oof, so the day i've been dreading for the past years has finally come and i'm dropping joohwan!!! i've... had hwan for over two years and a half now, almost three years, and it's honestly the longest i've kept a character in an rp. i... love him so much. everything about him, hwan is easily my favorite character i've ever made and we've both been through a lot of experiences in the rp. i got to see him grow and improve and be petty and find the love of his life and it's been wonderful to both of us.
but i feel like there's not much i can do with him anymore and for a while now i've been keeping hwan around for both the claims i have for him and hwandy. i just don't think this is enough of an excuse to keep not only a spot someone else might want but also all the legitimately excellent music claims that i got with him that other people might be interested in lmao so it's very painful for me to do this.
just wanted to thank everybody who's enjoyed him, who's written with him, who saw how much thought and love i've been putting into him since i first got him back in 2018. i'm obviously not leaving famed lmao but also feel free to refer to hwan as andy's boyfriend or as a 2nd gen idol who's now a soloist if you need someone for your characters to bitch about okay <3 actually no for the sake of andy having fun with actually being older than hwan for once, pretend hwan is in a 4th gen boy group that debuted in around early 2018 okay thanks xxxxx
in more ways than one, she finds relief standing still in this encounter. unpleasant or not, there’s joy in the little things — little facets still left hinging on her bones when monotony gets the best. it’s where it curls the edges of her lips into a grin, her eyes nearly feigning an ignorance. “small dogs have long life spans, so suppose i’ll live long enough to bark till my grave.”
and when her eyes glance over to the clock, she still has a few more minutes to spare. (she’ll use each second to feed into her own amusement, laughter included). “the song’s a hit, don’t you think? all in english — light things up like dynamite.” her voice falls into a sing-song lilt of the remnants she’s picked up from mere seconds of listening, a catchy tune only more enjoyable by joohwan’s irritation. she smiles to herself, lets herself feel whatever joy she can collect out of someone else’s dread.
“oh i’m sorry.” minjung chirps happily, almost too light and free when the contrast is aimed for destruction. “gold star’s given fuse some more individual freedom instead of group activities. we’re not like origin who seems to be married together for the sake of cameras, shipped to america every other month.”
as the owner of two pretty small dogs, joohwan would never wish for her words to be a lie, but he also refuses to allow for her to have the upper hand in this conversation. rather than sticking out his tongue at her – which might’ve been only slightly more mature than his words –, he just offers, “well, tiny dogs are also too overexcited and have a bigger chance of suffering from a heart attack.” which… doesn’t even sound like it’s true to his own ears, but joohwan is tired.
he makes it even further obvious how tired he is when he just decides to sit down. joohwan finds he doesn’t care if she’s standing above him, as even if minjung tries to make a metaphor out of that, he’ll just choose to ignore her. “the song is about as terrible as the english language and the united states combined are, so i guess it’ll probably be a hit.” it is exactly the type of thing he expects that country to enjoy. “hope you’re taking a lot of joy from my suffering so at least someone has a good time with this fucking song.”
leaning back on his elbows, joohwan raises an eyebrow at her. “you’re seriously wanting to brag about individual activities to me? to me? i have three solo albums to my name and solo endorsements. we get shipped off to america to finance the rest of the company, but i still have more solo opportunities than members of other groups that are allegedly more available.”
show off. might as well follow suit. “right, right, uh,” andy paused, and took breaths between each greeting, as if he needed to think them through. if it were up to him, he’d speak majority english for comfort, and reply to comments in the language presented, rather than fuck around with translating shit. even if he was on his own, andy might still to majority korean, not wanting to waste time. however, following hwan meant tossing in a spanish greeting at the end of his list, a match to the inclusion of mandarin before.
he didn’t look at hwan.
fucking stardew fucking valley. this is what happens when your fans are full of pre-teen girls. andy shoved the total-whites-of-the-eyes eye roll that barely didn’t make it onto his face into a manila envelope, and shipped it to the back filing cabinets of his brain. “what a shame. hwan here’s such a big fan. big… farmer.” he played off the hint of a laugh, willing interpretation to turn to a lack of appropriate word choice. “we’ll make do with lol and overwatch. maybe if we have time we could do fall guys or something like that?” the initial hype around that game seemed to die down enough it could be safe to mention. despite opening up the floor to having fans join their games, andy wasn’t in the mood, really, never was, for fans joining him in his free time. for fuck’s sake, he’d made fake ass profiles and logged hours in just for this moment. servant to a contract, he was. “that game’s close enough to stardew, isn’t it? bright colors and that.” just enough room for him to seem unknowing, rather than mocking, though it was entirely mocking.
“right, usually i go jungle, but since we’re together, could bot?” for the first time in a while, andy broke his fake comment reading to direct the tail end of the question to hwan. “if you want adc, you’ll have to arm wrestle me for it.”
streaming together had been a bad idea. joohwan knew it would be but having confirmation of it only made him want to laugh even harder. the two of them had too many inside jokes, knew each other too well and weren’t allowed to let even one tenth of their relationship meet the surface for a live stream with him and andy not to be at least somewhat at risk of showing things that shouldn’t come out in the first place. the greetings was a petty move of andy’s and hwan bit the inside of his cheeks to keep from laughing, while the comments about stardew were far too much for him to be able to control his reactions completely. clearly eight years as an idol hadn’t really taught joohwan as well as he hoped they would.
laughing quietly, he reached for his glass of water and took a look sip as an excuse to get himself back together. “clearly, andy does not play stardew,” he pointed out, thinking that maybe being honest would allow for people to see it as ignorance rather than disdain. “honestly i don’t think he’s a huge fan of roleplaying?” how joohwan managed to say that with a straight face? he’d like to thank his ancestors for giving him resting bitch face. “don’t you prefer moba or fps? which is fine, i think i just have a more varied taste for videogames than he does.”
rolling his eyes, joohwan snorted. “there’s no,” fucking, “way i’m going to support for you. you’re too reckless when playing and i have to clean up after you, nope. just go jungle and i’ll take mid,” he offered, already picking mid for his primary position and adc only as an alternative. “then i can show them my incredible akali gameplay. if she doesn’t end up being banned, of course.” joohwan let his eyes skim the comments, finding one he didn’t mind answering. “oppa, what role do you play and what are your favorite champions? usually, i go mid or adc, but i prefer mid. i like playing assassins, so akali, katarina, yone, qiyana. any of those are fun.”
wandering becomes a source of comfort, even when gold star’s building feels too familiar for the cause of getting lost. still, one step at a time and one peek past each glance of the windows — she nearly forgets why she’s here in the first place. meetings after meetings, no news of fuse (it’s all a period of assimilation at this point).
hands in her pocket, and the figure in one room sparks a pull of a grin across her face. one hint of fun thrumming as a premonition, and she keeps herself as quiet as possible, walking through the room with nothing more than the bellowing speakers leaving her foot to tap against the ground, and her head bobbing to her right then to her left. yet, when the music scenes — seo minjung still manages to fish out a lopsided smirk and a tilt of her head. “a bell? i’m no lap dog attuned to pavlovian training. no amount of origin fame can relegate me to a dog.” a snarky remark, and in comes the first burst of a boredom cure, pulling her expression to faux disbelief.
“by the way — this song, origin’s really got a hit. best song i’ve ever heard.” half-honest, and half an attempt at mockery when her hands cross against her chest.
if the humiliation of having to record, rehearse and perform this song wasn’t enough, now joohwan is also forced to do it in front of someone like minjung. he doesn’t know what is it about dynamite that bothers him so much exactly – yes, yes he does, he thinks about going to the united states so many times, thinks about the way the media and people in the industry treat them, and his blood boils at the mere thought of playing their games –, but he can say for sure that her presence makes his temper even worse. “well you bark and bite like a fucking chihuahua, ” her existence renders joohwan stupid in the least positive way possible – he falls victim of the usage of petty snarks. “you’re as pleasant to be around as one.”
minjung’s comment about dynamite has hwan both rolling his eyes and letting out a laugh. “of fucking course you’d like this type of song, my goodness,” if there’s someone he expects to like it, either genuinely or just to spite him, it’s definitely her. “wanna perform it instead? maybe gold star will let fuse have it to compensate for the lack of activities overall. actually, your leader and kiana have that sub-unit huh? maybe gold star is already thinking of an alternative to the group.”
location: gold star practice rooms
date: june, 2021
with: @fmdxmax
lying down on the floor, joohwan stares at the black ceiling of the practice room. this is one of his least favorite places in the company, if only because he spends far too much time here. he’s sick of the walls, sick of the black ceiling, sick of the lights, sick of the gold star building overall. if he’s not rehearsing for one of his solo releases, he’s rehearsing for the shit ton of things origin does even without having comebacks – or with only one comeback per year – and honestly, joohwan doesn’t know how he manages to walk into the building without having a couple of mental breakdowns.
perhaps he’s being dramatic, but it’s inevitable with what gold star is not pushing origin to do. he thought they had already gone all the miles of selling themselves out to the western market, but apparently gold start didn’t agree with him and they are stuck going even further, for the minimal possibility of some recognition from people who can’t even speak their names properly. to say hwan was annoyed was an understatement. he takes a deep breath, turning his head to the side to find someone sitting next to him. “kid,” he calls out to max. “how mad are you going to be at me if i happen to ditch practice before it’s over?”
never having planned to share this much of his home with the world, no more than the vague backgrounds of instagram posts of the animals, this was a little strange. having a camera pointed at him, and his fingers resting on the cool keys of his board, however, might have been the most common occurrences in his life. and with the darkened background, it was possible no one would gauge anything new about his home anyway, which meant this was a space of comfort. the other, his head turned to at a rolling forty-five degree angle. he lifted his arm from the chair’s to bump on top of hwan’s, as the countdown to stream began.
…2, andy plastered on a turn of the lips short enough it could be a natural starting point.
…1, he rolled a final movement through his body to loosen it.
comments started pouring in near automatically, unsurprising when he was streaming with a man who had more dumb girls foaming at the mouth for him than andy did. he pulled the edges up into a wider smile, as if the comments had been the cause.
addressing the camera properly for the first time, he said, “hi everyone. i’m charm’s andy, and this is my roommate origin’s joohwan. we’re going to be livestreaming today with you all. we’re going to be playing games, so it’ll be up to you if you want to come find us and help us out. could we get some suggestions in the chat before we start?” god smite them if they started pulling through with the stardew valley type shit. “hwan,” he turned again, “you wanna start us off with the first pick? senior privileges.” minute muscles twitched, cause what might have looked like a momentary spark in andy’s eyes, a clear calling of the joke others might not understand.
@joohwanfmd
as they were getting ready to start streaming, joohwan couldn’t help watching andy. he knew to look away as soon as the transmission started, not particularly interested in feeding into of their shippers fantasies – honestly, they were creative enough as it were without knowing one tenth of his and andy’s relationship – but he always appreciated the experience of seeing his boyfriend going from andy the person to andy the idol. hwan had never been particularly fooled by it because hwan himself was the product of a carefully crafted image, but he was always slightly impressed with the way andy went from who he was to the person his fans thought he was. made joohwan think about the persona he had to sell to the cameras before his image change, before the scandal left him with no option but to have an image change, and how exhausting it was. at least, hwan reckoned, andy was the type of person to have fun when fooling other people like that.
when the stream finally started, joohwan was adjusting his headphones. the two of them had been in this position enough times, either gaming or working, for hwan to be fully comfortable and he knew that was going to be an issue. he didn’t struggle measuring his words in front of cameras anymore – especially because origin as they were ended up being granted some freedoms other groups weren’t – but it’d be difficult in his home, in a situation he’d been in several times before.
“hello everybody, i’m origin’s joohwan”, he greeted, both in korean and english at first, then in mandarin, for the andy fans who would be pleased by that. “should i greet you in japanese too?” he added, just to be cheeky, and did so. joohwan knew andy was being diplomatic as they were more likely not going to take any suggestions from the chat whatsoever. “hmm, i thought we could start with league, since it’s a game everybody knows and we play often.” or rather, hwan played. he knew andy was fonder of fps games. “but it’d be a bit harder to read comments.”
that didn’t stop hwan from opening the game, quickly logging into his account while andy did the pleasantries. he then checked the chat and had to swallow down a laugh. “would you play stardew valley? ah, i think i don’t have it on my computer, only on the switch,” a lie but he wouldn’t tease andy to that point. “sorry, we have to go with something else. we could do overwatch too. what do you think, andy?”
location: gold star practice rooms
date: june, 2021
with: @fmdminjung
dynamite is single handedly the worst thing gold star has ever made joohwan do. and he’s thinking about all the stages, the performances, origin’s early music, the fucking on music video – none of it comes close to how much he genuinely detests this song. and it’s not even about the song on itself, which is just… it’s fine. not to hwan’s tastes, but fine on itself. it’s about releasing a song in english with a very specific goal in mind, one that joohwan doesn’t subscribe to. it’s a type of pandering that hwan didn’t expect for them to fall victim to so fast. his opinion on this literally doesn’t matter and gold star will have them do anything the company wants, so joohwan is left with no option but to accept his fate.
his hatred doesn’t mean he will perform badly, however. it doesn’t matter how much he dislikes a song, joohwan refuses to perform with less than ninety-five percent of his capacity. so yeah, joohwan is stuck in the company building after hours practicing for this god damn song, when the rest of his members are not even around. not a single day goes by without him cursing his grandmother and her perfectionism which completely rubbed off on him. joohwan is trying his best, completely involved in the choreography, when he turns around and finds someone standing there. he startles. “shit,” joohwan cusses, reaching for the remote to turn off the music. he glares at minjung. “wear a fucking bell or something, fuck.”
and last but not least, my old man yelling at clouds hwan!
april, may, june: basically he's touring lmao. so i think this is mostly valid for origin members BUT since you don't have to actually be at the schedules, you can also find him in the gold star studios begrudingly rehearsing dynamite in between rehearsing for tour (because this man never stops rehearsing, joke's on gold star for not making him main dancer). he's going to be grumpy as fuck because he hates that song, though, so be warned.
👀 + fmk max, jihae, a clone of yourself 👀 + what do you think your purpose in life is? 👀 + if origin disbanded and your contract expired with gold star today, would you want to continue making music? if so, what similarities and differences would it have to what you've made so far?
Send me a “👀 + a question” and my muse has to answer honestly!
👀 + fmk max, jihae, a clone of yourself
“I’d fuck myself, have you seen me? Marry Max, I guess. The kid is fine. And it leaves for me to kill Jihae, but I think he wouldn’t mind.”
👀 + what do you think your purpose in life is?
“I think God is too busy to have given each and every single person in the world an specific purpose, but if I had to pick it’s to mind my own business, help where I can, accept when I can’t, and take care of the people I love.”
👀 + if origin disbanded and your contract expired with gold star today, would you want to continue making music? if so, what similarities and differences would it have to what you've made so far?
“Yes, I would. I’d want to set up a company for myself, maybe signed another couple of artists that would have as much freedom as they could have, realistically speaking. I like the type of music I make as a soloist, I’d love to keep doing that, but also to have the permission to release more things like Whistle every now and then.”
hwan has been sober for a bit over a year now (yay!) and so i thought it’d be a good idea to write a headcanon retroactively talking about his relationship with alcohol (where it came from, how it developed, what happened on the day of his scandal, how was the treatment like for him)
drinking started very young for him. around age fourteen, more or less. joohwan never had a lot of friends his own age – partially because he was, well, a bitch, partially because he spent too much time at the dance studio with older people – so literally most of his friends were older than him. he hung out with all of them, they all drank and smoke, and he inevitably picked up the habit.
the thing about hwan is that he had untreated ptsd due to what happened with his parents. he bullshitted his way through a couple of years of mandatory therapy (because he was, again, a CHILD) and didn’t go back to it until his scandal. he developed anxiety because of it, still can’t go to sleep without making sure the front door is completely locked, hates guns and gun noises (another reason for him to dislike a few origin songs let’s be honest here) and overall very weary of strangers, which was only made worse for him after he debuted and sasaengs started being an issue.
and alcohol was just… a reprieve. whenever he got drunk, he didn’t have to worry about those things. frankly, he didn’t have to worry about anything at all. and up until more or less three years after origin debuted, his drinking was strictly social, even if he would drink perhaps a little bit too much in those occasions.
(you know how one day there was this story about how they stopped doing dinners with alcohol with bts because someone from the group broke a table? hwan.)
origin has been stressful from day one because of the competition. hwan didn’t want to do that and everything about it made him second guess himself soooo much. it was terrible, 0/10, would not recommend.
but drinking stopped being only a social activity by the time origin started getting more famous. 2016 was a huge year for them, what with winning their first daesang, having such a massive era with fire then blood, sweat and tears, and that’s when the pressure got real. like one daesang meant they had to win a lot more daesangs, because neither the boys or the company would be satisfied.
and then in 2017 origin exploded. attention from the west started increasing a lot and gold star basically they decided they had to be the next biggest thing in the world. that’s a lot for a person to handle, especially a person who was very much not willing to do therapy by then, and the pressure was becoming more and more suffocating.
joohwan became even more paranoid too because the increased fame came with increased obsessive and intrusive fans. that was when he really started drinking to try to get to sleep since sleeping pills rarely did it for him. but hard liquor was the answer, it worked wonders, and it helped him sleep even when nothing else would.
2018 & 2019 brought with them even more success for origin, but also brought andy. i would never suggest that andy made hwan worse because that’s absolutely not true – in fact, whenever andy was around and their relationship was in the okay stages of the early days, hwan felt like he could partially rely on someone. when their relationship got bad and they broke up? worse week of hwan’s life, but when they got back together and stuff genuinely improved, hwan had days when drinking wasn’t as strong of a thought.
but andy is not a solution to his problems the same way hwan isn’t a solution to andy’s – and hwan would never want them to rely on each other to that extent because it’s just not healthy – and they spend more nights away from each other than together. it became harder and harder for hwan to go to sleep, and he more and more started drinking for the sake of it, to numb the anxiety, to numb the paranoia, to numb the intrusive thoughts.
it wasn’t true that he’d show up for schedules completely drunk but it would be a lie he did them sober either. not concerts because he’d throw up halfway through them if that was the case, but photoshoots, music video filmings, even interviews? he was never completely sober, especially when they were in the us. he took to drinking in the mornings, to the point where he started needing more and more alcohol to get a buzz going.
made him erratic at times, especially when he went days without drinking for whatever reason. it had him back to his earlier days of origin, when he’d snap at the boys without any reason whatsoever. just… bad vibes all around.
when his scandal happened, joohwan was approaching that state where instead of needing more to get drunk, he was starting to need slightly less, because he drank so often his body was struggling to compensate. it was on the verge of getting that bad, yeah.
he had just wanted to forget. the anniversary of his parents’ death had come and gone and he hadn’t wanted to think about it, but all thoughts came back when he started drinking so he decided he wouldn’t stop. joohwan was unfortunate enough that photographers followed him and people decided to film him being basically carried outside of the bar. when he got home, he passed out and woke up to his manager calling him a thousand times to let him know he was needed in gold star.
joohwan being as famous as he was, and in korea on top of that, couldn’t drop things and be shipped off to rehab. (it was a possibility that they considered, sending him to a facility somewhere that would be as hidden as possible and claiming he was just taking a hiatus at home but ultimately if that leaked it would have made things worse).
so he did get admitted to a hospital for a couple of days just so he could be kept an eye on, but most of his treatment was done in a private, in the therapist and psychiatrist’s offices. he went to AA meetings everyday for a couple of weeks, spoke to different therapists that had different methods until he found one that worked the best for him and on top of that joohwan was dealing with the side effects of going cold turkey.
cutting alcohol so suddenly? terrible experience -10/10, joohwan would not recommend. but this entire process worked for him and he’s been sober for over a year!
joohwan continued with his therapist, she’s great, basically saved his life. he also sees a doctor very often because of the consequences of the alcohol to his body, takes a bunch of vitamins to compensate. he also developed gastritis (incredible), which he pretends doesn’t exist based on how much coffee he drinks, and he often has to take some medicine for it but you know. one day at a time.
basically, hwan is in a much better place now. he’s never going to be cured of it – once an addict, always an addict – but he’s doing treatment for his anxiety, he has a therapist who genuinely cares about him. on top of that, joohwan is dating an addict. it turns out that recovering addicts can actually help each other out especially if they are not addicted to the other’s drug of choice.
whereas hwan might one day screw up his sobriety – hopefully not though – he has people who will help him through it, and i think that’s honestly the best case scenario here.
( ✉ → joohwan ) oh, you did?
( ✉ → joohwan ) you’re braver than me to look at what anyone’s ever talking about on twitter.
( ✉ → joohwan ) yeah, i’m fine! knight has done the comeback thing quite a few times now. i’ve got it under control. 😅
( ✉ → joohwan ) how about you?
( ✉ → knight ash ) eh i can’t really find anything bad about me anyway because my name is always flooded with too many tweets
( ✉ → knight ash ) are you sure? i mean this in the nicest way possible, man, but you kind of looked pretty shit last time we met
( ✉ → knight ash ) i’m fine though. touring. the usual.
( to: *bass boosted* move ) uhhhhhh a gift card
( to: *bass boosted* move ) i kind of panicked because i didn’t know what he actually NEEDS so i just figured if i give hi, the money he’ll probably get something he’s happy with.
( to: *bass boosted* move ) sorry, that’s not really helpful…
( to: *bass boosted* move ) what are your options?
( ✉ → golden maknae ) ugh that’s such a good idea, dammit
( ✉ → golden maknae ) hm... shoes? everybody needs shoes, right?
( ✉ → golden maknae ) why is this so fucking difficult? fuck it, i’m gonna give that man a car for putting up with our bullshit
in a way max gets it. he had to learn the hard way that a person can’t always go above and beyond the 100% they give without crashing into a wall and collapsing eventually. but he can’t help it. each time they enter the studio to learn a new choreography, listen to a new vocal guide for a song, get into the recording booth to bring forth another piece of art or pose for the jacket shooting for a new single or album, max can’t help but want to excel and do his absolute best. he’s just never satisfied with his performance and that’s a fact.
no matter what he does, he does it right or not at all.
so joohwan’s words make him lean into the other with a sigh, temple resting on his shoulder. “i know but… you know me,” he retorts weakly, hoping joohwan will understand. he does know his member, years of working, living and growing together proof that they had established a mutual understanding for most of their habits, flaws and weaknesses. (and yes, max saw his strong desire to always do his best as a weakness.)
“sometimes I don’t understand why we focus on releasing singles in japan when we have so much more fame internationally,” he wonders out aloud in honest curiosity, his brows furrowed as he watches one of the others yawn openly right after the director called ‘cut’.
joohwan doesn’t expect the same level of enthusiasm about the group from his members. he knows that the attachment is different from person to person and that he just has convenient enough circumstances to feel comfortable not bothering caring about what does and doesn’t happen to origin. that’s not so much true for the rest who rely mostly on the group, without any or many solo activities to back them up. though, at this point, surely all of them are living comfortably enough to not have to worry at all. but still, he won’t ask of them to not put effort, not when they want to do so.
“i know, kid,” he pats max’s head twice, smiling down at him. “try your best then, but don’t worry about it too much. we probably have other more important things to worry about anyway.” like tours. like whatever decision gold star is going to make about the future of origin, which is as nebulous to hwan as everything else.
he spares half a moment to look at where the filming has been cut and then to step to the side as the crew starts moving around them. being as disruptive to the production crew is probably the best lesson hwan has learned. and he doesn’t care as much about the obvious reason – that he should probably treat people with kindness regardless – but that it was his improved attitude that had so many people in the industry stepping in to defend him after his scandal. “do you want to release a single in the us, huh? want to promote there?” joohwan cringes at the mere thought. “the only positive side of that is being able to buy weed legally.”
a japanese comeback is always awkward for max in a way. the knowledge of their language isn’t good and the focus on the western market leaves him neglecting his studies more often than he’d like to admit for his own hard working bitch of a mind but he simply finds it not as important, not as necessary as improving on about everything else. so he has to watch yet again as he flinches in second hand embarrassment at the bad accent he has, arms folded across his chest when the notes seem just on the boarder of being off and he really needs to get some more vocal lessons in.
perhaps he could ask joohwan.
and just as he thought of the devil he felt arms on him, a weight on his shoulders making him jump before the reflection reveals joohwan comfortably leaning on him. it really never failed to spark a sense of joy at how much they’d grown closer over the years. so unable to hide his smile he beams one over his shoulder back at the elder male. “you know I always want to improve. I really may need to tackle you for some more vocal advice actually. I’m not happy with my tone in this song at all, not gonna lie.”
striving towards perfection has always been a constant for joohwan. he’d spend extra hours in the studio practicing, extra hours monitoring every single video from rehearsals and performances alike to make sure he wouldn’t miss a single point of improvement. the moment he was publicly criticized for failing to fulfill a basic part of his job – deliver a quality vocal performance – he took the initiative of hiring a private vocal teacher, anything to make sure he would improve and deliver better performances. but– it’s been a while since his heart has less been in what he does for origin. joohwan knows, deep down, that he doesn’t put half as much effort into the group now than he does to his solo career, and that’s just a reality he has to face.
so it’s borderline funny to him that max is looking for any type of advice in regards to their deliver in a song that is so inconsequential for them. it’s not like their japanese audience cares much for the quality of what is being released. joohwan hums. “i don’t think you should worry about that so much now,” he tightens his grip around max for a second before releasing it, standing by his side with an arm over max’s shoulders. “you did what the producers wanted you to do, and the result was just fine.” joohwan lowers his voice. “i don’t think the producers or the fans care that much about this song, honestly,” he shrugs. “i wouldn’t mind giving you some tips, but don’t overthink this one too much. just film your scenes today and go home believing you did the best you could with the little that was offered to you.”
