The Conditions for Becoming a Kind Idol Leader

Although they had spent so much time living in the practice room, they still weren’t as busy as they were during the active promotion period after the comeback.

Because of that, Zero One—a group that already had almost no meaningful emotional exchange to begin with—became even worse at talking. Even though they were the same members, the only things that ever really registered were their faces onstage or in front of fans, so the distance that had already been there was never going to shrink on its own.

Still, the Status Window was such a nuisance that he kept fiddling with it. Honestly, he couldn’t even tell whether it had any effect at all.

The responses were terrible, too.

“If you’re trying to get yourself cursed at by acting up all the time, just say so. I’ll gladly do it.”

That was Cheon Sa-yoon, still as rude as ever.

“……”

‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠

Lim Se-bin said nothing, but his face said everything; he sighed away the irritation in a cloud of pure annoyance.

“Hey, what the hell. You’re making my head spin.”

Kyeon In-woo’s reaction was the closest thing to normal.

“Today is—uh, wait. Jaeho. Pyo Jae-ho.”

And then there was even Pyo Jae-ho, the one who ended up needing to be restrained instead.

Is this what they call a total disaster?

The memory of checking off the goal box he’d written down in his phone memo came back to him.

There had been that incident during the album jacket shoot, but it wasn’t anything major, nobody got hurt, and there hadn’t been any serious trouble. In that sense, he could probably count the comeback as a success.

The schedule after the comeback had been a brutal march, too. Starting on Thursday and continuing day after day, they were reporting to a different broadcasting station every single day for pre-recordings or live shoots.

In between, there were promotional schedules and live broadcasts he ran personally to keep in touch ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠with fans.

Because there was time for preparation, there were plenty of days when he had to wake before dawn and get ready.

Fans who came to see the idols they loved had to suffer through those early hours too, waiting from the crack of dawn, but that was part of the work, part of the effort required to make a name for yourself, so it wasn’t something he could complain about.

Without music shows, there weren’t actually that many ways to promote yourself directly to the public or meet fans face to face.

Self-produced content and online fan service had only recently started in earnest, and unless someone was already interested in idols, they wouldn’t even go looking for them.

And in a situation like this, there was one person who was in such a foul mood that even the staff around him were tiptoeing instead of approaching properly.

Needless to say, that person was Lim Se-bin.

Ever since the comeback showcase, Lim Se-bin had been in a constant low-pressure state.

He’d always seemed absurdly touchy, but at least he used to have a concept of image management. Lately, though, even the people around him had started whispering that he looked like he might be sick, because his mood had become visibly and steadily worse.

He was already difficult to approach because he was the sort of person who religiously maintained a proper distance from everyone, and with him acting like this, it only got harder to say anything to him.

Thanks to that, Young-in ended up half-forced into the experience of feeling like some kind of harmful bacteria. On the bright side, it did give him a moment of self-reflection about just how clean he himself was.

Haha, fuck. If a plague ever swept across the world, Lim Se-bin would probably be the first person to step up and model social distancing for the rest of humanity.

Someone that sensitive and obsessively neat—how did he even manage hair and makeup on ordinary days, and how could he act like nothing was wrong when handling official work? Maybe none of it mattered and he was just keeping his distance from the people he didn’t like. Was that him? Was that the real answer?

Anyway, after that bizarre, hard-to-parse conversation between Go Young-in and Lim Se-bin, the two of them had ended up in a situation where they only spoke when absolutely necessary for work and not at all in private.

That didn’t mean Lim Se-bin was chatting with the other members, either. He just barely opened his mouth at all.

Even so, Young-in had made up his mind and tried to speak with him again—no, correction, the Status Window had driven him so crazy that he’d tried to talk to Lim Se-bin again. But some attempts are beautiful precisely because they fail.

“Se-bin hyung, can we talk for a moment?”

“……”

Before he could even finish, Lim Se-bin turned his face away and went right back the way he’d come without looking back.

“Earlier, during rehearsal, the blocking—”

“……”

He didn’t even listen to the end. He just stared silently at the monitor, then drifted back to his original spot.

“You look like you’re feeling unwell. You’re not sick, are you?”

“……”

Even when he finally managed to meet his face, he was treated like invisible air.

At that point, he hadn’t managed to hear a proper answer at all.

Lim Se-bin wasn’t just maxed out in distance-maintaining skills; his evasion and ignoring skills were maxed, too. Then why on earth had he never invested a single point in communication, the one skill actually required for healthy social interaction?

Fuck. Answer? What answer? He hadn’t even seen him say a single word—not one syllable, not a breath. It wasn’t like he was some voice-losing mermaid or anything. One sentence from him could probably pay off not a thousand in debt, but ten thousand.

At that point, you’d think he’d at least pretend to listen, just to figure out what the hell the bastard was trying to say.

Of course, after he kept at it stubbornly with all that broad understanding, Lim Se-bin finally spat out exactly one irritated line.

He said something about feeling a disgusting stare, didn’t he? Probably.

He had no idea why that memory had surfaced all of a sudden. Maybe it was because the Status Window had written “gaze” in the text.

What he’d said at the time had sounded far from ordinary, so Young-in had asked whether he should tell the manager. Lim Se-bin had told him to mind his own business and said he’d handle it himself. But no matter how he looked at it, he didn’t seem like the type who would handle it himself, so Young-in remembered slipping the matter to the manager privately anyway.

Even so, nothing unusual had shown up yet.

Still, it didn’t sound like he was just making something up to complain. He really did seem irritated.

Lim Se-bin was prickly—no, let’s be charitable, sensitive. He reacted sharply even to other people’s touch. If that was the case, then maybe his reaction to gazes was the same.

He’d asked again to find out more, but after that Lim Se-bin had gone right back into silent-monk mode, so there had been no progress.

While his mind was busy replaying that incident from not long ago, Young-in’s eyes never left the fan who had taken a signature from Kyeon In-woo and was now moving toward him.

What kind of thought is this to be having on a fan-signing day, not even on a day off?

There hadn’t been any immediate developments with Lim Se-bin, and there was nothing he could do about a gaze alone. He’d ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠already told the manager, and the manager had said he’d report it to the company, so for the moment that was all he had to rely on.

Somehow it felt like the things involving Cheon Sa-yoon were part of the same pile of karma, one after another.

It’s probably just my imagination.

The fan, who seemed to like Kyeon In-woo best because she couldn’t stop looking at him all the way as she moved down the line, finally turned her head when she felt Young-in’s gaze on her profile and met his eyes head-on.

Once he was face-to-face with a fan, Young-in habitually emptied his mind and smiled in greeting. Even the lines he would normally never be able to say from his own nature came out smoothly.

At any rate, for now this was more important than the unexplained nonsense.