I found another teeny tiny hint that might be a foreshadowing. In one of the final episodes of En-O clock in which he would be a featured player, there's a bit where the members have to come up with a ringtone.
Heeseung mentions his own experience (which the caption kindly tells me was captured in En-Log 250415) where he created his own ringtone. (?? I will need to look into this later).
He starts telling the members very seriously about the different types of ringtone that exist - caller-ringtones and bell ringtones etc etc. He's addressing this comment to Sunghoon, and Sunghoon only, which I am noting without comment because I just don't know enough to interpret. What I did find interesting is that nobody had anything to say about it. They couldn't agree or disagree, because they just didn't have this knowledge and experience. They didn't say whether they admired it or what they thought about Heeseung's output. Or maybe they did and it was edited out. But there was an odd silence from my point of view, when I'm used to the boys of other groups at least paying lip service of enthusiasm for each other's solo projects and side quests.
En-O clock from about episode 85 or whatever it is I started from is very enjoyable, by the way, in a 'just right porridge' sort of way for me (cue rending of clothes, gnashing of teeth, but like, not at a very high octane, because I am tired and he's gone already). It's not the messy, erratic, is Mingi the tanker or does someone on the content side of kq corp actually hate him? vibes of Ateez reality content for which I have to be in the right mood nor is it that bang chan-ssi do you really actually think there are that many small children still watching you guys- and do you at all regret calling your group KIDS level of extreme, sometimes unbearable childishness of Stray Kids content. It's mild enough to be unprovocative and grown up in enough to not make me feel repelled.
There's a certain kind of liminal vibe in young Idols that repels rather than attracts me - it's when they're not out of childhood yet. Each person comes out of that stage of like, adolescence into actual adulthood, at a different time. Doing this completely unscientifically, I went by vibes to start with En-o clocks from March 28, 2024 (Episode 88), and I was about right in terms everyone in Enhypen being grown up enough to be interesting.
However, when I skip back to the year before that, to (again, selected on vibes and not some sort of spreadsheet analysis with the actual airdate), to about Episode 57 (Youtube date March 30, 2023), there's a LOT that's very different.
First, again, the Heeseung Departure Foreshadowing:
What a difference a year makes. In 2023, Heeseung "does something" with an entrance that surprised me, given the journey I took with him from 2024 through to the end of 2025. He did this with the rollerskate rink content, but with much less playfulness and enthusiasm than he does here:
They're supposed to decorate the studio to make it look like a festive pajama party, and Heeseung is the only one who comes up with this idea to play around with the props, inviting others to salsa with him and shaking his (small but bouncy) booty, to the delight of everyone else.
By contrast, by Episode 125, the most that Jungwon can come up with to say about Heeseung is that he is capable of sleeping anywhere. "Heeseung hyung can fall deeply asleep practically anywhere."
Jay concurs.
And in fact, that's what the final 40 or so En-O clocks keep demonstrating. Heeseung falls asleep, lies down, powers down, rests, hides, rests, while on camera, after he hurriedly goes, I'll go first for every single task and challenge. If I wasn't looking for a pattern and also inhaling these all in a row and um, possibly, also, if i i wasn't an INTJ autistic, I wouldn't have noticed, but it's a pretty clear pattern: Volunteer to go first, get his 'portion' out of the way, zone out (and, more than once, actually just go to actual sleep).
Heeseung doesn't deny it either. "I'm able to create a bed to my liking in any location."
.... So he went from being a mood maker to someone Jungwon could only describe as someone whom his teammates saw constantly just fall asleep or went to sleep all the time unless he had to turn "on" to go on stage, and otherwise discussed projects that had nothing to do with the team.
Ah.
