Chapter 52

Chapter 52

After those who were disqualified had packed up their things and left, the remaining contestants changed into workout clothes in the dorms and gathered up once more. Despite all the tears when they’d said their goodbyes earlier, everyone seemed to be strangely smug now.

I guess it’s only natural. Their egos were inflated because they’d reached the finals buoyed by the encouragement of their countless fans. Most of them were probably susceptible to getting swept up in the triumphant atmosphere, especially since they were all so young.

The emcee seemed to have left the building, as he was nowhere to be seen. Youngrin took his place for the rest of the shoot.

“Congratulations, the twenty of you will compete in the final round of Relisted! Idol Incorporated. Let’s have a round of applause!”

“Yes!”

Everyone clapped, but I wasn’t really interested in this small talk.

Why can’t I see anything they might use to select teams? This was the time when the final teams would be assigned, but there was nothing visible. I couldn’t see a single prop—only the big screen in the background. What were they planning?

“Let me first show you the song you’ll be doing for your final performance.”

“Hi, guys! This is Team Eagler.”

“Whoa!”

A famous team of composers appeared on screen, bowing in greeting. They were a well-known group who had worked on songs for a variety of famous idols in the past. Cuts from a few familiar music videos flitted past on screen and the contestants grew excited as they recognized them.

“Let us show you the song we have prepared for you... right now!”

So it’s a completely original song, then. Only now that we were at the finals were they giving us a song that could eventually end up on the debuting group’s album. It was very obvious to me just how tight their budget had been before the season began.

“La lu! La li!”

The song was good, at least. It had a catchy tune and it wasn’t likely to just hit the top of the charts by virtue of the show’s popularity and then plummet out of sight immediately after. The problem was, I couldn’t make out any of the words the guide vocalist was singing.

He seems to be improvising the lyrics. Wait, don’t tell me...

“This song is titled Final. And as for the lyrics... there are none!” Youngrin declared.

“Huh?”

“No lyrics?”

The contestants reacted with puzzlement. One of the composers on the screen clenched their fists awkwardly, very clearly reading from a script.

“Please show us your creativity and complete the demo of Final. We’ll be rooting for you!”

Youngrin picked up where the video left off.

“That’s right. This song is incomplete. You will have to write your own lyrics, devise your own choreography, as well as come up with a suitable second title for the song. You can also change up the arrangement if you would like.”

I saw this coming. Why are they so obsessed with making us do everything ourselves? Even if self-produced idols were popular these days, I hadn’t thought they’d do this all the way into the finals.

Hadn’t they noticed that everyone but the Moon Rabbit team had made a mess when given creative freedom in the third team battle? The Huskiez team had only gotten first place thanks to Eugene’s incredible stage presence. Their track didn’t even sound all that good.

Worse still, the final battle will be broadcast live. What are they going to do if everyone is terrible? I listened dubiously to the rest of the song as it blared from the speakers.

One thing was for sure—I needed to be on the same team as Raebin. Not only did we have to write the lyrics, but we had to do the arrangement, too. I needed him, no matter what.

So how are we going to put our teams together?

Youngrin answered my question almost immediately. “And as for the final teams... you are free to organize your team however you wish. The production team will not be involved in the selection process. Each team can have up to seven members. After you have decided on your team, you can start getting ready.”

Uh-oh. This isn’t going to be good. If anyone misbehaved, they’d be hit with the full force of the internet’s wrath. I’d known that the final live broadcast was going to be fraught with danger but hadn’t expected things would get so hairy during the preparation phase.

“And as for the first place prize... It’s ten million won.”

“Oh!”

People gasped loudly, taken aback at the sudden mention of prize money.

“In order to make the competition fair, we have decided that the shareholders will be entirely responsible for choosing who will debut.”

This was gobbledygook to me at this point, but ten million won... That meant I’d get to keep almost eight million after taxes. I really want that money. I still hadn’t received the kimchi refrigerator I’d won previously. They are going to come through with the prizes, right?

I considered all this as Youngrin continued giving instructions.

“Please start putting together your final teams... right now!”

The contestants all jumped into action as soon as she’d finished speaking.

“Moondae.”

“Hey.”

The two people standing on either side of me turned to me right away. Big Sejin, in seventh place, and Kim Raebin, in fifth. Big Sejin grinned when he noticed Raebin was also hoping to join my team, probably pleased because their specialties didn’t overlap.

“Why don’t the three of us team up?”

“Sounds good.”

“All right.”

We came to an agreement right away. In the meantime, Ahyeon, who’d been lingering near his second-place seat, approached us hesitantly. I guess there’s nothing to lose from having Ahyeon on our team.

“Want to join us?” I asked.

“Y-y-yes!” he answered enthusiastically, perking up.

The others nodded without protest. So now there were four of us. I frowned.

Second, fifth, sixth, and seventh places. Maybe this is a bit excessive? There was a chance people online would accuse us of only accepting our friends onto the team and excluding anyone who wasn’t ranked highly enough. It would probably be a good idea to accept someone with a lower rank we weren’t friends with, but who had passable skills.

“Hey, what do you think of asking Eugene—” Kim Raebin began.

“Uh...”

I had already seen Eugene and Chungwoo speaking to each other in the distance. They were sitting in first and fourth place. No. That won’t do.

“Why don’t we just call it?”

“Huh?”

They won’t understand refusing Cha Eugene and then accepting a few lower-ranked people on our team instead. I chose to just give up on bringing more people on board at all. Big Sejin jumped in right away to help me out, seemingly having figured out the situation we were in as well.

“We need to think about how much screen time each of us is going to get. Don’t you think it’ll be better if there are fewer of us so we can get more exposure during our final performance? Also, we have the perfect combination of individual talents right now!”

This was incontestable. There was no knowing what variables in the editing or our screen time might arise if Eugene joined our team.

Raebin appeared to mull it over for a minute, then nodded easily enough. “I think you’re right.”

He’d made a wise choice.

This isn’t just about votes. There’s prize money on the line. I didn’t know how the voting would proceed yet, but even if the production team chose to add together the individual votes for each member—which would be extremely disadvantageous for a smaller team—it didn’t matter. It was how much time on camera we got that was really important. Four people was more than enough.

Now that we’d come to an agreement, Big Sejin spun around energetically. “I’ll go and tell them we’re done—”

“Excuse me, guys.” Someone cut in, interrupting him. It was Goldie #2. “Could we... could we join your team?”

Surprisingly, he was accompanied by Lee Sejin, who was in 11th place.

How did you talk him into that? Goldie #2 was doing his best not to show how anxious he was, but it was really obvious.

I began to wonder how we could best refuse them to avoid backlash from the fans. I glanced at Big Sejin, who wore a pitying smile on his face. It was clear he was also mentally wording his refusal. We’d put together a small but solid team and no doubt he considered this new development to be irritating.

But Goldie #2 was undeterred, if not a little desperate. “Guys, I will pull my own weight, I’m sure of it! I’ll do any part you give me!”

Things were getting awkward. If Eugene had come over and asked to join us, we could have refused him without too much worry. We could have made a few jokes and played up a friendly rivalry for the camera. But this was a high school freshman in 18th place begging to join us. Worse, most of the people in our group had been on the same team as him during the first round.

We’ll only be feeding the sharks if we refuse. I resisted the urge to sigh. The best thing to do would have been if one of us had instantly refused and apologized, but no doubt none of us had wanted to shoulder that particular burden.

It was best if we simply accepted them and just pretended like we’d excluded the ever-popular Eugene because we wanted more screen time. It would seem strange if Big Sejin or I suddenly changed our mind and agreed, though.

“C-can’t we let them join?” Thankfully, it was the most compassionate of us who gave in first. Ahyeon glanced at us cautiously as he spoke up.

Good job. Now all that remained was to persuade Raebin.

“I think that’ll work,” Raebin responded immediately.

What? He accepted, just like that? He hadn’t hesitated at all. Maybe it was because he’d already suffered at the hands of the editors once before, or there was some other reason I wasn’t aware of.

“Hmm. What about you, Moondae?”

“Sounds good to me.”

“All right. Why don’t we all team up, then?”

“Wow! Thank you!” Goldie #2 said, throwing his arms into the air with excitement. Lee Sejin bowed to us stiffly from behind him. It surprised me that he was still so stiff.

“No need to thank us, just work your butts off,” Big Sejin replied quickly, making his way over to Youngrin. After he exchanged a few words with her, the screen lit up behind her.

[Team 1 confirmed!]

[Seon Ahyeon (2), Kim Raebin (5), Park Moondae (6), Lee Sejin B (7), Lee Sejin A (11), Kwon Heeseung (18)]

It was locked in. I had my doubts since this wasn’t exactly the team I’d wanted. Plus, I wasn’t keen on someone so potentially dangerous like Lee Sejin being on the team, either. But this outcome was preferable to catching flak online for being too cliquey.

I heard Eugene crying out in a disappointed voice from behind us, “Oh, we’re too late!”

It seemed they had been discussing asking me to be their main vocalist. They were too late since Team 1 had come together so quickly.

“Hey! Let’s be on the same team next time!”

“Sounds good,” I answered Eugene, who was waving at me.

This is the last round. What is he talking about, next time? It seemed as though Eugene would remain his usual cheery and air-headed self til the very end.

***

“Wow! We put together our team so fast, so now we’ve got extra time for practice!” Big Sejin grinned happily. Now that we were about to enter the fourth team battle, it was nice that we could skip the pleasantries and avoid wasting time having tedious getting to know each other conversations.

“Why don’t we pick a leader first, then get right to it?”

“Wow!”

All of the others made a big deal out of being impressed by Big Sejin’s initiative. He’d been the leader in every team battle thus far, so we just assumed he would volunteer this time, too.

He smiled and shook his head. “Oh, and I won’t be the leader!”

“But why?” asked the members, all wearing identical expressions of shock.

Big Sejin blinked several times with great exaggeration, acting as though he were embarrassed. I wanted to poke his eyes out.

“I’d love to be the main dancer!”

He was absurd. There was nothing stopping him from being both.

You took on both roles during the second team battle. I wondered if he was trying to make us give him the role through some strange attempt at reverse psychology or something.

To my surprise, it was former child actor Lee Sejin who spoke up gruffly, “You can be both, can’t you?”

“Yes, of course. But I want to focus on only one role this time.” Big Sejin smiled and put his hands together. “And because we have so much creative work to do, I think we need someone with talent in that regard to be our leader! This occurred to me during the last team battle as well.”

I turned to Raebin. He blinked at Big Sejin, then noticed that I was looking at him. With a quiet noise of acknowledgment, he said, “I’d like to recommend Park Moondae.”

No, that’s not what I meant.