When I Woke, the World (2)
I pulled out my phone, and texts and chats were pouring in like they'd lost their minds. Raking a hand through my tangled hair, I let out the long sigh I'd been swallowing for the past hour.
Then I refreshed the browser.
Kim Hyunjo had been right. And so had Reporter Park Woo-jung.
Episode one of Next K-Star was a reversal drama with Neptune at its center.
The living room was a crucible of excitement and nerves. Once the stage ended, the judges' raves came one after another, and the edit was still firmly on Neptune's side — shots of the panel marveling, cuts of them murmuring to one another, then insert footage filmed in the company practice room, driving home again and again just how badly the performance had stunned everyone.
Right at the peak, the BGM cut out cold, and the mood flipped.
The harsh criticism poured onto Lee Songha alone.
"She's dragging the team average down all by herself. Are you even practicing properly?"
"She catches the eye, so your gaze keeps drifting that way, but once you actually look, there's nothing beyond it. If she had an acting or variety background, maybe — but she doesn't even have that."
The camera closed in on Lee Songha's reaction. She couldn't quite hide the hope on her face as she looked toward the judges' table, and that expression crumbled, just for a flicker. It lasted only a moment. The expectation and the thrill both died back, and she bowed her head with a mute, emptied look.
The next instant, an interview of her coming down off the stage followed right behind.
I went straight to the internet to check the reaction.
She'd taken a beating, but the edit hadn't played any strange tricks, so the overall sentiment toward Lee Songha was fine.
"Community reaction's decent. How's social?"
"Fine over here too. The portals are tamer than I was afraid of."
The Traitor answered, lifting his hands off the keyboard. Beside him, Kim Hyunjo was staring into the monitor in a trance. Every time his lips parted, an inevitable okay, nice slipped out, so it seemed safe to set at least one worry down.
"Oppa, what are people saying? Are we okay?"
"They're not saying stuff about Songha, are they?"
The girls had all turned this way. I glanced toward the Traitor, and our eyes met. We both laughed at the same time.
"Reaction's good!"
Lim Seoyoung snatched the Traitor's laptop as quick as a stray cat.
"Let's look together."
LJ immediately glued herself to the screen. Even Lee Songha, who had been stripping a scrawny chicken bone clean, edged her head in. Lee Taehee didn't squeeze into the cluster, but she was already leisurely pulling out her phone to search.
About thirty seconds later, the living room had turned into a full-blown festival.
"Look at this, I'm not kidding. So many people know our names!"
"They kept throwing our names up in the subtitles, of course they know, dummy. Scroll, scroll."
"They said I hit them with a fandom truck!"
"Tough break. Hey, I said scroll."
"Ahh, what do I do. My name's in the title and I can't bring myself to click! Songha, can you do it for me—!"
"Ugh, this is killing me! Give it here. Give me the laptop."
"You have a phone!"
"Oh. Right. I do have a phone."
Unable to sit still, Lim Seoyoung wandered the whole living room with the laptop in her arms, and LJ spun in place while staring at her phone. Lee Taehee was sprawled across the sofa the way she always did, treating it like her natural habitat, so for a second I thought, as expected of the leader, staying calm — except a closer look showed a phone in one hand and a glass of sansamju in the other. How many glasses of that lethal infused liquor is she even drinking?
And Lee Songha sat in the corner, jabbing at her phone. Related posts happened to be up on my laptop, so I held it out.
"Songha. Here."
"Ah. Thank you."
She took it in one quick grab and locked her eyes on the monitor, only her pupils moving, busy and intent. As if it were strange to have drawn a good reaction out of people with singing or dancing, she blinked several times.
"Honestly, PD Go Joon-tae, this guy..."
Off to one side, Kim Hyunjo finally set his laptop down and let out a short, breathy laugh.
"If this was the structure, he could've given us a heads-up... I caught a whole basin of curses for nothing. Geonyoung, you've got all the production contacts, right?"
"Yes."
The Traitor, mid-stretch, answered at once.
"Text PD Go Joon-tae that we watched today's broadcast and thanks for the edit, and send the crew gift cards, one each. Coffee or something like that. And tell them that once it's light out, we'll stop by the edit bay with snacks."
"Yes. I'll pick decent ones and send them."
"Aigoo, I was wound so tight my whole body's aching."
Kim Hyunjo groaned and collapsed onto the sofa.
I picked up the phone that still wouldn't stop buzzing and checked it. A long chat had come in from my brother and his wife, and there were a few texts from people I hadn't heard from in ages.
I'd only told my family and the idiots in the group chat about the broadcast. How did they know?
Looking into it, the shot of me with the Neptune girls after they came down from the stage had apparently been held on screen for quite a while. I opened the guys' group chat, and messages stacked up in a rush.
Under those, messages about trying a video call just once, and something about a blind date, ran on without end, so I switched the notifications to mute without a second thought.
I was just moving over to my contacts to call Mom first when—
"Huh? They're talking about us again?"
Lim Seoyoung pointed at the TV. Everyone turned that way again.
The mission stage and the evaluations were over, and what looked like individual judge interviews filmed after the recording were playing. Producer Song Baek-jin stroked his scruffy chin, sounding regretful.
"That girl Lee Songha — I said it during the recording too, but if it were the acting side, or..."
"Actually, that friend locked in a drama just two days after that day's shoot."
"Oh? She did? Well, she's quick on her feet. Then the evaluation changes. If she shows above-average acting over there, it's a win-win for the team and for her."
PD Go Joon-tae's voice cut in, and Song Baek-jin's eyes went wide. Then an insert graphic followed: two days after the first mission recording, Lee Songha had auditioned for and joined TVL's new miniseries, successfully taking her first step as an idol-actor.
"......"
The living room froze in an instant.
Announcing Lee Songha's casting wasn't the real problem — not if Knet and TVL, sister companies, had mentioned it once for the sake of promotion. The problem was the nuance.
The way it played, it sounded as if the moment the recording judged her dance and vocals lacking, Lee Songha had reached for acting with nothing prepared. An audition and a confirmed cast in two days. Stack on the fact that the drama's male lead was Seo Ji-joon, from the same agency, and a bomb had basically just hit the floor.
"No, that..."
Kim Hyunjo stared at the screen, stumbling over his words. He looked like he couldn't believe what he was seeing.
"If they tear into it like that, what the hell are we supposed to do? This guy, I swear... We've got a whole crowd of people tearing their hair out right now, trying to talk about this at the best possible time without any misunderstandings... Ah, the back of my skull. Ah, I'm going to lose my mind."
His phone rang at once. In the space of a moment his face had aged ten years. He picked it up, then whipped around toward the Traitor.
"Did you send the gift cards?"
"Not yet."
"Don't. Gift cards, fuck— Team Leader Park? We just saw it here too."
Still on the line with Team Leader Park, Kim Hyunjo vanished toward the kitchen.
"Songha, give me the laptop."
I took it back from her. Whatever was about to be said wouldn't be as generous to Lee Songha as the talk from a moment ago. The Traitor seemed to have reached the same conclusion — he retrieved his laptop from Lim Seoyoung and was telling the others not to search the internet.
I refreshed the community and scanned the reactions.
I looked up, and Lee Songha was watching me. She looked calm on the outside, but I knew her well enough by now to know that didn't mean she was fine underneath. I shut the laptop and made a point of sounding as if it were nothing.