Legends Never Die
“Hah!”
I woke the way I always did—breath snagged hard in my throat—then forced it steady and pressed the heels of my hands into my aching eyes. Early dawn. The day of the third stage had arrived.
Hong Seul-gi, a high school girl who had hand-made a placard with Lee Han-hee’s name on it, drew a long breath amid the milling crowd. From what she’d seen last episode, Han-hee’s team luck this round was pretty solid—aside from Kim Seong-min. And even Kim Seong-min wasn’t weak; his skills were solid enough. So she believed, again, that Lee Han-hee would deliver a stunning stage.
So why did she feel so uneasy? Without realizing it, Seul-gi was chewing at her fingertips.
He’d always been pale, but with every episode Lee Han-hee looked thinner, whiter, and the sight of him set worry thrashing ahead of everything else. She’d heard the broadcast schedule was brutal, but still…
Even to Hong Seul-gi’s eyes, the contestants’ faces carried a fatigue they couldn’t quite hide. It was already common knowledge that this program shot and edited almost in real time, with almost no pre-filming, so fan anxiety ran high. To practice that hard, build a full stage, and still handle the K-plus filming—all in that short a window!
“Han-hee looked so tired…”
Maybe because of the backlash about overworking the kids, the broadcast mostly showed contestants laughing and horsing around with bright faces—but the legs sprawled corpse-like behind the ones joking around couldn’t be hidden.
No matter how hard production tried to bury it, a post collecting exhausted expressions caught at the edge of the frame had blown up with sky-high views just the other day. Whether everyone had seen that post or not, the faces of people waiting for the stage were already heavy with worry before a single note played.
“What if our kid collapses at this rate…”
Seul-gi glanced at someone holding a flashy placard who seemed to be Song A-seong’s fan, then turned her gaze back toward the stage. She was just as worried. Most people already knew Lee Han-hee was a practice maniac. He had better motor skills than expected and absurd stamina, so the Han-hee on camera never once let the strain show.
That’s exactly why I’m more worried.
Even someone with ridiculous stamina had a limit. It couldn’t not be hard—and the way he still smiled like he was fine while everyone else was flat on the floor only made her more uneasy. You were supposed to rest when it was time to rest. Was he actually resting?
In the time she still had, Seul-gi opened Lee Han-hee’s fan café. It hadn’t been around long, but the café rank had already climbed past Seed and Sprout and was eyeing Leaf.
Han-hee’s always busy taking care of everyone around him, so I hope this time the older brothers take care of him a little
Reading the comments piled onto the room-assignment talk, Seul-gi nodded. That Lee Han-hee would debut seemed to be the shared assumption not only among fans and viewers but among the contestants themselves—and yet there were plenty of trainees who couldn’t manage their own affairs and still tried to use him. So many that by now you could spot them at a glance.
One of them was Yoo Min-seong.
I don’t like him.
He’d just happened to land in the same room, on the same team—but the way he forced a “same-age” link and clung too hard was painfully obvious to Han-hee’s fans. Being low in the rankings made the desperation understandable, but watching someone who wasn’t even that close attach himself like that…
Stick to his side, snag even one extra camera hit, build name recognition with the light-fan layer, and use him. That’s the play.
No matter how you looked at it, it didn’t read as genuine fondness.
Of course Yoo Min-seong wasn’t the only one trying to force a link with Lee Han-hee. There were people who seemed overflowing with one-sided intimacy—barely any contact points, yet they still barreled up to greet him—and Han-hee greeting them back had been caught on camera so often early on that it was tiresome even to count. Most of them had been eliminated, though.
The people he’s actually close with are different…
From Seul-gi’s view, Han-hee was generally kind to anyone who approached him, but the people he was truly at ease with were few. Everyone’s eyes worked roughly the same way, so other fans had seen it too—after episode 11 aired a few days ago, the hottest topic in the fan café was “Who is Lee Han-hee closest to?”
The names of his first roommates, along with people he’d shared a team with—Nam Hye-seong, Lee Won-yeong, Kim Yo-han—came up now and then, but the two drawing the strongest support right now were these:
Just the three of them going to the Han River together says it all….
If you read the eyewitness write-ups from that day, they were so soft and fond it was unreal. Why don’t I live in the capital region?
Skimming the café posts, Seul-gi let out a long sigh. The Han River. That weekday early afternoon, stuck as a high school student who couldn’t leave school grounds, she’d had no choice but to sit there crying blood while she watched the live SNS feed.
Just thinking about that day still made her stomach burn. It got worse after a fan posted a vivid write-up of spending the whole day with them—following from the billboard tour, leaving a little gap, then watching them picnic by the river and sing.
It was a post steeped in the proud satisfaction of having stood guard so the boys could play in peace. Protecting your bias like that. Even if you’d saved the country in a past life, you couldn’t have been happier than that.
“I could have protected them too…”
Even now, whenever Seul-gi saw the clip the poster had attached at the end—Lee Han-hee turning back to say thank you as they left the subway—her jaw clenched on its own. That should have been my place. Why did being a high school student have to put her through this trial?
She was still fretting over the fan café when the noise finally died down. Looks like it’s about to start. Seul-gi clamped a hand over her mouth as it tried to fall open and worked to calm her pounding heart. Steady, heart. Steady.
“All right—before we watch the first stage of Idol Survival’s third round, theme Legends Never Die, let’s welcome today’s special judges.”
Special judges? She was still blinking in confusion when familiar faces began appearing one by one on the screen overhead, and the audience seats erupted in screams.
“Oh my god! Vesta! Unnie! Unnies, I’m dying!”
“Ryan! Ryan! Ryan!”
“Yuri! Yuri unnie, you’re so pretty!”
However they’d managed to gather them in one place, every face settling into the judges’ seats was anything but ordinary. Seul-gi’s mouth fell open. What was even happening?
“First, a senior who marks her fortieth debut anniversary this year—Heo Min. Hello, teacher.”
“Yes, it’s good to meet you.”
“It’s an honor to have you here.”
“The honor is mine for being invited.”
Heo Min, a living legend of the music industry. She’d debuted in her teens and was nearing sixty, yet that still-lovely pure tone drew gasps from the crowd.
After her came Park Ju-seong, once the bassist and lead vocalist of the now-disbanded band Blackbird; Im Hyo-jun, a male vocalist whose voice only grew deeper with the years and who still posted strong chart numbers whenever he released an album; Ryan, making a rare media appearance after a long absence; Yuri, currently one of the busiest stars around; and Vesta. The full roster of luxurious special guests had been introduced.
“Insane. How did they even pull this together…”
The person beside her, holding a placard stamped large with Song A-seong’s name, murmured in awe. Seul-gi couldn’t hold her anticipation down. The joy of knowing people that magnificent had come to watch her boy was rising high enough to spill over.
But wait—they had to perform in front of people like that? Wouldn’t their hearts just fly out of their chests? Seul-gi clutched at her own without meaning to. Once the excitement settled, a cold tension rolled in behind it. They needed to start strong.
“All right—the first team to take the stage is Team Violet! Violets—the symbol of Vesta, right?”
“AAAAAAAH!”
When she saw Lee Jae-jin, Kwon Do-ha, and Cha Ji-heon step onto the stage, Seul-gi covered her mouth without thinking. Han-hee was her one-pick, but black-and-white outfits, harnesses, even chokers—watching well-dressed men fill the stage, she found herself gripping both hands together.
“Lee Jae-jin already destroyed me…”
When the screen caught Jae-jin, the voice beside her shook. He’d buttoned a white shirt almost obsessively tight, and the black harness cutting across it only highlighted his chest and waist; her eyes went there whether she wanted them to or not. She glanced sideways—her neighbor looked ready to achieve enlightenment on the spot.
In truth, Seul-gi’s gaze kept going to Kwon Do-ha. All black, so at a glance he looked neat and restrained, but the longer you looked the more the cut of the clothes revealed his lines. The more she watched, the more she wanted to keep watching—she hadn’t really known, but he was taller than she expected and built incredibly well, long and striking even standing still.
While she was looking, she spotted someone a few seats ahead and across, holding something that looked like a telescope of a camera.
Photography during the performance was banned, so they’d apparently tried to hide it under a coat—but because of the tiered seating, from a diagonal back row the shape of it showed. The coat they’d draped over it was still dangling and swinging, and they didn’t care at all, locked fully onto the shot.
The energy rolling off them said they’d take the ejection if they could just get this one. So that was what people meant by a hardcore home cam photographer?
A little greed crept into Seul-gi. High-res photos from the venue—maybe she wanted them more than she thought.
She tried sneaking a shot with her phone camera and clicked her tongue at how soft it came out. How much did a camera like that even cost?
She set the regret aside and fixed her eyes on the stage. She had no interest in the staff already charging over after spotting the camera. The only thing that mattered was that the performance was about to start.
Right. My eyesight’s good. I’ll burn it into my retinas.
She kept her eyes wide on the stage, and before long the lights went out and a growling car-engine exhaust rolled through the air. This was—Racer!
“Ah, no way. Vesta’s Racer? They picked this?”
With a rough, roaring sound, seven bodies hit their marks, surging and freezing in dynamic starts and stops. Movement like an engine turning over.
A beat began to layer underneath as they locked into formation with organic precision, and just as she thought, It’s starting—Kwon Do-ha’s sky-high note slammed into her ears.
“Wow!”
Goosebumps raced up Seul-gi’s arms at an opening that crushed the whole house. It was a perfect seizure of the initiative.
In the waiting room, the faces watching the first stage were openly stunned by the overwhelming performance.
“Isn’t that a balance collapse? Honestly, if those two are on the same team…”
Just as Jo Min-jun said with a sour look, Kwon Do-ha and Lee Jae-jin were tearing through the stage like fish in water, as if the fight between them had never happened.
“Whoa—is he a rocker or what…”
Even through the rough mid-song choreography, the high notes kept climbing without end, and contestants’ faces twisted on their own—grimaces of admiration and disbelief at how that was even possible.
The feed cut now and then to the special seats. Special guests clapping, laughing, marveling. Watching production pour so freely into the fledgling contestants actually showing what they could do, and the senior legends being surprised and proud of them, you had to admit the staff were good. Even as clips alone, the framing was so sharp the ratings couldn’t help but land.
“Solid first start.”
“Uh, is that a ‘good’ start? How are the people after them supposed to handle this…?”
Yoo Min-seong shot back in a shaky voice at the calm remark.
But that first start—clean and sharp and fast, true to the song’s title—was more than enough to haul the atmosphere into a boil. The quality fully met the hype. Even the audience members who’d been a little worried looked ready to enjoy themselves now. For an opening, it couldn’t have been better.
Our turn was dead last, so we had to keep waiting until it came around. One hundred chosen from twenty thousand idol hopefuls nationwide, then more than half of those cut again—what remained was elite enough that no stage fell far short of expectation.
“Those eyes are scary…”
Because the people dancing as if this were the most important moment of their lives had eyes that burned.
Before long it was the fourth slot. A contestant who slipped a little on stage clenched his jaw and found his place again, resentment dripping from his eyes. As if determined to claw the mistake back, he poured everything into the belt section of the band track until the veins stood out in his neck. Watching him, I thought—so this is what people mean when they say someone’s eyes are full of poison.
While the team focused on Tulip’s stage on the monitor, Han Min-hyeok opened his mouth.
“No mistakes. Let’s go out there and deliver everything we prepared and practiced.”
And just like he said—it was our turn now.