Conditions for Becoming a Kind Idol Leader - Episode 34
They returned to the studio. The members, except for Kyeon In-woo, were already seated and waiting.
Where the hell did that bastard Kyeon In-woo wander off to again? Just as Go Young-in was about to go looking for him, the timing worked out perfectly and Kyeon In-woo came in shoulder to shoulder with Jeong Hae.
Kyeon In-woo was strolling along with his hands shoved in his pockets, all bad-boy swagger. From the way Jeong Hae kept talking beside him, it looked like the two of them really were having a conversation.
Go Young-in remembered what the blue-haired guy had said earlier. He’d been happily trashing Jeong Hae to the heavens. There was no guarantee a word of it had been true, and he had no idea how much of it might have been real.
Either way, it was clear Kyeon In-woo and Jeong Hae knew each other. So Jeong Hae hadn’t just been pretending to be close for no reason.
Filming resumed. The MC stepped to the center of the stage and drew everyone’s attention.
“Did everyone give it their all? Then now, from first place through sixth, including your own groups, please rank the teams as you think they stand! The team that comes in first will receive a very meaningful reward! I don’t think you’ll be disappointed.”
At the word reward, the participants’ eyes lit up, and they immediately leaned in to hold a serious discussion.
“Should we start with first place? Does anyone have a group in mind?”
“Me.”
At Go Young-in’s question, Kyeon In-woo answered shamelessly, his face as thick-skinned as ever. I said the group, not yourself, asshole. Apparently words weren’t enough, because Kyeon In-woo snatched up the voting device and, in one swift motion, put Zero One in first place.
At least pretend to think about it.
“As expected, you’re decisive. Amazing.”
At Cheon Sa-yoon’s praise, which could almost have sounded sincere, Kyeon In-woo reflexively started to swear back, then remembered they were on broadcast and could only hurl his curses with his eyes.
He was definitely mocking him for picking without thinking. Kyeon In-woo knew perfectly well Cheon Sa-yoon would never mean anything exactly the way he said it, which was probably why he was reacting like that.
[Clause 23 | A kind idol leader must also know how to mediate his members’ conflicts at a reasonable level.]
Damn it. Were they all suffering from some disease that made them incapable of leaving each other alone? Even on air, they had to poke at each other with words, circling around the point just to scratch at someone’s nerves?
Go Young-in just gave a hollow laugh. They were already the sort of people who, compared to the other teams, could get themselves cursed out at the slightest misstep.
At least in a place like this, they needed to show some humility and get their vaccinations in early; then, when some dogshit edit eventually came out, people might still go, Huh? Is that an evil edit? and feel even the smallest flicker of doubt. Humility, my ass.
At this rate, I swear, these guys have probably shaved years off my life and then some, and there’s no way to check because of the status window.
While he was thinking that, there was barely any time left; the MC’s voice rang out, calling the remaining seconds.
“Se-bin, which group do you think is first?”
“…Hard to say. I’ll go with the majority.”
Go Young-in would have bet his entire fortune that Lim Se-bin hadn’t even bothered to think about it.
When he asked Pyo Jae-ho, the boy looked like he wasn’t interested at all, yet immediately started dissecting every group’s song, listing off what was strange about each one. Go Young-in hurriedly covered the pin mic and barely managed to stop him.
Exhausted in an instant, Go Young-in looked at Cheon Sa-yoon. Cheon Sa-yoon answered before he’d even been asked.
“Can’t I keep it a secret? Haha, look at your face. I’m joking. You all did so well that it’s hard to rank you. For now, please gather opinions without me.”
Of course, that wasn’t the answer he wanted. Once you stripped away all the broadcast-friendly lip service, what was left was basically, I don’t care what I think, you decide among yourselves. Then just don’t give an opinion.
Haah. He composed himself and asked the members one by one what they thought, but somehow every single opinion ended up different.
Maybe it was even worse because they were saying only what sounded good for broadcast and not what they really meant. And of course, there wasn’t a single one of them who would just yield their opinion.
Go Young-in gave up on asking any further and roughly averaged the answers he’d gotten before submitting them.
* * *
A sharp beep echoed through the entire studio, signaling the end. Before anyone knew it, time was up. Looking around at the members, not a trace of tension remained on any of their faces.
“We’ll move positions first!”
The MC cut through the disarray and refocused the room. Positions? At the word, everyone either looked confused or wore expressions that said they had some vague, ominous guess but didn’t want to believe it. Seeing that reaction, the MC laughed as though confirming it was exactly right.
“After calculating the results using the rankings you personally chose, there have been some major changes!”
[Rankings]
?1st: XINX ⏫
2nd: Zero One ⏫
3rd: The Road ⏬
4th: Eternal Seven ⏬
5th: DTD ⏬
6th: Triple Shot ➖
“First place is XINX! Congratulations! For the rankings below them, please refer to the screen.”
It was exactly the kind of sleazy, low-down attitude you’d expect from a show whose entire point was to make people feel bad—the lower ranks were brushed over without even being mentioned properly.
The unexpected result brought both joy and disappointment across the room. Most people seemed unable to predict where they themselves would land. Even XINX looked dazed, as if they hadn’t really believed they could take first place.
As expected, the groups with powerful, forceful performances had overall ended up near the top.
“Everyone checked it? Then please switch seats between your groups.”
With a single performance stage, the upper and lower rankings had been flipped upside down.
Eternal Seven, who had been sitting in the first-place throne, moved down to wooden chairs, while XINX, who had been on a plastic chair without even a backrest, climbed into the throne. Other groups shifted seats as well, while some stayed where they were.
Thanks to that, Eternal Seven and The Road, who had been in the upper ranks, looked like mourners at a funeral.
The real competition hadn’t even started yet, and it was already like this. No matter how he looked at it, dividing the seats by rank was the dirtiest possible way to make people feel bad.
The DTD members Kyeon In-woo knew seemed more or less unchanged in expression, and Na Woo-ri was… well, Na Woo-ri was Na Woo-ri. As for the group from Jeong Hae’s side… only Jeong Hae looked okay. The blue-haired one was, as always, loudly complaining.
And XINX, now that they’d become first place, were being almost painfully careful of everyone else’s feelings.
Because XINX was walking on eggshells, the other participants had started to feel strangely uncomfortable too. They’d been thinking it was no big deal to shift rankings around, but when the other side reacted like that, the atmosphere couldn’t help but turn odd.
After confirming that every group had switched seats and settled in, the MC approached XINX and held the microphone out to them.
“You’ve taken the first-place seat away from Eternal Seven. How do you feel, Sio?”
Sio was XINX’s leader name. He also had a strong impression and a somewhat rough-looking aura, at least on the outside. He was the member Go Young-in had first spoken to as a kind of greeting when the group entered, the one who had been muttering in English.
“Um… we didn’t mean for that to happen either. It’s surprising, an unexpected result.”
The answer itself was genuinely innocent. He seemed to have no idea that saying we didn’t mean to do that would only make the other side feel worse.
He looked like he wanted to get out of there right this second. He was still trying to stammer out answers to the MC’s questions, but both his intonation and his word choice made it obvious he was having trouble keeping up.
That group was unusually foreign-member heavy, even their leader being a second-generation Korean American raised in the United States. On top of that, the group itself hardly ever promoted in Korea and had spent most of their time abroad, so even though they’d debuted a while ago, their Korean was still shaky.
Whether that was just his personality or he was simply unused to this kind of broadcast, he was clearly bad at managing his expression too. If this went out on air, there was no way the comments wouldn’t get nasty in a dozen different ways.
“I see. Do you think you’ll be able to keep holding on to first place?”
“Hmm… no. Not yet.”
“Not yet means you think it’s possible, right?”
Sio looked like he had no idea how else to answer. By the middle of the exchange, he seemed unable to think of the right Korean words at all and only mixed in English while reacting as if he didn’t understand what sort of response they wanted from him.
The MC apparently decided there was nothing more to get and moved on without delay. That one would probably get edited out, or maybe only his expression would be used separately somehow. The MC’s eyes were already hunting for the next target.
“Eternal Seven!”
“Yes.”
“You’ve fallen from first to fourth. That’s unfortunate.”
“We’ll take it as a sign to work harder.”
Eternal Seven’s leader, Yoon Ho-su, answered smoothly on behalf of the members. Up until then, he’d looked fairly composed, but the MC’s next question was something else entirely.
“By the way, did you know this?”
“Know what?”
“The only participant group to rank Eternal Seven as dead last, sixth place, was XINX, the team currently in first place!”
At the MC’s words, the whole studio started buzzing.
“Why would he say that? He’s insane……”
“Was last season of this show like this too?”
The MC ignored the growing noise in the studio and kept firing questions at Eternal Seven. Even when they tried to answer vaguely, he would press them again, making them state it clearly.
That MC could really make a fortune teaching people how to sow discord. No question about it—he was the kind of person who’d make obscene money.
The members of Eternal Seven all kept smiling calmly, while XINX’s leader Sio had been getting more and more fidgety ever since the earlier exchange, and now he looked utterly drained of color.
A few of the XINX members didn’t seem to fully understand what was happening because of their limited Korean, so they kept asking the Korean members what was going on. Some of them even seemed unfazed, as if this was a competition, so what was the problem?
“Ah… I see?”
Yoon Ho-su took a small breath, then lifted the microphone again.
“Aren’t you curious what your group lacks that caused you to receive the lowest score?”
“Well… I am curious, I suppose.”
“What about you, XINX? Is there a particular reason?”
Sio gave no answer at all. In the end, an awkward silence began to spread through the studio.
Even after that, the MC continued to fling pointed questions at several groups, as though tossing out bait and waiting for someone to bite, but everyone dodged them at a reasonable level and got through it.
“Well said! Then from here on, we’ll begin the actual competition! Right. Please bring up the first mission!”
With the MC’s grandiose explanation, the screen lit up with the competition theme in huge letters.
[Top of COVER - Perfectly embody the other team’s song!]
From the wording alone, it was the kind of phrase that made the people using it look petty and gave the people on the receiving end this oddly unpleasant feeling.
They really were serious about making people miserable. Perfectly embody the other team’s song? What absolute bullshit.
Soon the screen changed again, revealing the evaluation method. From the MC’s explanation, it looked like the first round would be ranked by the participants voting among themselves, just like before.
Once the actual ranking vote day came, there would probably be something else added on top of it. They wouldn’t just hand out rankings and leave it at that.
“The ranking will be decided by covering another group’s song! The first-place team will pair up the competing teams two by two, and the two groups facing off will each choose which of the other’s songs they want covered.”
That meant even if they deliberately paired up groups or songs with bad compatibility, there was still a problem. Who was supposed to deal with the fallout after that? It was structured so that even first place got stuck with the burden, which made him wonder what the point of winning first place even was.
“If you know what kind of music each group does, you can give them a song they’d be able to perform well. Of course, the reverse is possible too, right?”
The remaining teams were basically left with no choice. That was even more true because they had to choose the songs for one another.
“If there’s a team you want to knock down in the rankings, make good use of this! And remember I said the first-place team would receive a meaningful reward? The reward for first place is a song free-pass ticket!
Just hearing the name free-pass ticket didn’t make it clear what kind of chance this was, so everyone went quiet. But the moment the explanation continued, the studio burst back into noise.
“The first-place team can use the free-pass ticket to change the competition song to any song they want! Of course, songs by musicians who aren’t participating here are also allowed!”
“Wow. Then first place doesn’t have to do the other team’s song at all, so there’s really no problem.”
The admiration of one person was enough to start everyone else whispering. Comments of all kinds scattered around the studio—some amused, some jealous, some envious, some uneasy.
It was definitely an enormous advantage.
For example, even if a powerhouse like XINX, with their intense choreography, hard beats, and mostly hip-hop songs, chose an incompatible group like DTD or Eternal Seven, the selected groups alone would be the ones struggling to pull off the concept. XINX wouldn’t have any problem at all.
“Then, XINX, please decide which groups will compete against each other!”
* * *
“Cut! Good work, everyone!”
With the PD’s call of “cut,” filming for the first episode came to an end. Afterward, he even exchanged numbers with a few of the members for reasons he’d never imagined in his life.
After a long stretch of indecision, XINX finally submitted the pairings for which groups would switch songs, and the result was:
XINX ↔ Eternal Seven
The Road ↔ Triple Shot
Zero One ↔ DTD
In the end, they got tangled up with DTD after all. Was this rigged? The pairing didn’t look normal at all. The moment XINX chose DTD as Zero One’s opponent, Go Young-in had even briefly wondered whether the PD had nudged the result.
Why were other things changing just fine, while this future refused to budge?
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