Chapter 194

Chapter 194

VTIC’s Cheongryeo was sitting at the table next to ours.

This is the first I’ve seen of him since our vacation. To be honest, I didn’t feel much of anything, just as I’d expected. Judging from how quiet he’d been until now, it was unlikely he’d try anything stupid again.

I’ll just ignore him for the most part. As expected, I could only hear the others chatting. They seemed to be conscious of the noise they were making and raised their voices intentionally to be heard.

“We’ve been enjoying the reality show!”

“Thank you.”

With their comeback delayed, they’d probably been staying home and watching a lot of content. The VTIC member who’d spoken seemed to think I’d thought his compliment was just him being polite, since he continued to elaborate unnecessarily.

“We watched it together, and it was really good!”

“Yeah. You enjoyed it, too, right?”

One of the other members tried to bring Cheongryeo into the conversation.

Just go away. The interaction between us just now had been moderately friendly, but things were about to go south. If a fancam caught us now, there were bound to be rumors.

These assholes are such a bother, I thought to myself. Our eyes met. Cheongryeo simply nodded, and that was that.

Huh. The way he was acting was surprisingly appropriate for the situation. I supposed that maybe the blow to the head had finally knocked some sense into him.

“Thank you, VTIC! We’ve been watching your performances a lot lately as well!” Big Sejin exclaimed.

“Oh no, you’ll make us shy!”

“Yeah!”

“We’re going to be hyper-focused watching you today. That’s why we brought our own seat cushions!”

“Hahaha! That’s why you brought them?”

“Yes! Good luck!”

“You too!”

Big Sejin put a polite end to the conversation. I wondered if I should buy him some good quality beef or something. It would be worth the money.

I decided to give Bae Sejin credit as well since he wasn’t openly glaring at the VTIC members. The moment VTIC returned to their seats, Big Sejin covered his mouth so that the crowd couldn’t see it and whispered, “Where did you hit him? I don’t see any bruises or anything.”

“The back of his head and his neck.”

Cheongryeo was wearing a black turtleneck, which made it pretty clear that the marks I’d left on him hadn’t faded yet. An odd look appeared on Big Sejin’s face for a moment, but he soon erased it.

“Hello everyone! Let’s take a moment to look back over the past year before we start a new one...”

The emcee began to speak up on stage. The broadcast had begun.

It’s going to be pretty boring for a while. I leaned back in my seat so it wouldn’t show in my body language. It was time to dutifully react to every part of the ceremony for the cameras.

***

As one might expect, it was actually nice to be able to sit down and do nothing when our schedule was generally so packed. But at the same time, it wasn’t all that easy to look focused on the stage and do nothing else.

This is still better than the first time we filmed for Idol Inc., though. Anyone who performed tonight would win something, after all.

I clapped as another group finished their performance and the crowd screamed and cheered. They had performed choreography that incorporated modern dance and hadn’t been all that great, with the exception of the one person performing in the center. If I were to rank all popular idols the way Idol Inc. had, I’d rank this group somewhere between gold and silver.

I decided to ask our dance major’s opinion. “How did you like the performance?”

“M-me?”

“Yeah.”

“Uh… Th-they seemed very enthusiastic. Their extensions were pretty, too.” He couldn’t seem to bring himself to actually say they were good, which told me all I needed to know.

I endured for a good while, reacting politely so that I wouldn’t be caught being rude on any fancam.

“Love you, Loviewers!”

“Thank you. You made our year so happy.”

It took us an hour before we were able to go up and give our speech after winning a bonsang. Then it was time for us to get ready for our own performance.

“Let’s move!”

“Okay.”

Our performance wasn’t going to be just one of the many special stages of the awards ceremony season. It was our first since the successful release of our reality show. We needed to turn people’s attention back to our music and performances so that we could ensure our continued popularity as an idol group.

This is our job, we need to be good at it. So we went all out with this one.

I’m finally here

I’m your present

We’d split up into two groups on stage, with countless backup dancers in tow. As our two groups collided, flags bearing landscapes and animal paintings fluttered through the air. What followed was an incredible dance break that utilized laser effects which looked like colorful, fast-moving balls. The arrangement was aggressive and fast. It was a performance modeled after a traditional game played by warriors in the Goryeo and Joseon eras called dakyu.

The cheering was loud enough to be heard even through our earpieces. It was a shorter version of the same dance break we performed at our concert, but the audience seemed to like it quite a bit. I’d thought this to myself before, and it was a little hilarious to me that I could now tell based on the mood of the crowd, while I was still on stage, if a performance had been moderately good, or a total killer.

This time it was clearly the latter.

“Phew.”

“Guys, you did really great, even though the floor was slippery and all.”

“That was amazing!” Big Sejin said, glancing upward as if disappointed despite saying this. Apparently, he’d wanted a more high-impact performance.

“Yeah, good work. It’s been a while since we performed in Korea, right?”

“Yeah.”

“It was fun!”

We hadn’t made any mistakes, and judging by the camera lights we could see coming on and off, the performance had been caught on film the way we’d rehearsed it. The members all looked pretty proud of themselves as they caught their breath as we returned to our seats. VTIC wasn’t at their table.

I think their turn is coming up. The live broadcast was nearly done, so they’d probably gone to prepare. The only awards remaining were the Most Popular Artist Award and the daesang.

They’ll have to come from backstage if they win now. I’d seen this happen before, but it was less impactful than waiting in the idol seating area so the cameras could catch the winner’s reactions, to be honest. Thinking to myself that this awards ceremony was pretty clumsily put together in the end, I waited for the video on screen to stop playing.

Moments later, the person announcing the next award called us.

“The winner of the Gold Disc Most Popular Artist Award is… Congratulations, TeSTAR!”

“Huh? Wh-what?”

The members, who’d all been sitting back in their chairs relaxing after their performance, suddenly sat up. Their reaction wasn’t surprising.

Frankly, I hadn’t been expecting to win at all. The polls for the Most Popular Artist Award were no longer public, and only the total number of votes cast overall was shown following recent criticism that showing who was winning in real time encouraged unhealthy competition.

But even so, we can get a feel for these things. The Most Popular Artist Award was often won by the album daesang winner. Streaming services are the norm these days. If an artist sold a lot of physical albums, it meant that they themselves were popular, not just one of their songs. But TeSTAR had won the award based 100% on votes, without any input from the hosts under the guise of “professional evaluation from impartial judges.”

I mean, even if VTIC fans weren’t as eager about this award ceremony… The VTIC fans had assumed that they wouldn’t be taking part in this ceremony and therefore hadn’t been very enthusiastic about voting. But even taking that into account, this was a shocking outcome.

They must have rushed to vote after the articles announcing they’d be here went live, though. This seemed to suggest that we were getting close to catching up to VTIC. A strange sort of rush went through my body.

I need to keep calm. In any case, that momentary thought aside, my body was already moving on autopilot and bowing to the audience alongside the others.

“Whoa…”

“No way!”

Some of the members looked dazed, while Eugene rushed out excitedly, but none seemed to have expected it. Of course, they were shocked.

The organizers didn’t even tell us. They’d probably wanted to catch our genuinely shocked expressions, those bastards. We clumsily moved onto the stage as the cameras got close-ups of us.

“Th-thank you!”

“Thank you!”

Our formation broke apart, however, as we bowed to the waving fans, and the hand microphone that a staff member passed to us ended up going to the wrong person—Kim Raebin.

“Uh… yeah…”

He was confused. As I already knew, improvising a speech was too much for him to handle.

But he’s started to speak, so he needs to say something now. Just say ‘Thank you, I love you,’ or something.

“Thank you.”

There we go. He seemed to gain steam after that since he spoke at length into the microphone.

“We were quite worried leading up to releasing the Tiger Hunter album whether we would actually achieve mainstream success. But so many of you voted for it, winning us this prize. It feels like confirmation that we’re doing the right thing.”

Please stop, that’s enough. If he left it there, he’d have delivered a pretty good speech, even if it was long-winded. But he didn’t stop.

“And the solo songs were also a huge risk— Oh my gosh, I’m sorry!” Kim Raebin balked when he saw the staff in front of him signaling him to wrap it up and politely handed his microphone to me.

Why are you giving it to me? Our leader is right next to you. The crowd burst out laughing. Kim Raebin covered his face and carefully backed away.

Maybe this is what we needed to break the ice. More than half the audience here were VTIC fans, and even they seemed to have eased up a little in the face of Raebin’s awkwardness. Maybe seeing this rookie group look so confused to have won made them feel a little more generous toward us. Maybe they’d accept that we’d won, just this once.

I tried to smoothly hand the microphone back to Chungwoo, but he laughed and gestured that I should speak. He was probably doing so because he’d given the speech when we’d received our bonsang earlier in the night.

I don’t really want to do it though. I took up the microphone reluctantly.

“Raebin is very smart. I agree with everything he said.” After another quiet burst of laughter, I calmly continued, “Thank you for taking the time out of your busy lives to vote for us. We’ll be back soon with more music worth voting for.”

“Thank you!”

“Love you Loviewers! I’m so happy!”

Our speeches ended with Eugene giving the audience a thumbs-up. Cameras followed us even in the short time we spent moving through the backstage area, so we couldn’t talk about what had just happened. But all of the members seemed to realize that TeSTAR was no longer lingering at the bottom of the top, but rather working our way steadily up the ranks.

This is huge motivation to work harder. It even occurred to me that the agency might start having delusions of us becoming rivals with VTIC by next year.

Moments later, however, seeing VTIC perform on stage told me that the agency would probably very quickly give up on that dream. The audience’s screams were so loud, it felt like our ears might bleed.

They’re goddamn good on stage. They were now four members instead of five, but the absence was hard to notice because backup dancers had been placed at all the right spots. And the song was amazing, too.

So this is what’s possible when the agency is actually good at their job. They’d quickly cut away the member that they weren’t going to be able to salvage, and took care of the others carefully so that no malicious gossip articles would come out about them during their hiatus. There hadn’t been a single public mention of Cheongryeo’s injuries, either. The way they’d dealt with this incident showed that their agency had experience, talent, and vision.

As a result, I could easily see VTIC coming out the other end of this whole thing thanks to this single perfect stage, with a little help from well-tended to public opinion. Their agency left ours in the dust.

Hmm. I wish I could leave this company. I thought the shared dream of all salaried workers. Soon VTIC’s long performance came to an end, and the daesang was announced, the outcome surprising no one.

“And the daesang goes to... VTIC’s ‘Insight!’”

I stood up and clapped enthusiastically so nobody had any room to criticize me for my reaction.

“Thank you so much! We... we promise to keep doing our best!”

The VTIC members were crying. They’d had a pretty hard time of it recently. I could even hear people in the crowd sniffling.

Hmm. Cheongryeo didn’t seem to feel much of anything, though. He pretended to comfort the other members, then took to the microphone last and casually started speaking.

“I don’t know why I’m here.”

The f*ck?