That's Right, Be More Flustered
That's right. Be more flustered.
When Ye-chan strolled in with the easy smile of someone who'd just run into a neighborhood acquaintance on a walk, the ones thrown off-balance were the trainers and judges.
In a later interview, Lee Ga-won of Jupiter would look back on the moment with a distant, almost fond expression.
"We were expecting the usual startled trainee reaction when they saw us. But Ha Ye-chan just greeted us so casually that I actually wondered if I was the one on a hidden-camera prank. Haha."
"Shall we begin?"
Ye-chan picked up the microphone waiting in the booth and asked the judges, who were still standing there with their mouths half-open.
Only then did one of the trainers snap out of it and clear his throat.
"Ahem. Y-yes, let's."
A familiar accompaniment began to pour from the speakers.
Ye-chan decided not to shake off the tension slowly climbing his body. He would enjoy it instead.
Choose your prince.
In the world you choose, may I be waiting at the end.
A song he had sung and danced tens of thousands of times. Ye-chan handled it with complete ease.
The difficult choreography, the parts that shot suddenly higher—he carried them all as naturally as water flowing downhill. The judges who had been dissecting him with their eyes gradually began to look impressed.
Choose me, princess.
In the world you chose, I am waiting at the end.
When the roughly four-minute song ended with Ye-chan's wink, a familiar red-haired young man sitting among the judges shot to his feet and clapped hard.
"Ga-won said there were some really talented kids, so I came expecting a lot—and this is even better than I hoped. We were all sitting here waiting for you. Weren't you surprised?"
Ju Tae-hyeon, another Jupiter member like Lee Ga-won, asked while practically radiating goodwill from every pore, still standing.
"I was surprised."
Ye-chan answered politely with a face so deadpan it bordered on shameless.
"……You really don't look it, though?"
The one who blurted that out in an involuntarily stupid voice was Gye Jeong-yeop, currently one of the hottest composers in the industry.
Ye-chan turned toward Gye Jeong-yeop and spoke in the same flat tone.
"I just don't show much on my face."
That level of control isn't normal, though?
About half the judges looked puzzled. The other half were staring at Ye-chan with sparkling eyes, just like Ju Tae-hyeon.
Unbothered by the reactions in front of him, Ye-chan simply blinked with an expression so blank no one could tell what he was thinking.
Perfect.
Inside, of course, he was relieved that everything was going exactly according to plan.
After the bizarre lines the choice window had forced on him earlier, looking like a normal person was already a lost cause. Even if he somehow cleaned up everything he'd said so far, there was no telling when that damn choice window would pop up again and ruin everything.
Better to become the kind of guy who swung from one extreme to another so thoroughly that no matter what nonsense he spouted, people would just think, Yeah, he's always been a little unhinged.
And then, at some point, that unhinged guy would start feeling welcome when he appeared. People would think of him while eating. He'd cross their minds before bed. He'd even show up in their dreams. And if he didn't do something crazy, they'd feel a little disappointed…
That was how you seeped into people's hearts, wasn't it?
The so-called "weirdo seepage."
That was Ye-chan's real play.
"Hm. We'll leave it at that, then."
When Gye Jeong-yeop finished speaking with a faintly unsettled air, the judges finally found their footing and began piling on the praise one after another.
"Trainee Ha Ye-chan, your singing is incredible, but your dancing is polished too. You've improved a lot since last time."
"This is a trainee who clearly knows exactly how to look charming on stage."
The outside judges brought in for the evaluation were especially generous with their compliments compared to the Choose My Prince trainers.
Ye-chan took a fresh look at the lineup of judges.
It was true that the trainees' faces and skills formed the biggest pillar of Choose My Prince's success. But the midterm evaluation judge list—leaked before the first broadcast and so stacked that people asked, "How did they even pull that lineup together?"—had also done a solid job of generating early buzz.
Olympus, ranked first among the Big Three idol agencies, had already sent Lee Ga-won as a trainer and now added Ju Tae-hyeon to the judging panel. The other two agencies had sent their CEOs in person. Famous composers, lyricists, choreographers, and high-ranking figures from various idol companies filled the remaining seats.
The agency people, in particular, seemed drawn to the fact that Ye-chan was an independent trainee.
Independent trainees usually don't blow up on these shows.
At best one or two made the debut lineup. If he slipped here, they were clearly laying groundwork to poach him with sweet talk.
Ye-chan pretended not to notice their transparent intentions and simply kept bowing his head.
They didn't touch this lineup, though.
In his third and fourth resets, Ye-chan had moved early to make sure this particular panel of judges never came together. From the fifth reset onward he had left small details like this alone—he could bury Choose My Prince 99 just fine by detonating a few bigger things—so he had simply let it ride.
I was too busy with a mountain of other things outside Choose My Prince to bother with it. But why did Jung Chan-yang leave it alone? It looked like he was just walking the path I already walked.
Whether he had gotten lazy now that he was living a human life outside the reset window, or whether he was forced to follow Ye-chan's final choices no matter what, either way it was good news for Ye-chan.
I'd prefer the latter, honestly.
"Anyway, good work. We'll announce the results after we've seen every trainee's challenge, so go rest in your room, Trainee Ye-chan."
"Thank you."
Ye-chan folded at the waist in a proper bow.
Good manners weren't just for idols—they were basic human decency. In this country's climate, even a weirdo had to be a polite weirdo if he wanted to survive.
Ye-chan received a spare dorm key from a staff member and slipped out the back entrance of the building as directed, carefully avoiding the other trainees.
With that, he had safely rounded the biggest turning point of the first dorm stay.
Unlike the first day, the program was unfolding as expected, and for the first time he felt like he had found the rhythm.
Maintaining his S-Grade was a given. What remained was the center position for the theme song.
The center would be decided by the second-grade-test judges after they finished evaluating every trainee. Before the resets it had been Shim Sang-rok, and even after Ye-chan started interfering with the program it had been Shim Sang-rok almost every time. Skill was skill, but he was also the most suitable trainee for early buzz, so it made sense.
Ye-chan thought of the Choose My Prince 99 teasers that always featured Shim Sang-rok.
No point thinking about a problem that's already left my hands.
The theme-song center seat had never been one of Ye-chan's planned goals anyway. Nice if it happened, no big deal if it didn't.
Ye-chan grabbed a towel and a change of clothes and left the room.
Apparently no one had expected anyone to return this quickly—the dorm building was empty of even a single ant. Thanks to that, Ye-chan washed at a leisurely pace in the shower room as if he had the whole place to himself, then came out and turned his face this way and that in the mirror attached to the changing area.
Having only managed a few hours of sleep, the dark circles under his eyes were heavy and pronounced. Ye-chan brushed a finger over the shadowed skin and let out a sigh.
Standing in front of a camera with a face this sloppy… the old Ye-chan would never have allowed it.
Show a perfect image only when you are perfectly prepared.
Even if his appendix burst right before a live stage, even if a group member was arrested mid-concert in a drug scandal, even if news broke during a tour that the company had been scammed in an investment fraud—Ye-chan would still smile calmly and take the stage.
That was what an idol meant to him.
No matter how frantically the legs kicked beneath the surface, above the water the swan glided serenely—an idol who shone purely at the peak.
In reality, the idols of Olympus and Lee:Spirit had won fans' affection precisely as such lofty beings and become undisputed first-tier idols.
But what audiences wanted from contestants on a trainee survival show was a little different.
They paid attention to why this trainee should become an idol, how desperately they wanted it, what effort they had poured into the stage they were about to perform, or whether they had some tear-jerking backstory as a trainee.
With solid skills and looks you could climb reasonably high, but without some kind of "narrative" it was hard to sit in first place.
Viewers wanted trainees to prove their desperation, and they ranked that desperation and lined them up accordingly.
To Ye-chan it was hard to understand.
I don't even get how you're supposed to score something as invisible as a heart… If you're desperate, you'll naturally put in the matching effort and build the skills, so judging by that would be simpler and better.
This industry was full of people skilled at packaging themselves. Ye-chan had seen enough people who looked completely different in front of the camera and behind it to feel genuine disgust. Words proved nothing to him.
That was why Ye-chan had always proven how serious he was about the idol profession through his actions, and why he gave everything he had in every single moment.
But on Choose My Prince, the ones choosing trainees to become idols were not Ye-chan—they were the viewers. To sit on the highest throne, he had to match their wishes.
A beautiful face worn down by long practice was exactly the kind of element viewers loved, so Ye-chan deliberately left the dark circles unconcealed by makeup.
Shame the PD bastard won't even air the all-night practice footage.
Conscious of the fixed cameras in the hallway and rooms, Ye-chan returned to his room with thoroughly calculated messy, air-dried hair and a towel draped around his neck.
From tomorrow they would practice and practice again until the theme-song shoot, so he planned to sleep while he could. The thought that he could sleep deeply until at least evening, when his roommates returned—since the sun was still high—made him a little excited as he threw himself onto the hard mattress.
The moment Ye-chan tried to close his eyes, something sparkled in front of him.
Help Kang Hae-sol maintain his S-Grade in the theme song grade test!
⏱ Time Remaining: 8 hours 11 minutes
If you were going to throw this at me, at least do it before I got on the bed.
Ye-chan glared irritably at the hologram window floating in the middle of the ceiling, then sat up.
What exactly was he supposed to do with a mission like this when he had already returned to the dorm?
Ye-chan casually picked up his smartphone—the only means of contacting the other trainees right now—and headed back to the shower room, where there were no cameras. After closing the door and completely blocking any chance of the hallway camera catching him, he furrowed his brow and sank into thought for a moment.
What was he supposed to say to pull Kang Hae-sol up to S-Grade when they had only practiced together once at dawn?
After long deliberation he opened the contacts app, found Kang Hae-sol's name, and brought up the message window—then suddenly remembered.
[Hae-sol hyung 010-XXXX-XXXX]
The eleven-digit number he had saved on his phone the moment he reset.
It was a number Ye-chan had arbitrarily recalled from past memories and stored. The Ye-chan of this reality had not yet exchanged numbers with Kang Hae-sol.