Chapter Text
Hoseok, for the most part, would consider himself an okay person. He isn’t perfect, by any means, he’s still young and he’s made a lot of mistakes. He has known poverty and partying and promiscuity. Has hurt good people in the process, and some bad ones too, and maybe they deserved it, or maybe they didn’t: but he would like to think his moral compass has become pretty sound through those experiences.
That's the thing about being an okay person: good people can fall much quicker into becoming bad people, if only for a little while, because they can't recognize when they are falling, because they are so good. The higher you are to the top the more time there is as you fall to be ignorant to the fact that you're changing into someone you won't recognize once you eventually hit the ground. But people right in the middle, like Hoseok, have seen both ends of the spectrum, and can tell before they teeter off the edge. And it never hurts when he falls, because he's not as high up as the good people. He can look down and he can gauge the distance, and he knows he's an okay person right now.
That inner wisdom is why his morals are relatively okay, he thinks.
Even then, when the new kid comes to No.Mercy, he knows it will test those morals.
Because Hoseok is an okay person, but he’s also human in a very high pressure and shitty situation. So, he really feels like he should naturally be more angry. Furious even. But, that really isn’t where his mind goes: he doesn’t have Kihyun’s unrestrained fire or Minhyuk’s blind frustration or Jooheon’s threatened stare.
He’s just, surprised. Incredulous maybe. That the producers would actually do something like this.
But that’s the thing about trying for a life in the limelight, lesson number fucking one to wanting to be an idol, everyone has their own agendas. He’s sat quietly through the heated discussions Jooheon and Gunhee have had late at night about this exact topic, when the two of them are kept awake by the uncertainty that’s always nipping at their heels and Hoseok pretends not to listen. Privacy is hard to come by when you’re sharing a too-small dorm with a horde of too-big young adults, so Hoseok tries to give them their space when they want it, even if that’s the best he can do.
He’s an okay person, not a good person, so he doesn’t feel overly guilty for eavesdropping.
The two of them would whisper fervently at the audacity of it all as he feigned sleep on the couch. The idea of playing the puppet to get the angle that someone else wants to be perfect. Knowing that this whole thing is just a shitshow to squeeze the most cash out of something that is already largely predecided. Going through Hell as the higher ups turn their heads and avert their eyes and watch the ratings. They don't care about the lives they ruin and the hearts they break along the way, they just want to find the next big moneymaker.
Jooheon and Gunhee resent No.Mercy for all that it is and all that it represents. They hate it with all the passion and vigor that he would expect out of the spitfire rapper duo and Hoseok hates it too. He really does, his heart too open and his soul too bare to ever be as inauthentic as he feels is expected of him sometimes, but he knows what he has to do to provide for his family, and if this a part of it: so be it. Which is not to say that he doesn’t love to sing and make music, doesn’t love being a part of a team and being a part of something bigger, because he does with all his heart.
In his more vulnerable moments he may even admit to himself that music is the one thing he touches that he has no fear he’ll destroy.
But that does not mean he is ignorant to what a small part they get to play in the grand scheme of these things, he does. He hates it, but he knows what it entails.
So objectively, Hoseok should really not be shocked at this turn of events.
But still, seeing the greed of those behind the cameras as they purposely throwing an infant to the wolves for the sake of good television, in the form of a quiet, awkward boy in the closing episodes of the show is a little off putting. A little much. Dare he say, maybe even a little overkill?
Although people who run shows like this would never care about the opinions of someone like him, so Hoseok digresses.
This boy, this martyr for the cause of television avarice, introduces himself. He use his stagename because the cameras are still rolling and real names don’t exist when the camera is rolling and Hoseok thinks his first feeling when he sees him isn’t anger. And the surprise of this decision that he really should’ve seen coming is now fading into something else. If he were to put a word to it, he thinks what he feels is pity. Because sure, someone coming this late in the game definitely feels like a surefire debut, and subjectively; that thought does leave a twang of bitterness in him, just for a beat something dark and angry manifests and he feels a little like less than an okay person.
But then the beat passes, and he recognizes that that surefire debut is only surefire if one of the other trainees doesn’t kill him first.
And he can’t help it, Hoseok looks at him and thinks, “This kid will never make it.”
Because he looks so young, and you can tell how nervous he is. Looking so small and so uncomfortable in his too-big jacket, his face pale and lips bitten. He looks utterly terrified, and damn straight he should be. For bullshit tension fabricated by the cameras, the agitation in this room is the most toxic Hoseok has ever felt and he feels like he’s choking on it as surely as this kid is too. Choking on the conflict that is already so distorted and backwards and Hoseok wants to scream because this is so fucking stupid. He’s a lot of things good and bad but being a pawn is not one of them and this new kid with his fear and his wide eyes and his awkward silence; and his friends with their fury and animosity and jaws clenched so tight; are all playing right into what they want.
He wants to say, “If there’s an us against them, it should not be between this kid and the other trainees.”
But no one is saying anything, fists held so tight under the table Hoseok is worried someone is going to pop a knuckle out of place, so he says the first thing that he can think of as being semi passable for neutrality, “You came at the worst timing.”
It is true, he came after the most emotionally exhausting and devastating day of an already emotionally exhausting and devastating experience. And because everyone has an agenda, Hoseok knows this was on purpose.
K.Will dropping this kid off then leaving him alone here with them is the equivalent to chopping off his hand and throwing him into shark infested waters. Just for the kicks the producers probably made sure to pick out the kid who couldn’t swim.
They end up going back to the dorm, and the new kid wanders and flits around. Never staying in one place long enough to give people the opportunity to tell him it’s the wrong one. His fellow trainess are not bad people, Hoseok knows. They are good people put in a bad situation that has forced them into a box where there is nowhere to place their anger but on the easiest target, and the producers have painted it bright red on this new boys back. The other boys are falling; and Hoseok is an okay person so he can gauge the distance and he knows the landing will hurt them, that it is hurting them, and that it is hurting the kid too.
That’s what happens to good people in bad situations.
But the thing is, the thing that makes it different for him is: Hoseok is not a good person.
There are a few things Hoseok is absolutely sure about:
Hoseok is an okay person, so he’s sure that’s why he could look at this kid (Changkyun, he learns is his real name; because the camera is off now at the dorm and real names exist again) and the situation and allow himself to see it differently: to see a boy who is struggling to keep his head above water and the sharks from gnawing at his feet because everyone has their own agendas. He is sure that this boy won’t have many friends here.
Hoseok just isn’t sure if he’ll be one of them.
And that- that sounds cruel. But he never claimed to be a good person. Even for an okay person, he doesn’t like how twisted it comes across even in his head and he gauges the distance he’s at and it’s lower down than he wants it to be. Hoseok loves his family and he loves music and he has a big heart and he is an okay person, and that night he promises himself that he can’t let this competition make him into a bad one.
There are a few things Hoseok is absolutely sure about:
He is sure they picked the kid who couldn’t swim.
And something about the way he looks, sitting so stiff and unsure in his too-big jacket and stupid striped socks in a too-big empty room in a too-small dorm, tells Hoseok that he’s not going to be able to bear watching him drown.