Trying His Hand at a Photoshoot
Rembrary had no idea he was what you'd call a hopeless dancer.
After all, he had never once danced in his life.
That was only natural — no one in the temple had ever expected a High Priest to dance.
But to the dance teacher and the other members, this was anything but natural.
"Woo Yeon-woo. Ba-ba-ba-baba-ba. Ba-ba-ba-baba-ba. All you have to do is move to the beat, right?"
"The right hand goes up and the left hand goes down, and then they cross... is that not correct?"
"The moves are right. The beat's completely off."
"...I shall try again."
Flustered, Rembrary repeated the choreography exactly as he'd been taught.
But the dance teacher's expression showed no sign of improving.
"Yeon-woo. Uh—your form is actually good! But what is this? We're not doing calisthenics here. How about you try matching your moves to the music a little more?"
"On the 'la-la-la-LA' the right hand goes up, and on the next 'la-la-la-LA' the left hand goes down, does it not?"
"That's what I'm saying — the moves themselves are fine."
The dance teacher wrapped both hands around his head and asked, "How do I even describe this? Yeon-woo, have you ever seen a puppet show?"
"I have."
"No matter how skillfully you work a puppet, the way it moves is just a little different from a person. You know that, right?"
"I do."
"That's exactly you. You look like a wooden marionette."
"!"
"You memorize the choreography fine, but... it doesn't look like dancing."
"Is it really that bad?"
"Let's do this properly unless you want clips of yourself floating around the internet as a meme. Okay?"
But even hours of practice produced no results.
The dance teacher sighed again and again.
He couldn't exactly berate the kid, either — Rembrary committed every move to memory the instant it was taught. He danced from memory, and the problem was simply that it looked comical.
Watching this unfold, Jong-woo pressed a hand to his forehead.
The kid was already getting flak for his personality as it was.
If he took the stage looking like that, the criticism would only pile on — now for sloppy dancing too.
He could already see darkness closing in on his future.
There was noise marketing that worked, and there was noise marketing that just drew backlash. Lazy effort was neither — it was nothing at all.
"When you get back to the dorm, make sure he practices. A lot."
Jong-woo weakly urged the other members on.
But by the next day, the situation hadn't changed one bit.
Yeon-woo's dancing remained as creaky and comical as ever.
"Hey, you guys. Did you even make him practice?"
It was so hopeless that Jong-woo, unable to watch any longer, took his frustration out on the other members for no good reason.
"Practice or not, he memorized the choreography right away."
"Dancing smoothly is something he has to work on himself. What are we supposed to do about it?"
And so, by the time they filed in for vocal training, Jong-woo was half resigned.
The kid lost his rhythm along with his memories, he told himself, and left it at that.
He didn't see a few days of practice fixing that level of clumsiness anyway.
The vocal trainer, likewise forewarned about Yeon-woo's condition by the dance teacher, greeted him with zero expectations.
"Alright, here we go. Can you read sheet music?"
"I cannot read the sheet, but I have the notes by heart."
"And the lyrics?"
"Nearly all of them."
Still unconvinced, the vocal trainer held out a sheet of lyrics. "Keep your eyes on this."
But the moment the song began—
The trainer's listless eyes started to gleam.
Jong-woo, who had been slumped against the wall in half-defeat, went, "Huh?"—his eyes flying wide open.
The other members, who had been betting among themselves on just how badly Yeon-woo would do, flinched in unison.
Rembrary hummed his way through the song, and when he lowered the sheet, he nearly jumped out of his skin.
All five of them were staring at him with the strangest expressions.
"What is the matter with you all?"
When Rembrary asked, they were too flustered to get a proper word out.
It took the vocal trainer a long moment before he finally shouted, cursing under his breath, "Holy crap—wow, this kid—when the hell did your singing get this good?!"
Rembrary shrugged with perfect composure.
He had never danced, true, but he'd been singing hymns nonstop since his days as an apprentice.
Right up until he became High Priest, he sang hymns at least twice a day, and practiced even more on holy days.
Even after his elevation, he sang often.
Song was an excellent vessel for spreading divine power far and wide.
"I sing tolerably well."
"Tolerably? You sing amazingly! And forget technique — your tone is incredible!"
"Is that so."
"You've got no fancy technique, but your tone is so good it actually comes across cleaner for it. It's got that 'screw all the ornamentation, I'll win on pure tone alone' vibe!"
The vocal trainer applauded outright in praise, then turned to Jong-woo. "Why has this voice been going to waste? Don't you think Yeon-woo's voice could carry the next song as the main vocal?"
Jong-woo, still mid-clap, nodded along without thinking.
He had a point, honestly.
It was a tone that could carry a solo career if it wanted to.
A voice like that would draw in a devoted fanbase at the very minimum — that much was certain.
But in his dazzled admiration of the unexpected voice, Jong-woo failed to notice the expressions on main vocal Cathy's and lead vocal Taein's faces turning sour.
"But can a person's voice really just change like that overnight?"
It was the moment they settled into their seats inside that moving contraption they called a "car" — not a carriage.
The doors closed, the car pulled away, and Cathy muttered under his breath.
Rembrary, who had just fished out his cellphone to explore this thing called "the internet," glanced up at him instead.
Cathy, all yellow hair, was resting his chin on the windowsill with a sulky look.
"Somebody forgets a dance he used to nail, and somebody who couldn't sing starts singing like that. Whatever, man."
Hye-gyeol, who had a mouth far too coarse for a maknae, answered in Rembrary's stead. "Calm down, dude."
Cathy just pouted and said nothing more.
Instead, this time it was lead vocal Taein who spoke, voice cold. "You might be relieved that Yeon-woo's forgotten how to dance, since you're the dance position, but over here we don't need three vocalists."
Again Hye-gyeol jumped in for Rembrary. "The more good singers in a group, the better, what are you on about. You three could form a vocal unit or something."
Jung-seo, the leader, said nothing, eyes glued to his phone, and Jong-woo was busy up front taking calls.
Rembrary noticed the strange tension in the air and studied the members carefully.
He realized that Taein and Cathy — whose positions overlapped with his — had heard his singing and were now wary of him.
It wasn't outright hostility yet, but they had clearly been provoked.
Rembrary gave a wry smile and lowered his gaze to his phone.
He'd encountered this sort of thing back in his old world, even as a priest.
No — it had been even worse there, because divine power was determined one hundred percent by a god's favor alone.
No matter how faithfully you followed the rules, how earnestly you prayed, how morally you lived — if the god happened to favor the person beside you, that was the end of it.
Circumstances like these meant an invisible war of nerves was always running through the temple.
After he became High Priest it had all vanished, but before that, Rembrary too had drawn his share of wary glances.
So all of this is the price of being too excellent, is it.
Rembrary nodded to himself, thoroughly convinced.
That was when it happened.
Jong-woo, who had been on the phone the entire ride, suddenly shouted, "Yes!"
Then he twisted around from the front seat and called for Rembrary.
"Yeon-woo! Woo Yeon-woo!"
When Rembrary looked up from his phone, Jong-woo practically burst with excitement. "Do you know photographer Song Dae-baek? He's with House of JJ."
"?"
"Right, you don't even know your own age, of course you wouldn't know him. He's a photographer on a serious rise right now — and he wants to shoot you for the promo page on his website!"
Rembrary searched "photographer" on the internet.
Song Dae-baek aside, he hadn't even understood what a photographer was.
But the members, who had caught the name instantly, let out short gasps of recognition.
"That photographer has a massive personal fanbase, doesn't he?"
"He's huge on Instagram."
"Exactly."
Rembrary searched photographer, photograph, photoshoot, and the like, then lifted his head.
Jong-woo was staring at him as if someone had planted stars in his eyes.
"Is this truly as good a thing as all that?"
"Honestly, the pay isn't huge. But he's got tons of personal fans, so it's really good for buzz and name recognition."
"I see."
"Yeah. And since it's for his own website's promo, if this photographer uses your photos for his own PR, other people might take notice of your shots and reach out later — ad agencies, other photographers, that kind of thing..."
"Aren't you getting ahead of yourself there," Taein grumbled under his breath.
Jong-woo cleared his throat and went on. "I think he liked your Oh Sola interview shoot. He says it looked like — your words are all snooty, but your expression is clean as a priest's? Something like that. He really wanted to shoot you."
"...Hm. He has quite the discerning eye."
Taking Rembrary's admiration as more of his signature arrogance, Jong-woo frowned and issued a warning. "Woo Yeon-woo. Acting like you're better than everyone is absolutely off the table until you make it big. And after you make it big, too."
Rembrary nodded, and Taein muttered bitterly, "Must be nice, fame comes so easy."
Jung-seo, the leader, silently shook his head at Taein — don't. Taein shut his mouth, and Jung-seo gave Rembrary a pat on the back.
Then, for two days straight, they threw themselves into nothing but vocal training and dance practice.
On Wednesday, only Rembrary set out with Jong-woo for a stark white building where Song Dae-baek had asked them to come.
Jong-woo explained that the place was called a studio.
Inside, they found a man so gaunt he looked like he'd been carved down to the bone.
The man was holding a contraption similar to the one the Oh Sola photographer had carried before — only larger.
Above the space hung what looked like overturned umbrellas, and white makeshift walls had been erected around the room.
Men and women in casual clothes moved around them, clearing away tangles of cords and stands sprawled across the floor.
"Over here."
Jong-woo tugged Rembrary along, approached the gaunt man, and hurriedly produced a business card. "I'm Lee Jong-woo, manager of Wild Animal at LLL Entertainment."
The gaunt man took the card, patted at his own hip pocket, and murmured, "Ah, a card. I don't have any."
"That's quite all right."
Apparently, the gaunt man was Song Dae-baek.
While Jong-woo exchanged pleasantries with him, Rembrary studied the studio closely.
He had learned to browse the internet, but only at the level of typing in words and reading whatever explanations popped up.
Now he stood in a room packed with enormous machines whose names he didn't even know, and he was thoroughly at a loss.
Song Dae-baek, having finished his greetings with Jong-woo, looked Rembrary over and murmured, "Woo Yeon-woo? Better in person."
Only then did Rembrary realize he hadn't greeted Song Dae-baek at all — but Song Dae-baek didn't seem to care in the slightest.
Only Jong-woo let out a belated, soundless scream.
Rembrary arched an eyebrow.
And this was the photographer, was it.
Song Dae-baek was scrutinizing his face with almost unbearable intensity.
Then, at last, as if assigning it a score, he smiled and said, "Amazing that a face like this couldn't make it for three whole years."
Jong-woo carefully cut in. "Um, Mr. Song — we brought him bare-faced like you asked. Still, is there nothing we should prepare before the shoot?"
"We'll shoot a set bare-faced first. Once I see the photos as they are, I can tell what kind of makeup direction would work best."
"Oh. Yes, sir."
As Song Dae-baek beckoned Rembrary toward the white makeshift wall, Jong-woo edged backward out of the way.
Rembrary followed him, having no idea what he was supposed to do next.
Jong-woo had said that for a photoshoot, he just had to stand still or do as he was told.
But that alone didn't explain the principles of how a photograph came to be.
Song Dae-baek positioned Rembrary in front of the makeshift wall, gave a few nods, then stepped back and raised the strange, oversized contraption he'd been carrying all along up to his eye.
He studied Rembrary through it for a long moment, then asked, in the driest tone imaginable:
"How far can you strip?"
"What?"
"How much can you take off."
"!"