The Second Chance of A Suicidal Idol

Joon-woo & Reggie (1)

The craze was already something to be said about. People had joked about Joon-woo and Reggie's chemistry before debut, and they were already labeled as a pair during Producer10. However, it took only a youtube video to ignite a forever-running flame:

Reggie and Joon being ✨fruity✨ for 20 minutes

It was a title so cringy Joon-woo hated every part of his being.

With a whooping two and a half million views, the youtube video stood to it's name. It was clips of Producer10 for the most part. Them leaning on each other's shoulders or supporting each other while singing or dancing. Some text was added to try and twist the narrative of inherently innocent actions and it worked.

Perhaps the kicker of all the clips was one from Producer10. It was from their second-to-last challenge, when Sung Chunghee was on their team.

Joon-woo was struggling to nail one of the moves, thanks to stress of being front and center for the performance they were, at the time, preparing for. Reggie had offered his help so graciously.

Low and behold, the move was one where Joon-woo had to come up from the floor and do almost seductively soft movements to the audience. It had many clips from the live performance. Reggie positioned himself behind Joon-woo and as Joon-woo began to stand, Reggie led him through the movements with skin-on-skin contact.

The editors of Producer10 had apparently taken Joon-woo's "shudder" of uneasiness as something to edit hearts around. They made it seem as if Joon-woo had shuddered to Reggie's touch. It made Joon-woo's skin crawl, the way the creator of the viral compilation had slowed the clip with slow saxophone music and zoomed on both of their faces.

The comments only got worse.

Flights_4_joon: there's no heterosexual explanation for this
kpopjunkie54: this group may outgay Haobin...
justagirl: no cause they just debuted and there's so much proof already

Carre had found such to be the funniest thing possible.

"Kite, are you seeing this? Someone wrote a whole fanfiction in the comments..." Carre laughed a rich-person laugh.

Kite rolled its eyes, "These people are delusional."

Joon-woo nodded in agreement.

–+–

Mr. Jeong held two cutesy decorated photo card holders. One had Joon-woo's photocard and the other's, Reggie's.

Joon-woo wanted to scream.

"Umm... The company wanted me to give you two these. Put them on your bags before we leave for your shoot." Mr. Jeong explained. Handing the Joon-woo photocard to Reggie, and the Reggie photocard to Joon-woo.

The mood of all of ASCEND tensed up at the action.

"They're really playing into this..." Jung Hyun-Ok commented with a bit of surprise on his face.

Perhaps noticing Joon-woo's dismay, Mi Yong patted his groupmate on the back. "Once you're finally of age, I'll treat you to a drink." He joked.

Joon-woo shoved Mi Yong off of him. "I am of age, Hyung."

Reggie put the keychain on his small going out bag. It was colorful, the keychain, and was very noticeable against Reggie's beige bag. Joon-woo copied the action with a slight hesitancy.

"Well if we walked to a package store and I bought alcohol they would assume I was some plug for you..." Mi Yong reasoned with a slight tease.

Joon-woo's expression was visibly tainted. He shifted closer to Reggie to avoid Mi Yong's entire presence.