‘Gasp.’
Park Moondae’s fansite master clicked the W Live notification immediately, without even taking a breath.
‘They’re doing live video interaction at a time like this?!’
TeSTAR normally made sure to keep up with SNS activity regularly even when they weren’t promoting, but she never imagined they’d go this far immediately after a concert.
And within an hour of it ending, no less!
‘They must be exhausted.’
Considering the set list that wrung every last bit of their stamina out of them, a hint of concern crept in.
But there was nothing she could do about the corners of her mouth rising.
‘I get to see TeSTAR again already!’
It felt as though the heavy emptiness that might have hit after the concert ended was being blocked in advance.
Apparently an enormous number of people had flooded in, because after a loading screen that lasted much longer than usual, the video finally appeared.
TeSTAR were sitting around a table completely covered with delivered food.
[Oh! They’re coming in!]
[Can you see us clearly?]
And every single TeSTAR member waving hello was wearing a party cone hat on his head!
‘Cute!’
They’d clearly meant it when they called this a concert afterparty.
With a warm expression, the fansite master quickly checked Park Moondae’s face first.
“……?”
He looked a little…
Like a Tibetan fox?
For some reason, he had the hollow, world-weary expression of someone hit by sudden reality.
‘Our professional idol Moondae got defeated by nothing more than a cone hat…?’
While wondering about it, the fansite master realized why a moment later.
Looking closely, it seemed the members had decorated the cone hats themselves, because each one had a phrase written on it in crayon.
And Park Moondae’s said this.
—(Con) Crybaby King Two Days in a Row (grats)
“Huuuuugh….”
It was insanely cute!
The other members had playful phrases on their heads too, like “Currently Preparing Abs,” but Park Moondae’s sulky look was cute enough to be genuinely lethal…….
She covered her mouth so she wouldn’t look like a lunatic on the subway, but failed to realize that there was no need.
After all, nearly half the carriage was made up of people on their way home from the concert….
Every other passenger seemed to be groaning helplessly or failing to suppress laughter.
And the comments on the W app were instantly filled with people asking about the messages on the cone hats or simply screaming about how cute they were.
After waving a few more times and checking the comment reactions and viewer count, TeSTAR answered with a little embarrassment but obvious enjoyment.
[Ah, the messages? Haha… You noticed right away.]
[That’s right. We really did write them for one another~]
[I like mine! Moondae hyung wrote it!]
Cha Eugene lifted his cone hat high with both hands.
Written on it was:
“Got on his knees asking to ride the wire just one more time.”
It was an adorable phrase, but Cha Eugene seemed to think it made him look cool because it demonstrated his passion.
‘Cha Eugene is cute too, I guess.’
The fansite master generously acknowledged the situation.
She meant that she was willing to accept his position as the maknae who played well with her boy.
Park Moondae snorted softly too.
[Glad you liked it.]
[Hehe.]
[On that note, I am extremely curious who exactly wrote the message on my hat…….]
[Hahaha! We all did, all of us!]
[Ah! Lee Sejin hyung wrote it!]
[No, Eugene!]
It was a cutely chaotic atmosphere.
She held her breath and focused on the screen.
Ryu Chungwoo smiled and opened his mouth.
[So, how was today’s concert…….]
Cut.
The video abruptly went dark.
[W Live has ended.]
“……?”
All of a sudden?
None of the members had even been touching the phone.
‘What? Was there an error?’
TeSTAR’s side must have been flustered too, because another live notification came after a short while.
[Loviewers are invited back! to TeSTAR’s concert afterparty♡ >_<]
Perhaps they were embarrassed, because the TeSTAR members had taken off their cone hats and were sighing in relief as the W Live started again.
[Phew! Looks like there was some kind of problem!]
[Hello again, Loviewers!]
[I-It should work properly now, right?]
[Of course~ Probably! All right, then, shall we keep talking? Raebin-ssi!]
[Yes. We thought it might be nice if this W Live could provide a different kind of entertainment for Loviewers on their way home…….]
Cut.
It disconnected again.
This time, it hadn’t even managed to broadcast properly for a full minute.
“…….”
The fansite master was seized by a very ominous feeling.
The next W Live started immediately.
[Why on earth does this keep happening?!]
But the image quality had turned into a mess of blocky pixels.
TeSTAR, now looking like dot-matrix images, muttered among themselves while staring at the screen.
[I don’t think we touched anything wrong?]
[W-What if we try another phone…?]
[…I think it’d be better if we could at least transmit the audio reliably. The app environment itself seems a little unstable right n—]
The video ended before Park Moondae could even finish speaking.
‘F*CK!!’
Ever since the app had been updated a little while ago, errors had been taking turns hitting different idols.
Apparently it was TeSTAR’s turn this time.
The fansite master immediately checked the W app’s notices, but no matter how hard she looked, there wasn’t a single announcement about errors or server instability.
‘…Right. They don’t do that.’
As always, they treated their guaranteed paying suckers with dependable consistency.
She was speechless.
“…….”
It took TeSTAR about five more minutes before their next attempt.
Apparently they’d switched phones as Seon Ahyeon had suggested.
Now even the W Live title had begun accumulating crying emoticons.
[TeSTAR’s concert afterparty… Please, just let us do itㅠ (crying emoji)]
A clear screen greeted TeSTAR and the viewers.
‘Ha, is it working this time…!’
For a moment, the fansite master relaxed, thinking TeSTAR’s strategy of switching phones had worked.
But this time, there was no sound.
[Cha Eugene, excited]
[Kim Raebin, asking a question]
[Bae Sejin, reading comments aloud]
[Ryu Chungwoo, flustered]
Then Park Moondae, who had gone offscreen, reappeared holding a piece of paper with something written on it in crayon.
—Can’t you hear us?
Comments confirming that they couldn’t flooded in.
With an expression caught somewhere between laughter and tears, Big Sejin scribbled more crayon onto the paper.
—ㅠㅠ
Then another retry.
TeSTAR were gradually starting to look worn out.
[We meet… again, everyone.]
[Heheheheh….]
[It seems you can hear us properly this time.]
But somehow, this time, it looked like it wasn’t going to disconnect!
[Ah, it seems a little more stable now!]
[Hmm, there does seem to be a slight error on the screen we’re looking at….]
[If we restart it, it might turn off again, so let’s just continue like this for now.]
[Agreed!]
Most of TeSTAR nodded at Ryu Chungwoo’s cautious suggestion.
If they restarted it and it disconnected yet again, there really would be nothing they could do.
[All right, then. Shall we start by talking about the moments that impressed us most during the concert?]
[Me! Let me go first!]
[Okay, let’s start with Eugene!]
Only then did TeSTAR become excited and properly launch into their concert review.
[Using the ropes is fun!]
[Oh my, is that why our Eugene kept saying it was fun and breaking ropes during practice~?]
[I don’t eat them!]
[Idiot, he doesn’t mean you literally consumed food.]
[No. Kim Raebin is the idiot.]
[…!! That is incorrect! My intelligence quotient is on record from a certified examination…!]
But there was something they didn’t know.
Almost every viewer except for a tiny handful had been kicked out of the broadcast.
The decreasing number of comments wasn’t the error.
The viewer count remaining unchanged was the error.
The vast majority of Loviewers were staring at infinite loading screens or error messages, sobbing their eyes out…….
And Park Moondae’s fansite master belonged to that vast majority.
[A temporary error has occurred.]
“…….”
A few malicious little shits among the tiny handful who had gotten in snickered as they relayed what was happening on SNS as though tossing alms to the poor.
—Wow Syeombyeol are tearing into chicken. Gotta comment asking if they’ve lost their minds eating at this hourㅠ
—They say Yookjin and Rebinn went outside during the concert rehearsal to see how many people were there. Didn’t Gukdae and That Person, old as they are, pull rank on the young handsome kids? Bleegh
She could see trolls who normally would have been buried receiving attention, their shares and quote-post counts steadily climbing.
“……Ha.”
For the first time since the Rookie Award controversy, the fansite master felt a deep, profound surge of rage.
Naturally, she wasn’t alone.
The W app’s SNS account was bombarded with an enormous flood of desperate pleas.
—Do something about TeSTAR’s damn W app
—Give me my idols backㅠㅠ
—I genuinely want to know how you manage this app. There have been error cases with idol after idol ever since the update.
—Error error error, it’s errors every fucking time, how have you never once posted an apology, you bastards
—WHY (angry emoji)
But the W app said absolutely nothing.
‘…I knew that, but…….’
These bastards hadn’t apologized even after one VTIC member’s personal W Live had glitched five separate times not long ago.
Unless the entire service was paralyzed to the point where comments stopped working altogether, they simply brazened their way through ordinary errors.
If anything, it would have been stranger for them to make some kind of statement specifically about TeSTAR.
‘Does this mean… I won’t get to see live Moondae after all?’
Just in case, Park Moondae’s fansite master kept clicking in and out of TeSTAR’s live W Live thumbnail.
But nothing happened.
And by the time she reached home, TeSTAR’s W Live had ended altogether.
“…….”
The replay might appear as early as tomorrow.
Or as late as a week from now.
‘If the error was really serious, maybe the replay won’t even— No! There’s no way!’
It was better not to entertain any more ominous thoughts.
“Haaa…….”
The fansite master let out a long sigh and entered her home.
‘I should wash up… then organize my data.’
There was no need to feel upset over something like this after having such a wonderful concert.
‘Right. It was so good.’
The moment she remembered the two days of concerts, her mood quickly improved again.
And when she picked up her phone once more, new news had arrived.
“…?!”
A TeSTAR SNS notification.
And it was Park Moondae!
========================
Hello, Loviewers
I’m Moondae (puppy emoji)
This is today’s W Live fancam.
I wanted to meet lots of Loviewers, so it’s a shame. I’ll be back again soon. (clumsy fox drawing)
(Video)
========================
The attached video was…
A recording of the W Live they’d just done!
That’s right.
When the members switched phones and attempted the broadcast again, Park Moondae had set up his own phone beside theirs too, just in case.
With video recording turned on.
And the instant the W Live ended, he’d figured out what happened and uploaded it immediately.
Because it had been filmed on an entirely different phone, it didn’t violate the W app’s contract regulations either.
‘…My god.’
The fansite master flopped face-first onto her bed.
Park Moondae was such an intelligent, incredible idol that she’d been rendered speechless.
Then, when she finally managed to look at Park Moondae’s SNS post again, she noticed something she hadn’t paid much attention to earlier.
A crooked fox drawn in crayon.
‘No, seriously, how is this humanly possible, this is insane!!’
Considering Park Moondae’s catastrophically bad drawing ability, he’d clearly copied that fox over and over again to practice before posting it.
‘You even paid attention to us crying because there isn’t a Tibetan fox emoji…?!’
The fansite master wailed about what kind of idol did things like this, and SNS reacted the exact same way.
And the flow didn’t end with Park Moondae’s individual fans.
One after another, the members began leaving comments under Park Moondae’s post with photos from concert practice and preparations for the afterparty.
There were even posts containing little bits of behind-the-scenes information.
—Holy shit, the giant ribbon headband from the Bae-Ah-Moon unit stage was picked by Bae Sejinㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ Ahyeon says thank you for choosing a pretty oneㅋㅋㅋ This is so funnyㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ
—So <I Like Waiting> was Lee Sejin’s pick. Of course my idol knows what’s good
—ㅠㅠㅠㅠ Raebin, thank you so much for the photo of Ryu Chungwoo in just a white T-shirt with the dragon robe thrown over it. I love you
—Why is everyone only uploading endless photos of other peopleㅋㅋㅋ Fine, I’ll be OT7, okay, guys
Before long, the TeSTAR fandom’s disappointment over not being able to enjoy the W Live together had disappeared.
Read only on MUGEX
“Mm, everyone seems to like it!”
“Phew.”
“Yeah.”
“That’s really a relief!”
At Big Sejin’s confident declaration, relieved voices sounded from all around.
I suppressed a sigh.
‘Of all times for an error to happen, it had to be then.’
It would’ve been a problem if the atmosphere turned sour on the very day the concert ended.
Everyone had to be excited and happy.
That way they’d want to come to the next concert and feel like listening to this album too.
Still, fortunately we’d managed to steer things in a good direction.
But the fact that the W Live hadn’t proceeded properly as planned left a bad taste in my mouth.
‘We even rented a place specifically to do that.’
It really was disappointing.
But things couldn’t always follow the expected scenario perfectly, so I decided to be satisfied with this much.
“All right, then. Shall we keep going more comfortably now?”
“Sounds good~”
“Let’s order chicken!”
At present, TeSTAR had returned to the dorm and finally changed into comfortable clothes.
And now round two was just about to begin.
‘They’ve got a lot of stamina.’
They were probably so excited they couldn’t contain themselves, and the fact that we had nothing scheduled tomorrow morning was giving them some reckless energy.
‘I should hang around for a reasonable amount of time and then slip out.’
Even Bae Sejin was choosing food, so the picture would look strange if I was the only one who bailed.
Still, while these guys were busy making noise, I had something I needed to check.
‘Status Window.’
Since the concert had ended successfully, there were a few things that needed settling.