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Chapter 87

[Mission Success.]

[You’ve successfully severed Kim Joon-Hyuk and Lee Young-Joon’s relationship by utilizing their weaknesses.]

The notification said that I broke their friendship by finding out their weaknesses. That hadn\'t been my intention. I had predicted that the two would try to ambush me at night and steal the recordings on my phone. Thus, my plan was to stay awake while waiting for the two and fight them off by myself. Then, I would hand over the related evidence of what happened to the broadcasting crew, and the two would be forced to drop out of the show. This was what I predicted to be the core goal of this mission.

‘But separating the two was this mission’s main goal?’ Things went in a completely different direction than I predicted.

“Mr. Tae-Yoon. The team next to us is in an uproar.”

“They said Mr. Kim Joon-Hyuk and Mr. Lee Young-Joon dropped out of the show.”

“…What?” I asked in shock to hear that the two quit.

“Yes, I also just heard it from Mr. Jin-Young and Sang-Hoon. They received the news from the broadcasting crew when they woke up.” Kim Ju-Hyun told me that he heard this information from our team’s OnebyOne’s members, Choi Jin-Young and Kim Sang-Hoon. In other words, it was reliable information.

‘But they just quit in the middle of the night?’ It was surprising that the two just dropped out of the show without even attempting to ambush me during the night. I thought this was good news since this was what I had been aiming for—no, it was even better than what I hoped for since the problem was solved even without me doing anything. And since I had nothing to do with them dropping out, I wouldn’t have to deal with the consequences afterward. It was the perfect ending.

Furthermore, the process of how those two dropped out was even more surprising.

“The two fought?”

“Yes, it wasn’t just some bickering. The two had a huge fight, and Mr. Joon-Hyuk even twisted his ankle.”

“What about Lee Young-Joon?”

“They said he had a bruise on his face, busted lips, and everything.”

“So, that’s why they decided to drop out from the show?”

“Yes, that’s what I heard.”

It was unexpected that those two fought.

‘But I suppose the main point was to break their friendship rather than make them drop out.’ It was as the old saying went, ‘fight the barbarians with the barbarians’. Anyway, it felt like everything became resolved much more easily than I expected. Though the two were a bit injured, I thought it was karma and didn’t feel bad for them. My only concern was whether this would affect my Siren members.

Thus, I snuck to their lodging place to check how they were doing. Because OnebyOne’s Kim Joon-Hyuk and Lee Young-Joon dropped out, the only ones in the group were my four Siren members and Bleshu’s Han Do-Young and Yoo Ji-Hyuk. I thought they would feel terrible for having to fix and change the whole performance because they went from an eight-people group to a six-people group, but I was wrong.

“Oh, hey, Tae-Yoon.”

“Huh?”

“Tae-Yoon?”

Contrary to my worries, my group members greeted me brightly and came out to the living room. The atmosphere was great, and Dong-Jun looked especially happy.

“Ah, it’s so nice now.”

“Dong-Jun!”

“Hmph!”

“Ah, what~”

Dong-Jun appeared very pleased that the two were gone, yet my other group members looked a bit more careful about how to react.

‘But even though they are being cautious, their faces look bright.’ It didn’t appear that the two’s disappearance affected them badly; instead, it seemed to have relieved them of a huge burden.

“But are you guys all right? Won’t you have to remake the whole performance again?”

“Yeah. It was already something we couldn’t use. I originally planned to scrap everything from beginning to end anyway.”

“The song choice too?”

“Yeah, I’m also going to change the song.”

Woon and Do-Seung told me and smiled. It seemed they had something else in mind.

“What kind of concept are you thinking about right now?” I asked out of pure curiosity.

“What? Are you acting as a spy for the other team?”

“What?”

“We can’t let our enemy know!”

My Siren members purposefully overreacted and even pushed me back a little. I knew they were doing this jokingly, but I felt a bit left out. I mean, I was originally the leader of their team.

‘Haaa…’ I began to feel more resentful of Kang Hyun-Sung again.

“If I must give you a hint, it’s innocence,” Do-Seung said.

I didn’t know how to respond so I simply said, ‘oh’. But it seemed my response was lukewarm and Do-Seung reacted sensitively to what I said.

“What? Do you think it’s bad?”

“No.”

“Then, why did you respond like that?”

“I just said, ‘oh’. That’s it.”

“No, that’s not just what you did.”

“Come on, stop it, Do-Seung.”

“Seriously!”

My Siren members bickered amongst each other and joked around. When the topic was about music, Do-Seung became strangely timid and doubtful. Nevertheless, I thought about what Do-Seung told me.

‘Innocence? Is that a good concept?’ The concept itself was fine. After all, it was rare for a concept itself to be bad—well, except for the one about a Joseon martial artist and a Medieval Knight fighting one-on-one. But the only reason why I felt wary about the concept was because it was hard to make a memorable hook.

Would they be able to make a big impact that would make the audience remember their performance? Most groups brought dark, complicated, and hard beats in competition because otherwise, it was hard to make an impactful performance. Besides, with a complicated and dark melody, it would be easier to put a dance break anywhere, and the group could dance to a tough beat with no lyrics.

However, it was hard to do that with a pure concept. Not only was it difficult to make a big impact with a concept like that, it was difficult to create a varied and colorful stage. Yet, when I looked at our probability of winning first place, the percentage didn’t change.

[Probability of winning first place: 80%]

If this was a truly bad idea, the percentage would’ve dropped. Thus, I decided I should trust Do-Seung and Woon for now.

“Our performance could be better than you guys’ later on!” Yeon-Hoon said as if he was declaring war against me.

“All right. I will look forward to it,” I told them and got up from my spot. Because they became a six-member group, they could look a bit lacking. Yet, smaller numbers could also have their positives since in this round, we would all be individually assessed on our performances. And since they had fewer people now, they could have more individual screen time.

“Then, see you again after practice,” they told me.

“You can come to see us when you\'re bored.”

“Should we eat dinner together?”

“I will have to see what happens around dinner time,” I replied to my group members and left.

When I returned to my lodging, I saw that everyone had already changed to their training wear and were warming up in the lounge.

“Tae-Yoon, you\'re here!”

“Ah, yes.”

“Let’s go practice.”

I went down to the basement. From what I heard, we wouldn\'t have to shoot any more variety content. In other words, it was time to practice and practice and practice some more.

Thus, Kang Hyun-Sung announced, “Let’s only have some breaks to recover and practice the rest of the time now. If we just follow the schedule, I think we will be able to get everything done on time.”

I also didn’t mind practicing but Kang Hyun-Sung was insane. He was almost too much. It was like he was addicted to practice.

***

A couple of days passed since we arrived at the training camp. All teams, including ours, focused on their practice. OnebyOne members seemed to have received quite a shock that two of their members had dropped out and Kim Sang-Hoon and Choi Jin-Young from our team couldn’t make much progress in their practice on the day of the news. But soon afterward, they seemed to pick themselves up and focus on training again.

“Honestly, we didn’t like those two either.”

“They were trainees who were in our agency for a long time. And because the group was created around those two, we couldn’t say much but everyone disliked them."

“Well, I guess ‘everyone’ now is just me and Jin-Young and Kyoung-Joon who is in the Luminin’s alliance team now.”

“Anyways, our company also decided to halt their activities for now, and I think they might get expelled from the group too.”

“The only thing that concerns us is that we have to prepare a stage with only the three of us in the final round, but I guess things will work out in the end.”

OnebyOne members appeared to not have liked Kim Joon-Hyuk and Lee Young-Joon much either, and they didn’t appear too regretful that those two had dropped out of the group. The only reason why they hadn’t been able to focus at the beginning of practice was because they were worried about the final performance. At this point, it seemed clear how those two usually acted. Even their own group mates had no sympathy for them.

I also wondered how the public would react if they heard the news, but I supposed the broadcasting crew would take care of this matter. In the first place, those two had been casts without much screen time so I doubted that they would receive many setbacks. Like that, we practiced again and again and occasionally used the jacuzzi or spa in our facility. Then, we practiced again, ate, and followed the same routine.

And while this happened, my aunt contacted me from time to time. More accurately, I unblocked her contact number sometimes and checked her messages filled with curses.

—Ah, damn it. You bastard. Accept my call, you crazy…

Since her rage seemed to have not calmed down yet, I decided to let it be and focus on the current matters at hand. Like that, the same routine-like days continued until it was March 18, Friday. The producers sent us a notice then.

—Another episode is airing today~ Please stop dinner practice for today and gather at the lawn!”

“…Did you all receive the message?”

“Yes.”

“Haa….”

The Only One members’ faces didn’t appear too bright from the news.

‘It’s because they are going to air the mini-game episode today,’ I thought. There had been a little commotion that day, which was when Park Young-Ho tried to jump over the hurdles. Though the day ended with no accidents, I wondered how the producers would’ve edited the last event.

But based on how the show didn’t highlight Park Young-Ho’s leg injury much in last week’s episode, I doubted that they would put much emphasis on it in this episode too. After all, this could be a sensitive issue for a broadcasting show too. Still, it was natural that they were nervous because they didn’t know what would happen.

“Let’s go to the lawn for now.”

“Yes.”

We all moved to the lawn together. There were several camping chairs already stationed on the lawn, and in the center, there were theater snacks like popcorn and nachos set up for us. And on the back of a white curtain, there was a projector lighting it from behind.

“You all just need to react like you are watching a movie,” the producers announced. The setting was nice and comfortable, besides the fact that it was a bit chilly this March evening.

“Tae-Yoon! Come here!” Yeon-Hoon called me then.

“I\'ll go now.”

“What, sorry?”

“Mr. Tae-Yoon?”

I quickly raised my chair and moved to where my Siren members were before people from Kang Hyun-Sung’s team could stop me. Though Kang Hyun-Sung’s team stared at me with a look of betrayal, this was my true group members after all.

“How is your practice going?” I asked them.

“Good, of course~”

“Our new concept suits us so well!”

“I look forward to seeing it.”

“Are you mocking us again!”

“No, of course not.”

“Don’t act so sensitively to Tae-Yoon, Do-Seung.”

I brought the popcorn while talking to my teammates. Dong-Jun took a clump of popcorn and shoved it in his mouth, but Do-Seung pulled Dong-Jun’s hand back out.

“Umph! Ah!”

“I told you to control your weight before the performance!”

“It’s popcorn!”

“You think popcorn has no calories? Eat one at a time.”

“Soon, you won’t even let me drink water.”

“Yes, don’t even drink water.”

“Wow, what a devil.”

It felt like I was at home as I waited for the broadcasting show to begin. I didn’t feel worried about this mini-game episode airing. My only concern was how the producers would edit Park Young-Ho’s jumping scene, but that wasn’t really a problem for us since we did nothing wrong. And since I got no warning from the system, I thought there would be no problem with the general direction of this episode. I looked towards the screen with a light heart.

“…Huh?”

“Oh?”

“What…?”

“Hm.”

Yet, I quickly realized that something was off. We weren’t evil-edited as villains or anything like that, and there were no points that we could be reprimanded about either. Park Young-Ho’s injury wasn’t highlighted in any way, and everyone was edited to be laughing while just playing games.

“Hm…but this is uncomfortable.’ In this episode, we were the main characters again. Yet, more than before. Of course, since this wasn’t the first time we took this role, it was neither surprising nor a problem for us, but that was the case only for us.

‘Ah, I can feel prickles…on the back of my head.’ Right now, we were at a lodging place where all the groups were gathered. On top of that, we were doing a team alliance mission. Though it wouldn’t be good for anyone to openly show their jealousy towards us and complain that they had so little screen time, I knew people didn’t only act rationally. For the other teams, we could have a big target on our backs.