.

'Lee Doha' (reaction rate 68.9%) and 'Kim Wonho' (reaction rate 92.3%) have 'reacted' to you. Based on your choice, you can recruit one of them as a companion. The reaction rate of the person not chosen will continue to accumulate, but the timing of the companion recruitment cannot be guaranteed. Companion recruitment status 2/??

When did these guys even react this much? Two-way choice — well, that's a nice problem to have.

I looked at the two in front of me.

"Oh, found it. Doha-hyung, isn't this it?"

"That's just a bug."

"Aack! Tell me that sooner!"

Kim Wonho, or Lee Doha.

Time to actually trust my instincts, for real.