The Maknae Has to Be an Idol

I arrived at our dorm.

“Thank you, Ms. Seung-Yeon,” I said and went outside the car.

Ms. Seung-Yeon also seemed to have said something in response but unfortunately, I couldn’t catch it. I didn’t ask her to repeat because this wasn’t the right time to stay behind and chit-chat. My mind was too occupied with news about OnebyOne’s Kim Joon-Hyuk and Lee Young-Joon.

After getting on the elevator, I organized information related to those two trolls. When I first picked out those two to be in our group, I hadn’t made any big calculations. I simply chose them because they were good at performing. In OnebyOne’s worst performance—the gangster concept show where I didn’t even remember the title of—those two were the only ones who’ve managed to look relatively okay. Their visuals weren’t bad, and I knew they had talent because they were able to showcase their skills even in a terrible performance. Thus, I had expected them to blend into my team with no problems.

‘Yet, I didn’t realize that they had such a drawback.’ It appeared that I had made the wrong assessment. In the message that OnebyOne’s Choi Jin-Young sent me, there was a word that immediately caught my eye.

‘They are difficult to handle?’ People usually describe a really stubborn person in this way. I thought of several possibilities, but I thought I shouldn’t make rash decisions before finding out more about the situation.

‘I should check what happened first.’ The elevator stopped at the 24th floor. I opened the door and went inside and saw Yeon-Hoon waiting for me on the living room sofa.

“…Hey.” Yeon-Hoon looked completely exhausted as if all his energy had been drained out of him. He looked even more soulless because the only light in the living room was the lamp shining behind him.

“Why are you sitting like that?” I asked. I turned on the ceiling lights and brightened up the living room. Yet, even after I lit up the room, the dark and dreary atmosphere didn’t disappear. Yeon-Hoon continued to ooze out negative energy from the sofa.

“...They are probably in their rooms.”

“I heard that there was some trouble within the group on my way here…”

Thud. Before I could finish, Yeon-Hoon rushed towards me and hugged me.

“Tae-Yoon…what are…we going to do…?”

“…?”

“What happened…were those guys really that terrible…?”

“Terrible?”

“I felt suffocated the whole day. Umph. Erm…” Yeon-Hoon looked like he was holding back his tears until he finally burst out crying. I couldn’t fathom what exactly happened that he was acting like this. Of course, I knew that Yeon-Hoon’s reaction would be much more exaggerated than most people's since he was a very expressive person. Furthermore, he must be feeling more high-strung and pressured than usual by participating in a survival show. Thus, I needed to find someone else to gain more objective information.

“Dong-Jun!” I yelled in front of Dong-Jun’s room. After a while, Dong-Jun came outside.

‘His face also doesn’t look good,’ I thought. I was surprised that the usually carefree Dong-Jun looked quite gloomy too.

“Yeon-Hoon is crying?” Dong-Jun asked.

“Yes,” I replied.

“Are you okay, Yeon-Hoon? Don’t cry,” Dong-Jun said.

“Dong-Jun…”

“I know you had a…really hard day today.”

Yeon-Hoon hugged me and cried again. I asked Dong-Jun what happened with my eyes, and Dong-Jun sighed and went to the sofa. I also pulled Yeon-Hoon to the sofa and sat.

“It’s pretty easy to explain, but I don’t think I should explain it in simple terms.”

“What do you mean?”

“Simply put, it’s because some people were way too stubborn.”

“Hm.” The words I expected to hear came out: ‘stubborn’. It appeared that OnebyOne’s Kim Joon-Hyun and Lee Young-Joon remained obstinate and didn’t back down from their opinions.

“I will explain to you in more detail.”

“Okay.”

“You know the phrase, ‘there’s nothing more dangerous than the blind conviction of a fool’?”

“Yes.”

“But I realized there is something more dangerous than that.”

“What is it?”

“The conviction of a guy with mediocre skills.”

I couldn’t understand what he meant then.

“You know OnebyOne’s performance with the gangster concept? That came from Kim Joon-Hyun and Lee Young-Joon’s heads.” Sigh.

I could infer a lot from his sigh.

‘The idea for that stage came from the group members?’ I was surprised to hear this. I was certain that their company CEO made them do such an awful performance.

“They should’ve come to their senses after getting last place with that performance, but they seem to believe that they got last place not because of the concept but because their group members didn’t properly execute the idea. And overall, they think their idea was good.”

I understood what Dong-Jun meant by people with mediocre skills then. In OnebyOne’s gangster concept performance, those two were the only ones who managed to live up to the concept somewhat. Perhaps, they were the type to have good performance skills but awful ideas. After going through many years making up for bad ideas with good skills, it seemed they began to believe that their intuition was truly good.

‘Damn it.’ It was just as Dong-Jun said—it was dangerous to work with mediocre-skilled guys who had great conviction and confidence in their abilities and ideas. But that didn’t seem to be the end of it.

“Their personalities are also bad!” Yeon-Hoon yelled from beside me.

Dong-Jun nodded. “It seems like they are used to playing king in their group. They are pros at making fun of others and putting them down.”

“Then, did…?”

“Yeon-Hoon suffered a lot from them.”

I clenched my fists intuitively. If those guys were in front of me right now, I would’ve punched them.

“How were they like exactly?”

“They’re the type of people to take your words out of context, tease people about the smallest things, and ignore other people’s opinions while dominating the conversation in their favor.”

In other words, they were trash.

“Whenever Yeon-Hoon proposed something, they jokingly said, ‘Ohhhh~ That’s bad~’ but you could tell that they were trying to establish hierarchies since Yeon-Hoon looks like a pushover.”

“I’m not a pushover! They were being mean because I was too nice!”

“Yeah, it’s as you say.” I felt my blood pressure rise. I could understand why Choi Jin-Young sent an apology message to me about his own team. I wondered how I could enact my revenge. Could I go and beat them up?

“Well, they kept steering the conversation towards the concept they want to do.”

“What is the concept they want to do?”

“They said they wanted to do something cool and mix Joseon, cyberpunk, and medieval times themes all together. Their general idea is to make a one-on-one battle with a Joseon cyberpunk martial artist versus a medieval knight.”

“…?”

“Yes, it’s as you think. They want to mismatch our and Only One’s performance and add some dreadful ideas along with it.”

“…What’s wrong with those guys?”

Dong-Jun shrugged like he also didn’t know. After hearing Dong-Jun’s explanation, I had a general idea of how their day went. The OnebyOne members in their team probably kept mocking Yeon-Hoon, who tried to settle the situation peacefully and stop their terrible ideas. Yet, those two continued to act like absolute trolls and remained stubborn about their ideas.

‘It must have been hell,’ I thought and asked, “How could they act like that when they were getting filmed?”

“They only acted like that when the producers turned their cameras off to change the batteries.”

“Ha, seriously?” These guys seemed to have only learned the worst tricks in this industry. But then, I began to wonder and asked, “And did Do-Seung just watch all this?”

There was no way our fiery-tempered Do-Seung would leave those two trolls to act as they wished. I would’ve expected him to do something whether or not the cameras were on. Yet, at this part, Dong-Jun’s face darkened.

Now that I thought about it, I wondered, ‘Where is Do-Seung and Woon?’ I couldn’t see them anywhere. I thought they were washing themselves up or were at a convenience store, but it has been too long.

“We could’ve ignored it and ended things if it was just those two guys trying to ruin the show, but things became heated on our side.”

“On our side?”

“Woon and Do-Seung fought.”

“What?”

I didn’t expect this at all. At times, Woon and Do-Seung acted like old couples with a good relationship. They came from the same company before transferring here and practiced together for a long time. Accordingly, the trust and camaraderie they had with each other was deep.

“You know how Do-Seung and Woon’s personalities are like opposites?”

“Yeah.”

“They clashed with the way they responded to the two OnebyOne members.”

“How?”

“Do-Seung’s stance was to just passive-aggressively ignore those two while Woon wanted to incorporate the two into the team somehow and work altogether.”

They truly had drastically different personalities. As expected, there was no way Do-Seung would reach an understanding with the OnebyOne members. He probably had to restrain himself a lot by not hitting them. But Woon had the type of personality to continue to try to work with everyone in harmony; it was as if his life motto was that no one was truly bad in this world.

“But that seemed to have pissed Do-Seung off. They later left by themselves to talk.”

“And were things very tense after that?”

“Yeah, they didn’t say a word to each other in the practice room and didn’t even meet each other’s eyes.”

This was a serious problem. If the problem was coming from the outside, we could all just insult those two culprits and forget it. Yet, if the problem came from inside, we needed to address the issue and overcome it. And naturally, it was harder to handle the latter problem. I looked at Woon and Do-Seung’s rooms. Honestly, Woon’s room was also my room and Do-Seung’s room was also Yeon-Hoon’s room.

“Yeon-Hoon.”

“…Hm?” It seemed Yeon-Hoon calmed himself a bit and looked up at me.

I pulled him away from me and said, “I think we’ll only be able to sleep after solving this problem with Woon and Do-Seung. What do you think?”

I thought it was best for Yeon-Hoon to solve internal conflicts within the team. He was our leader after all and the oldest.

“…Yeah, we have to solve it.” Yeon-Hoon wiped his tears and looked to be contemplating seriously. We could deal with OnebyOne’s Kim Joon-Hyuk and Lee Young-Joon later and needed to solve the conflict within the team first.

“I will go and talk to them first,” Yeon-Hoon said while getting up from his spot and going to Do-Seung’s room.

Creak.

Soon after, the door opened and Yeon-Hoon came outside. Then, he went into Woon’s room afterward. After some time passed, the door creaked and Yeon-Hoon came outside of Woon’s room. Then, he staggered towards me and Dong-Jun.

“Was the conflict solved?” I asked.

“They said they don’t want to talk today…” Yeon-Hoon answered in a gloomy voice. It seemed the problem wasn’t solved.

“Haa.”

Siiigh.

Dong-Jun and I sighed simultaneously.

Dong-Jun said, “They usually have such a good relationship with each other. What happened~”

I stretched out my arms and said, “Then, let’s sleep for now, and tomorrow, we can…”

I was about to suggest discussing this issue again tomorrow when I noticed the percentage.

[Probability of winning first place: 60%]

The percentage I had barely managed to raise to 65% by using ‘Insight’ was dropping again.

Sigh. I sighed exasperatedly when the percentage dropped again.

[Probability of winning first place: 59%]

While I was thinking these thoughts, it seemed as if the emotional divide between my teammates was becoming wider. There was no way I could tell what was going inside Woon or Do-Seung’s mind. I racked my head. We needed to get first place in the third round. I racked my brain to find a solution when Dong-Jun suggested an idea.

“How about we make Woon and Do-Seung sleep in the same room~”

[Probability of winning first place: 60%]

In response, the probability rose again.