For a week straight, collAGE kept shuttling between music show stages, only to face, every live-broadcast day, the same truth: they weren't even going to show up in the ranking segment. As the days passed, the song's buzz slid downward on its own. Luke, who at first would comfort the team by saying the next stage might catch a little more heat, stopped bringing it up.

Everyone quietly accepted that their lead single wasn't going to blow up.

That much was plain from the online discussion. Posts about collAGE were scarce; the only persistent topic was shock that a major group launched by MEG could see its debut single perform this poorly. Beyond that, there was hardly any deeper conversation. Even the injury story Kaede raised on the debut stage barely registered; a few comments went so far as to claim Lan Yu was milking pity and to sneer that using a story like that for hype was embarrassingly out of date.

Before they knew it, it was the last day of music show taping. The members piled into the van early and headed for the TV station. Their manager, who had been scrolling his phone to confirm the day's schedule, suddenly locked onto something. He skimmed fast, then burst out, excited: "Lan Yu! Luke! Up, both of you! Look at this!"

"Mm? What is it?" The two who'd been called blinked awake, still groggy. The others, startled by the outburst, stirred too.

The manager thrust his phone at them. It took a moment for their sleepy eyes to focus, and then they saw it: the forum had exploded with new posts about collAGE.

"Did our stage finally get noticed?!" Eunwoo, leaning in, couldn't help getting excited too.

"Doesn't look like it," Nat said after scanning the posts. "It's the group reality show they're talking about."

"And..." Dohyeon glanced at the pair. "It's mostly about the leader and Yu."

Lan Yu read more carefully. A few days earlier, someone had uploaded backstage B-roll, and viewers had spotted lots of small moments between Luke and him, especially one shot where the two looked like they were hugging.

He tried to remember. The moment causing the fuss was probably right after they got offstage, when he and Kaede had been comforting Luke. In the shot, though, Kaede happened to be blocked out of frame.

Once the topic picked up, people trawled back through earlier episodes of the group reality show, and the threads quickly filled with replies as everyone posted the shippy moments they'd noticed.

"It looks like having you two lean into that dynamic on the reality show was the right call—this whole thing seems to be lifting the group's overall buzz." The manager couldn't hide the excitement in his voice. "Make sure you both bring it on this week's episodes; the company will definitely line up more joint appearances for you two."

Luke and Lan Yu, however, didn't share the manager's excitement. They just exchanged a look and fell silent.

The members, who had been about to chime in, saw how unusually quiet the two were and sensibly sat back down, wordlessly opting out of the topic.

Sensing the awkward air between them, the manager was about to say something when a call came in from the company. He hurried back to his seat to pick up. From the sound of it, the company had also noticed the forum chatter about the Luke–Lan Yu pairing and wanted to plan next steps.

Lan Yu quietly unlocked his phone and logged in to check the threads. He found that it all traced back to a single post: while watching a backstage highlight uploaded two days earlier, a user had spotted, at the edge of a shot Dohyeon was filming with a GoPro, Luke and Lan Yu tucked into a corner whispering—and started a thread: "L&L won't be for real, right?!"

That instantly drew a wave of shippers into the replies. People started scrubbing every clip frame by frame to dig up moments between the two. Before long, someone spotted a wide sweep at the end of a music show that caught them in a hug—even though the people involved knew it had actually been a three-person embrace. The find lit the shippers on fire. Replies piled up: "kkkk my ship is real!" "How are they already lovey-dovey the second they're offstage?" "Is this one of those showbiz fics where he debuts hand in hand with the leader?" "From the way they're hugging, you can tell off camera it definitely doesn't stop there, kkkkk."

The earlier, company-scripted episodes of the group reality show only poured more fuel on the fire. Every deliberate or offhand interaction was blown up by fans, all striving to prove the two were closer than they looked. For a while the forum pages were overrun by shippers of the pair, who even settled on a ship name: "LukYu."

As Lan Yu scrolled, new posts kept bubbling up. After a few more swipes, he sighed and set his phone down.

He couldn't say what he was feeling—nor what he ought to feel. At first, the two of them really had been tied together by the show's script; that was how, after such an awkward start, they still ended up with so many unexpected points of contact. But as they spent more time together, Lan Yu realized what they had on camera could no longer be brushed off with "it was scripted." Even so, seeing people magnify those staged, rehearsed beats frame by frame, he couldn't help wondering: what exactly are the two of us now?

Lan Yu snuck a glance at Luke. Luke was resting his chin in his hand, gazing out the window as rows of high-rises appeared and then slipped away.

Is he feeling the same as I am? Lan Yu couldn't help thinking.

As for Kaede beside him, his gaze stayed fixed on the image frozen on his phone — that backstage hug — and he didn't say a word.

The manager finally hung up after a long call, then couldn't hold back his excitement: "The company just called. They've noticed the online buzz about collAGE. It started with talk shipping Luke and Lan Yu, but the attention has lifted the whole group. They want to strike while the iron is hot—extend the promotion period, line up more shoots for the reality show, and move straight into planning the next comeback."

The van lit up. Nearly a month of music show stages had everyone's bodies flagging, but hearing the schedule still made them giddy. For rookies, a calendar packed with work feels steadier than sitting idle after promotions.

"Who could say we're not good little slaves to capitalism?" Lan Yu quipped at his own expense. The van went quiet for a beat before he realized he'd let an inside thought slip out.

"Yu, what did you just say?" Luke turned from the window to look at him.

"Nothing," Lan Yu said with a sheepish smile. He was privately relieved he'd said it in Chinese.

"But, Yu—can you keep going like this?"

"Hmm?" Caught off guard by Luke's sudden question, Lan Yu felt a little at a loss.

As if sensing his confusion, Luke added, "Yu, your injury—it still hasn't healed, has it?"

"Mm—just a little longer and promotions will be over; it's nothing serious." Lan Yu hadn't expected Luke to steer the talk back to his back injury.

"Mm." Luke's reply landed like a hard stop, and Lan Yu let the conversation end there as well.

The van, lively a moment ago, settled back into its usual quiet.

"Hyeongs, would you two say hello to our ARTist together?" After the pre-record wrapped, Cheol-seong wandered the dressing room with a GoPro, then came up to Lan Yu and Luke, prompting them to greet the camera.

Doing as he'd been told, Lan Yu put on a surprised face, gave a dazed little hello, and asked, "Cheol-seong, why are you suddenly having me and the leader say hi?"

"Hyeong, you really don't know? The forums are all talking about you two as a ship right now."

"Really? I didn't expect people would be shipping me with the leader." Lan Yu couldn't help the silent grumble in his head—he didn't even know why he had to act out this whole 'oh, I had no idea' bit.

"It's because hyeong and the leader are always so close. After practice you two sneak off for your own meal instead of eating with us."

Do all of these things really need to be spelled out on camera? Lan Yu looked, a little helpless, at the excited Cheol-seong in front of the lens. He knew Cheol-seong was only following the manager's instructions. For a rookie group with a rare chance to break out, grabbing a wave of attention was the most urgent thing. Still, hearing these stories deliberately laid out to the camera made something sit wrong in him; it felt like a spell had been cast—his body wouldn't move.

"Hyeong?" Noticing how oddly quiet Lan Yu had gone behind him, Cheol-seong glanced back, but Lan Yu was still sunk in thought and didn't hear him.

"Cheol-seong, are you talking about me?" Luke appeared from behind then and wrapped both Lan Yu and Cheol-seong up in a quick hug.

"Hyeong," Cheol-seong swung the lens toward Luke, "say hello to our ARTist too."

"Good evening, our ARTist! We just finished what was supposed to be the last music show stage, but thanks to our ARTist's support we now have the chance to present even more stages for ARTist. We're truly grateful to our ARTist!" Luke greeted the camera with a broad smile.

"Hyeong, have you noticed how much our ARTist is focused on the two of you these days?"

"I only just saw it—there's a lot of attention from ARTist online on what's between me and Yu." Luke chuckled and ruffled Lan Yu's hair. "It's simply how we are day to day, so at first, seeing everyone look at us that way, both Yu and I were pretty surprised. But it also means ARTist is really following collAGE so closely. To be cared for like this—we've been blessed more than we can say."

Hearing Luke answer so naturally, Cheol-seong felt a quiet respect kindle for their leader.

Lan Yu didn't say another word—not even after Cheol-seong switched off the GoPro and set it down. It felt as if paste had been poured down his throat; the words wouldn't come, and he had no wish to force them out.