The Maknae Has to Be an Idol

Kang Hyun-Sung’s expression turned noticeably cold. Though his face remained expressionless, his gaze could almost kill a person. There was a reason why I called his eyes ‘mad for success.’ I thought I might really get punched at this rate, and my hand gradually moved towards my phone.

“Thank you for your encouragement. Let’s meet again,” Kang Hyun-Sung said and turned around. Then, as he went down the stairs, I could hear his foot stomping.

Creak. Bam.

With the sound of the door opening and closing, Kang Hyun-Sung completely disappeared. I also returned to the waiting room. I had felt a thrill when directly confronting Kang Hyun-Sung, but now that he was gone, I felt uneasy.

‘That wasn’t a satisfying end.’ The person I provoked was Kang Hyun-Sung. Of course, I never said anything blatantly and only returned the warning Kang Hyun-Sung gave me while cheering him on for the next show. Yet, Kang Hyun-Sung was no fool. He probably understood what I meant by those words and understood my provocation to fight, which made his expression turn sour. I wondered if I made the right choice getting on Kang Hyun-Sung’s nerves at this time.

‘But in the end, we are just enemies.’ Considering Kang Hyun-Sung’s attitude just now, he probably had marked us as his enemy from the beginning, and I was probably his main target. From an outsider's point of view, I was probably the one who made the ideas and led the stage performance.

‘I hope I didn’t put my group members in danger because of my actions,’ I thought worriedly. But in the end, I said to myself, ‘I should go now though,’ and began moving again. There was nothing I could change by just worrying about what happened here.

***

I went to the waiting room and after receiving the car keys, returned to the basement parking lot. When I came down, my group members were waiting for me like meerkats and welcomed me. I didn’t know whether or not they were glad to see me or the car keys, but it didn’t matter.

“Let’s quickly go in.”

“Let’s turn on the heater. Heater!”

It seemed everyone was cold after standing outside for a while. I turned on the car’s heater, and everyone immediately melted.

“Haaa. It’s so nice.”

“So warm.”

“Ahhh, this feels so good.”

Dong-Jun especially looked like he was going to topple over with just a slight poke.

“Why does the broadcasting studio feel especially cold?” Dong-Jun then asked.

“It’s because all the souls who disappeared without debuting gathered in this place,” I replied jokingly.

“…Don’t say something so scary like that…!” Yeon-Hoon from the driver seat responded.

“Hahaha!”

“Is Yeon-Hoon scared?” Woon and Dong-Jun from the back seats teased him.

“No…It’s because Tae-Yoon says such scary things…” Yeon-Hoon explained while hunched up in the corner.

“This is too lame to even be scary. Are you going to faint if you see a horror movie?”

“That’s why I don’t see scary movies. Don’t even think about forcing me to watch one,” Yeon-Hoon said. I made a mental note to myself that was exactly what I should do in the future.

“Then, shall we go?”

“Yes!”

“Let’s go home!”

“Yeeees!” Yeon-Hoon turned the car’s engine and softly stepped on the accelerator. It was seriously a wonder how a guy like Yeon-Hoon managed to get a driving license. He seemed like the type to cry and whine that he couldn’t drive by just grabbing on the handles. And on our way back home, we talked about today’s shooting.

“The audience’s response was no joke today.”

“Yeah, it was really great.”

“I was surprised how loud their cheers were when we took off our dopo.”

The audience’s response to Walya was astonishingly good—so much that we could achieve first place alongside Only One. It had only been one month since we were wondering about when we could debut and so on; but now, our debut was not even on our minds, and we were only worrying about the results of our upcoming performance.

“I wish days like this will continue,” Yeon-Hoon said.

“I’m sure it will,” I replied. Though I was almost certain that we would have better days than today, I didn’t say it out loud.

“But what are we going to do for our next performance?” Woon turned the topic back to our performances.

“Only One did really well in their first-meeting performance…” Woon said worriedly. He appeared pressured because he was in charge of the execution portion of the performance.

“The song they used is ‘Traitor’ from the group, Light, right?” Dong-Jun asked.

“Yeah, though they changed it a bit, the song’s core melodies are basically the same as the original,” Do-Seung answered. When Only One covered the Traitor song, they simply made the dance break a bit longer and the general melody, instruments, and so on were all the same.

Because they changed the format a bit, it appeared as if they had edited many parts of the original song; yet, on closer inspection, it wasn’t too different from the original. But they were able to make it appear as if they made huge differences with small edits—in some ways, they did a splendid job of revising the song.

“Do we also have to revise the song?”

“We have to.”

“But this song has such a strong concept to begin with. There aren’t many ways to revise it.” Woon and Do-Seung conversed.

Light’s Traitor wasn’t famous to the public but was famous as a legendary song among K-pop fans. Light was a group known for their conceptual songs, and this song was the most conceptual song among theirs. The song’s fierce mechanical song and heavy drum beat set up the mood of a bleak SF scenery, and its iconic scratch noises sounded futuristic.

Even the song’s music video was set in a post-apocalyptic time in a mechanical civilization. The song’s story was that of a betrayer who betrayed the whole city by leaking information. Only One didn’t depart far from the performance and also displayed a cyber-punk performance.

‘We should keep the SF feel.’ I was sure of this. But even in SF, there were many subgenres; cyberpunk that Only One use was one such example. If we just kept the SF concept, we could keep the general tone of Only One’s performance.

“Then, maybe we could have a longer dance break here…”

“Should we keep these iconic sounds or drastically change them?”

And while Won and Do-Seung discussed while watching the Traitor music video, I also organized the general concept of our next performance in my head. I planned to share my thoughts in tomorrow’s meeting time after going through them inside my head.

“We arrived!” It was then we arrived. Woon and Do-Seung turned off the “Traitor” music video and quickly stopped their discussion. I also went over ideas inside my head.

“Ahhhh!”

“Let’s go down.”

We all went down the car. Perhaps, it was because we had been sitting down for a long time, our bodies felt sore.

“Ah, my whole body feels cramped. Urggggh.” Dong-Jun clutched his shoulders and stretched. There were cars with three rows of seats that provided enough space for a good-sized group, but not all three-layer seat cars were the same. Our car was one that was probably made to carry luggage and goods, and sitting inside it for a pretty long time made our bodies feel stiff. And while we stretched and loosened up, my group members began to go up the rooftop.

“Let’s go home~” Dong-Jun and I also walked up the stairs leading to the rooftop. No matter how small and inadequate it was, this was the place I spent three years in and my heart felt at ease as if I had come back home. I went up and loosened the luggage and raised the boiler temperature and slumped to the ground.

“Ahhh.”

“How nice~” We exclaimed.

“Is this K-Ondol[1]?” Dong-Jun asked.

“Hahaha!” Woon burst out laughing. I wondered if K-Ondol was something to laugh this hard about. Meanwhile, Yeon-Hoon didn’t say anything as soon as he lay on the ground. I was wondering what was going on with him and approached him.

“…Urghhh! Ah, I’m not sleeping!” It seemed he had fallen asleep in that short time frame but woke up after feeling my presence.

“Let’s wash ourselves today and sleep immediately afterward. I’m sure all of you are exhausted.”

“Yeah, let’s go to sleep right away. I don’t even have the energy to eat.”

While my group members went to wash, I placed the blanket on the ground and got ready to sleep.

‘I think we should get a new blanket if we can,’ I thought. The blankets we were using to put on the floor and over us were the same ones we had been using for three years. Though we were washing it once every two weeks and using it cleanly, they were looking quite worn out after all those years.

‘Maybe we have to change the blankets after getting money,’ I thought.

‘No, we should move dorms first.’ I realized that the blankets weren’t a problem, but our dorms. It was all right for us to live on a rooftop like this still, but it became dangerous after the first episodes get released to the public. The security at this place was too loose and our location was released too transparently. But even if we make more money now, it was impossible for us to move to a nice house any time soon.

In order to do our schedules, we would need to get a lodging place in Seoul, but the price of apartments with good security in Seoul far surpassed what we could currently earn. Whether it was by rent or lump-sum pay, it was out of reach. The only possible option was for us to win in The Showcase and enter the lodging place the new company we would make a contract with provided for us. But even that would take quite some time even if we managed to do that. The answer was…

“I just finished washing up! You can go next, Tae-Yoon!” Dong-Jun told me as he got out of the shower, looking clean and fresh.

‘I should try talking to him later,’ I thought while looking at Dong-Jun and went inside the bathroom.

***

After all the members washed up and changed clothes, we lay over the blankets. Then, after we turned off the lights and placed the blankets over us, it felt like we could immediately drop to sleep.

“Good night, everyone.”

“…Urgh. You too.” Yeon-Hoon said, already half-asleep. After about three seconds later, he fell unconscious.

‘He really falls asleep fast,’ I thought. The speed at which Yeon-Hoon fell asleep was almost at a baby level. Yeon-Hoon usually slept a lot, and I was slightly worried about how he would be able to deal with the schedules in the future. Perhaps, he could catch some sleep in the car rides since he was the type to fall asleep easily anywhere.

‘I’m sleepy too,’ I thought and planned to also get to bed. The schedule was tough enough to ease even insomnia, and I felt like I could fall asleep instantly.

‘No, I should think about the concept and lyrics a bit more.’ I thought my heart would only be at ease after thinking about the concept and the lyrics of the Traitor a bit more. I put my phone’s light to its lowest setting and tried to go inside my blankets when somebody tapped my head.

“Shh.” Dong-Jun placed a finger on her mouth and stared at me. When I looked at him with surprised eyes, Dong-Jun mouthed the words.

—Get up.

‘Hm?’ Not just him but Do-Seung and Woon also got up. The only one who was sleeping was Yeon-Hoon. I was surprised why they were getting up, but Woon pointed towards the door.

—Let’s go.

We all got out of the room quietly in order to not wake Yeon-Hoon up. We finally got away from the rooftop and got to the streets when Dong-Jun burst out with a wide smile on his face. “Haa! I thought I was going to die from suffocation!”

“You don’t think Yeon-Hoon woke up, right?”

“Don’t worry. When I saw him, he looked like he wouldn’t even know it even if someone carried him out of his bed.”

Woon and Do-Seung talked, and I walked between them. I asked, “Why did we come out?”

I came out because my group members told me to, but I didn’t know why. But when I asked this question, my group members all stared at me in disbelief.

“Did I do something wrong?” I said a bit regretfully.

“You really don’t know? Why we came out?”

“Wow, I’m so disappointed in you, Tae-Yoon.”

Woon and Do-Seung replied. I tilted my head in confusion.

‘Ah.’ I thought, and a date appeared in my mind.

‘February 29th.’ It was Yeon-Hoon’s birthday.

1. Traditional Korean architecture; underground heating system ☜