The Maknae Has to Be an Idol

I raised my phone and searched through my contact list. Yoon Tae-Hyung was the true villain of WD Entertainment and someone I planned to deal with in the future, so this vision wasn’t anything of a surprise. From an ordinary person’s perspective, he was someone who lacked morals and had no consideration for others. Of course, it was natural for people to prioritize themselves above others, but that had its limits.

‘Yoon Tae-Hyung is someone…who knows no limits.’ This was a guy who would push someone else off a cliff just to avoid getting a paper cut. Thus, it was only expected that a guy like that would use our settlement rate for his gain. No, he probably did much less than he would’ve normally done but held back because a big company was in the picture.

‘I need to prepare from now on.’ I couldn’t keep working with a person like that and needed to get rid of him somehow. I stopped scrolling on top of a number that popped up on my phone screen. This was the number that I received when I first entered WD Entertainment.

—WD Entertainment’s boss Kim Dong-Hyun

This number belonged to one of the three bosses of WD Entertainment. When I first arrived at this company and was writing the contract, I remembered saving this number as the company’s representative. But instead of him, I called someone else.

“I’m sorry to call you at such a late hour, Ms. Seung-Yeon. Could I talk to you for a bit if that’s all right with you?”

—…Ah, Mr. Tae-Yoon? What happened?

Seung-Yeon sounded quite surprised, as if she hadn’t expected me to call her at this time.

“I’m sorry to bother you when you got off work. But I have something to urgently ask you,” I said, and after a pause, I asked, “Could I ask if you have recently had a meeting with Yoon Tae-Hyung about us?”

I knew I might appear rude, but I couldn’t back out from this. I didn’t want to stand by and watch as my members and I lost all the money we worked so hard for. It couldn’t be helped if Ms. Seung-Yeon tried to hide the information from me. Then, I needed to try contacting Ms. Hyuna immediately afterwards.

‘And if even Ms. Hyuna hides information from me, I would have to contact the boss.’ There was no other way than that. But I knew how genuine these two were about us, and thus, I prayed that Ms. Seung-Yeon would be honest with me. Perhaps, my prayer worked because she hesitated before slowly opening her mouth.

—…Yes. We just had a meeting today. Haha.

—…We talked about what we would do if the Siren won The Showcase 2.

“What about after that?”

—Since this was our first meeting and Mr. Yoon was still suffering heavily from a hangover, we couldn’t talk for long. We just discussed—no, Mr. Yoon just one-sidedly told us his thoughts and stance to us.

“What was his stance?”

—…Haa, it’s so embarrassing that I don’t even want to say it, but…he planned to ask the Jaeil Company to guarantee our employment using Siren members as hostages.

I nodded after hearing this. It appeared Yoon Tae-Hyung didn’t bring up the topic of settlement rate and so on yet. He would probably bring that up in a later meeting. I finished organizing the situation generally in my head. It seemed as expected, Ms. Hyuna and Ms. Seung-Yeon weren’t in agreement with Yoon Tae-Hyung. That seemed to be the case in the future I saw with my Precognitive Vision, but I felt more reassured after confirming it in person.

“Ms. Seung-Yeon, could you perhaps, help me a bit?”

—Sorry?

“Ah, it’s nothing much, but….” And then, I made all sorts of requests to Ms. Seung-Yeon.

“Isn’t manager Yoon Tae-Hyun going to always act the same even in the future?”

—Yes, that’s true.

“Then, could you gather evidence of that?”

—Ha, yes, I got it.

“Thank you so much for offering to help us again.”

—No, there’s no need. It’s only natural. I will work on fulfilling your requests one by one.

“Yes, thank you so much.”

—Okay, let’s talk again.

And by the time I was done with the call, I heard the door lock release.

Diiriri-ring—

The door lock opened, and all my group members returned.

“Tae-Yoon~”

“How were you?”

“Did you write anything? Do you need more time?”

“I will never eat mala hot pot again…I will never eat mala hot pot at night ever again…”

It appeared they had all met in front of the house and entered together. I smile slightly, seeing them. Then, they gathered at the sofa, circled me, and asked:

“What were you doing?”

“How is your writing going?”

“Are you hungry?”

I answered, “Yes, nothing much happened. The writing is going well.”

“You sure are working hard.”

“Will we be able to see it tomorrow morning?”

“Yes, don’t worry about it.”

I said, purposefully acting calm. I thought I should keep the information about Yoon Tae-Hyung to myself since it didn’t seem necessary to tell them right now.

‘I should be the only person knowing about it for now,’ I thought.

***

After her phone call with Tea-Yoon, Seung-Yeon stared at her phone blankly for a while. Tae-Yoon was the youngest of the group, but at times like this, he certainly didn’t seem like it.

“On second thought, there’s not a single part about him that seems like a maknae,” she murmured.

“Hm.” But she didn’t expect him to be so direct with her about this issue. In the first place, she and Hyuna had been planning to tell the Siren members about the current situation because they thought the idea of using the Sirens as hostages to get a better deal with the Jaeil company was unreasonable.

They didn’t know what exactly Yoon Tae-Hyung was planning to do, but there was no way he would make a deal that would help the Sirens. Thus, they knew it would be the Siren members who would be negatively impacted by the situation and wanted to do something about it. Yet, they didn’t know what they could do besides sharing with them information about the current situation.

‘…Does he have something in mind?’ she thought about her call with Tae-Yoon. Tae-Yoon seemed like he had a plan, but she didn’t know what it was. Instead of thinking more about it, she contacted Hyuna and told her about the conversation with Tae-Yoon.

—Really? Mr. Tae-Yoon suddenly asked you that?

“Yes, I was really surprised.”

—For now, we should prepare what he asked us to do. It seems like he has some kind of plan in mind.

“Yes, we should.”

Then, after exchanging some jokes with Hyuna, Seung-Yeon ended the call. The room filled with silence again and Seung-Yeon contemplated hard. She had majored in design for college and joined WD Entertainment’s design team as a member. Yet, her first task in this company was to support idols and act as their manager.

At first, she had decided to do her best to fulfill a moral obligation, and then, she continued because it was regretful to let such great talents as Siren go to waste. But as time passed, she found herself cheering for the Siren much more than she expected.

“…I really want them to do well,” she said out loud. She didn’t even want a transfer to a new joint company. She just wanted Siren to do well as much as they suffered. Then, she thought she could genuinely cheer on the Siren as a simple fan.

***

The next morning, I showed my group members the universe storyline I had completed. It was a file I completed after two hours of working while my group members were asleep.

“Basically, each member has their own original story.” I handed a clump of paper with the content of the storyline to each of my members.

“Did you really write this on your own alone…?”

“You really did this by yourself?”

My members seemed stunned by the amount of content I produced last night.

“This is thirty pages, Tae-Yoon…”

“How could anyone write thirty pages overnight…”

“This is so much. Even if you just have to type the same words again and again, it would be a lot.”

I admitted that it was quite a large amount considering that I created it in one night, but it wasn’t an impossibility. After all, thirty pages was an amount that college students could succeed in creating if they were on an extremely tight deadline.

“For now, could you read this first?” While flipping through each page, I explained my storyline from the general outline to the small details. Then, I got to the original stories of each member. My members first looked at me in surprise, wondering if they had to go this far, but as they listened further, they looked like they were quite enjoying my story.

“Oh…”

“This is…interesting…”

“I think if we use this idea for a performance, it will be cool.”

Yeon-Hoon, especially, turned teary while reading the papers.

“Tae-Yoon…?”

“Yes?”

“Isn’t…this a bit sad…?”

Of course, he was overreacting a bit, but the general mood of my storyline was rather gloomy.

“Since the story is set in a post-apocalypse world, the genre has to be a bit sad,” I replied.

The universe that I set up for the Siren was in a post-apocalypse world, but not completely. There was a web-novel feeling to it, and I also placed a lot of mythical and fantasy elements to the story.

“Then, since we have the storyline now, we need to create the song. What kind of mood are you expecting it to be?” Do-Seung then asked.

“This is the first song and performance to introduce the universe storyline,” I calmly answered while looking at my members.

“I think it would be good to go with a refreshing fantasy feeling with themes like ‘new beginning’ and ‘first chapter’.”

“A refreshing fantasy?”

“Don’t focus so much on the ‘fantasy’ aspect but on how this is supposed to be the first or beginning performance.”

“I think I’m getting what direction you want to go in, but I think it will be clearer after I see your lyrics.”

“That’s why I came up with the lyrics.”

“…?”

As Do-Seung looked at me in shock, I pulled out the paper with the lyrics and handed it to him.

“I had some time left over after creating the universe storyline, so I made a rough draft of the lyrics. I can edit it according to the song you make and tweak things like word count and vocabulary.”

Do-Seung looked at the lyrics blankly and tapped the table with his fingers. It seemed he was trying to come up with a rhythm according to the lyrics.

“…It’s good?” It seemed he had come up with a general picture inside his head and spoke, almost relieved.

“I also want to look at it!”

“Me too!”

“What does it say?”

Dong-Jun, Yeon-Hoon, and Woon all gathered around the lyric pages. I backed away slightly and assessed my members’ faces. Then, everyone glanced at the lyrics and made quite bright expressions.

“The song title is good.”

“Yes, that’s true.”

“It really feels like the beginning of something.”

That was their one-line commentaries. The song title I came up with this time was ‘<Hello, World!>’ Anyone interested even a bit in computers would be familiar with the line, but it was also fitting for a song title.

“Then, should I create a song according to the lyrics?” Do-Seung asked.

“Yeah, that’s good.”

“Let’s do that.”

Other members agreed. That was how our first universe song and final performance <Hello, World!> was decided.

***

Park Soo-Chul returned to The Showcase 2’s production management’s office, looking very worn-out and tired after editing episode 5. All energy was sucked out of him every time during the editing period.

“Are you all right, Mr. Park Soo-Chul?”

“I have no energy left, my eyes feel dry, and all my joints are aching.”

“…That’s normal.”

“Yeah.”

It was also very normal for them to have all sorts of physical ailments during the editing period. Park Soo-Chul ripped the tops of a bunch of instant coffee packages and mixed them inside his tumbler. It was then writer Kim Min-Young clutched Park Soo-Chul’s shoulders.

“But Mr. Soo-Chul, how about we make a bet before you go?”

“A bet?”

“Yes, there’s a bet we are making for fun,” Kim Min-Young said and handed him a sketchbook paper.

—Bet on the final winner of The Showcase 2

…These were the letters written in the sketchbook.

“Who do you think will win the show?”

“Who currently has more bets?”

“Why do you ask?”

“I never bet on the winning team.”

“Ha, seriously?” Kim Min-Young snorted and then began to count who received more votes between Only One and Siren. Then, soon afterward, she said in shock, “No one…is in the lead.”

Both Siren and Only One had the same number of votes, and hearing this, Park Soo-Chul’s expression turned serious.

“I think it’s up to you to decide the winning team,” Kim Min-Young said.

“Hm. Then…” Park Soo-Chul slowly moved his hand between Siren and Only One. After hovering still for a while, his hand pointed at one place.

“That’s surprising,” Kim Min-Young said.

“Really?”

His finger landed on Only One.