“Let’s take a picture.”
Despite the sudden request, Hando readily nodded in agreement. Was this the attitude of a prepared celebrity? The image of Cheonghyeon, freshly showered and fluffy, and Hando holding a towel, was beautifully captured on the screen.
Soon after, he also took a solo selfie. Cheonghyeon immediately posted on his official cafe.
Countless words flashed through his mind, but what went up was a short sentence and a single emoji.
[Thank you. Today was the happiest day of my life.]
The calm-looking text contrasted with the sobbing emoji beside it, eliciting a smile. Yet this was the emoji Cheonghyeon liked best. It was the only one on this phone that cried the hardest. Why were tears coming when he was happy?
Just as he was getting a little sentimental, Yoonwoo and Sikyung burst noisily into Hando’s room.
“You can’t take pictures without us!”
In the end, after taking dozens more photos, he selected the best one and added it. The members signing autographs in front of him, smiling while holding cake in the VIP lounge, a selfie with Hando, himself laughing with messy hair tangled up with the members.
My hair’s ruined!
He pretended to be furious, but the members were not fooled. His flushed cheeks and warm neck gave away his embarrassment. Laughter filled the dorm for quite some time afterward.
Since the start of the year, Cheonghyeon had been constantly busy with his schedule, leaving him thoroughly fed up.
Loving fans is one thing, but this was too much.
Cheonghyeon, expressing his displeasure with his entire being, resembled a prickly hedgehog.
After the secret signing event, even a simple knock from his manager would earn him a glare so intense the manager would retreat with an awkward smile, backing away more than once.
Currently, no one dared touch Cheonghyeon.
To the manager, Cheonghyeon was a truly peculiar fellow. If you call the typical slacker someone who skips washing their face and showering, spending all day lying in bed with matted hair, then Cheonghyeon was a different breed altogether.
No matter how late he went to sleep, he would wake up early in the morning, wash himself thoroughly, and have the members style his hair. Once that flower arrangement was complete, he would spend the day buried in a plush, large single sofa that completely engulfed his body.
Of course, if you looked closely, he did maintain his own diligent lifestyle, taking light walks, or intently watching fans play on his phone.
But he hated doing things he was told to do with a passion, like someone who had never worked a day in his life. Watching him, you could not help but wonder how he had even survived in the military. Had he changed this much after his service?
Why is that guy so lazy when he says he wants to be a civil servant, the epitome of diligence?
Truthfully, due to Cheonghyeon’s stubborn attitude, they had not pushed him, but the offers pouring in for him were staggering. Scripts for dramas and movies rained down on a guy who had never acted before, and requests for variety show appearances never stopped.
The problem was that ever since the autograph session, Cheonghyeon reacted like a cat with its fur standing on end whenever anyone even hinted at work. So the manager would swallow the words rising to his throat and leave. The cold sweat running down his spine was just a bonus.
But the job he had to present to Cheonghyeon today was quite important. It was a crucial matter that, if this small, cute slacker refused, he would have to get down on his knees to get permission.
“What? A reality show?”
As expected, Cheonghyeon immediately prepared to refuse, his expression sour.
Cheonghyeon was already slightly fed up. He had been cutting off the manager’s probing requests cleanly until now, but Changsik had not given up and brought another job.
Cheonghyeon inwardly shook his head at this persistence.
“Cheonghyeon, the thing is, the situation is a bit complicated right now.”
Seeing his manager approach the topic with an unusually serious expression, Cheonghyeon almost covered his ears without listening, but then gestured as if to say, “Go ahead, tell me.”
A satisfying lunch, his weary body, and his gaze that seemed to elicit sympathy from his manager had quite the effect.
Changsik, not wanting to miss this opening, hurriedly laid out the details.
Since Cheonghyeon’s accident earlier this year, the conflict between fanbases had intensified dramatically.
New fans of Cheonghyeon did not blend well with the existing East fandom and were more active in Cheonghyeon’s dedicated fan cafe, created by someone taking the lead, than in East’s official fan cafe.
Of course, this situation was not unique to East. The reason was simple: <Our Love Playlist>
“It is all because of Our Love Playlist. I heard other places are even delaying album releases and postponing schedules entirely.”
Cheonghyeon nodded slightly. Last year, while selecting participants for Our Love Playlist , each group’s fandom was torn apart. No matter how much you love everyone, everyone has their top and second favorites. Even fans not actively participating in the pseudo-romance found it far from pleasant to see their favorite cast as a sacrificial lamb.
Later, agencies would beat their chests in regret over this. They should have insisted on sending one member at a time when the PDs suggested selecting individuals. But while they dithered, fans started naming members they disliked within their own groups, just like with East, and fandoms shattered, fighting day and night.
Unlike the past, where even rejecting one member would get you labeled a toxic individual fan, after Uyeonri, the voices of individual fandoms began to gain real power.
- Tt-yong hahaha Look at the part distribution… If this is how it is going to be, why even do group activities? So freaking selfish
└ ?? If you are unhappy, why do you not write your own lyrics and compose your own songs, you piece of shit? Hahaha. You are just freeloading and talking too much
└ So have those songs ever even ranked number 1 on music sites once? Who the hell dragged those shitty songs up by the scruff of their necks, huh? Hahaha
└ Your oppa cannot even make those shitty songs himself, so he wants to piggyback? T_T
Attacks this sharp were commonplace. It was normal to dissect a song second by second to see how much of a part your favorite member got.
Even during V Live broadcasts, if an unpopular member appeared with a popular one, comments like “I only want to see 〇〇~ T_T” would flood in.
The atmosphere in the idol industry as a whole had become increasingly sharp, with the ranking by metrics like Instagram and Twitter likes, individual merchandise sales, and V Live view counts becoming even more intense.
Given fans like this, it was only natural that relationships between members themselves grew distant and emotional rifts deepened.
The people leaving hate comments were fans who liked their own colleagues. No matter how hard they tried to let it go, resentment naturally festered in the back of their minds.
Fans increasingly supported and cheered for their favorite members’ individual activities rather than group activities like streaming music or voting. As a result, members who realized the size of their personal fanbases sometimes expressed their intention to withdraw from contract renewals with their agencies.
By the time agencies belatedly grasped the situation and tried to intervene, the river had already been crossed, beyond return.
And the peak of this conflict was East’s fandom.
Of course, unlike other groups where fans fought without distinction between acceptable and unacceptable topics, there was one subject they tacitly avoided: Cheonghyeon’s suicide attempt earlier this year.
While the company and Cheonghyeon had firmly denied any involvement, no one brought it up again. However, the newly influxed Cheonghyeon fans viewed the existing East fandom as mortal enemies.
After all, were not the fans of Hando, Yoonwoo, and Sikyung the ones who created this ominous atmosphere in the first place?
The newly influxed Cheonghyeon fandom was so massive in number that it was comparable in size to the three other fandoms.
The manager and CEO sighed deeply over this.
While it is true you should row when the tide is in, since all the activities undertaken so far were solo projects, the newly influxed Cheonghyeon fans did not have particularly deep affection for East.
They did not even engage in the usual practice of revisiting past content after becoming fans. Most claimed they could not focus on older videos, repeatedly watching only My Home, My Purchase, Uyeonri, and the Cheongsan Water ad making-of footage.
Was it not about time for new content? Rather than endlessly rewatching old videos they kept forgetting and found uninteresting, Cheonghyeon’s fans chose to pressure the agency.
Why is Global Semicol not doing anything? Amidst the fans’ pressure and Cheonghyeon’s seemingly indifferent laziness, Changsik and Hyunkwang felt drained. This could not go on.
They needed a breakthrough. Global Semicol’s executives gathered, racking their brains day and night for several days. The result was a reality show.
“Still, when the members showed up as surprise guests at the signing event, the atmosphere was great…”
“That is why I am proposing this. It is not like we have crossed a point of no return. Right now, your fans know nothing about Hando, Sikyung, or Yoonwoo. They are practically different groups. Plus, with all those misleading articles, most fans probably started with negative feelings…”
Changsik paused briefly after saying this, choosing his words carefully before calmly continuing.
“Honestly, with the overall atmosphere like this, even new fans who keep joining might get swept up in it. That is not a good sign…”
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