Knocking on Heaven's Door

After sleeping like the dead for two straight days, I woke up and checked my status window while chewing on cereal. In that short span, Song and Dance had each gone up by one.

I figured Song was about due for a bump, but Dance went up too?

A successful stage at the competition handed out a lot of experience, and the results must have been better than I'd expected. One more point in Song and I'd meet the debut requirements—at least for the previous version of the system—which meant I could dodge any serious skill controversy for a while.

So, hospital today, then maybe the university district this afternoon.

I'd been neglecting the hospital visits while I was locked in on the audition, but everyone had been understanding. It must have looked like a critical stretch of my life, because they'd told me to come whenever I could free up a little time. I messaged the coordinator to ask if today worked, and the OK came back right away. By twelve-thirty.

It's only eight now.

Two solid nights of sleep had me up early, and the short-term lessons I'd booked were finished, so I had plenty of room before the hospital. I stretched while I thought about what to do with the free time, then washed thoroughly and went to get dressed—only for my gaze to snag on the closet.

I'd never been the type to fuss over clothes, but even so, the selection was looking a little too thin. I stared at the closet, small as it was and still somehow half empty, and did the math on what was left in my account. I was going to need to buy some clothes.

I really have been living in nothing but padding jackets.

Comfortable or not, Lee Jae-jin had a point—it was April already, and I needed a new outer layer. I threw on something decent, grabbed a mask and a hat, and headed for the department store.

After debating what would hide my face best, I bought a roomy hooded zip-up and pulled the oversized hood over my head. Mask plus hood made me feel like a criminal, but there wasn't much choice. Dodging the glances that snagged on me anyway, I walked quickly to pick up gifts. I always ended up eating what they gave me at the hospital, so this time I was bringing something to share.

I arrived with both arms full and locked eyes with Hye-ji, who was wearing a sulky little face.

"Hye-ji, how have you been?"

"Hmph."

She spun her head away as if she were properly offended. Her lower lip jutted out. Was she upset that I hadn't come often enough?

"You're not happy to see me after all this time?"

"…"

She shot me a prim little glance, then turned her small body away and sat in the corner, which only made her feel farther out of reach. The audition prep had cut my visits down, sure, but we'd been seeing each other for over two months.

"I had something important going on."

"…Something important?"

"Yeah. ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Do you watch TV, Hye-ji?"

"TV… I watch with Mom."

"Then later you might get to see Oppa on TV, huh?"

"Hani Oppa's going to be on TV? When?"

The second I mentioned television, whatever sulk she'd been nursing vanished. She came over with her eyes round as saucers, and I scooped her up at once. I meant to set the kid who'd planted herself in the corner right down among her friends, but a small hand latched onto my arm.

"No. Keep holding me."

"Then I can't sing. You don't want to hear a song, Hye-ji?"

"…I do."

At first, when the kids dug their heels in, I'd had no idea what to do with them. Now I was used to it and could handle them without breaking a sweat.

"How about this one—Cherry Blossoms of April?"

The weather had been so inconsistent that the capital region still hadn't managed to push out any buds, but April had arrived all the same, so I picked a song that felt like classic spring. Songs with a strong seasonal flavor tend to stick in the memory long after the years pass. You let them go quiet when the season changes, then find yourself hunting them down again the moment it returns. Maybe it's because they're packed with a feeling you can only get in that particular time of year—the memories clinging to them don't fade easily either.

It was a bright, fresh song about love, written with lyrics that made your chest flutter more than most. I pushed the hood back and lowered the mask so I could sing comfortably, and the kids came into clear view, clustered together on the floor.

Several of them nodded hard in time with the beat, and I barely managed to keep from laughing out loud. They were almost too cute for words.

They bobbed their heads up and down, swayed side to side, riding the rhythm while I ran through a few more songs, then I picked strawberries out of the snacks I'd brought and shared them around. That was when a strawberry stabbed onto a kid-sized fork suddenly appeared in front of my mouth.

Choi Yu-ri, ten years old. I remembered her keeping her distance at first, but now she was staring at me with the fork in her hand, clearly telling me to hurry up and eat. When had we gotten this close? Happy about it, I took her hand and popped the strawberry into my mouth, then held a smaller piece up to her little mouth. ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠She accepted it with a soft little bite.

"You're eating so well, Yu-ri. Are the strawberries good?"

"Yeah. I like strawberries."

"Give Hye-ji some too."

"And Min-ah…"

I ferried strawberries to one open mouth after another—like a nest of baby birds—and before I knew it, it was time to go. Strange how time always seemed to move faster the moment I set foot in this place.

I waved goodbye with roughly the same reluctance the kids were showing, left the hospital, and headed for the university district. On the way I stopped home to grab the acoustic guitar. The case pressed uncomfortably into my shoulder, but I carried it anyway.

I ducked into a shop to restring it, tuned it, and cleaned up the body. This weathered acoustic had been a prop my mother once used in a play, or so I'd been told. She'd been so passionate she'd learned to play whatever the role required herself.

Everything I knew about her was secondhand, so I had no real sense of who she'd actually been—but attachment still clung to the things she'd left behind. At least, it used to.

I thought I'd thrown all of that away—attachment and everything with it.

The fact that it kept pulling at me said otherwise. Feeling the need to settle this before the program properly began made me wonder if the expectations I'd held for her, and the disappointment that followed, had been bigger than I wanted to admit.

I set up a little ways from where I usually busked, near the small theater where my mother had performed often when she was young. I sat on a rest stop with a clear view of the theater and took out the guitar. Today's performance didn't need an audience, so there was no mic and no amp.

Come to think of it, this body had learned the guitar too—the fretting on my left hand felt natural. Another sign that the family situation here wasn't so different.

I brushed a hand over the body, thinking about what to play, then loosened up with Knocking on Heaven's Door, a song I'd listened to ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠a lot while practicing. I'd played this one plenty of times myself.

As the program went on and the episodes aired, my name and face would be exposed more and more to the public. Just as I'd told the kids today, I was going to become someone who appeared on TV—and if I followed the path the system was laying out, that outcome was inevitable.

I still didn't know why I'd been chosen, but separate from the system's intentions or goals, I found myself curious about the end of that road too.

How far could a life that had already collapsed once climb back up?

And two days later, at four in the afternoon on April 5th, the second-round audition results arrived—along with the dorm schedule.

"Thank you for your hard work!"

"Thank you. You worked hard too."

Inside the studio, people were scattered everywhere waiting for their turn. A photographer who had been snapping nonstop adjusted the camera height to match the next contestant.

Fourteen? Fifteen? Either way, the contestant looked young, with baby fat still filling out their cheeks.

Middle school, probably.

The youth hit hard. Almost everyone they'd photographed so far had been late teens to early twenties.

Given the show's purpose, KCOM clearly wanted finished products they could debut the moment the program ended—not trainees they would have to invest years in raising—so that age was probably the hard floor.

Hard to think of them as competition when they look that young, but still.

Anyone who had cleared two rounds of auditions wasn't going to be lacking in skill just because they were little.

Roughly two hundred to one, right?

Five days in Seoul, two in Busan. Based on the tests I'd sat through, they'd taken a hundred people per session for a total of seven hundred—and the actual judging hadn't taken long at all.

The last day of auditions had been April 4th. By four the next afternoon, April 5th, schedule emails had already gone out to the hundred second-round passers. In effect, more than twenty thousand people had been cut down to a hundred in six days.

At that speed, they must have been scoring the second round on the spot each day.

And after one free day, it was April 7th—move-in day. Before the dorm life began in earnest, the accepted contestants had gathered to shoot profile photos. Another schedule that had started before dawn.

KCOM, K-plus… living up to the names they carry, I guess—pushing the "hurry up and squeeze every drop out of it" mindset to the absolute limit…

I hadn't loved that the first and second rounds had been held on the same day, but I'd more or less made my peace with it by now.

They're not just grinding the contestants. They're grinding themselves too.

Honestly, between the judging process itself and a dorm schedule locked in this fast, I never saw it coming. For the staff and for some of the contestants, it must have been the kind of pace that set your teeth on edge just trying to keep up.

For me, though, the speed was pretty good. With a mission on the line, the faster things moved, the better.

I glanced at my phone. Ever since the guide mission finished, the system had been stuck on an update screen.

"I'll fix your hair for a moment."

"Ah—thank you."

I'd walked in, gotten makeup, had my hair set, and then waited. I was sitting a little farther off in the corner, away from the hot lights, when a stylist appeared at my side without my noticing. Busy hands reshaped my hair again. I must have been fiddling with it without realizing.

I'd gone with whatever the stylists recommended—they'd tossed around terms like guile cut and dandy cut—but nothing had changed all that dramatically; my neck just felt a little freer. Simple is best, or so they said. They'd shaped it with a curling iron, which was novel enough that I kept touching it.

I caught myself reaching for my bangs again and met the eyes of the person still fixing my hair. Their expression was stern, so I gave a small smile and looked away, then rubbed the back of my neck with a hand that had nowhere ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠else to go.

This is awkward.

I'd never been this thoroughly done up for a photo shoot before, and my hands refused to stay still.

This studio was the loose-fit knit group. There was also a white shirt and jeans group, and an all-black suit group; they were splitting the shoots by age and body type. Thanks to that, the studio wasn't as packed as it could have been.

Thirty people? Thirty-one?

The knit group seemed to cover a wider range of ages, and every so often I spotted another contestant who looked as young as middle school, like the one earlier.

Then again, a suit would be a hard look for a middle schooler to pull off. The younger ones had probably been funneled into jeans or knits.

Still—when they said profile photos, I figured it'd be like ID pictures. Same clothes, assembly-line treatment.

Instead they were doing one-on-one work, paying attention to hair and makeup, and even within the same group the variations were significant. Being in the knit group didn't mean everyone wore the same knit—there were structured ones, thin knit cardigans, hooded knits, all kinds. The other groups were probably the same.

Enough cohesion to feel like a set, but when you look closer, every one of them feels different?

The care they were putting into the shoot was a little unexpected. Nothing about the earlier stages had suggested this level of attention.

So now they're willing to spend some money?

Unlike the first and second rounds, several cameras were filming the photo shoot itself, which was also new. The waiting area had more unmanned cameras, but the side actually capturing the profile shots had a director on site. Probably material for behind-the-scenes later.

All in all, it was a completely different standard of treatment and environment from the first round, when they hadn't seemed to care about anything at all.

I could understand it to a point. National audition or not, the important title was "one of a hundred chosen from twenty thousand." Showing every single person who didn't make it would have been meaningless.

They're cutting the front end extremely short and planning to start pulling real runtime from here on out.

Either way, the goal was to build an idol group. There was no reason to spread attention across too many other people. The first and second round footage would probably air as short introductory segments—though that wouldn't be true anymore after this.

I didn't know when the profile photos would go up, but I needed to take the shoot seriously. A photograph could hold more than people expected, and it could become a critical point in building an image.

It felt like the start of an observational variety show.