The Maknae Has to Be an Idol

Lee Woon was warming up in the Next Wave’s practice room. Honestly, there was nothing to practice, but he came out because his body felt too stiff just to keep staying inside the dorm. Maybe it was because their debut was coming soon, but he felt like if he didn’t practice, he couldn’t even fall asleep or eat comfortably. Of course, since it wasn’t so severe that it would affect his daily life, he didn’t show it to his members.

Sighhh…

However, he also knew that he was not in a normal state. Since there was no specific choreography to practice, he just did basic stretching and copied the choreography of famous dancers. Although he didn’t know what the title song would be, he still needed to check what choreographies were trendy continuously. Rather than making a choreography on the spot, it was better to pile up multiple data and combine or transform them.

‘My ankle feels a bit sore.’ His ankle felt a bit sore lately; perhaps, it was because he had been overdoing it lately. However, when dancing, these kinds of pains were common. After airspraying his ankle, he checked his movements once again. He didn’t know when this started, but at one point, he began to feel frustrated if he couldn’t dance.

Lee Woon thought it might be a habit he formed from letting out his pent-up emotions through dancing. He was not the type to often reveal his inner feelings. Even when he failed in getting to the debut group at his previous company–even when he saw trainees with worse skills than him debut faster than him–and even when his debut fell through due to another person’s devious trick, he never spoke out and simply lamented his circumstances.

Lee Woon thought it was not his time yet and thought everything had its course and he should just accept his fate and live with the flow. Like this, he tried to pass over these troubles without conflict and struggle. However, there were some emotions that he couldn’t just get over unless he resolved them properly. Thus, he thought he should focus harder on dancing to forget those emotions.

Ziiing. It was then his phone vibrated. Lee Woon, who had been fully immersed in dancing, stopped the music. Then he looked at the caller.

—YM Entertainment Hwang Jun-Kyul

“Why is he…?” It wasn’t someone he wanted to meet. YM Entertainment was a company that only left scars for both Lee Woon and Kang Do-Seung. They were trying to avoid encountering any people from there as much as possible.

However, now that Siren was starting to become famous, all kinds of people were contacting him. He had been worried that he might start getting contacts from YM Entertainment as well, and as expected, people didn’t change easily.

“These guys…really…don’t change…” Lee Woon answered the phone.

—Wow, it’s been fucking ages. Lee Woon, how you’ve been doing?

A voice that Lee Woon didn’t want to hear called out his name in an overly friendly way.

“Ah, yeah. It’s been a while…” Lee Woon answered, swiping back his sweat-soaked hair.

*

After proposing June as the debut date, Kang Hyun-Sung didn’t say anything for a long time. He was probably calculating what the pros and cons of debuting in June would be for them.

From Kang Hyun-Sung’s point of view, it was probably not a very advantageous proposal, since if they made their debut in mid-July, they could improve the quality of their debut in an agency like Another One. He probably didn’t want to move the debut date a month earlier and risk lowering the quality.

Nevertheless, if I thought about why Kang Hyun-Sung didn’t immediately reject my offer, I thought, ‘Is he thinking that if we have to go head to head at least once, it might be better to just compete from our debut?’

He might be drawing up a plan similar to mine—the plan to compete from our debut and raise the buzz if we have to compete anyway. However, he seemed a little troubled about debuting in June, not July.

At first, I also thought it would be safer for our debut date not to overlap with Only One. If we debuted together and one side had an overwhelmingly higher quality album, the other side would crash. However, I had to take into consideration that if I only picked safe paths, we would never be able to reach half a million in sales for our debut album. We needed to hear things like, ‘Wow, what’s up with them? They’re crazy’ instead of ‘they’re good for a rookie.’

In order to hear reactions like that, we needed to stand out the most by far, but it certainly wouldn’t be easy. It was a stage difficult to reach simply by improving the quality of the album. All external conditions -not just the album quality- needed to be met, since all the eyes and ears of the idol consumers should be focused on us.

‘For that to happen, we need to keep the same composition as The Showcase 2 as much as possible and debut.’ We needed to utilize the full-course meal provided by The Showcase 2 and keep riding on its fame. However, no matter how delicious a meal was, consumers didn’t want to eat the same food twice. We needed to serve something more stimulating and colorful with more variety while the consumers still hadn’t forgotten the taste of our previous meal.

Thus, if Only One and our group made our debut in the same week in the first half of this year, I thought, ‘We would definitely become a hot topic.’ The fire that was lit by The Showcase 2 would burn once again. Furthermore, things would feel spicier than before since we were beginning the main game with our career on the line, and not just participating in a competition to debut. However, there was one problem.

‘It’s too much of a gamble.’ This plan was dangerous unless there was a guarantee that Only One and we would dominate the idol industry at that period. If we only managed to get a bit of publicity and didn’t show clear growth from The Showcase 2, others would criticize us as one-hit wonders and there was a high likelihood that we would crash and burn. Rather than raking in the inflow of new fans, we could crash our fandom.

‘But if we succeed, we could get a heap of fans for both groups instead of one of us losing.’ We could beat all the male idols that year- not succeed relatively as a rookie. Currently, all the first-tier male idols who exceeded 1 million album sales had joined the military, split into units, or were doing overseas tours. In other words, this was an off-season for male idols.

If Only One and we debuted together this year and dominated the industry, I thought, ‘…It might be possible to make 500,000 album sales in a week.’

We had a shot of becoming temporary first-tier idols if we filled the empty spots in the male idol vacancy during this season. Although there was a high risk if we failed, the reward was equally great if we succeeded. It was a high-risk, high-return game. Kang Hyun-Sung, who had been silent for a long time, finally said.

—Can’t we debut in July at the same time?

As expected, he was bothered about debuting in June.

“We’re going to debut in June.” I pushed head-on with June. We couldn’t go in July. If we went with July and debuted at the same time, it would only be beneficial for Only One.

Frankly, I was not confident we would be able to release an album with a quality similar to that of Another One with Next Wave. I thought we would be able to produce a similar quality as Only One if we prepared for a month and a half on a tight schedule. Kang Hyun-Sung probably knew this and was asking us to debut in July. However, I couldn’t give up on debuting at the same time in June. I desperately hoped he would agree, but…

—Unfortunately, I guess we won’t be able to debut at the same time then. We’ll do it in the middle of July. Please go ahead of us.

He was as stubborn as an ox. It was our last chance to ride on The Showcase 2’s fame, and it was a chance too good to miss. Was it because I felt too disappointed?

“…Can’t you just give in this once?” I asked him before I could control myself.

—…What?

I couldn’t believe I said this to him, and an awkward silence passed between Kang Hyun-Sung and me for a while. I thought about hanging up the phone like this a hundred times but decided against it as it would be even more embarrassing if I hung up the phone now.

—Then what about the end of June?

“…What?”

—You asked me to give in. I’ll give in halfway.

I hadn’t even expected it, but my whining worked. However, people had no end to their greed as I asked, “Then what about the third week of June?”

—You’re trying to drag it to a date closer to the middle of the month as much as possible.

“…Yes.”

—All right. Then let’s do it in the third week of June.

…It worked. I had never expected this would work.

—But can you decide the date of your debut on your own like that?

It was then Kang Hyun-Sung asked an essential question. I asked, “What about you?”

—It’s up to us to set a debut date.

“We can’t do anything at our discretion, but we’ll try our best to make that happen.”

—…

“We’ll solve it on our own so don’t worry.”

—…All right.

“Then…” I wondered what I should say and hung up. Frankly, I had no idea this phone call would be so collaborative. I thought it would be a tense conversation where we tried to fish for information, check up on each other, and play a battle of nerves.

‘But we just talked about cooperating.’ Although the atmosphere was unfriendly, the content of the conversation was a win-win situation for both of us.

“…Please take care.”

—…

“…I’ll hang up.” I hung up before I heard the answer. I thought it was a pretty good call overall.

Sighhh. After I hung up the phone, I felt a sudden rush of fatigue. I had set the date at the spur of the moment but thought, ‘We don’t have much time if it’s the third week of June.’

My head heart, thinking of all the things we have to plan. I thought we needed to get the budget first.

‘But to get the budget, the album concept and song needs to be done.’ Since nothing was done, I was at a loss for what to do. Since the song requests began in earnest tomorrow, the final song and recording would probably begin before mid-May.

‘We can start recording the songs and fan songs that we made while doing The Showcase 2 tomorrow.’ Since we just needed to record the remastered songs that have already been made, we could immediately start working on it tomorrow.

‘Then we would be able to save quite a bit of time.’ If we finished recording four of the seven songs first, the recording work would be finished quickly. We could film our music video and do the photobook shoot before June and start getting album reservations in June.

Then, we would finish editing the music video and complete the album before our debut. I thought, ‘We would be cutting really close, but I think it’s possible.’ I thought it would be possible under the assumption that we would use a shit load of money.

Squeak.

At that moment, Yeon-Hoon opened the door and came out of his room, crying in his pajamas. “Tae-Yoooooon…Tae-Yoon…”

“…Yeon-Hoon?” I immediately got up, wondering what in the world happened.

“What’s going to happen…to Rachel…? Her husband just died…”

“…?”

“Look at this…this is the couple I’ve been shipping the most this season…” He must be talking about the main female and male leads of the drama he was watching.

“I’m so sad, Tae-Yoon…”

“Ah…yes.”

Bawl… I patted Yeon-Hoon’s back lightly while he wailed. He began to mourn for Rachel’s husband while crouching on the sofa.

‘What…the hell is this…’ This was so like Yeon-Hoon, but every time he did this, I was completely taken aback.

Yeon-Hoon barely managed to turn off the OTT application and said with a sigh, “…I need something to calm down.”

“Yes, I think so too.”

“Shall I eat some ice cream…?”

“That’s not a bad idea.” I went to the freezer to console Yeon-Hoon. Among Do-Seung’s birthday café, there was a place that sold cup ice cream. Since it was a rare menu, I bought several of them and put them in the freezer. After taking out two black cat vanilla ice cream, I turned around to move back to Yeon-Hoon when—

[A surprise mission.]

‘…Again?’ The system suddenly threw another mission at me.

[Go to the practice room and meet Lee Woon.]

[Upon Success, Lee Woon’s slump will be prevented.]

[Upon failure, Lee Woon’s slump will start.]

‘Woon’s slump?’ It was a problem I had never thought about.