Conditions for Becoming a Kind Idol Leader — Episode 45
45
...Status window?
A familiar voice flooded his ears as if the speaker were standing right beside him. He couldn't make out the other person's face clearly, but for some reason he was certain they were making a sour expression. The status window's shrill alerts no longer made it through properly, and the scarlet warning boxes filling his vision didn't matter at all.
All he could do was wait, heart pounding, for the other person's answer. His body looked as though it might collapse at any moment, the other person's displeased face, the anxious voice in his own head—everything blurred beneath the hope that had suddenly bloomed inside him. He knew it was absurd, and yet he was sure the other would believe him. They had already believed him once. They were the same person. If he had to bear the consequences, he still thought it might be all right.
"...Hey. I don't mean anything bad by this, but you, man."
The look he got was the kind reserved for someone babbling nonsense. Last time, he said he believed me. He thanked me for telling him. He said he trusted me. Then why is it different now?
"I think you should go to a hospital."
Why?
What had Go Young-in been feeling then? If the situation changed even a little, of course people could change with it. He had been stupid—truly stupid. He should have just endured it alone. He shouldn't have failed to stomach even that much.
"This is seriously not normal."
He must have been punished for trying to dump his burden on someone else.
"You're acting completely insane right now."
So this was what he got for it.
Go Young-in only kept opening and closing his mouth with a foolish look on his face, showing no sign of speaking, and Kyeon In-woo, who had been waiting in silence, let out a self-mocking laugh.
"Fuck."
Kyeon In-woo strode forward and gave Go Young-in a light shove. Go Young-in staggered and was pushed back, unsteady on his feet. Kyeon In-woo glanced down at the floor, then drew a long breath, swallowing his anger with visible effort before reaching back to grab the door handle.
"I knew it."
There was disappointment buried deep beneath his voice, quiet and flat, without any rise or fall. At the sound of that familiar voice, Go Young-in sucked in a sharp breath. The moment he lifted his head and tried to speak urgently, the door slammed shut in front of him with a heavy bang.
Clause 3 | A perfect idol must be able to gather himself quickly, even when his mental fortitude wavers.
The status window, which he hadn't even noticed appearing, blinked quietly in place.
Only then did Go Young-in inhale in a rush. He slowly steadied his breathing.
...Huh. What did I just see? Out of nowhere?
He had definitely been talking to Kyeon In-woo. His heart was racing. Even though it was the middle of summer, his hands felt unnaturally cold, and they seemed to be trembling in tiny spasms. Right? And then...
It had clearly been a familiar voice, a familiar face. Or had it?
Just as he tried to focus and drag the memory back into place, a stabbing pain throbbed behind his eyes.
Fuck, a migraine.
The moment he walked into the studio, he saw that a long judges' table had been set up in front of the stage, just like on an audition program.
Honestly, he wasn't even sure this kind of mid-check was necessary. It was called a progress review, but in practice it was basically just a stage set for people to evaluate one another and toss out lines that would look good on broadcast.
It was hardly even an evaluation. Maybe if they were individuals with no entangled interests, but once you were already a debuting group signed to a company, you couldn't ignore the relationships between agencies—or between agencies and the broadcasting station. According to Manager Kwon Je-won, DTD's management team had even called him directly...
They said it would be better to aim for a warm atmosphere instead of ripping each other apart.
Manager Kwon Je-won had said it was fine if they did whatever they wanted, but that was only because he didn't know Zero One. Absolutely not.
As he looked around at the members seated nearby, Kyeon In-woo came into view.
...Huh.
Since their last conversation, things somehow felt even worse between them.
If I only listened to Kyeon In-woo's version, then I really am the one being weird.
From Kyeon In-woo's perspective, it made sense that he would be pissed. What was he supposed to do in situations like this? Should he apologize? He was already suffocating as it was, and of all things, Jeong Hae—the source of another kind of suffocation—was walking this way now.
He had apparently decided from the start to come over to Zero One's side, because his steps were perfectly unhesitating.
Behind the approaching Jeong Hae, Sio from XINX was also coming this way, then hesitating and turning back to his own seat.
"How am I supposed to know anything if you won't tell me? That's harsh, man. We're not even rival teams."
Jeong Hae teased them lightly in a tone full of mock grievance, giving the Zero One members a casual greeting with his eyes.
He was already an unpleasant person to deal with, and with the Kyeon In-woo situation layered on top of that, Go Young-in had even less desire to engage with him. When would the waiting period end? He would rather get straight to filming.
Jeong Hae really didn't back down—for a lot of different reasons.
"You guys are still the same. You never talk much, back then or now."
"Leave me out of that. I at least know how to answer properly."
"Haha, fair enough. Young-in really is the quietest one here. Anyway, we should all get together again sometime. We used to hang out a lot, remember?"
"That was back then. By the time we need to remember it, we probably won't even be able to. Why bother?"
"Is that how it is? Still, opportunities to end up on the same program aren't exactly common. Oh—since we're all here, why don't we take a group photo? For an Insta upload or something."
"Why bother?"
Every word he spoke somehow dragged the conversation back to those old school days. Fuck. Since that was all he kept bringing up, Go Young-in couldn't even figure out how to respond. Normally Kyeon In-woo would have tossed in a halfhearted reply, but today he was answering in a nearly confrontational tone.
And part of that antagonism was aimed directly at Go Young-in.
What a petty bastard.
The first team to perform was EternalSeven and XINX. Maybe because of what XINX's leader Sio had said last time, the atmosphere between them was unexpectedly warm.
Since this was only a midterm evaluation, they didn't perform the entire stage. They only showed the completed portion, so the lineup moved quickly.
Zero One was third, so they ended up going on stage sooner than expected.
The arrangement was nearly finished, but there were still details left to refine, like costumes and choreography, so they only showed the middle section and called it there.
They had decided to go with a kitschy concept for the outfits, but discussion with the company hadn't been wrapped up yet, so that part was still on hold. Judging by the candidate ideas, honestly, they just looked... like punks.
The song itself was going to stay minimal, too. He'd already changed the beat to create a shift in atmosphere and swapped out the main riff instrument...
After enough tinkering, the result had become less like DTD's fresh, bubbly first-love feel and more like something tense and groovy.
To make up for their small number of members, the choreography made the most of formations and movement paths, using them as broadly as possible. On the other hand, it also played to their strengths. Instead of simply taking the original, easy choreography and making it a little more intense and difficult, they had built a much harsher, tougher routine with more demanding moves, while leaving in the original song's little "cute" segments here and there.
The first person from DTD to take the microphone for feedback was Na Woo-ri.
"Wow! You changed the song in such a weird way? Um... it feels kind of... unfinished? How do I put it. Like it's on the verge of falling apart...? The rhythm is really strange in a good way."
So he wasn't completely tone-deaf after all. Unfinished wasn't exactly wrong. Since they had changed the meter to an odd time signature, it made sense that it would feel like something still in progress. But Na Woo-ri also, as he'd noticed before, wasn't great at choosing his words.
"Yes. Since unrequited love is a one-sided feeling, I thought there would be an underlying sense of anxiety and tension even while trying to move closer. So, to reinterpret that in Zero One's style and express the unstable, uneasy emotion of unrequited love, we changed the rhythm progression to 7/8 time."
Before Pyo Jae-ho could answer, he jumped in quickly and took the lead.
More questions followed after that—why the dance and concept outfit remained the same, and so on—and since most of them were harmless, the answers went over smoothly.
Without much of a break, DTD moved over to Zero One's stage area, and this time Zero One sat side by side in the judges' seats to evaluate DTD.
In the original song, Zero One had also worn school uniforms, and DTD seemed to have matched that concept as well.
They had also made various changes to the music—swapping the organ sound for a piano, stripping out the gritty, scratchy attack that came with the guitar riff, and so on.
Since the group image was completely different, it looked as though they had reworked the song to make the dark, slow atmosphere brighter and less heavy.
Instead of the acrobatic movements that had been scattered through the original choreography, they had apparently decided to use props, bringing out a school desk for the performance. Since they weren't confident in a hard-hitting dance, they had simply changed the structure altogether.
Overall, it wasn't bad, but a small mistake came out of Na Woo-ri while they were using the prop. He was standing at the far edge of the formation, not center, so it wouldn't stand out much, but it was still a mistake all the same.
Which meant Pyo Jae-ho's hellish mouth might go flying off in any direction at any moment. Once he noticed a mistake, there was no way he would let it go.
Sure enough, the moment the stage ended, Pyo Jae-ho lifted the microphone, looked at Na Woo-ri, and opened his mouth.
"You missed the choreography."
"Ah! So Jae-ho noticed the newly added choreography too, huh?"
Just as expected, you bastard. Go Young-in cut in immediately, barging in right after Pyo Jae-ho.
"I was about to ask about that myself. You added a desk choreography that wasn't in the original song. It's different from the existing routine, and it feels fresh and like a good idea, but is there a backstory to how it came about?"
Wrong and different don't mean the same thing, but... whatever. Let it go, let it go.
If he had just let it sit there, that mouth of his would absolutely have gone on about how they hadn't practiced enough and a dozen other things besides. Fuck...
Even after that, whenever there was the slightest hint that Pyo Jae-ho was about to say something harsh, he would interrupt or redirect the conversation in little bursts to steer it away.
Being a leader who cut his own members off as needed was better than having some rude bastard from another group on his hands.
"Anyone else have an opinion?"
That was exactly when he had been thinking that he should focus only on watching Pyo Jae-ho closely.
"Well, no matter how you look at it, the one who decides how to use the arrangement is the leader. Weren't we already supposed to not be talking to each other anyway?"
It was Kyeon In-woo.