The Malicious Member Has Returned! Episode 17
Just because he’d had a private conversation with me at dawn, Ji Hwasung’s attitude didn’t change dramatically or anything. However, as always.
Tiny differences were what brought about bigger changes.
“Logan.”
Choreography practice continued even after breakfast.
In the same quiet atmosphere as yesterday, with only the music pounding as we danced, Ji Hwasung suddenly turned off the song and called Logan. It was right after the part with the steps Logan had messed up seven times yesterday.
“H, Holy. Hwasung, why?”
“…
Why are you so surprised? Am I going to eat you or something?”
“No, it’s just….”
Because Logan was watching me with eyes like a puppy that had done something terribly wrong, I had no choice but to cover my mouth. Why is he so cute, seriously?
Ji Hwasung looked back and forth between me and Logan, then stretched his mouth into a straight line and muttered.
“…
You did.”
“Oh, Sorry? What did you say? Sorry, I didn’t hear you!”
“Ah, I said you did well!”
Ji Hwasung’s shout rang through the practice room.
At a glance, it looked no different from yesterday, like he was getting angry. No, today was a bit more intense. But the content wasn’t anger.
I quickly spoke to Logan, who was just staring at Ji Hwasung with round eyes.
“He said you did well. You didn’t mess up the part you got wrong yesterday. Even from what I saw, you danced well, Logan. You’ve improved a lot. Good.”
“Oh? really!? Wow, thank you, Hwasung. And Chun-yong hyung! This is the first time I’ve heard praise like this!”
“Who shouts when giving compliments? As expected, Ji Hwasung must be the incarnation of Stalin.”
Logan was purely delighted, and Gao Yan, standing beside him, stuck out his lips and grumbled.
“Why. Are you upset because he didn’t praise you?”
“Chun-yong hyung, no! I do well even without Ji Hwasung’s praise!”
“Oh, is that so?”
Ji Hwasung wrinkled the tip of his nose with that usual confident smile of his.
“Well, I thought Gao Yan did well too… but if you don’t want to hear that, then I can’t help it. We’ll practice from now on without any praise for Gao Yan.”
“Why! Praise me too!”
“Wow, look at you changing your tune. Just now you said you did well even without my praise.”
Only then realizing the contradiction in his words, Gao Yan rolled his eyes and quickly said, in an accent even faster than mine, a native Korean’s.
“That and that are different. There is a Korean proverb: praise makes even whales dance. When Gao Yan receives praise, he dances better than a whale.”
“…
Hah.”
After listening to Gao Yan to the end, Ji Hwasung let out a hollow laugh, then threw an arm around his shoulders and cackled.
“Gao Yan, you’re seriously funny, huh? Hey, you’re really entertaining!”
“What, why are you suddenly speaking informally!”
“Why, you’ve been speaking informally this whole time, but I can’t? We’re friends. Same-age friends!”
“…
Now that I hear it, you have a point. Me, Logan, and Ji Hwasung are all friends.”
“Oh, then can I join the hug too?”
A hug? Good, puppy. As Logan came over, wagging an invisible tail, Ji Hwasung firmly shook his head.
“No. You can’t. We have to practice. Later is fine.”
“Then I’ll practice now!”
“Gao Yan will too!”
In an instant, they fell perfectly into sync and began holding onto each other while checking the choreography. Seobin, who had been watching the strange sight of the three of them, muttered with a dazed face.
“…
Can people make up like that in just one day?”
I lightly shrugged once and answered.
“They’re young and the same age. It can happen.”
“What’s with you, saying something that sounds like you’re about thirty like it’s nothing? You know you’re just as weird as they are, right?”
Before I came back, I had been close to thirty. To be called out for this by Seobin, who knew nothing.
“Bin-ah.”
“Yeah…?”
“Your shoulders were really stiff during the isolation part of the dance break.”
“Wh-when did you see that?”
“We practice while looking in the mirror. Of course I can see.”
At Seobin’s remark that I sounded like I was thirty, something deep in my heart flared up, and I clamped both hands onto Seobin’s shoulders with a broad grin.
“I’ll help you even harder.”
Just in time, I had confirmed that when I taught others, my fallen stats recovered quickly.
This will pay you back for advising me to quit drinking in my previous life, Seobin.
Seobin’s face turned white once he realized I practiced to a bizarrely intense degree, but.
Isn’t it good when good things happen?* * *Kim Juan frowned as he secretly slipped out of the warm and friendly practice room.‘I don’t like this.’Yesterday, with Ji Hwasung suddenly flipping out and everyone fighting like dogs, he’d thought the team atmosphere might finally collapse. He had been planning to show himself practicing hard all alone amid the bad mood and run his mouth a bit during the individual interview.
“…
Kim Chun-yong.”
That’s right. Kim Chun-yong.
That bastard had ruined his plan again.
As he said the name, Kim Juan stamped his foot without even realizing it.
Kim Juan hated seeing Kim Chun-yong throw himself earnestly into everything for no reason. Not only did it make a comparison with him, who only did as much as he could, but…
It felt like he was looking down on him.
Not even knowing that this was his own filthy inferiority complex, Kim Juan ground his teeth and bought a bunch of ion drinks from the vending machine in the hallway.
Since the other guys had taken all the spotlight in the practice room right now, he intended to at least secure an angelic image.‘Should I put something in only Kim Chun-yong’s? No, if I get caught, debuting will be completely over, so I need to think of something else….’Behind Kim Juan, who was imagining something gloomy that didn’t match his hamster-like appearance, someone quietly approached.
Without even looking back, Kim Juan answered in a curt voice.
“Ah, I’ll move in a second.”
But the voice that came back to him was one he knew very well.
“Mm, it’s okay. Take your time.”
“…
Huh? Jaeha hyung?”
Behind him stood Son Jaeha, the leader of the team Juan had wanted so badly to join, together with another member of his team.
As expected, the nickname AG’s ace wasn’t for nothing; even drenched in sweat, Son Jaeha’s appearance shone brightly.‘Ah, if this hyung had picked me, I wouldn’t have to suffer like this! Why on earth didn’t he pick me? Ah, I’m getting pissed off again.’But Kim Juan hid those inner thoughts and handed them two of the drinks he had bought, smiling sweetly.
“You two, please have these. I already drank one earlier.”
“Ah, thanks. Hyung, take this.”
“Um, the person next to Jaeha hyung, your name is…?”
“Ah, I’m Bang Yuchan. Yuchan.”
“I’m Kim Juan! Since you’re older than Jaeha hyung, please speak comfortably to me.”
“Hm…? Well, okay. Got it.”
“Juan-ah, how’s practice going? I heard from Hwasung yesterday that there was a little friction. It seems like you resolved it well, though.”
Kim Juan conveniently left out the fact that he had been the cause of the first friction in their team and babbled with a pitiful expression.
“Well, it’s this and that. Hwasung is having a hard time… Still, I’m trying hard to help him!”
“…
If you’re helping, that’s a relief. Hwasung follows me a lot, so I was a bit worried whether he’d be okay alone on another team.”
“Aw. It’s fine. I’ll tell Hwasung that hyung is thinking a lot about him. Both of you, work hard at practice!”
Not forgetting to fawn over Son Jaeha until the very end, Kim Juan hurried back to his practice room. Yuchan, who had been quietly watching his back, whispered in a small voice.
“Jaeha. Are you close with him?”
“Ah….”
Son Jaeha hesitated slightly before answering Bang Yuchan, then soon replied to Yuchan with a fresh smile on his face.
“I think I’ll have to watch him a little more before I know for sure.”* * *The lounge on the eighth floor of the headquarters of Music Days, also known as M-Days.
“Tell me that again.”
Even as Lee Hyeonjeong felt a headache coming on, she finished saying what she had to say to Producer Joo.
“They covered the camera behind them with a hood… so it didn’t show exactly where the two of them went. I thought it was the emergency stairs, but nothing showed up on the camera there either.”
“Hah, these brats haven’t even debuted yet and they’re acting so cocky. Where the hell did they learn that kind of thing?”
Yet despite saying that, Producer Joo’s face didn’t look particularly angry. Knowing his paranoid personality, Lee Hyeonjeong was startled and asked back.
“Oh my, is that all?”
“Hm? What is?”
“No, normally… you would’ve cursed them out. Saying those clueless bastards are even blocking their own broadcast footage, with every swear word in the book.”
“Ahh, well.”
Producer Joo tore open the wrapper of a candy on the table, popped it into his mouth, and answered placidly.
“Well, like you said, Writer Lee, normally I would have. But Kim Chun-yong made the earlier part so damn well. I’m pissed, but it’s bearable.”
“You really… like him, don’t you?”
“You saw what that kid did too, Writer Lee. How could people like us not like him?”
Lee Hyeonjeong nodded, quietly agreeing with him.
It wasn’t a lie. Kim Chun-yong really had made a good broadcast.
Producer Joo rolled the candy from one cheek to the other and began counting on his fingers.
“The way he brazenly talked to that Mun Yunha, the way he rearranged the song in that odd way and got a bizarre score, the way he caught Jin Dasol’s eye, the way he showed his dance skills and won the center for the dance break. It’s seriously maddeningly good footage. He has that, you know. That.”
Beyond appearance or skill, a way of speaking and moving that drew people’s eyes.
Something that burst forth at crucial moments.
“…
He has star quality. Kim Chun-yong.”
At Lee Hyeonjeong’s answer, Producer Joo smiled in satisfaction.
“That’s exactly it.”
In the end, what the public wanted wasn’t just someone handsome, good at singing, and good at dancing, but a star.
That was a truth that wouldn’t change no matter how much anyone tried to deny it.
In that sense, Kim Chun-yong was an excellent prospect.‘We’ll have to see if it actually works once it airs, but anyway….’“The team with the best footage right now is that team, right? What about the other teams?”
“Ah, the other teams. Hmm.”
At Producer Joo’s words, Hyeonjeong put her thoughts about Kim Chun-yong aside for the moment and carefully recalled the situations of the other teams.
First, the team that included August Entertainment’s ace, Son Jaeha.
That team included another AG trainee, Jang Siu, and Bang Yuchan, whom the production team had been watching since the beginning.‘Those two are good. Son Jaeha picked his team members well.’The rest were reasonably cooperative teammates, so the overall atmosphere was good, and their teamwork wasn’t bad either.
If she had to point out a distinctive feature, it would be that the dance member there kept trying to stand out during the dance break, which was giving Son Jaeha trouble.
In any case, though they weren’t as good as Kim Chun-yong’s team, they were still creating fairly decent footage.
And then there was the problem person currently giving the assistant directors in the editing room headaches.
The team with the Chinese trainee, Liu Wei.
Unlike Kim Chun-yong, this side was a problem in a bad way.
“We’ll just do it like this.”
“…….”
Whether it was because of something Liu Wei had said somewhere, no one there dared treat Liu Wei carelessly. And by “treat carelessly,” that meant words, physical contact, every form of communication.
What was an idol survival program at its core?
Growth from an inadequate self into a better self, friendship between trainees, desperate smiles put on for a single fleeting camera chance.
In other words, wasn’t it selling narratives?
If you wanted to debut just by singing well and dancing well, you shouldn’t come on a survival show like this. Your company should coax and coddle you like a baby bird, raise you, and then send you straight onto a music show stage.
In that sense, Liu Wei’s tyranny was not good for broadcast. To make usable cuts, they would have to slice the footage up second by second and recreate it from scratch.
But they couldn’t not do it either. Because Liu Wei was Director Shin’s pick, the one directly connected to their investors!
Which meant overtime until they managed to make something.‘I’ll have to add four shots to my coffee later. Damn it.’When Lee Hyeonjeong’s face turned nauseated after thinking that far, Producer Joo waved his right hand as if he understood perfectly.
“Enough, enough. I get it. For now, Director Shin isn’t in Korea, so we can make it the way we think is best. You’re working on the trailers right now, right?”
“Ah, yes. The first cut is almost done, and they should be working on the second cut and episode one now.”
“I’ll go check on it later. Writer Lee, go back to the dorm side and get the individual interviews. Make them provocative. Get a lot of footage.”
“…….”
“…….”
The two gave each other a thumbs-up and strode out of the lounge.Two and a half days until the first trailer for
And two days remained until the trainees’ first stage.