Position Evaluation (4)
Lee Seo-yeon's voice cut through the air, and the audience fell silent in an instant. It was only a sound she had let out lightly — and yet it gathered every eye in the room as naturally as breathing.
"Seo-yeon's voice on that intro is the best thing here."
"There's definitely something that pulls you in right away."
Thinking about it, the opening verse was the hardest part of a song like this. Unlike the famous chorus, the beginning wasn't something people already knew by heart — and it wasn't as if the melody itself had some irresistible hook, either.
"So Seo-yeon was the key all along."
"Looking at it now, this is exactly the kind of song where an intro that grabs your ear on the first verse matters more than anything."
A trainer beside them nodded.
"We're so used to this track, but if you think about people hearing it for the first time..."
"Even if the whole country knows the chorus, not that many people know the rest of the song."
You could feel it — this role was every bit as important as center. Maybe even more so. The opening melody could easily come off as plain and dull next to the chorus, which meant someone had to seize the audience's attention and hold it. Lee Seo-yeon was doing exactly that.
"Seo-yeon's got something, she really does."
"She even gave up center for the team, right? Don't tell me she saw this whole picture by herself."
"She decided the arrangement direction too, so yeah — that's probably exactly what happened."
And it wasn't just the voice. Thanks to a bold reworking of what had been a rather plain intro in the original, the pop color of the track came through even more vividly. The result was a voice laid over a quiet piano and a minimal beat — a voice with unmistakable presence.
"This... they put this together well."
"The stage is way better than it was at the evaluation."
"Guess Seo-yeon's just built for the stage."
"This is that classic the trainee was hiding her power during mid-evaluations thing."
The trainers instinctively leaned in toward the monitors.
Out in the audience, someone holding a small notepad and a ballpoint pen was locked onto the stage. And then the performance began. Lee Seo-yeon's intro was warm, and it was seamless.
It's not just that her voice is good.
The arrangement was excellent. It kept the original's emotional R&B feel while letting a distinctly pop color come roaring to life. A song that had opened on nothing but a quiet piano and a minimal drum beat brought in a synth pad and bass toward the back half of the first verse. An intro that used to just drift by had become not a mere beginning, but a moment that seized the ear. And at the center of it all was Lee Seo-yeon.
So this is what they mean by a muse. The feeling just hits you.
By the first verse alone, people would have already realized this stage wasn't going to be ordinary. And right after, Baek Eun-bi took the baton. Her voice was solid. The lyrics were plaintive, but her delivery had a strength that refused to get dragged around by the emotion. This wasn't just a sad song — it was a properly constructed pop R&B stage, and her vocal made that unmistakably clear.
"This team actually feels the most like a team."
A low murmur of admiration slipped out before he could stop it. It didn't feel like watching a merely emotional performance. It felt like properly enjoying a song that had been reinterpreted through a pop lens. But then, for a single moment, a pang of regret crept in. It was when Yoon Se-ah's chorus began.
You told me a lie ♪
It was good, honestly. No — it was really good. The high notes were clean, and the emotional line was solid. And yet... something... something... the complete immersion he'd been sinking into wavered, just a little.
The chorus itself was powerful. The impact was clearly bigger than the original, and the arrangement was backing it beautifully. And yet, strangely, the original chorus drifted into his mind.
It's not that she can't do it...
So why didn't it hit? To be precise, it wasn't that the original was simply better. It was that it would have been different if it had been Lee Seo-yeon.
If Seo-yeon had done it, this would have come alive even more. What a shame.
The longer the chorus went on, the stronger the regret grew. Lee Seo-yeon had seized the atmosphere in a single breath on the first verse and pulled the audience into the song. And the arrangement had been built to keep the original emotion while maximizing every pop element.
It's all good... it's all so good...
What if, from this foundation, the highlight had exploded through Lee Seo-yeon's vocals?
That would've just been a legendary stage, right there.
The intro alone had already been that good. Add an arrangement with this kind of impact on top of it, and anyone watching would have called it Lee Seo-yeon's stage.
It's a shame. Such a shame.
He found himself wanting to write her a proper song of her own. But the stage itself was still excellent. This wasn't a performance that fell apart just because Lee Seo-yeon wasn't center. Baek Eun-bi and Lee Seo-yeon stacked the emotion in harmony, Se-ah handled the chorus more than decently, and the deeper they went, the deeper the immersion grew. In particular, the impact the arrangement gave the highlight made the whole track into a sound that filled the ears with something solid.
Still. I'm voting for Lee Seo-yeon.
The moment he decided, the regret was gone. Just good teamwork. A good arrangement. A good stage. And as he sat there enjoying it, the final section began.
The back half, where the emotion climbed to its peak. After quietly building everything up, Lee Seo-yeon took the final killing part.
I know, I know, it's over now ♪
In that instant, the audience held its breath again. The same voice that had pulled everyone in on the intro was now gathering up the emotion one last time, bringing the stage to a close.
...Wow. This is genuinely incredible.
That part wasn't even a killing part in the original. But the impact that burst from a place no one expected hit harder than the highlight itself — a killing part in its own right.
Once this stage is over, a lot of people are going to vote for Lee Seo-yeon's name.
He started voting before the performance had even ended. And before the impression still lingering in his head could fade, he scribbled a quick note.
The stage ended, and the MC moved on, introducing the next performance as the show continued. But backstage, our team was facing a far more tense moment. The results.
Unlike last time, this evaluation revealed the results immediately to the trainees who had just come off the stage.
"I'm so nervous..."
Se-ah, sitting in the middle, grabbed Eun-bi unnie's hand and mine tight. Her fingertips were cold. Then the monitor flickered on, and the individual rankings were revealed.
Se-ah smiled awkwardly.
"I'm last, huh?"
Her expression looked calm enough, but her fingers fidgeted.
"They're not showing the vote counts? Our members did so well I came in last even as center."
Everyone on the team had done so well, and she herself had worked so hard — but in the end, a vote could only go to one person. I quietly wrapped my hand around Se-ah's.
"You did so well. Our vote counts are probably all pretty close."
Eun-bi unnie nodded quietly beside us. And right after, second and first were revealed.
First place, right next to my name. For a moment I was happy. I'd expected it, too. But in a space with only my teammates, I couldn't just be purely glad about a result announced like this.
That was when it happened.
Eun-bi unnie was the one who spoke first. I looked at her, startled. She just beamed at me, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.
"You came in first because you were good. You're not going to feel sorry toward us for that, are you?"
"She's right. Now you just need to get a hundred thousand votes, Seo-yeon."
"Yeah! Seo-yeon's going to take first in the position ranking!"
"For real."
The mood lightened in an instant. I squeezed Se-ah's hand once more and smiled at Eun-bi unnie.
"Thank you, unnie."
And only then — just a little. Really just a little. I let myself show that I was happy.
A little later, every stage had ended. Now it was time for the overall rankings by position to be announced. Tension hung among the trainees. The votes earned on this stage would be added to the final tally — a critical measure that would decide who survived and who was eliminated.
"First, we will announce the vote counts and rankings for the trainees of the No Mercy group."
Before I knew it, I was watching the screen with more nerves than I'd felt for my own ranking. The rankings appeared on the monitor one by one.
My eyes went wide. Looking at the raw numbers, it was more than ten times what she'd received in the last round. I looked at Park Hye-in. And in that moment — even though first place belonged to someone else — it was Park Hye-in who burst into tears.
I stared at her, dazed. Her small shoulders shook. She'd covered her face with her hands, but the tears welling all the way to the corners of her eyes were still visible. And before I knew it, something surged up in my own throat.
How did she end up as my tear button?
My vision blurred. When Park Hye-in cried, the corners of my eyes got wet too. Like an idiot. There are moments when someone's growth becomes this visible — this tangible. And I was watching it happen, right now, in Park Hye-in.
"Trainee Park Hye-in, last time you received four votes."
The MC, of course, wasn't about to let this moment pass.
"On this stage, you received fifty-two. We have to hear how you feel."
Park Hye-in scrubbed at the corners of her eyes with her hands and lifted the microphone in a tear-choked voice.
"Um... I thought this stage might be my last... but it seems like there are people who opened their hearts to me... thank you."
The trainees listened in silence.
"And... I want to thank the members I prepared this stage with. Honestly, I was pretty clumsy this time too, but they helped me so much and treated me like a real teammate."
She seemed like she was finished — then she whipped her head around. First to me, then to Se-rin, then to the rest of the members. Park Hye-in met each of our eyes, one by one.
"And lastly... I want to tell my previous teammates that I'm sorry. One more time."
She's apologizing again? I didn't have a microphone in my hand, but I spoke to her in a small voice.
"Stop saying you're sorry."
Park Hye-in's gaze found me again. I met her eyes, smiled lightly, and said,
That was the moment.
"...hhk."
Park Hye-in's brows crumpled in misery all over again. She pressed her lips tight — and this time she couldn't hold it. The tears came even harder.
Oh no.
I blinked hard and looked away, afraid the tears would be contagious. Even so, my vision grew blurrier and blurrier. Then I glanced around and saw that last round's teammates had gone red around the eyes. Every one of them. A few were covering their faces with their hands, crying outright.
Wait. Are they going to air this?
The calculator in my head kicked on, and just like that, the tears vanished.