Hongjoong was tired. He had been stuck all day making final preparations for his team's stage on their way to the Thailand K-Con; from finalizing the line-up of their songs to checking in with management on their groups lineup regarding the performances.
Right now he was in the hotel room that he was sharing with Seonghwa; checking his emails in case there would be any updates or in case management needed something else from him again.
Scrolling through his mail, he refreshed the page once more before he was about to go to sleep when he saw that he got one recent email sent to his inbox. Checking to see who sent it, Hongjoong scrunched his eyebrows in confusion. His curiosity was piqued when he saw that it was the official management team for the Thailand K-Con.
I wonder what they want. Hongjoong thought to himself.
Reading through the email; the leader of Ateez could swear that his soul left his body. He barely registers the loud girlish scream that slipped through his lips. This couldn't be happening. It wasn't possible. The probability of something like this happening was as real as something from a fantasy. Harshly slapping himself in the face 3 times, Hong Jung re-read the email multiple times. He was at the point of hyperventilating once he confirmed that he wasn't dreaming or hallucinating. The world didn't exist to Hong Joong the whole time that he read the mail.
Right when he was about to open a draft to write out his response; someone grabbed onto his shoulders and shook him with great force.
"HYUNG!" Hong Joon registered multiple voices shouting.
After resetting his brain for a few seconds, reminding himself who he is and where he was, he finally registered the panicked faces of his members. Now panic seized him.
"What's wrong?" He asks with rising panic.
"That's what we would like to ask you Hong Jung-ah." Replied Seonghwa with a worried yet strict tone.
"What's wrong with me? Nothing's wrong, why do you ask?"
"Hyung," San spoke with a light shake to his voice, "You let out a yell like someone committing murder in here. You woke us all up..."
"Yeah! You even woke me up!" Piped up Mingi.
Nodding, Yonho softly asked "What would have caused you to scream that bad, Hyung? It was worse than the time that Wooyoung managed to snag a limited edition version of one of BangTan- Sonienim's albums..."
While everyone was bombarding the leader with questions and fretting about him, Yeosang looked at the leader's computer, and saw the email that Hongjoong was about to respond to. "Um, guys?" He spoke with hesitancy after having briefly read through it; "I think I found out why he screamed like that..." he said while pointing at the computer screen.
Everyone quieted down quickly and quickly rushed to the open laptop to see the email. Crowding around the laptop, they all read the email out loud. Thinking about it, they now understood why their leader let out that scream and looked the way that he did when they entered the room.
But as towards the reason as to why Hong Jong screamed, they shared glances between each other. So this is why he screamed...
He was going to collaborate with 3Racha. And Soyong from (G)-Idol but that was besides the point. Their leader was asked to collaborate with the production team of Stray Kids. Now that they thought about it, they couldn't blame their leader for reacting that way. After all, it was no secret between themselves about how much Hongjoong looked up to 3Racha; more specifically their leader, Bang Chan.
If it wasn't for the fact that they were all Hong Jung's boyfriend, they would have thought that his admiration for Bang Chan was actually a huge crush. They had no problem with him fanboying over Bang Chan, they all secretly looked up to a member of Stray Kids as well.