First to the Booth
What kind of guys are these?
Lee Min-gyu, one of the two company-pushed idols sitting in S-grade, barely managed to smooth out a face that had been about to crumple completely — forgetting for a moment that the cameras were rolling.
The corners of his smiling mouth trembled.
His agency had already received the song and choreography for Choose Your Prince more than three months ago and drilled them into him. Lee Min-gyu had planned to seize the image of a skilled performer from the very first practice with that thoroughly prepared dance and vocals.
Last night, the atmosphere of everyone practicing themselves to death had made it hard to slip away early, so he'd gone to bed later than expected — but for all that, his condition was excellent. Even now, his sharp movements felt sharper than usual, his soft ones softer still.
So why do those bastards keep catching my eye?!
Through the wall of mirrors filling one side of the practice room, every S-grade trainee's movements were laid bare before Lee Min-gyu's eyes. Nine people dancing the same choreography, and yet the leads and the extras were crystal clear. And he was one of the extras.
Did those bastards practice ahead of time too?
That's exactly the look of someone thinking that.
Confirming Lee Min-gyu's wavering eyes through the mirror, Ye-chan thought without much interest. Trying to throw his weight around in front of this era's true veterans with a few months of practice. It was laughable.
Before Ye-chan had started resetting, Choose My Prince 99 had been a program of unprecedented success. The theme song was something every trainee practiced at least once as a matter of course. Even after the resets began, through the second cycle it had still been a world where Choose My Prince succeeded, so he'd had plenty of occasions to sing or dance this song.
After that, so much time had passed without performing it that he'd thought he'd forgotten it completely — but something must have left a proper imprint somewhere in his head, because as he practiced, his body began to follow the memory more and more.
Or it could be because of this.
This stat that made him feel full just looking at it was the pure fruit of Ye-chan's labor. All the points he'd ground out over the week after the grade test filming, plus the points from this training camp level-up and quests — he'd poured every last one into Dance.
When the stat had first crossed into A, his thoughts and body had moved out of sync moment to moment and it had been maddening — but once the + attached itself, his body moved with exactly the delicate precision he wanted. If A+ was this good, he couldn't help looking forward to raising the stat one more tier.
At this rate, if I hit S, won't I be dancing better than before?
While Ye-chan was privately thrilled, the song ended.
"Looks like everyone's pretty much got the choreography down. Shall we practice on our own from here?"
Shim Sang-rok, whose face was so fresh it was hard to believe he'd just danced the notoriously brutal Choose Your Prince all the way through, looked around at the trainees. They nodded in agreement.
Shim Sang-rok set the tablet the writer had handed him on a makeshift table.
"I'll leave the tablet here."
Anyone who wanted to check it could freely, he added. As the oldest and longest-training among the S-grade trainees, Shim Sang-rok had naturally taken on the leader role.
"Hyung, about this part—"
Which was why he kept getting tangled up with people who were being a nuisance like that. Helping others while carrying out a time-limited mission. That was more than ordinary meddling.
Unlike Shim Sang-rok, Ye-chan had no interest in socializing with the other trainees and claimed a spot in the corner of the practice room.
"Ye-chan, want to sync up together?"
Beom Se-hyuk, who had naturally dropped formal speech overnight while practicing, approached. Woo Hwi-gyum was trailing behind him too.
"I'm heading straight to the booth, so I was going to clean things up on my own."
Ye-chan refused quickly. Part of it was not wanting to get more involved with Woo Hwi-gyum, but he also genuinely planned to practice just three more times and head down to the second-floor booth. Practicing a song he'd already fully mastered would only pile on fatigue, and he could also claim the narrative of being the first trainee among all ninety-nine to challenge — two birds with one stone.
"Yeah? Then Hae-sol hyung, want to join us?"
Kang Hae-sol's shoulders flinched. He'd been paying zero attention to this side and was clearly startled at being called out of nowhere. Meeting Beom Se-hyuk's clear eyes through the mirror, Kang Hae-sol frowned a little.
"I'll do it alone."
"Okay? Then I guess it's just the two of us."
Beom Se-hyuk nodded, took Woo Hwi-gyum along, and moved a little farther away.
Ye-chan brought a thumb to his temple.
When and how am I supposed to peel those two apart.
If he left them alone, Beom Se-hyuk would catch stray rocks just for being Woo Hwi-gyum's close friend. Communities would sprout nonsense overnight — if he's hanging out with a school violence perpetrator, maybe Beom Se-hyuk's character is questionable too.
Of course, despite such rumors Beom Se-hyuk always climbed to the very top — but Ye-chan didn't want his teammate's value discounted over baseless fabrications. That said, artificially separating two people who were getting along fine and then having "Ha Ye-chan is ostracizing someone" start circulating would also be a problem.
Recalling the exhausting past days when a single photo that made his sharp eyes look like a glare had set SNS ablaze with talk about his face reading and his character, Ye-chan shook his head. Right now, focusing on the mission in front of him came first.
Another window floating below the status window caught Ye-chan's eye.
Receive an S on the grade test for Choose My Prince 99's theme song, Choose Your Prince!
Yes. The production team had claimed they were filming individually to assign center and positions, but in reality this shoot was a kind of surprise mission to re-evaluate the trainees' grades. Ye-chan, who'd come from the future having already watched the broadcast, already knew this — but the quest was being needlessly kind and pointing it out one more time.
The word "booth" itself was a joke from the start.
Wiping the light sheen of sweat from his forehead with a towel, Ye-chan left the practice room. It was still early, so whether everyone was still practicing or not, the hallway was sparsely populated except for a few staff. Ye-chan headed straight for the stairs down to the second floor.
"Oh, Trainee Ha Ye-chan. Already heading to the booth?"
A program writer he ran into midway widened her eyes at the sight of him and spoke up.
"Yeees."
Ye-chan stretched the ending uncharacteristically and smiled as if shy. The writer's cheeks flushed red.
People's tastes really don't change.
Writer Kim Sang-hee, who couldn't resist a man who looked like you couldn't stick a needle in him acting all soft and pliable, was a fanatical fan of Lee:Spirit's Ha Ye-chan. For the record, that absurd preference was something she had stated with her own mouth.
When he'd first reset mid-interview he hadn't been in his right mind and hadn't noticed, but during the last grade test filming, Kim Sang-hee's eyes lighting up at the sight of Ye-chan had been unmistakable. The Ye-chan who'd been active in Lee:Spirit hadn't particularly had a soft side, but in Kim Sang-hee's eyes there had apparently never been an idol who looked so rotten-tempered and was so good at his job as Ye-chan.
Or perhaps there was something only Kim Sang-hee could see — she had remained his fan steadily through to the point of his final reset. He'd learned she was a writer at a fansign from her own mouth, but she'd been too embarrassed to say which program she worked on, so he hadn't known.
I could have dug a little and found out, but I believe in protecting secrets a fan doesn't want to share.
Meeting her on set like this as independent trainee Ha Ye-chan rather than Lee:Spirit felt a bit strange. Of course, what mattered now was that to top idol Ha Ye-chan, Kim Sang-hee was just a fan whose job happened to be writing — but to trainee Ha Ye-chan, she was a program writer who could become a solid backer.
Kim Sang-hee, briefly dazed staring at Ye-chan's bright smiling face, suddenly came to her senses and cleared her throat.
"Ahem. You seem confident. Wouldn't it be better to think it over a bit more calmly?"
Glancing carefully around and confirming there were no cameras, Kim Sang-hee spoke in a carefully roundabout way.
The principle was that trainees who finished filming at the booth returned to the dorms and did not make contact with remaining trainees. But in a training camp where everyone had at least one smartphone, perfect security was never going to hold. Trainees whose mouths and hands were lighter than wings might message their roommates, of course. A warm-hearted trainee worried about remaining agency-mates might stick his nose in and send a text.
Kim Sang-hee seemed to want Ye-chan to pick up information circulating bit by bit through trainees who'd already been to the booth and prepare accordingly. Feeling that Kim Sang-hee, who took great pride in her work, had done her best to show goodwill in her own way, a smile came naturally.
"Thank you for worrying about me. But my condition is really excellent right now. If I practice more, I think I'd just lose energy."
"Hmm, if that's the case, there's nothing to be done. Do your best."
Kim Sang-hee looked like her mouth was itching, but she didn't spill anything further. Ye-chan was satisfied.
In this entertainment industry where someone always heard daytime talk and someone always heard nighttime talk, there were no secrets between just two people. He already knew as much as he needed about Choose My Prince 99 — if someone saw Kim Sang-hee telling him this and that, he'd inevitably be accused of being a production pick.
Just having her tell the editing room to write pretty subtitles and put in good effects when I appear is perfect.
Unlike terrestrial or other cable broadcasts, on N-net the writers often wrote the subtitles rather than the PDs. No matter how strictly a writer separated work from personal feelings, they were still human — wouldn't more care go to the one who looked good to their eyes?
With considerably lighter steps, Ye-chan arrived in front of a certain room on the second floor where the booth was. Unlike the other floors, there were quite a few production staff here. Greeting the staff politely every time their eyes met, Ye-chan eventually flung the door open with energy.
In the center of the room was a square booth made of transparent vinyl. And on the three sides excluding the door Ye-chan had entered through, trainers and external judges sat with solemn expressions, surrounding the booth and projecting gravity.
This second grade test — which shoved trainees who'd expected to film themselves inside a so-called booth into a sudden pressure interview setting — was a segment Ye-chan had thoroughly enjoyed. Before resetting, he'd been moved by the sight of trainees giving their all on stages they'd prepared even under that kind of pressure. After multiple resets, he'd come to admire it as an excellent way to assess talent — if you couldn't even get past that much pressure, you had no business making a living as an idol.
Becoming a figure in a scene he'd always only watched through the screen, Beom Se-hyuk from before naturally came to mind. The current Ye-chan couldn't overwhelm Beom Se-hyuk with skill. Nor did he have the confidence to make a more striking surprised face.
So Ye-chan calmly entered the booth and smiled as usual.
"Hello, I'm trainee Ha Ye-chan."
He threw in a leisurely self-introduction as a bonus.