The Conditions for Becoming a Kind Idol Leader - Chapter 66
"Well."
At the softly asked question, Ahn Tae-yeon hesitated over her answer before finally speaking.
"I’m not really sure why."
"Really?"
"Sorry."
So that was it. Go Young-in gave a quiet nod of understanding. Then he asked again.
"I didn’t do anything wrong, did I?"
Ahn Tae-yeon carefully checked his expression, then said slowly, "Not really……? You know as well as I do, it was mostly stuff like you being annoying, or acting all high and mighty just because you were in an academic-track school and also a trainee… Most of it was basically forced."
At any rate, he hadn’t been the one at fault, so unless it was a rumor, there shouldn’t be any problem with this.
If that was all, then fine. Beyond the café window, rain was still pouring down in sheets. Go Young-in looked quietly at the raindrops striking the glass, then tightened the coat he’d worn over his clothes.
Noticing his unease, Ahn Tae-yeon brought up something else to change the subject.
"Son Jeong-hoon also told me not to contact you for no reason."
Son Jeong-hoon, of all people? There was nothing good about remembering, unless… Right. Son Jeong-hoon didn’t know there was a problem with his memory. Or maybe he’d simply meant to tell them not to make things harder for him?
"Why?"
"…He just said you felt uncomfortable seeing us. I’ve got enough shame to know when to stop."
"I said I felt uncomfortable seeing you guys?"
Ahn Tae-yeon nodded. Go Young-in hadn’t said anything like that, but if it was a memory he’d forgotten, he couldn’t rule it out carelessly.
"Does Jeong-hoon really say things like that?"
"Uh… He said you looked like you were having a hard time. So I wasn’t expecting anything, but it kept bothering me. I wanted to apologize somehow."
Maybe because she’d started with the assumption that he would naturally understand even if he didn’t answer, she was easy to listen to; he didn’t have to say much before she kept talking on her own.
"After Kyeon In-woo got busy for a while and stopped coming to school, you were always with him. And once In-woo wasn’t around, it got even worse……."
"Was it like that?"
"That’s how it looked to me. Since In-woo debuted too, he must’ve started training around that time, right? But you and Son Jeong-hoon kept coming because of attendance days. Why did they do that anyway? It only lasted a month or two, but……."
Ahn Tae-yeon, raking through old memories as she spoke, suddenly clammed up when she looked at Go Young-in.
"Are you cold?"
Then, with a troubled expression, she blurted out something completely out of nowhere. Strictly speaking, he was more on the warm side. Go Young-in wet his lips lightly.
"No, I’m fine."
"You’ve seemed a little…… off since earlier."
"It’s because of the air-conditioning."
"They don’t have the AC on here."
"……."
After the awkward sentence trailed off, silence settled between them for a while. Ahn Tae-yeon seemed to have nothing else to say, and Go Young-in didn’t have anything to offer either, so he sat still.
Maybe that was why. The buzz of a phone vibrating in the awkward air felt oddly welcome for once. It was a call to Go Young-in’s phone.
Mobile Phone
Zero One — Kyeon In-woo
He suddenly snapped fully awake.
"You don't have to go out. It’s fine, just take it."
He thanked Ahn Tae-yeon, who waved him off and said it was fine, then answered the call. What was this? Had he been caught wandering off somewhere else?
"Go Young, where are you? You’re not at the convenience store. You trying to die?"
He started with swearing the second the call connected. Was this bastard outside? It was noisy around him. Why had he come out?
"I was looking around for something else. I’m heading to the convenience store now."
"It’s raining like shit and you’re still fucking around? Your voice sounds like shit too, by the way. Don’t do dumb crap and get over here already. I’m in front of the convenience store now."
"Got it. I’ll be there soon. Uh… ten minutes?"
"Bullshit. Be here in five."
"It takes about ten minutes to get there."
"Three minutes."
"…Seven."
"Fine. I’ll let it slide."
Click. The call ended right there.
Did he come out because he couldn’t wait and wanted to check whether Go Young-in had slipped out? Or had he suddenly gotten hungry? He’d said it was fine a moment ago, and now this—so abrupt.
Couldn’t he wait even a little while? Why was he so damn impatient? Go Young-in stared at the disconnected call and let out a helpless laugh.
He tore his gaze from the phone and looked up. Ahn Tae-yeon was watching him with a startled expression.
"It was a call from one of my members. I just came out for a moment, so I should go back in."
As he got up to leave, Ahn Tae-yeon hurriedly stopped him.
"Wait!"
After hesitating, Ahn Tae-yeon finally spoke, faltering a little.
"Can I still keep contacting you?"
…How was he supposed to answer that without causing more trouble later? Perhaps sensing a refusal, Ahn Tae-yeon grew more anxious.
"I know it’s shameless of me, but we’re having a reunion soon, too! I wanted to apologize late, and maybe clear up the misunderstanding while I’m at it……."
"……."
The person saying just now that he’d been bullied at school was bringing up a class reunion. What kind of situation was this supposed to be?
Even she seemed to realize she’d spoken without thinking, rambling without any real structure. Trying to clean it up only made the explanation longer, but it didn’t help; all she did was keep repeating the same strange things.
"The other friends keep saying they want to see you too. Everyone feels sorry. The truth is, we wanted to be close with you, but we just got swept up in the mood, and—"
Go Young-in, who had been listening quietly, slowly pushed his chair back and stood.
"I should go."
At the scrape of the chair, Ahn Tae-yeon looked up at him and drew in a sharp breath.
"Hey, you……."
Still unable to tear her gaze from his face, Ahn Tae-yeon soon lowered her head and offered him a napkin. Go Young-in wordlessly took it.
"…Sorry. I said something I shouldn’t have."
Ahn Tae-yeon didn’t try to stop him again.
* * *
For days, the rain never stopped. It just kept coming down, tiresome and relentless.
At least the audience vote hadn’t happened yet, so that was something. If they’d had to receive viewers in weather like this, the fans would’ve been the only ones left to suffer and wait. And the waiting was already damn long.
Zero One’s concept for this stage was killer. A keyword that suited Zero One’s rotten personalities remarkably well.
They’d even prepared suits and props that fit the concept, and the choreography was packed with dynamic movements to give it the feel of action scenes.
They fought with knives as if acting out a frame from an action film, stepped onto tables, and even flipped through the air. In the partnered sections where they matched each other move for move like combatants, they even used hidden paint rounds in their costumes to create the effect of blood spraying out.
In short, on this stage, Zero One didn’t look like an idol group so much as some kind of traveling circus troupe flying all over the place.
After Zero One came Triple Shot.
After the live broadcast mess, the PD had tried to deny any suspicion of manipulation in his own way by changing the performance order to a random roulette system, but somehow they’d still ended up right after each other.
At this point, it wasn’t an exaggeration to say that whatever had originally been done and redone with DTD had now been done and redone with Triple Shot instead. At some point, they’d started clashing with Triple Shot more often than with DTD.
He couldn’t help but watch Triple Shot’s stage in more detail than the other groups.
Maybe because Bae So-jin had been shut down, there wasn’t anything obviously strange. And from the stage they’d prepared this time, the concept was completely the opposite.
If Zero One’s concept had been noir, Triple Shot’s song was bright and hopeful.
As for the quality of the performance, it was enough to say that Kyeon In-woo had again commented that their dancing was fucking terrible.
Besides, the second round of the second preliminary competition had become the subject of heated discussion not because of the stage itself, but because of the final results.
The issue was the elimination vote.
Triple Shot, who had received the lowest score in the contestants’ internal vote, had survived by receiving high scores from the professional judges and overtaking XINX, who had been ranked just below them.
The problem was that they hadn’t even explained how many points each vote was worth. They’d only announced what percentage of people had voted for whom, leaving no way to know the exact figures.
That caused a lot more noise inside the production, but in the end, they said a vote had to be fair, and the results weren’t overturned.
With XINX’s elimination effectively treated as a forced departure, the uproar didn’t fade even after filming ended.
Normally, the PD would’ve said something to settle the mood or at least made an excuse that it wasn’t what it looked like. This time, he said nothing at all.
As soon as filming ended, the PD got up from his seat, gave the assistant director instructions to clean up afterward, and left long ago.
After finishing his rounds of greetings and heading back late with Kyeon In-woo, Go Young-in spotted a familiar group approaching from far down the hallway.
It was the Triple Shot members, minus Jeong Hae.
Unlike usual, the Triple Shot members were quiet. Judging by their expressions alone, it almost looked as though Zero One’s and Triple Shot’s song atmospheres had been switched.
Are those bastards the type to know this would happen all along? They ate it up and liked it until now. They sure knew how to exploit things, too.
It wasn’t even surprising anymore. Triple Shot hadn’t exactly had a record of getting glowing reviews since their first stage. Maybe now that the broadcast editing wasn’t cushioning them anymore, this was how they were reacting.
The Triple Shot members were whispering to one another nonstop, and even from their expressions alone, it was obvious the conversation was anything but pleasant.
Now and then their voices rose as if they were fighting, and then they would glance around at the people nearby and lower their voices again.
Then Jeong Hae, who hadn’t been visible until just a moment ago, appeared.
Triple Shot, whose atmosphere had been so bad it might as well have been an internal split, calmed down a little once that bastard Jeong Hae showed up.
Jeong Hae wore an expression as dark as if he’d taken on every worry in the world. Was it just because of this broadcast?
Or did he get a call from Ahn Tae-yeon?
Trying to pull him aside right now would be blocked by Kyeon In-woo, and when Go Young-in had sent Jeong Hae a message first, there’d been no reply in the end. So that was how it was when he’d been contacting him so persistently before—now nothing.
"Jesus, this weather’s a fucking mess."
Tsk. Kyeon In-woo clicked his tongue while spinning a plastic prop knife for the stage in his hand.
He’d taken it without turning it back in, saying he wanted to play with it. Since he was fiddling with a prop like that, his personality somehow looked even more obnoxious than usual.
Was he talking about Triple Shot, maybe?
"What?"
"The weather."
Nope. Right. There was no way he cared about other people.
Kyeon In-woo was holding his phone in his other hand and looking at a weather app. So from the beginning, he hadn’t been paying attention to who was standing there.
It was true the weather had been awful lately. Go Young-in found himself agreeing inwardly.
"They say a typhoon’s coming."
Judging by the morning news babbling about an autumn typhoon making landfall, it seemed like one would hit soon and keep dumping rain for days on end.
"Yeah. Thanks to that, somebody looks like a drowned rat."
"Haha… It’s not that bad. Maybe it’s because the schedules overlapped."
It had to be pouring hard to count as this much. If it were just rain, maybe it would’ve been fine, but lately it had been coming down like a waterfall. It was enough to make him think, absurdly, what if everything just flooded over?
"What do you mean, ‘not that bad’? You showed up looking like a corpse."
He was talking about the day Go Young-in had gone to see Ahn Tae-yeon. The second he arrived at the convenience store, he’d had to listen to all kinds of crap. How long did they plan to keep dragging that out?
As they walked while tossing out meaningless comments, they ended up running into the Triple Shot members right in the middle of the hallway. Go Young-in greeted them out of habit first.
"Hello."
"Ah. Yes."
One of the members returned the greeting. They hadn’t been all that close to begin with, and because of Yoo In-hyeok, the Triple Shot members were somewhat wary of Go Young-in.
So there wasn’t much to say beyond a formal greeting.
"……."
Even Jeong Hae, who normally would’ve been chattering away and then wandered over to toss out random remarks to lighten the mood, was just staring in silence.
Jeong Hae looked extremely tired. The Triple Shot members weren’t talking much either, and were carefully watching his mood.
He looked like he had something to say, but he didn’t open his mouth.
Why had Jeong Hae lied? Did he simply want him not to contact him? Was there some separate reason why contact couldn’t happen? What on earth was it?
Even after several minutes, he showed no sign of speaking. So they stood there in the middle of the hallway, unintentionally locked in a standoff.
─?~ ??~
Then, through the quiet hallway, a sudden cute BGM started playing.
No way…….
Go Young-in turned slightly and looked behind him. The insane bastard Kyeon In-woo was spinning the plastic stage knife extravagantly in his right hand while playing a game with his left.
Was he even playing a game that could be done with one hand? No, that wasn’t the point.
Fuck. I keep thinking it, but is he seriously insane?
"…I’ll go first."
Jeong Hae, who had been staring blankly at him, let out a small sigh and passed by them first. The rest of the Triple Shot members followed after him in a line.
The moment Triple Shot left, Kyeon In-woo shoved his phone back into his pocket. Hey, you—
"If you’ve got something to say, then say it already. I’m bored out of my mind here."
Kyeon In-woo grinned shamelessly and joked around.
Don't laugh, you maniac.
* * *
That evening, an anonymous post went up on the internet.