Charm Goes to Work
“Ah, I wish it’d been a hoodie. That’s a shame.”
A boy who looked about middle-school age was speaking in front of an unmanned camera. The way he opened up about how much he liked hoodies and sweatshirts made him look even younger.
He said that, but the knit he was wearing now was soft and fluffy and suited him so well that once this aired, plenty of people were going to coo over him.
I watched the middle schooler chatter on about himself in front of the camera for a while, then turned my eyes toward the shooting floor. Locking in a little bit of screen time like that from the start wasn’t a bad idea, but figuring out how I should take my own photos felt more urgent.
I can’t find anyone useful to reference.
The contestant who’d just gone through had left no impact. He’d done fine—which, put another way, meant he’d been ordinary. He’d used flower branches well enough, but the concept overlapped with so many others that it felt disappointing. The people watching had only given the mildest of reactions.
But the moment the next turn started, muted gasps broke out from people on set all at once. I was no exception. Someone extraordinary had stepped up.
“Whoa, is he a model?”
“I feel like I’ve seen him somewhere….”
The contestant who’d just entered the frame looked a little older than the ones before him.
Early to mid-twenties? He was lean and tall like a model, and the combination of hair styled to look damp, clean cotton trousers, and a thin, loose knit shirt was stunning.
It felt less like an amateur posing and more like a professional shooting for a magazine. His eyes were different.
“Ugh… that looks kinda sexy!”
The middle schooler still standing in front of the camera covered his eyes in a theatrical gesture and called out.
The pose—half reclined on a sofa, collarbones and bare feet on display—did leave skin showing, but it didn’t feel sexy. It was closer to the best a man that age could do with a loose-fit knit.
Just masculine enough, with a clear point of appeal: a mature kind of cool. Reducing it to “sexy” sold the atmosphere short. At the very least, he was the most impactful contestant shot so far.
But he did throw the word “sexy” straight at the camera….
Sexy was a concept that sold, no question—but it wasn’t a great first impression to plant. He’d said it like a joke, yet the remarks that followed didn’t sound entirely positive either.
“I don’t think I could pull that off. It feels like something that comes out of experience…?”
The way he stretched the words, all coy and envious, was skillful. He seemed to be flipping his youth into a selling point.
He should watch what he says.
Being young wasn’t a free pass to chip away at another contestant’s image. Calling the guy impressive would have been enough—tacking on unnecessary commentary that steered people toward a weird take wasn’t a pleasant habit.
Calling him out felt like overkill, and leaving it alone left a sour taste, so the words slipped out before I could stop them.
“He looks cool, though.”
“He looks cool.”
And then a firmer voice cut in, plain and clear. Unlike me, who’d muttered it from a corner a little off the set, the speaker was standing right across from the middle schooler; I could see his back.
“To my eyes, he just looks cool.”
The intent behind repeating himself was obvious—to wipe the “sexy” impression clean off the board.
Don’t run your mouth so freely. That’s what he’s saying.
Leaving the middle schooler speechless, having missed his chance to answer, the boy simply dipped his head once without adding another word and turned away. Even with the eyes of everyone nearby fixed on the back of his head, he didn’t seem to care at all.
The middle schooler left behind looked awkward, embarrassment written all over him. His whole posture screamed, I was just kidding around—did you really have to get that serious about it?
They both look young, though….
One looked like a middle schooler, the other high school age, and in that brief moment the clash of wills on set had been intense.
If I stretched the reading a little: the middle schooler had taken a jab at a guy in his twenties, the high schooler had told him to watch his mouth, and the middle schooler was now sulking like the scolding had been too much.
Was this just how survival programs worked? It wasn’t even my fight, and I was already getting dizzy.
“That outfit looks great on you! Perfect—let me pick a background.”
After that, the middle schooler held his ground in front of the camera. Whether he looked dejected or not, the shoot itself moved along smoothly.
Right after him came the high schooler’s turn. He’d been given a knit vest; paired with clean-fitting pants, it read almost like a school look.
It suited him. Uniforms were a concept that always worked.
“Ah, nice~ Stand up straight—front view~.”
Tall, with long legs, he looked like a model too.
When he looked straight into the camera and I got a closer look, his eyes were large and round; at a glance, his face was pretty enough to pass for a girl’s.
He had the kind of impression that called to mind a female idol once famous for a once-in-a-millennium beauty. Completely at odds with that blunt, no-nonsense voice from earlier, he smiled prettily the whole time they were shooting, and my only thought was that once those photos dropped, people were going to fall for him in droves.
For his age, he had no shyness at all. Middle and high school boys usually tried desperately to look cool in photos—there was none of that here. He simply knew his face was pretty, and he knew exactly how to make that work as charm. In his own way, he was a pro too.
“Yes, great~ That’s a wrap!”
“Thank you for taking such good photos!”
I stared hard at the high schooler as he bowed to the clearly satisfied photographer and stepped out.
Between someone who tore others down for their own image and someone who risked his own image to say the right thing, I liked the second kind better.
UR grades aren’t exactly common…?
Even following that model-like contestant, he hadn’t looked out of place—his looks had already felt out of the ordinary—and then the status window put up a Charm-specialized UR. On top of that, a Vocal score of 87 at his age. In the Beginning version of the game, that was a solid debut-tier range.
And with the specialty of a rap position on top of it….
Barring something extreme, he was going to place and debut. Prejudice or not, the personality of a guy who said what needed saying suited a rapper pretty well.
Anyway—Lee Jae-jin, and now Song A-seong. I’d already seen two URs that had been rare even in the game. Were there more of them here? If this was the competition, the debut cut might sit higher than I’d thought.
“Next, please get ready.”
Right. Focus.
I shook the thoughts off quickly. Today was profile photos, a brief interview, and an entrance ceremony. With that much on the schedule, zoning out was a bad idea.
“Thank you for having me.”
Feeling the heat of the lights, I stepped in front of the camera.
It was time for my Charm stat to go to work.
Even with the roster split up, shooting more than thirty people meant the photographer couldn’t spare each of us that much time or that many cuts. Even so, I could feel that she was doing everything she could to get a good shot in the short window she had.
For contestants who looked awkward in front of a camera, she offered reference poses; she also corrected posture and eye lines as she went, pulling out the best frames she could.
There’s even a banana.
One side of the studio was stacked with props prepared for the shoot—fruit and flowers of every kind. A lot of them had already been used.
Someone sat at a desk with an apple balanced on their head; someone else lay on a bed pretending to eat grapes. Others cradled flowers for a front-facing shot, or perched on a chair and leaned in as if catching a scent.
Using props seemed like a smart choice. Having something in hand made posing easier, and more color made the final image look richer.
But with everyone using props, it’s starting to feel like nobody has any individuality left.
Because the props were there, people felt they had to use at least one—and when everyone did, it became a mutual minus. The special quality disappeared.
Prop choice was free, so some contestants had grabbed several at once. The results might have come out colorful, but it didn’t seem like a good call.
The whole point of a profile photo, after all, was to sell yourself—and when the props buried the person, the person got washed out. Too many props scattered the eye.
And they overlap, too.
Even when people tried to avoid it, chosen props sometimes matched earlier ones.
The pretty ones were limited, so even if someone ahead of them had already used a piece, they couldn’t bring themselves to give up what they’d marked. And even if nothing overlapped here, there was no telling how the results would land.
If I think about the other studios being in a similar situation….
The prop I picked could still collide with people from another room. Once that thought settled in, I dropped any early urge to grab something—but with no one useful to reference, I was still stuck.
If I’d learned anything across a few stages, it was that a high Charm stat worked wonders when I needed a specific expression or atmosphere. It corrected whatever I intended so it landed exactly right—not too much, not too little.
What it didn’t do was invent a direction from nothing. Even if I wanted to coast on Charm, I still had to decide what I was aiming for.
So while I was turning over how to take the photo, that twenty-something contestant had come out and owned the mood with nothing but a sofa and his styling. It had been a good lesson.
I should have checked his name, too.
Anyone finished with the profile shoot had to move straight to interviews, so while the middle schooler and the high schooler had stolen my attention, he’d vanished before I could even open a status window.
“Looking straight ahead! Yes, good. Let’s keep switching backgrounds!”
Impressed by him more than a little, I was doing my best to make the most of the clothes and styling I’d been given. The ivory knit cardigan I was wearing was loose overall, especially in the sleeves—quite a bit bigger than the size I should have been in. An oversized fit like that was only as useful as what you did with it.
After lightly testing a few frames while we swapped backgrounds and found the right color, I sat down in the chair in earnest.
“…Yes, let’s go with this! Now hold the pose and we’ll shoot.”
The chosen background was white. I sat on a tall wooden chair in brown, pulled one leg up onto the seat, and drew it in toward my body. The loose cardigan fell around it, wrapping the shape.
I hesitated over what to do with my hands, then rested them stacked on my knee and looked at the camera—and without any further direction, the shutter started clattering. The tips of my fingers peeked out past the sleeves.
“…Gooood! Keep going.”
I glanced sympathetically at the photographer as she suddenly cleared her throat like her neck hurt. Maybe all that coaching had wrecked her voice. One round of shots passed, and just as I was about to change poses, a calmer voice came through.
“Could you stretch the right leg a little more? So we can see the top of the foot.”
At the unexpectedly lower register, I looked up and saw the photographer fixed on the camera, completely locked in. Her focus pulled me under with it. Facing forward, turning my head, brushing a hand down my face—I worked through posture and eye lines while the shutter kept going, click after click.
“Yes, that’s a wrap!”
Following her directions and praise, I kept shooting until, before I knew it, my turn was over.
“Yes! Thank you!”
At the voice calling the end, I bowed and followed the staff’s guidance straight to the space set up for interviews. The shoot had finished so fast it barely felt like I’d done anything; I was still a little dazed.
…Well, a good thing is a good thing.
I’d worried I might just sit there counting awkward seconds because I wasn’t used to the camera, but there hadn’t been time to feel any of that. Contestants hadn’t been given much time to begin with, but subjectively it hadn’t even felt like five minutes.
The photographer’s professionalism—pulling even the person in front of the lens into total focus—had been impressive. Lately I really was collecting a lot of new experiences.
More things worth remembering in a few short months of this nineteen-year-old life than in a full twenty-four years of the other one.
I guess I really did waste that life.
The thought left a faintly bitter taste.