Princesses, I'll Wait for You in Seoul
The five-day grueling campaign drew to a close with Woo Hwi-gyum's closing remarks.
Ye-chan, who had grown more and more polished in the MC role with each passing day, found himself surrounded by production staff the moment he stepped off stage — locked once again in a prison of praise.
When he finally managed to break free, massaging his stiff neck as he headed over to where the other members had gathered, Nam Ji-yu was just then pumping his fist and shouting.
"Man! If only the concert had gone on one more day!"
"Ji-yu hyung, are you serious? I feel like I'm dying right now…"
Gi Tae-rang, who had been moaning about being completely wiped out ever since the third day's concert ended, stared at Nam Ji-yu in pure disbelief.
Nam Ji-yu clicked his tongue and shook his head.
"If we'd had just one more day, I could've done the ending ment too~ Ha, even if it's hard, if I just get to deliver a ment I'd go a few more days! I'm so jealous of Hwi-gyum!"
"No, if we're extending it, we should go all out and push it to thirty-four days! I want to do an ending ment too! Let's run a concert for over a month!"
"What's so all-out about thirty-four days! If you really want to go all out, extend it until last place — me — gets a turn!"
Gi Tae-rang, who had been half-sprawled across a chair, snapped back to full vitality in an instant.
"Does everyone already have a ment planned? Looking at how all five of them put 'princesses' in there, is that like a required ingredient?"
"Nah, I just used it because the first three all did."
Seonwoo I-gyeong, who had somehow slipped into the cluster of trainees, said this with a bright, easy smile.
The appearance of the man who had set SNS boiling the day before with a textbook example of coyly half-formal speech sent a fresh wave of excitement through the trainees.
"So how was doing the ending ment? Felt amazing, right?"
Instead of answering, Seonwoo I-gyeong simply raised a thumb.
"I'm so jealous!"
"Everyone! We're moving to the cars now! Please check that you haven't left anything behind!"
In the meantime the audience had finished filing out, and the production staff began gathering the trainees.
Ye-chan looked around.
It was hard to believe the place had been packed wall-to-wall with people only moments ago — the surroundings now felt hollow and bare.
Carrying that strange, lingering feeling, Ye-chan boarded the bus that had been their home for the past several days.
"Wow, the ride from Busan all the way back up to Seoul is going to be a whole ordeal of its own."
"I still can't believe the second ranking announcement is next week."
"Time really flies."
The afterglow still hadn't fully faded, and chatter continued for a while inside the bus — but as the limits of their stamina gradually caught up with them, the cabin naturally fell quiet.
Listening to the soft breathing of the sleeping trainees, Ye-chan closed his eyes as well.
This week's live broadcast of Chumaf was a rare occasion — Ye-chan was watching it alone at home.
The reason was simple: five straight days of guerrilla concert promotions and performances had drained the stamina of every trainee who usually gathered together, Ye-chan included.
Having properly rested for the first time in a long while without practicing on his day off, Ye-chan sat down in front of his computer with a clear head.
He was starting to want to say goodbye to this underfurnished apartment that didn't even have a TV, but once he debuted he would be living in a dorm anyway, so looking for a new place felt pointless.
No money, no family, and it doesn't seem like I have any acquaintances either… what exactly am I even doing with this body?
Not long after this strange reset had begun, he had visited the community welfare center and looked into various details about his "current body."
Checking the resident registration and family relation certificates, he had found that his current body's parents had the same names as Ye-chan's original parents — only the dates of their deaths were different.
Originally they passed when I was in middle school, but on this side it says kindergarten. It feels wrong to call it a silver lining, but… being able to qualify for wartime labor service exemption is something I'm honestly grateful for.
He had little memory of or longing for his parents, so the discovery stirred no particular feelings.
Having repeated the resets so many times, Ye-chan had already spent decades of time after both of them were gone.
What bothered him more was the existence of an "older brother" listed as missing.
Before entering this current body, Ye-chan had been an only child.
So the sudden appearance of a brother from who-knows-where still felt thoroughly unfamiliar.
Ye-chan briefly tried to picture this faceless older brother on the family register, whose name was written as Ha Ha-gyeong.
Thinking about it again, that name probably got him teased at school. No — the name itself is fine, but stuck next to the surname it gets a little… awkward.
Ye-chan shelved the unproductive train of thought and connected to the N-net streaming channel.
This was no time to be thinking about some older brother whose living status he didn't even know.
If that brother ever suddenly popped up one day and tried to interfere with his life, he could deal with him then.
Episode 7 of Chumaf opened, as it had the previous week, by showing the trainees' practice process.
Ye-chan was a little startled by the storm of developments that hit from the very start.
Hold on — the cameras are rolling, so why are they fighting? Are they insane?
The trainees going at each other's throats starting from part distribution was absurd enough on its own, but the way the editors had stylishly packaged each team exploding one after another was genuinely breathtaking.
The absolute highlight among them was, once again, Kim Su-young and Kim Ju-young's Team 1 for A Girl's Prayer.
The cheerful, laughing atmosphere that had carried them through the mid-point evaluation flipped completely after they received harsh criticism from the main vocalist of the original artists, Strawberry Love.
Back in the practice room, Team 1 of A Girl's Prayer busied themselves blaming everyone but themselves.
"I told you we should at least try something close to the original key even if we can't do the full thing!"
"Hey, Kim Su-young. We changed it because you couldn't sing it, remember? I figured it was better than cracking on stage, but I guess not."
"Everyone, stop. We still have time, so let's just fix the parts they pointed out one by one. Su-young, cool off too, okay?"
These guys don't hold back.
The earlier teams had argued and sparred for dominance too, but trading insults this raw was a first.
Right after showing the scene of the teammates dispersing under Kim Ju-young's mediation, the screen cut to trainees standing at the far end of a hallway.
It looked like a distant shot that had been zoomed in — the image was so blurry it was hard to tell who was who.
The one facing the camera is Kim Su-young, and the back… whose is that? Same Team 1, looks like.
"Ugh, this is so annoying."
"You go calm him down. It's not like this is the first or second time that hyung's been like that."
Hearing the voices, yeah — that's them.
Watching with keen interest to see what would come next, Ye-chan had Kim Su-young's irritated voice drive straight into his ear.
"No, not that. Kim Ju-young."
Wow.
The blistering casual speech made his mouth fall open on its own.
"Ju-young hyung? What about Ju-young hyung?"
"Ugh, just because we were on the same team last time and this time, he keeps acting all buddy-buddy."
"Wow, is Kim Su-young's personality for real? Ju-young hyung really likes you, though? You guys are the Kim+Young Brothers."
"That's what pisses me off the most. Why do we have to get linked just because our names are similar, what the f—"
The profanity was bleeped out with an electronic tone, but from the context it was obvious what Kim Su-young had said.
"He can't sing for shit and he can't dance either, but we get packaged as a set — it's fucking horrific."
"Oh man, my stomach hurts from laughing. Hey, but at least Ju-young hyung is a good person."
"Good person my ass. Hey, for an idol, being good at what you do is being kind."
The footage cut to a different team right after that.
Which meant they didn't bother showing how — or whether — the conflict got resolved.
Not that Ye-chan could imagine any way this particular mess could be fixed.
He gave the production team a round of mental applause.
They actually aired this. They're completely unhinged.
It was content that would stir controversy on multiple fronts, but the show was already riding a rising wave — so it seemed the higher-ups had decided to ignore any slap on the wrist and push for an even bigger issue.
Judging by the video quality and camera angle, Kim Su-young would never have imagined that scene was being recorded.
If he had fainted while watching the live broadcast right now, it wouldn't have been the least bit surprising.
The conflicts that followed — Kang Hae-sol's team arguing over completeness and stability, the same-team members keeping Beom Se-hyuk in check — were minor stories that left Ye-chan largely unmoved.
Kim Su-young's was on a whole different level.
He wanted nothing more than to dive onto the internet and check the reactions immediately, but the broadcast was still in full swing, so he soothed his itching hands and waited.
After a brief commercial break, the competition stages began.
Worth the wait.
He had already seen these stages during the competition and the concerts, but watching them on broadcast was a different experience entirely.
Having long since flung all thoughts of Kim Su-young far away, Ye-chan carefully studied each performance and analyzed the trainees.
The top-tier ones really aren't at trainee level anymore.
Beom Se-hyuk's team's stage closed out the competition, and the vote totals were announced in one clean sweep after that — and with it, Episode 7 of Chumaf came to an end.
With a slightly trembling heart, Ye-chan first opened Twitter.
Since the results had just dropped, people talking about the vote counts caught his eye first.
Maybe scroll down a bit.
As he scrolled, posts gushing over the stages lined up one after another.
Even in his impatience, Ye-chan carefully combed through every bit of feedback on his own team without skipping any, then scrolled further still.
Here we go.
At last, posts about the so-called "Kim+Young Brothers" began pouring out.
Many people were saying many things, but in the end they were all driving at the same point.
A short, sharp post that cut straight to the core happened to catch his eye.
The trending hashtags were stamped just as fiercely: #KimSuyoungGetOff and #LeavingIsTheKindThingForKimSuyoung.
Without anyone needing to declare themselves a particular fan, the entire atmosphere was a unified chorus calling for Kim Su-young's exit.
After checking SNS to a reasonable degree, Ye-chan opened an anonymous community tab next.
The moment he entered the board, raw reactions incomparably sharper than anything on SNS came stabbing out at him.
SNS looks downright gentle and polite by comparison.
As always, the board was packed with inventive, colorful curses.
Stories about Vocal Team 5 — Kim Su-young's previous team — also cropped up regularly.
Kim Su-young will drop out.
He didn't look like he had the guts to weather an atmosphere like this — and even if he somehow toughed it out, there was no future in it.
He had joined the program to debut, but debuting from here was already off the table; sticking around and scraping by would only earn him more abuse.
By the time he had finished surveying the reactions across the more active sites, his usual bedtime had long since passed.
Tomorrow… no, midnight already came and went, so today. Anyway, I need to head to Shim Sang-rok's company after lunch, so I should sleep soon.
Whether it was because only practice addicts had somehow clustered together, or because they kept spurring each other on just by existing in the same space — even though the guerrilla concerts were over, the trainees had naturally agreed to gather at the GE building and practice together.
And the day after that is the second ranking announcement, then the start of the fourth joint training camp… hm?
Ye-chan stretched, and just as he was about to turn off his phone screen, a post with an absurd title caught his eye.
"……What is this?"