Chapter 40

Chapter 40

I was a bit taken aback. Considering his personality, I’d expected him to be curled up crying in the corner. But he appeared to be pretty unbothered.

How should I put this? It’s like he’s become... grimly determined. Ahyeon wasn’t even looking at his phone. He seemed to grow scared the longer I didn’t say anything, though.

“Wh-what is it?”

“Well... um...”

There was no reason to upset him. I trailed off, fishing a chocolate bar from my backpack. The night Eugene had shown up at our room had taught me a thing or two.

“Want some?”

“Y-y-yes! Thanks...”

Ahyeon took the sweet gingerly in both hands as if it was something precious and tucked it carefully away in his backpack.

Isn’t he going to eat it?

He seemed overly aware of my eyes on him and explained uncertainly, “I-I need to watch my weight... If I get heavier, m-my moves will suffer. I-I don’t want to get into the habit of eating nighttime snacks.”

“Yeah?”

I guess dance majors are built different. I was about to dismiss the thought, but it occurred to me he was contradicting himself.

“You gave me a chocolate bar after midnight during our grade evaluation though, didn’t you?”

“I-i-it was fine in your case, Moondae! Y-you were way too thin back then...”

There was more to this, I suddenly knew. I stared at him, perplexed, and someone laughed from the next bunk over.

“Yeah. You were so scrawny when you started, I thought you were doing some kind of aggressive weight loss program,” Big Sejin said.

“But did you guys know it’s actually just the way his metabolism works? I mean, the way you eat, Moondae... You should be gaining way more weight than you do, man. If I were you, I’d be super chubby by now,” Goldie #1 added.

Uh, all right. I ate a lot more than I usually would to keep my energy levels up. I didn’t know they’d made all these assumptions about me and my eating. I was a bit puzzled, but the silly conversation seemed to have lifted everyone’s mood a little.

Ahyeon laughed quietly, still sitting on the bed underneath me. When I leveled a cold look at him, he jumped, choking on his own spit and coughing.

What an... odd guy. Without a word, I threw him a bottle of mineral water from my bed.

Ahyeon fumbled as he tried to catch it, but eventually righted the bottle and took a few sips. He muttered quietly, “I-I want to do even better this time.”

“Yeah...”

Based on these words, I supposed he’d seen what people were saying after all. Maybe he was managing to keep his cool because he hadn’t really looked too closely.

I debated for a moment, then cautiously suggested, “You know, it might distract us too much if we spend a lot of time online. Let’s just focus on finding the information we need.”

“Oh...”

Ahyeon exclaimed, an odd look on his face. He straightened suddenly, a determined look on his face.

“I-I-I already know what people have b-been saying. I-I’m ready.”

“Huh?” What is he talking about now?

Ahyeon mumbled shyly, “I-I’ve been seeing those kinds of comments about me e-even before we started this shoot. F-feels like there’s no end to them...”

I wondered if this was why he’d seemed so down on the day we’d met for lunch. Public sentiment had not been as bleak back then as it was now, but the internet was a dumpster fire at the best of times.

Ahyeon was probably not very well acquainted with how bad things got online and had delved too deep down the rabbit hole.

Just how far did he go? I suspected he had probably ventured onto the ridiculous online communities that were specifically dedicated to belittling idols. He was kind of rambling now, almost as if he were trying to convince himself.

“I-I saw this coming. I was r-ready for it, too. I-I’m okay. I’m used to it.”

“Is that so?”

“Y-yeah!” he said, nodding quickly. I, on the other hand, felt shaken.

I think he must be referring to the way people criticize him for his stutter. I’d thought about it a few times in the past, but I was fairly certain that the other kids his age had probably given him hell for it growing up. Kids these days. They’re scary.

I quietly worried my lip. “It won’t last long, so don’t worry. If we pull off a good performance, everything will settle down again.”

“Y-you think so?”

“Sure. This is a survival show, after all. We just gotta survive.”

Most internet criticisms came in waves and died out with enough time unless somebody did something really deserving of bashing. Reality was sh*t and people got a kick out of anonymously kicking people down. No doubt they would all very quickly switch targets as soon as some other high-profile figure caught their attention.

I shrugged. “I mean, tomorrow it could be me they come for.”

“Huh? N-no, that isn’t right! Y-y-you didn’t do anything wrong...”

“Neither did you.”

Ahyeon fell immediately silent, utterly taken aback.

Big Sejin piped up. “So what you’re saying is that he shouldn’t believe for a second that he deserves all that malicious talk about him on the internet, right? You’re such a cool dude, Moondae! Seriously, if I were a viewer, I’d have bought your stock by now.”

“Oh, really?”

“Wow. Not even saying that gets much of a reaction out of you, either!” He tipped back, rolling about on his bed, and doubled over with laughter.

Goldie #1, on the bed below him, cowered but also didn’t forget to throw out a word of encouragement to his teammates. “Stop it, you idiot! The bed’s going to fall apart... Guys, let’s just do our best. Let’s kill this performance!”

“Yeah!”

Everyone had clearly decided to turn the negativity into fuel and it was a somewhat effective strategy—the room was filled with a vague feeling of hope.

Raebin, who hadn’t said anything during the surprisingly heavy conversation, muttered quietly, “All right. Well in that vein, I put together some references for our costumes and props. I’ll send them to our group chat now, shall I?”

“Oh...”

“Whoops! Nearly forgot.”

Right. The whole point of accessing our phones again was to work on our concept. Seems as though he’d been able to find some stuff pretty quickly, but had held off bringing it up because of our conversation.

After all the negativity Raebin had suffered through after the first team battle, I supposed the current situation was no big deal to him. His motivation probably hadn’t taken much of a hit.

Goldie #2 cleared his throat. “Of course.”

“All right. Here goes, then.”

Smartphones all around the room began to buzz with incoming messages, and I swiped through the files he’d sent.

[List of colors/materials/patterns_diagrams included.xlsx]

[Detailed list of props & patterns_no diagrams.xlsx]

I opened the files and was impressed with how meticulous his work was. I suspected not even the production team had expected this level of detail. He’s good at this.

The others seemed to be having similar thoughts since they were all marveling and throwing compliments his way. Big Sejin even gave an impressed whistle.

“Thank you...” Raebin accepted the praise reluctantly.

We discussed our costumes and props until three in the morning. Our desire to put on the best performance we could left us all willing to forego sleep. I could use my trait to help me stay awake, but the others were seriously impressive to me.

***

We spent another two days working hard, practicing constantly. Then the much-hated interim evaluation rolled around again. This time, even the stage manager, music director, and the costume team sat down alongside the trainers to give their input.

As for my opinion regarding what we had so far, objectively speaking I thought we were headed in the right direction.

Still, I wasn’t really looking forward to the evaluation. My teams had never received any positive feedback from them, thus far. As it turned out, though... the comments this time around were shockingly good.

“I loved that.”

“Let’s just roll with this!”

First of all, this was how the feedback started. The trainers were grinning and the guest judges invited onto the show were impressed. They rained praise down on us, only growing more effusive as it went.

First, there was the dance.

“Who did the choreography? You all did it together? But there must have been someone in charge... Guys, you gotta be honest with me. This was really a team effort? Fine... I suppose we’ll find out when the episode airs. In any case, I’ve got no feedback to give. It was good.”

Next came Mewdy, the vocal trainer.

“First, I’d like to commend you for keeping your voices so steady while dancing like that! And it’s charming how you altered the original song to fit your reinterpretation. I don’t think you need any adjustments!”

Even Youngrin, shockingly enough, heaped praise on us.

“I can tell that a lot of thought and practice went into this. I respect that you let your work speak for itself, however, which amateurs often don’t. It feels like you already have a complete product, though this is only the interim evaluation. I’m really looking forward to seeing this on stage.”

Up to this point, all of us were simply bobbing our heads like dashboard toys as we thanked the judges. The praise was so effusive, I wouldn’t have been surprised if one of my teammates started crying.

Even the director and the costume team complimented us.

“Looking at the designs you have here, we could tell right away that you paid a lot of attention to detail. I think these will work really well with your performance.”

“This team really knows their craft. The arrangement is perfect. You have a knowledgeable person on the team and you’ve all agreed on the direction you want to go. It was a pleasure to work on the sound with you. The performance is everything we expected from you and more.”

“This team was very quick to finish their costumes. We’ve already started work on making them. You have a clear theme you’re going for, with very few ambiguities. We’re looking forward to seeing you perform wearing the outfits we make!”

My teammate’s expressions after the downpour of positive feedback was over were quite a sight to see. They were all just nodding along stupidly, as though it hadn’t quite sunk in yet that they should be happy. Even Big Sejin had trouble finding words when it came time to say something in response.

“The team—I mean, uh—thank you. We’ll do our best to live up to your expectations!”

“Don’t push yourselves too hard or you’ll injure yourselves!”

The judges applauded and after we all gave a collective bow, we returned to our seats. All of us were out of it, mechanically clapping along as the other teams performed. None of us really absorbed any of what was happening on stage. I was pretty dazed.

Why are things going so well? We’d been working without proper sleep for days, focused on finishing our performance, so we hadn’t been certain of whether it was actually good. The most I’d expected to hear was that it was all right.

This... feels pretty good. I felt a rush of dopamine hit me. I stared at the other teams performing, briefly pausing to relish the sensation.

The evaluation ended close to midnight.

“That was awesome.”

“Yeah.”

“I thought so too.”

Our team was mumbling to one another from their respective beds. The evaluation results had finally sunk in after the whole thing was over, and they were all now radiantly happy.

“Guys, I think we might really have this.”

“Y-yeah.”

They bantered back and forth like this for a little while.

I guess we’re going to bed early tonight. I was finally about to get more than four hours of sleep. I shut my eyes, but they suddenly started talking about work again.

“Oh. Guys, we didn’t decide on a color for the sleeves.”

“You’re right.”

These guys were nuts. I forced my eyes open. Sh*t.

“I found a couple of colors. Let me show you.” I could hear Big Sejin tapping away at his phone. “Here, this is the site I used—” he cut himself off mid-sentence. Big Sejin was frozen, still holding his phone tightly.

“Huh?”

“What’s the matter?”

He was pale as he stared at his phone. The screen glowed in the dark, and I could see the color of it despite the distance between us.

That’s a gossip community. It was affiliated with a big portal site, and known for being full of all sorts of hot takes, unconfirmed rumors, and scandalous posts.

I pulled up the site without saying anything to Big Sejin and noticed a post that was almost at the top of the popularity rankings even though it had been uploaded only thirty minutes ago.

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[3rd! I’m exposing Big Sejin from “Idol Inc.” for school violence. (425)]

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It was a gloriously well-composed bombshell exposé.

What the actual f*ck!

No wonder the day had gone so well.