The Conditions for Becoming a Kind Idol Leader — Chapter 42
42
The day of the WHO'S THE K studio shoot. As usual, nothing went smoothly.
Even before anything else, the sight of that large, cloth-draped object sitting alone in the middle of the studio had put him on edge.
"All right, everyone! For the first round, Top of COVER! You’ve all been told which song your group will be taking from the opposing team, correct?"
─Flash.
A tournament bracket appeared on the giant screen.
XINX - Deep Blue
VS.
Eternal Seven - Healer
Zero One - You Only See Me
VS.
DTD - M'aider
The Road - Just For You
VS.
Triple Shot - BOOM BOOM BOOM
The song Zero One had chosen for DTD, M'aider, was the title track from Zero One’s second mini album. It was the one that best matched DTD’s style.
Though calling it a perfect match would have been a stretch. It had a blues-rock feel, dark and sluggish in a way that didn’t quite fit their atmosphere, but... it was the closest they could do. Their concepts were the same school uniforms, so there was some overlap. It wasn’t exactly a scam.
"If you’ve all checked the screen, please give us your attention again this way."
The MC stood beside the mysterious, cloth-covered object and, gripping the fabric with both hands, whipped it away.
"Ta-da!"
A roulette wheel...?
What emerged beneath the cloth was a massive roulette wheel. In this twenty-first century, they were still using something this analog. Had they ever done this before?
And why are the options written like that?
The circular wheel was divided into several sections, but the choices written on it were only three.
- Song Rearrangement Rights
- Costume Change Rights
- Choreography Change Rights
...Fuck. Not even a blank section? You were guaranteed to land on one of the three.
"Each group’s leader will step forward and spin the roulette. The result written on the wheel will not apply to the team that spins it, but to their competing team."
Spinning the wheel by hand and stopping the pointer on Costume Change Rights, the MC continued her explanation.
"For example, if Costume Change Rights comes up like this, the group that landed on it will be able to intervene freely in the rival group’s styling. Styling is one of those elements in an idol performance that fans pay just as much attention to as the stage itself!"
No wonder they’d chosen those three. They could deliberately sabotage the performance itself. Every last one of them was terrible... Should he be grateful that hair and makeup had at least been left out?
"Question!" one of the contestants shouted urgently, raising a hand. "I thought the point was to judge skill through fair competition, but doesn’t this make it way too dependent on luck?"
The MC looked almost delighted, as though she’d been waiting for someone to ask.
"Excellent question! But I think you’re overlooking one very important fact."
She smiled with a meaningful little curl of her lips.
"Everyone! Luck is a skill too!"
"......"
The contestant who had asked the question sank back down, looking flustered. He probably felt like he was talking to a wall.
How many people in real life succeeded on pure skill alone? If you didn’t have luck, would any of you have made it this far?
She was basically dismissing the contestants’ hard work as luck. But because that wasn’t entirely wrong, it was hard to argue with.
Seriously, if she started selling acupuncture mats, she’d probably become this month’s sales champion, wouldn’t she?
"And there’s still one more thing we haven’t told you yet! In this round, one group will be selected from the three losing groups as a loser team. The selected group will no longer have the right to remain on the broadcast. In other words, you’ll have to withdraw voluntarily!"
Apparently, the phrase voluntary withdrawal had more of an impact than expected. The whole room had turned into a market again. If they’d just called it elimination, that might have been one thing, but by wording it like this, simply losing felt humiliating.
"But don’t worry! These exchange rights won’t allow you to interfere with the opposing team all throughout the preparation period. They only take effect after you’ve watched each team’s stage during the midway evaluations!"
It was garbage either way, but according to the explanation, these change rights, arrangement rights, and the like could only be used during the mid-check sessions, after viewing and evaluating each competing team’s stage.
Wasn’t that even worse? If you’d already finished almost everything, they could still make you start over from the beginning.
"How much you intervene is entirely up to you! You can demand a complete overhaul, or simply end it with one quick comment."
So basically, if the other side decided to change the concept and leave the remaining details to you, that would be fine too. As long as the opposing team made some request, you had to apply it... no matter what.
What kind of lawless system was this? Even the most garbage-tier company wouldn’t do this, ...hmm. No, wait. Wasn’t this actually an unnervingly accurate reflection of reality?
Being able to interfere during the mid-evaluation meant they were, in effect, judging each other. It was a broadcast, so everyone would probably keep things moderate and stop there, but the fact remained that as long as this existed, they’d have to change something somehow.
Using the exchange rights for something positive was still basically telling the other group they had weaknesses. Using them for something negative meant deliberately screwing them over. No matter what they did, the discomfort would linger.
Of course, this was a broadcast, so they’d probably keep it decent... but you never knew.
"Then, the leaders of each group, please come forward!"
Go Young-in forced his expression back under control and walked out as calmly as he could. Looking at the other groups, their members were cheerfully rooting for their leaders, telling them to do their best, but Zero One was... well.
He had started down the steps, then paused and glanced back at his members. They were all just staring blankly in his direction. Was this really okay? Wouldn’t people start rumors about internal conflict? Damn it. He’d never paid attention to that kind of thing, so he didn’t know how he was supposed to act.
Except for Pyo Jae-ho, they weren’t clueless, and yet they refused to react no matter what. Go Young-in trudged down toward the stage.
Just then, his eyes met Sio’s from XINX, who was looking around like a frightened meerkat. Sio’s eyes widened in alarm, then he crept toward Go Young-in’s side. What was this—he’d been startled as if he wanted to avoid him, and now he was coming over?
While the staff approached the contestants onstage to fit them with microphones, Sio spoke to him with an unmistakably urgent air.
"Last time, um... that..."
He faltered and stalled halfway through his sentence, so Go Young-in told him it was fine to speak in his native language. The result was him suddenly pouring everything out at full speed, and it honestly made him flinch a little. So it wasn’t that he was naturally quiet—it was that language itself had been forcing his talkativeness down.
He was speaking so fast and so softly that honestly, Go Young-in only caught half of it. To summarize: there was something he absolutely had to ask him about.
Something he absolutely has to ask?
And while he was still talking, Sio kept glancing off to one side, so Go Young-in followed his gaze. It was toward the seats where the Triple Shot members were sitting.
Before he could even ask what he meant, a blue head suddenly shoved itself into the conversation.
"What’s got you so worked up?"
Why the hell was this guy here instead of at his own spot?
"Triple Shot’s Yoo In-hyeok, please stand according to the ranking order! We’re resuming filming!"
Just as the MC said that, the attention in the room was pulled there for no reason. Had he lost his mind? The blue-haired guy called Yoo In-hyeok’s expression hardened for a second, then he casually returned to his place.
At any rate, because it didn’t take long to set up the microphones, filming resumed quickly.
The MC came over to XINX with a microphone, saying they’d do a brief interview before spinning the roulette.
"Sio, is there any special meaning behind the song XINX chose for this round? You were told the first-place group could choose any song, but you didn’t change it and brought over Eternal Seven’s song as it was. Does that mean you’re that confident?"
"We’ll do it fairly and squarely."
XINX’s declaration that they’d give up the advantage and go head-to-head in a fair match was fairly impressive. It would look nice on camera.
The opposing team, Eternal Seven, seemed more surprised than resentful about what had happened during the previous shoot as well.
Apparently the MC wasn’t interested in digging further, because she praised Sio for his sportsmanship and moved on. The next turns were in ranking order, as expected.
"Young-in of Zero One, how did you feel when DTD first handed over your song? It must have been a bit surprising, considering it’s an unfamiliar genre for Zero One."
She was practically interviewing herself. He wasn’t even surprised at how transparent it was that she wanted him to answer in a way that could be conveniently edited later.
"‘You Only See Me’ is DTD’s debut song, isn’t it? Since it’s such a meaningful and important challenge, I thought we should do our best to live up to expectations."
He answered while cutting out anything unnecessary and emphasizing that he understood exactly what this song meant to them, just in case the editing team tried to twist it into something else.
After that, they continued the interviews and spun the roulette. If this were shown on broadcast, it probably wouldn’t even take ten minutes total.
As a result of the spin, Zero One got Song Rearrangement Rights, but the funny thing was that DTD, their rival team, had also drawn the same thing. Things were just as bad on that side.
If they’d drawn something else, then even if they lost, they could at least comfort themselves by saying the other side only won because they gave them a weird costume or a terrible choreography. This, however, left no room for that kind of mental gymnastics.
That didn’t mean he was going into it expecting to lose. Whatever happened, he couldn’t afford to do it half-heartedly.
The other groups... well, the one that stood out in his memory was Triple Shot, since they kept crossing paths with everyone. They’d drawn Costume Change Rights, and it didn’t seem like they intended to use it in any especially kind way.
Just from the interview earlier, too.
Even from the interview alone, especially given that Triple Shot’s leader—the blue head... Yoo In-hyeok—there was no avoiding the thought.
The final interviewee, Yoo In-hyeok, had answered the MC’s question about whether there was any meaning behind the song he’d chosen for the opposing team, and that was the problem.
"I just picked the song that seemed like it would fit that group the least."
"Oh. So that’s your strategy?"
"Ah, well~ wasn’t that why they made these rules? I was just doing what I was told."
From the song selection alone, it was obvious he’d intentionally chosen something that wouldn’t suit the rival team, The Road, at all, so it looked like he’d come ready to cause trouble from the start. The Road stared at Triple Shot as if they couldn’t believe he’d really gone that far, and their reactions were pure disbelief.
He absolutely could not get tangled up with that guy. If he got mixed up with him wrong, it would be a pain in the ass.
What the hell gives him the confidence to act like that?
Did he have some hidden trump card? Or was this really just about screwing over Jeong Hae, like he’d said before?
Well... honestly, he didn’t care much how the other groups’ images turned out. Right now, his own—
[Article 101│A perfect idol group is not built by one person alone.]
Right, fine. He got it. The persistent bastard. He was already busy enough trying to protect Zero One’s image.
In any case, if someone ran wild like that, all the attention would go to them, so this should have been a situation worth celebrating... and yet—
Why do I have such a bad feeling?
─Beep.
For some reason, even the status window’s familiar alert sound from earlier seemed to ring out especially loudly.
[Article 80│Even a perfect idol cannot avoid every incident.]
......
What kind of article was that? That wasn’t a clause, that was just a notification, damn it.
What the hell was supposed to happen there?
They had barely gotten through one problem, and now there were already signs of something else brewing. Could they really make it through this without another major controversy?
Damn it.
* * *
That same day, short performance edit clips, teaser videos, and trailer footage for each group participating in WHO'S THE K were uploaded to Knet's NewTube.
After filming ended, Go Young-in came to the company practice room to prepare the competition song, and stared blankly at the link Kwon Je-won had sent him, telling him to monitor it.
He had clearly planned to head to the practice room after the shoot and start working on the choreography and concept planning. But then Baek Geon, the company producer, had suddenly shown up and dragged him to the studio with Pyo Jae-ho without warning.
The reason was fraud. Go Young-in had thought that was a load of nonsense.
According to Baek Geon, this was revenge for all the times he’d asked to see what they were working on and had been ignored, only for Go Young-in to show up now having produced a performance song.
Well, what could he do? If he showed people half-baked work, the system would start issuing warnings about a perfect idol not being allowed to have any flaws in skill.
No, more importantly—he’d also worked on the song himself back then, so why was he suddenly bringing it up now...? It was obvious he was just trying to force him to keep composing no matter what.
And then, while he’d been dragged into the studio and tinkering with the song, that brat Pyo Jae-ho had suddenly left, leaving him to guard the room by accident. Damn it.
He had ended up working on it alone, against all reason, and it was killing him.
Still, I should monitor it...
Go Young-in, looking pale, rested his hand on the master keyboard and stood there in a daze before trudging over to the self-camera he’d left on for filming. Before turning off the recording button, he even gave the camera a little wave.
Dragging the chair over in front of the laptop and settling himself down, Go Young-in opened the internet window.