Five trainees sat at one side of a table.
Min-jae sat alone at the other.
The executive spoke gently.
That made it worse.
They had decided to adjust the group's image before debut.
There was another trainee.
Seventeen.
Better dancer.
Stronger visual.
More development potential.
Min-jae was twenty.
He had improved enormously.
His evaluation scores were respectable.
His attitude had always been excellent.
Everyone appreciated how hard he'd worked.
They hoped he understood.
Min-jae understood perfectly.
That was the worst part.
He'd trained beside the replacement before.
The boy was better than him.
Not at everything.
But at enough things.
Younger too.
Better face for the concept.
Learned choreography faster.
More natural on camera.
If Min-jae had been the executive risking several billion won launching a new group, he probably would have made the same decision.
There was nobody to hate.
No villain.
No injustice obvious enough to carry his anger.
Just arithmetic.
Six positions.
Seven people.
Someone had to disappear.
It was him.
The group debuted five months later under the name HIVE.
Min-jae watched their first music-show stage alone on his laptop.
Every formation was familiar.
He knew exactly where he would have stood.
Second verse, rear left.
Pre-chorus, transition centre.
Final chorus, right side.
He knew the choreography better than some fans eventually would because he'd learned an earlier version of it before the company changed the bridge.
One of the members looked directly into the camera during the ending pose.
Min-jae laughed.
Then cried.
Then hated himself for crying.
Then sent congratulations to two members.
Both responded.
One called him hyung and told him they'd never forgotten him.
Min-jae told them to stop being sentimental and enjoy debut day.
HIVE became moderately successful.
Not legendary.
Not VANT.
Not MUSE.
But successful enough that one member eventually became a popular actor and another released solo music that charted well.
Min-jae saw their faces occasionally for years afterward.
He was proud of them.
He envied them.
He was ashamed of envying them.
All three feelings lived together quite comfortably once he stopped pretending human emotions needed to be morally consistent.
He tried again.
Of course he did.
That was something people misunderstood when he eventually told the story.
They assumed being removed from the lineup had made him quit.
It hadn't.
It just made every rejection afterward heavier.
At twenty-one, he stood in another audition room.
He sang.
Danced.
Answered questions.
The evaluator looked at his file.
"Twenty-one?"
"Yes."
"Military service?"
"Not yet."
A pause.
"You've trained before."
"Yes."
"You're good."
Min-jae already knew what came next.
"But we're mainly looking at younger trainees for this project."
There were sixteen-year-olds waiting outside.
One of them had danced before Min-jae.
The kid had been frighteningly good.
Min-jae bowed.
"Thank you for your time."
Outside, he walked three blocks before stopping.
He did not cry.
That bothered him more than crying would have.
He simply stood beneath a traffic light and understood that it was over.
Not mathematically impossible.
People debuted late.
People got lucky.
Companies changed plans.
But reality had become clear enough that continuing no longer felt brave.
It felt like refusing to understand.
He wasn't special.
That sentence had once sounded cruel.
By twenty-one it simply felt factual.
Kang Min-jae was reasonably handsome.
A serviceable dancer.
A competent singer after years of training.
Disciplined.
Knowledgeable.
Professional.
And surrounded by teenagers who had all of those qualities plus something he couldn't practise into existence.
A voice.
A face.
A presence.
An instinct.
The thing that made someone look at a crowded stage and ask:
Who's that?
Min-jae had wanted to become someone people couldn't look away from.
He'd discovered, very slowly and very painfully, that the world was perfectly capable of looking elsewhere.
Three months later, he enlisted.
⸻
Military service was useful because nobody asked Min-jae what his dream was.
Wake up.
Make the bed.
Eat.
Train.
Clean.
Follow instructions.
Complain about the weather.
Complain about food.
Complain about officers.
Sleep.
Repeat.
There was comfort in having every hour assigned to him.
For the first time in years, nobody expected him to improve his singing.
Nobody measured his dance lines.
Nobody photographed his face.
Nobody discussed his marketability.
He was simply Kang Min-jae.
One soldier among many.
By the time he finished, saying I used to be a trainee felt strange.
As though he were describing someone he'd known.
University came next.
Business administration.
A decent school.
Nothing prestigious enough to impress anyone at a family gathering, nothing embarrassing enough to require explanation.
Min-jae discovered, to his mild irritation, that he was quite good at normal life.
Lectures made sense.
Accounting made sense.
Marketing theory made sense.
Exams rewarded preparation in a reassuringly predictable way.
If he studied more, his grades generally improved.
No professor ever told him his face didn't suit the concept.
He made friends.
Went drinking.
Joined a club for one semester.
Dated a girl from the economics department for six months.
Visited Osaka with three friends and spent most of the trip eating.
Graduated.
Found work.
Changed companies once.
Got promoted.
Had another relationship.
Then another.
Then Seo-ah.
Life happened.
He wasn't secretly miserable every second.
That would have been easier to understand.
He had been genuinely happy many times.
He laughed until his stomach hurt.
He got drunk at weddings.
He watched football with coworkers.
He travelled.
He bought his parents expensive gifts with his first proper bonus and pretended not to notice how pleased his father looked.
He loved Seo-ah.
He just never found another thing he wanted the way he had once wanted a stage.
Maybe he'd been frightened to.
Passion, Min-jae had learned early, gave the world something valuable to take from you.
Stability was safer.
Stability didn't humiliate you.
Stability didn't gather six people around a dormitory table, let them plan their future together, then quietly erase your name.
So Min-jae became sensible.
He rarely thought about it in those terms.
He simply made sensible decisions.
Business degree.
Stable company.
Savings.
Pension.
Promotion.
Don't quit without another job lined up.
Don't spend too much.
Don't risk too much.
We'll decide later.
We'll figure it out.
There was always later.
Even the idol industry became something he could enjoy from a safe distance.
By the mid-2010s, a seven-member boy group called VIA began appearing everywhere.
Voice In Action.
Min-jae had thought the name sounded slightly embarrassing when he first heard it.
The group came from Nova Music, a company so small at debut that industry people sometimes seemed surprised it had managed to keep the lights on.
They weren't from Aurora.
They weren't from Vertex.
They weren't supposed to reshape anything.
Then they did.
A domestic hit became several.
Asia became bigger.
Then America.
Then Europe.
Albums exploded.
Award shows invited them.
American television invited them.
Stadiums sold out.
Nova Music became Nova Entertainment, then Nova Entertainment Group, swallowing companies and expanding into an empire that would have seemed absurd when VIA debuted.
By 2026, nobody thought about what their name stood for anymore.
VIA simply meant VIA.
Min-jae liked them.
That was inconvenient.
It would have been easier if he thought they were overrated.
But he understood performance too well to lie to himself.
He could watch one of their concerts and immediately recognise why it worked.
Breath management during difficult choreography.
Tiny formation adjustments.
Who instinctively found the live camera before the red light fully came on.
Which member modified movements when tired without making it obvious.
How a weaker singer positioned his microphone during doubled lines.
How the group created apparent spontaneity inside rehearsed segments.
Min-jae saw all of it.
Years of training didn't vanish just because nobody had paid him to use them.
Sometimes Seo-ah would catch him watching a music show and laugh.
"You're doing it again."
"What?"
"That face."
"What face?"
"The judging face."
"I'm not judging."
"You just said that girl's weight distribution is wrong."
"It is."
"You haven't danced professionally in ten years."
"I never danced professionally at all."
"Exactly."
"Which makes my criticism free."
She would throw a cushion at him.
He missed that.
Min-jae blinked and found himself staring at the framed Busan photograph again.
His chest tightened.
"Okay."
He stood abruptly.
Enough.
Food.
Alcohol.
Something unhealthy.
Perhaps a comedy so stupid his brain couldn't generate thoughts while watching it.
A sophisticated recovery plan.
He pulled on grey sweatpants, a hoodie and sneakers, checked for his wallet, then caught himself glancing toward the yellow mug.
For a moment he considered texting Seo-ah.
You forgot this.
An excuse.
Pathetic.
He left the phone in his pocket.
Not tonight.
He could contact her later.
There was always—
Min-jae stopped with one hand on the doorknob.
He almost laughed.
"Jesus."
Even now.
Later.
He opened the door.