Luck Is Also Skill
“Thank you for picking me. I’ll work hard.”
Because he had taken first place in the previous evaluation, the people around him murmured in surprise when Kwon Do-ha’s name was called for third. Do-ha himself, unfazed, simply walked down and offered his thanks.
It was a clean, unadorned remark—no extra commentary. Considering Kwon Do-ha’s level of recognition, third place was honestly a little strange. How had the scores worked out?
While I was still turning that over, fourth place Song A-seong and fifth place Han Sang-jin were called. A-seong held his position; Sang-jin had climbed from seventh to fifth.
So once again it’s just Lee Jae-jin and me left?
Déjà vu. The setup was identical to when they had ranked us after the rival match stage.
“And now—the contestant who claimed glorious first place in the first individual vote is—!”
After a drawn-out pause that would have been filled with commercials on TV, the name called was, once again, mine.
“Contestant Lee Han-hee! Congratulations!”
“Congrats.”
I gave the hand offered beside me a firm shake and headed down. Seeing that the Top 5 rankings matched the team mission results so closely, the team mission scores had clearly carried a lot of weight.
“A few words of appreciation, please.”
I took the microphone they held out and looked straight ahead. The flood of lights was blinding, but I put a smile on my face.
“I’m truly grateful to everyone who supported me. I want to keep growing without stopping, and show you that progress. Once again—thank you.”
Under the bright lights, I looked straight into the camera trained on me and dropped my larynx, shaping a solid, steady voice. It was a technique I’d learned for presentations a long time ago; done this way, my voice didn’t shake.
I bowed, moved to the left, and soon Lee Jae-jin, finished with his second-place remarks, came walking over. I waved him toward me. We’d been told to stick together all day, after all.
Then the lower rankings began. Forty-eight people still hadn’t been called. Twenty spots remained. Twenty-eight of them would be eliminated here.
“In fifty-eighth place—Contestant Nam Hye-seong!”
“—Thank you! I’ll work hard!”
Kim Jin-su had been called at fifty-fifth and Nam Hye-seong at fifty-eighth fairly quickly, so a good deal of the worry lifted off my shoulders. Even so, I couldn’t quite settle. There was a weight to someone else’s elimination.
“And the final contestant is…”
The MC, looking equally bitter, opened his mouth. Seventieth place.
Among the contestants still standing on the right, quite a few were already crying. Once the sea of tears started, a few people on our side began sniffling too. It was natural that they’d grown attached. If they’d shared a room or practice space, they would have seen each other’s faces every single day for a month. Of course it hurt to watch someone go.
“Yes—Contestant Jang Ho-hyeon.”
“H-huh, I—I’ll really, really work hard. Th-thank you. Really.”
The contestant finished his remarks nearly gasping, then moved, and the lights over the right-hand seats—where only the eliminated remained—went out. Cameras caught the bowed heads of people crying.
Did they really need a shot like this?
Even a little screen time could be an opportunity for those people, of course—but the framing was cruel. Before long the eliminated contestants were gone, and the personal scores went up on the monitors: the sum of the seventeen-day individual vote results and the team scores of the teams that had won the rival matches.
What stood out was that the Top 3’s individual vote totals were almost identical—around twelve million, differing by only about thirty thousand votes.
Their respective team scores were three hundred thousand, two hundred eighty thousand, and two hundred ten thousand. Relative to the whole, it wasn’t a huge number, but because the individual scores were packed so tightly, the team score became extremely significant for locking in the ranks.
Looking at the people who just got cut—every last one of them lost their rival match.
It influenced the rankings, and in the lower half it became the line between staying and going home. People who noticed started making pained noises. The pressure of the team mission was heavy.
In that atmosphere, the benefit was revealed at once.
“Now then—we’ll announce the benefit for the first-place team of the first team mission, the Rival Match! And that is… choosing a partner!”
Partner? The suddenly cutesy word left everyone blinking, and the MC continued.
“In the upcoming team mission, people bound as partners will absolutely be placed together! In other words—one-plus-one!”
The moment I heard the benefit, I looked at Kwon Do-ha. He was smiling.
“Um—can people who already have the benefit partner with each other?”
Nam Hye-seong shot a hand up, and the MC shook his head.
“No. Ten pairs of partners need to be made in total. However, once the final teams are formed, there is no limit on how many partner pairs can end up on the same team.”
“Ahh, understood!”
So it was a correction that let you lock in being on the same team as someone you wanted—basically a guaranteed pick. Even without Kwon Do-ha’s earlier request, the person I would choose was obvious.
“For reference, the person chosen has no right of refusal. It’s a benefit, after all.”
Looking at the trait alone made it clear.
We Shine When We're Together (S)
“All right—first-place Contestant Lee Han-hee, please choose your partner!”
“I’ll choose Contestant Lee Jae-jin.”
“Ah—first and second place together! How thrilling! Next up, Contestant Kim Yo-han!”
Kim Yo-han chose Song A-seong; Lee Won-yeong chose Han Sang-jin; Yu Sang-hyeon chose Han Min-hyeok. Being vocal-line heavy, they all seemed to be avoiding the option of picking Kwon Do-ha, whose position overlapped with theirs.
“Contestant Choi An-seong, please choose your partner!”
“I’ll choose Contestant Kwon Do-ha.”
Thanks to that, dance-strong Choi An-seong picked Kwon Do-ha, and after him came Ahn Do-hyeon, Cha Ji-heon, and other generally high-ranked contestants. To avoid ending up on a middling team, that was the advantageous move.
“I’ll choose Contestant Woo Cheong-hee!”
Last to pick, Nam Hye-seong chose Woo Cheong-hee—a pair that looked like it would get along well. Bright, hardworking types.
“All partners are set, so from this moment we begin the team-member draw!”
A draw. The ominous edge in the wording was hard to miss. And that premonition landed without fail.
“First, we will select seven people who will be allowed to pick their own teammates. And the ones who select those seven are—ta-da!”
A draw for the draw? Before I could fully process it, the MC gestured, and what appeared on stage was a gacha machine you’d only expect to see in a capsule-toy shop—the kind where you put in a coin, turn the dial, and a capsule pops out.
Whether or not he noticed the blank looks on the contestants’ faces at the sudden appearance of a prize machine, the shameless MC kept talking.
“They say luck is also skill, don’t they? No delays—let’s start right away! First up is number seventy!”
The MC cranked the lever. A capsule opened with a pop, and a slip of paper flew out. Seventy. Seventieth-place Contestant Jang Ho-hyeon stepped forward, and after that mid-range ranks like thirty-three, forty-two, and twenty-six kept coming out until, at the end, number fifty-eight was drawn.
“Number fifty-eight—Contestant Nam Hye-seong!”
“Yes—!”
With a light step, Nam Hye-seong came down onto the stage, and the seven contestants lined up at center. While they cleared away the gacha machine, seven placards were brought in, each covered with a white sticker.
“Please each choose one placard and stand in front of it.”
Because the stickers hid the writing, the placards looked identical from the outside, so the contestants took their places without much hesitation.
Seven people picking teams… so are they assigning ten per team again this time?
I’d assumed they would make ten teams of seven, but another ten-person setup? That would make the picture identical to the first team battle. I watched with a faint unease that something else was coming.
“What did I say at the very beginning? Luck is also skill, right? Now—peel the stickers off your placards!”
With that ominous line, they tore the stickers free, and the numbers one through seven appeared.
“In the order of the numbers on your stickers, you will take turns choosing teammates one by one. First—number one!”
The instant the MC finished, Nam Hye-seong, who’d drawn the placard with a single bold vertical stroke, shouted at the top of his lungs.
“Han-hee hyung—!”
“The first-and-second-place combo! Snapped up the second the clock starts!”
I waved back at Nam Hye-seong as he shook his placard side to side. So that was already Nam Hye-seong, Woo Cheong-hee, me, and Lee Jae-jin—four. The rest of the team picks proceeded smoothly after that, and somehow Kwon Do-ha ended up joining our team as well.
“Ah—is the balance going to be all right? First, second, and now even third have all piled into one place!”
That was because Kwon Do-ha hadn’t been chosen until the turn came back around to Nam Hye-seong again. Plenty of people seemed wary after watching him annihilate not only the opposing team but his own teammates as well in the previous team mission.
“Team One has already picked six people!”
Because they had filled seats so quickly with partners first, Nam Hye-seong was able to pull in four more people who ranked fairly high. Looking at the roster, it felt like the undisputed strongest group.
“That lineup’s insane…”
A contestant who somehow already looked drained muttered it quietly. Seo U-ri—Cha Ji-heon’s roommate, someone he’d been close with.
While the other teams waited out the rest of the draw and checked the specs of the contestants who had already hit ten, a sudden announcement dropped.
“All right, everyone! You will now split yourselves in half.”
“…Huh?”
Split in half? Contestants stared blankly at Cheon Tae-rim over that bizarre demand. I was a little stunned myself. I’d thought another ten-person team was predictable—but I hadn’t expected them to literally bisect us.
“Yesterday’s allies are today’s enemies! You have five minutes to divide the teams. Begin!”
“….”
Five short minutes were given, but no one rushed to open their mouth. The impatient ones who had been crowing that with ten people they would definitely take first now looked thoroughly stuck.
“For now, how about we split with the partner pairs as the base?”
In the middle of the flustered group, Kwon Do-ha spoke up, calm as ever. With five each, one side would have two partner pairs and the other one, so dividing the partners first made sense.
“Mm. Then how should we decide—odds and evens?”
Since being on the same team as Jae-jin wouldn’t change either way, I held out one hand and flipped it palm-up, palm-down. Odds and evens—a little childish, but it seemed like the fairest method I could think of.
“You mean denshin?”
“Yeah. That.”
So one person from each partner pair stepped into the middle and held out a palm with a grim face. Nam Hye-seong, Choi An-seong, Lee Jae-jin—and the result:
“Augh!”
“Yesss!”
“Hye-seong!”
While Choi An-seong clapped a hand to his forehead, Nam Hye-seong let out a noisy yell and leapt into the air. Woo Cheong-hee, catching the same spark, hoisted the jumping Nam Hye-seong clean onto his back.
“Hahahahaha.”
“Heeheeheeheehee.”
When had they gotten so close? Watching Woo Cheong-hee run around with Nam Hye-seong on his back, a laugh slipped out of me on its own. Were they that happy?
One way or another, the team assignments finished, and a short break followed. Team One split into two groups of five: me, Lee Jae-jin, Woo Cheong-hee, Nam Hye-seong, and Seo U-ri on one side; Kwon Do-ha, Choi An-seong, Im Yun-seong, Park Beom-gyu, and Min Seong-ho on the other.
Im Yun-seong, Park Beom-gyu, and Seo U-ri were in the top twenty, and Min Seong-ho was still in the top thirty, so with Choi An-seong and Nam Hye-seong factored in, the balance thankfully wasn’t completely wrecked.
“We’re finally on the same team!”
And Woo Cheong-hee, who had kept his energy sky-high the whole time they used rock-paper-scissors to settle the remaining teammates, nearly took flight the moment he heard that for the second joint training camp, same teams would share rooms—to build teamwork.
“We’re finally in the same room!”
“Same room!”
Unlike Nam Hye-seong, who matched Woo Cheong-hee’s bouncing energy beat for beat, Seo U-ri—who had ended up on our side after throwing paper alone—looked less and less able to handle the voltage, wilting by the minute.
“Ah…”
After a meal together with the new teammates and roommates for bonding, we stepped into the newly assigned room. Same layout as before; it felt familiar. And before anyone had even finished unpacking, Seo U-ri sat down hard with his bag still on.
“….”
Wedged into a corner without a word, he looked exactly like a frail Maltipoo trapped between two beagles.
His skin looked unusually pale, and I debated whether I should go buy him some digestive medicine—then decided to quarantine the two beagles in the small room and have Jae-jin, Seo U-ri, and me take the big one. Leaving him in a room with those two felt like cruelty.
“Just rest for a bit.”
“Th-thank you…”
I watched him wriggle into the blankets, closed the door, and came out to the living room. We still had the shoot for choosing songs and concepts and the rest of the meetings, so we’d have to go back out later—but there was a little time to rest. Rest would make him feel better, at least a little.
“Why is your synergy this good?”
Alone, neither of them ran quite this hot, but put them together and the energy seemed to explode.
“It’s like we just click!”
“It’s fun!”
Seventeen and fifteen. Ages that were allowed to love playing around—but right now it felt like some kind of limiter had shattered. Those originally bright, clear eyes had gone a little fierce. Clear-eyed maniacs, almost.
And that medicine-high tension and laser focus of theirs went on to shine the moment the break ended and filming began.