The Kill List Meeting
After leaving home, I spent the night at a hotel Kang Hyeongman had arranged for me.
"For tonight, just rest here… What are you planning to do starting tomorrow? Going back home?"
"…No. I don't want to go home until My Idol Academia's third week is over."
"…Alright. Then I'll put in a long-term stay request for this hotel, so make yourself comfortable. I'll send Sanggu every morning — take the car to school. I'll bring your uniform tomorrow."
"…Yes. Thank you, sir. And… I'm sorry. For putting you through all this trouble."
"……."
When I answered like that, a little deflated, Kang Hyeongman reached out and patted my head once.
"You haven't done anything wrong. …Don't worry about it too much. Get some rest."
"…Yes."
With that, Kang Hyeongman left.
"…I should wash up first."
I took a quick shower and collapsed onto the bed.
In terms of pure exhaustion, today ranked among the worst days of my life.
I'd barely slept for a week preparing for the competition, then performed the result live in front of an audience.
But… what was wearing me down the most right now was something else entirely.
…Why did I have to be born as those two people's child?
The look in my parents' eyes when I'd said that — as if I'd genuinely wounded them.
My parents had exploited me like a servant…
Sucked the marrow from my bones without a second thought…
And never felt a shred of malice or guilt about any of it.
So whenever I pushed back even a little…
Yerin…
How could you say something like that…
They would look sincerely hurt, sincerely tormented.
And every time, even when I hadn't done anything wrong, I ended up feeling like I had.
Just like right now.
"…Damn it."
Nineteen years of living like that had made me this way.
I was exhausted, but I couldn't close my eyes.
Because the moment I did, Mom and Dad would come to mind.
"…This is so annoying."
I hated them.
Really…
Hated them so much my teeth ached.
After Episode 2 of My Idol Academia aired… when I went back to school, my life was similar to how it had been after Episode 1 — and yet completely different.
When the first episode broadcast, plenty of people had come up to act like they knew me.
And now, after Episode 2…
"Yerin! I watched the show!"
"You looked so pretty—!"
"The team competition already finished filming, right? How was it?"
"Are you close with Yu Seol?"
"Your dancing was incredible—! When did you start learning?"
A stampede of bodies.
…Far more people than before.
Previously, the crowd had more or less clustered around my desk. Now…
"Is this her class?"
"That must be her. Wow… she really is pretty."
"Yerin unnie! I said hi to you in the hallway before — do you remember me?"
They filled not only our classroom but the hallway outside, all of them coming just to get a look at me.
"Uh… well…"
In the past, I could have brushed off a modest crowd with indifference and short answers.
But this throng was beyond what I could handle.
The situation dragged through every break and lunch period, so the sleep I'd planned to catch up on at school never happened.
Life after school had changed, too.
"Yerin! Welcome!"
"Jiwoo-ssaem."
Lee Jiwoo — my first trainer — had signed an exclusive contract with Hyeongje Entertainment, which meant I could take as many lessons from her as I wanted after school.
My Dance stat might have been 99, but the fact remained that I was short on real experience. So for a full week I soaked up every scrap of know-how she had to offer.
There was also an upside to Lee Jiwoo being active on community boards.
"Yerin, look at this. The response to you is already great."
The screen she held out showed a post that seemed to have been written by someone who'd been in the audience.
First time going to one of these places, but my girlfriend is super into this stuff so I tagged along. Day 34 of dating her. You guys know, right? That early-relationship phase when your girl looks the most adorable. (Ah, wait, you guys probably don't know lmao.) Anyway, no matter how many pretty girls came out, I figured my girlfriend would still look the prettiest to me — but damn… from the very first stage, holy shit… Especially Ha Yerin? That girl was seriously insanely pretty. I looked at her once, then looked back at my girlfriend, and some orangutan was waving a lightstick around lmao. Anyway she sings great and dances ridiculously well. Near the end Yu Seol's stage was also crazy good, but me and my girl both voted for Ha Yerin's team. Technically I signed a no-spoiler agreement so I shouldn't say this, but it's an anonymous board so who cares? Ha Yerin's team took first lol. Peace out.
"Ah, you probably don't know this one, Yerin? This is a community mostly guys hang out on…"
Swipe.
Lee Jiwoo pulled her phone back, opened a different site, and kept talking.
"On the sites women mostly use, posts about you are the most common ones too."
"……Wow."
Sure enough, the women's community she showed me was also dominated by posts full of praise directed at me.
"Normally this place is nothing but roasting, so for it to look like this? The public opinion is seriously good."
"Is that so?"
"Obviously! Yerin, next week's shoot is the ranking announcement, right? Looking at how good the vibe is… I think we can get our hopes up a little?"
Lee Jiwoo said it with a sly glint in her eyes, grinning at me.
I smiled faintly and shook my head.
"Come on… there are still some heavy hitters left. First place is definitely a stretch."
"Heavy hitters — you mean that girl? Yu Seol?"
"Yes."
I nodded, and Lee Jiwoo nodded back.
"Hmm… fair enough. Her skill level is definitely trainee-graduate tier. No matter how rose-tinted my glasses are, I can't deny she's a cut above our Yerin."
"…Haha."
As always, Lee Jiwoo was ruthlessly realistic about this kind of thing.
Well… that was one of the things I liked about her.
"Still, Yerin. On survival shows like this, rankings aren't decided by skill alone. I think it'd be good to hold onto a little hope."
"Yes, I will."
"Ah, and today's the day Episode 3 of My Idol Academia airs. We can check how you came out on tonight's broadcast. You're watching with us here again tonight, right?"
"That's the plan."
"Hehe, I'm getting excited. Wonder how hard my student tore up that stage. …But Yerin."
Lee Jiwoo laughed, then pointed at my pocket and kept going.
Bzzzt.
"That… it's been bothering me for a while. Your phone keeps ringing?"
"Ah."
At the tip of her finger, my phone was vibrating nonstop.
I hurriedly switched it off and shook my head.
"I should have turned it off earlier. Sorry."
"Hmm? You're not going to answer?"
"It's a call I don't need to take."
The person calling me right now was Mom.
For the past week, whenever they had a free moment, Mom and Dad had taken turns flooding my phone with calls.
The missed-call count alone had to be in the hundreds by now.
Click.
I powered the ringing phone all the way off, smiled, and stood up from my seat.
"…More importantly, ssaem. Let's keep practicing."
"Shall we? Haha, Yerin's so fired up it's making my chest burn too."
And so I kept dancing with Lee Jiwoo straight through to night, forgetting even about dinner.
Then, right before My Idol Academia started, we all gathered in the monitoring room with the chicken Kang Hyeongman had ordered as a dinner substitute.
"Excuse me, boss! What kind of dinner is chicken for a kid trying to debut as an idol — chicken!"
"I, uh… I thought I heard the grilled kind was fine."
"Grilled is still chicken! It's a good thing Yerin's the type who doesn't gain weight… Still, be more careful next time!"
"Ah, got it."
Apparently the power dynamic between Kang Hyeongman and Lee Jiwoo had already flipped.
I laughed at the irony of it and sat down on the couch in front of the TV.
Click.
22:00
The clock had just hit ten.
Episode 3 of My Idol Academia — the one covering the first team competition.
Our team had taken first place, and I'd put on a strong showing myself.
But how that material got used was entirely up to the production team.
"Ah, it's starting."
Time to find out how the producers had cooked the first team competition.
Rewinding the clock to last week.
The night the first team competition ended.
The contestants finished all filming and went home, but for the My Idol Academia production staff, the day was only just beginning.
A little past midnight, they relocated to the broadcasting station and held a meeting.
The meeting's official name: the Editing Direction Meeting.
At a glance it looked like an ordinary production meeting, but…
Among themselves, the staff had a different name for the Editing Direction Meeting.
They called it the Kill List Meeting.
"Alright. Talk to me."
Under the direction of Shin PD, the main producer of My Idol Academia, the meeting began.
The writers in charge of editing started reporting to Shin PD on how they planned to structure Episode 3.
"First of all, there's a lot of material to fit into Episode 3. Both Ha Yerin and Yu Seol handled their assigned songs well, so for now we're keeping the rival framing as is…"
It went without saying that the cyber roulette used for team competition song selection hadn't been random — it had been rigged.
More precisely… only Ha Yerin's and Yu Seol's selections had been manipulated.
The production team had deliberately assigned the sweet, lovey-dovey track Where Is My First Love! to cold-image Ha Yerin, and given the hip, girl-crush anthem Thank You Very Much to cute, slightly clumsy Yu Seol.
It was the producers' own way of separating the wheat from the chaff.
They wanted to see which of the two frontrunners could better digest a song that clashed with her image.
But both of them had delivered performances so strong it was hard to call a winner.
So the writers decided not to push either one just yet — they'd watch the competition play out and judge from there.
Which meant the content going into Episode 3 of My Idol Academia would be the same as previous episodes: the Ha Yerin–Yu Seol rival narrative.
The two of them were already the reliable mainstays of the show — solid as a bowl of hangover soup — so leaning on them would probably lock in stable ratings.
But…
"Sure, of course we put both of their stories in. But look… are you planning to ride that one narrative all the way to the finale? It's too flat. Too stale~"
Shin PD seemed dissatisfied with running the entire broadcast on the single engine of the Ha Yerin–Yu Seol rivalry.
"…Then."
"Something hotter… something that'll get the audience fired up… how do I put this. Weren't there any contestants who looked like they might blow up?"
Contestants who might blow up.
Having worked with Shin PD for a long time, they knew exactly what he meant.
When Shin PD said "a contestant who might blow up," he meant… a contestant who would serve as fuel for the program.
In other words, a sacrificial offering for a witch hunt.
"Hmm…"
At Shin PD's request, the writers each sank into thought, trying to recall anyone who fit the bill.
But…
"Well… there wasn't as much conflict as we expected during this team competition…"
Contestants who could play the role of kindling Shin PD wanted weren't coming to mind easily.
Faced with his juniors' frustrating blankness, Shin PD sharpened his gaze and let a cold edge into his voice.
"Kids. You gonna wake up or what?"
"……."
"What? No conflict? How many years have we worked together — you still don't know my style? If there isn't any, you make it."
"……Even so."
"Kids. If we want to climb higher in this industry, we need to grab this opportunity. Ratings are our food and our connections — you don't get that?"
Shin PD had a habit of needling his subordinates until he got the result he wanted.
And so the writers, who couldn't afford another week of all-nighters, had to wring their brains dry.
And then…
"Um…"
"Yeah, go ahead."
"There's one contestant who comes to mind…"
One of the writers who'd been deep in thought pictured a particular contestant's face and opened her mouth with difficulty.