Lee Won-yeong

On his way back to the practice room after reluctantly carving out a few minutes for some unwelcome ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠high school friends, Lee Won-yeong frowned at the university district. The crowds had swollen so thick he could barely push through.

He'd heard the area had gotten busy lately, but this was the first time he was seeing it for himself. Something about an XX University busking guy blowing up, wasn't it? He'd been too busy scraping by to care—but looking at this many people turning out, the guy must have been something else after all.

"Haa…"

A sudden tightness seized his chest. Won-yeong dragged in a stifling breath and let it out slow. Watching people thrive in this industry always set his nerves on fire.

He was twenty now. Twenty years old, and he had nothing to show for it.

No luxury left for envy. This was the end of the line.

He dragged his aching arms and legs toward the practice room, putting distance as fast as he could between himself and the singing that floated from behind. He didn't want to hear it. He already had enough trouble memorizing the choreography without cluttering his head any further.

The theme song for Idol Survival: Sunlight. He'd been assigned the first testing day, and the barely two weeks he'd been given still made him bitter—but for Won-yeong, Idol Survival was as good as his last shot. So he had practiced with his teeth clenched until they hurt.

He had worked that hard, and still managed to wreck it this thoroughly. Almost impressive, really.

"Whoa, can 2145 not hear? How do you even walk around with that face after something so humiliating?"

"Thick-skinned, that's how. If it were me, I'd have quit out of sheer pride."

Right after the first-round Sunlight audition ended, the voices cursing him and the sneering looks made Won-yeong's blood run cold. He already knew. He knew he had danced badly today.

People better than me got cut.

Listening to them mourn number 2157 while tearing into him for having the nerve to pass, Won-yeong clenched his fist—but he kept his mouth shut as if nothing were wrong. Even he had to admit his survival was a miracle. He had nothing to say for himself. That didn't mean it didn't cut deep.

"Wow, so as long as you've got a pretty face, anyone can be an idol, huh?"

That one landed hardest. If becoming an idol were really that easy, he wouldn't have felt this wretched. Won-yeong stared down at the number tag stuck to his stomach. 2145.

Quit out of pride?

If this had been a dream he could abandon over something as cheap as pride, he would have quit a long time ago. His pride had already been trampled flat more times than he could count. As long as he could debut, none of it mattered.

The first audition ended under that sour atmosphere, and the second followed immediately. Won-yeong actually felt relieved.

He figured he could make up for his poor first-round evaluation here. In the first round, dancing in a line with several others had thrown off his spacing and led to mistakes—but the second was solo. He was sure he could do far better.

And this time I get to sing, too.

Being able to dance and sing stably at the same time was a huge advantage for an idol, and Won-yeong had made it his top priority in practice. He refused to believe he was just another face trying to coast through the way the others accused him of being.

Until he slipped onstage.

Crash!

At the bridge, Won-yeong went down hard, and his mind went white. But if he stayed down, he was done. The moment he remembered the staff member who'd warned them there would be no second chances, his body jerked upright on its own.

He rose like a roly-poly doll, danced and sang to the track, then stumbled offstage and collapsed onto a nearby set of stairs, tears pouring out of him.

Of all times, it had started raining right before his turn. He'd gone up with no real way to handle it, and the stage had been impossibly slick. Far from dancing better than the first round, he'd spent so much energy just staying upright that he'd performed even worse. The rage boiling up inside him was more than he could swallow.

I practiced that hard—and this is all I get?

Keep making the same mistakes, and they stop being mistakes. They become your skill level. It was his own body—why wouldn't it listen? He hated the stubborn flesh that refused to move the way he wanted. He'd even worked out hard, hoping it might help his dancing even a little. It barely made a difference.

Was he just short on natural talent? Between dance skills that refused to improve and one blunder after another, self-loathing crashed over him like a storm.

Won-yeong pushed the familiar self-hatred back down the way he always did. Then he sat there blankly and watched the other contestants' stages.

His turn was long over; he had no reason left to stay. Anxiety still glued him to the spot. Was his fate already decided? The dark thoughts made themselves known. The sun went down. In the dim hours, buried in the dark, he watched number 3000's stage.

The moment he saw it, Won-yeong knew. That guy was going to win. A presence that seemed to change the density of the air itself. A talent that pulled every eye toward it. Something he did not have.

"…"

He couldn't put a name to the feeling that surged up in him. Jealousy? Admiration? That night, Won-yeong lay awake chewing on an emotion he couldn't even identify. When sleep still wouldn't come, he opened SNS and scrolled mindlessly—and watching "Penguin Busking, Drizzle," he realized that the number 3000 he'd seen that day was the same XX University busking guy the internet called the Penguin.

White padding jacket. Same skill. Same resonance.

Won-yeong realized the Penguin already had a sizable fanbase. Before debut. Even with his face covered.

People who are meant to blow up, blow up.

Then he watched a "Penguin One Month Ago VS Penguin One Month Later" video, and a hollow laugh slipped out. What kind of monster was this? In barely a month, the depth of his voice had changed. His sense of rhythm was on another level. Scrolling through a "Penguin Days 1–31 Summary" video, Won-yeong felt the sheer unfairness of talent.

So this is what real talent looks like. What a genius is…

It had taken him more than two years to grow this much. Someone else improved this dramatically in less than a month. That overwhelming gift twisted something inside him.

The way Won-yeong put Lee Han-hee in a tight spot at the sports festival was half impulse, half design. When he heard the event was rope climbing and Han-hee stepped up beside him, dropping his gloves had been intentional. If drawing eyes was a talent, no one had more of it than Han-hee—so he figured he might as well use it a little.

He'd meant to make things slightly awkward for him too, but it didn't land at all. Being hoisted up in a flash and meeting that face left him a little rattled. The guy was strong, too?

In truth, he barely had the bandwidth to care. From the second he saw the rope climb, his own goal had been to create a tense, barely-hanging-on moment—and then fall. At roughly six meters up, the thought of dropping made his hands shake with nerves; he clenched them tight.

His dancing was full of small mistakes, and in the second round he'd flat-out fallen. To soften the skill controversy, he needed to layer on a clumsy, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠scatterbrained image even offstage—and this was the best place to paint that picture.

Falling completely would make the biggest impact.

He knew exactly how mediocre he was. The plan was to build an image people would still find cute even when he messed up, while also burning a strong impression into their minds. He needed to be remembered, first and foremost. He wasn't blind to the risk of getting hurt—but the crisis that had spiked in him after watching Kwon Do-ha had left him half out of his mind. At this rate, all that waited for him was being buried and forgotten.

Han-hee catching his falling body had never been part of the plan.

No, seriously. The guy looked athletic enough that Won-yeong had assumed he'd just dodge.

Is he a sucker?

Their eyes had met head-on. There was no way Han-hee hadn't seen that Won-yeong didn't think much of him. So what on earth possessed him to try catching someone who was falling?

While he was still reeling from the absence of the pain he'd braced for, filming wrapped up in no time.

Won-yeong liked to think he was sharp about reading people, but Lee Han-hee was someone he simply could not figure out. That conviction only hardened once they ended up on the same team.

"Hyung, your legs go like this here. One, two, three—split—one, two, three. Yeah, just like that."

"Mm, okay. I've got the feel of it. This time I'll get it."

As if he'd completely forgotten the time Kim Yo-han smacked himself in the face during a mafia game, he stuck close and walked people through every single move like it was nothing.

"Sang-hyeon, your tempo sped up just now. Here it's tan, ta-da-dan, tan, tan-ta-da-da-dan, tan. Like that."

"Yeah, thanks."

And when Yu Sang-hyeon lost the beat and froze up, he clapped out the rhythm for him. The practice time he lost helping them, he seemed to make up in the dead of night.

The more often Won-yeong crossed paths with Han-hee in the practice room at those early hours, the more a certain question stacked up inside him.

Why go this far?

Watching him cheerfully shave down his own time to help people, as if the idea of rivals never even occurred to him, made it impossible not to wonder.

Why walk around acting like such a good person? It was hard to write it off as pure performance, either. Even Won-yeong himself had already been helped more than once since the sports festival. The voice that had talked him down during a hyperventilation episode was still vivid in his ears.

So he could understand, at least a little, how the people orbiting Han-hee like satellites must feel.

Someone who sacrificed himself for others. In Won-yeong's eyes, Lee Han-hee was a textbook sucker. Live like that and you ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠were just asking to get stabbed in the back. Of course people kept flocking to him when someone that capable acted that way.

"Um, could you maybe show me this part?"

Bronze rank: Go Ju-ha. A contestant who seemed especially desperate for any scrap of attention. The more he was seen with Han-hee, the more chances he got to put his face out there—most people still hesitated a little, afraid of the comparison. Go Ju-ha showed none of that hesitation.

Maybe he figured he was already at the bottom, so he might as well grab whatever scraps fell his way. Other people his age scolded him for not knowing his place, but the truth was the kid had a razor-sharp sense of his place for someone so young.

"Ah, I've already got something lined up with Won-yeong-hyung. I'll show you in a bit."

"Oh—okay! I'll wait!"

And it wasn't just Go Ju-ha. Plenty of people were watching for their moment to approach. The second Han-hee looked free, someone moved in. Even Choi An-seong checked in from time to time. That was how valuable an opportunity Han-hee looked like—screen time and real skill growth in one package.

The stares aimed at Won-yeong himself, for how actively Han-hee was taking care of him, had grown so thick that he'd already gotten used to them.

"Hyung, do you remember this part of the choreography?"

"Was I supposed to come in like this?"

In Won-yeong's opinion, the biggest reason for Han-hee's popularity was his eye. The sense to see a stage from a distance. On top of that, his directing was excellent—he knew exactly where to put people. Any team that made him leader caught a fair wind.

He set the arrangement direction and handled the part distribution himself, and if something felt off, he adjusted the parts bit by bit until everyone was in the right seat. The skill was almost supernatural. No one on the team complained about their share of the parts. There weren't many true center spotlight sections to begin with, but more than that, he finished the allocation with ruthless accuracy relative to skill.

Put another way: he made sure everyone knew their place so thoroughly that no one could even raise an objection. His sense for judging how good or bad someone was ran so sharp it left no room to bluff.

Lately, Won-yeong kept surprising himself. In the old days, talent like this would have crushed him under self-loathing and jealousy. These days, it barely touched him.

Getting angry at Han-hee felt like yelling at someone who lived in a completely different world. More precisely, he wasn't in a position to be angry. He'd finally understood the situation: the person who'd already run all the way to the finish line alone had turned around, taken their hands, and was pulling them forward.

Gold rank, Silver rank. Bronze, Iron—it didn't matter. Before long, every teammate had grown used to Han-hee's care. He never realized how reassuring it would feel to have someone lay out a clear direction from start to finish.

And after strong evaluations in the first assessment and then the second, the trust in Lee Han-hee only ran deeper.

"Sharp formation dancing matters, but the most important thing is still the narrative. Please put a little more care into connecting the choreography with the lyrics."

"Yes, sir!"

They were all contestants on equal footing, yet somewhere along the way a clear hierarchy had settled into the way advice was given and received. No one minded. If anything, they welcomed the guidance.

It felt exactly like a teacher and his students. That was how large Han-hee's presence loomed in that practice room.

And it was the same for Won-yeong himself.

Less a teammate than a dedicated producer…

The trust that had soaked in so fast over such a short time still felt strange—but the constant anxiety that used to cling to him had vanished without his noticing, and that was enough that he had no complaints.

Won-yeong could barely remember the last time he'd felt this kind of achievement. The wall that never opened no matter how hard he beat on it had come down all at once, and he was taking step after step beyond it. How could he not be satisfied?

Somewhere in the unconscious, instinctive layer of himself, Won-yeong sensed that Lee Han-hee was something special. He closed his eyes and pretended not to notice.

What mattered was the result. The outcome. There was no need to dig into the cause. The days when that cursed obsession with results had choked him half to death felt like ancient history; all he wanted now was to accept the luck he'd been handed without thinking too hard about it.

Still, something snagged. In a corner of his heart, a voice kept shouting.

Do you even deserve this?

When he finally couldn't stand the pressure and the words left his own mouth, Won-yeong was genuinely shocked. He had never once imagined a day would come when he would dig up his own shame with his own tongue.

"You already knew I fell on purpose, didn't you?"

And looking at Han-hee, who didn't even flinch, he felt relief and a strange guilt at the same time.

"I knew it. You already knew."

He had always put himself first, as if that were the most natural thing in the world. Reality was hard enough without doing otherwise. He'd figured using people was fair game. Everyone else did it.

So why, only now, was this person showing him a new path?

"Hyung, let's try it a little slower. It's fine if it's slow—just get every move exact."

As if he never got tired of it, Han-hee broke the same motion into pieces and demonstrated it again and again. Won-yeong followed carefully. A little slower, but precise.

"Yes, that's it. Want to run it a few more times like this?"

A chance that had never truly been given to him before—maybe his ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠last one. He couldn't let go of the thread of growth that had finally been placed in his hands.

Hours of practice stacked on practice, until he was gasping for breath—and still, he felt like he could live. That was how it felt.