Chapter 77

'What is this?'

Sitting in a café with a nice atmosphere, monitoring reactions to 〈Miro Maze〉, Hajin was a little thrown.

title: Real-time Trends - Our Nieces and Nephews · 10,841 - Miro house · 7,932 - Myeongdong Busking · 9,045 - Taeil-ah I Love You · 15,791 - Miro Maze · 5,112

The timeline on the burner account he'd set up for searching was refreshing every three seconds.

Miro Maze — which up until recently had been 'your standard K-boy-idol survival on a slightly bigger scale' — had somewhere along the way mutated into 'the fruit of a miracle pulled off by the young household breadwinners of a shit-tier small-time company.'

'Why is everyone suddenly flooring the accelerator?'

Surfing endless internet hot-thread pages in search of the cause of this ridiculous state of affairs, it didn't take Hajin long to find 'the post.' And in one look, he pinpointed every last coincidental element that had built this massive wave.

Coincidence 1. Upia's 12th-anniversary concert.

Upia's fandom, I.dea, had a crazy history behind it — 13 years in — and, for an idol-group fandom, skewed older than most.

Most of them, holding down day jobs, had long since stopped camping out on communities and SNS pushing their oppas the way they used to. Instead, they quietly nursed whatever new tidbit surfaced and poured their focus into real life, saving up their fangirl funds.

'So normally, a post like this — going up on a community, and in the pre-dawn hours at that — would've been quietly buried by morning.'

The problem was, the announcement of Upia's 12th-anniversary fan concert had come down not long before. Their first full-lineup concert since the military hiatus, no less!

'Because of that, the I.dea side was already blazing.'

Successful re-re-signing + first concert after the military hiatus + 12th anniversary right around the corner.

Mainlining the fangirling holy trinity, I.dea's firepower right now could give Upia's peak era a run for its money. Which is why 'the post,' unlike most, pulled in several hundred comments and set off talk on every possible angle.

The I.deas gathering in the comments started debating just how meaningful the fact that 'a third boy-group is coming out of Miro' actually was to them. And that fire jumped smoothly next door, to the And With U's, who'd been quietly wiping their tears and cheering each other on in the corner.

- Miro is family. - Then how does our family tree work? - The disciples were officially the young masters, so wouldn't the new ones be the little young masters? - But calling them the young masters is kind of shameless of us, isn't it… the youngest trainee over there is 17. - So then… sons? Either way, they were born on Upia and Enderway's capital, weren't they. - Let's just go with nieces-and-nephews, someone in the maknae fandom said one of them's actually a distant relative of Taeri (Seo Taeil + leader).

And just like that, 〈Miro Maze〉 abruptly became the youngest son and the nieces-and-nephews of the Miro house.

Yeah, fine. Up to this point, sure. It was still only a reaction within the Miro fandom.

The problem was what came next.

Coincidence 2. Cat's Repayment Part 2.

Honestly, when Hajin had first seen the reward in the System window, he thought he'd misread it.

'That's still not over?'

Hadn't the witness-sighting already made the rounds, and everything that was going to happen already happened? Apparently the kitten from the rain that day was really, seriously grateful.

He'd wondered what kind of repayment could possibly still be coming, and once he'd figured out what it actually was, Hajin let out a dumb little "ah."

title: [Upia Miro Seo Taehyun Kang Hajin sighting? nice-story? kind of thing dropped] link: https://… from the time back when the animal-hospital sighting went up i think got written before but back then it got buried now with the miro maze teaser dropping it's getting bumped back up

Click on the link, and once again a long post rolled up onto the monitor screen.

title: [omg guys i saw Miro house. Seo Taehyun scroll warning] [photo] this is the proof shot! ok so my friend recently lost her cat at home she'd cracked a window to air the place out for a sec and the kitty apparently slipped out through the gap so my friend was seriously on the verge of passing out from crying, running around everywhere trying to find her [photo] this one is just so you all can see how cute; honestly isn't she such a pretty cat beyond just being cute my friend adopted her back when she was a baby and has raised her like her whole heart so she was walking around with a full death-face then yesterday she got a call from the animal hospital ㅠㅠㅠ they'd found aegi (that's the cat's name)ㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠ she happened to be having dinner with me and literally dropped her food and just ran (friend found aegi and bought me more meat later so i'm all good) but as we're walking into the animal hospital, suddenly some kind of… backlight… it's clearly pouring rain out, but from somewhere the sun is shining… REALLY warmly like literally the inside of the animal hospital is all warm and fuzzy so i look to see what and there's TWO GENUINE hotties right in front of my eyes;;; turns out the person who'd found my friend's aegi was Seo Taehyun there was another really good-looking guy next to him, but that one was a face i'd never seen before but like ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋme and my friendㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋwe were boys of the world teachersㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋah just thinking about it again is so funny what does teacher even mean teacher…but back then we were all proud teachers☆ i'm not ashamed of myself anyway both of us — our #1 wasn't Seo Taehyun but my friend really liked him too so she recognized him right away!! when we went "wait Seo Taehyun!?" he smiled kind of sheepishly…dying…oppa hasn't changed at all…and i'm the only one who's gonna keep aging… ah i totally get now why cherry boy syndrome happened the real thing is insane, and in the meantime he's gotten a little taller and his voice must have broken because it's more… manly? now you know how his voice used to be totally soft and pretty, now n-no it's kind of low? [photo] [photo] anyway so at first my friend was going to give the guy who found her cat a thank-you fee but he said he wouldn't take it, just being remembered was thanks enough (but oppa how could we forget youㅠ) so me and my friend said okay, when you debut we'll seriously buy 500 copies of your album, we'll definitely go to your fansign with presents, and he smiled so wistfully…ㅠㅠㅜㅜ but i overheard the good-looking guy next to him say something about "hyung, manager, company" so it seems like he's currently a trainee too!! we got permission to put up a post online too!! just in case i took the good-looking oppa in the photo too ㅎ but since he's still a regular person for now, if he does debut later i'll definitely put up his photo and confirm the nice story it was so nice to see him after so long…my heart is beating again…anyway that's what happened…i got so excited writing this i don't know how to wrap it up now sorry;; the end!

The witness-sighting had been posted by the friend of the owner of the cat Hajin and Taehyun had found.

The earlier sighting had been a post someone put up after sneaking a photo of the two of them at the animal hospital, but this one was the real deal — receipts and all, posted with Hajin and Taehyun's actual permission — so it was spreading fast.

Probably, back when it first went up, the post was long and Seo Taehyun didn't have much of a mention presence yet, so it just got swept under — and now, with the teaser dropping and the whole 〈Our Nieces and Nephews〉 situation, search volume had spiked and the post had naturally floated back up.

The comment section — where only a handful of Seo Taehyun fans had left traces before — was now flooded with new arrivals.

- here on a pilgrimage - our niece/nephew candidates have such gentle hearts too - miro trait: look like they'd kill a passing bird with a glare, but in reality treasure every ant - fuck kang hajin the real thing must be crazy hot if a regular person went and asked him for a photo;; - ah so this is that animal-hospital story from before ㅋㅋㅋㅋ - opㅠㅠㅠㅠ now that the teaser's dropped can you release the photo you took with hajin ㅠㅠㅠㅠ please ㅠㅠㅠ - there's a some-such-and-such law, you have to post 5 pics of your cat, there's a law like that

Between the 〈Miro Maze〉 fandom that had started to form little by little through the profile reveals and performance videos, and the senior fandoms who'd come to lend their weight to the nieces-and-nephews nice-story,

with the Seo Taehyun fandom — who'd been longing day and night for their Taehyun's dreamlike debut and were putting in the work pushing him,

and finally the K-pop drifters who were just enjoying the whole spectacle from the sidelines,

no fewer than four camps had piled in. The post quickly turned into a red-hot thread and, for a while, headlined the popular boards on every entertainment community out there.

Once up, the post refused to come down for days — and just when the buzz was starting to cool a little, OP resurfaced.

title: +update post ha ㅁㅊ this made weekly best i dedicate this glory to our aegi, who's probably asleep at my friend's place right about now [photo] friend gave me permission! just in case ㅎㅎㅎ right now she's next to me cackling and writing this with me now that the teaser's out and the official profiles are up i thought it'd be okay so i'm here to give y'all the photos! [photo] [photo] [photo] the good-looking oppa turned out to be a trainee just like i thought ㅎ that ex-teacher's intuition….ㅎㅎㅎㅎㅎㅎ there were some comments saying isn't this a promo post but seriously on the honor of an ex-teacher and the cuteness of our aegi absolutely, absolutely not!!!!!!!1 please don't misunderstand ㅠㅠㅠ [photo] [photo] friend says she's just too upsetㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ told me i had to post these together but me and my friend did end up voting on miro maze afterwards ^^ㅎㅎㅎㅎㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ beyond just teacher, maybe now i'll become a Desti^^ no seriously guys the real thing is INSANE for real he shows up in my dreams sometimes seriously please grab this stock now, i'm begging you like this everyone please give miro maze kang hajin seo taehyun lots of love♡ (baby-god-baby dan haru who's on it with them, please give him lots of love too….ㅎ) - ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ ah so you ended up becoming a Desti after all - op what's Kang Hajin like in person???? i saw the profile pic and got SUCH a shock ㅠㅠ > (op) ha he's hot, don't trust that profile pic ㅠㅠ he's a monolid wolf type but standing next to seo taehyun the face-combo is insane > are the two of them close??? i'm a cheppie and i'm debating whether to add hajin to my basket > (op) i don't know that part either ㅠㅠㅠ sorryㅠㅠㅜ but just the face-combo alone was worth it, for me - kind of funny though, do people usually take pics with regular people like that?ㅋㅋㅋ > right ㅋ…hmm…honestly kind of feels like viral marketing… > (op) even after i posted proof y'all are still going, at this point you just want to believe it's viral ㅋㅋㅋㅋ if you hate it just scroll past~~! > MIRO????MIRO??????MIRO doing viral marketing??????MIRO???????????????????? > fuck the comment above me calm down, so much bottled-up frustration in there > GIVE miro the money and manpower to do viral marketing FIRST and THEN talk about it please > if miro knew how to do that, upia would already have a 20-story building and endup would be furnishing the inside of it ㅠ if it weren't for seo taeil and choi yeonwoo, that place would've gone bankrupt 183 times over by now ㅠ > stop hitting miro guys, i'm gonna cry… still, miro's staff are good people… ㅎ they do their job well these days… > flawed but good-hearted friends…. that name — miro….

The occasional viral-marketing insinuations, and the trolls whose only purpose in life was shitting up threads, were being handled by the newly-awakened I.deas and And With U's.

The hot post triggered further spinoff posts, and those spinoff posts pulled in a fresh wave of new arrivals.

The Seo Taehyun fandom, seeing their opening, started aggressively promoting Miro Maze by pairing Taehyun and Hajin, and the small fandoms that had quietly formed around the other trainees started stretching their wings one by one, going all-in on pushing their kids.

'And this state of affairs is the result.'

Checking the buzz volume, now overwhelmingly higher than before, Hajin set his phone down on the table. If this buzz kept up, 〈Miro Maze〉 would, nine times out of ten, land as a major success.

The Voluntary-Resignation Combo's editing and structuring was proven, and the trainees' skill level was a guarantee.

Ji Suho had caught on to that fact too, and had been pulling overtime nonstop, planning extra content to keep this buzz from cooling off.

Right — the problem started here.

'There's nothing left to nurse.'

Whether it was fans promoting the show or new people getting drawn in, something new had to keep dropping for anyone to have anything to bite. But all 〈Miro Maze〉 had, right now, were the trainees' profile photos, two performance videos, and a teaser that ran less than a minute.

The PD Kwon Hajin knew would, by this point, already be dropping episode-1 pre-release clips, second teasers, anything — pushing content out and pushing again to milk this opportunity for absolutely everything it was worth.

But right now, 〈Miro Maze〉's production company wasn't releasing a single new tidbit, and was just standing by watching the hot thread cool down.

And Hajin knew the reason why.

He also knew how to solve it.