The Shot That Shook Everything
I, too, had staked everything on today’s audition and had even prepared a special outfit for it. The look I’d chosen was a black suit paired with flat shoes and a hat draped in a black veil—an austere, immaculate ensemble that matched the song’s solemn mood. I thought it was a solid choice. By hiding my body in something so modest and composed, I could conceal the fact that my weight had dropped well below average thanks to my eating disorder. Being underweight was still preferable to looking bloated, but even I had to admit my current state was objectively alarming. Of course, that gaunt, fragile appearance happened to suit the song’s atmosphere perfectly.
The outfit wasn’t mine. Na Yeri’s wardrobe consisted only of leggings, tracksuits, a few pairs of jeans, plain white T-shirts, and one dress for going out. There had never been room in the budget for anything fancier. Idol stage costumes were often one-time affairs anyway; even for the same song and concept, it was standard to wear something new for every music show, and repeats were extremely rare. Purple Swan, formerly under Cha Entertainment, had worn countless outfits across six years of promotions, all of which were now stored in a warehouse. For important evaluations like the semi-annual or annual assessments, the company would lend those stored costumes to trainees without question. This time, I had asked for the same favor.
Honestly, I would have preferred to show up in my usual tracksuit and let the song’s mood fend for itself, but if I failed because of that, the regret would gnaw at me for days. So, inconvenient as it was, I decided to do everything I could. I marched straight to the person in charge and asked to borrow an outfit.
Choi Hye-na, the former Purple Swan member who now worked at the company as both director and stylist, stared at me for a moment with open curiosity. It was rare enough for trainees to request costumes, but it was apparently unheard of for someone to show up days before a stage and demand one so brazenly—especially when that someone was me. Given my social withdrawal, the fact that I had gone out of my way to ask must have been particularly surprising. Still, after a brief look of astonishment, she simply found the outfit I wanted and even altered it to fit, all while scolding me at length about how I had gotten so thin.
“These unnies are nice people, but their nagging…”
I suspected that excessive meddling was simply a passive skill that came with being a good person.
“Next… Yeri!”
“Yes.”
While I had been lost in thought, my turn had arrived. Huh. I was actually a little nervous. Maybe because the setting was unfamiliar? I had never once felt tension even when facing dozens of those “X-like bastards.” Feeling anxious over something like this was oddly unsettling.
If today’s stage marked the end of my time with Cha Entertainment, my plan to recover my body quickly and check on “the most important matter” would be delayed. I would have to earn living expenses instead of focusing on recovery. Still, it wouldn’t be a catastrophic derailment. It would be annoying and exhausting, but I had already lived through something similar in the first timeline, so taking a longer route wasn’t the end of the world. Repaying the people at Cha Entertainment who had helped me could wait until I was properly established. Reminding myself several times that failing to make the debut lineup wouldn’t result in my head being blown off, I steadied my nerves and stepped onto the stage with confidence.
After the debut-group audition concluded, Cha Entertainment staff gathered in the conference room to begin selecting the next debut lineup. Choosing the debut members was a matter of the company’s future, and every employee present treated it with the utmost seriousness.
“This is… what kind of bolt from the blue is this?”
The atmosphere was far from pleasant. A tip that had surfaced a few days earlier had put their carefully crafted Plan A in danger of complete collapse.
“Have you confirmed it?”
“Yes, Representative. It appears to be a file uploaded by one of the trainees.”
“You couldn’t identify who?”
“Well… when we looked into it, the number of trainees who held grievances against those three was simply too high.”
“Which means… this is more or less common knowledge among the trainees.”
“Yes.”
Although it had been called a debut-group audition, today’s event had really only been a confirmation round. The outline of the debut lineup had already been decided based on months of evaluations. That was only natural. After assessing the trainees nearly every month, it would have been unreasonable to let a single stage overturn everything. So what exactly had today’s audition been meant to confirm? Nerve and composure—whether the trainees could still perform at their best even under the extreme pressure of debut selection. Of course, if someone had completely botched their stage, the lineup could have changed, but the company had expected such cases to be extremely rare.
In the end, the audition was little more than a formality with the debut group already chosen in advance. The other trainees were essentially serving as extras, but that was simply how the industry worked. Competition here had never had much to do with fairness or equality. Even a trainee-friendly company like Cha Entertainment could not completely escape the logic of efficiency and capital. The most the company could offer was to release the remaining trainees without restriction or introduce them to other agencies that might suit them. Doing even that much was enough to avoid being called heartless, and Cha Entertainment was known for being more reliable in that regard than most.
Given the situation, having Plan A—which had been prepared right before this largely ceremonial audition—fall apart was a devastating blow. If the debut lineup changed, the entire concept, debut schedule, and activity direction that had already been mapped out would be rendered meaningless. No one knew exactly how this would end, but one thing was clear: the single small shot fired by Na Yeri had thrown the entire company into chaos.
“Why don’t we just push forward anyway? The fact that none of the company staff knew about this means they at least knew how to keep it out of sight and mind, doesn’t it?”
It was a reasonable suggestion. In the entertainment industry, perception was everything. As long as nothing became public, a personality issue of this level wasn’t particularly serious. If anything, it was rarer for a talented artist to possess both skill and flawless character. In that sense, the fact that the company staff had failed to notice the issue beforehand was almost a positive—it meant the three of them were at least clever enough to care about how they appeared to others. From an outside perspective, the chances of the personality problems surfacing were low. Internal friction was something the company could manage, and carrying on while keeping things moderately hidden was, in many ways, the normal state of affairs. It was understandable that some staff members thought this was preferable to changing the lineup at the last minute and inviting trouble.
“No. Have you forgotten how Black Dust fell apart?”
“…That’s true.”
But that logic only applied to ordinary cases, and Cha Entertainment’s position was different. They had already experienced Black Dust’s disintegration due to internal conflict. The same kind of problem had existed back then, and they had debuted the group with the confidence that they could smooth things over internally. They had done everything they could to resolve the members’ conflicts. The result had been a spectacular failure. Black Dust, which had been doing well, had self-destructed within a year of debut because of team discord. Having learned that painful lesson, Representative Cha had no intention of repeating the mistake. In fact, the current situation might even be considered a fortunate pretext—because Representative Cha had been thinking along slightly different lines for some time.
“Conflicts that have built up over years of trainee life don’t simply disappear just because you debut. We confirmed that clearly with Black Dust, so I’d rather not discuss it further.”
“Then Minji, Seong-ah, and Hye-won…”
“They’re excluded from the debut lineup.”
“If we do that, we may have to redesign the entire debut group from scratch. Those three were supposed to be the core of the next lineup.”
“Good grief… If we redesign the debut group…”
“Everything goes out the window? We might have to start over completely…”
“That’s exactly why today’s meeting matters. Try to recommend a next debut lineup that stays as close as possible to the original plan.”
As soon as Representative Cha finished speaking, staff members began suggesting trainees. Every senior employee at Cha Entertainment knew the trainees’ abilities and characteristics well enough from the evaluations, so the reasons they gave for including certain trainees were solid.
“Something feels off.”
“Since the members have changed, shouldn’t the concept change as well?”
“That’s obvious, but even just looking at the combination, it feels a bit awkward.”
The next Cha Entertainment idol group was planned to have seven members. After removing the three problematic trainees and adding three more recommended by the staff to the remaining four, they laid out the seven profiles and examined them. The result was still an awkward lineup. That was inevitable. The three levitation members had been the core of the planned debut group because their individual charms and strengths were undeniable. If any replacement had been more appealing than them, they would have been included from the beginning. If they debuted with this lineup as it was, it would at best be a watered-down version of the original concept.
“This won’t do. We’re scrapping the existing debut group and starting over with a new composition.”
Even though Representative Cha had just declared that the meticulously crafted debut plan would be completely discarded, none of the staff could object. They, too, could see that debuting with that combination would lead nowhere. Objectively speaking, it wasn’t bad—but compared to the original Plan A, which had been the perfected version of that combination, it simply didn’t feel satisfying. In cases like this, the outcome was likely to remain somewhat lackluster. If the company poured everything into promoting them, they might achieve some results, but the group would fall far short of the standards expected from Cha Entertainment, the agency that had risen to mid-tier prominence with Purple Swan’s success. Even Black Dust, despite its eventual explosion, had been truly impressive right after debut. Debuting such an awkward team at such a critical moment was simply unthinkable.