A Fight Breaks Out
"We're only singing the first verse before we cut off, so we should adjust the difficulty too. For the choreography, let's keep the moves we put the most power into."
At Ye-chan's words, Seonwoo I-gyeong and Kang Hae-sol, who had been lost in thought for a moment, soon nodded.
"Let's move moves one, three, and six over to the second verse."
"Yeah, and let's ease off a bit right before four, then drive into it."
Listening while looking at the numbers scrawled on the diagram, a rough picture began to take shape.
Ye-chan, who had been listening carefully, started offering his own thoughts as well.
"How about mixing in some Chuyup moves here? You know, this one."
"Ah, that move? Seems fine to me. What do you think, Hae-sol?"
While the three who had experience putting choreography together talked it over, Woo Hwi-gyum and Lee Seung-heon—near complete novices when it came to creative dance—just sat blinking.
Ye-chan pressed papers with the lyrics written out into both their hands.
They had enough sense to sit with their knees lined up and start memorizing. Ye-chan slipped back in between Kang Hae-sol and Seonwoo I-gyeong, who were still trading ideas at full speed.
I have to stick right next to these guys and keep them on track. Otherwise another disaster like earlier is going to happen.
"Hae-sol, can you do a one-hand air track here?"
"If I just hit the beat..."
"That's not it."
Having looked away for only a second and already finding the two about to veer into something ridiculous again, Ye-chan seized the reins and made a decision.
"What the— Why are you standing there like that?"
Jeong Ui-tak spotted Ye-chan leaning against the wall in the hallway, flinched in surprise, then immediately frowned.
Bae Sae-byeok, standing behind him, met Ye-chan's eyes and gave a small bow of his head.
Ye-chan raised a hand in a light reply, then scanned the surroundings.
I wanted to wait right in front of the room, but there's a camera there.
Confirming no one else was nearby, Ye-chan asked quietly,
"How was it after that?"
"Ah, seriously. Worry about your own team, hyung. Looking at it, from Seonwoo I-gyeong hyung on down you've got nothing but heavy hitters. Do you even have time to stick your nose in our business? If we end up last because of that, I'm not taking the blame."
"Ui-tak, can you even picture 'last place' sitting next to hyung's name?"
When Ye-chan asked it with genuine curiosity, Jeong Ui-tak shuddered his shoulders as if he were thoroughly fed up.
"Wow, it's really annoying, but I can't even argue back."
"How about Sae-byeok?"
"Don't interrogate Sae-byeok! Sae-byeok, you don't have to answer."
When Ye-chan turned the question to Bae Sae-byeok instead of the thoroughly uncooperative Jeong Ui-tak, Ui-tak spread his arms and blocked the space between them.
Ye-chan paid no attention and simply tilted his head to poke under Jeong Ui-tak's arm.
"Have you made any progress? You know the day after tomorrow is the midterm evaluation, right?"
"...... You're really persistent. So persistent."
"We've given up on the midterm evaluation."
Bae Sae-byeok, tilting his head the same way to meet Ye-chan's eyes, answered.
Apparently deciding there was no helping it, Jeong Ui-tak sighed and fleshed the answer out.
"It was worse than the morning, if anything—they have zero intention of cooperating. Well, I figured if they get cursed out by the bucketful during the midterm, they'll feel the crisis and improve a little, so we decided to leave them alone until tomorrow. There. Happy? Hurry up and go inside and sleep."
Jeong Ui-tak seemed to expect from his teammates the bare minimum of conscience and common sense any human ought to possess. In Ye-chan's view, however, the odds of those three repenting were zero percent.
Guys like that generally shifted the blame for why they got cursed out onto someone else, so if they tanked the midterm they would only trash Jeong Ui-tak and Bae Sae-byeok even harder among themselves.
The answer's clear.
A good stage was already water under the bridge.
From here on they had to focus on showing the viewers a clean good-versus-evil picture.
The other three's names... Yoon Ji-woo is from Haerim, Jin Yong-ho from Central, and Kim Dae-young had no agency. Haerim's nothing special. Central is the problem.
Central was an agency with such close ties to the production team that, during the first training camp, they had already received the Chumap theme song and choreography in advance and practiced it.
Even after that they consistently received better screen time and kinder editing than their actual performance warranted, so it made sense that Jin Yong-ho was acting so cluelessly cocky.
But Jin Yong-ho was laboring under a massive misconception.
Chumap was a long-term project that kept the group debuting from this program under N-net for a full seven years and milked them dry.
By now the main PD had already planned several variety series around that group, so the interest in the winning debut members was enormous.
At present, Central's Jin Yong-ho and Lee Min-gyu sat at 17th and 20th.
In contrast, Rubel Entertainment had Jeong Ui-tak in 7th and Beom Se-hyuk in 2nd, so it was obvious whose side the production team would take.
Even without going as far as Rubel, Bae Sae-byeok is 11th. Compared to Jin Yong-ho, who's floundering even with all that push, they'd rate him much higher internally.
In that case, creating a picture that was easy for the production team to edit was exactly what Jeong Ui-tak and Bae Sae-byeok needed to do from now on.
"Ui-tak, I think talking things out openly is important."
"With those three? I don't think talking it out will change anything."
"They won't change. But you're not going to debut with those three, right?"
Jeong Ui-tak's eyes, which had been wary like a part-timer dealing with a nightmare customer, lit up sharply. He had clearly grasped exactly what Ye-chan was driving at.
Bae Sae-byeok still listened in silence.
"You thought bad teamwork among teammates was like spitting in your own face, so you kept smiling nicely the whole time you practiced, right? Then even if scenes of them freezing you out air, there will always be people saying you're overreacting because you yourselves claimed it was fine."
Ye-chan continued, meeting both their eyes in turn.
"Make sure you say it while the camera is rolling. That you want everyone to do well together, and if there's any misunderstanding you want to clear it up. Asking if you've done something wrong would work too."
"...... Won't that make it way too obvious you're playing to the camera?"
Toward Jeong Ui-tak's subtle expression, Ye-chan deliberately snorted in exaggerated fashion.
"So what if it shows a little? It's not like you're saying something that isn't true. If they start behaving because of the camera, great. If they keep acting the same, then at least you two have to survive."
Having said that much, Ye-chan patted Jeong Ui-tak's shoulder.
"You haven't forgotten we decided to debut together, right? Hang in there. You too, Sae-byeok."
At the sight of Ye-chan giving a thumbs-up, Jeong Ui-tak let out a sigh deep enough to sink the ground. Since he didn't say he wouldn't do it, it seemed he had made up his mind.
A smile of quiet pride slipped out on its own.
Practice continued from early morning the next day as well.
On the pretext of practice-room inspection, two teams were assigned to each room today.
In truth the inspection was an excuse; it was obvious they had crammed everyone together because they wanted footage of the trainees sizing one another up.
The team sharing a room with Sinabro was Auspicious, the one that included Beom Se-hyuk and Shim Sang-rok.
You could feel the production team's earnest wish to capture first and second place from the sudden evaluation burning with rivalry on camera, but unfortunately the scenes they wanted never materialized.
"So? So what happened?"
"What happened? We all rolled on the floor together."
"Ahaha, that must've been hilarious. Can't you reenact it right now?"
"Se-hyuk, you wanna try rolling?"
Watching the trainees get along so well that they even synced their short rest breaks during practice, Ye-chan shook his head inwardly.
Their relationship was good—too good.
I wonder if words like competition or checking even exist inside Beom Se-hyuk's little head. No—looking at the sudden evaluation, maybe they do?
He sometimes sent competitive glances Ye-chan's way, so he seemed to have a desire to win in his own fashion, but he was still a hard one to pin down.
Ye-chan cast a glance at Beom Se-hyuk.
Beom Se-hyuk was cackling as he listened to Seonwoo I-gyeong recount how, during practice, Woo Hwi-gyum had stepped on Kang Hae-sol's cloth and all five of them had tangled and gone down in a heap.
"Break's over! Let's practice again!"
"Yes~!"
Well, well.
At the words of the other team's leader, Shim Sang-rok, the Sinabro members answered energetically and cleaned up their resting spots.
"Then shall we go first?"
"Oh, good, good."
They even went so far as to preview the songs and dances they had practiced so far for each other.
It was something both teams could do only because they were confident the lyrics and choreography they had created were close to perfect.
If there was even a shred of suspicion the other side might copy, you'd never do it.
Conversely, even if this side had something they disliked and planned to change, watching the other's stage so openly and without reservation would not have been easy.
It was not that they could not enjoy it because their own noses were on fire. It was the quiet dread that they might unconsciously draw inspiration from the other team's stage and end up using it that made them hold back.
Ye-chan connected the USB containing the music file he had received from Shim Sang-rok to the speaker and pressed play.
A heavy sound soon filled the practice room.
Beom Se-hyuk, who had completely wiped away the cackling look from moments earlier, sprang forward and took the intro.
The Auspicious team's genre was hybrid trap, and the center was of course Beom Se-hyuk.
He really flew around on stage.
In every round stored in Ye-chan's memory, Beom Se-hyuk had worn a sharp black uniform and taken center for this song.
If the Sinabro team Ye-chan had joined was the concept most preferred by fans of trainees with cold impressions, Auspicious was the concept popular with fans of bright, sunny trainees like Beom Se-hyuk.
A stage of quality hard to believe after only a single day of practice unfolded.
It was an obvious story, but this time too it seemed Beom Se-hyuk's team would be the one competing with Ye-chan's for first place.
While the Auspicious members proudly high-fived one another, Ye-chan stretched his legs out fully.
Beom Se-hyuk, who had not shed a single drop of sweat despite performing such intense choreography while singing and was still soft and dry, approached and held out his hand.
Ye-chan handed him the USB with Sinabro on it and took his place in the middle of the members already lined up in the starting formation, eyes blazing.
"Then I'll play it!"
Beom Se-hyuk pressed the play button, and the intro began.
"Th..."
"Hey! There's a fight in Practice Room 1 right now!"
The instant Kang Hae-sol, who was taking the first start, opened his mouth, noise erupted outside.
"......"
Kang Hae-sol, who had completely missed the timing, froze with his hand still raised.
Except for Woo Hwi-gyum, who stood blankly staring at him, the rest of the trainees bolted for the door.
Ye-chan, who had no interest in watching a fight supposedly the most entertaining thing in the world, leisurely walked over to the speaker and pressed stop.
A fight among guys who gathered to become idols? Are they sane? The quality's been dropping since yesterday...
In that moment an ominous premonition flashed through his mind.
Ye-chan turned his stiffened neck toward the door left standing open.
With perfect timing, the conversation of the trainees running from the next practice room punched clearly into his ears.
"Who's fighting who?"
"One of them is Jeong Ui-tak, they say?"
Crazy.
His legs kicked off the floor faster than his head.