The Artist Team
On the day of the live audience taping for the second round of the competition, the law student could hardly contain her trembling excitement.
At last...! Neoul in the flesh! That nationally treasured voice, live!
She had been given a placard with Gal-Neoul’s photo and name on it by another fan, along with a whale-shaped cookie, and the unexpected kindness had made her already buoyant mood soar even higher.
It was her first time attending a live taping, so she hadn’t realized the waiting would be this long. By the time they were finally let in, she felt ready to kiss the ground in relief.
Then someone behind her tapped her shoulder twice. She turned, and there stood her private tutoring student—a middle schooler blinking up at her with shy surprise.
“Teacher!”
“Oh my.”
It was an extremely awkward moment. Of all places to run into a student, she had chosen a fandom event.
Her eyes trembled as she tried to think of what to say first. What came out of her mouth, though, was a stupid question.
“How did you get here?”
“I applied for audience tickets! Mom said I could come! Who are you here to support, Teacher?”
“I, I... I’m here for Gal-Neoul....”
“I came to cheer for Oppa Gi-yeom.”
The middle schooler just seemed delighted to have bumped into his tutor in a strange place outside school. He grinned, all bashful innocence.
Before they could chat any further, the doors opened and the audience was ushered in.
“Teacher, we’re sitting next to each other! That’s a relief!”
She wasn’t sure what exactly was such a relief, but since the boy was happy, the law student decided that all was well and laughed it off.
Her conscience prickled a little at the thought of a teacher and student sitting side by side at a place like this when they should have been studying, but still...
I ditched my little sibling after teasing him until he grabbed my pant leg and begged me not to go, so I’d better enjoy this!
Life wasn’t only about textbooks and exams. It was also important to have a warm heart—to be able to love someone, and to cheer for them sincerely.
People with narrow hearts and not enough love were the ones who could never stand seeing others do well; they were always seething with envy and jealousy.
If watching your idol work hard made you want to work hard too, and if one good memory could keep you happy for months afterward... wasn’t fandom, in its own way, a valuable lesson in living?
She set down the hesitation that had briefly taken hold of her and decided to savor the moment honestly.
When will Neoul come out...?
Her heart fluttered as she waited for MC Jeong Ondo to appear and introduce the first stage.
But then, without warning, the lights cut out and the entire venue plunged into darkness.
“Huh...?”
“Teacher.”
A murmur rippled through the audience. She took the middle schooler’s hand, sensing the boy’s surprise.
“Looks like there’s been a blackout.”
The boy whispered in a tiny voice.
But the law student spotted someone silently climbing onto the darkened stage.
Among the silhouettes that looked like shadows, one man’s towering figure seized her attention.
H-huh! Don’t tell me...!
♪♬♩♪— ♪♬♩♪— ♩—
Without any warning, a harmonica intro drifted out with the melody.
The stage lit up brilliantly.
There was Neoul, wearing faded jeans and a white short-sleeved T-shirt, with a white shirt carelessly tied around his waist. The raw labradorite pendant hanging from his neck swayed as he moved.
Brushing back his tousled hair with a crooked grin, Neoul looked like some free-spirited art student wandering across campus.
And then she noticed it: here and there on his clothes and arms were faint splashes and smears of paint.
Some of it was plainly dried paint. Other spots looked as though someone had tried to wipe them away, only for the color to stain the fabric instead, leaving the marks behind.
Holy crap. Who came up with something this wonderfully perverse....
In the best possible way, it felt like the work of someone who was “a pervert with excellent taste.”
With the bright backing track beneath him, Neoul opened his mouth.
“Is everything alright?
You ask me every day
Do I look that worried?”
Huh...? He changed his style...?
The melody came out almost like he was speaking in rhythm.
Neoul’s voice was still unmistakably his, yet the singing style was completely different from before.
He seemed to have abandoned the fantasy-tinged, dreamlike habits of his earlier performances and created a new vocal style to fit the concept.
Maybe Baek Yuri had helped him shape the new approach, because there was the faintest trace of Yuri’s vocal color woven into it too.
Oh no...! This is too good too...!
And his English pronunciation was insanely good.
She had thought he was only fluent in Japanese, but even the English lyrics flowed out so naturally it was startling—like a native singer’s performance.
Meanwhile, Lee Gal-chae stepped forward in a soft, fluid glide, wearing blue shorts and a white long-sleeved sweatshirt.
“I sneak along the top of walls like a cat
I always take the stairs three at a time
Riding the slide on the handrail
Walking a tightrope with my eyes closed”
Wow... his expressions and gaze control are what...?
With a proud, catlike stare, a mischievous curl to his lips, and an utterly natural expression, Lee Gal-chae danced as though he were truly balancing on a tightrope, his eyes covered.
While a variety of expressions flowed across his face like water, there wasn’t a trace of awkwardness. It all felt effortless.
If Neoul had seized everyone with the intro and locked their attention firmly on the stage, Lee Gal-chae felt like he was catching that momentum and drawing the audience even deeper in.
“I like things like that.”
His tone carried a subtle mix of hurt and self-consciousness, as though he were asking why people kept looking at him strangely when he simply liked what he liked. It was expressed naturally in both the song and his face, never forced.
His interpretation of the song is no joke.
She hadn’t really noticed before because he had never stood out that much, but Lee Gal-chae’s tone was incredibly pleasant to listen to as well. It had a polished quality, and his vocal timbre felt steady and reliable.
As Lee Gal-chae moved off to the side, Park Dahan came to center stage.
“Oh, it’s definitely unstable
We might fall
There’s no progress, only more scars
I might look pathetic”
The five of them danced in ways that were similar and yet different, creating the sensation of gears that should have fit together but didn’t, all of it wobbling with precarious unease.
It definitely came in off-beat, and yet somehow everything still clicked, which made it strangely compelling.
“But it’s nothing
But it’s nothing
The wind doesn’t hurt me
I’m fine
I’m fine
It’s alright”
Yeo Do-bin’s chorus.
His voice was unique—bright yet husky at the same time. With his smooth Australian English pronunciation blending in naturally, he sounded like someone perfectly suited to pop or jazz.
His dancing had a remarkable groove as well. There was restraint in it, but also a strangely sexy, expressive line to every movement that made it impossible to look away.
Then Baek Yuri’s solid voice came crashing in with power.
“Living in a dream is skydiving
My parachute is random, my life is
Like a world tour from a forgotten bucket list
And every time, you—”
Was he always this luminous?
She had known Yuri’s skin was clear and bright, but now he seemed to glow even more intensely. He was only wearing a simple pair of jeans and a white shirt smeared with paint in all the wrong places, yet the effect somehow made him look even more pure and delicate.
Beautiful.
Instead of a perfectly synchronized, razor-sharp routine, the performance shifted into freer choreography. But none of them were lazy—not even slightly. If anything, they seemed more passionate because of it.
Laughing brightly as they danced with exuberance and fire, the five boys were youth itself, and the sweat, hope, and restless energy that came with it.
Instead of blinding or dizzying lights, only a soft, single-toned wash illuminated them.
“Is everything alright?
Buckle your seatbelt tight
I won’t be responsible if you fall”
After Park Dahan’s pre-chorus, Neoul’s chorus burst out with even more excitement and a fiercer dance. Compared with Yeo Do-bin’s first chorus, it felt harder, sharper, climbing toward the highlight.
“But it’s nothing
But it’s nothing
The wind doesn’t hurt me
I’m fine
I’m fine
It’s alright”
With a bright, firm resonance, all five voices fused together.
“Isn’t it fun not knowing where you’ll land?
So what if there’s no plan?
With scar-covered feet, we chase the stars
Some faint light is beginning to show in the darkness
Don’t worry—trust me
Yeah eh eh eh”
Hopeful tremors poured out through the song. The boys danced as though they had thrown themselves into an uncertain world as dizzying as their tousled hair and the sweat beading on their foreheads. It was as if they were sketching their own picture across the stage with the tips of their toes.
“Is everything alright?”
Lee Gal-chae asked, and Baek Yuri answered.
“I’m fine
I’m fine
It’s alright”
Under the hot lights, their sweat-damp hair swayed as they danced.
Neoul sang as though whispering, then asked again.
“Is everything alright?”
Yeo Do-bin answered.
“I’m fine
I’m fine
It’s alright”
“Aaaahhh!”
“Aaahh!”
After the stage ended, the law student found herself clasping hands with the middle schooler and screaming at the top of her lungs before she even realized it.
Still shrieking like a pterodactyl, she only came back to herself after Neoul wiped the sweat from his chin, bowed politely, and stepped off stage—just as Jeong Ondo was about to come up again.
No, no... My dignity in front of the student...
But the middle schooler was too busy staring at the stage in a frenzy to pay her any mind.
Since the whole audience was shouting in unison, even if she had screamed right beside him, no one would have been able to tell who was making the racket.
Wow. Live is the best. A legend.
The first team stage she had watched at home was already wonderful, but it couldn’t compare to hearing the live performance in person.
Besides, even though Neoul’s voice had wavered a little from breath control during the signal song, lacking a touch of stability, it was now held so much more firmly.
His dancing didn’t feel lacking at all either. His arms and legs were so long that the movements actually looked bigger and freer.
His very existence is just light...
After the first stage ended and Jeong Ondo gave a short comment, the other teams that had covered the same song came out one after another.
One team wore vivid primary-colored baseball jackets and bomber jackets that gave off a traffic-light kind of energy, making for a uniquely flashy image. Another team came out in cute overalls of various colors, carrying balloons in both arms.
Both stages had more striking clothing and props than the first one.
Mm... it’s fine...
But the song itself felt bland. Especially since she kept comparing it to the first stage, the disappointment only grew.
The first performance had stripped away all decoration and extravagance, yet it had lodged in her mind with far greater force. Even though the paint-smeared jeans could have seemed rough and shabby at first glance.
Compared with that opening stage—raw, free, and filled with the youth of an anxious young artist—the second and third stages felt as though the teams hadn’t fully understood the song.
More ordinary performances followed after that, and just as her concentration began to slip, the sixth stage finally became worth watching again.
Baek Gi-yeom, Ko Un-gu, and Daiki—who had once been on a team with Neoul—were gathered together this time, and Baek Gi-yeom’s rap finally got a chance to shine properly.
This time it wasn’t a singing rap, but one that spat out its lines with rough force. His exact sense of rhythm, his diction, and the hook that drove straight into the ear were all incredibly appealing.
He’s good...!
Beside her, the middle schooler stamped his feet and let his eyes sparkle.
On the final eighth stage, Ha On-ha and Woo Cheong were teamed up and delivered an almost supernatural dance break.
Woo Cheong danced like someone whose seal had been broken at last, while Ha On-ha gritted his teeth and matched Woo Cheong’s pace, pulling off the difficult choreography all the way to the end.
After a while, all eight teams came back up onto the stage.
The MC gave each team a short introduction, along with brief interviews and the occasional joke.
“Team number one opened the second-round competition today! What was your team name again?”
“Yes! We’re the Artist team!”
Baek Yuri took the microphone.
He was the only one who could explain things calmly and clearly without going off the rails with some absurd comment.
“The Artist team? Does it have a special meaning?”
“Our clothes are a little smudged, but if you look closely, each of us used an art material that matches our image.”
He explained that Neoul had used oil paint, Baek Yuri transparent watercolor, Lee Gal-chae pastel, Yeo Do-bin oil pastel, and Park Dahan marker.
She hadn’t noticed before hearing the explanation, but now that she knew, each material really did have its own distinct texture.
Wow... what even is this detail level?
“It was Do-bin’s idea, both to use paint and to apply this kind of detail.”
Not only had the producers not assigned it to them, they had come up with it themselves.
Baek Yuri said they had been thinking up a concept that fit the song together, and in the process of combining Gal-Neoul’s, Lee Gal-chae’s, and Yeo Do-bin’s ideas, the Artist team had been born.
“Yes! Great! If the Artist team’s stage was your favorite, please press button number one!”
After the introductions of all eight teams were complete, voting began.
Each audience member had only one vote.
So there won’t be any strategic blocking votes, then.
Just as she breathed a quiet sigh of relief after pressing the number one button to finish her vote, the MC dropped a bombshell.
“Thank you for participating in the vote, passengers! But!”
“There’s still one more vote left!”
MC Jeong Ondo had just thrown a nuclear warhead onto the table.
“This time, please vote for the team you thought was the most disappointing among the stages from one through eight!”
In other words, they were being told to vote for the team that had performed the worst.
The final tally would be calculated by subtracting the number of votes received in the “worst team” vote from the votes received in the “best team” vote.
It was the total of positive votes and negative votes combined.
A little later, the tally was finished and the results were announced.
“In fourth place... is Team One, featuring Gal-Neoul, Lee Gal-chae, Baek Yuri, Yeo Do-bin, and Park Dahan, who showed the brightness of youth running toward a dream!”