Chapter 16

Chapter 16

The other team wasn’t bad. Ryu Chungwoo was a great fit for the song, and objectively speaking their performance was better than most of the other teams. But the audience wasn’t comparing them to the other teams, they were comparing them to VTIC.

This was the inevitable problem anyone faced when covering the latest hit song from the hottest idol group in the country. The original performance was still fresh in the majority of the audience’s minds. Even if they somehow managed to perform parts of the song better than VTIC themselves, it wasn’t likely that anyone would ever acknowledge it—VTIC fans occupied every corner of the internet and they would bury anyone who said otherwise under comments that amounted to “this will never compare to VTIC.”

All of that aside, my team performed better. My teammates all seemed to know it, too. Their expressions were bright and happy as they returned to the stage to greet the audience before the vote would take place.

The emcee introduced the teams in the same order they had performed. “Ah, here’s ‘October 31!’ Their performance was great fun and embodied the Halloween aesthetic! That was what inspired your team name, correct?”

“Yes! We’re the Halloween cuties!” Big Sejin exclaimed. “And there’s actually a second meaning.”

“What might that be?”

“Each of us has a variety of charming flavors, just like the famous thirty-one flavors of ice cream we all know and love!”

Big Sejin turned to the rest of the team, cupping his cheeks with both hands cutely. We had rehearsed this—the rest of the team quickly responded with their own poses. As for me… I poked one finger into the soft flesh of my cheek. In real life, no one my age would be caught dead acting like this unless they were totally wasted or trying to make fun of someone, but my life was on the line here.

“Oh my god!”

“They’re so cute!”

Thankfully, no one in the crowd seemed to be bothered by the overly cute posing. It was a good thing I’d used my points to up Park Moondae’s physical attractiveness stats. B- was only a little better than average, but could almost be considered handsome.

The other team began introducing themselves.

“Hello! I am…”

I could tell the other team was nervous, since there was a notable difference in the volume of the crowd’s cheers, even if the contrast wasn’t noticeable enough to be humiliating.

“Nice to meet you. My name is Ryu Chungwoo!”

The crowd screamed. One thing they had going for them was that everyone seemed very enthusiastic to hear Ryu Chungwoo’s name. Sadly for them, though, it wouldn’t be enough to secure the team a victory.

“Shareholders, please cast your vote! First, please vote for the team that you think did best! ‘October 31’ is number one, and “Mountain Heroes” is number two!”

The audience each pressed the number that corresponded with the team they liked best on their remotes, and before long the allocated time for voting was over. Then came a second round of voting.

“Next, you will be allowed to choose the one member from each team that you liked best!” The emcee repeated, “Let me say this again. Not just one person, but one from each team. That’s a total of two!”

This was obviously a ploy to sew discord on the production team’s part. They clearly wanted to add some additional spice to the show. And as was about to be revealed, the reward for the winners of this vote was even better than the one awarded to the winner of the team battle vote. Worse, none of us had been told about this before the stage rehearsal earlier that day.

“Everyone! The prize awarded to the winners of this second vote is… a disqualification immunity ticket!”

The other teams had been furious about this, but my team didn’t have it in them to start trouble. Seon Ahyeon was a pushover, and Goldie #1 and Goldie #2 were not brave enough to speak up, even if they wanted to complain. Lee Sejin had been hard-pressed just to learn his part and Choi Wongil no longer misbehaved after I’d put him in his place. Big Sejin probably had no complaints, since he had gotten to be the main dancer in the end.

This made it sound as if our team was only peaceful because we were each already busy dealing with our own individual problems, which was pretty much the truth of it. As far as the cameras were concerned, we had good teamwork. That was all that mattered. In any case, this second vote came to an end blanketed in a more ambiguous mood than the first.

“Thank you!”

With a short bow, the contestants, including me, descended from the stage. Strangely enough, I felt reluctant to leave. Filming finally came to an end late into the night.

***

“Good work, guys!”

“I think we did pretty good, wouldn’t you say?”

Everyone had been disappointed to hear that the results of the second vote wouldn’t be revealed until our rankings were announced, but they all quickly put it out of their minds. They’d no doubt expected as much since it was the same thing that had happened last season and my team was probably just content that we’d won the team battle.

“And as for the team battle… October 31 wins! The score is 401 to 82!”

Everyone was shocked at the insane difference in score. When the announcement was made, the studio had erupted into a cacophony of noise, with screams and claps lasting for at least five seconds.

With the exception of Big Sejin, the whole team was nearly in tears, making it pretty obvious how everyone was feeling. We’d had no choice but to pull ourselves together pretty quickly, even though the crying hadn’t been contained to our group.

“Dongyun…”

“Good work. You did well.”

A contestant from the other team had also started crying. You feel less inclined to cry yourself when someone who’s having a hard time is already doing so, especially if yours were happy tears. As a result, my team members hung in an odd sort of joyous limbo, conscious of both the cameras and the other team. They saved their elation for when filming was over for the day.

“Should we make a group chat? We worked so hard together. We should have a team chat room!”

“Wow, that’s a great idea!”

“I’m all for it.”

At Big Sejin’s suggestion, we created a group chat. Surprisingly, even Lee Sejin didn’t spoil the good mood and willingly shared his phone number without complaint.

“Wow!”

“No way, Sejin!”

“Yay! We can all chat together now!”

In the end, I also ended up exchanging numbers with everyone and being added to the group chat. I’m going to turn the notifications off…

“Moondae! Great work!” Big Sejin said to me as I gathered my things.

“Yeah, you did a good job as our leader,” I replied. I was just being polite since everything had turned out so well, but he soaked up the compliment like a sponge.

“Ha ha! Yeah, I was a pretty good leader, huh?”

And so modest, too…

“Just kidding!” Big Sejin said with a grin.

I don’t think it was a joke. Just shut up already.

“We should hang out and stay in touch!”

“Uh, okay,” I replied.

Big Sejin obviously wanted me in his clique—He probably wants to cut ties with the contestants from his agency, since they’re nothing special—but I hadn’t forgotten that he might later end up a drug dealer. I had no intention of taking any risks until I was certain he wasn’t going to drag me under. I’ll just ignore his messages and tell him something weird is going on with my phone.

Another voice entered the conversation. “M-me too! L-let’s stay…”

“Stay in touch?” I took pity on him.

Ahyeon nodded enthusiastically. He was more tolerable than Big Sejin, at least. I nodded, and Ahyeon’s expression brightened.

Big Sejin smiled. “Should the three of us make a separate chat room? It’d be nice to have a chat room with just us since we’re all the same age.”

Is this the angle you’re going for then? However, Ahyeon agreed straight away, so I suddenly found myself in a second chat room.

I had a bad feeling about this. I’d put my concerns aside, since finishing the performance had been the more pressing concern, but it bothered me that in previous seasons, the voting had often led to teams forming based on the first team battle.

Don’t tell me I’ll keep ending up in the same group as these guys? I had no way of knowing. Regardless, the team battle had gone well and I was likely to pass the first evaluation.

“Be careful going home!”

“See you next time!”

The contestants all called various goodbyes to one another as they left the set. I also exited the studio and caught the bus home. Once I got back to my tiny one-room apartment, I’d check out everyone’s online reactions to the team battle right away.

***

The audience usually signed a nondisclosure agreement committing to not speaking about what they’d seen until the episode actually aired, but such measures seldom actually deterred anyone. Therefore sites that allowed users to post anonymously were flooded with fan accounts of the team battle.

They went something like this:

[Comments after watching the sh*tshow Idol Inc recording in person]

: Marshmallow rocked. Period.

- What’s with this comment? It keeps coming up.

ㄴ Is it spam?

ㄴ Nah, I hear it actually rocked.

ㄴ But how do you perform a Marshmallow song in any memorable kind of way? What’d they do, a magic show on the side?

It was surprising. I’d been expecting that the team with Cha Eugene in it would come up in the comments more since he had been the overall winner of the show in my previous life. Of course, half of the comments were from idiots who were just attention-seeking and jumping on the bandwagon to mock the show. But it seemed that my team had left a lasting impression on quite a few people.

I scrolled, picking out and reading a few of the more coherent posts.

==========================

[Here’s what I can remember from the first team battle]

…And the guys who did the Marshmallow song were seriously so good that I think they could debut as a group right now. They’ve got great moves and the only clumsy one was Lee Sejin, but even he managed to pull it off… I wonder who came up with the idea.

Ah right, the high notes were seriously something else. I think the guy who did the bridge has the makings of a main vocalist.

Edit: You guys keep saying this is fake, so here’s a picture: (they’d uploaded a hazy picture of the stage)

==========================

ㄴ So who else was there, other than Lee Sejin?

ㄴ You say they were amazing, but you can’t remember who the members were? LOL you can’t fool us

ㄴ I’m not lying. Take a look at the photo. I checked their profiles and Seon Ahyeon was one of the contestants on the Marshmallow team. He was f*cking good. If they were gonna pick a face for the group, it would be him.

ㄴ But how did they pull it off so well? I’m dying of curiosity here. Marshmallow’s debut song is cringe as all hell

ㄴ They went with a sort of occult theme, and it gave me the chills

ㄴ ??

ㄴ No they didn’t, they dressed up as robots

ㄴ LOL ignore this clown. They just went with the fairy theme from the original song

ㄴ No man, it was werewolves.

ㄴ No, vampires

ㄴ Which one of you is telling the truth, you motherf*ckers? T_T

ㄴ It was fairies. Trust me lol

“The comments are a hot mess.” I skimmed through some of the other posts, and they all had the same clowns messing around in the comments. It was likely no one would be able to make sense of what happened at the recording until the show aired, which was fortunate.

It would generate more curiosity. The production team would be monitoring the internet’s reaction closely, so the many times my team had come up would probably have a favorable impact on our screen time.

I guess that’s enough reading comments for now… I have to consider my next steps. I summoned the pop-up that had originally appeared the second our performance had ended.

[A successful performance!]

You’ve impressed the majority of the audience!

-Audience size: 582 people (New record!)

-Proportion impressed: 81% (New record!)

: Pick a rare trait ☜ Click!

I’d been given a little bit more information to work with. It seemed that there was the opportunity to earn better traits if I set a new record for audience size and the proportion of them I managed to dazzle. The two special traits I’d been given so far had been pretty effective, so earning another in exchange for a single performance wasn’t a bad deal at all.

I’d die if I didn’t manage to debut in under a year, so I supposed it was only fair that I was rewarded well for my accomplishments. Hmm… Just thinking about it pisses me off a little.

I’d leveled up once for completing the “practice a dance 500 times” goal while preparing for the team battle but hadn’t actually allocated the point yet. I intended to use it to its maximum effect, depending on what would happen during the next day of filming. I’ll save the point for now and see what trait comes up.

I clicked the message and the now familiar slot machine appeared. The reel spun and came to a stop on a plate holding brass letters.

“Oh…”

The few silver slots I’d seen in passing were no doubt the better traits, so I was a bit disappointed. I suppose I can’t always be lucky. In any case, the actual trait mattered more than its color. Quickly setting aside my disappointment, I read the description of the special trait I’d won.

[Trait: “Look at Me (D)” obtained!]

People will pay a little more attention to your actions.

I was at a loss for words.