Chapter 74

Chapter 74

TeSTAR’s performance on the music charts created huge waves.

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[TeSTAR’s rankings in the 24HR charts (after one hour)]

: Hi-five at 85th, Magical Boys at 88th

The highest entry ranking for any male idol group after the real-time system was abolished

One song entered at a higher ranking than VTIC

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- That’s insane

- Whoa, Idol Inc. is pretty nuts

- We should start including TeSTAR in the top three male idols LOL. Let’s throw out T-Holic, they’ve lost their edge

└ This asshole isn’t a TeSTAR fan. Please report them for starting sh*t

└ Done!

- I knew this was how things would turn out. Even the teaser was doing amazing haha

- They sold 250,000 albums on their first day and their pre-order period was really short. Seriously, they’re really showing that they’re of another class right from the get-go

- Now people are going to start obsessing about the scores. Starting with me LOL

└ ROFL I am so proud of them right now

The recognition the group was receiving had already reached a peak within the country as things currently stood. The comments were a hot mess, since anyone who’d watched even a single episode of Idol Inc. was weighing in with their two cents.

Now that the competition was on, VTIC’s fans became cold as ice.

- Their debut album is setting new records? LOL These broadcasting companies really need to stop spreading rumors

- They should look at the data. It’s pretty clear it’s just a stroke of luck

└ Sadly, the songs are doing super well right now haha. If they’d been released a month ago, they might have even entered the charts in the 70s

└ Where do you get your confidence LOL? These TeSTAR fans need to get their numbers straight!

- Enjoy it while it lasts! By the next album, the Idol Inc. buff will be gone T_T. The way I see it, this debut is the highlight of their career.

└ VTIC fans are off their rocker LOL

└ Try not to act like such a disgrace to your fandom

- All of them had some kind of controversy while the show was airing. It’s odd how many people are listening to their music...

Thanks to malicious netizens doing their best to fuel the flames, the fandoms seemed to be on the verge of war. But those who didn’t count themselves as part of either fandom and just enjoyed idol music were amused by this development.

- Wow, so we get to see VTIC and TeSTAR together on the same music show this week?

- Guaranteed to be a good time haha

- At this rate, TeSTAR’s going to hit first place, aren’t they?

└ Who knows? Today was the last day of VTIC’s first week and they sold about 180,000 albums

└ Holy crap, those are crazy numbers

└ I guess what matters is how well the tracks perform after TeSTAR starts performing on TV

└ TeSTAR’s going to have to appear on a lot of variety shows LOL

The next day, Hi-five reached 17th place and Magical Boys 19th. The speed at which they moved up the chart was incredible, but of course, it wasn’t anywhere close to how well VTIC was doing.

- TeSTAR is on a roll

- Leave VTIC out of the discussion, they have no match. It’s frankly hard to believe that rookie male idols are doing so well on the charts

- It’ll be impressive enough if they manage to hold onto their rankings and not drop any lower

Everyone was moderately surprised, yet at the same time, their expectations were being met. Then Thursday rolled around, the day TeSTAR would be recording their first appearance on a music show.

***

“I’m so sleepy.”

“Yeah.”

I never expected to be empathizing so sincerely with Eugene.

I knew we’d have to start early in the morning, but I failed to take prep time into account. Say, for instance, that the music show filming began at 4:30 A.M. That meant we had to be on standby at the broadcasting station by four at the latest, which meant we needed to go and get our makeup done a few hours before that—which meant we’d gotten no sleep at all.

We get to stay indoors, moving from place to place, but I pity the people who are coming to see us. Though the audience was selected randomly from a pool of applicants who wished to attend, I felt like anyone who came deserved to be paid an hourly rate or something. At least it wasn’t that cold out at this time of year—it wasn’t likely anyone would get sick while they waited.

“I want to sleep...” Eugene stretched out on the sofa as soon as he entered the waiting room and promptly fell asleep.

“Sh-should I wake him? I-if he falls asleep... h-his voice might be affected”

“He does that all the time. He’ll be fine. Don’t waste time worrying about him,” Raebin insisted firmly.

“O-okay.” Ahyeon wrung his hands together. He was pale, probably from anxiety rather than lack of sleep.

“Hold on a second,” I said.

“Huh?”

I rummaged in the small backpack I carried around and threw Ahyeon a packet of candy. They were glucose candies. “Eat some. They’re good for when you’re tired.”

“Huh? Y-yeah...”

“Whoa! Me too, Moondae!” Big Sejin, who’d been staring at his phone, tried to snatch one away.

Surprisingly, Ahyeon deftly blocked his attempt. “Th-thanks, Moondae!”

“Wait, did Ahyeon just...”

I didn’t comment, throwing Big Sejin a packet of his own. He grabbed at it eagerly.

“Thanks!”

I’d probably have to start carrying around three or four times the amount I actually needed if I ever wanted to actually eat any myself. I was low on funds, so this was not a good sign.

At that moment, the manager and Chungwoo arrived, accompanied by cameramen.

Is this for the reality show again? Because this music show was hosted by Tnet, apparently the camera crew for our show was allowed free access. The manager beamed and waved at us.

Chungwoo said with a smile, “Guys, our fans sent us lunch boxes.”

“Whoa!”

“Food!”

Eugene was suddenly awake. Honestly, that’s pretty impressive.

The boxes of food brought into the waiting room were extremely luxurious.

I never thought I’d get to see five-tier lunch boxes with my own eyes. I was a little taken aback as I disassembled mine, each layer filled with food. Lunch boxes were usually sub-par and only meant to stave off hunger, but these resembled luxury catering. There were stickers pasted to the top of each box.

[TeSTAR’s debut]

[is magic ♡]

Below that it simply read, “From TeSTAR fans.” The catering seemed to be a product of a joint effort from multiple fan communities. Since this was our first debut performance, they’d probably decided to work together instead of sending food to each member separately. It was pretty considerate of them.

“Let’s take a photo.”

“I think we should take one now, then take another shot after we open all the boxes.”

“That’s a great idea. Moondae’s good at taking photos and really quick.”

“Yeah.”

“Ah?”

Without a word, I took a few shots of the food after adjusting to get a good angle and focus. Then I adjusted the brightness and saturation to get the colors to look right.

“That looks amazing.”

“Y-you’ve r-really got talent!”

“Thanks. It’s okay to upload these, right?” I asked.

“Huh?”

Though I was asking the members, the question was really meant for the manager. We hadn’t uploaded anything personally ever since Lee Sejin had posted his letter. We’d wanted to avoid spoilers and hadn’t wanted to disturb the carefully cultivated anticipation leading up to our debut. Now, however, I thought it might be okay to start uploading, and to our relief, the manager signaled that it was fine.

The members, seeing him confirm it, returned to our discussion with enthusiasm.

“Of course it’s fine!”

“That’s a great idea, Moondae.”

“Can we eat now?” Eugene asked desperately, but we all ignored him in unison as though we’d rehearsed it.

Raebin nodded gravely. “I think we should post frequent updates from now on.”

“Yeah....”

But you should really have the manager check your posts before you upload them.

“We have to say we love the fans.”

“W-wait, won’t it look like we’re only saying that because they sent us food?”

“Oh...”

While I edited the photos, the others began to brainstorm an appropriate message.

“There’s a character limit. We should choose our words wisely.”

“Okay!”

The finished post looked something like this.

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[This is the official TeSTAR account!]

: TeSTAR is waiting to film our first performance on a music show! Thank you so much for the lunch boxes! They’ll give us the strength to perform even better on stage today! We’ve prepared a lot and we can’t wait to show you what we’ve got today! To everyone who waited, thank you, and we love you T_T Hope to meet like this for a long time to come ♡ (Photo) (Photo) (Photo)

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“There! It’s up!”

The members smiled proudly, but Chungwoo, who’d been watching with a faint grin, suddenly looked concerned. “Wait a second. What time is it right now?”

It was 3:50 A.M. Way too early.

Ahyeon went pale. “D-did we just p-post before sunrise?”

“W-we can delete it, right?”

“It’s already too late... the notifications would have gone out already.”

All of us sat in awkward silence. Many idols uploaded at odd hours in the morning, but it was a problem that our first update in a month had gone up at such an ungodly hour.

Eugene, still staring mournfully at the lunch boxes, asked, “What’s the problem?”

“It’s generally not nice to get notifications in the middle of the night.”

“Aha,” Eugene said innocently, “Then we can apologize!”

Moments later, another new post appeared on TeSTAR’s page.

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[This is the official TeSTAR account!]

: We apologize for the posting so early T_T We lost track of time... We’ll post during the day next time!

(Photo)

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The attached photo was of the members bowing their heads in shame in the waiting room. An odd feeling suddenly hit me.

“Hold on...”

“Huh?”

“I think we just spoiled our stage outfits.”

“...!”

Much to our relief, we were able to get permission from the production team to reveal the outfits early. However, getting such a bad scare prior to even starting filming left the members looking drained.

“We should let posts sit for at least thirty minutes before we upload from now on.”

“All right...”

After putting an end to that hectic mess, it was almost time to start filming.

“Let’s eat now!”

“There’s no time. We can eat afterward.”

“Oh...” Eugene pouted something fierce. We drank the vitamin drinks that accompanied the meals and then shuffled out, heading for the stage.

The two-hundred-odd people that made up the audience, all of whom had waited in line for hours to see us perform, cheered. We hadn’t even gone on stage yet—all we’d done so far was pace around next to the stage, barely visible to the fans.

Big Sejin addressed the gathered group seriously, “Don’t talk about food, guys. We don’t want people to think we’re the only ones who got to eat so early in the morning.”

The members, who’d been made rudely aware of just how early it was because of the incident earlier, all nodded eagerly except for Eugene.

“But we didn’t get to eat...”

“We can eat as soon as we’re done,” Chungwoo placated him.

“Okay...”

“You’re up, TeSTAR!”

“Okay!”

The members climbed the stairs onto the stage after receiving a signal from one of the staff. The set was impressive. The key props from the ruined school featured in our music video had been placed on stage and they even had purple LEDs and soap bubbles floating around.

Looks like they dolled out some serious cash. We had no time to examine the set closely, however, since hundreds of people were watching us.

“This is our first prerecorded performance. It’s great to have you all here!” Chungwoo said.

“Thanks for coming to see us!” the members chimed in. The cheering was now interspersed with screams and shouted greetings.

“If you would like to make any requests of us—”

“Upload posts more often!”

“Oh, posts.”

The crowd had already seen all our early morning uploads and there was a loud burst of laughter from where they stood in front of the stage.

Chungwoo ended up laughing as well. “We’ll upload often. And not so early in the morning, either.”

“We’ll upload something today!”

“How often is often enough for you—” Raebin began to ask.

“Every day!” the fans began shouting at the top of their lungs, unfazed by even Raebin’s methodical question. They were impressively cohesive.

This was the first time we’d conversed with the crowd from up close, and frankly, we weren’t communicating very smoothly—but it was still heartwarming, in a way. We’d only be rookies for a short period of time, so no doubt the fans were enjoying the vibes that came with an awkward new group, too.

“Oh, here we go.”

The members, having chatted with the fans for a short while, took their starting positions on stage after a staff member gestured they were ready to start.

I sang the first part, so I took my place at the front of the stage.

“Moondae!”

I considered a moment, then made a small heart shape with my hands. It wasn’t the famous Korean finger heart, just a heart made with both hands.

“Oh, my god!”

I internally cringed so hard I felt goosebumps all over, but the fans seemed happy enough. Their legs were probably hurting from lining up for so long so early in the day. The least I could do was make things fun for them.

After the crowd’s screaming and cheering died down a little, the prelude began to play.

♬♪♩♪- ♬♪♬♪- ♪♩-

Loud voices joined in from below the stage.

It’s a... fanchant. I hadn’t expected to hear one today.

I met you tomorrow

But I’ve been thinking of you all day

“All day!”

I found myself smiling as I began the first verse. This was pretty fun.