Damn Idol Episode 69
[At first, I wondered if Sion hyung had scolded Saemiro hyung. Saemiro hyung kept watching Sion hyung’s mood and yielding things to him.]
[But Sion hyung seems more like he’s in a state of “I have no idea why he’s acting like this,” so I don’t think that’s it.]
[Maybe it’s something like this.]
[Sion hyung speaks carelessly, but every now and then, he also praises people carelessly. And when you receive one of those careless compliments, your whole body tingles.]
[There’s a high chance the grace of that tingling sensation descended upon Saemiro hyung. He was in the studio yesterday when I wasn’t there.]
[Anyway, I’m glad something happened that could help the two of them get closer…….]
“Choi Jaeseong!”
“Yes!”
“Come out. We’re watching Episode 3.”
Choi Jaeseong, who had been writing in his journal, snapped his notebook shut at Han Sion’s voice.
Today, Episode 3 of Coming Up Next was airing, and for the first time, they weren’t filming viewing reactions.
In other words, it meant the members could comfortably watch the broadcast among themselves.
When he went out to the dorm’s shared living room, he saw everyone sprawled around in comfortable clothes.
Han Sion was naturally sitting in the center, with On Saemiro and Lee Ion seated on either side of him.
‘This is my first time seeing a 3-On shot like this.’
Of course, he had seen them sit in the order of Han Sion
-Lee Ion
-On Saemiro a few times.
But that was a fake 3-On.
Sion hyung had to be in the center for the true stability of 3-On to be complete.
Thinking about it, Sion hyung was kind of a fascinating person.
He himself tended to be indifferent to the members, but he was extremely used to being in the center.
As if he had been born that way.
‘Well, even so, lately he does seem to be paying a bit more attention to the members.’
That was why he had thought about a solution for Ion hyung’s vocal tone, and had bestowed the grace of a careless compliment upon On Saemiro hyung.
Thinking such thoughts, Choi Jaeseong sat down and opened his mouth.
“There’s no eating-and-spitting today? What a shame.”
“……
You think that’s a shame?”
“Of course it is. Sion hyung, what’s the tastiest thing out of the food we’re eating right now?”
“Chicken breast sauce.”
“Hyung, you have a blessed body, so sauces are sometimes permitted for you, but for a prototype-type human like me, that’s not the case. I never get a chance to taste anything stimulating.”
“So?”
“In that case, even if I can’t swallow it, wouldn’t it be incredibly enjoyable to have the flavor of juicy meat fill my mouth?”
“…….”
He could feel Han Sion malfunctioning in real time.
From what Choi Jaeseong had figured out, Han Sion was an extremely smart person, but he was weak against “illogic pretending to be logic.”
There was a reason for that, too.
Unlike most smart people, who immediately treated another person’s nonsense as nonsense, Han Sion did not.
He considered the other person’s logic very seriously.
Then, even though he himself couldn’t understand it at all, he took into account the possibility that such logic might be valid.
He thought of it not as wrong, but as different.
However, when he still could not obtain any objectivity from the other person’s logic no matter what, he malfunctioned.
And that sight was pretty amusing.
Should he call it the pleasure of watching an extremely, extremely smart person over-immerse himself in a joke and collapse?
Sure enough, when he looked around.
“…….”
“…….”
Everyone was silently watching Han Sion.
With faces that, if expressed as an emoticon, would be about “ㅎ_ㅎ.”
Even On Saemiro, who usually didn’t care much about such things.
In fact, from Choi Jaeseong’s perspective, Han Sion was a person with many different facets.
At times, he was indifferent like someone worn down and dulled by experience, and at other times, he was delicate and sensitive like an adolescent boy.
Then he would suddenly become gloomy, only to quickly become cheerful again.
If Gu Taehwan was the type to grasp someone rationally based on quick perception, then Choi Jaeseong was the type to grasp someone through the social atmosphere.
That was why Gu Taehwan thought Han Sion was an unpredictable person, while Choi Jaeseong thought he was a person with many different sides.
“Ah, hyung! Of course it was a joke.”
“It was a joke?”
“Of course. Who would like eating-and-spitting for that reason? Do you know how painful that is!”
“Right, of course. If it were from the perspective of acquiring calories, maybe.”
“……
What does that mean?”
“When you think about it, compared to the calories we burn, the calories we acquire are low. That’s why we’re always hungry.”
“Right.”
“But either way, if you put food in your mouth, some amount of it should be absorbed. There’s probably some amount you swallow without realizing it while chewing, and some part that gets absorbed through the oral mucosa.”
“…….”
“Is that not right? Can the oral mucosa not absorb food? Still, wouldn’t it absorb at least some meat oil?”
“I-I’m not sure?”
“Anyway, from that perspective, I thought eating-and-spitting might have a bit of utility.”
“R-right.”
This time it was Choi Jaeseong who malfunctioned, but it didn’t last long.
Because it was time to end a conversation he could not understand why they were being so serious about.
“It’s starting.”
Soon, the title Coming Up Next appeared on the TV screen.
* * *
-They’re gonna tell the Chris Edward story on today’s broadcast, right??
-You still believe that damn show? These dirty bastards dragged out Han Sion’s song choice for 30 minutes. It’s definitely gonna come out in Episode 4.
-Kang Seokwoo went to M Show and turned so damn cable-style, it’s annoying lol
-But wasn’t Han Sion’s song choice dragged out because they had to show Take Scene’s side too?
-That’s what dragging it out means, damn it. I don’t care about Take Scene, they’re boring.
-Am I the only one who feels bad for Take Scene these days? Even on the Con board, all anyone talks about is Han Sion.
-At this rate, Team B is seriously gonna debut.
-Considering Choi Daeho’s boomer tendencies, no way.
-But considering Choi Daeho’s idiot tendencies?
-Oho, the possibility is rising?
-The ads are so damn long
There were many viewers using the live board to ease the boredom of the advertisements.
There were also quite a lot of posts and comments being uploaded.
However, in a single instant, all of that stopped.
It was a level of silence that bewildered those who couldn’t watch the program and were only looking at the board’s reactions.
-?? Where did everyone go.
-Did the server crash? The post regen suddenly died?
-Guess the broadcast started?
-It gets this quiet just because the broadcast started?
The reason the board had gone quiet was simple.
Because Episode 3 of Coming Up Next began with a scene that made it impossible to look away.
It was Chris Edward.
Of course, no matter how much it was Chris Edward, his mere appearance alone couldn’t have created this level of silence.
No, if anything, people would have started talking more.
However, the production team of Coming Up Next shoved the hot potato straight into the viewers’ mouths without warning.
♬♪♪♪♪♪~~
Chris Edward was playing the piano.
The moment they heard it, they could tell.
This was Flowers Bloom.
To be precise, it was the early version of Flowers Bloom that Chris Edward had composed, and that only Han Sion had noticed.
Over the softly audible melody, an interview scene with Chris Edward was inserted.
[I once traveled to a northern region of Norway. That place was filled with cold snow as far as the eye could see.]
[But that was my misconception.]
[Life existed everywhere.]
[A yellow flower, blooming pitifully between the pure white snow.]
[This is the song I made after seeing that.]
Soon, captions appeared.
Norway Flower
The inserted interview with Chris Edward faded out, and another sound was layered over his piano performance.
Flowers Bloom.
No, now it was Falling Flowers.
It was Han Sion’s performance stage.
In truth, it was not a sound that perfectly matched the song Han Sion had sung.
However, the texture was extremely similar, and the way the melody developed was identical.
It was the perfect timing for viewers, who had belatedly come to their senses, to start pounding on their keyboards.
-Fuck, is Han Sion insane.
-Wow, that’s freaking crazy. There really was an original song. The title Norway Flower is stylish too.
-But doesn’t it feel subtly mismatched?
-That’s because they didn’t balance the performance and vocals. They just slapped Han Sion’s voice on top of the original performance.
-Yeah yeah yeah, I think that’s why it feels even more trustworthy though?
-lol ValQ received a song like this and arranged it in that shitty way?
-The Flower stans had every right to curse. Why did they raise this to a female key?
-No, but am I the only one who likes Han Sion’s version better?
-22222 I think Falling Flowers is better too.
-Wow, but Hip-Sion really was a genius. There was a reason all the hipsters latched onto him.
-Passing indie freak here.... I think I just got hit by Han Sion in a traffic accident...
-You mean a fan-crash accident lololololol
-Han Sion’s mysterious hit-and-run story lololol
In truth, unlike the viewers’ admiration, there was a bit of a trick to this scene.
It was true that Norway Flower and Falling Flowers were similar songs.
But they were not so similar that people without musical knowledge would spam exclamation marks after hearing only one phrase.
So the production team extracted only the most similar parts of the two songs and aired them.
The sections that floated awkwardly in between were smoothed over with the interview content.
They had also asked Chris Edward whether he could play it with a feeling similar to Falling Flowers.
Unexpectedly, Chris readily accepted the production team’s request.
“You mustn’t forget that I took part in this show.”
“I get it, so stop saying that.”
“Then arrange just one more song for me.”
In order to place Han Sion in emotional debt.
Thanks to these unseen efforts by the production team, the viewers’ reactions were exploding.
After the performance of Norway Flower came the cut of Han Sion and Chris Edward’s first meeting.
In truth, the two of them had already had plenty of conversation the day before filming this scene.
So if one only looked at the scene, it was slightly awkward, but it didn’t seem artificial.
Rather, it would have been stranger for a Billboard composer active in the United States and a Korean idol trainee to be friendly from their very first meeting.
[How did you come up with that idea?]
[I heard the first phrase of the song, and suddenly an idea came to me. I wondered, shouldn’t it have started a full octave lower here?]
[And then?]
[Once I set the starting note that way, the entire melody suddenly became visible. So I thought, Ah, this is the original song.]
[You said your name was Sion, right?]
[That’s right.]
[You’re a genius. Without a doubt.]
Genius was a word used all too often in the broadcasting industry.
Especially in the show business industry, at least one person was given genius marketing every year.
Because of that, there were many among the public who reacted negatively whenever the modifier “genius” was attached to someone.
But this time, the weight of it was different.
There was no need to go out of the way to say that Chris Edward had been the music director for a film that had drawn ten million viewers in Korea.
There was no need to emphasize that he had won an award for film music at an awards ceremony.
Because even if one looked at the Billboard chart right now, it was not difficult to find Chris Edward’s name.
Not long ago, one could even find his name at the very top of the Billboard chart.
A musician like that had, in effect, notarized the modifier “genius” for Han Sion.
-Genius ㄷㄷ
-Even the hate claim that he’s praising him because he got paid doesn’t work. I saw an article saying Chris Edward is donating his entire appearance fee.
-He got paid, so he’s just praising him, damn it. Genius, my ass.
-lololol foresight increased.
-Wow, but what’s with Han Sion’s English? I’m dying over his accent.....
-He must’ve lived abroad, right? That’s not English you can learn in Korea.
-Coming Up Next, these honest bastards don’t sell sob stories and only compete with music, damn it, it pisses me off.
-Why are you pissed?
-I’m too curious about Han Sion♡♡♡
-lol look at the temperature difference in the comments
-Under the Streetlight, Flowers Bloom, Chris Edward—they hit three issues in a row, so there was no time to sell his storyㅠㅠ
-(Info) Based on the broadcast flow, Team B hasn’t been confirmed yet, so there was no timing to sell stories.
-lololol At this point, it feels like the whole nation is in a hidden camera prank pretending not to know lololol
So no one felt any sense of incongruity even though only Han Sion appeared for the first ten minutes after the broadcast began.
No matter what anyone said.
The center of gravity of this whole board was Han Sion.