Chapter 28

Chapter 28

To be entirely honest, if someone were to ask me if “Blazing Like the Sun” was a good song, I would have said yes. But if asked whether it was a good song for an idol performance, I’d have advised them to avoid it at all costs.

The song’s lyrics and sound were that of a rock band from the 2000s. Take my word for it. I’d heard the song whenever I went to film idols invited to throw the first pitch at baseball games. Not even the disciplined dance style of the cheerleaders fit the song—it was just a cheery rock anthem. Only the extremely high notes throughout the song set it apart. All of this meant that the arrangement would be hellishly hard.

Can’t I get a trait that helps with song composition? I need one right now. The original artist and the contestants were having a conversation full of hope for our future performance, unaware of my despair. My teammates seemed only to know a couple of lines from the addictive chorus.

“We didn’t perform together for that long, so we weren’t able to sing this song live many times. I hope you can take it and really make it shine,” the artist said.

“We’ll give it our best shot!”

And how are you going to do that? Oh, forget it. I decided not to stress over our inevitable failure. I would just play it safe during this second team battle, hoping the editors didn’t tear me to shreds. As things stood now, I could probably already get into an average agency and succeed at quickly debuting.

But still… I thought we’d at least be able to pull off a decent performance. Strangely enough, I found myself feeling bitterly disappointed. It hadn’t been by choice that I’d started this, and I couldn’t understand why I suddenly cared so much. I guess I’m getting too invested.

Still, I had a lot of fun last time. All right, Let’s see what I can do during our brain-storming. I supposed one of the others might end up producing a good idea. The original artist left the set before long. We were informed that he’d come by during the interim evaluation a few days from now to watch us with the trainer during practice.

The team gathered around, finally ready to discuss the performance.

***

Chungwoo suggested an idea that sounded more rhetorical than anything else. “A cheer squad. I think that would be the best theme, don’t you think? It will go nicely with the song, and we can easily incorporate some difficult moves.”

“A cheer squad? Uh... I suppose that might work.”

“I think that’s pretty good.”

“Exciting.”

A few people responded positively, including Eugene. They seemed to be okay with the idea.

“What do you think, Raebin? Moondae? Sejin?” Chungwoo quickly skimmed over the faces of the team members and picked out the three who hadn’t reacted, including me.

I knew that waiting until the last moment and speaking deliberately would give me a better chance of influencing the outcome. For now, I decided to smoothly turn to look at the other two.

“Why don’t you tell us your thoughts first, Sejin?”

“I think a cheer squad would look corny.”

He was still dishing out facts. Sejin’s unwillingness to cooperate hadn’t really been highlighted on the show yet, since he hadn’t fallen victim to malicious editing so far. From the posts I’d seen written about him while searching my own name, Sejin’s fans seemed to believe he was just a shy and sensitive but hardworking guy.

But the thing was, Chungwoo always came out fantastic in the edit. I had a feeling Sejin might end up the victim of the villain edit this time around.

In any case, Chungwoo didn’t seem all that concerned by his criticism. He asked quietly, “Do you have any other ideas, then?”

“No. That’s why I didn’t speak up,” Sejin replied.

“Hmm, okay. Noted.” Chungwoo turned his attention to Raebin. “What about you, Raebin?”

“I don’t know the song very well, so I’ll have to hear it first.”

“Okay. Let’s have a listen, then.”

He tapped the tablet PC we’d been issued and the electric guitar melody of the chorus began, preceded by a classical drum beat. Everyone listened quietly until the song ended.

Raebin was the first to turn pale and mutter, “Wait, this is...”

Someone else had finally realized the gravity of the situation. The lyrics encapsulated a bygone trend that praised the beauty of youth. Put nicely, it was retro. Objectively, it was old-fashioned.

There was no special concept, like flower fairies or vampires, and it was difficult to insert one into the song. Because it was made specifically with a single talented singer in mind, the octave was inhumanly high in the chorus. If it was lowered even slightly the song would immediately lose its appeal. The clear, high-pitched tone was what made the song memorable.

“Hmm. It’s really high. Can you see anything else that might cause us some difficulty?”

Raebin took a deep breath as if about to launch into a rant, but he pressed his lips together after glancing at the camera. He’d been criticized heavily after the last team battle went live, so he was being cautious now. “Uh… Yes. The song is great, but I think it’ll be hard to arrange.”

“Yeah? If you’re saying that it must really be difficult, then,” Chungwoo said, nodding slowly.

He was saying this because Raebin had still managed to pull off a strong arrangement in the first team battle, even if he’d made himself look pretty terrible on screen in the process.

He was able to sample the beat from a generic EDM melody from the late 2000s and turned it into a sleek modern EDM trap song.

“What about you, Moondae?”

Finally, it was my turn. “I think there’s something else we need to decide on first,” I said.

“What’s that?”

“How we’re going to spit the different parts of the song up.”

If the song choice was already terrible, then we needn’t bother focusing on putting on an amazing performance. Instead, our goal had to be avoiding a complete fiasco. I was utterly certain that the only person on our team capable of singing the chorus properly was me.

If someone hope to stand a chance, their singing grade had to be at least an A-, and I was the only one with a high enough grade. But that doesn’t mean I can just sing the entire chorus alone. We had to cut it into parts and practice so that we wouldn’t make any mistakes.

As for the arrangement, we could delay making a decision about it for a little longer, since there was no obvious solution to that problem at the moment. This wasn’t the time to draw up a big plan—it was an emergency. I tried to frame the situation as moderately as possible.

“It’s a difficult song to sing, so I think we should start practicing as our first priority.”

“Deciding the roles… That’s important, too,” Chungwoo said, looking surprised.

“But it’s odd. I thought you wanted to start with the arrangement during the last team battle?”

“Huh?” That conversation hadn’t made it to air, so I had no idea how he knew.

“Oh. I heard from Big Sejin.”

When did that guy start talking to Chungwoo? I definitely needed to keep an eye on him, that Big Sejin.

“Raebin, let me ask you since you’re probably the best out of us when it comes to arranging,” Chungwoo said. “What do you think of Moondae’s suggestion?”

“It’s a good idea. We can practice and I’ll be able to consider what options we have in the meantime,” Raebin agreed easily. The look on his face, though, was reminiscent of a scientist who’d just realized an asteroid was going to collide with Earth tomorrow.

“Well, we’ve all said our piece, so let’s take a vote for now until we think of something better.” Chungwoo wasted no time, quickly wrapping the conversation up. “Raise your hand if you agree we should go ahead with a cheer squad theme for now.”

The majority of the group raised their hands, including me. Chungwoo didn’t even frown when he saw that Sejin hadn’t raised his. He just moved on to the next vote.

“Raise your hand if you’re okay with just dividing the parts first.”

This was also passed by the majority. Even Sejin raised his hand, which probably meant my explanation sounded reasonable. He lowered his hand before our eyes met, then avoided my gaze. I guess the other man wanted to make it clear he wasn’t agreeing with me, just my idea. Why bother?

“Okay. Let’s start by assigning roles, then.”

Things seemed to be going smoothly for a while, but we soon hit the roadblock I’d been expecting.

“I don’t think I can do this part.”

“Me neither...”

“The key is too high.”

The high melody in the chorus was repeated four times, taking up nearly half of the song. All the other members failed to sing it at all or were left holding their throats with wry frowns on their faces. One of them, who was pretty good at singing with a grade of B+, seemed worried about straining his throat. Then he made the suggestion I’d been dreading.

“I think we should arrange the song first, to lower the key, before we continue. We have two members who can rap, so why don’t we add some rap lines, too?”

He wanted to proceed with the arrangement first. Sh*t.

“Lowering the key would be…” Kim Raebin said, his expression going dark. He gave off a generally unapproachable vibe generally, but at this moment he looked downright unfriendly. The ship had already sailed, however.

“I agree.”

“Same here.”

“Hmm, I suppose everyone does need to be able to sing their parts. Why don’t we lower the key, then try to arrange the song accordingly?” Chungwoo asked.

Raebin glanced around him, then nodded. “All right. Let’s do that, then.” It was obvious he was forcing himself to go along with the others since refusing would only lead to him coming out bad in the edit again.

In the end, they went ahead with working on the arrangement, incorporating a jumbled mix of discordant opinions that lead to lowering the key, adding rap lines, and adding an accompaniment that suited the cheer squad theme.

I supposed this was why it was dangerous to let fools have a say in things. The performance was a hot mess. I didn’t bother to voice any of my objections, however, since I had no hope of overturning the majority vote. Even if I got lucky and “Words of Persuasion” kicked in, I wouldn’t be accomplishing anything unless I had a suitable alternative solution ready to go.

And if the others accused me of wanting the song to remain untouched because I was the only one who could actually sing it, I’d be in a sticky situation. I didn’t want to be portrayed as selfish—the show had already made me look pretty aloof. In other words, I needed someone else to tell these guys that their ideas were terrible.

I suppose I have no choice but to wait and see for now. The interim check, which would evaluate only the first verse, was three days from now. Unless the judges had completely lost their touch, at least one of them would give us decent feedback. In the meantime, I would try and figure out an alternative strategy.

“Let’s move on to the dance, then!” Eugene shouted. The choreography that he proceeded to create was so fiendishly difficult, it reminded me of the moves for “Shining Star.”

I was seized with the impulse to invest my remaining stat point into dancing, alternative strategies be damned. The next three days left me scraping the bottom of the barrel for the remaining dregs of my energy, stamina stretched to its limits.

Then the day of the interim evaluation finally arrived.

***

“This team has such high-ranking members!”

“Raebin’s really set on winning this one!”

“All of you had good grades in the ranking announcement.”

The first thing the judges mentioned was our ranks. They were reading off a script given to them by the production team, but it was true, nonetheless. And it probably meant their expectations were high.

“Oh, you already have the demo track ready?”

“Yes!” Raebin replied. He’d been consulting with a pro arranger over the last few days.

“That’s great!”

“Yes. This team is the only one who’s already using a custom arrangement instead of the original song.”

“Of course, this team is full of talent after all!”

The judges seemed ready to be impressed. This wasn’t the reality that panned out. Their reactions after we finished performing the first verse were lukewarm at best. They shrugged and exchanged glances, then picked their microphones up one by one to deliver their feedback.

“Actually, your performance isn’t bad, per se. But it lacks charisma.”

“Yes. The choreography is great. It’s clever. But the cheer theme… I understand it was meant to suit the spirit of the song, but why does it feel so flat?”

“The rap is too random. The song’s been tweaked in a lot of places, but your rendition feels inferior to the original.”

The problems began to take form as the judges continued critiquing.

Youngrin took the microphone and asked abruptly, “Who arranged this?”

I avoided looking at Raebin since he wasn’t really the root of the problem. The other guys were all looking at him, though, so my caution was probably wasted.

“We decided on it together,” Chungwoo said, realizing what was happening and hurrying to ensure we took the fall as a group. He probably intended to take some of the blame himself, by saying he’d been an inadequate leader. It was a good call on his part. Every team had its troll, however.

“Yes, but Raebin did the arranging,” one of the guys whose name I hadn’t bothered learning spoke up suddenly.

You’re just going to throw him under the bus like that? You must be out of your mind. The cameras were on. Why was this guy being so stupid? He looked pretty flustered, and it seemed he’d spoken impulsively, frightened by the scathing feedback from the judges.

Oh, f*ck it… At this rate, it would look like we were picking on Raebin as a group. I didn’t want anything to do with that, so I decided to speak up.