The Sight of Hard Work
To get the teams settled first, Jong-woo dragged Rembrary off to the broadcasting station.
The other contestants scheduled for that day had already gathered there. They were exchanging greetings with one another, and when Rembrary appeared, they offered their greetings his way as well.
Jong-woo noticed the curiosity threaded through their glances, and it made him oddly emotional. Come to think of it, only last year they'd been floundering, unable to land a single schedule. Now they were the ones calling producers first, volunteering to appear on shows, and passing celebrities were the ones staring in fascination as they walked by.
Rembrary drew so much noisy attention wherever he went that Jong-woo hadn't really registered it, but feeling the change all at once like this made it strikingly real.
"Jong-woo, what are you doing off by yourself?"
"Because of you, that's why, you—"
In any case, he and Rembrary made the rounds, trading quick greetings with everyone else.
Along the way, they spotted the Sea Butter rapper they'd recently tangled with over some unpleasant business. The moment their eyes met, the rapper visibly wavered.
Jong-woo nudged Rembrary forward to greet him first, and the rapper returned the greeting awkwardly. Apparently the other side wasn't in a great mood about recent events either.
Like he has any right to sulk. Jong-woo grumbled inwardly. This is the guy whose side added brand-new schedules to their plate.
"Jong-woo."
"What?"
"You arranged this schedule specifically to follow him, so why act so flustered? If he sees, he'll think we ran into him by pure coincidence."
"That's exactly why I'm acting flustered. So it looks that way."
When Rembrary fixed him with a flat, dead-eyed stare, Jong-woo cleared his throat and looked away.
"What? The CEO told me to do it."
"What a pathetically thin excuse."
Just then the PD appeared, a stack of papers rolled up and clutched in his fist like a baton, and the restless atmosphere settled down considerably.
He greeted each of the gathered contestants one by one, then handed out the papers he'd brought.
Jong-woo and Rembrary each received a sheet. On one side, the vocalists' names were listed; on the other, the rappers', and thick lines connected the pairs across the middle.
"We've paired you up in twos at our discretion. Practice with the team as assigned, then come in on the filming day. We'll send the detailed schedule separately."
So the production staff had simply gone ahead and decided the teams themselves.
It became obvious from the note printed at the very bottom of the page: 'Contestants were grouped according to vocal compatibility.'
"Let's see... there you are."
Jong-woo found Woo Yeon-woo's name and traced the line across the page with his finger.
The name in the rapper column, connected to Woo Yeon-woo's...
"Now where have I seen that name before?"
It was Beta, whom they'd crossed paths with back on Sing Survival.
The instant it clicked, a voice chimed in beside them—"We meet again!"—warm with recognition.
He turned to find Beta approaching with a wide, beaming smile.
They'd exchanged a passing greeting earlier, but this time it was far more earnest.
"Wow, I guess we really are fated, huh? Right? Oh, by the way, I've been watching your variety stuff. Love it."
Just as Beta and Rembrary were exchanging pleasantries, Rembrary realized something: Jong-woo was unusually quiet.
This was the man who would normally be bowing and bustling forward, saying, Please take good care of our boy.
Wondering what had gotten into him, Rembrary glanced sideways—only to catch Jong-woo darting furtive glances toward the Sea Butter rapper.
What's wrong with him?
He found out later, when he went down to the first-floor terrace with Beta.
"Nothing major. Just—the person teamed up with the Sea Butter rapper. Queen's. Honestly, calling that guy a rapper feels wrong, but calling him a vocalist feels wrong too. Either way, I think it's a little unfair for someone like that to enter a competition like this."
Rembrary rolled his eyes over and asked, "Didn't he appear on Sing Survival as well?"
"That's right," Beta said, adding, "He sings and raps, and he's good at both."
Jong-woo had wanted Rembrary to be the sole focus of the stage that day. Sharing the spotlight with Beta was fine—he was on the same team, after all—but with the Sea Butter side? Absolutely not.
So when it turned out the person paired with the Sea Butter rapper was none other than Queen's, Jong-woo had been quietly disgruntled.
Rembrary himself, however, clearly couldn't have cared less whether Queen's showed up or not.
Since the man in question was perfectly at ease and it was only the bystander spiraling, Jong-woo worried about souring the mood. He excused himself, saying he'd run to the convenience store in the station to grab some food.
Once the two of them were alone, Beta asked, "Do you have any songs in mind?"
"I don't know very many songs."
Beta didn't find this strange—they'd spent weeks on a program together, after all. Instead, he rattled off the titles of a few songs he'd been considering, then asked again, "So, look—I'm not exactly a great singer. Not bad, but not great either. And as far as I know, you're not much of a rapper either, Yeon-woo. Am I right?"
"You are."
"So I picked out three songs that are easy to pull off, and three that are medium difficulty but loud and flashy enough that even a mediocre performance can carry them on energy alone."
He'd even prepared the lyrics in advance; he took down Rembrary's phone number and texted them over.
The two of them quietly hummed through the songs, searching for the one that looked easiest to sing.
The moment the last note faded, Beta—who had been grinning the entire time—went grave.
"How was it?"
"I knew you couldn't sing, but wow. You really can't."
Around then, Jong-woo returned from the convenience store, arms loaded with snacks, and set them down beside the pair.
When Jong-woo asked, "So, how's Yeon-woo?" Beta answered like a blade.
"The voice is top-notch, and his sense of rhythm isn't bad, but listening to him is a bit... His voice is so good that honestly, if he just did everything at a normal, even level, it'd sound great."
"Really?"
Rembrary demolished the sandwich Jong-woo had bought at impressive speed, refusing absolutely to interject in the conversation between Beta and Jong-woo.
He had said it himself: one does not interject while eating.
And especially when his own share of the food had not yet been divvied up—silence and speed were always the winning strategy.
By the time Rembrary had finished two sandwiches and a juice, Beta, done talking with Jong-woo, noticed the single remaining sandwich and went round-eyed.
"Anyway, Yeon-woo, just focus on articulating every syllable clearly, and you'll be fine. Also—where did my sandwich go?"
Rembrary pointed a finger at the one sandwich that remained.
When Jong-woo asked, "Where's mine?" Rembrary pointed at the convenience store.
Beta's manager, who had been munching a sandwich beside Rembrary this whole time, gave a discreet cough and waved his hands apologetically.
As Jong-woo trudged off to buy more sandwiches, grumbling under his breath, Beta offered Rembrary some earnest advice.
"This is the method I used when I first started building my rap skills. Back when I was still dreaming of debuting, a friend and I used to hold entire conversations in nothing but rap. Full attention to rhyme, flow, all of it."
"That sounds mortifying."
"It's not mortifying when it's just the two of you. Look, Yeon-woo, you don't have to go that far, but you do have to make sure the audience understands what you're saying on stage, right? So try this."
And Beta unveiled his practical, field-tested method for improving one's skills.
While Beta and Rembrary were busy lamenting each other's total lack of talent, the Sea Butter rapper was running through a rehearsal with Queen's—and the two of them were busy being awed by each other.
"Honestly? We've just pre-ordered the win."
Afterward, the Sea Butter rapper returned to his agency, and when the members greeted him with a welcome back, he brought up Woo Yeon-woo.
"Guys, guess who I saw. Woo Yeon-woo."
"Huh? What was he doing there?"
"No idea. He was just there when I showed up."
The members asked their manager whether Woo Yeon-woo had originally been slated for the show, and the manager said no. As of when he'd last checked, Woo Yeon-woo definitely had not been part of this program's lineup.
"Wow, son of a—he's deliberately chasing after the same shows as us, isn't he."
Annoyed as they were, the members still had words of encouragement for their rapper.
"You'd better crush him."
"Don't you dare lose to that guy."
The rapper just laughed, as if they were stating the obvious. He was brimming with confidence.
And perhaps he had reason to be. It wasn't public knowledge, but he had originally debut-trained as a vocalist before later switching to rap.
His singing was genuinely solid. And his teammate Queen's? The man was at a level where you couldn't even tell whether he was a rapper or a vocalist.
"Let them grab attention with all their drama and scandals. At the end of the day, skill is what survives."
While the Sea Butter members were steeling their resolve like that, Rembrary—following Beta's advice—was hard at work researching how to hold a conversation in rap.
Since Rembrary wouldn't be writing his own lyrics for the competition, Beta's idea was this: put rhythm into your everyday speech, deliver it to someone, and then ask them what you just said. If they understood, your enunciation passed. If not, you'd found your weakness.
"Nay, thou must not practice upon me."
Rembrary tested the advice on the nearest available subject—Jong-woo, currently behind the wheel—but Jong-woo just snorted and gave him nothing.
"Just tell me whether the words came through clearly."
"I've been glued to your side for months and I can't understand your enunciation? I adapted to that ridiculous archaic speech of yours, didn't I?"
"Dost thou say so?"
"I do say so. Go find someone else."
Rembrary considered Sa Gam-jae, who would be staying behind at the agency with the other members. Should he call and ask?
But the man was a Grim Reaper, and somehow Rembrary couldn't quite bring himself to trust him on matters of mortal comprehension.
He deliberated a while longer, then thought of Sunwoo Sil. The man was the most passionate about music of anyone he knew—surely he'd receive him graciously?
On the other hand... Sunwoo Sil was so passionate about music that subjecting him to Rembrary's terrible rapping over the phone might genuinely offend him.
After much deliberation, Rembrary called Jang Tae-ri.
"Hey-oh, Tae-ri-oh, nice to meet you, oh."
He delivered the greeting with a rap cadence, and Jang Tae-ri fired back, "Hello? Hello?" again and again.
Her voice was pure bewilderment.
"Tae-ri, say hello? Hello? It's Yeon-woo, nice to meet you, nice to meet you."
[...]
"Ms. Jang Tae-ri?"
[Ah, you scared me! What on earth was that just now?]
When Rembrary explained the situation, Jang Tae-ri clucked her tongue over how someone who could actually sing had ended up on a program like this—then abruptly burst into a strange, wheezing laugh.
"What's so funny?"
At his question, Jang Tae-ri let out another long, breathy exhale and said,
[Try it on Jo-woon. That thing you just did.]
"The rapping greeting?"
[Yeah. Then tell me how he reacts.]
"Understood."
The moment he hung up, Jong-woo launched into a lecture as he turned the steering wheel.
"Drop the English bits, drop the English. You barely know any English—no need to force it in there."
"I shall heed thy counsel."
Rembrary answered with perfect composure, then, following Jang Tae-ri's suggestion, dialed Shin Jo-woon this time.
[Yo, piggy.]
The instant Shin Jo-woon picked up, Rembrary delivered his rap with full conviction.
"Rap rap-rap, Yeon-woo raps, Yeon-woo raps the rap, Yeon-woo raps, rap rap-rap."
[...]
A long silence stretched across the line.
Rembrary, who had been waiting patiently for a reaction, finally asked first, "What do you think I just said?"—and only then did a clenched-teeth laugh come through the receiver.
[What was that?]
"Rap practice. What do you think I just said?"
[You said you rap.]
"Did the enunciation come through clearly?"
[Yeah, every word. I was on speaker mode—my secretary just heard the whole thing and fell out of her chair laughing.]
So my words do carry. Rembrary nodded to himself, satisfied.
Beta had said he only needed to be understood by others. Surely this was more than enough?