Emergency Event
A party member is in crisis! Please save your party member!
There was no time to dismiss the hologram window flashing in front of his eyes.
Without a second's hesitation, Ye-chan pushed through the trainees clustered outside Practice Room 1 and strode inside.
He shoved the still-blinking hologram roughly aside and took stock of the situation at a glance. Who's in here right now… Team 1 and Team 3, who normally use this room. Plus Beom Se-hyuk and Shim Sang-rok… When did Seonwoo I-gyeong get here?
Down by the stage, Beom Se-hyuk — who was usually all grins — stood with a rare look of genuine discomfort, positioning himself as if to shield Jeong Ui-tak behind him.
Shim Sang-rok and Seonwoo I-gyeong, never ones to mind their own business, had planted themselves squarely in front of a still-fuming Kim Dae-yeong.
Behind Kim Dae-yeong, the other two who supposedly helped lead the bullying hovered awkwardly, glancing around as if waiting to see which way the wind blew.
Ye-chan also spotted Nam Ji-yu, the leader of Team 1, who had gotten caught in the crossfire of Team 3's fight — clawing at his hair as he looked helplessly from one side to the other.
Then Ye-chan approached the production crew, who were holding their breath and watching the whole thing unfold.
The staff looked even more rattled than the trainees. These poor people. Practice-room shoots are usually handled by the junior crew, so of course they'd freeze up in a situation like this.
The moment the fight broke out, someone had clearly bolted to fetch the main PD and the head writer. Until those two got back, the remaining staff couldn't decide whether to intervene or keep rolling — so they were just standing there, watching. That much was obvious without asking.
Ye-chan leaned toward the FD stationed farthest from the action and spoke quietly.
"FD-nim, maybe it would be better to clear out the trainees outside?"
"Ah — right. Yeah."
As if the thought had only just occurred to him, the FD hurried to the door and shooed away the gawking trainees.
Now naturally left inside Practice Room 1, Ye-chan moved toward the heart of the incident.
Kim Dae-yeong's T-shirt collar was crumpled, as if someone had grabbed him by the scruff. You've got to be kidding me. Even a shouting match would have been insane enough — but a physical fight? The situation was far worse than he'd hoped.
Curious to see the face of the brave soul who'd dared grab a hyung nine years his senior by the collar, Ye-chan turned his head.
His eyes met Jeong Ui-tak's — who was glaring at Kim Dae-yeong and his crew from behind Beom Se-hyuk — and Ye-chan froze solid.
"Hyung, you came too…"
"Did you get hit? What the hell happened to your lip?!"
Cutting him off, Ye-chan closed the distance in a few quick strides and inspected Ui-tak's face up close.
Blood had smeared around a split lip — the kind of injury you didn't get from a shove or a collar grab. This wasn't pushing and grabbing. This was a fistfight…
Reading the horror on Ye-chan's face, Ui-tak scrambled into a pathetic excuse.
"Ah, this just got scraped by accident. It looks worse than it is — it doesn't even hurt."
"Look in a mirror before you say that. You've got blood on your mouth… and your cheek, too. This is seriously bad."
On closer inspection, it wasn't just the lip. One cheek was faintly red — the unmistakable mark of a solid hit.
Ye-chan glanced toward Kim Dae-yeong, whose face had gone ashen now that reason seemed to be creeping back in.
Ye-chan's expression hardened, and he raised his voice.
"Jeong Ui-tak. How old are you?"
"Eighteen…?"
Ui-tak looked up at him as if wondering what he'd done wrong this time, but Ye-chan ignored the look and raised his voice further.
"Who hits a minor — and during a shoot, no less?!"
Ye-chan didn't put the emphasis on why.
The reason for the fight was obvious enough. But no matter how justified the cause, it took two hands to make a clap.
The moment they'd dared throw hands in front of the sacred camera, both Kim Dae-yeong and Jeong Ui-tak had already locked in a future of getting thoroughly dragged online.
What remained was only a question of degree.
Jeong Ui-tak was nine years younger than the twenty-seven-year-old Kim Dae-yeong.
Striking an underage idol trainee hard enough to split his lip — on camera, mid-filming — how severe a crime would that be judged?
The netizens would decide, of course, but it was obvious Ui-tak would face a harsher verdict for grabbing a hyung's collar in violation of Confucian sensibilities… wait, no. Kim Dae-yeong would be the one taking the far heavier sentence.
"Th-that—! Ui-tak started it by acting all cocky first!"
Kim Dae-yeong had clearly run the numbers himself, because he opened his mouth with an air of wounded injustice.
Ye-chan turned around, his face ice-cold.
"Did Ui-tak hit you first, hyung?"
"No, that wasn't…"
"Then why did you hit him?"
The frigid voice settled over the practice room like a death sentence.
Kim Dae-yeong looked around in panic at his fellow perpetrators standing behind him.
But the other two awkwardly avoided his gaze.
"Hey, you guys…!"
"What on earth is going on here?"
Just as Kim Dae-yeong was about to spit out something bitter about betrayal, the main PD flung open the practice room door.
"Ui-tak got hit."
Ye-chan turned Ui-tak's body so the injured face was clearly visible and pushed him forward toward the main PD.
"…Huh."
The main PD swept a long look around the practice room, then let out a disbelieving snort of laughter.
"Wow. Undebuted trainees throwing punches in front of the cameras… You lot are really something else. I'll hear everyone out one at a time, so Trainee Kim Dae-yeong — you come with me first."
Having said his piece, the main PD spun on his heel and walked out. Kim Dae-yeong scrambled after him in a panic.
It wasn't over yet. Ye-chan grabbed Ui-tak by the wrist and approached the production staff still standing in place.
"I think we need to get his face checked at the infirmary — is that all right?"
"Ah, of course. Absolutely. We'll let the PD know."
"Thank you."
Ye-chan bowed his head, then turned to Shim Sang-rok and Beom Se-hyuk, who had already stuck close to his side.
"I'll take him from here, so don't worry too much."
"Okay. Se-hyuk and I will explain the situation to your teammates."
"…But I don't see Sae-byeok anywhere?"
At Seonwoo I-gyeong's words — he'd come over a beat late — Ye-chan scanned the practice room and realized it was true.
He'd been so focused on Ui-tak's face that he'd completely forgotten about Bae Sae-byeok. Ye-chan looked at Ui-tak with a face that demanded an explanation.
"…He went to change clothes for a bit."
"…The infirmary comes first right now. After that, we're going to have a nice, long talk — including about what exactly made him need to change clothes in the middle of practice."
Hearing Ye-chan spit out every syllable with deliberate, measured precision, Ui-tak felt a wave of pure mania rolling off him and pressed a hand to his dizzy head.
Ye-chan turned to Seonwoo I-gyeong one last time.
"I-gyeong hyung, this might take a little while — sorry."
Seonwoo I-gyeong shrugged.
"I may have talked about being competitors and all that, but I'm not so cold-blooded that I'd tell you not to care even in a situation like this. Go sort it out and come back."
A large hand clapped Ye-chan on the back and gave him a firm shove. Ye-chan gave a short nod and left the practice room with Ui-tak.
Whether the crew had done a thorough job clearing people out or not, the hallway was empty — not so much as an ant in sight.
As if the tension had finally drained out of him, Ui-tak let out a long breath and asked anxiously,
"Is my face that bad? Think it'll scar?"
"Wow. Amazing. The kind of guy who worries about that is the same guy who picks a fight?"
Ui-tak grumbled as he hurried after Ye-chan, who was already striding quickly toward the infirmary.
"They crossed the line first, okay?"
"So you brawl in front of the cameras? You know what, you're actually a pretty dangerous guy."
Ye-chan widened his eyes as if he'd made a truly remarkable discovery, and Ui-tak's cheek twitched with indignation.
The movement split his lip open again, and fresh blood welled up. Ye-chan pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and pressed it to Ui-tak's mouth.
Ui-tak took the handkerchief and snorted.
"If you'd been standing there, hyung, you wouldn't have just sat still either. And I think you've got the wrong idea — I never laid a hand on Kim Dae-yeong hyung. …I did shove him a little, though."
"So what, Kim Dae-yeong grabbed his own collar? Is he running a self-harm extortion scheme?"
"Wow, how did you know?"
Ye-chan's sarcastic stride came to a dead stop.
"…You're saying you really didn't do it?"
"Am I crazy? Grabbing someone by the collar in front of a camera?"
Ui-tak's brow furrowed, and his cheek had swollen even more in the short time since. Ye-chan shelved the rest of his questions for later and deposited Ui-tak in the infirmary.
A short while later, Ui-tak emerged with an ice pack pressed to his cheek and began explaining everything from the beginning.
"Hyung, you told us to settle things in front of the cameras, right? I thought about doing that, but we're outnumbered, so if they just denied everything or dug their heels in, we'd have no way to push back. So Sae-byeok and I decided to wait it out until the midterm evaluations. Figured if they weren't trying to drag everyone down with them, they'd come to their senses eventually."
If they were the type to come to their senses, they wouldn't have started something as stupid as bullying in the first place. Ye-chan's mouth itched with the urge to argue, but he decided to hear Ui-tak out without interrupting.
"So we were just going with 'in one ear and out the other' — but Sae-byeok has this tendency to look completely indifferent, you know? They kept picking fights and getting zero reaction, so they got properly pissed off and tried to trip him."
"What a psycho."
"Right? But Sae-byeok didn't fall — Kim Dae-yeong hyung did."
"…"
"And the water he was holding spilled all over Sae-byeok."
Ye-chan sighed. They were… truly, spectacularly stupid.
"…Well. You've been through a lot?"
"I'm so dumbfounded just saying it out loud that I'd rather just laugh."
Still, Ui-tak added that the atmosphere at the time had been deadly serious, and let out a sigh.
"They couldn't keep filming like that, so Sae-byeok went to change clothes. But then Kim Dae-yeong hyung starts spouting nonsense about how Sae-byeok must have pushed him."
"What an absolute psycho."
Ye-chan sighed again.
You needed a brain to have malice in the first place — but the sheer idiocy of idiots doing idiotic things left him without even a proper sigh left to give.
"It was already annoying enough hearing him spout garbage about how he wouldn't have fallen that stupidly if Sae-byeok hadn't done something — and then the other two chimed in from the side, saying that if their hyung felt that way, it must be true. In that moment I just snapped. So I yelled at them to stop pinning it on an innocent kid and that if they asked the camera director, he could show them the footage."
What followed was even more absurd.
Embarrassed, Kim Dae-yeong had started swinging his arms around, throwing a tantrum with every ounce of temper he did and didn't have — and in the process, he'd accidentally struck Ui-tak in the face. Then, seeing the blood on Ui-tak's lip, he'd panicked and tried to shove his own collar into Ui-tak's hands, telling him to hit him back if he wanted.
After that, Nam Ji-yu's teammates — who shared the same practice room — had seen the scuffle and apparently spread the word all over the place that a fight had broken out.
"I… did shove Kim Dae-yeong hyung's shoulder in the middle of it, though."
"…"
Ye-chan looked at Ui-tak, whose shoulders had slumped.
He'd prided himself on having seen every kind of incident the entertainment industry could throw at him, but this industry was a miraculous place where the legend was always being rewritten.
"They're not going to call this mutual, right?"
"Kim Dae-yeong hyung will definitely try to claim that."
Given how big the whole thing had gotten — big enough that everyone from the main PD to the people at the dorm already knew — there was a certain unfairness to it all.
But in the end, it was reaping what he'd sown. Ye-chan thought for a moment, then spoke.
"It's a good thing the cameras were rolling when the fight happened."
"Is it?"
"With the PD's personality, this is definitely going to air. Brace yourself for every kind of noise people are going to make. From what you've told me, you didn't do anything wrong, and the truth will come out eventually — but either way, fists flew on an audition program, so plenty of weird people are going to swarm."
"I know. There'll be people calling me out for talking back to an elder and shoving him when I'm so much younger. But that elder is going to get torn apart way worse than I am, so I'll take comfort in that."
This kid… he's grown a bit already, hasn't he?
Under Ye-chan's look of reluctant approval, Ui-tak lifted his chin with triumphant pride.