This Is What I Do Best
The practice room was pure chaos. Someone was belting out high notes right beside someone else storming through a rap verse. Off-beat instrument tracks layered over each other from every corner of the room.
My finger slid across the tablet screen.
So this is why surprises are so hard.
Suddenly it made sense — why idols on the eve of a comeback were always so desperate to leak spoilers. Hiding your trump card was no easy feat. Especially every time I caught Kang Yiyul sneaking glances my way with that sly look of his, I had to fight the urge to jam my earphones into his ears and just play it for him.
The work was going faster than expected.
I did make a living off this, after all.
The beat and melody I'd knocked out on a basic app were playing back through my ears.
"There we go."
Clean chord progression, a melody that sat nicely on the ear. The hook was catchy enough that it was already stuck in my head.
I hit play again.
Intro, verse, build-up into the highlight, all the way through the chorus. A composition that couldn't have been more polished.
My head nodded along slowly.
"Not bad."
Maybe it was because I wasn't using my usual production software, but the rough, unpolished sound actually suited my current position well. Showing pro-level skill right out of the gate would feel off. Even if I was selling producing as my strength, I couldn't afford to skip the growth arc on this side either.
But then a question surfaced in my mind.
Whose song is this? No — who is this song for?
My hand stopped. So that was the source of the wrongness I'd been feeling all along.
This was not a song for me.
A chord progression that sold well, a safe structure, an unremarkable arc. The exact formula I'd churned out countless times before.
I pulled out my earphones.
"……Ha."
A short breath escaped me.
There was a spotlight, but no star standing in it.
If I took this song to the stage?
The reaction was predictable.
But that's where it ended.
"……Ah."
That was when the phrase I'd seen on the screen came back to me.
Who Are You?
Right. This mission was a stage built around answering one question: who are you?
It was the only individual stage in the entire survival show where you decided everything yourself — which made it the one real chance to show people who you were.
In the end, what was needed here wasn't technique. It was proof.
And yet here I was — a man who had spent his whole life writing other people's stories — without a single line written about my own.
"……I'm losing my mind."
I had no choice but to start over from scratch.
I tore the densely scrawled page clean out of my notebook.
Then I spread open a fresh one.
After rolling the pen tip around for a long while, I wrote down exactly one word.
[Me]
I'd written so many songs. Some people had debuted on my music. Some had taken number ones, won awards.
But I had never once sung a song of my own.
"……Heh."
A hollow laugh slipped out. I'd never had a client like this before.
First, then, I'd need to get to know my client a little better. I drew a circle around the word me, and like pruning branches, I started jotting down words as they came to me.
[Music]
[Producer]
I paused for a moment.
And then.
[Kang Yiyul]
"……Yeah, this one has to go."
I moved to strike a line through Yiyul's name, but in the end I erased it carefully with the eraser instead.
Drawing lines through names feels wrong somehow.
Using an absurd superstition as my excuse.
"I'm losing my mind."
It had been a while — feeling this lost while working on a song. But it was a pleasant kind of frustration.
The practice room was still noisy.
And in the middle of all that noise, for the very first time, I began writing about me.
The mid-point evaluation, two days before the Round 1 stage.
The air in the practice room had been heavy from the start. The judges took their seats one by one, and when MC Kang Sejun finally appeared last, every trainee's spine bent forward in unison.
"Good afternoon, everyone!"
"Right, I trust you've all been practicing hard?"
"Yes, sir!"
Everyone answered CEO Song Inhyuk's question at full volume, but tension ran thick beneath their voices. This was where the real competition began.
A brief camera check, and then filming started.
"Then let's begin the Round 1 mid-point evaluation."
This time, Kang Sejun himself sat alongside the judges to watch the performances. With a veteran of Kang Sejun's stature added to the panel, the trainees had no choice but to grow even more nervous.
One by one, in the order they were called, the trainees took the stage.
"You really think your strength is dancing? That's what you prepared?"
"If this is the vocal you're supposedly best at, I'd hate to see the rest."
"You're an idol, and your claimed strength is a joke?"
"This is genuinely concerning, everyone. What exactly are you trying to do here?"
The judges' scathing critiques came one after another. The harsh feedback from the signal song mission looked like child's play by comparison.
Wow. What aired on TV was just the tip of the iceberg.
Hearing it in person was a different dimension entirely. The pressure you felt standing in that room was like the air itself pressing down on you.
The problem was the same across the board: instead of expressing themselves, they were imitating someone else. Their stages were nothing but mimicry — and of course, they couldn't even surpass the originals.
The textbook example was standing right in front of us.
"Quite a few of you trainees performed one of your group's songs, Sejun-ssi. What do you think?"
At that question, Kang Sejun — who was always smiling — let the smile fall away.
"I see our songs are…… apparently considered easy picks."
Wow. So this was that scene.
A suffocating silence.
"N-no, sir!"
Hearing it live, it's genuinely terrifying……
This moment had gone massively viral even in my previous life — it was one of the clips that drove the show's early buzz. Overseas fans had turned it into a meme, that's how big it got.
The hapless trainee flailed his hands in a panicked denial.
"It's just — you're so cool, and it's a song by a senior I really respect, so……"
"I appreciate that, truly. But that isn't an answer to the question of who you are."
At that single line, the trainee's expression crumbled. Barely halfway through the evaluations, the remaining trainees swallowed in unison.
"Next up…… Code 6 trainee. Please introduce your keyword."
When Go Jaeseong stepped forward with his hand raised in confidence, every trainee's eyes turned to him. Their gazes were full of trust — the belief that he was the one person who could somehow thaw this frozen atmosphere.
The judges, too, straightened up from their slouched postures. They were the ones most worn down by the subpar stages, after all.
"Hello, I'm the Code 6 trainee."
Go Jaeseong greeted them calmly.
"My keyword is producing."
"Oh-h. So the Code 6 trainee can produce?"
"I haven't been learning for very long."
Go Jaeseong smiled sheepishly at Kang Sejun's question.
"But the more I do it, the more fun it gets. I want to show you all that I'm someone who isn't afraid of a challenge!"
The judges nodded along, satisfied with the answer.
Go Jaeseong had rearranged "Fantasy," the hit song of the famous idol group Chase. Where the original was a performance-driven track, he'd layered on a hip-hop sound and even delivered rap lyrics he'd written himself.
Close your eyes
Show me your fantasy
Time won't wait for you
……He's good, I'll give him that.
His skills were steady even while juggling rap and choreography at once. The feel of it was completely different from watching the broadcast.
I could've sworn he was way worse back then, though.
The thought struck me out of nowhere.
Wow, I really f***ing hated this son of a b****!
Because in the entire time I'd watched the survival show, not once — not a single time — had I ever thought this guy was good.
Having binged the whole show after the fact, I absolutely, absolutely refused to believe Go Jaeseong had been one of the skilled members. I'd even chalked it all up to an illusion manufactured by editing.
Back then I genuinely thought he was trash-tier.
And yet here I was, objectively assessing my enemy's skill without a shred of prejudice.
……Am I an angel? Or a bodhisattva?
Granted, the disappointing stages before his had done plenty to make his performance shine that much brighter.
"Man, I should've learned producing too."
"You think you'd be anywhere near Jaeseong's level?"
"…Fair point."
Leaving behind the envy-soaked voices of the other trainees, the evaluation continued in the warm, lively atmosphere that had finally taken hold for the first time since it began.
"How long did you say you'd been producing?"
"About a year now."
"One year, and you're already at this level—"
"There's real talent here, without question."
Jack P, the producer from Nyx Entertainment, picked up the assessment.
"Self-producing idols are the trend these days. In that sense, the Code 6 trainee could become a member a team genuinely can't do without."
At those words, the expressions of the surrounding trainees changed.
Envy, admiration — and the quiet conviction of, ah, this guy's debuting.
Go Jaeseong was forcing a modest smile, but he couldn't quite hide the upward curl at the corners of his mouth.
The moment the guy swaggered back to his seat, the trainees swarmed him.
"Insane. You absolutely destroyed that."
"Godjaeseong—"
"You're debuting, guaranteed."
Go Jaeseong waved them off.
"Oh, come on. I just prepared hard, that's all."
What a show.
The mid-point evaluation ran in reverse order of Code numbers. The next turn was Choi Woonjo's.
Choi Woonjo took the stage with his own rap laid over a famous hip-hop beat.
Oh……
Even though I'd seen this stage on the broadcast several times, hearing it live hit completely differently.
"His tone is insane?"
"Must be the overseas training — even his pronunciation's on another level—"
"Code 5 really doesn't know what nerves are, huh."
The evaluations that followed were, naturally, glowing.
"Next, Code 4. Please get ready."
Here it comes.
The moment I stood from my seat, murmurs broke out all around me.
"Whoa— right after Jaeseong and Woonjo?"
"He has to do rap right after Choi Woonjo, of all people—"
Their tone was laced with unmistakable mockery.
Yeah, figures.
Go Jaeseong had clearly already spread the word. I hadn't even told Yiyul I'd be rapping. It was expected, so it didn't surprise me.
Without missing a beat, I picked up my guitar and walked forward.
"Rapping while playing guitar?"
"He's going to get destroyed."
"Rap so doesn't suit him, though?"
It was hilarious how they treated every word out of Go Jaeseong's mouth as gospel.
Hey, use your head — who brings a guitar out to do rap?
"Your body's holding up okay?"
Kang Sejun asked first, smiling.
"Yes! Perfectly fine. Thank you for your concern."
Kang Sejun nodded.
"Good to see you so spirited. Please introduce the stage and keyword you've prepared today."
"Yes. The keyword for the stage I've prepared today is an original song."
Clack.
As if someone had hit pause on a video, every sound in the room cut out.
The murmuring trainees. The writers taking notes. Even Kang Sejun, mid-shuffle of his cue cards.
Beyond the mirror, every single face had frozen solid.
Yiyul, eyes gone round as saucers. Han Sangyoon, frozen in open shock. And Go Jaeseong, whose smug expression had been wiped clean away.
A flicker of consternation even crossed the judges' panel.
"Hold on."
Jack P spoke first.
"You prepared…… an actual original song?"
"Yes."
"A song you made yourself?"
"Yes."
"You didn't forget what the mission theme was, did you?"
Their suspicion was only natural. A survival contestant whose name wasn't even public yet — a trainee rushed in just to fill headcount — suddenly showing up with a self-produced song?
Murmurs erupted from the back of the room again.
"Is he kidding right now?"
"What? Nobody said anything about that."
"Talk about fishing for attention."
I had anticipated every single one of those reactions, so I lifted my head and met the eyes of every judge on the panel.
And I answered with total confidence.
"Yes."
The corners of my mouth curled slowly upward.
"Because this is the thing I do best."