Dansol had come out early to prepare the ingredients when he spotted Taeoh crouched in one corner of the kitchen. Taeoh looked completely out of it, as if he'd seen a ghost.
"…Taeoh-ssi?"
"..."
"Taeoh-ssi!"
"Huh? Y-yes!"
"Are you okay? Why are you out so early?"
"Ah… I thought I'd prep the ingredients… ahead of time. What about you, Dansol-ssi?"
"I came out to prep too… Want to do it together?"
Dansol held out a carrot he'd been holding to Taeoh, who still looked like he might burst into tears at any moment.
"S-sure!"
"There are a lot of vegetables—how about fried rice?"
"You must be good at cooking, Dansol-ssi?"
"I think I'm decent. The members say everything I make tastes good. Maybe I've got good 'hand taste'…"
As he washed the vegetables with practiced ease, Dansol scratched the back of his head shyly at Taeoh's question. The company meal allowance was limited, while the members—right in the middle of their growth spurts—were always hungry.
On practice days, they could at least eat at the snack shop in front of the company on credit, but the problem was that the place was so unbelievably bad it was almost better to starve. Thanks to that, the members' evaluation of Dansol's cooking skills was extremely generous.
"What about you, Taeoh-ssi…? Do you not really cook at the dorm?"
"Our auntie usually cooks for us."
"…You live with your aunt?"
Dansol nodded placidly, and Taeoh burst out laughing.
"Pfft—no. Not my real aunt. A hired auntie..."
"Huh?! A hired auntie? You mean… someone who does the housework for you?"
That was unimaginable in Dansol's company. At Dansol's shocked expression, Taeoh scratched the back of his head awkwardly.
"It wasn't like that from the start… It's just that our album did really well. Ah—sorry..."
"..."
"No, that's not what I meant… I'm just making it weirder trying to explain..."
There was a gap between Zeus and DinoSoul that couldn't be bridged even with polite words. Unlike DinoSoul, which struggled to chart even after three years, Zeus swept ranks one through ten every time they released an album after their debut. The only time DinoSoul had ever charted at all was with the OST of a daily drama Dansol appeared in.
Taeoh understood those petty, complicated emotions that came from being stuck in such a situation. Zeus, too, had once been mocked as a flop idol group after botching their first concept. Knowing that feeling made him want to bite his own tongue every time he misspoke.
But Dansol wasn't the type to wallow in an inferiority complex. That, too, was a luxury reserved for people who were only moderately unpopular. With no schedules and no popularity to speak of, Dansol was busy satisfying his curiosity from a purely viewer-centric standpoint.
"Then… your dorm must be really big, right? Does the auntie have her own room too?"
"Ah… she doesn't live with us, but there is a room she uses to rest sometimes…?"
"If you don't mind me asking… how many pyeong is it?"
"About ninety…?"
"Then… can you see the Han River?"
"K-kind of?"
Dansol asked the things he'd always genuinely wondered about whenever he saw successful idols on TV.
"Wow… that's insane. If I'm reborn, I want to live somewhere like that at least once..."
While trimming the carrot, Dansol muttered without thinking, then quickly clamped a hand over his mouth. Fortunately, Taeoh didn't seem to notice the slip.
"Dansol-ssi… you're not offended, right?"
"Huh…? Why would I be…?"
"Well, I just..."
"Ah… because our album flopped?"
"Cough—ah—don't say that... Please don't say things like that, Dansol-ssi..."
At Dansol's offhand remark, Taeoh started trembling and instinctively glanced at the camera. Seeing his expression, Dansol continued with deadpan brutality, like a child who'd found something amusing.
"Or is it because DinoSoul's dorm is a semi-basement, two rooms, with eight people crammed inside?"
"Aaah! Stop! Don't!"
"And there's mold too, right…? We actually live with mold, so we're basically a 120-member group. Huh! Don't tell me—your dorm has an air purifier in every room?"
"Aaah! Please! I was wrong! Should I get on my knees?!"
By the time they finished tormenting Taeoh with one-sided jokes, the two of them had grown noticeably closer.
Even though no one was eavesdropping, Taeoh lowered his voice and asked,
"Cough… Dansol-ssi. Is it okay to ask this…? Have you decided who you're voting for this time?"
"Huh?"
"Who you want eliminated."
"…Ah."
The first elimination was just around the corner, yet Dansol hadn't thought about it at all. He'd grown careless after the date with Minhyeok.
For a moment, he considered voting for himself and leaving, but in RO Match Survival, voting for yourself was treated as an invalid ballot.
If he wanted to play it optimally, voting for Yoo Dohyeon made sense. But eliminating someone who openly showed interest in Lee Yiyeon could be interpreted as him being interested in Yiyeon.
At the same time, it felt wrong to vote out people who treated him well. If he had to choose someone, it needed to be a person he wasn't close to—someone it would make sense to pick.
"…What about you, Taeoh-ssi?"
"Me…? Well. There is someone I desperately want gone, but the problem is there are too many."
"Who…?"
Just as Dansol was about to ask who Taeoh had in mind, Jisu and Daesu entered the kitchen together.
"Sol, why did you come out so early instead of doing it together?"
"Ah, Jisu-hyung! Just because. It's good to get things done early."
Jisu kept his gaze fixed solely on Dansol, as if Taeoh didn't exist. After just stepping out to shower, he found yet another alpha stuck to Dansol's side, which put him in a bad mood.
At Taeoh's cutesy tone, Jisu deliberately widened his eyes and replied flatly, his usual sing-song cadence gone, replaced with a monotone voice.
"I helped too, hyung!"
"Who's your hyung?"
"Huh? Ah… Dansol-ssi calls you hyung, so…"
"Call me sunbae. Or better yet, don't call me at all."
Just yesterday, Jisu had sulked over Minhyeok being called "hyung," yet now he erected a cold wall against Taeoh.
Startled by the stark difference in attitude, Dansol glanced nervously at Taeoh. Feeling sorry for how deflated he looked, Dansol tried to change the subject.
"Hyung, have you decided?"
"Huh? Decided what?"
"Who you're voting for… for elimination."
"Oh, that…?"
Jisu looked at Daesu. Daesu had taken the knife from Dansol and was dicing an onion, then shot a sly glance at Taeoh with a crooked smile.
"So that's what you two were talking about…?"
"Ah… not really. I was just curious."
"Well… I think I'll vote for whoever our Sol votes for. If you tell hyung quietly, I'll vote for the same person."
"Eek! I don't have anyone! I really don't!"
Dansol flailed at Jisu's blatant fishing. Yoo Dohyeon's face flashed through his mind, but considering the backlash if Yoo Dohyeon didn't get eliminated, it wasn't a good move.
"Really? If you think of someone later, tell me. Hyung will help."
"Ah—no need to help! I—I'll cook the rice!"
Still smiling teasingly, Jisu sent Dansol scurrying to the stove.
Dansol grabbed the wok and started frying rice in a hurry.
Confident in cooking, Dansol dumped all the prepared ingredients in at once and mashed everything together. It was less "stir-frying" and more "rubbing." He added freshly cooked rice without letting the steam escape, producing something that looked closer to porridge than fried rice. The vegetables, still full of moisture and cooked without any consideration for timing, squelched unpleasantly.
Seeing such clumsy technique from someone who claimed to like cooking, Daesu tried to take the wok away—but Dansol, wearing the grave expression of a royal head chef, refused to hand it over.
The truth was, Dansol liked being someone who cooked; he wasn't actually skilled. The horrendous food at the company snack shop and the members—at an age where they could probably eat cast iron—had inflated his cooking ego in the wrong direction.
As everyone watched Dansol fry rice in a wrist-destroying posture, they eventually gave up and started setting the table. That was when PD Choi—who rarely interfered with dorm life—walked into the kitchen.
"Oh, you're preparing dinner early. That's awkward—we might not have needed you to cook today."
"…Huh?"
Following PD Choi into the front yard, they saw two massive meal trucks, a coffee truck, and a snack truck lined up in a row. Among them was even hotel catering.
A pastel banner and X-banners made it clear who the lavish tribute was for.
[We didn't know what you'd like, so we prepared everything. Please eat well and take good care of our Taeoh. —From Hera]
"They were supposed to come on schedule, but the assistant director gave them the wrong date. The food's already ready… What should we do?"
The sheer effort put into the stickers with Taeoh's face impressed even veteran staff.
Taeoh felt increasingly uncomfortable, as if he kept messing things up for Dansol.
Dansol wasn't feeling great either. On drama sets, people joked that when you worked with idols, snacks never stopped—so why didn't your idol have that? He'd always thought it was just teasing.
Now he knew it wasn't.
"I'll eat inside. I like fried rice."
Watching Dansol bite his lip, Daesu spoke up. Jisu went even further and pressured PD Choi.
"Then bring it out and eat together. Our Sol worked his ass off making it. You're not thinking of editing it all out, are you?"
Cornered by two door-sized alphas—one of whom was publicly an omega—PD Choi was stuck. Protecting Dansol's fried rice mattered, but so did not alienating Zeus's massive fandom.
At that moment, Yeomin and Yoo Dohyeon—who had been resting inside—came out to the yard, drawn by the noise.
"Well, damn—so the punishment is getting paid off with money, huh, junior?"
Yeomin sneered at Taeoh.
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