Off-Screen (무대아래에서) | Haobin

Silent Confession (조용한 고백)

It happens again when Hanbin watches the live performance of Over Me. It's much worse, actually, because Hao Hyung's dressed in tight black pants and a billow-y white shirt that accents his slim hips. The scarves he uses for the dance are of a much higher quality, too. Everything is on another level compared to when the Overdose team rehearsed before the trainees earlier in the practice hall in just their training clothes. The stage, the smoke, and the way that Hao Hyung feeds off of the audience's energy adds up to a huge crisis for Hanbin.

He's relieved the Say My Name team already performed because that means he can sit down while he's watching Over Me. And he does need to sit down. It is very necessary.

As he expected, Hao Hyung blows everyone else out of the water. It's not even close. Hanbin thinks their Say My Name performance went well, but Over Me is the clear winner of the Artist Battle. He can tell by the magnitude of the screams from the audience and the hot feeling surging through his entire body even after the Overdose team leaves the stage. Hanbin doesn't speak to anyone for a while, dismayed by the intense reaction coursing through him. Once or twice... that could be a fluke. But three times? Hanbin has to stop and examine it. And his conclusion scares him more than he wants to admit.

Hao Hyung is just... hot.

That's it.

Hanbin feels a little like crying as he realizes this. He thought, all this time, that his interest in Hao Hyung was professional. Friendly. His intense feelings for Hao Hyung were supposed to be feelings for a best friend or a brother. Or, maybe he was just a top fan, as he had started to refer to himself. He'd been a fervent fan of things before -- mostly K-Pop idols he looked up to -- but he'd never been in a real relationship with the object of his interest, so he thought that could be the reason he felt such a deep desire to be around Hao Hyung.

But his body isn't lying to him, and Hanbin can't keep ignoring these reactions, not after the intense and unmistakable wave of lust that rocks through him when he watches Over Me. His teammates, thankfully, mistake his silence as nerves and intimidation from the great performance. But Hanbin isn't nervous because he already knows that Hao Hyung is going to win this round again. He'll just have to... pretend otherwise for the cameras. He's gotten pretty good at that over the course of the show.

He at least gets the top score in his team, which is a relief. He's never gotten the top score within his team before, despite his top overall scores, so he allows himself to be happy about that. But when it comes to the scoring for Over Me, when the other trainees are loudly speculating about who will receive the top score, Hanbin just quietly says, "Hao Hyung." And he's right.

He's been right about Hao Hyung all along. It's the one kind of prediction he actually trusts himself to make in this survival show.

He keeps his confidence for the cameras, and simply lies later in his interview about how he thought their team or the En Garde team would win. That should help to satisfy the producers' insistence that he put some distance between himself and Hao Hyung, without actually hurting Hao Hyung.

He didn't tell Hao Hyung all the details about that meeting. While most of the people who work on the show are kind to him, and Hanbin has had an overall good experience, the producers are frightening. It would be better if they didn't try to act like they are just looking out for him. They are looking out for their own profits, and it's more degrading when they frame their desires as being in his best interests.

Hao Hyung is right -- they do explicitly allow some BL to happen on the show. The producers explained that it attracts certain viewers without dissuading the more conservative audience, but there's a line that even Ji-Ung isn't allowed to cross. Ji-Ung and Jongwoo likely already had the pleasure of meeting with the producers, too, so they could set clear limits on their BL. The producers plainly said that if Hanbin was caught on camera or by the production staff in any kind of compromising position with Hao Hyung, they would have to drop him and Hao Hyung from the show, regardless of their ranking. They framed this as not just a way to protect the show's "wholesome image", but to protect Hanbin's long-term career prospects. So, really, by leashing the two of them like this, they were actually helping him find his way as a young idol navigating the complicated realities of East Asian homophobia.