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The podcast is Aron’s idea.
Well, not like it could have been anyone else’s; Aron, after all, is the one who moved away to LA when he was in fifth grade and the other four were in third, and in high school happens upon both podcasting and Dungeons and Dragons. He spends two miserable years at NYU and then moves back to Korea for school instead, starting a new page as a freshman at Seoul National. He rooms with Dongho, but Jonghyun and Minki come in often, and a common topic of conversation with Jonghyun was gaming.
Really, Aron would never have come up with New Trailblazers if it weren’t for Jonghyun complaining that he needed something new to play. But Jonghyun did complain, and something did spark in Aron’s head, and so three weeks into their first semester of college Aron sits three of his four childhood friends around the shitty, rickety round table in his and Dongho’s dorm room and tells them to come up with some characters.
It starts as something fun that Aron records for his own amusement, but then he’s texting Hannah and sends her one of the files and she first sends him a video of herself laughing her ass off and second suggests that he publish it. So he asks Dongho to compose some theme music and gets a cheap website domain and starts uploading.
Well. It takes off to say the least - to say the most, they go kind of viral, at least in South Korea’s nerd circles and within the domains of bored college students needing some humor between classes. Dongho’s begging for a dog (and being unsatisfied with the consolation fish Aron so graciously gifted him instead) and impulsive character Baekho (yes, he named his character White Tiger, Aron wasn’t surprised in the least) won a fair amount of hearts, as did Minki-as-Ren’s sass and character voice and Jonghyun’s cuteness in out of character moments and his cleric JR’s tendency to overuse Zone of Truth as opposed to literally any other spell.
Yeah, it was Aron’s idea and he’s damn proud of that because now they get paid money to hang out and play D&D which means Jonghyun doesn’t need to stress over his major anymore and Dongho can sit around and compose music most hours of the day and Minki, who never liked school in the first place, now doesn’t have to go. And he’s glad above all else that it’s with them. He’s known them since preschool, back when Dongho was still level one in kumdo and Minki didn’t wear his hair long yet and there was a fifth member to their little group.
One of the first questions Aron asks when he comes back to Korea is, “what happened to Minhyun?”
“Oh, he moved away, actually, right after you did,” Minki explains. “He auditioned for something or other. He was on TV last year, some show for trainees, and now he’s in Wanna One.” Minki proceeded to look at him dubiously. “Aron, please tell me you’ve heard of Wanna One.”
He has. Mostly because Grace’s friend’s friends had been on the first season of the show and Grace’s friend and Grace’s friend’s friends were in a group and that group was… well… he learned from Grace later that they were under the same label as Minhyun. Aron remembers Shannon, if only vaguely - she was nice, and energetic, and yes, she sang very well.
Their Minhyun, an idol. Mindfuck. Honestly, Jonghyun coming out or Dongho pursuing a child studies degree weren’t even as surprising combined as that was. Aron watches that one music video of theirs, the one where they have kid versions of themselves, and scoffs at the actor playing child Minhyun. He looks all wrong.
Occasionally, while they’re playing on air, childhood stories will come up. Minhyun was mentioned once, then twice. They cut the anecdotes out the first few times to avoid getting copyrighted by CJ, who were notorious for cracking down on any unauthorised use of names (and also to avoid crazy Wannables), but it just kept happening until finally Dongho had the grand idea to just not call him Minhyun.
“We can just call him the Knight,” Dongho suggests. “You remember. When we were little that’s always what he’d play. The knight.”
“Yeah, and I was the princess,” Minki a,dds smiling big at the memory.
“No one cares, Minki, shut up.”