Chapter 71

Team Lead Ji Suho — the man they called "Miro's Guardian Spirit" — stepped into a restaurant in Seoul.

"Welcome. Do you have a reservation?"

"Yes, under Ji Suho."

"I'll show you to your room."

The food here was solid, but what really made the place useful was that every table sat in its own private room — he came here often for important meetings.

Strictly speaking, today wasn't a work meeting. But the conversation they were about to have needed more discretion than any meeting he'd sat in on, so he'd picked this spot.

"Got here a bit early."

He checked the time — about thirty minutes till the appointment.

Unwilling to let even that short scrap of time go to waste, he pulled his tablet out of his bag — to monitor the reactions and viewer voting rate for the Miro Maze performance videos that had gone up the previous evening.

When he opened iTube, the Miro Maze A-team performance video he'd fallen asleep watching last night started playing automatically.

Worried the sound might carry, Ji Suho paused the video and quickly checked the view count and comments.

source: iTube title: MIRO MAZE ∥ Daylight (日光) (Prod. Seo Taeil) - A-team Performance Video 498,125 views · 2,965 comments (Top) - seo taehyun timeline i'm making for my own use: 0:03 hair-flip = paradise, 0:21 wistful taehyun, 0:54 falsetto is INSANE ㅠㅠㅠ ...see more - seo taeil makes damn good songs - ♥gaon arts uni applied music 2nd-in-class singing sculpture jung siwoo let's debut♥ - hafuckhereigoagainhavingtogamblemylifeonsomeoneelseslife - taehyunie i'm so proud of you - eunchan-ah, it's noona, you may not know me but from the moment noona first saw you today, i've decided to mobilize my bank account and every remaining minute of my life to cheer on your debut ...see more

For a single day's worth of traction, the numbers were nothing to sneeze at.

In fact, hadn't PR sent over screenshots, mentioning that all kinds of related posts were going up on SNS and community sites?

title: HOT! ║ [Just Dropped: Miro's Next Boy-Idol Survival Performance Videos] A-team https://itu.be/eHdmsrj B-team https://itu.be/tjDMghkdwl +lyrics, composition, and arrangement all done by upia's seo taeil +5/3 9pm first broadcast +voting has started >> voting link - ? the view-count trend is going nuts - a-team's visual troika is INSANE ㄷㄷ - which team's your pick? A-team VS B-team > a-team...visuals and skill both otherworldly > 2 > 333 > eh i think B is better! > 22 b-team looks more polished - does seo taehyun not age?? like at all????? > shut up cus i ate up all his years for him > back off already or you'll give yourself indigestion - guys please tell me who's singing the first line for b-team ㅠㅠ? just consider it saving a life > kang hajin 182cm vocal + B-team leader (yes he's the black-hoodie oppa) > no way, THAT cat?? > what did they even do to that profile pic > wtf with that face he's a main vocal AND dance break center???? > he's not the main vocal... apparently the main vocal is some kid called gong seok - are seo taeil and seo taehyun related? > that came up back in boys of the world too but i don't think anything was ever confirmed? > nono this time during an interview he said they share the same clan so they're really distant relatives > wait for real? ㅋㅋㅋㅋ > but they're so far apart on the family tree they're basically strangers... yeah and turns out seo taehyun is technically the higher generation, they found out and got awkward so lately they barely even greet each other when they cross paths ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ > lmaoㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ > oh mannㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ - has seo taeil decided to just do producing from now on... doesn't look like he's gonna do any more upia stuff. i mean honestly producing pays better ㅋㅋㅋ better than being oldpia... > uh the 12th anniversary concert got announced last week~? > know-nothing beat it back to where you came from and stop shitting up other people's party

'The first teaser… this coming Wednesday, wasn't it?'

With the first broadcast now just three-odd weeks away, Ji Suho jotted down feedback for PR in his tablet notes.

It was clearly generating buzz — even in that short window, calls were coming in real-time from reporters and industry contacts.

The industry didn't take weekends off to begin with, but moments like this really drove home what a rough place it was.

"Urgent calls, I can check and call back later…."

Even this much was only manageable because he'd handed Enderway — his original assignment — off to a hoobae before Miro Maze got started.

If Hajin hadn't come in with that survival-show proposal and taken down Department Head Son Hyunggu, Ji Suho would still be Enderway's assigned manager right about now.

Come to think of it, in the mere three months since he'd first met Hajin, an awful lot had changed.

'Kind of a waste sometimes, honestly. He'd have made a damn good agency staffer.'

Three months of watching had taught Suho one thing: Hajin loved 'the work' far more than he realized himself.

How to put it — when Hajin was working, his eyes lit up. You could see the life spilling out of him, the energy boiling up, just from standing beside him.

'Like he genuinely loves this line of work?'

Otherwise there was no way he'd be pulling all-nighters in the practice room every night and still finding the energy to check on the other trainees and look out for them.

Suho recalled what the staff who'd monitored Hajin's team over the two missions had said.

—Wherever Hajin is, it's really loud.

—The other teams have their little rivalries, everyone has different friend groups, the atmosphere gets a bit heavy… but wherever Hajin is, none of that.

—He really takes care of everyone so no one gets left out. If someone's quiet, he starts a conversation; if someone's eating alone, he joins them; if someone's slow at choreo, he pulls them aside and teaches them.

—His people skills are killer! He'd even memorized all the camera crew's names. You can tell he's spent a lot of time in group settings.

Talk had already been quietly circulating among the staff that Hajin might end up leading the next debut group.

—Hajin really doesn't seem like a twenty-year-old.

Well, of course.

He wasn't your ordinary twenty-year-old.

'He said he came back… from the future.'

Another one of his secrets, one that had naturally come to light as trust between them built up.

Hajin would occasionally tell Suho about his 'past life.' He'd talk about regression and this and that, but truth was, Suho still didn't have a fully clear grasp of the whole thing.

'If I hadn't picked up an ability of my own in the first place, I probably wouldn't have believed him either.'

Suho checked the time — about ten minutes left now — and took a sip of water.

"Kang Hajin…."

Suho was curious about Hajin. It was a manager's instinct.

Why hadn't the past-life version of him ever managed to debut?

Why did he deny how much he loved this work?

Why couldn't he trust himself?

What had happened in his past?

Were those past events shaping who he was now?

"……"

On the tablet's iTube screen, the B-team performance video had auto-loaded under recommended videos, right next to the A-team one.

Suho clicked it without really thinking.

The thumbnail: Hajin gazing straight into the camera with a smile that seemed like it could bewitch anyone, one hand raised in a wave.

"…and yet he's this good."

Kang Hajin — why did he look like he was holding himself one step back from all of this?

A jumble of questions was making his head spin.

Slide—.

And the door opened.

"Hello, Team Lead."

"…Ah, right. Have a seat, Hajin-ssi."

What kind of person are you?

Swallowing that question down inside, Suho returned Hajin's greeting.

---

'Damn Republic of Seoul.'

Having skipped breakfast to make the lunch appointment on time, Hajin was radiating pure hostility toward the infrastructure of a country where everything revolved around Seoul.

One trip into Seoul: an hour minimum, two if you were going a little further, five hours round trip — the "insane efficiency" every Gyeonggi resident cynically joked about on the daily. Nothing worth making a fuss over.

But it was tough for Suho to just pretend not to see how visibly wiped-out Hajin looked, so he asked, awkwardly:

"Was the trip rough? I really should have come out closer to your place, in retrospect."

"Ah — no, it's fine. I had some things to do in Seoul anyway, and an hour and a half isn't that far."

"…so that counts as not far, then."

"Gyeonggi's just like that. Everywhere's two hours away. Which is the problem — everywhere takes two hours."

For Suho, whose grandparents' grandparents had lived in Seoul, this was an incomprehensible sense of time.

Rather than fumble through some awkward attempt at sympathy, Suho went straight for the practical: filling up hungry Kang Hajin's stomach as fast as possible. He pressed the bell, and shortly a server opened the door.

"Two Course A's for us, please."

"Yes, two Course A's coming right up."

While Suho placed the order with practiced ease, Hajin gratefully downed the ice water that had been poured out ahead of time.

The restaurant Ji Suho had booked was as private as private got. Given the nature of today's conversation, they needed to take security as seriously as possible.

"By the way, Team Lead — how much longer are you going to keep using formal speech with me? Last time you dropped it."

"Ah, right. I keep slipping back into it without realizing, ha ha."

"It'd be a whole thing if you did that in front of the kids, so drop it now while you're at it. I really am way younger, after all."

At that, Suho's expression turned complicated. It occurred to him that this was actually the perfect timing to ask about Hajin's past — the very thing he'd just been wondering about.

"…Speaking of which, uh — you said you went back to the past, right?"

At Suho's question, Hajin set his cup down and looked up. Unable to shake a strange feeling of nervousness, Suho pressed on.

"So how old are you, exactly? From how you've talked about the past-life stuff, it sounds like you were definitely an adult."

"……"

"No, I just — we're in the same boat now anyway, so I figured I should know you better to be able to support you more effectively where it matters…."

He hadn't done anything wrong, and yet somehow his explanation kept trailing on and on.

Hajin watched Suho, silent, for a long moment. The longer that went on, the more Suho felt sweat starting to form on his back.

Hajin held his gaze a while longer, and only when even Suho ran out of ways to fill the silence and started to feel awkward did he slowly open his mouth.

"You believed that?"

"Sorry?"

"I'm asking, did you really believe that. What I said about coming back from the future."

Yes. I did.

At Hajin's completely unexpected words, Suho blinked stupidly.