To Be Seen by More People (1)
At Yeo Do-bin’s words, Neoul felt as if he had been struck on the head.
When he had seen the comments cursing him all this time, he had thought it was amusing how they blazed up like fire whenever something happened. He had never once considered that the people cheering for him might feel hurt when they saw those things.
So that is how it is. They feel hurt in my place.
To be honest, Neoul could not fully understand it.
He was a complete stranger to them, neither family nor friend. He was only one participant in a broadcast program the humans watched for amusement.
They could simply enjoy the show and move on, and if the stage was good, perhaps they could even vote.
But was he really worth the stress? Him? Weren’t people watching broadcasts, performances, and listening to music in the first place because they wanted to enjoy themselves?
Neoul wanted to ask: what was he, that they should feel hurt on his behalf?
Then Yeo Do-bin said, eyes wide and earnest, “Th-then I’ll work even harder.”
“……”
“So that none of the people cheering me on will feel hurt.”
His expression was utterly resolute.
Neoul picked up his smartphone and typed in his name, now so familiar that even its three syllables felt natural.
People whose names and faces he did not know were posting words overflowing with affection, along with pictures of Neoul. Some were even angry or heartbroken on his behalf when they saw the malicious comments.
Neoul grew curious about their faces. What their names were, how old they were, what they did, and why they had come to like him and support him.
He wanted to know what kind of music they liked, whether any of the people who left messages here had also been sitting in the audience, and so on and so forth.
And if he could speak with them, he wanted to tell them that the spiteful comments had not hurt him even as much as a fingernail, so there was no need for them to be upset at all.
The comments of all shapes and sizes felt to him like samples of the many kinds of humans living on land, and he found them fascinating, as though he were exploring a new field of study.
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇
Quite apart from Neoul’s wishes, however, a state of emergency had broken out among the fans.
The seed of anxiety began to spread after the second round recording, from the moment similar-looking review posts started appearing one after another across every community and SNS.
Artbble Second Team Match Viewing Review
Live voting is trash.
You vote for the best team and the worst team separately, then they add them together;;
Even if you get 100 votes for doing well, if you get 100 votes in the worst-team category, you end up with zero.
I can’t say who it is yet, but the team that did the best on stage got dragged way down because of this. And they’re saying they’ll do it again with online voting and add those together too.
Ugh.. stop throwing sabotage votes, please..
“Top teams need to stick together,” “Judges need to be fair,” “Don’t play games with these kids’ lives and please vote with your head on straight,” and so on.
It was such a mess that it even climbed into the realtime trending lists.
People first started guessing which participant might be in the “best-performing team.” By far, the names mentioned most often were those of the upper-ranked contestants whose performances had stood out in the first team mission.
They said the stage was great, so I was looking forward to it, but if their ranking fell already I can feel my blood pressure rising.
The fans, for their part, grew uneasy that this might have something to do with the team their own bias was in.
As they hunted through spoiler posts, some people’s anxiety hardened into certainty, while others were left with the complicated feeling that they could not tell whether this was fortunate or unfortunate.
The situation truly exploded after episode 6 was released.
Although only four stages were shown in the main broadcast of episode 6, the performance videos of the remaining four teams, which would appear in episode 7, were also released on MTube for the sake of voting fairness. And the second-round team voting window opened.
Unlike individual voting, where no one could know the rankings in advance, the vote totals were displayed live in real time. In bold, large letters in the voting notice, it said that the bottom three teams out of eight would all be eliminated.
What the hell, then why did they even sell the OTT?
Was individual voting just for the revival round? T_T
And the team Neoul belonged to, Artist, was currently in third place. It had briefly risen to first before falling back down.
??? How is this only third?
The owner of the channel of yesterday’s casual idol fan, today’s fan-tuber Warning: A Wave of Gal-Neoul-Is-Coming, had no words for this absurd situation.
“They were the best!”
She had delayed voting for a bit because, after watching the main broadcast, she had replayed Neoul’s stage video on MTube over and over again. And now this had happened.
She already knew from her older sister that the Artist team had placed fourth. It was obvious the upper-ranked fans had been trading negative votes with one another.
But that was beside the point. This was not simply a matter of upper-ranked fans.
They were targeted.
Gal-Neoul, Baek Yuri, Lee Gal-chae. An overpowering combination. Ha On-ha and Woo Cheong were no different.
Leaving aside the fact that the fans of the two teams had attacked one another, there was no way the remaining six teams’ fans had simply sat back and done nothing.
They had almost certainly piled their negative votes onto those two teams. If those teams had not had a larger fanbase, they would have been dragged down much further than third and fourth place.
The same was true of the online vote situation now.
She quickly finished the vote she had been putting off, then used SNS and the MTube community to urge others to vote as well. She even quietly marketed the idea to her friends, shamelessly begging for votes.
2nd place: Artist Team
They’d moved up!
Probably because the Artist team’s stage had been so good that fans, like her, had lost their souls replaying it endlessly and forgotten to vote. Bit by bit, the vote count climbed.
But the next day.
4th place: Artist Team
It was impossible!
It felt like a bomb had fallen out of a clear sky. Unless there was a force deliberately working to bring them down, this could not have happened.
Ha On-ha’s team, which had also hit first place right after Neoul’s team, had fallen back to second.
Ugh.. negative-vote terror
Manipulation? No way.
Enough already, you bastards.
Neoul’s team lurched between third and fourth place in real time, making the fans’ hearts pound.
Every time they thought, Leave it alone and it’ll rise, it dropped. Every time they thought, Surely it can’t fall any lower, it fell even further. Then, at the most unexpected moment, it would shoot back up again, as if teasing them. It was just like watching stock prices.
Neoul’s clear, smiling voice singing in the fancam echoed in her ears.
I’m fine
I’m fine
It’s alright
What do you mean you’re fine! You’re not fine at all!
She had been somewhat careless because she thought his debut was already guaranteed. But this could not go on. Neoul had sweated through back-to-back performances and given the best stage after best stage. She could not let him be disappointed by an outcome like this.
Just you wait, Neoul.
I’ll make sure more people recognize you, and can see your talent for what it is.
She sat in front of her monitor, gripping her mouse so tightly it seemed it might break, her eyes blazing.
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇
A few days later.
“Huh...! Neoul...! Neoul! Look at this!”
Yeo Do-bin held out his smartphone.
On the voting screen, the Artist team was trading first and second place with Ha On-ha’s team every minute, every second.
Yeo Do-bin found another video and showed it to him.
[Hello. I’m Dolpangi, bringing you K-Pop idol news. Is everyone enjoying the hot new Idol Travel these days?]
It was the channel of an M-tuber with 450,000 subscribers.
[I couldn’t possibly miss an idol survival show where new stars are born! I’ve been keeping up with the main broadcast and really watching hard myself, too~ Personally, I’d like to introduce a few especially eye-catching, charming contestants!]
“Hmm……”
[First up! The face genius who stole my heart! A tone genius! And now, a hard-working genius who has mastered dancing too! It’s none other than the beautifully named Gal. Neoul.]
Neoul’s expression shifted subtly as he watched the video.
“I did not steal anything. This is a false accusation.”
Aside from the rabbit’s liver, he did not have much use for any other organs.
Whether Neoul objected or not, Yeo Do-bin said excitedly, “Our stage and fancam both have crazy high views! Our stage is number one in views!”
That was not all.
“Wow...! There’s even a subway ad at Hapjeong Station! Let’s go take pictures!”
Yeo Do-bin showed him a photograph.
Neoul’s face was plastered across a wall as large as a gate. Yeo Do-bin’s face was plastered across the wall opposite it, equally huge.
“A subway ad? Why is my picture stuck up here?”
“The fans paid for it themselves. Since lots of people pass through the subway, they put ads there to promote you to the public.”
He was already getting messages about subway ads from other people as well.
[Baek Gi-yeom: Hands up if you’re a Gal-Neoul going to see the subway ad!]
[Baek Gi-yeom: Yuri and I are up together at Apgujeong Station!]
[Woo Cheong: Brother?]
[Woo Cheong: Hongik University Station, let’s go?]
But every person named a different place.
“Hapjeong Station, Apgujeong Station, Hongik University Station. Why does everyone say something different?”
Just then, Won Hasin came out of the room. Because it was the weekend, his beard was stubbly, and he had an electronic cigarette in his hand.
“Because they put the ads up in a bunch of places. There were fourteen of them for you.”
As he passed by, Won Hasin tossed off the reason and then went out to the yard to smoke his e-cigarette.
“Fourteen...?”
Yeo Do-bin gaped, startled.
Neoul did not understand why he was so shocked and asked, “Why. Is that too few?”
“No! That’s a lot!”
“Only fourteen...?”
“Don’t go around saying things like that...!”
Yeo Do-bin grabbed Neoul and launched into a lecture.
Even getting one ad would be something to be grateful for. He had heard advertising was expensive, too, and fourteen was an enormous number. The fans had worked hard to earn money, pooled their own savings, and paid for this. Wouldn’t it be disappointing to hear him talk like that?
They had carefully designed and posted these ads with nothing but the hope that he would debut. They had even written messages of encouragement on sticky notes, so he had to read them carefully and make sure to take proof shots too.
“So that is how it is.”
Neoul nodded earnestly, looking up the meaning of subway in advance. Ah, so it was like the bus he had ridden last time. But it went underground? How did one go underground?
He did not quite understand, but it seemed interesting.
Neoul, who had no sense for money, did not really know what was expensive and what was cheap. But he could at least roughly understand what Yeo Do-bin meant.
With the heart of hoping I debut and cheering me on...
He remembered the cheers he had heard during the first and second round recordings. And the comments that had gotten angry and upset for him in his place. It was grateful, but also strange.
I haven’t done anything for them.
Was this what being a fan was supposed to be?
The people and retainers of the Dragon Palace offered tributes to His Majesty, but that was because His Majesty protected them and kept them safe.
But Neoul could not remember ever giving them anything. He searched through his pockets. He was flat broke. There was nothing appropriate with which to repay them.
I should have ransacked the Dragon Palace treasure vault for gold and jewels...
Neoul thought of the card Won Hasin had linked to his smartphone. Won Hasin had said with his own mouth that he had plenty of money.
Maybe I can just spend as much as I like and pay it back later? What should I give the fans? I heard humans like gold. Would bringing them lumps of gold work?
While Neoul was lost in thought.
Yeo Do-bin, after pouring out all of that, let out a long breath, then hurried off to buy stationery and letter paper.
“I’m going to write letters and take them with me.”
Neoul lifted his head. The easiest and fastest way to learn was imitation. He should imitate Yeo Do-bin. Neoul replied as he sent messages back to those who had contacted him.
“I shall go with you as well.”