To: Rival
Kim Yo-han and Lee Won-yeong wore lukewarm expressions as they studied the five placards: Lover, Friend, Rival, Fan, Idol.
"Hard to say what any of that actually means…"
"Hmm. Love songs, friendship songs, something like that?"
Nam Hye-seong, who had been wearing the same puzzled look, finally spoke up.
"If we each pick one of five, that means two teams per placard, right?"
"Probably. Rival matches, don't you think?"
If their guess was right, each theme would pit a winner against a loser.
"Is there a team we should avoid competing with?"
"It's hard to single out just one, but I'd rather face one of the other three teams if I can help it…"
Kim Jin-su shook his head. Honest, at least. I felt much the same. We would have to compete against someone, but I wanted to avoid facing Kwon Do-ha, Lee Jae-jin, Song A-seong, or Han Sang-jin if at all possible.
Friendship was part of it, sure—but smaller gaps in raw stats were always better. Kwon Do-ha and Lee Jae-jin especially were walking cheat codes; I had no desire to meet them as the opposing team.
The comparisons would be automatic.
While the others were talking fairly freely, the usually quiet Yu Sang-hyeon opened his mouth.
"How about deciding the theme first? I'm fine with anything as long as it isn't the first two."
Lover and Friend. The material was so familiar that whatever we staged would probably look like something everyone had already seen a hundred times. Lee Won-yeong spoke next.
"I want Fan. Fan would be good."
More decisive than I had expected. I nodded.
"If no one else has a strong preference, we'll put Fan at the top of the list. Anyone want something different?"
"I don't think Idol would be bad either."
Nam Hye-seong spoke, and Kim Yo-han followed right after.
"I can't picture the exact concept yet, but if it's going to be a rival match anyway, going all-out head-to-head might not be so bad. What about Rival?"
Another unexpectedly fiery answer.
"Shall we take a vote, then?"
There was no guarantee we would get what we wanted, but knowing the order of preference was still useful, so we voted.
Rival four votes, Fan three, Idol three.
Won-yeong, Go Ju-ha, and I had chosen Fan; Nam Hye-seong, Yu Sang-hyeon, and Kim Jin-su had chosen Idol; Kim Yo-han and the three Silver trainees had chosen Rival.
"We'll aim for them in that order. Be right back."
Before long the team leaders were being called, and I walked out onto the central stage where the set had been prepared. Last time they had made us draw lots for members; this time it was colored balls. I watched the ping-pong balls bounce around inside the machine, then turned the crank. Leave it to a survival show to make everything a gacha game.
"All right, contestant Lee Han-hee draws. Ah, a black ball. Number three!"
There were ten balls in total: five numbered one through five, and five blank. Only a numbered ball let you choose a theme, and luckily I had drawn one.
I glanced at the other team that had also drawn a black ball. The performance-oriented group led by An Do-hyeon, from the looks of it.
At least it wasn't one of the five teams I really wanted to avoid. Small mercies.
Lee Jae-jin, who had drawn the yellow ball marked 1, claimed Idol. Han Sang-jin, with the green ball marked 2, took Fan. That left Rival, Lover, and Friend.
I chose Rival without hesitation. An Do-hyeon broke into a bright smile; clearly he had wanted this theme as well.
When it came to pure dance, An Do-hyeon's team sat a full tier above ours. With An Do-hyeon himself at Dance 89 and the rest of their stats clustered around dance, the whole group felt like a performance unit.
Vocals, on the other hand, belonged to us by a wide margin. On the surface it looked like a textbook "dance versus vocals" rival match.
"Do well out there."
"Looking forward to it."
He held out a fist; I bumped it lightly. By then the assignments were finished.
"From this point on, rankings will be determined by individual votes. However, the team that wins its theme matchup will receive bonus points in the final tally."
The MC explained that the head-to-head result within each theme would add a certain amount to every member of the winning team, then moved on to the themes themselves.
"On the day of the live performances there will be six rounds of on-site voting. Five of those will decide the winner of each theme; the sixth will select the team the audience thinks performed best overall. The team that takes first place in that final vote will receive a special benefit, so please give it everything you've got."
In other words, there would be theme winners and an overall first-place team. The MC mentioned the existence of a benefit but never said what it was, then immediately continued.
"Think of each theme as a letter addressed To someone. To a lover, to a friend, to a rival, to a fan, to an idol! Craft a stage that feels like a letter written to that person!"
After a few more logistical notes, MC Cheon Tae-rim wished the contestants luck with his usual sunny smile and wrapped the segment.
I returned to my teammates, who were looking a little dejected. An idol group lived and died by what the camera could see—by performance—so they had already decided our odds against An Do-hyeon's team were slim.
I had no intention of letting this devolve into a simple singing-versus-dancing showdown. If that had been the plan, I would never have filled the Silver slots with dancers whose stats leaned so heavily into dance in the first place.
We needed a stage that satisfied both the eyes and the ears. That meant there was no time to sit around looking gloomy.
"Shall we start the meeting right away?"
If it wasn't possible, we would make it possible. Maybe it was the thought of working them without mercy, but a smile rose to my face on its own.
Once we had moved to the practice room, the team settled in for a proper brainstorming session. Song selection came first.
"I'd like to start narrowing down candidates. Anyone have a good idea?"
"Hmm…"
I was wearing the team-leader hat; if only my opinions ever got adopted, people would eventually call me a dictator. So I had no plan to push hard from the start. While I waited for the others to speak, I sketched a concrete concept and arrangement direction in my head. The only question was when to bring it out.
"A letter to a rival… that's kind of abstract. What kind of song even fits?"
Nam Hye-seong tilted his head. The production staff had handed us a selection list of nearly a hundred tracks for this team mission, so no one was eager to commit. Still, dragging our feet here would do us no favors.
I met each person's eyes one by one until the ones who had been waiting for someone else to speak finally opened their mouths.
"We should just pick something fast, divide the parts, and start practicing…"
"Since the theme is Rival, maybe a song with a fast beat would be better…? Something straightforward—like, if you come at me, I'll smash you flat…"
Kim Jin-su and Go Ju-ha sounded less than confident, but the Silver trainees who were strong dancers chimed in agreement.
"Yeah, if it's Rival, a driving dance track feels like the natural fit."
"How about this one? The seniors from Twelve—Capture. Everyone knows it, right?"
"Of course. Anyone who dances has covered it at least once."
Capture, the title track from the boy group Twelve's third mini album, was an older song. The repeated hook lyric "I'll take you down" could be used to strong effect; the Silver trainees looked excited just thinking about it. That was when Yu Sang-hyeon cut in, his voice completely level.
"Capture is famous for how hard the choreography is. Are you all sure you can handle it?"
The Bronze trainees glanced around, but the Silver trainees nodded. Dance stats in the mid-eighties tended to breed that kind of confidence.
"It might be tough, but if the stage can look good, we just have to make it work. We didn't come here to play around. Hard work should be enough, right?"
Choi An-seong's textbook "effort solves everything" answer drew a calm reply from Yu Sang-hyeon.
"Even effort needs time. Realistically, two weeks of prep isn't enough to master choreography this hard. A few of us might manage, but more than half the team won't keep up. We'll end up having to simplify the difficulty, and once we do that the song itself starts looking half-baked, doesn't it?"
He was right. Outside of me and the Silver trainees, most of the team's Dance stats were quite low. A stage like that would look unbalanced no matter how you cut it; difficulty adjustments would be unavoidable.
Capture had the clear advantage of looking spectacular, but its musical impact was weak. Kill the dance and you were left with a song that was neither here nor there. Yu Sang-hyeon's point landed.
He really does seem like a different person.
Hard to believe this was the same guy who had once teared up insisting that effort never changed anything. He grew fast, in every sense.
"…Why are you deciding it won't work without even trying?"
"Because once we've already started and regret it, there's no going back. We have to be careful from the beginning."
Yu Sang-hyeon's almost awakened intensity made several of the others nod. Capture had a notorious reputation among idol fans for its brutal choreography. On top of that, the moves never let the body settle long enough to sing properly; the song was widely considered impossible to perform live.
It might have looked fine in the imagination, but I doubted Capture would be a perfect choice once it hit a real stage. Sensing the shift in mood, the Silver trainee who had proposed it—Choi An-seong—spoke again.
"Okay, not Capture. Do you have something in mind, Yu Sang-hyeon?"
"I do. To Myself."
"…A ballad?"
To Myself was a ballad by the male soloist An Min. It had a decent sense of rhythm, but it was not the kind of track usually chosen for an idol-group survival mission. The moment I heard the title, though, I knew.
This is it.
The others made no effort to hide their shock. Male soloist. Ballad. For a survival-show idol-group mission, the pick was nothing short of radical.
"Ballad or not, the lyrics are about talking to yourself. That's pretty far from 'rival,' isn't it?"
"We just tweak it a little. Meaning is whatever we decide to give it."
"I can at least picture Capture. I can't picture a stage for To Myself at all."
"Same here… Why this song specifically?"
"…"
Faced with questions about his radical ballad choice, Yu Sang-hyeon closed his mouth. When he seemed unable to find the words, I stepped in.
"I think To Myself is fine. No—I think it's good."
"Huh?"
Sudden interjection. A ring of widened eyes stared at me. I spoke as clearly and quickly as I could, building trust by refusing to give them time to second-guess.
"We're doing this one. Concept is a ball—a masquerade. We'll mix in a musical feel."
"A musical?"
"A ball?"
"Yes. Short theatrical staging at the beginning and the end. Like a play."
While they were still reeling from the word musical, I pushed the ideas I had already prepared. The more specifically I described the set pieces, the costumes, the overall atmosphere, the more their faces began to light up.
By the time I finished speaking to a circle of bright, focused eyes, Kim Yo-han had thrown an arm around my shoulders.
"So you had a plan all along, huh?"
"Well. Let's just say I did a little advance thinking."
The same Kim Yo-han who had been fretting and shooting anxious glances at the bruise his elbow had left on my cheek during the mafia game was now casually draping himself over me and joking around. I played along without protest.
"I love it! Hyung, you're a genius!"
I high-fived the excited Nam Hye-seong as well, secured unanimous agreement, and then hurried off. From here on out we were going to be extremely busy.
It was only later that I realized Lee Won-yeong had been watching my back with a complicated look in his eyes.