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Chapter I: The Initial Infection
The downfall of Stray Kids did not begin with a scandal, a devastating injury, or creative differences. It began on a humid Tuesday evening in July, in the living room of their main dorm, over a half-eaten box of cold fried chicken.
Bang Chan was massaged by the sheer, unadulterated exhaustion that only an eighteen-hour studio session could provide. He was slumped on the leather sofa, a laptop balanced precariously on his thighs, squinting at a waveform that currently refused to cooperate. Across from him, Han Jisung was aggressively vibrating while playing a mobile game, and Changbin was doing seated bicep curls with a random heavy textbook he had found under the coffee table.
Jeongin was there, too. He was lying upside down on the armchair, his legs draped over the backrest, his face illuminated by the harsh, hypnotic blue glow of his smartphone. His thumb was flicking upward at a terrifying, rhythmic speed—every two seconds, a new burst of high-pitched, chaotic audio leaked from his speaker before being brutally cut off by the next swipe.
Chan rubbed the bridge of his nose, his voice heavy with sleep. "Jeongin-ah. Put some headphones on, please. My brain is turning into mush."
Jeongin didn’t look up from the screen. His thumb froze for a fraction of a second. His expression remained completely deadpan, blank and hollow, like a vessel that had been entirely drained of its contents.
"What the sigma?" Jeongin murmured.
The laptop screen reflected in Chan’s wide, unblinking eyes. He slowly lowered the lid of his computer, the latch clicking shut in the sudden, heavy silence of the room.
"…What?" Chan asked, his voice dropping into the carefully measured, cautious register he usually reserved for dealing with corporate executives or malfunctioning soundboards.
Jeongin turned his head slightly, his fox-like eyes glinting with a strange, terrifying light that Chan had never seen in all their years together. A slow, unnerving grin spread across the youngest member's face, splitting his features into a mask of pure, chaotic malice.
"Bro’s not skibidi enough," Jeongin stated plainly.
The dumbbell in Changbin’s hand stopped mid-air. Jisung’s thumbs froze over his screen, his character immediately taking a fatal sniper shot to the head. The television in the background continued to play a variety show on mute, the flashing lights casting long, eerie shadows across the room.
Nobody moved. Nobody breathed. The air in the dorm thickened with a dense, suffocating confusion. It was the exact kind of silence that precedes a historical disaster—a quiet so profound that it carries the weight of a turning tide.
"Jeongin," Chan said, his tone dropping an octave, his parental instincts overriding his exhaustion. "What language are you speaking right now? Is that English? Is it a dialect? Are you having a stroke?"
Jeongin didn't answer. He simply let out a sharp, melodic laugh that sounded entirely too high-pitched to be natural, snapped his phone off, and flipped himself off the chair with the grace of an acrobat. He glided out of the living room, leaving the three older members staring at the empty doorway like they had just witnessed a close-encounter of the third kind.
"Did he..." Changbin started, slowly lowering the textbook to the floor. "Did he just insult us?"
"I think," Jisung whispered, his eyes wide with a deep, existential dread, "that we just lost him to something terrible."
By the end of the week, the terrifying reality of their situation had set in. Yang Jeongin, the beloved youngest, the polite and sharp-witted vocalist who had survived years of rigorous training and industry pressure, was now physically, psychologically, and linguistically incapable of speaking like a normal human being.
---
Chapter II: The Progression of Decay
The transformation was not gradual; it was a violent, total hostile takeover of Jeongin's vocabulary. The linguistic degradation was documented by the members with a mixture of clinical fascination and absolute horror.
Day 1: The Subtle Infiltration
It began under the guise of casual slang. The group was in the dance studio, dripping with sweat after running the choreography for their title track five times in a row. Hyunjin had managed to execute a particularly difficult spin flawlessly, collapsing onto the mirrors with a dramatic, breathless sigh.
"Wow," Felix gasped, waving his shirt to get some air. "Hyunjin-ah, that was actually perfect."
Jeongin, who was sitting in the corner drinking from a water bottle, nodded solemnly. "That’s lowkey sigma."
The members laughed. It was a nervous, collective giggle. They assumed it was a joke—a bit, a temporary character he was playing for an upcoming vlog or an inside joke he had picked up from a stray staff member. Hyunjin threw a sweat towel at him, giggling. "Yeah, yeah, thanks, Jeongin."
Chan smiled, breathing a sigh of relief. *It’s just a phase,* he told himself, rubbing his sore shoulders. *Kids say weird things.*
Day 3: The Aura Shift
By Thursday, the humor had completely evaporated.
The vocal line was in the recording booth with Chan. Seungmin had just finished a stellar take, his high note sustaining with pitch-perfect clarity through the studio monitors. He stepped out of the booth, looking quite pleased with himself, expecting the usual round of high-fives and constructive notes.
Chan nodded aggressively, clicking his pen. "Beautiful, Seungmin. The control on the vibrato was exactly what the track needed."
Seungmin looked at Jeongin, who was scrolling through his phone on the studio couch. "What did you think, Innie?"
Jeongin slowly lifted his head. His eyes were completely devoid of emotion. "Negative aura."
The pen in Chan’s hand snapped perfectly in half.
Seungmin’s smile vanished, replaced by a cold, sharp twitch in his left jaw. "What did you just say to me?"
"Bro lost five hundred aura points for that outfit too," Jeongin added, his voice entirely monotonous as he gestured vaguely toward Seungmin’s oversized striped cardigan. "Unc behavior."
"I am older than you by five months!" Seungmin shouted, his hands clenching into fists as he stepped toward the couch. "What are you talking about? What is an aura point? Speak Korean, Yang Jeongin!"
Jeongin didn’t even flinch. He just pulled his hood over his head, sinking deeper into the cushions like a turtle retreating into its shell. "Bro’s crashing out. Not very rizzler of you."
Day 5: The Departure
Friday was the day the physical structural integrity of the group began to splinter.
The members were gathered around the kitchen table for breakfast. Lee Know had spent an hour preparing a mountain of perfectly seasoned spam and eggs, placing the plates down with a rare, quiet pride. Changbin reached across the table to grab a piece of bacon from the communal plate, his fork mid-air.
Jeongin’s hand shot out with lightning speed, his chopsticks intercepting Changbin’s fork with a sharp *clack*. He snatched the bacon, stuffed it into his mouth, and chewed without breaking eye contact.
"Hey!" Changbin yelled, his massive chest expanding as he glared at the youngest. "That was mine!"
"Bro got fanum taxed by Ohio," Jeongin chewed out, his voice muffled by the pork.
Silence descended upon the kitchen like a wet wool blanket. Minho stopped wiping the counter, his eyes narrowing into two slits of pure, homicidal calculation. Felix slowly put down his orange juice, looking as though he had just witnessed a crime against humanity.
Changbin stood up so fast his chair screeched against the tiles. He looked at Jeongin, then looked at Chan, who was sitting at the head of the table with his head in his hands.
"I can't do this anymore," Changbin said, his voice terrifyingly calm. "I am a grown man. I lift three hundred pounds. I am not being told I was 'fanum taxed by Ohio' by a child who still loses his wallet twice a week."
Changbin walked out of the kitchen, slammed the front door of the dorm, and went to the gym three hours ahead of schedule.
### Day 8: The Border of Sanity
By Tuesday of the following week, the condition had reached an international scale of absurdity.
The group was in the back of a moving van, traveling through the rain-slicked streets of Seoul after a late-night filming schedule. Seungmin was sitting next to Jeongin, his laptop open on his knees. His brow was furrowed, his eyes darting across a series of medical articles and psychological journals.
Jeongin looked out the window, watching the neon signs flash past the glass. "Only in Balkongrad," he muttered to himself.
Seungmin didn’t look up from his screen. His fingers flew across the keyboard, his typing sounding like a barrage of small-caliber gunfire.
"What is Balkongrad, Seungmin-ah?" Hyunjin asked from the row behind them, his voice laced with genuine anxiety. "Is it a real place?"
"I am currently researching whether this is a manifestation of late-stage linguistic regression or an unprecedented form of digital-induced aphasiac echolalia," Seungmin stated, his voice flat and clinical. "I have searched twenty-four separate online databases. There is no country called Balkongrad. There is no medical record of a human being using the word 'skibidi' fifty-four times in a single twenty-four-hour cycle without experiencing total neurological collapse."
Jeongin turned his head, staring at Seungmin’s screen. "Seungmin-ah is lowkey tweaking. His brainrot is real."
Seungmin slowly closed the laptop. He leaned his head back against the headrest, closed his eyes, and began to count backward from one hundred in classical Latin just to ensure his own cognitive functions were still intact.
---
Chapter III: The Emergency Consultation
The breaking point arrived on Day 12.
The members were gathered in the living room for what was supposed to be a peaceful evening off. Chan had ordered their favorite barbecue, spent his own money on expensive cuts of beef, and set up a movie on the projector screen to foster some much-needed group bonding.
Jeongin walked into the room, wearing a neon green tracksuit that hurt to look at. He stood in front of the projector screen, blocking the opening credits of the film.
"Move, Innie," Minho said, his tone dangerously polite. "I can see your silhouette, and it’s making me want to throw a shoe."
Jeongin puffed out his chest, placing his hands on his hips. "Can't move. I've got ten thousand aura. The rizz is too powerful."
Chan stood up. His face was gray. The skin under his eyes was dark enough to look like theatrical makeup. He looked like a man who had spent the last fortnight fighting a war against an invisible, intangible enemy, and he was currently losing the front lines.
"That's it," Chan whispered. "Get your coats. We're going to the clinic."
The private medical facility the company used was quiet at midnight. The doctor, a distinguished man in his late fifties named Dr. Park, had handled everything from severe dance injuries to extreme exhaustion over his long career with idols. He sat behind his heavy oak desk, looking through a series of charts while Jeongin sat on the examination table, swinging his legs back and forth like a cheerful toddler.
"Physically," Dr. Park began, tapping a clean fingernail against a printout of Jeongin’s bloodwork, "he is in peak condition. His iron levels are excellent, his reflexes are incredibly sharp, and his neurological scans show absolutely no signs of trauma, lesions, or chemical imbalances."
Chan leaned over the desk, his hands gripping the wood so tightly his knuckles turned white. "Doctor. You don't understand. He called me 'unc' three times in the waiting room. He looked at a poster of the human skeletal system and said the ribcage lacked 'gyatt.' I don't know what these words mean, Dr. Park. I feel like my sanity is slipping through my fingers like sand."
Dr. Park looked past Chan’s shoulder to Jeongin. The youngest member offered the doctor a small, two-fingered salute. "Sup, chat," Jeongin murmured.
The doctor slowly lowered his glasses. He looked at the charts, then at Chan’s desperate, hollow face. A deep, heavy wave of profound sympathy washed over the older man's features. He reached across the desk, placing a heavy, comforting hand over Chan’s trembling knuckles.
"Leader-nim," Dr. Park whispered, his voice trembling slightly. "I am a medical professional. I have studied at Seoul National University. I have done fellowships in Boston. But against this... against the digital rot of the modern youth... there is no medicine. I am so deeply, deeply sorry."
Chan slowly fell back into his chair, staring at the ceiling as a single, theatrical tear slipped down his temple. Beside him, a small skull icon seemed to materialize in the empty air of the clinic, a silent testament to the absolute death of their peace.
---
Chapter IV: Operation: Save the Maknae
The drive back to the dorm was silent, save for Jeongin softly whistling a melody that sounded suspiciously like a viral loop from an online short-form video platform. The moment the front door clicked shut, Chan turned around, his eyes burning with a desperate, frantic energy.
"We are a team," Chan declared, his voice echoing through the hallway. "We have won survival shows. We have topped global charts. We have practiced twenty hours a day until our feet bled. We are not losing our youngest member to an online subculture. We are going to fix him. By any means necessary."
The members split into specialized tactical units, each designing a specific methodology to break the linguistic curse that had taken hold of their maknae.
Team 1: Positive Reinforcement (Felix)
Felix’s approach was rooted in pure, unadulterated love. He cornered Jeongin in the kitchen the next morning, holding a plate of freshly baked brownies.
"Innie," Felix said, his deep voice carrying a soft, melodic warmth as he smiled brightly. "Look what I made for you! They’re still warm. You love brownies, right? Tell me how they taste. Use your regular words, please."
Jeongin took a bite, chewing slowly. Felix leaned in, his eyes wide with hopeful anticipation, waiting for a *'Wow, Felix-hyung, this is delicious!'* or a *'You're the best baker!'*
Jeongin swallowed. He looked at the brownie, then looked at Felix. "This cooks lowkey. No cap, Felix-hyung, you cooked with this one. Absolute peak rizz flavor."
Felix’s smile shattered. He slowly set the plate down, walked into his room, pulled his duvet over his head, and didn't speak for the next four hours.
Team 2: Aggressive Deterrence (Lee Know)
Minho did not believe in soft words. He believed in behavioral conditioning. He waited until Jeongin was sitting on the sofa before walking over and dropping a heavy, wooden cutting board onto the coffee table with a terrifying *thud*. In his right hand, he held a large, professional chef's knife, which he began to sharpen with slow, rhythmic strokes.
"Jeongin-ah," Minho said, his face completely expressionless, his eyes wide and unblinking. "The next word out of your mouth will determine whether you get to keep your phone for the rest of the month, or whether I find out how many pieces I can chop an apple into in ten seconds. Choose your next sentence with extreme care."
Jeongin stared at the flashing blade. He swallowed hard. The silence stretched for ten agonizing seconds.
"Bro’s trying to send me to the gulag," Jeongin whispered, his voice trembling slightly, but the slang remained unbreakable. "Negative aura behavior."
Minho let out a long, slow breath, pointed the knife at him, and walked away before he did something that would require a public relations statement from the company.
### Team 3: Mirror Therapy (Han)
Jisung’s strategy was based on counter-intelligence. "If you can’t beat them, overwhelm them," he argued during a secret meeting in the bathroom. He spent an entire afternoon researching the exact origins of the slang, printing out a glossary of terms, and memorizing them like lyrics to a fast-paced rap track.
He walked into the living room where Jeongin was resting. "Yo, Jeongin! What's the move, my fellow sigma? Are we heading to Ohio later to tax some fanum, or are we just staying in the skibidi toilet to grind our aura points?"
Jeongin turned his head. He looked at Jisung with a profound, crushing sense of secondhand embarrassment so intense it could be felt physically in the room.
"Jisung-hyung," Jeongin said, his voice dripping with disgust. "You look so cringe right now. Please stop. Your rizz is literally in the negatives."
"It didn't work!" Jisung screamed, running back to Chan’s room. "He’s immune to his own poison! He just called me cringe, Chan! My pride is destroyed!"
Team 4: Physical Redirection (Changbin)
Changbin believed the problem was an excess of stagnant energy in the brain. "He’s spending too much time sitting down," Changbin reasoned, grabbing Jeongin by the scruff of his neck and dragging him to the dorm's home gym setup. "We're going to sweat the rot out of your system."
For two hours, Changbin forced Jeongin to perform heavy squats, deadlifts, and cardio intervals. He stood over him like a drill sergeant, shouting encouragement. "Come on, Jeongin! Push! One more rep! Feel the burn!"
Jeongin collapsed onto the rubber gym mat after the final set, his chest heaving, his face red from exertion. He looked up at Changbin’s massive, muscular frame looming over him.
"Bro is... an absolute unit..." Jeongin gasped out, wiping sweat from his brow. "But the workout... lacked... gyatt... optimization..."
Changbin slowly dropped his clipboard. He turned around, walked out of the gym, and began doing heavy bench presses in total silence, processing the defeat through physical pain.
Team 5: Intellectual Deconstruction (Seungmin)
Seungmin approached the issue like a debater. He sat across from Jeongin at the dining table with a thick English-Korean dictionary and a red pen.
"Let’s analyze your claims, Jeongin," Seungmin said, tapping the table. "You frequently reference 'Ohio.' Ohio is a Midwestern American state with a population of approximately eleven point seven million people. It is known for its agricultural output and manufacturing. Why do you associate it with chaotic or supernatural events? Please provide a structural thesis based on geographical or sociological data."
Jeongin stared at him for a solid minute. "Bro really brought a dictionary to an aura fight. Common Seungmin L."
Seungmin closed the dictionary, stood up, and quietly walked over to the freezer to press a bag of frozen peas against his throbbing temple.
Team 6: The Melodrama (Hyunjin)
Hyunjin’s method was entirely emotional. He threw open the door to the living room, draped himself across the back of the sofa where Jeongin was sitting, and let out a loud, theatrical wail.
"Innie!" Hyunjin cried, clutching his chest as if he had been pierced by a sword. "Where is my sweet little brother? Where is the boy who used to smile so prettily at the cameras? Who is this monster that has taken his place? Look at me! Look into my weeping eyes and tell me you remember our love!"
Jeongin didn’t even look away from his phone. "Bro’s doing side quests now. Dramatic aura is through the roof."
Hyunjin gasped, fell off the back of the sofa onto the carpet, and began to sob dramatically into a throw pillow, declaring that the universe was cruel and devoid of meaning.
---
\ Chapter V: The Direct Confrontation
By Sunday evening, every tactical unit had failed. The members were exhausted, defeated, and emotionally drained. They sat in the living room like a defeated army, watching Jeongin calmly make a cup of instant ramyun in the kitchen, humming that same terrible, digital melody.
Chan stood up. His movements were slow, stiff, like an old man whose joints had rusted from years of labor. He walked into the kitchen, stopping right at the edge of the counter.
"Jeongin," Chan said. His voice wasn't angry. It wasn't frantic. It was just tired—a deep, ancient tiredness that carried the weight of a thousand generations of leaders.
Jeongin turned around, holding his hot cup of noodles. "Sup, unc."
"Don't," Chan whispered, his eyes pleading. "Please. Just for five minutes. Talk to me normally. Tell me how your day was. Tell me if you're tired. Just use regular sentences."
Jeongin tilted his head, his expression shifting into something that looked vaguely like curiosity. "Why? Is my aura too powerful for you? Are you crashing out, hyung?"
"Please, Jeongin," Chan begged, his hands coming together in a prayer gesture. "I am asking you as your leader. I am asking you as your brother. Stop saying these words. They are destroying the fabric of our home."
Jeongin took a slow sip of the ramyun broth, his expression completely unaffected by the display of desperation. "Bro’s literally crashing out over some slang. Not very sigma of the leader. You need to look at the big picture, chat."
Chan visibly aged five years in that single second. His shoulders slouched forward, his hair seemed to lose its luster, and a faint, silver strand appeared near his temple. He looked back at the living room where the other seven members were watching through the doorway, their faces pale with horror.
"We need to find the source," Chan whispered, his voice hollow. "We need to find out how this happened."
---
Chapter VI: The Source of the Rot
The investigation took place in Jeongin’s bedroom while he was in the shower. Seungmin and Jisung acted as the cyber-intelligence unit, bypassing the phone’s lock screen with a password they had discovered through careful observation (*0208*—Jeongin's birthday, an embarrassingly simple security measure for a self-proclaimed mastermind).
They opened his video streaming applications, clicking directly on his watch history.
The screen illuminated their faces, casting a sickly, colorful glow across the dark bedroom. As they scrolled down the list of videos, the sheer magnitude of the disaster became apparent.
"Oh my god," Jisung whispered, covering his mouth with both hands. "Look at the timestamps."
"Twelve hours," Seungmin breathed, his analytical mind struggling to process the data on the screen. "On his day off last week... he didn't leave his bed. He opened the short-form video feed at 8:00 AM, and he didn't close it until 8:00 PM. Look at the content, Jisung-ah."
The history was an endless, seamless loop of high-frequency digital noise. It was a barrage of heavily saturated edits, deep-fried audio clips of a robotic voice repeating the same ten words over and over, flashing colors, split-screen videos where the top half showed an animated character running through an obstacle course and the bottom half showed someone slicing colorful kinetic sand with a knife.
It was pure, unadulterated, industrialized brainrot.
"His algorithm is beyond saving," Seungmin stated, his voice trembling as he refreshed the feed. Every single recommendation was worse than the last—a terrifying vortex of nonsensical cultural garbage designed to capture the human attention span through sheer sensory overload. "The system has identified him as a perfect target. It’s feeding him this content at an exponential rate. His linguistic centers have been entirely overwritten by the repetition."
"Can we reset it?" Jisung asked, his finger hovering over the settings menu. "Can we delete the account?"
"It’s too late for the phone," Seungmin said grimly, looking toward the bathroom door where the sound of the shower had just stopped. "The infection isn't in the device anymore, Jisung-ah. It's in his head."
---
## Chapter VII: The Strategic Counter-Move
Chan gathered the group in his bedroom for an emergency council. He sat on the edge of his bed, a single lamp illuminating his face from below, giving him the appearance of a general preparing for a final, desperate stand.
"I remember something," Chan said, his voice dropping into a conspiratorial whisper. "From when we were rookies. During our training days."
The members leaned in closer, the air tense with anticipation.
"Jeongin has an extremely specific psychological trait," Chan explained, his eyes darting across the faces of his team. "He is an empathetic mimic. He has always subconsciously copied the behaviors, accents, and speech patterns of whoever he spends the most time with. Remember when he spent a week rooming with Minho and started checking the stove knobs four times before bed? Remember when he went to Australia for five days and came back saying 'mate' with a perfect accent?"
Felix nodded aggressively. "Yeah! He does that! He mirrors people!"
"Exactly," Chan said, a spark of hope finally flaring in his eyes. "The reason he is speaking like this is because he spent twelve hours isolated with a digital entity that spoke only in brainrot. His brain mirrored the algorithm. So, here is our new strategy: **Operation: Absolute Normality**."
The members leaned closer, listening to the blueprint of their survival.
"For the next seven days," Chan decreed, "we are going to create a linguistic vacuum around him. Nobody is allowed to use any slang whatsoever. No modern terms, no internet jokes, no abbreviations. We will speak in the most formal, standard, grammatically correct Korean possible. We will read classic literature aloud in the living room. We will discuss historical events over dinner. If he is exposed to nothing but pure, pristine language, his brain will naturally mirror us and reset itself."
The members looked at each other, nodding slowly. It was a brilliant plan. It was elegant. It was rooted in psychological science.
"We can do this," Minho said, his grip on his knife tightening slightly. "A week of speaking like a news anchor. Easy."
"For Jeongin," Hyunjin declared, wiping a lingering tear from his cheek. "For our maknae."
---
Chapter VIII: The Spread of the Pandemic
The first twenty-four hours of Operation: Absolute Normality went perfectly.
The members spoke to each other with the precise, elevated vocabulary of Joseon-era scholars or evening news presenters. When passing the salt at breakfast, Changbin would say, *"Would you be so kind as to transport the sodium chloride container across the table surface, my esteemed brother?"* and Minho would reply, *"It is an absolute honor to assist you in your nutritional endeavors."*
Jeongin sat between them, chewing his food in a state of deep, suspicious confusion. He didn't say a single word for the entire meal, his eyes darting back and forth between them like a spectator at a bizarre tennis match.
Chan watched from the head of the table, his heart swelling with pride. *It’s working,* he thought. *The silence is the first stage of recovery. We are purging the system.*
The cracks began to appear on the afternoon of the second day.
The group was in the recording studio again, working on an arrangement for a vocal track. Han Jisung was sitting next to Chan at the soundboard, taking notes on a legal pad. He had been speaking in perfect, formal paragraphs for thirty-six hours, and his creative brain was beginning to experience a severe drop in pressure.
"The progression in the second verse is quite splendid," Jisung noted, his voice smooth and controlled. "However, I believe the transition into the chorus requires a slight modification to maintain the emotional momentum."
"I agree," Chan said, adjusting a slider. "What kind of adjustment do you propose?"
Jisung opened his mouth to explain, but his mind suddenly experienced a massive, terrifying synchronization error. The word he wanted—*subtle* or *understated*—was temporarily trapped behind a wall of mental fatigue. His brain, searching frantically for a linguistic placeholder, bypassed the formal filter and grabbed the nearest available colloquialism from his memory banks.
"It just needs to be... you know... *lowkey* smoother," Jisung said.
The slider under Chan’s thumb slipped, sending a deafening burst of static through the studio monitors. Chan froze, his head turning slowly toward Jisung with the stiff, mechanical movement of a horror movie villain.
Jisung’s eyes went wide. He clutched his throat with both hands, looking as though he had just swallowed a poison capsule. "I—I apologize! It was a momentary lapse in my cognitive faculties! I did not mean to utilize that specific term!"
"Be careful, Jisung-ah," Chan warned, his voice low and vibrating with tension. "The infection is opportunistic. Do not give it a foothold."
But the foothold had already been established.
On the morning of the third day, Felix was in the kitchen, attempting to flip a pancake. He executed the maneuver with remarkable grace, the pancake spinning twice in the air before landing perfectly in the center of the pan.
Hyunjin, who was walking past the kitchen to get a glass of water, stopped and nodded in genuine approval. "Wow, Felix. The coordination required for that action was truly commendable."
Felix smiled, his deep voice rumbling through the kitchen. "Thank you, Hyunjin-ah. I felt like my... my *aura* was very stable during the attempt."
Hyunjin dropped his glass. It didn't shatter—it was plastic—but it rolled across the linoleum with a hollow, mocking sound that echoed through the entire apartment.
Felix slapped a hand over his own mouth, his eyes round with pure terror. "I didn't mean it! It just came out! The word just... it fit the sentence so well, Hyunjin-ah!"
"Stay away from me!" Hyunjin shrieked, backing out of the kitchen with his hands raised defensively. "You're infected! Chan-hyung! Felix is showing symptoms!"
The descent was exponential after that. The linguistic quarantine had created an artificial pressure vessel, and the moment the first leaks occurred, the entire structure exploded into chaos. The human brain, when denied casual expression for too long, will always seek the path of least resistance—and the path of least resistance had been thoroughly paved by Yang Jeongin.
By Thursday evening, the irony had become the primary vehicle of destruction.
Changbin was sitting on the sofa, watching a sports match on the television. His favorite team had just executed an incredibly aggressive, risky play that resulted in a spectacular goal. Changbin jumped to his feet, his massive muscles flexing as he pumped his fist into the air.
"Yes!" Changbin roared, entirely forgetting the protocol. "That was an absolute *sigma* move! Total dominance!"
Minho walked into the room, holding a laundry basket. He stopped, looked at Changbin, and let out a dry, hollow laugh that sounded completely unhinged. "Oh, we're saying that now? Splendid. Truly magnificent. Let’s all be sigmas. Let’s all go to Ohio. Let’s all live in the skibidi toilet together."
"Minho, stop!" Jisung cried, running into the room and grabbing Minho by the shoulders, shaking him violently. "You're letting the darkness win! Fight it! Think of the classical literature! Think of the news anchors!"
"The news anchors are dead, Jisung-ah!" Minho shouted, his eyes wide and vacant as he dropped the laundry basket. "The algorithm encompasses all! It is the past, the present, and the future!"
---
Chapter IX: The Total Collapse
By Friday night, the dorm had transformed into a surreal, post-apocalyptic wasteland of modern digital subculture. The formal language experiment had not cured Jeongin; instead, the group’s collective isolation had caused them to absorb his condition through sheer proximity and psychological fatigue.
The living room was an absolute disaster area.
Hyunjin was lying on the floor, staring at the ceiling, softly repeating the word *"rizz"* over and over like a religious mantra. Jisung and Felix were in the corner, engaged in a heated, passionate debate about whether a specific dance move possessed *"positive or negative aura points,"* their voices rising in pitch as they used complex hand gestures to illustrate their arguments.
Changbin was doing push-ups in the center of the room, counting each repetition by shouting *"Ohio! Ohio! Ohio!"* with the cadence of a military drill instructor. Seungmin was sitting at the dining table, his laptop open, but he was no longer researching medical journals; he was watching a loop of an animated character dancing to a high-pitched song, his eyes glazed over, his thumb twitching in perfect synchronization with the video's frame rate.
Only Bang Chan remained uninfected. He stood in the center of the room, looking around at the wreckage of his life's work. His group, his family, the global phenomenon that had conquered stages from Seoul to New York, had been completely reduced to a chaotic, nonsensical internet meme.
The front door clicked open. Jeongin walked in, carrying a bag of convenience store snacks. He had spent the afternoon at a quiet cafe, reading a book and enjoying some time away from the madness of the dorm. He looked entirely refreshed, his skin glowing, his expression bright and clear.
He stepped into the living room, stopping dead in his tracks as he surveyed the absolute madness before him.
"What..." Jeongin started, his voice completely clear, his pronunciation perfect, his tone entirely normal. "What is going on in here? Why is Hyunjin-hyung crying about rizz? Why is Changbin-hyung shouting about an American state?"
The room went completely still.
Changbin stopped mid-push-up, remaining suspended an inch above the floor. Jisung and Felix froze in their debate. Seungmin slowly turned his head away from his laptop screen. Every eye in the room fixed onto the youngest member with a desperate, heavy intensity.
Chan walked forward. He stopped three feet away from Jeongin. His movements were slow, his eyes entirely hollow, his spirit completely broken. He looked at the youngest member—the catalyst, the patient zero, the cause of their total structural collapse.
"Jeongin," Chan whispered, his voice cracking with an emotion that transcended grief.
"Yeah?" Jeongin asked, backing up a step, looking genuinely alarmed by the dead look in his leader's eyes.
"Did..." Chan started, his lip trembling slightly as he gestured vaguely toward the chaotic room around them. "...did we lose?"
The silence stretched for three long, agonizing seconds. The television continued to flash in the background, casting long, eerie shadows across the living room.
Jeongin looked at Chan. He looked at the silver hair near his temple. He looked at the absolute ruin of the leader's authority. A slow, familiar, mischievous grin began to spread across the maknae's face, splitting his features into that iconic mask of pure, unadulterated chaos.
"Common unc L," Jeongin said softly.
Chan didn't blink. He didn't yell. He didn't drop to his knees. He simply stood there, his eyes staring straight through Jeongin, focusing on a distant, imaginary point somewhere on the far wall of the apartment—a point where the words had meaning, where the language was safe, and where the digital rot couldn't reach him.
"I don't even know what that means anymore," Chan murmured to the empty air.
Jeongin merely hummed at his words, leaving the 7 members confused and depleted.