Damn Idol, Episode 76
The members, who had frozen for a moment, soon smiled amiably and nodded.
“Of course. How could we not know when you were walking around looking that sorry?”
Me?
I’d been acting, though.
“Come on, it was totally obvious.”
When even Choi Jaeseong chimed in, I had no choice but to admit it.
Because I thought I was in a more emotional state than usual, too.
“How much did you know? And how did you know?”
“Mm, we were sure the production crew was pushing Take Scene… but that’s not what tipped us off.”
“Then what?”
“You were a little strange. You acted like usual, but something felt stiff? Not hostile, more like a turtle hiding under its shell.”
“……”
“That’s around when Taehwan noticed.”
Gu Taehwan did?
Well, Gu Taehwan was incredibly quick.
But Three Months and a Hundred Days hadn’t found the perfect answer.
“You’re the only one from Three Months and a Hundred Days who’s going to debut, right?”
Well, from their perspective, it was only natural that they would think that far.
In the end, I confessed the truth.
After hearing my story, Gu Taehwan let out a flustered groan.
“Take Scene?”
“I never imagined that… Will you be able to promote smoothly? They were your competitors until just recently.”
“No, more importantly, what about Fade? Aren’t the two of you the worst possible combination?”
Something felt a little strange.
They had already accepted it as a given that I would debut with Take Scene.
It was probably because of the conversation that day.
“Sion. Did you come on this show so your parents could hear you sing from the hospital?”
“Something like that. That’s why I want to debut as quickly as possible, if I can.”
To me, it had been a casual conversation.
It wasn’t something that felt terribly sad to me anymore.
But the members hadn’t taken it that way.
To the point that they considered my situation more than their own.
That was not an easy thing to do.
After meeting countless people, I’d come to learn that one element was needed in order to be considerate of others.
Namely, one’s own safety.
Most humans can only be considerate of others when they themselves aren’t suffering a loss.
Then what were Three Months and a Hundred Days?
They knew that my debut had ruined their own screen time.
At that moment, On Saemiro opened his mouth.
“Don’t worry about it too much. Not about us, and not about the viewers.”
“The viewers?”
“I’m saying you won’t be criticized by the viewers.”
“No way. The people who were supporting Three Months and a Hundred Days will curse me out.”
I wouldn’t be hurt by their criticism, but that was what would happen.
But On Saemiro gave a confident smile that was unlike him.
“We don’t think so.”
I didn’t know what he was thinking.
A brief silence passed, and within that silence, I made a decision.
“Fine. Can I tell you what I think now?”
“What you think? About what?”
“Before that, do you know what the duet stage means?”
“Isn’t it just a congratulatory performance?”
“No.”
When I conveyed what I had figured out, the members were flustered.
“No, how the hell do you even catch things like that?”
“It’s obvious. Should I even tell you what the free-choice song means?”
“There’s meaning there, too?”
“Take Scene, the group Lion Entertainment has ambitiously raised. Their debut song has been decided as ‘Scene Stealer,’ but do you think that was the only song they collected?”
Absolutely not.
They must have received dozens of songs, narrowed them down to two or three candidates, and agonized over it until the very last moment.
“There’s a high chance they’ll sing one of those songs. Maybe they’ll even sing not a candidate song, but the follow-up song that’s supposed to come after ‘Scene Stealer.’”
Coming Up Next had enough buzz for them to try something like that.
Now that I thought about it, the reason they’d hinted that we should avoid original songs might be because they themselves were going to sing a new song.
It might not be good if unfamiliar songs came out on both stages.
“In other words, the final stage will be broadcast as Take Scene’s victory no matter what we do. Even if they have to create footage that doesn’t exist.”
“That makes sense……”
“But.”
I looked over the members and continued.
“I want us to win on-site. To the point that the two thousand audience members tilt their heads in confusion. To the point that they refuse to accept the judges’ comments. To the point that after the broadcast, the viewer board is covered in complaints.”
This was what I truly felt.
I liked Three Months and a Hundred Days more than Take Scene, and I wanted them to do well.
Even if I disappeared, I wanted there to be a moment when their potential fully bloomed.
So they could use that moment as a milestone and move toward the top.
Of course, I knew this was a self-satisfying act meant to erase the uneasiness in my heart.
No matter what my true feelings were, I wasn’t going to refuse the fastest path to debut.
But if my self-satisfaction could develop into their satisfaction as well……
“For the time we have left, let’s go insane. So we can utterly crush Take Scene.”
I thought that would be enough.
* * *
The judges decided on the song selections for the duet stage.
“Taehwan and Ready will sing this song……”
Just as I’d expected, even the parts had already been distributed.
While Take Scene and Three Months and a Hundred Days practiced their duets, I began working on the arrangement for the song we would sing in the final mission.
At the same time, I started teaching the members.
Until now, I’d held myself back in front of the cameras because I was worried I’d look too obnoxious, but that didn’t matter anymore.
After all, Coming Up Next had to wrap Han Sion up nicely and prettily and send him to Lion Entertainment.
No matter what I did, there was no way an inappropriate scene would be broadcast.
The one I invested the most time in training was Lee Ion.
It was only two measures, but it had the highest difficulty.
“First, we need to improve your ear. You have to be able to hear the sound you’re making in order to produce it.”
I had Lee Ion stand there and slowly pressed the piano keys.
“What do you think the notes are?”
“Um… C, E, A, G?”
“Correct. Good. Now I’ll combine two notes.”
“……
F and D?”
“Next is a semitone.”
Lee Ion seemed more accustomed to ear training than I’d expected.
When I asked, he said he’d prepared for the Korea National University of Arts entrance exam for a short time.
“But how did you end up joining an agency?”
“I went to an applied music academy because of the entrance exam. Ah, by applied music, I mean a practical music academy.”
“I know that much, you know.”
Around then, the members of Three Months and a Hundred Days, who had been practicing, began sneaking over one by one.
It seemed they were curious about Lee Ion’s life story.
The story of how Lee Ion joined an agency was nothing special.
“Because of my face.”
“……
Hyung, you’re the greatest authority on being shameless without seeming shameless.”
“Right. At least Sion openly brags.”
Me? I’ve never bragged.
But the reason Lee Ion left the company wasn’t great.
“They kept trying to take me to drinking parties. While pushing off stage practice.”
“By drinking parties, you mean……”
“Well, advertisers.”
“M-men?”
“Both.”
“No, but hyung, you shot commercials too?”
“A few ads that needed ordinary models?”
This kind of thing happened everywhere in the world.
America was no different.
The important thing was, after listening to the story, Lee Ion had handled himself well.
One advantage of joining a large agency was that you were free from such things.
There was no way Lion would make Lee Ion do something like that.
“So I left the company. Thanks to the recording I had of what the team leader said, I got out cleanly.”
Aha. So that was why he openly dissed his former agency in episode one of Coming Up Next?
After Lee Ion’s story ended, the other members naturally started telling their own stories.
I already knew On Saemiro’s story, and Gu Taehwan didn’t have much to tell.
“I just lived a pretty normal life……”
Except for the fact that he’d been quick-witted as a child and had struggled to adjust, it seemed he had lived a peaceful, comfortable life.
That wasn’t a bad thing.
If anything, it was something to congratulate him for.
However, Choi Jaeseong spoke a little ambiguously.
He said that pressure from his family had grown intense, so he drifted around on the outside and eventually began dreaming of becoming an idol loved by many people.
But it seemed the truly important point was what kind of pressure he had been under.
Choi Jaeseong glossed over the details, and we didn’t press him.
“Now, break time is over, right? Let’s practice again. On Saemiro.”
The person I put the most effort into training after Lee Ion was On Saemiro.
On Saemiro, who had done truly well on the
Because he had let go of his inferiority complex about poverty and his jealousy toward me, and had begun looking at himself.
From now on, he would absorb everything I taught him like a sponge, so it couldn’t be the wrong teaching.
“When you make sound, you basically show way too much of, ‘I’m making sound. I’m going to make it now. Now, listen.’”
“Is that bad?”
“It’s bad. You’ve heard the expression ‘a savory sound,’ right?”
“Yeah.”
“What is savoriness? It’s flavor. Flavor is something you feel when you fully enjoy that taste, but you keep getting rid of it.”
“Ah, because I’m preparing to sing the next melody?”
“Exactly. You’re forcing the next taste before the current one can be fully savored. It doesn’t matter when you sing a fast-tempo song, but when you sing a slow song, it’ll show.”
Aside from that, I pointed out every problem I had usually felt in On Saemiro’s singing.
Even if he couldn’t understand it right away, I told him to memorize it.
In truth, these were things ordinary vocal trainers usually didn’t point out.
No, they were things they couldn’t point out.
They considered them things that could only be learned with time, and dismissed them as impossible to teach.
But I didn’t think that way.
You had to be able to fix even these aspects before you could say you were taking responsibility for someone’s life.
Of course, On Saemiro was not a life I was responsible for, but I could teach him.
“So, here……”
I was absorbed in the lecture when Gu Taehwan suddenly tapped my shoulder.
“What?”
“You’re not bullying On Saemiro, are you?”
“Me? Why?”
“You’ve been talking about the movement of the root of the tongue for an hour.”
“……
An hour has passed?”
It seemed I’d gotten too immersed.
“Still, it’s good to learn.”
When I asked On Saemiro if he’d memorized it, he said he’d recorded it.
Smartphones really were convenient.
Back in my day……
Hm, I’m from the smartphone generation too.
After that, I trained Choi Jaeseong and Gu Taehwan, then shut myself in the studio and began making the song.
* * *
While preparations for the final stage steadily progressed, episodes five and six aired.
The main content of episode five was
This stage drew an enormous reaction from the public.
“Uptown Funk” was a song anyone would have heard at least once, no matter how uninterested they were in music.
And “Seoul Town Funk” was a song that didn’t fall behind “Uptown Funk.”
Ah, of course, I’m not talking about the performers’ ability.
No matter how fiercely Three Months and a Hundred Days fought, they couldn’t compare to the original artist.
I meant that while emphasizing the core points of the original song, it didn’t lose the fun of the arrangement.
On top of that, this was something I hadn’t paid attention to, but to the general public, the use of Korean traditional instruments seemed to be a bonus point.
And the time-travel concept worked well with idol fans.
-Time travel time travel time travel time travel time travel time travel time travel.
-Three Months and a Hundred Days, you crazy bastards, debut togetherㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠ
-Smash the earthㅠㅠㅠㅠSmash the universeㅠㅠㅠㅠSmash time tooㅠㅠㅠ
I had no idea why they were smashing the earth and the universe, but apparently it meant they liked it.
According to Choi Jaeseong, after this they usually pull up an apartment……
I had tact, too.
It was probably a lie meant to tease me.
It wasn’t as if the fans were Thanos.
Fortunately, the production crew didn’t tamper with
However, they focused all of its attention entirely on me.
They directed it as though the birth of this stage was solely because of me, and portrayed me as carrying all the members.
If you only looked at the preparation process, that wasn’t wrong.
But it wasn’t great that they directed it that way even on stage.
Because the ones who immersed themselves, poured themselves out, and burst forth on that stage were entirely the members.
Time passed like that, step by step, and the competition was now two days away.
We had to manage our condition tomorrow, so today was the last day we could practice.
But, led by Lee Ion, the members began to insist stubbornly.
They said there was somewhere we absolutely had to go.
“So where is it?”
“You’ll know when you get there.”
“You’re not saying we should go take photos, are you?”
“What? Of course not.”
In the end, unable to overcome the members’ stubborn insistence, I had no choice but to follow them out.
And like that.
Beep
- Beep
- Beep
-
We arrived at my parents’ hospital room.