Production Presentation (2)
I’m translating the chapter now and preserving the web-novel formatting rules: prose in paragraphs, and the chat-style/board-like passages will be rendered as styled HTML blocks.CHAPTER_TITLE: The Beginning of the Fan War
At Ha On-ha’s blunt demand for somewhere to stay, Yeo Do-bin flustered and began blurting out a string of excuses.
“I-I mean, my home is in Australia, so I’ve been staying with a relative out in the provinces, and On-ha’s place would be awkward for the noonas...! And, um, filming reactions isn’t actually mandatory...! But it seemed like a good idea to film them anyway, so... I was looking for a proper place!”
Neoul took a moment to sort through what he’d heard.
Ah. So... they mean they need to film us watching the first broadcast, too. And they need a place where several people can gather to do it?
They had worked so hard filming the show itself already. Why did they need to film themselves watching the show, too?
He did not really understand it. But judging by their reactions, it seemed that once they got closer to debut, it was worth doing anything that might help, however small.
Neoul hesitated, then spoke in a trailing voice.
“Well. I am not staying in my own home either, so...”
“Really? Then do you want to come with us and look for an angel?” Ha On-ha offered at once.
“Tae-seok hyung apparently lives alone. Some of the other hyungs said they were going over there earlier.”
Neoul lifted one eyebrow, his expression turning sharp at the mention of a name he disliked.
“Tae-seok hyung? Gye Tae-seok? That licentious man?”
“Oops...!”
Startled by Neoul’s unfiltered language, Yeo Do-bin glanced around nervously, checking whether anyone had heard. Ha On-ha blinked hard, then rolled only his eyes around to make sure no one nearby was paying attention.
Neoul had thought the two of them would warn him not to talk like that. Instead, they looped their arms around his shoulders and dragged him into a corner, huddling close and whispering.
“Why licentious? What’s licentious about him?”
“T-Tae-seok hyung is licentious...?”
They had not even put on their mics yet, so they seemed determined to verify the facts first.
Neoul did not want a clean soul to be tainted by associating with a rotten one, so he told them plainly what he had sensed.
“Setting aside the stench that came from his soul, his eyes already looked wrong. He was the same sort who goes about tormenting stray blowfish and the like.”
“Dolphins torment blowfish...? Why?”
Yeo Do-bin frowned, clearly unable to make sense of it. His sharp features somehow seemed even colder for it.
“Dolphins hate blowfish...?”
Seeing Yeo Do-bin look genuinely sorry for the blowfish, as though it had been bullied, Neoul felt a renewed worry for how such a pure soul could survive this harsh world.
In the meantime, Ha On-ha sensed something unsettling in Neoul’s words and pulled out his phone to search for it. The moment he read the results, he sucked in a breath and slapped a hand over his mouth.
“W-Why...?”
“Look.”
Ha On-ha immediately showed the screen to Yeo Do-bin.
“Hup...! Dr... drugs...? Drug...?”
“Shh!”
Ha On-ha had only searched for two keywords: “blowfish” and “dolphin.” Yet the instant he did, blog posts and videos all popped up with one message: that dolphins supposedly enjoyed drugs made from blowfish poison.
“Oh, gosh...!”
“Wow, my hands are shaking.”
Yeo Do-bin and Ha On-ha were so shocked their eyes looked ready to pop out.
“No, hyung said it was just that he’d taken cold medicine and was sleepy. He kept saying he got sick a lot because of side effects from medicine, so I just thought that was it. I never, ever imagined it could be something like that!”
“B-But are you sure...? Maybe it’s a misunderstanding. Maybe it really was just the cold medicine...”
“Whether it’s a misunderstanding or the truth, we need to avoid all possible risks. We can’t debut alongside a bomb that might go off at any second. We can’t get tangled up with it either.”
Ha On-ha cut in coolly, then almost tried to rip his hair out before remembering it had been styled, and lowered his hand by force.
Yeo Do-bin craned his neck like a meerkat and glanced around.
“Then... then what do we do...? Should we tell the producer...?”
“It’s not confirmed yet, and it’s a very sensitive issue, so let’s watch carefully for now. For now, shh.”
“Got it...!”
When Ha On-ha mimed zipping his lips shut, Yeo Do-bin did the same.
Then both of them stared at Neoul, so he copied them and zipped his own mouth shut without understanding what it meant.
Neoul was puzzled by their suddenly grave expressions and asked, “But what is this drug...?”
“Shh!”
“Shh...!”
They hurriedly clamped down on his words, and Neoul obediently closed his mouth.
Why, what is a drug...?
Just then, a staff member called out that they needed to put on their name tags, so Ha On-ha and Yeo Do-bin dashed off.
Neoul took out his smartphone and sent Won Hasin a message.
[What is a drug?]
A call came right back.
“You insane fish! Who told you to do drugs? Which lunatic? Absolutely not! If you touch that, your life is over! Finished! Or your fish life, I guess? Either way! Don’t touch it, don’t even mouth it, and don’t go anywhere near it! Who the hell is offering you something that vile? Which bastard is it?”
At the barrage of angry words, firing out like a machine gun, Neoul’s ears hurt enough that he hung up.
So it was bad, then. In that case, the only person who could properly clear up his curiosity seemed to be Baek Yuri.
Among the crowd of people, Neoul found him standing by after just finishing his setup, waiting.
But before he could even ask anything, staff members steered Neoul into line and sent him up onto the stage. They had said to turn off the phone or put it on silent, so he switched it to silent and tucked it away with the clothes he had originally worn.
After the rehearsal, they were lined up again, their positions adjusted, and moved somewhere else.
“This way, please!”
They filed out in a neat row, then stood on the prepared stairs outside while another round of frantic photo time began. The staff placed the very tall Neoul and Baek Gi-yeom in the back row.
A thick wire fence stood at some distance from the stairs, and beyond it a dense crowd of people was packed together, all holding heavy-looking cameras. Many of them waved placards with the contestants’ names on them or draped them over the fence. It was sweltering, but their enthusiasm was impressive.
Neoul, who had grown confident after learning Hangul, read the letters on the placards until he found his own name and smiled faintly.
“Neoul! Bear ears! Do the bear ears!”
A woman waving his name shouted as she adjusted her camera.
What are bear ears?
He looked around in confusion and saw the other contestants working hard to charm the people in front of them. Everyone was tense and jittery, making shapes with their fingers, winking, waving their hands, and generally acting out of their minds.
“This is bear ears.”
Seeing Neoul look around, Baek Gi-yeom curved both hands into circles and set them on top of his head.
“This is a cat.”
This time he formed a V with his fingers, flipped his hand over, and put it on his head the same way.
The various signs made by hand seemed like a kind of code. Neoul copied the bear ears exactly as Baek Gi-yeom had shown him and looked toward the woman waving his name.
“Cute! Cat heart, too! Cat heart!”
The reaction was intense.
Why do they like this so much?
Still bewildered, he asked Baek Gi-yeom for help again.
“What is a cat heart?”
“Like this.”
Baek Gi-yeom formed a heart, then lifted his index finger slightly to make a heart with cat ears.
Neoul awkwardly tried to imitate it, producing a heart shape that was rather badly misshapen. But when he saw the woman’s lips curl up beneath the camera, she seemed pleased enough.
Neoul followed suit, softening his own mouth into a gentle smile.
To think such a tiny action could make someone laugh.
What a strange and pleasant thing it was.
Then a voice struck his ears.
“Galeoul looks fucking insanely handsome.”
...?
Neoul turned toward the owner of the voice. It was a woman holding a placard with Kim Ji-rok’s name on it. When their eyes met, she flinched and covered her mouth, turning away.
Neoul quietly asked Baek Gi-yeom, “What does ‘fucking’ mean?”
Is it something like a bowl...?
“Whoa! Don’t say that kind of thing!”
Baek Gi-yeom jumped and clapped a hand over Neoul’s mouth, glancing around warily. Fortunately, the area was so noisy that no one had heard. Once he was sure of that, he let go and patted his own chest.
Using profanity in a public place like this, when they were still just contestants in an idol survival show and not even debuted yet.
Of course, Neoul had not been cursing at all; he had just been asking what it meant. Still, it was safest to be careful.
Survival shows were jungles. Battlefields.
The entertainment industry itself was already a job where one careless slip of the tongue could be clipped into a short video, circulated across every site, and savaged from every angle. In a survival show that openly encouraged competition by ranking people against one another, what would it be like?
Using check votes to eliminate a rival who threatened the debut of the contestant one had chosen to support was almost the polite version.
More often, people would latch on and tear someone down, attaching all manner of absurd reasons and dragging them through the mud.
And plenty of those people were not even anyone’s fans. They simply enjoyed biting into a person for sport, hidden behind the mask of anonymity.
They would zoom in on the mouth, slow the footage down, and if Neoul’s expression crumpled for even the briefest instant, they would cut it up, paste it together, and assemble it into a rumor with absurd devotion.
Galeoul’s character, what a joke.
At the first meeting with fans and he says “fucking”? Got it.
Wow... He’s the kind who lets something like that slip in a public place, so once he debuts he’ll definitely treat his fans like fools... The sort who just keeps saying “oh, really?” at fansigns. He needs to be filtered out now.
Something about his eyes felt off, and sure enough, there it is. Everyone keeps saying he’s handsome, but I never got it. At least now the truth is out.
Don’t dress up a filthy mouth as being laid-back. He looks disgustingly cheap.
┗ And you’re saying “disgustingly,” too.
┗ People who talk like this act all high and mighty toward idols while they themselves have mouths like sewer rags. It’s pathetic.
There would undoubtedly be many who defended Neoul and fought on his behalf, but if a fight dragged on, it was bound to become exhausting and sour.
So I must not feed the beast.
Feeling the gaze from beyond the fence, Baek Gi-yeom smiled and draped an arm over Neoul’s shoulder, as if to say they were very close and the abrupt hand over the mouth had been no more than a harmless joke.
But Neoul was still confused, because of the negative reaction Baek Gi-yeom had shown just moments ago.
“Is it a bad word?”
“Yeah. It’s a curse.”
Neoul felt that despite all the studying he had done, he still had much to learn and asked, “Then why did that person curse at me?”
If he had said Neoul was handsome, why put “fucking” in front of it? Why curse at someone they had just met? Baek Gi-yeom answered without much concern.
“Well. If you use a word a lot, it can become a habit. Some people just tack curses onto every sentence like an exclamation point.”
“Then they did not curse me because they dislike me?”
“Right.”
Neoul quietly looked at the woman who had sworn. She was waving Kim Ji-rok’s placard and glancing at Neoul from time to time.
Neoul gave her a gentle smile. Then he tapped his lips twice and mouthed silently, Speak. Kind. Words.
The woman’s face turned bright red, and she froze so completely that her placard slipped from her hands and thudded to the ground.
Thus began the opening act of the war known as the fan battle, or, more accurately, the one-sided fan theft that belonged to Neoul.
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