translation by mourningmoor
The first day of the concert had ended, but the excitement lasted all night.
Videos uploaded in real time were being edited and reprocessed, creating an overwhelming flood of content.
Fans who couldn’t get concert tickets quenched their thirst through the content uploaded on Newtube as they welcomed the second day.
Inyoung’s older brother, Inseong, was one of those people.
“I couldn’t even get close to the venue in the end.”
Thinking about his younger sister, who had successfully gotten tickets for all three concerts, Inseong smacked his lips in frustration.
“So jealous. Seriously jealous.”
Then, he busily moved his fingers.
Concert-viewing V-logs from LIT’s concert were being uploaded one after another on Newtube.
From departing home to arriving at the concert venue, checking tickets, syncing the lightstick, and even participating in various fan giveaways—
He meticulously watched everything to ease his disappointment over not being able to be there.
But above all, Inseong’s biggest interest was LIT’s performance.
Last night, Inyoung had called him in an extremely excited voice.
[Oppa. It was totally amazing. Aaaamazing. I filmed Carnival! I’ll send it to you right now. Watch it. It’s seriously the best.]
The game was already over the moment he heard Inyoung’s voice.
It must have been a truly incredible concert. Inyoung, who kept shouting that it was the best, sent him a few videos she had taken at the concert. He stayed up all night watching them over and over, completely losing track of time.
Inseong pressed on one of the videos again.
Since last night until now, he has already watched this video more than ten times.
A song from their latest full album.
It could have easily been the title track—an absolute masterpiece.
As if it wasn’t already a great song, LIT had taken this incredible track and layered it with an insane performance, completely dominating the stage.
Inseong gazed at the members in the video, mesmerized.
Kang Ichan opened the stage, exuding dominance as he effortlessly descended using ropes, his relaxed expression and refined movements commanding the atmosphere.
“Amazing. Seriously, just like Inyoung said, Kang Ichan looks like he could control the very flow of air.”
Looking at Kang Ichan, it felt like he finally understood what overwhelming charisma truly meant.
He was still young, but given more time to mature, he would become nothing short of a perfect star.
As he kept replaying the video, he suddenly hit the pause button at one part.
“Huh?”
He had already slowed down the playback speed to observe the members' choreography in detail.
“Did it break??”
Then, something slightly odd caught his eye.
It was the scene where Jaewon and Roa were performing their trapeze trick.
The moment Roa used the trapeze as a foothold to jump toward Jaewon, the trapeze creaked slightly. Roa’s body tilted just a bit.
He had thought that this jump looked unusually risky, but it turned out there was something hidden behind the scene.
The trapeze that had been supporting Roa’s weight swung a few more times on its own before suddenly dropping with a thud—the strap on one side had snapped.
It had been completely overshadowed by the flashy performance.
“Whoa, wasn’t that way too dangerous?”
Feeling an irrational sense of frustration, Inseong clutched his chest, relieved.
“Roa, you almost got into serious trouble.”
He then rewound the video to rewatch Roa and Jaewon’s jump.
Before he knew it, the docking scene between the two was playing back in slow motion.
“The jump was tough because he got thrown off balance here. He might not have been able to grab his hand…”
At that moment, Inseong’s mouth hung open.
“What? Did I see that wrong?”
He had noticed something truly strange while playing the footage at its slowest speed.
It was the exact moment when Jaewon was supposed to grab Roa’s wrist. Just before their hands touched, they were slightly misaligned. If things continued as they were, the trapeze trick would have failed.
But in the very next moment, their hands had miraculously met.
Roa had grabbed Jaewon’s wrist, and Jaewon had grabbed Roa’s.
The trick was flawlessly executed.
At first, he thought it was just buffering. Sometimes, when the screen lags, things like this happen.
But no matter how many times he replayed it, that wasn’t the case.
“Wow. What is this? No matter how many times I watch it, this part is always the same. It’s not buffering.”
Then what was it?
Inseong kept watching the video over and over before finally reaching a conclusion.
“Park Roa. This baby-faced guy… his core strength is insane? How did he manage to do that in a split second? The jump itself was unstable to begin with.”
Incredible. He had truly found someone amazing.
Completely unaware that something else might have interfered, Inseong simply marveled at Park Roa’s skills and officially declared him his ‘ultimate bias.’
* * *
Last night, the Filaments who had watched L.I.T members’ N Live headed to the concert venue with even more excitement.
One thing was certain—the members were monitoring everything happening in and around the concert hall.
Yesterday, on N Live, Ichan had said:
[We’re already grateful that you’re coming to our concert, but you even prepared all these events for us, so thank you so much. We wanted our concert to feel like a festival for Filament, and it really seems to be turning out that way.]
As he said that, he showed the cup holder that an American lightbulb named Irene had distributed.
[We each got a drink and some merch too.]
At that moment, the comments section exploded with questions about how they knew about it.
[We’ve been checking in constantly because we were curious about how you were enjoying it. We’ve been looking at SNS, watching vlogs, and even tuning into live broadcasts.]
Roa and Siu even held up other distributed merch.
[We got these too. Though, of course, our manager hyung got them for us.]
Sticker photos, hand warmers, candy necklaces.
They happily held up the goodies they had collected, smiling brightly.
How could anyone not enjoy this?
Once again, Filaments took on the ‘festival’ with a battle-ready mindset, determined to make their idols happy.
And there was one more thing.
At the end of N Live, Roa had spoken with concern.
[Actually, during the carnival performance yesterday, I made a small mistake. I slipped when I jumped.]
It wasn’t that he had slipped. The trapeze strap had snapped.
Filaments, who had already analyzed the situation through repeated replays, immediately protested that it wasn’t his fault.
Naturally, they also sent complaints to Blade Entertainment. How could they let that happen during a concert? How could they have the members perform such a high-difficulty routine without properly checking the safety measures? The more they thought about it, the angrier they became.
[I barely managed to pull it off, but I don’t think it was perfect, so I felt sorry. I’ll do better tomorrow.]
They had wondered why the members went to the company instead of their dorm after the concert, only to find out that they had gone to practice the routine again. That revelation made everyone see red.
There had been nothing wrong with the performance itself. Even under those circumstances, the members had delivered a flawless stage.
And yet, instead of getting proper rest, they had gone straight to the practice room? Just what was the company doing? Furious, fans erupted into chaos.
So, from this morning, they launched a mass protest using the Twittle hashtag.
At the very least, this would force the company to wake up and take the members’ safety seriously.
Thus, on the second day of the concert, both online and offline, an even fiercer and more dazzling festival was unfolding.
And perhaps because of the passionate actions of Filaments, L.I.T’s performance was beginning to spread through word of mouth.
* * *
Roa, who had arrived early at the venue to warm up, opened his phone to check the reactions to yesterday’s concert.
“The response isn’t bad, right?”
Ichan, who had entered the waiting room at some point, asked.
“Yes. It’s better than I expected.”
“You two did really well yesterday.”
Hearing Ichan’s praise made him feel good. But at the same time, he felt a bit embarrassed.
Even Roa himself thought that yesterday’s performance was a miracle.
No one else might have noticed, but as the one performing, he knew best.
When he leaped off the trapeze, he hadn’t received its full support. So failure was inevitable.
There was a safety mechanism below the trapeze, so even if he had fallen, he wouldn’t have been injured. But the performance would have been an absolute failure.
From the beginning, Roa had been the one who insisted on including this in the concert setlist. Everyone else opposed it, saying it was too dangerous, and worried that if he failed, it would ruin the entire show. But Roa had pushed forward, confident that he could pull it off perfectly.
Yet, failing so spectacularly on the very first show—countless thoughts had raced through his mind in that brief moment.
He had shut his eyes tight.
At that moment, he felt Jaewon’s grip tighten around his wrist.
He was shocked. Truly, truly shocked.
It had been sheer luck. A miracle.
That’s why he felt even more anxious about today’s performance. What if it happened again? Miracles and luck weren’t something he could count on every day.
“Hyungnim. Yesterday, I…”
“The Filaments were right. The strap really was damaged. I just checked, and they replaced it.”
At Ichan’s words, Roa’s eyes widened.
“The trapeze strap really snapped?”
Ever since the performance mistake yesterday, Roa had been feeling uneasy.
The trapeze hadn’t fully supported his feet, but he had also worried that maybe his injured leg had acted up without him realizing it.
Luckily, the performance had ended successfully, and they had to finish the rest of the concert, so he had quickly put thoughts of the trapeze behind him. But the fact that he had made a mistake had continued to weigh heavily on his shoulders.
“Yeah. It wasn’t your fault. Even PD Pyo checked it out.”
So it hadn’t been a mistake. His leg hadn’t been the problem.
“You were amazing for pulling through in that situation. How did you manage to jump that far even when you slipped?”
Ichan ruffled his hair, calling him amazing.
The guilt and regret tangled inside him slowly melted away.
His eyes suddenly felt warm.
“Hy-hyungnim’s t-talisman helped me.”
After saying that, he quickly turned around and wiped at his eyes with the back of his hand.
Then he turned back with a bright smile.
“Anyway, hyungnim, are you really not going to cry today either?”
“What are you talking about? Not going to cry?”
His usual neutral expression—what people called his default face—held a hint of curiosity. Or at least, that was the polite way to put it. Really, his face said, ‘What kind of nonsense is that?’
“You didn’t check the monitors? The Filaments are making a fuss.”
“The Filaments?”
“Yes. Yesterday, during fan time, only you and Hanjoon hyung stayed dry-eyed, so they swore they’d make you cry today no matter what?”