Because I'm Your Hero

At the tail end of June, I stood onstage and looked up into the seats. Starting with Vesta, five stages had already come and gone. Only we were left.

"The song itself is the same, but just changing who it's aimed at makes the whole feeling shift."

Min Ho-su murmured it with open wonder, and Song A-seong nodded.

"The concept's intuitive, too. Soldiers."

The Yuri signature track Song A-seong had chosen, I'm Your Hero, had originally been a confession to a lover—I want to be the one who stands by your life. By changing the subject, A-seong had rewritten the entire atmosphere.

Grander. Sharper. More disciplined.

"Heroes, soldiers. God, that's cool."

Min Ho-su kept nodding, already half-drunk on the idea that hero equaled soldier. Maybe it was because the world had long since switched from conscription to a volunteer military; the way people looked at soldiers felt a little different from before.

Those eyes shining with pure, uncomplicated respect still felt faintly strange to me.

"It has to be cool. No exceptions."

From the moment Song A-seong locked in the song and concept until the costumes were finalized, that was the single mantra he repeated the entire time we built the stage. It had to be cool. Unconditionally.

"Cool enough that the people watching can't help but gasp. Cool enough that even we, the ones making it, think, Damn, this is incredible."

The instruction was simple. Living up to it was not. The sheer volume of work required for that single impression of cool was staggering. Given the concept, neither the audience nor the performers would tolerate anything half-hearted. In a way, we had summoned the disaster ourselves.

But it was a stage worth every drop of effort we poured into it. A moment that demanded nothing less.

"Just do as much ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠as we practiced."

Below the stage, Han Min-hyeok spoke again into the thicket of tense faces.

"We really worked our asses off. So just do exactly that much. No regrets."

When the oldest hyung—who had always stayed latest to practice—said it like that, Yu Min-seong, whose hands had been shaking with nerves, managed a nod. And I, team leader in name only, added my own line.

"We're going to kill it."

I gave Song A-seong's shoulder a light thump; he was wound tight beside me. Even after practicing ourselves half to death, the tremble we couldn't quite hide only meant how badly we wanted to do this stage justice.

Right before we went up, the seven of us locked eyes and stacked our hands.

"One, two—Aja!"

In that thin scrap of time before we climbed, we fired ourselves up, matched our breath, and stepped onto the stage together.

The second we were up we locked into formation. Then, on a stage so dark it felt like a black curtain had been drawn over everything, the song began.

In the lightless dark, the familiar chorus rolled out from the very top. Kim Seong-min took the start. With the movie having been such a hit, plenty of people in the seats still knew the famous OST; the moment his solid, clear voice released the first note, soft gasps spilled through the audience.

Still no movement on the dark stage. The chorus ended, the intro kicked in, and the lights flooded bright.

Under the sudden cascade of light, seven bodies snapped into perfect unison. The razor-sharp formation steps we had drilled every single day once real practice began—moves we had matched hundreds of times until every footfall landed as one.

The instant the lights hit and the performance detonated, a wall of cheers slammed into my ears. The first solo part was mine.

We had tweaked a few lines to fit the soldier concept, but most of the meaning stayed the same. Finding the courage to keep the person you love safe, to make them happy.

I held a steady vocal while we moved hard, and the ornate decorations on the dress uniforms caught the light and flashed.

I slipped back; Song A-seong stepped forward and handled the vocal cleanly. From the seats came a wave of suppressed cheers—some of them thick with the edge of tears.

I had seen it from below while we prepared: under the peaked cap, Song A-seong shone. The outfit made those sharp features cut even cleaner.

The elaborately decorated dress uniform, built for the stage, pushed every physical advantage to the maximum.

And those held-back cheers exploded the second Han Min-hyeok stepped out from behind Song A-seong. The roar that punched through the intro actually startled me for a beat.

I thought I caught eyes with someone in the seats who had both hands clamped over their mouth. I understood why they were losing it.

Han Min-hyeok, the same way I had felt on previous stages, had a gift for making clothes look like they had finally found their rightful place.

He found the exact role that fit the outfit and folded himself into that frame until nothing onstage felt out of place. Call it acting ability if you want. If that counted as talent, then yes—he had it.

When Han Min-hyeok snapped a sharp salute, fingertips to the edge of his brow, the decibels that answered him were unreal.

Friendship, youth, an East-Asian Cupid—concepts that should have looked wrong on him, he wore like they were made for him. His absorption rate had always been high. This concept just let the potential blow a little wider open.

Even the slightly looser dance lines sat perfectly ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠inside the mood.

Han Min-hyeok rotated back. Chorus again.

The familiar chorus rose and the team invited the crowd to sing with us. We had deliberately burned that opening section into their memory, so their voices flooded the stage almost at once.

I moved through the choreography to their singing and nodded to myself. We had the room now.

I laid harmony over the audience's voices as the chorus repeated. They came in at full volume the same way they had before, and the arrangement swelled in with them like an orchestra.

The rich, ringing sound wrapped not only the stage but everything beyond the seats. A closing harmony worthy of the final slot. Using the audience like that felt a little like cheating, but taking advantage of a widely known song we were remixing wasn't outside the spirit of the assignment.

The thing I had kept hammering home when we chose the track and concept was simple: we were idols. A stage was supposed to give the people watching joy and leave them with a good memory. Happy memory—that had to be the foundation of this performance.

Listening to the melody woven from so many different voices, I swept my gaze across the seats.

The faces of the people singing along looked happy. That was success enough.

As much as Song A-seong had chanted unconditionally cool, the stage had been unconditionally cool. As much as we had wrung our brains dry trying to express it right, it had been a stage that earned every second of the work.

"That was Team Sunflower. Thank you!"

"Encore! Encore!"

Even the people who had only been listening seemed reluctant to let it go; on the way off after the bows, encore calls rose from the seats even though this wasn't a concert. I turned and snapped a salute in their direction, and a wave of wistful cheers wrapped around my ears.

We came down and headed for the waiting room. I clapped the others on the back as we walked—faces still caught between joy and a dazed afterglow. Summer had arrived early and hard; the backs of the ones who had chosen dress uniforms were already soaked through with sweat.

It was an indoor hall and the air-conditioning was blasting, but the heat of a stage baked by lights and cheers was nothing you could ignore.

I glanced back at Song A-seong lagging a little behind. Under the cap he had pulled low to hide a still-young face, sweat was pouring like rain. I picked up the pace and pushed into the waiting room.

I grabbed a towel first and shoved it at him, cracked open a bottle of water for him too, then wiped myself down and tried to straighten the thoroughly crumpled uniform.

"We… we did good, right?"

Back in the cool air of the waiting room, a little of the stage fog seemed to clear. Jo Min-jun, face still buried in his towel, spoke carefully.

"We did great! They even called for an encore!"

Min Ho-su answered with a full-face smile. The heat of the stage still hadn't left him; his cheeks were still flushed.

"When we all sang together I almost cried. I was this close."

Yu Min-seong's voice was still wet when he said it, so I thumped his back a few times. He had worked hard.

"Who came up with the idea to cue the audience sing-along? That person gets full praise."

Min Ho-su hugged himself and patted his own shoulders, beaming. Thanks to his suggestion, the judging eyes of a scored performance had melted into the feeling of a shared concert. A finish worthy of the last slot.

"Yeah. He deserves it. Nice work."

If we had been in the middle of the order or first up, it might have felt awkward. Luckily we were last. In the flow of the broadcast, this stretch would almost certainly be edited as a moving final moment rather than something that made us look bad.

If it had flopped it would have been mortifying, but the response had been stronger than expected—a total win. Praise was more than fair.

"You did good."

I draped a towel over Min Ho-su's still-damp hair and scrubbed. When he looked up with shiny eyes I handed him the towel; Jo Min-jun picked up the thread with a blissful face.

"Suddenly I want to watch the movie again."

What had happened to the guy who had been sniffling that listening to the song to death in practice was going to make him hate a track he loved? Once it was over, it had already settled into nothing but a good memory.

"You said you'd already seen it a ton… Don't you have the whole thing memorized by now?"

"Even if you know the plot and the ending, a masterpiece is something you go back to."

Watching Jo Min-jun shake his head at Min Ho-su's question like the other just didn't get it, I found myself getting curious too.

If I ever get the time, maybe I should watch it once.

I had never been much for romance movies, but if someone loved one this hard there had to be a reason. We had just done a remix stage of ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠it; knowing the original felt like the least I could do. I filed it away in a corner of my head. No idea when free time would appear, but if it did—one viewing.

"Everyone worked so hard… I got a little greedy while we were putting the stage together. Thank you for going along with it."

In the meantime Song A-seong had drained an entire bottle of water and clawed back a little stamina; he finally opened his eyes. Han Min-hyeok, who had been fanning him from the side, shrugged.

"Whatever the result ends up being, I'm satisfied with this stage. Glad we did it together."

It was a surprisingly mature thing to say; I nodded too. This had been the first round where I had stepped a full pace back from directing, producing, and arranging. Going through it had made me think that leaning on other people sometimes might not be so bad.

There are a lot of strong ones here.

Maybe that was why the production staff kept scaling everything bigger and bigger.

The fun of an audition program lived and died on the contestants' ability. When you threw work at them and they somehow still cleaned it up, you started feeling freer and freer about taking the limits off.

I hope they put a few restrictions back on for the final, though.

I reset my hair and face while wondering how the final would actually run. The performance was over, but we still had to go back up for the critiques and the ranking announcement.

"Tally's almost done. Please stand by!"

Right on cue, the call that the count was nearly finished landed. The soft, loose smile that had been on Yu Min-seong's face a second ago turned grim. Same for Jo Min-jun.

The ranking ceremony that would decide the order of the six teams mattered most to the lower-ranked contestants. Depending on this ranking, you could walk away with a free Pass that sent you straight through to the final—the last stage.

"Moving down to the stage floor!"

The performance was finished. Now came the time to be judged.