The Guerrilla Fan Sign
Once Dance Team 5 had finished their greetings, the fan sign began in earnest.
The notice had only gone up a few hours earlier, and no one even knew which trainees would show. Ye-chan had assumed almost no one would bring gifts — yet somehow every fan who came up had both hands full of things they'd managed to pack.
"Ye-chan, can you put this on for me?"
"Of course. How does it look? Does it suit me?"
Ye-chan carefully set aside the flower crown he'd been wearing and settled a child's tiara studded with oversized heart-shaped jewels onto his head.
"Completely. Insanely. Perfect…!"
Ye-chan grinned at the fan who was covering her mouth in pure rapture, then asked again.
"Better than you imagined?"
"Yeah. My imagination was seriously pathetic… Ye-chan, you're the absolute best…!"
The fan who'd handed him the crown was half-sobbing with emotion. Ye-chan waved lightly after her as she shuffled sideways, still stamping her feet with lingering regret.
She said Beom Se-hyuk was her bias, but she's reacting this hard to the other trainees too. Fan signs really are the best.
The next fan, who'd just gotten Woo Hwi-gyum's signature and moved over, was a face Ye-chan knew well. He smiled brightly, genuine pleasure in it.
"Thank you for coming. What's your name?"
It was their first meeting in this life, so he started with the name. She answered quickly.
"Park So-ri. I'm… a huge fan of yours, Ye-chan. I've been watching your stages so carefully."
Whatever ferocity she'd once brought to wielding a massive telephoto lens had vanished; office-worker Ms. Park flushed shyly as she confessed her fandom. Ye-chan tilted his head at just the angle she liked and smiled.
"Princess Park So-ri. Your name is genuinely beautiful. I'm moved."
"Huk— yes. Y-yes…"
The effect was devastating. Same reaction as always, past life or present — Ye-chan laughed, pleased.
So-ri's been my fan since the very first reset. I wondered what would happen this time, since I debuted in Lee:Spirit instead… this is actually kind of moving.
A connection that found him again no matter how many times he reset. If she'd become Jung Chan-yang's fan instead, it would have stung, but he'd have told himself there was nothing to be done about it. That she was standing in front of him again like this — he was simply grateful. Ye-chan poured everything he couldn't say into the signature.
After that, the fan sign proceeded smoothly for a while.
It was when Ye-chan changed his headpiece for the thirteenth time.
"Hey, so — are there any eliminated trainees here?"
"Huh? Ha, haha. That's a secret."
Jeong Ui-tak's awkward laugh made Ye-chan turn his head. A fan with her chin lifted was looking down at Ui-tak with open intimidation.
"Can't you just tell me? I won't tell anyone."
"I can't…"
I was wondering when this would start.
Ye-chan recalled where they were and barely managed to keep his expression in check. This same fan had been mild as a lamb when she'd gotten signatures from Woo Hwi-gyum and Ye-chan a moment ago — but Ui-tak was young, and that had clearly made him a target. She didn't actually want spoilers so much as she wanted to corner an unseasoned young trainee and watch the raw reaction. To Ye-chan, maxed out on years of industry experience, it was transparent.
"What's so hard about just telling me? Don't be so petty."
The fan's voice was strong enough that the other trainees started glancing over at Ui-tak too.
At least there are no eliminated trainees at this venue. The other fan-sign locations must be pure chaos.
The eliminations hadn't even been announced yet. They called it a fan sign, but from the fans' side it was closer to slow torture — meeting their biases without knowing whether they'd survived or been cut.
"It's a secret, so I really can't."
Ui-tak answered calmly, refusing to be swept along. He was signing with fierce concentration, staring hard at the paper rather than her face — which only made the fan's brow furrow harder as her temper rose.
"Why won't you look at me? Is that it — you don't want to look at me? I took time out of my day to come here just so I could stare at the top of your head?"
She'd dropped all pretense of polite address now. At a normal fan sign the manager would have stepped in by this point, but expecting that kind of preparedness from the Choose My Prince production staff was a fantasy.
Ye-chan nudged Ui-tak's foot. Ui-tak, who'd been gripping his pen hard enough to snap it, startled and looked over. Ye-chan turned a natural eye-smile on the fan standing in front of Ui-tak.
"It's against the rules, so we can't tell you that, Princess."
"…"
Everything went quiet. Even the fan mid-rant was thrown by the sudden concept drop. She clearly hadn't expected Ye-chan to intervene; she just blinked at the unexpected "Princess."
Ye-chan lifted his chin shamelessly and kept smiling at her.
When you meet a lunatic, you become a bigger lunatic. The hologram windows had apparently trained him well enough that lines like this no longer cost him anything.
He switched back to a gentle tone.
"And if you already knew, you couldn't watch Episode 5 with your heart racing, could you? We have a duty to protect the princesses' racing hearts."
"… Ah. Yes."
Someone still not fully adjusted to Choose My Prince's concept games had the fight drained right out of her by a concept push even harder to withstand. The fan quietly took Ui-tak's signature and moved on.
Only then did Ye-chan address the fan waiting in front of him.
"Sorry about that, Princess. You said you have to go back to the office after the fan sign, right? Do you still have time to watch the stage?"
"Ah — yes, yes. It's fine."
"I'm so glad. Thank you!"
Ye-chan handed over a carefully written signature as if nothing had happened and offered his thanks. The fan, who'd been glowing with happiness, suddenly looked at him with a faintly pained expression.
"So even you have it rough making a living…"
The words slipped out almost to herself. Ye-chan pretended not to hear and waved her off.
There were a few more minor issues after that — nothing on the level of the problem fan — but he managed them one way or another and finished signing for all one hundred fans.
In the short talk that followed, Ye-chan made no effort to hide how buoyant he felt at seeing fans again after so long.
Once Park Na-gil — who'd somehow ended up as the day's MC — finished speaking, Ye-chan and the rest of Vocal Team 5 stepped offstage for a moment.
"Aaaah, Beom Se-hyuk!"
"Doo-chan!"
"Sae-byeok-aaaaah!"
Word had clearly gotten out; beyond the fan-sign fencing, fans holding placards packed the space. Ye-chan took in every single placard with his name on it, missing none. Something warm and fluttering filled his chest. All that remained was to let that feeling explode onstage.
Dance Team 5's performance ended, and Vocal Team 5's stage followed immediately.
"Fighting!"
Ye-chan lightly high-fived the hand Beom Se-hyuk offered on his way down, then dropped to one knee on the stage. The interlude of the Erased arrangement Ye-chan had written began to play.
It's an unusually sunny day, so I thought of you.
They hadn't rehearsed together even once since the last evaluation, and yet the six of them locked into perfect sync — as if their bodies still remembered the brutal training from the last camp. Unlike during the evaluation, Ye-chan sang his own part properly this time, and a satisfied smile rose to his lips on its own.
He held the ending pose for a moment, catching his breath, and the cheers pouring nonstop from the audience swelled even louder. Beom Se-hyuk, already back onstage, gave Ye-chan a light clap on the back and stepped one pace forward.
"What? Is there more?"
"What is it? Huh? What is this right now?"
"Don't go up on your tiptoes!"
The fans' voices, stirred by the unpredictable turn, drilled into his ears. Then the interlude of Choose Your Prince started up again, and Ye-chan put on the cutest expression he could possibly manage.
What Ye-chan had proposed to the trainees on the bus had been extremely simple: dance the title track, Choose Your Prince, one more time — in a cute version. The production staff riding the same bus had liked the idea enough to give an immediate OK, and after that everything moved at lightning speed. Trainees who'd initially mumbled that they weren't confident with cute concepts were, before long, throwing out ideas over one another without restraint.
"Everyone has to wink at least once! Anyone who doesn't buys snacks at the convenience store later!"
"Hearts too. Hearts. Everyone has to throw a heart at least once."
"Hah… so the time has finally come to unseal the cuteness of this body…"
Ye-chan had watched the trainees burning with motivation with quiet satisfaction, then left them with one last line.
"Go onstage with the resolve that if you're not the cutest person up there, you die."
And right now, all fourteen trainees were fighting for their lives to keep Ye-chan's word.
I came to meet you.
I'm always looking only at you.
The audience reaction was nothing short of explosive. Shutter clicks ringing loud enough to make him dizzy, cheers bigger than the accompaniment itself — they filled Ye-chan's chest with a deep, solid pride. He finished the stage with both hands cupped under his chin like a flower pedestal and made no effort to hide the laughter breaking across his face.
A complete success.
The overall mood here is pretty favorable too.
The day after the fan sign.
Ye-chan, who'd gotten up in the early hours and finished his morning workout, sat in the quiet locker room wrapping up his monitoring of the event. Same as on social media, there were occasional fans angry about the trouble at the sign — but most people were too busy talking about the cute version of Choose Your Prince that had closed the night.
The fan sign had gone off without disaster. Now it was time to handle what remained.
Ye-chan fixed a hard stare on the hologram window in front of him.
The Inventory and Shop that had unlocked as a reward for reaching Level 10. For all their bizarre names, a lot of the items were useful. Ye-chan had no intention of buying anything blindly, though.
Items you could purchase cheaply with the same points used for raising stats had short durations. Looking at it long-term, Ye-chan judged that saving points to invest in stats was the better choice over buying items. More than that, he had to keep in mind the possibility that an item, once purchased, might never appear again.
Of course, if the right item shows up at a moment I genuinely need it, I'll use it without hesitation.
Ye-chan studied the cascading lines of text with care, then clicked something in the shop.
Ye-chan looked at the item now sitting in his inventory with quiet satisfaction.
"Oh, Ye-chan, you're in here?"
Nam Ji-yu swung the locker-room door open with his usual energy and waved.
"What time do you even wake up? You practiced this morning again, didn't you? You're seriously hardcore. Hardcore."
Ye-chan offered an awkward smile, as if nothing were out of the ordinary, toward Nam Ji-yu as he shook his head and headed for the showers. From Ye-chan's side, there was a perfectly valid reason he couldn't rest from practice.
I can't exactly tell him that tomorrow is a surprise mid-check.
And unlike usual, tomorrow's evaluation would be bringing in outside judges on top of the regular panel. The original song's composer, for instance. Or the original lyricist. Or the original singer.