Special Mission! Shine Bright (4)
Special Mission! Shine Bright (4)
"So, uh…"
As Hajin closed in on him with his brow deeply furrowed, Seok's hands started to shake.
In reality, Hajin had taken his contacts out after his shower and was just squinting to get a proper look at Seok's face — but Seok had no way of knowing that, and only spiraled deeper into misreading it.
"If it's nothing important, hyung, I'm heading in."
"So, uh…"
—'Later' doesn't come around as easily as you'd think.
—So when the moment to say something arrives, it's best to say it right then. My grandma said so.
But he decided to work up the courage.
"I-I'm sorry!"
"……"
"I heard what the kids did to you. I don't think that about you at all. I — I want to practice properly with you and put together a great stage!"
Seok's brave voice rang out down the corridor. Haru, who'd been reading the room from between them, decided this wasn't a place he belonged and quietly slipped away.
Left in the corridor now: Hajin and Seok.
Seok was still staring at the ground, torn up by the shame and guilt of being the older one. Hajin sighed and turned his head toward him.
"Forget it, hyung, why are you the one apologizing. You didn't do anything wrong."
"…I'll try to talk the kids around. They're only doing it because they're scared. Complaining and blaming other people is the only thing they know how to do…. I used to be like that too."
"……"
"But practicing with you, I really thought a lot about it. It was humiliating. Once I realized I could — I could do more too, I got a little ambitious. I really want to do well in this survival."
Seok wasn't much with words, but he was doing his best to get his honest feelings across. Embarrassing as it was, the relief he'd felt hearing that Hajin was on his team and would be leading it — he couldn't even put it into words. And there was no way he was going to let the first mission fall apart like this!
Under Seok's pleading gaze, Hajin sighed a small, put-upon sigh and scratched his head, then nodded and spoke.
"…Okay, okay, hyung, you can stop. I wasn't actually planning to walk away from it either."
"S-so, we'll practice together, right?"
"Yeah, sure."
"Good! Then I'll call the kids in and talk to them! I'm the older one, so if I say something…!"
"No, no. That part, I've got."
At the words, Seok lit up with a grin and cried thank god, thank god over and over. What's with the 'thank god,' seriously. Muttering that quietly, Hajin stopped Seok — who was about to turn and go summon the kids that instant.
"That part, I've got. Hyung, you have their numbers, right?"
"Huh? Yeah, I do."
"Just contact them, one by one, exactly the way I tell you. Not all at once — one at a time, separately."
"Huh?"
Seok blinked. Not all together — one by one? Even at Seok's utterly-lost expression, Hajin only kept his flat one, pressing the towel down against his wet hair, and muttered to himself:
"Well, one less guy to threaten, at least."
"Huh? Th-threaten?"
"Hm? Ah, persuade. Persuade."
You — you definitely just said threaten…. Come on, I said persuade. Who should we call first? At Hajin's soft, gentle smile as he redirected the conversation, Seok's pupils shook wildly.
Here we have a trainee, Park Jaeyoung (18), who managed to kick off this Miro Maze with the mortifying score of 18th place (dead last).
He thought:
'Is this really okay?'
The other hyungs had cranked up the tough-guy act, posturing like thugs, and he'd gotten swept along into this 'Kang Hajin boycott' without really meaning to…. But the truth was, he didn't get what Hajin had done wrong in the first place.
'Even if he did do something, isn't it more important to just get through the mission first?'
On top of that — he'd originally been 19th; he'd almost missed his shot at this survival entirely. If Yoon Taehee hadn't walked away from being a trainee during the three-day break, Jaeyoung wouldn't even be here.
'What in the world are these hyungs thinking.'
In the group chat set up without Hajin, there'd been endless back-and-forth about what time to meet for practice tomorrow. But even that wouldn't come together — plans kept fizzling — and eventually a few of them stopped chiming in at all.
Jaeyoung genuinely wrestled with it. Is it really okay to just go on like this?
He thought back to the last thing Yoon Taehee, who he'd been close with since they were the same age, had said to him.
—I really thought I did well in this last month-end evaluation. But I was 18th. Honestly, kind of hit me hard.
—Watching the other hyungs, I was like, oh, so that's the kind of people who debut…. That's why I'm quitting.
—You though, hang in there to the end. Once the show airs, I'll be rooting for you. Oh — and this is just a personal thing, but….
He was pretty sure Taehee had said something else important after that. Jaeyoung was trying to dig it up when a message came in.
〈Seok-hyung ‖ jaeyoung sorry but can you come up to the lounge for a sec? there's a survival-related thing I have to give you, you're the only one I haven't gotten to yet〉
"Give me something?"
What's this? Jaeyoung, without a shred of suspicion, followed Seok's message and headed for the lounge in just a fleece. If he'd paused a beat to think it through, it might have struck him that Seok — who wasn't even the leader — handing things out was a little off. But the eighteen-year-old, about to make his first-ever TV appearance, just walked toward the softly lit sofa without a care.
"Seok-hyung, I'm — huh?"
"Hi, Jaeyoung."
And there, cocked to one side against the sofa, back sunk deep into the cushions, was Hajin.
"H-hyung, why are you here…"
"Yeah, I had something to say to you, so I asked Seok-hyung. Sit down for a sec."
He'd been on guard at first — but here, in this lounge with only the two of them, none of the others pressing him, at Hajin's warm voice softly gesturing to the seat next to him, Jaeyoung sat down on the sofa like he was under a spell. And before he could even sink back into the plush cushion, Hajin spoke.
"Jaeyoung-ah. Tomorrow at 10 a.m., I'll be practicing the title track in Practice Room A."
"…W-why are you telling me. We said we were practicing separately."
"Yeah, you will be. But hyung's a person too, and it's kind of a bummer to practice alone. So I called someone in."
Hajin opened a chat window on his phone and held it out in front of Jaeyoung. Still wondering why on earth Hajin was telling him any of this, Jaeyoung looked at the messages — and froze.
〈Hello, this is Kang Hajin, leader of Team B
Just following up on the practice-time question from earlier
We're planning to do it tomorrow at 10 a.m.,
so passing on the schedule!〉
〈Miro Maze_PD Hwang ‖ Hello ㅎㅎ〉
〈Miro Maze_PD Hwang ‖ Yes, we'll head over to match that time then〉
〈Miro Maze_Writer Yoon ‖ Tomorrow we'll just be grabbing rough sketches, so while you're practicing〉
〈Miro Maze_Writer Yoon ‖ we'll come by and just shoot the visuals, without getting in your way~〉
〈Yes, understood. I'll pass it on to the kids too〉
〈Thank you! Have a good evening〉
"Production asked the leaders earlier to set the first practice schedule before the midpoint check and let them know."
"Th-this is…"
"But since you guys aren't practicing with me anymore, looks like tomorrow it'll just be me filming alone. Aigoo, if it goes out on air that I'm the disgrace of a trainee who skipped the first practice, I'll get roasted."
"…N-no, hyung. Who — who said you could film tomorrow?"
"Are you ready to eat that hate, Jaeyoung?"
Faced with the prospect of going out on national broadcast as a lazy, delinquent trainee, Jaeyoung's face fell and he started sputtering.
"Ah, well. Since you guys said you weren't practicing with me…"
The look on Hajin's face as he took the phone back — 'no helping it now' — was full of sincere regret. Comments are brutal these days, huh. Poor kid.
And staring at that shameless expression, Jaeyoung remembered the last thing Taehee had said.
—Oh, and this is just a personal thing, but….
—If you end up on the same team as Kang Hajin-hyung, try really hard not to cross him. That hyung's fucking terrifying.
Jaeyoung sucked in a breath without thinking. Something had gone seriously wrong here!
Hajin, watching Park Jaeyoung with a serene expression, was thinking:
'About time to toss the treat.'
Watching the pupils of the lamb (Park Jaeyoung) in front of him shake forty times a second, Hajin quietly slid his phone back into the pouch of his hoodie.
Then, for Park Jaeyoung, still torn between a future of getting hate on air and a present of being called a traitor right now, he cracked open a sweet little escape hatch.
"For the record — Seok-hyung and four others are all coming to practice tomorrow."
"……!"
He'd given him accomplices.
'Betraying alone is scary, but once there's a group, courage kicks in.'
That's how people's minds work. It wasn't like I'd done anything all that terrible to these guys in the first place. Anyone could see it was Han Seongwoo and a couple of his close ones setting the mood, and the rest just got dragged along, unable to push back — loyalty wasn't going to hold up there.
"For the record, in my interview, I'm planning to say that the friends who didn't show up tomorrow were extremely, extremely uncooperative with practice. In surveys like this, production usually leans on the leaders to help build character narratives, you know that, right?"
"……"
"I heard you guys were talking about maybe practicing around 2 tomorrow? Midpoint eval is at 7, which means from 5 you'll be prepping for filming, and since you can't just run off to shower before shooting… so what, maybe an hour of practice?"
So all he had to do was sit them down one at a time and quietly point out that their side was a cliff—
"Wow, so you're planning to practice one hour and then get evaluated by Seo Taeil-sunbaenim. That's some real gu—"
"H-hyung!"
"Yes, Jaeyoung."
"I — I'll come to practice tomorrow. I'll be there from 9:30 to warm up."
'And they come running to their own safety on their own — that's how people are.'
Staring at Park Jaeyoung, gone ashen as he looked at him, Hajin smiled sweetly.
"Yeah? You will?"
"Yes, yes. Honestly, I didn't even want to do this in the first place. I'm 18th. I need to do well."
Playing up his own desperation and urgency on his own initiative, Park Jaeyoung nodded.
"All right then. See you tomorrow."
"Yes!"
"Go get some sleep, you must be beat today. Sleep late and your face gets puffy."
"Yes!"
At the benevolent shoulder-pat and the gesture to run along, the kid, now stiff with discipline, hurried out of the lounge.
The System feels utter disillusionment at how conniving humans are! Everyone is so mean!Watching guys flip their stance as easily as flipping a hand, the System, thoroughly outraged, chattered on. Hajin savored the hot chocolate he'd made ahead of time and answered.
"Let it go, they're kids."
He pulled out his phone again, texted Seok to bring the next one, then briefly shut his tired eyes. Honestly, at first, his plan had been to think fine, you're all screwed, and actually shoot alone.
—…I'll try to talk the kids around. They're only doing it because they're scared. Complaining and blaming other people is the only thing they know how to do…. I used to be like that too.
—But practicing with you, I really thought a lot about it. It was humiliating. Once I realized I — I could do more too, I got a little ambitious. The other kids can change too.
Hajin thought back to the conversation he'd just had with Seok. And, hit by an old memory rising up, he sank into a tangle of feelings for a moment.
"…This damn meddling streak of mine, honestly."
Hajin knocked back the last of the hot chocolate in one go. Footsteps sounded from far down the hallway.
"Whatever. Who's next."
Five or so of them showing up counts as a win. This one I'll threaten kindly. Making a bizarre resolution, Hajin clasped his hands together.
And the next day.
The trainees of Team B found themselves in a very awkward situation.
"…Uh, hyung?"
"Ah, ahem."
"You too?"
At 9:30 a.m., Park Jaeyoung, who'd stepped cautiously into the practice room right on the dot of his promised time with Hajin, was floored.
"What the — why are so many of you here?"
Team B's first practice.
"All but one showed up?"
Full attendance minus one!