The First Elimination
And behind him, the camera caught the faint smile spreading across Yiyul's face.
[Practice running late into the night.]
"Seriously, how is Yiyul practicing with an arm in that state... Get healed up first, then practice."
[After the practice room camera switched off — footage delivered by the New Artist Development Team]
"What's this?"
The comment feed froze for a moment as the footage played.
"...So that's where he was crying?"
It was the very scene that had blown up in the teaser — Code 20, tears brimming in both eyes.
[Code 20: I want to do well—]
[Code 20: My body... just won't do what I tell it.]
[Code 20: ...Because I couldn't stop wanting to watch someone who was good.]
"Oh, come on."
Then came the reveal that Kang Yiyul's profile styling — the one that had gone viral the instant it dropped — was entirely Code 20's doing, and Gyeongjin made up her mind for good.
"Corrector, let's get you debuted."
But this was only the beginning.
[Code 20: If someone's handsome, you call him handsome. What else would you say?]
"God. Unreal."
Gyeongjin watched the message board servers grind slower and slower until, at last, they briefly crashed outright.
It was hard to believe only thirty minutes had passed since the broadcast began.
Boys Code, which had stormed out of the gate from episode one, crammed everything up through the signal song preparation into a single broadcast. Because the trainees crowded together in front of whatever camera happened to be rolling, faces overlapped or vanished from frame entirely more often than not.
[Code 20 asking Code 3 for help yet again.]
"Hold on — he's asking the guy with the injured arm to teach him?"
Sure, she'd sworn only minutes ago that the two of them had to debut together — but a bias was still a bias. Gyeongjin quickly repented her shortsightedness, though, nodding along at the TV in repeated silent gratitude. The place Code 20 had led him to was a shot with a flawless view, untouched by any other trainee's interference.
"Yiyul, honey, just stay glued to your Corrector hyung's side forever!"
[The signal song evaluation finally begins.]
"Ooh, fast pacing. I like it."
Being a male survival show, the spiteful edits were relatively few — nothing was wasting time dragging the pace down. Less fatigue was a definite plus, but Gyeongjin still hadn't lowered her guard.
"It'll all change once the public voting starts, though."
[Kang Sejun: Now, the trainee going first is— ah, there he is.]
The camera panned slowly down toward the owner of the raised hand. And the moment that hand was revealed to belong to Code 20, the comment feed surged back to life.
"Insane. Where does that audacity come from?"
[Production: Why did you volunteer to go first?]
[Code 20: Better to take the hit early, right?]
Gyeongjin held her breath and watched his evaluation unfold.
"What? That's even possible?"
He hadn't just memorized every move — his live vocals were holding steady too. His breath ran short in places, and a few notes wavered, but there wasn't a single section he simply gave up on. It lasted only a few short minutes, and yet it felt like witnessing a human being win.
There was no line to speak of in his dancing — it still had a mechanical edge — but nothing could hide just how many hundreds of times he must have repeated and drilled it. As the judges' praise rolled in one after another, Gyeongjin realized she was smiling with pride. This was the true thrill of a survival show: watching someone grow in real time.
The stages that followed only made Code 20's shine all the brighter.
[The trainee called at Code 4 is... Code 20.]
A few viewers did raise eyebrows, but the moment the evaluation criteria were made public, the doubts withered away. Plenty of others marveled instead at Code 20's ruthless precision, matching the demo video down to the last fingertip.
And so episode one settled the entire signal song debut group, and the teaser rolled.
Amid rapid-fire flashes of the signal song filming, a shocking ending appeared.
[The set descends into chaos]
Someone had collapsed — and a medic vehicle was rushing them away.
[Code **, Code **, are you all right?]
"Wh-what?"
After episode one aired, the SP began climbing at a frankly insane rate. It was nothing like the trickle that had come with the teaser's release.
The trainees talked about nothing but the broadcast all day long — how much screen time they'd gotten, whether they'd been spared the evil edit, what the comments were saying. They chattered without pause.
And me? It felt like dying and coming back to life all over again — except this time I'd been to heaven instead of the underworld.
Yes, my trash-tier dancing had been laid bare for the whole world to see, but I'd at least secured the image of a 'hardworking, growth-type trainee.'
Better yet, people were talking about Yiyul's 'teacher role,' and the reactions leaned overwhelmingly positive.
Maybe that was why. Even the Danger Level had shifted, if only slightly.
86%▼1%
'I can push it down even further today.'
If I could just get through the Round 3 stage cleanly, it was entirely within reach.
I knew perfectly well how punishing the survival show schedule was. What I hadn't anticipated was them running the Round 3 evaluation within hours of episode one airing.
"Hello, everyone — I'm Kang Sejun, MC of Boys Code."
This time Seongjun appeared in a three-piece suit, and I gave him a mental thumbs-up for the professionalism.
"Did you all enjoy episode one?"
"Yes!"
"Since episode one aired, we've been able to confirm Boys Code's buzz across a truly wide range of metrics."
Flashy graphics bloomed to life behind him.
They built all of that in a single day?
"First — a 1.2 percent viewership rating."
Gasps rippled through the trainees.
"On cable, where anything over 1 percent is already hailed as a triumph, our very first episode posted C-Net's highest rating of the first half of the year."
"Whoa—"
"Next: first place on every variety-show buzz index. The trainees' friendship and growth are being praised for striking a chord with viewers."
They really pumped this thing full of hype.
The atmosphere was unmistakably better than before the regression. The biggest difference between then and now was...
'Yiyul's styling change, wasn't it?'
Ever since the profiles had dropped, reactions to Kang Yiyul had poured in unlike anyone else's. Plenty of viewers had fallen head over heels for that mussel-black hair of his — and I couldn't help feeling proud on his behalf.
"And today."
Seongjun's voice dropped lower.
"The final gate of the agency's internal evaluation — the Round 3 assessment — begins now."
The lighthearted mood thickened back into tension in an instant.
"...Hoo."
You could hear the trainees drawing their breath.
"And with today's evaluation."
Seongjun paused. He swept his gaze across the trainees one last time, then spoke.
"The first eliminations will occur."
"...Ah."
"Already...?"
The air grew heavy on the spot. From here on out, this was a real survival.
"The number of eliminations is—"
A figure flickered up onto the electric board, climbing rapidly before falling back down. Then it stopped.
"Two trainees."
Every face in the room hardened.
"One will come from the lowest-ranked team—"
"And the other will be selected regardless of team results, as the trainee who showed the most lacking performance."
"Gasp..."
It meant piggybacking on a strong team wouldn't be tolerated, either.
"Then, let the Round 3 evaluation begin!"
The lights came up, and the judges' panel revealed itself.
"There are two judging criteria today."
Seongjun raised an index finger.
"How freshly you've reinterpreted the original song."
Then one more finger.
"And how completely you've mastered your own position."
The judges' eyes were razor-sharp.
'Because today is the day they cut people.'
"Now then — first up, the team that chose 'Bloom.' Please take the stage."
"Fighting!"
The trainees rooting for Choi Woonjo and Go Jaeseong's entourage shouted themselves hoarse, and Woonjo waved both arms in answer.
"Team introduction, please!"
"Yes!"
'Don't tell me they're reusing last round's name?'
"Hello, we are—"
At Woonjo's call, the team members spread both hands wide and slowly swept them out to their sides — a dead ringer for that flower-shaped dance from the idol song that had trended a while back.
"Mangaewha!"
Perhaps because last round's name had been so terrible, this time even the judges nodded along.
"Oh — did you combine man, ten thousand, with gaehwa, bloom?"
"Yes! I learned the word man for the first time this round!"
"Figured as much."
"It was fun that it works as both 'ten thousand blossoms' and 'full bloom'!"
The judges let out a short, impressed oh.
"Then — the stage of Team Mangaewha. Let's begin. Code On."
With the opening of the stage, a clear, crystalline geomungo note rang out.
Twaaang—
Shyly offered
beneath the moonlight
your two cheeks
bloom crimson
Unlike the original, it was a Korean-inspired concept built around folding fans, and the costumes adapted from traditional po overcoats felt fresh as well.
And then Go Jaeseong stepped out as center and performed 'that move.' The cameras tracked him position by position — the producers clearly intended to give it proper coverage in the broadcast, too.
'That should have been Yiyul's.'
I gritted my teeth.
'If you're going to steal it, at least do it properly!'
Even with Jaeseong mid-performance, my mind kept circling back to Kang Yiyul's legendary part from before the regression.
'Think about it. With that styling sitting on his head right now, that part would have swept up every last fan out there...'
But the worry melted away the moment I looked up and met Yiyul's face in the wings.
A face that stood out even in the darkness of the holding area.
'That's right.'
We had the best killing part of all waiting for us.