Daylight (1)

"Good, well prepped. Honestly, I'd been really worried about Team B."

Seo Taeil's satisfied clap rang out across the practice room. The Feather-class trainees, having just wrapped the midpoint check, still managed to shout thank you! through their panting. The cameras zoomed in on Hajin, standing at the center of them. Hajin — face faintly scrunched, catching his breath fast — went straight onto the monitors.

"Kyungho, though — you'll need more practice. You're falling behind on your own out there."

"…Yes, sir!"

"Anyway, overall the energy's really good. Maybe because you're young — everyone's got fight in them."

"Thank you!"

Unaware that said 'fight' was discipline hammered in by a certain someone's blood-and-tearless threats, Taeil smiled and flipped open the trainee profile file in his hand.

"Who's leader here? Hajin. Hajin, you set the mood well."

At the string of compliments, Hajin shook his head humbly and smiled.

"The guys followed my lead well."

"Come on, too humble gets annoying."

"Guess they all recognized my exceptional leadership."

"Whoa — that's annoying in a whole new way."

At the steady back-and-forth, laughter leaked out even among the production crew filming. Watching the warm mood, Hajin was certain.

'Solid edit locked in.'

In a survival show where narrative matters, an underdog uprising is always welcome. Especially when it's a program Voluntary-Resignation is producing.

'A comparable top-ranker to stack against would be the cherry on top.'

Hoping the top-tier A team, being checked in another practice room right about now, wasn't landing rave reviews (guys, sorry, but tank it a little for me), Hajin let out a relieved smile.

"But Hajin."

"……?"

"You didn't reach for it again this time either?"

At Taeil's unexpected question — glancing meaningfully back and forth between the part-division sheet and Hajin — Hajin flinched. No, why is this guy singling me out again? And this time, unlike last, he hadn't methodically cut his own parts either.

'I'm on the killing part and center on the dance break — where the hell else am I supposed to reach?'

"The part division… I worked it out together with my teammates. If there's an individual-stage opportunity next time, I'll reach for more then."

At the answer Hajin had carefully worked out, Taeil's eyebrow twitched again. What now, old man. What answer are you fishing for.

While Hajin — starting to get frustrated — managed his expression, Taeil, wearing a hmm, thinking look, soon nodded.

"Yeah, fair enough. Anyway, great work, everyone — and I'll be looking forward to the mentor evaluation."

"Yes! Thank you."

As Taeil made a motion to wrap and stand, PD Kwon nodded. Alright, cutting the shot~ we'll clap the slate. At that, the camera directors all set their cameras down in the middle of the practice room in unison.

"Uh, where's Sunjae?"

"PD Yun, he stepped out earlier to settle up for dinner at the restaurant."

"Ah, right, he's over there. Then… Hajin, sorry, could you clap once for us?"

"Ah, yes."

Learning that the AD who should've been clapping the slate was, of all times, off-site handling the next item on the schedule, PD Kwon asked Hajin. He hadn't meant anything by it. Kang Hajin just happened to be standing at the very center of the practice room, right where all the cameras were pointed.

At PD Kwon's call, Hajin — snapping to (on instinct) — raised his hand in the center.

"Slating—!"

"……."

"March 2nd, 8:42 p.m., Team B midpoint check, one two three!"

"……?"

Clap—!

A big, precise clap rang out — exactly the kind that would land cleanly on every rolling camera and mic. And in the wake of it, an inexplicable déjà vu left a strange stillness in the practice room.

And the déjà vu was caught first by the guy who'd done the clap.

'Ah, shit, without even thinking.'

Slated it way too smoothly, way too naturally!

From a trainee who was just supposed to stand in the middle and clap something out — that ringing, crisp projection. At that, Seo Taeil on his way out of the practice room, PD Kwon giving directions for the next shot, and the trainees flapping their sweat-soaked T-shirts all blinked and stared at Hajin.

In that split second — one, maybe two — Hajin thought:

'That's going in the behind-the-scenes reel, no question.'

He could see, in real time, PD Kwon's expression shifting into interest as she watched him! Hajin immediately let out a sheepish laugh, put on an awkward voice, and scratched his shoulder.

"Uh, the PD did it like that last time, so. …Was that not it?"

Watching the trainee who'd been answering so confidently a moment ago now grinning sheepishly wide enough to show his molars, PD Kwon cracked up first, and laughter finally rolled through the practice room again. Instinctively sensing a good moment, six cameras kept working Hajin from every angle.

Watching Hajin — the more she looked, the better the edit points he was making — PD Kwon shrugged and said,

"Ahaha, what — Hajin, if you get eliminated from the survival, you should just come be our AD~! You clap a slate exactly the way I like it."

Of course he did. It was the slate he'd learned with her shins bruising his.

'Telling an idol candidate to bomb out of survival and come be a PD — is that an insult or a compliment.'

Hajin shut up and smiled at his (former) workplace superior — (current) sky-high main PD — who was trying to get him re-employed (literally re-employed).

Naturally, right through to the end, he never once said yes, even as a joke.

---

After the midpoint check wrapped, the Feather-class trainees headed up to the dorm floor to work off their exhaustion however they wanted. Maybe because they'd pulled a decent review out of Seo Taeil, the awkward, embarrassed mood from the whole earlier incident was long gone.

And when someone spotted Kyungho walking a little ahead, everyone brought up the topic they'd all been wondering about.

"Yo, so why'd that hyung get reborn?"

"Dunno. Had a sudden change of heart."

When Hajin had brought Kyungho back after lunch, the Team B trainees hadn't been able to hide their bewilderment. Yesterday's Shin Kyungho, running around like a thug, and this Shin Kyungho now bowing his head with a polite apology in front of them — they couldn't believe they were the same person.

I mean, sure, we flipped our own stance in a day too, like a pancake on a griddle — but that hyung wasn't the type who could pull off a flip on this scale, was he? And amid this hard-to-swallow, astonishing situation, plausible theories began to bloom.

"You guys don't know? Seok-hyung apparently begged Hajin-hyung. To forgive Kyungho-hyung. Said as the older one, it was on him for not keeping him in line."

"Nah, they went at it one-on-one and Shin Kyungho lost. I saw Hajin-hyung heading out to find him at lunch."

"Both — but not one-on-one, he went to talk him around. I saw the two of them in the corner of the cafeteria earlier. Kyungho-hyung looked like he was crying, and Hajin-hyung was patting him, going I get it, I get it."

"Yeah, I saw it too. Hyung pulled him in and hugged him and everything."

Inside the whispered buzz, the touching legend (the misunderstanding) only grew. None of them dreamed, in that gentle scene, that Hajin's cold-blooded threat — get your ass up to the practice room right now if you don't want to die — had been buried underneath it.

And these innocent boys' respect for Hajin — who'd magnanimously forgiven the mutiny, successfully led the practice, and salvaged the first mission they'd already written off — started to swell up!

"Wow…. Is that hyung actually a saint, at that point? Honestly, a younger guy talking back to him right in his face like that yesterday."

"Honestly, we… were all about to be royally screwed too, and Hajin-hyung just handed us a second chance, seriously."

These conscientious boys then moved right into self-reflection. Looking back, they realized how weak and complacent they'd been, and that if it hadn't been for Hajin, they'd have ended up target practice for hate commenters!

And Park Jaeyoung, who'd been listening to all of it, said:

"…Ah, I heard one thing about that hyung too. From Taehee."

"Taehee? What'd he say?"

Every eye landed on Jaeyoung. Jaeyoung, on the receiving end of all those stares, cast his own toward Hajin — apparently just done showering, ambling by in the distance with a towel thrown loosely over his head.

"…He said that hyung's fucking terrifying, so don't cross him."

"Ah."

At that one line, everyone nodded like it all made sense.

…Let's not cross him. A precious lesson etched into bone.

---

"Guess we've got off to a decent start."

Meanwhile, Hajin — with no way of knowing that assorted legends about him were budding away — was strolling along the outdoor walking path (this office building actually had one) on the dorm floor, having passed straight by the source of his controversy. Partly to dry his hair (he liked letting it dry in natural air), partly to think.

Miro Maze's early schedule, which Hajin had organized on his phone, went roughly like this:

〈First shoot: opening (program overview), mission explanation, song reveal

Midpoint check [today]

Mentor evaluation [day after tomorrow]

Title-track recording

Title-track performance-video shoot〉

Which meant, in short—

'From today on, I'm dead.'

They'd said first air was in May, so they'd probably knock out two more missions before then. It was March now, so calling the coming month dead was the faster read. From his AD grind days, or his shut-in-at-an-agency days, he remembered this stretch being the brutal one both times. Wouldn't be different for a contestant.

"If I can just get past the mentor evaluation."

Things seemed to be flowing more or less the way he'd predicted, but something nagged. What Taeil had said earlier kept snagging on some corner of his mind.

Reach for it? Right now he was running solo on leader duty and the killing part and the dance-break center — what more was he supposed to reach for.

"…There's, there's got to be something behind that…."

"Excuse me."

"Fuck, jesus, who are you!?"

"Ah, sorry."

Just as he was about to sink into thought, a huge shadow popped up next to him — Hajin nearly jumped out of his skin. And the guy on the receiving end of that reaction, just as startled, flailed his long arms and stepped back.

"Lee Doha?"

"Sorry, I've been calling you a while, but you didn't answer."

Bundled head to toe in all black, with a black scarf wound around his neck, Lee Doha stood there stiffly. Wearing a scarf in March?

'Wow, honest-to-god a winter bear.'

If this guy debuted, his reality-show captions would absolutely come with a little bear icon. That was an industry lifer's instinct talking.

"I was out on a walk too."

"Bundled up like that?"

"…I get cold easily."

Lee Doha showed him the paper notebook in his hand, as if to prove it. Lyric sketches, probably — countless words and phrases were pressed into the paper in pen all over, like doodles. Ah, right. This guy's a genius artist. At the fact rising back up, Hajin nodded.

"Wait — you write on paper too?"

"I have to write it like this, or nothing comes out freely."

"Isn't it hard to find things later?"

"Ah. Anything I finish, I clean up and move to my laptop later. Cloud backup too."

"…Backup. Backup's important. Backup."

He suddenly flashed on a past life — someone in the office letting out a stunned ah, and in the same instant, every last person hammering Ctrl+S. Hajin quietly rubbed a hand down the goosebumps rising on his forearm.

'Hang on. Should I ask this guy?'

There wasn't really anything the two of them had to discuss, so he'd been about to suggest they head back in — but Hajin looked Doha over quietly. Still just a rookie, sure, but Lee Doha was a guy who could produce. Maybe Lee Doha could tell what Seo Taeil had meant?

"Hey, Doha-ya. Can I ask you something?"

"Yeah. Ask."

"'You didn't reach for it,' meaning… what do you think it means? Something Seo Taeil-sunbaenim said to me at the midpoint check earlier."

It was a little embarrassing to bring this up to the resident genius, but Hajin was actually starting to get frustrated. Maybe because Doha wasn't on his team, wasn't a younger brat — once he started talking, the rest spilled out easily.

"Feels like it's a follow-on from what he said at the last month-end evaluation…. But this time I've got tons of parts. I sing the front of the killing part, I'm center on the dance break, I've got an ad-lib in the third verse."

"……."

"So I'm wondering what 'didn't reach for it' is supposed to mean. You produce too, so I figured maybe something looked different from your angle."

Doha stared at Hajin as he spilled his worry. The most important thing when someone brings you a problem is listening, they say — but at Doha genuinely just listening, Hajin frowned with a what-are-you-staring-at look and tapped Doha's forearm. Hey. I asked what you think.

And after thinking a while longer, Doha carefully opened his mouth.

"…Can I be honest?"

"……? Obviously. Say whatever."

Wondering what he was building up to, Hajin folded his arms — and Doha said,

"If I were the producer, those parts you just said? I'd never have given them to you."

"…Why?"

"They don't suit you."

"What, you punk?"

Slapped across the face verbally, Hajin blinked twice.