God of Acting

I stared blankly at the status window. God of Acting. I never expected a trait like that to come up.

I should just be glad it wasn't God of Variety Shows.

I'd hit a total of 270 stats and spun the trait gacha with high hopes, only for one of the traits with almost nothing to do with the actual game progression to float up instead.

Traits like this were really meant as flavor—side pieces that propped up the idea of idols as all-round entertainers. In-game, they existed for self-satisfaction, for building a character concept and having a little fun with it. God of Acting, for instance, added extra facial expressions to your character depending on the grade, so look enthusiasts ranked it as something worth having at least once. Put another way, for everyone who wasn't a look enthusiast, it was pure trash. Extra expressions were the only thing it did.

"Still, it's better than I expected…"

Once I actually used it, the trait turned out pretty solid. Unlike the game, where everything was measured by clean numbers, acting ability was genuinely useful in real life. Changing my voice the way I wanted got easier, and the expressions I made looked more natural. My face moved so smoothly it was like someone had oiled the joints—I found myself impressed by it.

So this is what they mean by expressiveness.

The ability to clearly convey the emotion you wanted to show wasn't just an actor's strength. For an idol, it was a real edge too. Being good at singing and dancing alone wasn't enough—you also needed that stage presence, the spark that poured out under the lights. That was a virtue an idol couldn't do without.

And there were more advantages if I thought about it. In a place where a slightly sullen face could get you labeled with dead-fish eyes, accused of losing passion, dragged into attitude controversies and expression controversies without end—being able to consciously refine your face more easily was a bigger merit than it first seemed. Emotional control felt easier, too. Even if it wasn't a ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠direct stat boost, which was a little disappointing, the trait was more than usable.

It's already out now…

All I could do was accept it. And after trying it out on stage for real, it had felt better than expected.

"Great work, everyone!"

"Thank you."

Having successfully debuted the trait through the Antithese stage, I moved to the waiting room, took the towel someone held out, and wiped the sweat off. Looking around, the stage lights had been so intense that everyone was soaked.

I cleaned myself up for the remaining filming and checked my appearance in the waiting-room mirror—and the dazzling blond staring back still felt foreign. Standing center had somehow landed me with blond hair, and getting my natural color—not even dark brown, but deep black—bleached as light as possible had been a whole ordeal.

The stylist in charge had said we'd need two or even three rounds of bleaching, so I'd used the Scalp Protection Ticket that had come as a roulette reward. The first time I'd seen it, I'd thought something useless had dropped—but when the moment actually came, it was exactly the item I needed.

Nothing in this world is useless, I guess…

I planned to use the Dye Ticket from the roulette rewards to turn my hair black again. This color was way too eye-catching. I shook out the awkward blond once more, sat in ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠the seat prepared for me, and stretched until my back popped. Only then did it feel like things were finally over.

The stage… it's done.

It had only been a short stretch of time, but every single one of us had thrown ourselves into that stage completely. Now that it was finished, I felt that bittersweet mix of relief and emptiness.

"You all did way better than I expected today. Thanks for keeping up."

Everyone seemed to share a similar tangle of feelings, faces complicated, until Lee Jae-jin—who'd taken on the role of oldest member and team leader—spoke up first while the opposing team's VCR played. Come to think of it, now that the stage was over, this team was over too, wasn't it?

"I learned a lot, thanks to all of you."

"Thank you so much!"

Seo Woo-ri, who'd managed perfectly well on his own, and Woo Cheong-hee, whose color looked much better now, answered in turn.

"It was more ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠fun than I thought. Thank you, everyone."

I added my own piece. Looking back, I might have worked even harder than I had in the first round. It had been more fun, too, somehow.

"All of you hyungs worked so hard. I really learned a lot!"

Last of all, Nam Hye-seong—who'd come off the stage with tears still welling in his eyes—finished his greeting with determined cheer.

80, 81, 79. Two days before going on stage, Nam Hye-seong had hit Dance B0 and even managed to raise his singing stat by one more point. And just as he'd promised, he'd gotten through the live without collapsing. Objectively, compared to the other teammates, he hadn't overcome the stat gap, so I couldn't exactly say he'd done brilliantly—but put the other way, despite a clear difference in stats, there hadn't been anything that stood out as truly off-putting either. There had been a few slightly precarious moments, but those had actually seemed to serve the song's precarious atmosphere well.

Originally, Yusu's Antithese calmly, delicately lit a woman betrayed by love. The speaker remained solid and perfect despite that betrayal, so the original carried a detached, desolate feeling that ultimately told a story of rising past the wound and moving forward with grace. The speaker in our newly arranged Antithese, by contrast, was the one who had betrayed love. An antithesis to the perfect woman—an incomplete, twisted love. A devilish love story of someone who couldn't stand on their own, who begged and clung and then dragged the other person down into the mud with them. If Yusu's Antithese was an image of ascent, the one we'd drawn was an image of descent. Nam Hye-seong and Woo Cheong-hee were both too young to properly convey the original, so we'd planned around instability and immaturity rather than perfection.

Thanks to that, even Nam Hye-seong's slightly shaky parts could be taken as something that deepened the song's mood. If he'd fallen apart the way he had at the mid-evaluation, it would have been impossible—but in the end, we'd pulled him up to a level where you could almost argue it was the concept. His objective skill was the lowest on the team, but his growth rate outstripped anyone else's, and that was what made the result possible. Factoring in how young he was, a lot of people must have started pinning real expectations on Nam Hye-seong after the first and second team battles. Entertainment industry people were probably watching him with their eyes lit up, ready to snatch him up. His potential was genuinely remarkable, so one way or another, it was a happy ending.

"By the way—they don't call it living up to the reputation for nothing."

Seo Woo-ri spoke up while watching the next team's stage on the waiting-room monitor. Group 1, Team 2—Kwon Do-ha's stage.

"Honestly, I wondered why they picked Twenty-Five instead of Fill Me Up. Turns out there was a reason."

Originally, Twenty-Five had been a quieter but rhythmic track. Slowing the tempo a little and laying down rich harmonies while nailing the key points made the whole thing feel completely different—special. The kind of stage where "heavenly harmony" was the only phrase that fit. Kwon Do-ha held the center with absolute steadiness, his stable vocals continuously undergirding the performance, so the audience could settle in and focus with peace of mind.

"It's… weirdly moving…"

Seo Woo-ri murmured under his breath, still locked on the stage. I nodded. Taking a song that had originally expressed the uncertainty of being twenty-five with a light, rhythmic freshness and capturing it with more richness and stability somehow turned it into something comforting—and more moving for it.

"Concept-wise and expression-wise, it feels like a head-on collision."

On top of the angel-and-devil concept, even the ways of expressing it stood in sharp opposition. Just as I'd thought—this wasn't going to be an easy giveaway. From the perspective of someone who ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠knew what they were looking at, Choi An-seong's dance-specialized share felt small, and the other participants with solid-enough stats seemed a little diminished, buried under Kwon Do-ha. But having someone that good as the axis, covering every shortfall, gave the stage a much cleaner sense of skill and balance overall.

When the stage ended, applause burst out. Honestly, looking at Kwon Do-ha alone—watching him dance while singing without a single break—it was the kind of performance that left you no choice but to clap. Admiration came out on its own. Kwon Do-ha probably accounted for about eighty percent of the applause filling the room, but his skill made that weight of attention completely understandable. There was a reason even the people who attacked him never raised issues with his ability. He was just that good. In every way, he was an extraordinary person.

And so Group 1's stages ended, then Group 2, Group 3, Group 4, all the way through Group 7. Once every stage was done and filming wrapped, the second training camp ended and the final break began. Roughly ten days—the last rest period the production schedule would allow. From the third training camp on, things would run straight through to the final stage without a mid-break, so we were told to rest properly while we could.

"How hard are they planning to work us if they're stressing this much…"

"I know, right. It's kind of scary."

I headed home from the set with Woo Cheong-hee; our routes overlapped, so we took the same bus. Filming fourteen teams' stages in a single day meant the scenery outside the window was already dark.

I'm going to end up sprinting into the house again.

I'd tried taking different alleys home, but there was only so much I could do with the location. Maybe I should move.

I was thinking about the still-empty one-room and what to do about housing when Woo Cheong-hee spoke up.

"Hyung, if you have time later, do you want to pick a day and go look at the subway billboards together?"

"Subway?"

"Yes. They said they put ads up at subway stations centered around university areas this time."

Some stations had team ads, others had individual photos. There were ads the production staff had put up for program promotion, and also ads fans had pooled money for, Woo Cheong-hee whispered. I nodded. Setting aside a day for a billboard tour sounded nice.

"I'm in. Should we invite the others too?"

"Jae-jin hyung said he'd go, so I already mentioned going together."

There weren't that many participants who even had individual photos up, so he hadn't been able to ask anyone else, Woo Cheong-hee said—and his expression darkened.

"Something on your mind?"

"…"

I remembered. While we'd been prepping the second team stage, he'd often drifted off into thought, but he'd never brought it up through to the end. His words had gotten a little fewer, but he'd still worked hard, still laughed and chattered, so I'd thought he was fine. Apparently not quite.

"Do you think… I'm acting too familiar with you and Jae-jin hyung?"

After hesitating, Woo Cheong-hee whispered it in a slightly deflated voice.

"With me and Jae-jin hyung? You?"

Acting too familiar. That was the kind of thing you said about someone forcing a closeness on people who didn't want it. Jae-jin and I had treated him like a little brother, found him cute—I didn't think either of us had ever disliked him. With his unguarded, gentle nature and a deeper mind than he let on, Woo Cheong-hee was not the kind of person people accused of clinging.

"I mean… someone with no skill, latching onto people who are good, that kind of…"

His voice thickened mid-sentence, wet as if tears were about to burst free, and he squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head. Watching him swallow the tears that never quite fell, I could guess.

"…Comments saying that? Saying you're that kind of person?"

"…"

It was a survival program. Some people fell, some people passed—and if you looked at the idol survival boards, you could always find comments tearing other contestants down to protect someone else. Just looking at the three of us called the top three—me, Lee Jae-jin, Kwon Do-ha—made it obvious. Dig even a little into the depths and every kind of malicious rumor boiled over. For me, it was origin stories. Facility kid, chaebol's illegitimate son—that kind of speculation. For Lee Jae-jin, posts claiming he'd been kicked out of his old dance crew for bad reasons ran wild. The program had gotten famous, attention had piled up, and every type of person had shown up. Clinging—wanting to say that to a kid who wasn't even an adult yet. I clicked my tongue inwardly. So that was why he'd been so down.

"Don't let the hate comments get to you too much."

Even as I said it, I knew it wouldn't be that easy. Once you'd heard something like that, staying above it was hard. Of course he'd fixate. Of course he'd start policing himself. That was how people worked. The best thing was to avoid hate comments entirely when you could—but as a contestant whose debut was decided by audience votes, you had to check people's reactions to respond to them. Stuck either way.

"Acting too familiar… Am I the only one who thought we got close?"

I'd known him since the first day of the audition. By that measure, Woo Cheong-hee was the first contestant I'd gotten close to. When I'd found out we were on the same team and in the same room for the second team battle, it had felt so much lighter compared to the first round. In the first, there hadn't been anyone on the team I could really call close the way I could now.

"No…! I think we got close too! And I want to get even closer…"

When he added that he wanted to meet up and hang out at least once outside the training camp, it clicked. Last break had been too short for me to see Woo Cheong-hee separately—and once it got out through the cooking photos on Han Min-hyeok's SNS that the former roommates had gathered to watch the broadcast, the hate comments must have gone into overdrive. Acting close one-sidedly, never even meeting during the break, it was nothing special—that kind of thing. They would have jumped on it the second they got the chance. The situation was roughly clear.

"Guess we'll have to take a lot of pictures when we meet on our day off."

Having strangers hold forth on someone else's relationship was absurd, but if it had come to this, there was no reason not to show off the friendship. I set a day to meet and grinned wide. Time for a full-course hangout.