The Maknae Has to Be an Idol

I finished monitoring the responses and left my phone on the table. I had expected a drama-filled plotline since The Showcase 2 was the hottest topic on the idol platform right now. Thus, it was natural for all kinds of responses to come up. But—

‘They spiced it up too much.’ I could feel that people were getting too immersed in the show even through my phone screen. People were passionately loving, idolizing, and hating someone to the point that I wondered how anyone could be so passionate.

Although I should be used to these types of responses by now, I thought, ‘It’s not easy.’ My head felt dizzy every time I monitored these types of responses.

Sigh.

I cooled my head, which had overheated from monitoring the responses, and then stared straight ahead. The broadcast just ended.

—A refreshing taste! PepCola Lime!

An advertisement ran loudly. On the other hand, unlike the noisy screen, the practice room was dead silent. Even though the show was over, no one got up first. The Only One members seemed to have a lot on their minds as they silently stared at the ground, and Kang Hyun-Sung pressed his temples as if his head hurt. Bleshu’s Kang Jin-Kyu peeked at them and nervously moved his butt up and down. No matter how one looked at it, he looked like he was waiting for the slightest chance to make a run for it.

“I, um, have a practice schedule…so I’ll be taking my leave first…” Kang Jin-Kyu stood up first and left the practice room.

The Only One members replied, ‘Haha, yes, please leave safely’ with deadpan expressions in a repetitive, mechanical manner. With Kang Jin-Kyu’s lead, OnebyOne’s Kim Sang-Hoon and Choi Jin-Young also got up.

“Thank you for today…”

“Let’s see each other again tomorrow…!”

Those two also got up awkwardly and quickly left the practice room. It was my turn now. Since I was the last one to get up, no one could possibly fault me for this.

“Thank you for today. See you tomorrow.”

The moment I got up from my chair, Kang Hyun-Sung suddenly called me out, “What are you doing?”

“What?” I wondered why only I got a different response.

“We have to clean up together.”

‘Yeah, that’s right.’ Come to think of it, he was right. I almost ran away without cleaning up.

But then I thought, ‘Then what about the other dudes who left earlier?’ Why was I the only one who had to stay behind and help clean up? I mean, it was only right that I should clean up after using the practice room, but I couldn’t shake away the feeling that he was picking on me.

‘It’s strangely unfair.’ Kang Hyun-Sung got up from his seat and said, “I’ll tell the people who went earlier to clean up tomorrow, and let’s do it ourselves today.”

The other Only One members got up one by one. No matter how much they were struggling psychologically, they began to move one by one under his orders. Like this, we began cleaning up the practice room.

* * *

I began cleaning up the practice room with Only One. Since it was just cleaning up, it wasn’t a very difficult or cumbersome task. First, we folded the table and put it in the corner. We turned off the beam projector, removed the white screen, and wiped the mirror with a mop until it was sparkling. After vacuuming the floor, we wiped it clean with the mop again…

‘…Wait, why are we doing such a massive clean-up?’

When I came to my senses, I realized how thoroughly we were cleaning up this place. Frankly, a practice room was not a space where there were many things to clean as most of the space was empty for practice, and there were not many corners for dust to accumulate. Thus, cleaning shouldn’t normally take this long.

‘At this rate, do I have to start waxing the floor?’ I began to have my suspicions that they might make me wax the floor. I wiped the whole body mirror with a dry mop once more and looked around. Everyone, including Kang Hyun-Sung, was intently focused on cleaning. In particular, Kang Hyun-Sung was going crazy.

He swiped his fingers through the window frame and inspected it for any stains. I only saw people doing that in cartoons and didn’t know anyone who actually did that. On one side, I heard the vacuum going on, and on the other side, I heard mopping on the floor. Every person here was not allowing even a speck of dust to remain.

I thought this might be how an elaborate cleaning show might look. Since I had to finish my task anyway, I finished cleaning the mirror with a dry cloth. Since everyone around me was so focused on cleaning, it made me work hard too.

‘This dust is bothering me for no reason.’ Perhaps because the material was made out of glass, some stains didn't fall off even after I wiped it with a dry cloth. After wiping all the areas that needed to be cleaned, I went back to the areas that still needed more work and removed the dust one by one with my fingers. It was strangely addictive work, so I looked for any uncleanliness on the mirror as if I was possessed.

“…Mr. Tae-Yoon.”

“Ah, what the.” I was startled that someone called me from behind. Park Young-Ho was standing behind me, holding a mop in his hand.

I asked, “What is it?”

“Ah, you can go now, but you were too focused on cleaning…haha.” I wondered why he had called me, but it was to tell me I could leave now. It was finally some good news. I roughly wiped off the dust I had been eyeing with my finger and organized the mop. I was about to leave but—

‘Geez.’ Park Young-Ho looked as if he was about to cry. I could clearly see that his mental health was in the gutters right now.

‘It feels like they got insulted more because of Park Young-Ho on today’s episode.’ Park Young-Ho’s mistake became a decisive point for completely destroying the public opinion of Only One in this episode. However, it was difficult to say this was all his fault. It was unfortunate that he made a mistake, but if I had to point fingers, I would blame the producer for editing the show like this.

I said, “Don’t be so hard on yourself.”

“…Sorry?”

“Mistakes are mistakes, but it’s the producer’s fault for editing the show like that. Rather than blaming yourself, you should blame others, and don’t worry about it too much because the public opinion can be reversed next week.”

There would probably be a tear-jerking moment for Only One in episode 4, and just thinking about this made me worried as a strong force once broken down would only rise stronger. Of course, this ploy didn’t work if they were broken down too much, but Only One would be able to make a stronger comeback at this level. I was hoping that our group would have gotten this plotline, but everything went in the opposite direction from my predictions.

Sigh.

‘It’s getting jumbled up.’ I didn’t know why I was comforting Park Young-Ho when I wanted to be comforted instead. However, I felt too guilty to just ignore him when he was tearing up like a poor dog abandoned in the rain.

“Well, I’ll be going. Cheer up.” I patted Park Young-Ho on the arm several times and said goodbye. When I also said my goodbye to the other Only One members, they all said goodbye to me as well. I opened the practice room door and left.

* * *

Park Young-Ho stared blankly at the place where Bong Tae-Yoon left; then, he rubbed the arm Bong Tae-Yoon patted for a bit. Bong Tae-Yoon had comforted him when he least expected it, and he had also saved him when he almost fell. Park Young-Ho began to think that Bong Tae-Yoon might be like a guardian angel to him. But if there was one thing that bothered him, it was that—

“…Aren’t I a year older?” It strangely felt like Bong Tae-Yoon treated him like a younger brother. When he was about to think deeper about this, Kang Hyun-Sung’s words brought him back to reality.

“Let’s get ready to leave and go down too.”

“Yes.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Pweh.”

Park Young-Ho organized the mop he was holding. As Bong Tae-Yoon said, it would be better for him to blame others than blame himself for now. Of course, he didn’t really know if that was the right thing to do, but he couldn’t lose his composure.

‘I need to stay mentally strong.’

He needed to at least stay mentally strong to focus on the performances. The show was not over yet, and at some point, he believed that a redeeming moment would definitely arrive for him.

* * *

It was time for me to return to my dorm. I tried to return by using public transportation, but WD Entertainment’s Ms. Seung-Yeon was already waiting for me in the basement with the car parked. It wasn’t the van we usually rode but a small compact car.

“It’s my own car. Ms. Hyuna is driving the other members in the van right now.”

It didn’t matter to me what car I rode as it was more convenient than public transportation, and I could keep a low profile.

“Thank you for picking me up.”

“No need to thank me! Of course, I should do it. Then let’s go~” Ms. Seung-Yeon said and started the engine, and the car smoothly moved forward.

“Did you monitor the responses of today’s episode?” Ms. Seung-Yeon asked.

“Ah, yes I did.”

“Aren’t the reactions crazy?” “Ah, yes. I think so too.”

“Don’t you think something insane might happen? Like you guys might really win…”

I nodded while listening to Ms. Seung-Yeon. She seemed even more excited than me, but it was good news to me either way. In fact, I thought we would earn a lot of fans from today’s episode. The Showcase 2 was attracting quite a lot of viewers who weren't attached to a clear fandom as the show focused on gathering doomed or flopped idols. And through the performance aired today, I thought we could absorb a large number of viewers who were not part of any fandom into our core fandom.

“I was wondering if you guys should start making an official social media account using the group name, or it might be a little too early…”

Currently, our SNS wasn’t officially set as Siren but under WD Entertainment account. We were posting only our photos and broadcast notifications through the WD Entertainment account. In fact, since we hadn’t even debuted yet, it was natural for us to use the company account other than the official account.

‘We missed the right timing to make it.’ Frankly, we should have made it a while ago since we already started official public activities.

I said, “I think I need to talk about this with the members.” I thought it would be better to talk with the members about the official Siren social media platforms.

Then Ms. Seung-Yeon suddenly said, “Ah, um, Mr. Tae-Yoon.”

“Yes?”

“I think you should tread a bit more carefully than usual when heading back to the dorm.”

“…What?” I tilted my head at Ms. Seung-Yeon’s words, wondering why there was a need to be careful.

“Well, Ms. Hyuna told me that the atmosphere in the practice room was really tense…”

The atmosphere in the practice room? She was probably referring to the practice the other members did today.

‘What in the world happened?’ There must have been a problem since Yeon-Hoon said earlier that we couldn’t watch today’s broadcast together. I thought I would find out once I got there but—

Zing—

The phone vibrated, and I got a text message. I wondered who sent it.

‘OnebyOne Choi Jin-Young?’

He was a OnebyOne member that I just had practiced with.

—Mr. Tae-Yoon, I wanted to apologize to you first. We also just heard about this at our dorm, but there’s been a bit of a conflict between our members and Siren members…

According to the message, there was a conflict between Kim Joon-Hyuk and Lee Young-Joon from OnebyOne and my members. When I read through his whole message, even Choi Jin-Young, who just sent me the text, was not supporting his members but blaming them as well.

‘What is this?’ I didn’t know the exact details, but he said it was probably his members' fault. His message was quite long, but the last line was as follows:

—Joon-Hyuk and Young-Joon are quite difficult to handle, so please apologize to the members in my stead.

I couldn’t even imagine what type of personality they had if even their team members were apologizing to me. I picked them because I thought they did well on stage.

‘But what the heck?’ It seemed as if I just added two trolls to my team. Since OnebyOne was a group that flopped so hard before I regressed, I didn’t have much information about their personalities. I had thought they would at least be average, but there must have been a problem.

Sigh.

“Well, I think we should quickly head back to the dorm.”

“Ah, yes! Let’s quickly go.”

There were too many heads I needed to crack in this world.