Overnight Sensation
A lot had happened overnight.
Of course, it was terribly unfortunate that Lee Hyejeong had collapsed from malnutrition. Still, since the incident had already occurred, I had figured it would be best to turn the whole thing into an issue and raise her recognition even further.
But if they cut that part from the broadcast, there's no way for the viewers to know…
Looking back, it had been strange from the start. There was no way the production staff could have failed to notice how drastically Lee Hyejeong had lost weight compared to before. Even the viewers had picked up on her transformation right away.
But unlike the viewers' curiosity, Lee Hyejeong had not been given a single dedicated solo segment in today's episode. Because the broadcast never showed her properly, even the viewers who had initially been intrigued by her changed appearance inevitably lost interest.
Why the hell…?
It wasn't as if the production staff held some personal grudge against Lee Hyejeong, so why were they starving her of screen time like this? Even if her figure hadn't suited their tastes during week one, she had lost the weight and become genuinely pretty now. So why…
Back then I had no way of knowing the reason, and I fretted over Lee Hyejeong so hard I chewed my nails raw. Only later—through a completely chance opportunity—did I finally learn the truth.
The real story behind Lee Hyejeong's missing screen time in episode three was simple: there was simply too much content that had to go into that episode.
From the opening, team selection, song selection, practice, mid-check, the actual performance, all the way through the voting results—everything had to be crammed into episode three. The production staff had already been forced to schedule an extra hour just to fit it all. With that much material already overflowing, Lee Hyejeong's personal story simply hadn't felt worth the extra attention. Why waste precious airtime building a narrative for a contestant who was going to be eliminated eventually anyway? From their perspective, her story just wasn't that compelling.
But at the time of the broadcast, completely ignorant of the staff's reasoning, I could only grow more and more anxious over her tiny amount of screen time. And as if to mock that very anxiety of mine…
Contestant Ha Yerin explaining her idea to her teammates!
The teammates nod in agreement.
As if I had suddenly become some kind of genius, every eye and every expectation locked onto me alone, and the team performance began.
The moment the team performance ended, Lee Jiwoo's reaction told me everything I needed to know about how the stage had gone.
"Yeriiiin—!!"
"Jiwoo Teacher? Ugh—!"
The instant my stage finished, she slammed into me with a face full of pure emotion.
"How—!! You're insane, completely insane! The dancing goes without saying, but the concept was absolute fire! My own student actually pulled off a stage like that?! Aren't you a total genius?"
"I just… got lucky. I told you. It was a random idea that popped up."
Turning Where is my first love! into a nerd concept had been nothing more than a fluke idea that hit me while I was watching the music video, the kind of thought that makes you take a startled step backward.
But Lee Jiwoo, already thoroughly rose-tinted about me, buried her face in my chest, nuzzled against me, and shook her head hard.
"Nnnngh~ No way! Teacher can say this with absolute certainty—that wasn't luck, that was skill. And besides, there's still the biggest thing I have to praise you for!"
"The biggest thing? Ah…"
I tilted my head, then immediately realized what she was about to say and froze.
"Your expressions! Your expressions! That's the one thing Teacher always used to criticize, right? But somehow this stage, even your facial expressions were perfect! Aigoo~ My baby! I'm so proud of you! When did you even practice expression acting that hard?"
"……"
The expression acting Lee Jiwoo was currently praising me for until her mouth ran dry was not the result of any hard practice on my part. It was something I had obtained without a single drop of sweat through the first skill of the Heavenly Demon Divine Art—Heavenly Demon Illusion.
That fact… pricked my conscience a little.
"…That was also just a coincidence."
"A coincidence? Haha, our Yerin is so humble too~ But you're the only person in the world who would call that a coincidence. Here, look."
Lee Jiwoo said that and held up the comment window that was still rocketing upward at an absurd speed.
At a glance the comments looked almost forced in how excessively they praised me.
There were people cheering for the other teammates as well, but…
…the live streaming comment section was completely dominated by my name, exactly like the comment section of my own fan café posts.
That atmosphere continued well into the middle of the broadcast when the other teams' stages began airing.
The viewers kept comparing every subsequent team to my stage that had gone first. Thanks to that, I practically monopolized the comment section for the entire hour-plus of team performances.
And that atmosphere…
…cracked the moment Yu Seol's team was called.
Like a wave sweeping everything away, my name vanished from the comment section that had been covered only by me, and Yu Seol's name began flooding in to take its place. The flood only intensified once Yu Seol successfully finished her stage.
Once again the comments looked over-the-top enough to seem like pure hype, but the truth was that Yu Seol had genuinely delivered a stage of that quality.
"…That kid is the real deal."
Even Lee Jiwoo, already thoroughly rose-tinted about me, said as much. The cheers for Yu Seol continued for a long while after that.
And the moment the team performances finally wrapped up with Na Hanna's stage…
…someone threw a stone into the comment section as if they had been waiting for exactly that moment.
At first it was nothing more than a free and mild exchange of opinions, like a normal debate. But once the team rankings were announced, it exploded in earnest.
Yu Seol's fandom simply could not accept that our team had beaten hers for first place, and they started voicing their dissatisfaction.
My fans immediately flared up at the Yu Seol fandom's words and started hammering their keyboards…
Before long the comment section had become a tangled mess of both sides slinging insults at each other.
"Oh…"
I found myself watching the whole thing with more amusement than I expected. The sight of both sides locked in a dead heat, dragging out every scrap of verbal firepower to tear each other down, was genuinely entertaining.
But…
Clack.
"Huh? Teacher. I was still watching."
"No, absolutely not. A kid who doesn't even have an ID yet shouldn't be looking at this kind of stuff."
While I was still reading the flood of comments, Lee Jiwoo slammed the laptop monitor shut.
"Yerin, you've got My Idol Academia filming tomorrow. And it's ranking announcement right from the opening, right? You won't even be able to sleep properly once filming starts, so you need to manage your mental state and condition starting now."
"Ah…"
I was a little annoyed, but everything Lee Jiwoo was saying was completely correct. If I kept reading the comments and ran into some excessively vicious hate aimed at me, I would definitely lose sleep over it.
So I nodded at her words.
"…Okay."
"Yerin, you're not going to secretly check the internet at night after saying this, right? Promise with Teacher."
"Yes."
Only after I made a pinky promise did Lee Jiwoo finally relax and smile.
"Just in case anything happens, Teacher will keep watching the online reactions all night and contact you if there's a problem."
"Yes, thank you, Teacher."
When it came down to it, Lee Jiwoo was doing all of this solely for my sake. Trusting her, I returned to the hotel and, true to my promise, didn't look at my phone at all before falling straight asleep.
Starting tomorrow's filming there would be the ranking announcement plus the second team performance, so the schedule was going to be brutal. With the thought that I should sleep while I still could, I slept soundly until morning.
And the next morning.
Call time at the My Idol Academia set was 8 a.m. Since the drive would take about forty minutes, I had arranged to meet Kang Hyeongman in the hotel lobby at 7.
But…
Bzzzt—.
"…Mm? …Huh?"
Bzzzt—.
"…Am I late?"
Even though it was still dark outside, my phone was ringing desperately for me, so I jolted awake in surprise and checked it.
6:28 a.m.
"…What."
I had set my alarm for 6:40, yet I had woken up a full twelve minutes early.
Jiwoo Teacher
"…What could it be this early in the morning?"
Slightly annoyed, I answered the call.
And…
"Hello…"
"Y-Yerin! Something huge happened!"
"……What?"
I could hear her voice calling me in a desperate rush.
"…What's going on?"
"It's… I think you need to see this yourself! I'm right outside your door so hurry and open it…!"
"Outside my door…?"
From that moment I should have sensed that something was seriously wrong. For her to come all the way to my hotel room door at this hour of the morning, just how big of a deal was this?
And when I opened the hotel room door…
"…Yerin."
"Teacher… your face…"
The moment I saw Lee Jiwoo's face waiting right outside my door, I became certain that something had gone wrong. The dark circles under her eyes had sunk all the way down to her mouth, as if she hadn't slept a single wink all night.
"…Just what happened."
In that instant every negative possibility flooded my mind.
School violence…
No, not that.
Cigarettes…
I'd never even held one in Ha Yerin's body.
Don't tell me last night's thing continued…
Had Yu Seol's fandom, unable to accept the results, done something…
"Th-that's… Teacher kept checking the internet reactions all night last night… A-and then at midnight a video got uploaded to YouTube and it…"
"What exactly got uploaded to YouTube…"
Lee Jiwoo was still so flustered she could barely string her words together. And then…
"I-I can't do this… I can't explain it in words…! Yerin…! Look at this…!"
She held out her phone with trembling hands, and I took it with my own heart pounding…
"……Huh?"
On the YouTube screen inside the phone was a situation I had never even imagined.
"Y-Yerin, your fancam video hit Trending #1—!!!!"
A personal fancam video I hadn't even known had been uploaded. That video, which had gone up at midnight when almost no one would see it, had racked up 578,000 views in just six hours and was currently sitting at #1 on YouTube's Trending Videos.