Voting Begins
The exuberant chatter of Woo Cheong’s team faded, and Baek Yuri’s team appeared on screen.
“Wow. Looks like Yuri’s practically carrying that team on his back.”
Won Hasin clicked his tongue.
It was true enough. With no one else offering opinions, Yuri had designed the concept alone, calmly mediated the tension among the members over line distribution, passed along the editing direction and costume drafts, laid out the choreography and taught it, and even kept pulling in the members who kept missing notes for one-on-one coaching.
He moved without rest, as though ten bodies still wouldn’t have been enough, and while he somehow got through the meetings and the rest of it, things started to go badly from the middle of practice onward.
It was harder than expected to keep coaxing and dragging along the teammates who dodged rehearsal and loafed around.
At last, the scene that had caused the conflict appeared.
The team members’ expressions darkened.
In the end, the Searchlight contestant burst into tears.
And that was how this scene came to be.
Woo Cheong’s team and the others had slipped out secretly to prepare a cake. Today was Baek Gi-yeom’s birthday...! (As of the filming day.)
Only the birthday boy and the Galneoul contestant were left in the practice room!
The Galneoul contestant had already been ordered by the production staff to lie to Baek Gi-yeom and tell him he was actually his son from forty years in the future!
He had been assigned to carry out a surprise camera prank!
But then!
He was now out in the hallway, arguing after running out from both practice rooms.
Baek Gi-yeom had no idea what was going on!
For now, the Galneoul contestant stepped out into the hallway. (Looking around...)
He dragged him out?
The footage showed Neoul, who had dragged the two of them off at random, setting up a race and Baek Yuri winning handily until Park Dahan finally gave in. Yeo Do-bin’s team, clustered together at the window, watched as well.
After seeing that, Yeo Do-bin’s team hurriedly went back inside, saying they’d handle things themselves, and because the cake appeared far too early, the surprise prank ended in a half-baked one-man show by Neoul.
The Galneoul contestant spotted the cake.
He quickly grabbed Baek Gi-yeom by the collar and made sure he couldn’t see it!
A vocal genius with no talent for acting!
The live chat exploded.
Won Hasin cackled and laughed at Neoul with all his might. Dong-dong, rather than laughing, pitied him.
“Ah.... Our prince’s dignity....”
“My dignity is intact.”
Neoul ignored both the viewers and the reactions of the two men.
This is bad. I should have just watched it alone....
He’d forgotten, for a moment, that something like this had happened.
And as a bonus, by the time episode 3 was over, Galneoul crying screencaps were plastered all over social media.
Fortunately, episode 3 did not end with only Neoul’s ridiculous and embarrassing moments.
Neoul’s stage was actually the fourth team match, the eighth stage out of twelve teams in total, but in the broadcast it was shown as the third team match. Rather than appearing as the first stage of episode 4, it had been moved up to close out episode 3.
Among them, Baek Yuri’s team appeared first, and Neoul’s team was last.
Baek Yuri’s team overcame their initial conflict, put on a stylish stage, and ended on a warm, satisfying note that felt like a real triumph. One contestant did make a mistake, of course, but overall the stage received high praise.
Neoul followed.
“Oh. Your team’s the star of episode 3.”
“The star?”
“Yeah. They usually put the most impactful stage at the very end.”
The midterm evaluation went on with criticism after criticism.
Woo Cheong’s team rushed into an emergency meeting!
They talked it over, but no good idea came to mind....
The Galneoul contestant, who had been staring up at the ceiling and thinking hard, suddenly spoke.
“What if we tried a ghost costume?”
“Oh, a ghost! There was one perfect for a Korean ghost!”
“What?”
“Changwi.”
!!!
The editing made it look as though Neoul and Baek Gi-yeom had pulled off an amazing collaborative idea and overcome a huge crisis in dramatic fashion.
“Wow, fish~ You really did something there~”
Won Hasin made a big show of praising him, so Neoul smiled and told him that there had actually been two ghosts on that practice-room ceiling.
“Eek! You see ghosts too?”
Won Hasin suddenly complained of feeling cold and turned off the air conditioner, then began guarding against everything around him.
“Don’t tell me there are some in our house too....?”
“There are none right now.”
“Right now...? What does that mean? You’re saying there were some before, not now?”
Neoul shrugged. When Won Hasin clutched a cushion and hid behind Dong-dong, Dong-dong looked down on him for being scared of ghosts.
On screen, the stage video immediately continued.
Neoul, dressed in a blue cheollik and bound at the waist with a decorative belt, stared straight ahead with empty eyes, then dragged his hand from his chin down his throat and across the fabric, leaving behind red marks that looked like blood.
Seeing it like this, he really had done quite well.
He had performed better on the live stage than he had during practice or rehearsal.
Neoul, remembering the stage that had been exhausting but fun, expected Won Hasin and Dong-dong to start showering him with praise.
But the two of them had gone quiet.
Just moments earlier they’d been teasing him and reacting noisily, but now they only sat there, staring at the screen as if they might be pulled inside it.
[Should we walk together]
[all the way to the edge of the horizon]
[Even if it’s the end of the world]
[I feel like we could go, don’t you?]
Woooo— woo— wooo— woooo— woo—
Neoul’s sky-high ad-lib floated over his teammates’ voices.
It was the section that came right after the furious choreography, so he had exhausted himself trying to keep the pitch from wavering.
When he first practiced it, he was so out of breath that his voice shook like crazy, and Baek Namu had cursed at him, asking if he was a goat. When Neoul asked what a goat was, he was told it was the kind of creature whose voice trembled just like his.
Singing while doing squats, singing while holding planks, singing while sitting down, standing up, and jumping over and over like a madman had made him feel as though he might die, but in the end the shaking had barely been brought under control.
Still, it had been possible because the practice period for the first team battle had been fairly generous. He had heard the next one would be shorter.
But why is that part being shown five times? Is the TV broken?
Neoul alone was left confused.
The editors highlighted his ad-lib by cutting back and forth between the startled judges’ reactions, the other contestants, and the audience reactions.
Thud!
The audience’s cheers filled the screen. Neoul listened with satisfaction. Even hearing it again somehow made him feel good for no reason.
Only after the advertisements rolled in after episode 3 ended did Won Hasin, who had been unable to speak for a while, finally react.
“Wow.... Hey, fish. You’re serious. About debuting.”
Was he just realizing that now?
Neoul’s brow twitched.
“I have never said anything I did not mean.”
He spoke irritably, but Won Hasin ignored that and kept marveling at Neoul’s talent, eyes practically gleaming.
“Hey, seriously, why don’t you come to our company? I’ll pay you a lot! Huh? I’ll give you a huge signing bonus and cut you a good share too!”
“I do not need it.”
“Agh, hey, you just don’t know yet how important money is! This house, the air-conditioning bill, the food you eat, the clothes you wear, and making Secretary Song drive you around all cost money. You’re helping us because the shaman lady is an ancestor benefactor to us, but if not for that, you’d be sleeping rough on the street in this heat!”
“I appreciate that. Still, I will film until the end.”
Won Hasin sighed in disappointment, twisting Dong-dong’s hair around and around until it became a bun.
“Ugh...! It’s too good to give to someone else, seriously. How am I supposed to reel him in? I can’t exactly use finding the rabbit as bargaining material, since that’s not something I can do myself. Hm. Does it really have to be rabbit liver? Wouldn’t your father take ginseng or red ginseng? I could buy tons of that.”
“What is that?”
“Ah... right. I need to explain that first. Yeah, okay....”
After some thought, Won Hasin suggested that if Neoul signed with him, he’d spend his own money to clean up the marine trash in the South Sea and turn it into a pristine zone, only to be met with looks of utter disbelief.
Using what humans had thrown away to clean up after humans, then trying to hand a contract to a mermaid and brag about it.
Even as he said it, Won Hasin seemed to feel a pang of conscience, and he muttered in a smaller voice.
“I mean... maybe your father got sick because of water pollution.”
“I was told he had been ill since fourteen hundred years ago. Was there much trash in the sea then as well?”
“That wouldn’t be it, would it...?”
It was maddening. Since they still could not identify the exact cause of the illness.
Meanwhile, Dong-dong had gone completely dazed and unresponsive, so out of it that he did not even react while Won Hasin was fussing with his hair and making it into a bun.
Then, perhaps sensing the annoying hand, he jerked his head back and forth, slapping Won Hasin’s hand away with his hair, and turned to look at Neoul.
“Your Highness...!”
Dong-dong clasped his hands together, eyes shining.
“Of all the stages shown today, Your Highness’s was by far the best! How could the dance be so dazzling...! And your singing, too—your humble servant was truly moved!”
“Oh, Dong-dong, that last line sounded pretty shamelessly sycophantic.”
“You smelly pond fish, get lost! Do not insult my sincerity!”
Kaak!
Neoul separated the two of them before they could start fighting again, then headed to his room to wash up and go to bed. Before sleeping, he opened MTube and found the uploaded stage video, then checked the comments.
If that insanely handsome changwi told me to come with him, how could I refuse? I’d probably run after him like a total lunatic lol
“Uh....”
It was a little too intense, which made him uneasy, but it seemed like a good reaction. A good reaction... hm... was it? But wasn’t she not supposed to follow him? If you followed a changwi, a tiger would eat you.
He typed out a reply with painstaking effort using one finger.
He only got cursed at for it, because the netizen who had posted that comment might one day meet a handsome changwi and willingly walk straight into a tiger’s stomach.
Insanely good wow
Galneoul absolutely has to debut
What was that, where did the soft floaty movement go...? The line in the dance suddenly got shape? How is that even possible...?
Slashed it apart, holy crap
His facial acting is insane
The ad-lib was so good I passed out lol
Still, it was a relief that everyone’s reactions were so positive. Seeing the comments cheering him on made him feel a little closer to debut.
I’m going to poop in front of the broadcasting station if Neoul doesn’t debut.
┗ Ah... Neoul, for the sake of this person’s dignity, please give it your all.
┗ Dignity my ass lol
There were often strange comments like that, threatening the broadcasting station with their own bowel movements.
The individual fancam videos from the first team battle were released one after another as well. The view counts rose sharply. On the forums, recommendation posts and reaction posts poured in, and someone took those reactions and spread them further in short clips.
In particular, the part where it transitioned from Neoul to Baek Gi-yeom in the opening was cut cleanly and circulated under the title The Voice of an Angel and a Devil. Neoul’s languid, dreamlike voice was said to be the angel’s voice, while Baek Gi-yeom’s low, cavernous tone that delivered the twist was the devil’s voice.
There were opposing opinions too.
Galneoul is the devil. Seductive and mesmerizing. Absolutely. If you disagree, you’re wrong.
┗ No, lol it’s not the devil or an angel, it’s a changwi!
And at last, the voting window opened.