It's a Festival
"Alright! First, contestants ranked first through twenty-first, please gather in front of the song you want!"
People began clustering one by one in front of the three signs — Alpha, Beta, and Gamma. As expected, the crowd was thickest around Alpha Team and the song It's a Festival.
"Shall we line up by ranking?"
That was the start of the real mind games. Whether it was vocals, dance, or rap, the slots were limited. To snag the most visible position, the most important thing was figuring out which song contestants in a similar role were choosing.
One by one, contestants who'd been sizing each other up peeled away from Alpha Team. Even at a glance, the competition looked brutal — and for good reason. Nearly everyone inside the top ten had flocked to Alpha.
"Ah! Alpha Team! What a stacked lineup! Alpha Team's main vocal and center goes to contestant Lee Han-hee!"
I picked Main Vocal A. That was the center position. Kwon Do-ha took Main Vocal B, Lee Jae-jin took Main Dancer (Rap), Han Sang-jin took Main Dancer (Vocals), and below them Lee Won-yeong, Woo Cheong-hee, and Cha Ji-heon claimed the remaining spots — eighth, ninth, and tenth, in that order.
I'd expected some crowding, but I never thought seven spots would fill up right at the tenth-place mark.
People who still couldn't let go of the Alpha Team song clicked their tongues. This meant that from the third-round results onward, you'd have to crack the top ten just to join Alpha Team.
Or else…
I checked Cha Ji-heon. His expression was loaded with meaning. He'd slipped to tenth in the second round, but he was a contestant with a strong chance of climbing in the third — the evaluation for Vesta's stage in round three had been excellent. Depending on how Cha Ji-heon handled a position change later, the whole lineup could shift.
"This is a mess…"
In the middle of the chaotic team assignments, I heard Lee Jae-jin sigh. For someone who cared so much about stage quality, this kind of uncertain personnel arrangement clearly sat wrong with him.
It was true — the idea that positions could still change with less than a week left before a live stage was absurdly unfair. I'd already been worried the production team was overestimating the contestants' capacity; sure enough, they'd dropped another bomb on us.
…
Alpha Team center. Standing at the very front, I couldn't even let my face twist. I swallowed the sigh that wanted to slip out and checked the line beside us. Beta Team's assignments looked finished as well.
"Alright, Beta Team! Beta Team's main rapper and center goes to contestant Song A-seong!"
Song A-seong had chosen Beta Team and Meteor Shower, and Han Min-hyeok had gone Beta as well — Main Vocal A. His confidence in his skill seemed to have settled in; even taking a key position, he looked unbothered.
Min Ho-su went this way too, and…
Scanning the Beta Team lined up beside us, I felt a strange sense of the surreal. Kim Seong-min had chosen Beta Team's Main Vocal B.
I never thought there'd be a day Song A-seong, Han Min-hyeok, and Kim Seong-min would willingly end up on the same team.
Thinking back to how they'd sniped and bickered when we first met, it was almost unimaginable.
I guess that means things have changed that much.
Alpha Team and Beta Team. Because we were both standing in the front rows, my eyes met Song A-seong's, and we lightly bumped fists. We'd split into different teams for now, but we still had to debut together — I could only hope he'd do well.
"And last, Gamma Team! Gamma Team's main dancer and center is contestant Ahn Do-hyeon!"
I scanned Gamma Team's faces. Ahn Do-hyeon, Kim Yo-han, Ahn Jae-seo, Seo Woo-ri, Nam Gyu-hyeok, Im Su-han, Seo Ji-ho. Some familiar, some not.
If you tallied just the Top 12, it came out to seven on Alpha, three on Beta, and two on Gamma. Gamma's song wasn't bad, but looking purely at the results, the imbalance was severe. How things would shake out after the second team assignment a week from now was anyone's guess.
Once the distribution through twenty-first place was finished, the lower ranks began choosing songs — second-round rankings twenty-second through forty-second.
"Please choose the song you want!"
People who thought they still had a shot at cracking the top twenty-one in next week's third-round announcement mostly piled into Gamma. The ranks of the people already holding positions there were relatively the lowest, so it looked like they were leaving the door open to claim a new spot if they broke into the top twenty-one.
By the numbers, ten of the lower twenty-one went to Gamma, four to Beta, and seven came to Alpha. Checking the faces who'd come to Alpha Team, I spotted a familiar one.
"Hyung! Long time no see!"
Nam Hye-seong called out cheerfully and stuck out his hand, so I gave him a light high-five. After being assigned to the Narcissus team in round three and posting a rough result, he'd seemed pretty down, but his energy looked like it had bounced back somewhat.
Yu Sang-hyeon, who'd been on the same team as me in the first round, was here too, along with Yu Min-seong, who'd received a Finals advance ticket.
If Yu Min-seong, who has a Pass, doesn't make the top twenty-one, Alpha Team might end up building a stage with eight or more people. I traded small nods of greeting until my eyes met Jang Seon-woo's. It was a look similar to the one he'd given me yesterday while we were eating chicken.
"Tsk."
I smoothly ignored the way he clicked his tongue in open displeasure, only to lock eyes with Kwon Do-ha. He was watching Jang Seon-woo with a faintly amused smile that didn't look particularly cheerful.
"Alright, that concludes the Finals first-round team selection!"
They must have sorted it in the meantime — the rosters for Alpha Team, Beta Team, and Gamma Team appeared on the screen. The songs were set. The teams were set. Now it was time to start practicing all over again.
"Whoa, that is seriously cool."
Woo Cheong-hee's eyes sparkled as he watched the choreography draft video for It's a Festival.
"It kind of reminds me of middle and high school."
"Ah, right. It's definitely new, but there's that vibe from back then."
The two twenty-one-year-olds, Lee Jae-jin and Cha Ji-heon, drifted into a nostalgia trip. Apparently, if a track like this had come out when they were around fifteen, it would've gone on their playlists until it wore out.
It's a Festival layered rhythmic electric and acoustic guitars over dreamy, refreshing synth tones and bass, a song that conjured up a midsummer night's festival. Its signature was the rock-based sound that hit in the back half, where the drums exploded and the main vocal's tone locked in perfectly with them.
Woo Cheong-hee, who'd been staring at the pad like he might fall into it, started humming and riding the rhythm the moment the video ended.
"The song is so good. That feeling where it just drills into your ear and you want to keep listening? And we're the ones who get to sing this?"
"Doesn't it feel like something you should listen to by the ocean at night?"
When Lee Jae-jin said it would go with a night ocean, Cha Ji-heon added,
"Ah, I think I get it. With fireworks?"
"Whoa, yes! Exactly that feeling!"
I understood Lee Jae-jin and Cha Ji-heon being somewhat close — they were the same age and had been on the same team in round three — but Woo Cheong-hee had never even had contact with Cha Ji-heon, and somehow they were already clicking. Nodding along that the vibe was good and trading high-fives, they already looked excited. That social energy of his really was something else.
"For stage effects, it's gotta be fireworks, right? Beach means fireworks and sparklers!"
I could picture the feeling. Summer, night, ocean, fireworks. Han Sang-jin, watching Woo Cheong-hee rattle on about how romantic that would be, opened his mouth with a troubled look.
"I understand what you're saying, but I feel like you should know this… In our country, setting off fireworks on the beach gets you a fine."
"Huh?"
Woo Cheong-hee's face went blank with shock.
"But don't they sell fireworks sets around there…?"
"That's illegal too, actually."
Kwon Do-ha smiled faintly. It was true that some places openly sold fireworks sets near the beach, but they were illegal all the same. Woo Cheong-hee's eyes went round as if he hadn't known, and he muttered that his romance had just died. Beside him, Lee Won-yeong raised his hand and asked,
"Anyway, how much time do you think we'll need to learn the choreography?"
Seven position holders and seven subs. The practice room with all fourteen of us in it went quiet. Into that quiet, Kwon Do-ha spoke.
"How about individual practice until dinner? Jumping straight into full group work doesn't seem like it'll be efficient…"
"We need to get a feel for the song's atmosphere too… Let's finish changing everything we want to change in the choreography first, then start for real."
Lee Jae-jin said to learn it according to the choreography draft for now, and if anyone had moves they wanted to add or parts they wanted to revise, they should come to him. Everyone nodded.
With the main dancer seat locked down both by position and by skill, it looked like the choreography would once again be tweaked little by little under Lee Jae-jin's hand.
"It's four now, so how about we eat at six and start group practice right at seven?"
"I agree."
"Sounds good!"
And so the individual practice time we'd been given began. Some people went straight into learning the choreography; others rewound the video or studied lyrics. Looking beside me, I saw Kwon Do-ha staring at a lyric sheet full of empty blanks, so I pulled him over to a corner seat. Eyes from all over the room immediately fixed on us.
"Hyung, you can't push yourself!"
"Yeah, I'm fine, so don't worry about me and keep doing what you were doing. I'm just going to work on the lyrics a bit with Do-ha hyung."
"Okaaay~."
I waved off Woo Cheong-hee, who was fretting that if I overdid it the wound might reopen. Unfamiliar gazes flicked toward my waist as they passed.
So many people had seen me after the last performance, standing below the stage in a shirt soaked with blood, that most of them seemed to know I'd been hurt.
Settling into the corner to escape those faintly oppressive stares, I swept my eyes around the practice room. Fourteen people. The higher ranks had mostly shared a team with each other at least once or twice, so quite a few of them were already clustered around Lee Jae-jin and Han Sang-jin, learning the common choreography first.
I leaned against the wall on one side of the room and looped the song for about ten minutes. Once everyone was buried in their own practice, the surrounding stares finally fell away. Flipping the lyric sheet in my hand, I asked Kwon Do-ha beside me,
"Could you watch my practice separately later?"
Practicing here would draw too much attention because of the injury, so I figured I'd need to call Kwon Do-ha to another practice room or a different time slot. He looked at me with eyes full of things he wanted to say, then nodded.
One less thing to worry about.
I read through the lyric sheet in my hand again and again. Over the original lyrics, I planned to highlight the parts Lee Jae-jin and Woo Cheong-hee had been talking about earlier.
"The writer said we just fill in these blank parts, right?"
"Yes. They said even the hook is fine to change as long as the form matches."
"Hmm, then just a little…"
The pencil I'd grabbed off the dining table on the way spun between my fingers. Looking over the lyric sheet with its mood and direction already checked off, I started sketching lyrics one by one.
As main vocals, Kwon Do-ha and I were in charge of the song's hook and highlight, so we passed the pencil back and forth without hesitation, filling the blanks. Just leave the rap sections empty.
"How's this?"
"Not bad."
Excluding the rap, the actual amount wasn't much, so filling in the lyrics went faster than expected. When I checked the clock, the hour hand had just passed five.
Kwon Do-ha took the lyric sheet covered in clear pencil marks, said he'd go tidy it up and print copies, and stepped out of the practice room. Left alone, I stayed leaned against the wall and watched the people learning the choreography.
But just watching really did make me restless. Looking a hundred times was never going to beat dancing it once. Still, joining the choreography group felt awkward.
In the short breaks between their sets, more than five people had already peeked over and asked whether it wouldn't be better for me to just go upstairs and rest.
Come to think of it…
A sudden sense of wrongness made me scan the practice room. Nine people. At some point, four had gone missing. Had they stepped out?
When I stood, Han Sang-jin glanced my way, so I pointed at the door. It had been a while since those people disappeared, and there was nothing useful I could do sitting here. After how insistently everyone had told me to go rest upstairs, if I vanished they'd just assume I'd finally gone to lie down.
I slipped quietly out of the practice room and walked the hallway. I figured I'd look around a bit and, while I was at it, scout for a space where I could practice on my own.
I'd been walking for about ten minutes, hunting for somewhere suitable, when I was about to turn a corner and stopped short at the sound of swearing.
"What the fuck. I seriously don't get what the hell this is even supposed to be."
"Even if you get a Pass, the subs are just backup dancers anyway, right?"
"Exactly. There are only seven lyric sheets."
Voices I couldn't quite pin to faces. Between them, one I still remembered slipped out.
"Choreo edits, writing — they're all busy handling it among themselves… What a great program, seriously."
A snide voice. The tone was similar enough that I recognized him immediately. Jang Seon-woo.
"Lee Jae-jin, Lee Han-hee… I guess the geniuses will just take care of it themselves. Where do ordinary people get off even trying?"
It seemed the four who'd vanished from the practice room had gathered here. The lounge by the vending machines. So this was where they'd been cutting practice.
"But hey. I heard he got hurt, but how bad was it? Rumor has it there was a ton of blood…"
"Hell if I know. They say he went to the ER. Only their little group knows that kind of thing — when have they ever told us?"
"So damn full of themselves."
Among the people snickering and snorting, Jang Seon-woo's voice dropped low.
"But if you think about it, he's greedy as hell."
When he said that claiming center when he was hurt and couldn't even practice properly was just inconveniencing everyone else, a half-hearted murmur of agreement followed.
"Mmm. Yeah, if the center's still dragging around later, it really does kill the energy."
I tilted my head. Laying groundwork already? I had a strong feeling things were going to get messy once full group practice actually started.
I hadn't expected talk like this to be circulating already, before group practice had even begun.
Well… it's not like anyone has room to breathe.
Two weeks left until the Finals, one week until the elimination. Feeling the clock pressing in was only natural, so the longer time went on, the more the complaints would come into the open. I swallowed a sigh. Being injured was apparently a crime.