The Maknae Has to Be an Idol

[A surprise mission]

[Go hide in a bathroom stall before anyone else comes during break time.]

[Upon success, you will gain Kim Joon-Hyuk and Lee Young-Joon’s weaknesses.]

[Upon failure, Siren members’ stress level rises.]

I replayed the contents of the surprise mission that rang in my ears again. The sweet phrase, ‘Kim Joon-Hyuk and Lee Young-Joon’s weaknesses’, lingered in my mind. I’ve been waiting for a surprise mission like this, and these were the special perks I’ve been waiting for as a regressor. In novels, the ‘system’ usually gave out cheat-like skills and advantages to people who were already going to be strong anyway. However, in my case, the system gave me barely any cheats and extremely difficult quests.

‘But this is it.’ This was the easiest and most timely mission I had so far.

On the other hand, Park Young-Ho must have misinterpreted my smile as he approached me with a big smile on his face. “Mr. Tae-Yoon, your random play dance was amazing! I’ve never seen someone so good at that game before.”

“Ah? What? Ah, yes.”

“Your gaze changed so starkly every time the song changed…I thought I was seeing something like the Chinese Bian Lian[1]!”

I heard Park Young-Ho’s grandiose praise in one ear and let it out the other ear. Then I stared at Kim Joon-Hyuk and Lee Young-Joon once more. Their expressions looked very annoyed. Though it was my second time seeing such expressions from them, it felt fresh and delightful every time. Then I met Dong-Jun’s eyes for a brief moment.

—Great job, Tae-Yoon.

Dong-Jun mouthed these words with a big smile. I replied with a slight nod and thought about the surprise mission’s content. Since I was so focused on Kim Joon-Hyuk and Lee Young-Joon’s weaknesses, I had not thought much about it. But honestly, the content was simple. I just needed to go to the bathroom stall during break time. Compared to my previous missions, it was so easy that it was almost embarrassing to make the comparisons.

First of all, there was only one bathroom outside here. There were probably restrooms in each building, but the surprise mission probably wasn’t telling me to infiltrate the restrooms inside the buildings. Considering that it told me to go ahead of anybody else and stay hidden in a bathroom stall, it was probably a public restroom, and the only bathroom that fit this criteria was the bathroom outside.

‘I wonder when the break time is.’ I roughly assessed the shooting’s atmosphere, and it still felt like we were in the middle of filming. They were getting more reaction cuts from our team that won first place. The new topic was whether we were going to take a break after we finished filming and deciding on our accommodation or taking a short break now.

“Then, Kang Hyun-Sung’s team, who won, will decide their accommodation first!” As I expected, we were going to take a break after choosing our accommodation first; timing-wise, this was better. I scanned the team members. Only One members, including Kang Hyun-Sung, Bleshu’s Kang Jin-Kyu, and OnebyOne’s Kim Sang-Hoon and Choi Jin-Young. Everyone was staring at me, and I wondered why.

“Aren’t you going to choose the dorm?” Kang Hyun-Sung asked.

“You want me to choose?” I wondered why they passed the decision to me.

“We won two games, all thanks to you.” Thanks to Only One’s Kim Si-Woon saying this to me, I finally grasped the context of their behavior. True to their words, I did lead two games to victory.

However, I didn’t care which dorm we chose, so I said, “I have no thoughts about selecting the dorms.” And then I added, “If it really is okay for me to choose, can I choose the dorms with no options?” Rather than a jacuzzi or games, my top priority was sleeping well.

I continued, “We could be distracted during practice time instead, so it might be helpful to get rid of temptations in the first place.” Thus, I thought the dorm without options was the best choice. I thought I spoke somewhat logically, but the faces of my team members became grim. Kang Hyun-Sung was the only one who nodded.

Judging by their reactions, I might become public enemy number 1 if I chose a dorm without options. Thus, I gave them another chance to reverse their decision, “Would it really be all right to leave me with the right to decide the dorm?”

“Let’s choose by voting.” People jumped in at the chance to take back my right to decide the accommodation, and the result of the voting was—

“We’ll choose the jacuzzi dorm.”

“All right! Team Kang Hyun-Sung has been assigned the jacuzzi dorm!”

“Wow.” I made a mechanical reaction and clapped. On the bright side, I thought the jacuzzi dorm was better than the one with a game room as the jacuzzi took around 30 minutes at most, but games used up at least a few hours. Then, as expected, the game room dorm was taken by Team Tae-Yoon without Tae-Yoon, who came in second place.

“Team Tae-Yoon without Tae-Yoon has been assigned the dorm with the game room!”

“Wooooow!”

“Games!”

The people over there screamed with genuine delight, especially Kim Joon-Hyuk and Lee Young-Joon.

‘It makes me angry to see them happy.’ I wondered if I should have chosen the dorm with the game room to spite them. Lastly, the room with no option was taken by Luminin, who came in third place.

“Then you can all have your free time from now on! Take a good rest, look around the dorms, and unpack your belongings~.” And finally, the time that I’ve been waiting for arrived.

“Yes!”

“Thank you!”

It was now time for us to shoot the dorm tour.

“Mr. Tae-Yoon, let’s go inside and look at the jacuzzi!” Park Young-Ho excitedly said.

But I replied, “I have to use the bathroom first.”

I moved in the opposite direction and quickly hid in a bathroom stall. Since the mission gave me a specific place to hide, I thought a predictable development would follow where Kim Joon-Hyuk and Lee Young-Joon would gossip in the bathroom. It was a cliché to hear secrets in the bathroom whether it was in dramas or stories. Frankly, this became a cliché because it happened frequently in real life. I held my breath and stayed quiet after entering the stall. Then I turned on the phone recording function. And just as I expected—

“Ah, it was so hard to watch that bastard Bong Tae-Yoon’s disgusting dance.”

“Yeah, when I saw him do those bitches’ group dances, I almost vomited for real.”

Kim Joon-Hyuk and Lee Young-Joon came into the bathroom swearing. I wanted to thank myself for turning on the recording function in advance.

* * *

Kim Joon-Hyuk and Lee Young-Joon went into the outdoor bathroom and began venting out all the frustrations they acquired during the shooting. The main ways they vented their annoyance was through smoking and swearing.

“Ah, it was so hard to watch that bastard Bong Tae-Yoon’s disgusting dance.”

“Yeah, when I saw him do those bitches’ group dances, I almost vomited for real.”

Since they couldn’t swear on the show, they had to do it as much as they could when they had their microphones off. Thus, they cursed harder than usual, as if they were showing off how good they were at cursing. They chewed out Bong Tae-Yoon with a cigarette in their mouths. They wanted to smoke with the staff in the smoking area, but it would be troublesome if they got the image that they didn’t take care of their image, so they secretly hid and smoked there. The two poured out curses and harsh words as if they were competing to see who was the bigger trash-talker.

“Damn, I’ll have to go and fucking suck up to Yeon-Hoon.”

“Those Siren bastards have no sense. All they have to do is just do as we say, but how dare they fucking question us.”

“I’ll go and butter up those bastards and drag them to our side. I’m telling you, I almost got them.”

“But Woo Yeon-Hoon would be like, ‘Ah, really? But don’t you think there might be a better way?’ and pretend to be all nice and sweet.”

“His nice act is fucking nauseating.”

“I want to slam those shitbags’ heads to the ground and beat the living shit out of them.”

“Dude, I’m confident I can crush Lee Woon’s leg.”

“Then I can take Kang Do-Seung. That bastard tries so hard to be tough. If we met outside this program, I would have beaten the hell out of him.”

“What, you sure he’s not going to beat you shitless instead?”

“Ah, what the hell? I got mad muscles. That bastard muscles are just full of air.”

“You’re full of shit.”

Then they checked the mirror and tapped the cigarette ash. It was time for them to head back.

“Hey, do you have Febreeze?”

“Yeah, I have it here.”

“Spray it.”

“Got it.”

“Ah, will the smell of cigs go away?”

“Damn it, I should seriously quit smoking or something. It’s a pain in the ass to do this every day.”

They sprayed their clothes until it was almost soaking to erase the cigarette smell when—

Squeak.

They heard a squeak and the sound of metal scratching from the toilet stall. Kim Joon-Hyuk and Lee Young-Joon, who were busy spraying Febreeze, flinched in surprise and stopped and turned back. Bong Tae-Yoon was standing behind them.

“You seriously think you can get rid of the cigarette smell just by spraying that?” His expression was distorted like an evil spirit, and he looked like he could kill someone. Before Kim Joon-Hyuk and Lee Young-Joon could finish assessing the situation, Bong Tae-Yoon raised his phone and played the file he had recorded.

–Ah, it was so hard to watch that bastard Bong Tae-Yoon’s disgusting dance.

–Yeah, when I saw him do those bitches’ group dances, I almost vomited for real.

“I also have a backup, so don’t rack your head to get out of this and smash your head to the ground.” Bong Tae-Yoon said as he pulled out a mop rod that had been placed in the corner of the bathroom.

Kim Joon-Hyuk and Lee Young-Joon thought about joining forces and catching Bong Tae-Yoon for a moment.

‘We’re fucked.’

‘Fuck.’

But they soon realized that the only safe way to cover up this incident was to obediently smash their heads to the tile floor.

* * *

I smacked the mop rod on the floor and pondered if I should beat the crap out of these guys until they puked out blood. At first, I pulled out the mop rod to beat every inch of their bodies, but I felt a bit hesitant once I actually tried to hit them. I wondered if I really had to use my own hands for these lowly bastards. They looked like they were already in pain by smacking their head on the floor, but I didn’t beat them.

Frankly, I originally had no intention of going this far, but the level of what they said had gone far past my expectations. They talked about how they would crush Woon’s legs or beat up Do-Seung. It was not at a level where I could just endure it and easily let them go. I needed to at least do this much to calm my anger. When it seemed like a crack might form on their heads, I pushed them with my feet. Kim Joon-Hyuk and Lee Young-Joon were pushed aside and rolled on the bathroom floor.

“Stand up straight.” At my order, they faltered to stand up.

“Pwehh.” I sighed deeply to calm down and stared at them. There were countless ways for me to make these guys suffer. If I released this recording, these two bastards, including all of OnebyOne, would plummet to the abyss. These guys hadn’t just used a lot of swear words. They said misogynistic comments, threats about hurting someone, and remarks full of mockery and ridicule. These were not statements that could just end with people getting shocked that idols cursed. These guys were probably well aware of this as well, and that was the reason why they were acting so obedient to me now. Personally, I wanted to release this recording and send them to hell, but…

‘…It’s a shame that there’s still the performance left.’

Besides everything, these guys still had to perform with my members. I was beyond infuriated that I had to send these trash back to my members’ side, but the show needed to go on. Thus, I needed to teach them a lesson to make sure they at least listened well to the members.

“If you go out and act rude to my members one more time, I’ll release this recording.” I was going to offer the minimum compromise. “So once you get out of here, make sure to never carelessly prattle your mouth again and act cooperative at all times,” I told them to behave well in front of the members and cooperate with them for the performance.

Honestly, I was acting quite gentlemanly, and Kim Joon-Hyuk and Lee Young-Joon seemed to realize that as well as they said, “…R-really?” Their eyes shone even while rubbing their sore heads.

I got annoyed again, seeing their eyes brim with hope. However, if I punished them more here, it could disrupt the performance, so I had no choice but to suppress my anger. I had to be careful because I had no idea whether this recording would simply end with these two or they would bring the whole show down with them.

But above all, I thought, ‘Weaknesses are most effective when you hold onto them without using them right away.’ I had no idea what these two trolls would do if I released this recording on the internet. They might try to bring down everyone along with them by spreading false rumors, and the whole situation might turn into a shitshow. False rumors spread by others may determine the team’s fate at such a crucial time like this. Thus, for now, this was the safest way, since I could only control these two if I had their weakness in my hands.

I suppressed my anger again and repeated, “If you two don’t cooperate properly, I will release this recording directly on the internet, so make sure that I hear nothing bad from you.”

Kim Joon-Hyuk and Lee Young-Joon nodded with grim expressions.

“Then go now. I don’t even want to see your faces,” I said, throwing the mop rod against the wall. Then the two went out of the bathroom while nervously glancing at me. I leaned back against the wall and looked up at the ceiling after the two left. The situation was resolved in the end, but I didn’t feel completely relieved as it was still unknown whether they would really shape up in front of my members.

‘I’m worried.’ I was most annoyed that I had to send these pathetic bastards back to my members. I wanted to injure them so they would drop out of the show, but then I would become a criminal then. I couldn’t commit a crime and become a criminal for pathetic losers like them and came out of the bathroom with a deep sigh. I planned to return to the dorm after ventilating the cigarette smell out from those bastards. But—

Someone approached me from behind and spoke right to my ear. When I looked back in surprise—

“Let’s go to our dorm.” Kang Hyun-Sung was standing in front of me. “I didn’t record a video or voice recording, so don’t worry.”

“…”

…Anyway, how I saw it, it seemed as if our fates were tangled in the worst way possible. How could Kang Hyun-Sung always pop out whenever I did something…?

Sigh.

My head hurt.

1. Ancient Chinese dramatic art where performers quickly change masks to dramatic music. ☜