From Skid Row to Superstardom: An Idol System Novel

Immediately throwing the strange interaction to the back of his mind, Ari went to the PD's office to drop off his passport before dumping the suitcase of things in his shared room and heading to the practice room.

Everyone, including Levi, wearing his headphones, was in there, but the room was awkwardly quiet with everyone scribbling hard on their papers while the weird instrumental played in the background.

When Ari entered, Vishal glanced up with a tired expression.

"You're late. Production had to tell us that you wouldn't be here?"

"Sorry." Ari immediately apologized since it was his fault.

"It's fine. Did you at least write your lyrics? Or come up with a concept? We're all struggling a bit and haven't really settled on anything. It's been...tense."

Concept? His lyrics?

Oh Snap!

He was supposed to write lyrics!

He had completely forgotten about that.

[I told you that you were forgetting something important.]

[But you didn't want to listen and would rather take a nap.]

[Now look at you.]

[Tsk. Tsk.]

Reading the answer on Ari's face, Vishal rubbed his head and sighed.

"Whatever. It's fine. Just come inside."

"Okay. I'm sorry once again, everyone. I'll make it up to you."

"It's fine."

"Whatever."

"We're cooked regardless with this trash song."

"…."

The response in the room was quite mixed, and just as Vishal said, the atmosphere was extremely tense and suffocating.

It was as if everyone had given up.

"Since everyone is here, why don't we go around and let everyone rap their verse? If there's a common theme, we can use that as our concept and unify things. Okay?"

Although Vishal seemed to be speaking to all of them, everyone's eyes were on Levi, waiting to see what he would do.

"I don't care."

"Okay. Then let's start with Mathew?"

"…sure."

Looking slightly nervous, Mathew stood up and waited until the music got to his part once more before slowly reading the lyrics he had written.

To put it gently….it was a unique rap and Mathew spent the time chasing the beat rather than being on top of it.

"So what do you guys think? I've also started making choreography and can show you that as well."

"Oh…wow, uhm..." Vishal began stuttering as he tried to figure out how to say what he wanted to politely before a cold voice cut him off.

"It sounds like trash."

At Levi's words, Mathews' face turned red from embarrassment, causing Ari to glare at Levi.

"Oi. There's no need for being rude when he's trying hard."

Pale blue eyes glared back at him as Levi snorted.

"The person who was late can't talk to me about being rude."

"That was that, and this is this. He's a teammate. He's trying. Be cordial or get out."

"Say less."

Levi crumpled up the sheet of paper that he had, tossing it in the general direction of the trash can before leaving, and slamming the door behind him.

"Phew. Thank god he's gone." Mathew sighed in relief while patting his chest, and it seemed that the rest of them felt the same way, as complaints began flying.

"I'm always so scared when I look at him."

"All he does is glare at people and threaten to beat them up. I don't know how he keeps getting a good edit."

Ari was completely shocked at the way they were speaking and immediately began calling them out.

"What the heck? He's our teammate. Don't say that, and if you're going to talk bad about him, do it to his face."

Minjun turned and gave Ari a snide look, "So he can break my face? He's broken down several doors before."

"And? So have I."

Although in Ari's case, it was just the door handle, not the entire door.

"Well, they call you Captain Crashout for a reason."

"Well, if you don't want to see a real crashout, stop bad mouthing our teammate behind his back when I'm here. Got it?"

"The person who skipped our team practice and didn't even prepare really doesn't have grounds to be scolding me. Putting that special PD privilege to good use, I see."

"Me being unprepared is one thing. I take the blame for that, but bad-mouthing someone when they're not here is wrong. If you don't agree, feel free to leave, and I'll curse you out in every language I know with everybody here, then smile in your face when you come back. Let's see how you like it."

"You-"

"Yes, me? What? You don't like that idea? Feels bad? Then don't do it to other people." Ari gave Minjun a sharp smile.

"Of course, you crash-out thugs stick together," Minjun muttered under his breath.

"I sometimes wonder what you expect me to do when you say things like that," Ari said in a soft voice as he pushed up the fur hat so he could see better, and Minjun flinched for some reason.

"Okay. Okay! Everyone, calm down. Let's stop here before we start saying things we don't mean. Why don't we take a break and reconvene tomorrow? That way, everyone can have time to REVISE their verses and think of a concept. Okay?"

"Fine."

"Okay."

"Alright."

Since they were all in agreement, the room emptied out quickly, and Ari grabbed Levi's crumpled-up paper, went into one of the private practice rooms, locked the door, and made sure there were no cameras before taking a seat.

Being nosy, he uncrumpled the paper, realizing that it was clearly lyrics that had been written and erased multiple times, as if the writer had been constantly revising them.

And it wasn't just for the Levi's part, there were six different verses written in tiny letters, with 5 of them having [TEMPORARY] next to them.

And as Ari read the lyrics aloud while playing the music in his head, he realized that for the most part, the written words mostly fit the strange, disjointed song that they had been given.

[Wow.]

[Even as a rough draft, it sounds pretty good even when it's coming from you.]

[Despite his sharp mouth, he's surprisingly diligent, isn't he?]

[Don't you feel even worse now?]

Ari did.

He wanted to go find Levi immediately, but right now he had something more pressing to do.

"First, let's do some housekeeping. I completed the last mission on the mission board, right?"

[Correct.]

"Hand me my rewards, please."

[Ding!]

[I see Korea, I see France, I see you getting more passport stamps - Complete!]

[Mission Board #5 Complete!]

[Mission Board #5 Reward: 1 Gacha Gift Token Received]

[Ariel Matisse]

[Age: 18]

[Vocals: A+]

[Dance: C]

[Visual: A]

[Rap: F]

[Charm: A]

[Skills: JukeBox(A), Picky Listener (B), Pen Pal (C)]

[Current Rewards: 2 Stat Points & 1 Gacha Gift Tokens]

"First, let's add these two stat points to the rap stat."

[Rap: F -> E-]

Ari stared at the pathetically low rap stat before rubbing his eyes in annoyance.

For his rapping to be decent, he needed to get it to a C rank, but the issue was that he had no extra stat points, and none of his repeat missions were close to giving him any.

"Is there some magical item that can come out of the gacha that will allow me to rap better?"

[Anything is possible if you have enough tokens.]

"Will you give me more tokens?"

[That's all on you.]

[Will you complete your mission boards faster?]

"...."

"Fine, whatever, I'd like to use the gacha token then."

[Beginning Now.]

The familiar blue screen transforms into a gumball machine with rainbow colored balls inside.

The little animation of a coin entering the slot played, and the silver turn key cranked five times to the right before-

POP!

A bright blue ball popped out of the opening, into the air, and fell into his hands.

Grabbing the ball with familiarity, Ari split it open, causing one half of the ball to disappear and two small bright blue crystalline earring studs to appear in his palm.

[Bi-Lingual Blue Diamond Earrings]

[Use: Put them in your ear, tap each earring, and select which language you want for that earring.]

[Performance: Allows you to speak and understand the chosen languages at the level of your native language from a list of 250 languages. Once the language is set in each earring, it cannot be changed.]

Ari looked at the earrings curiously before tossing them up and down.

Blue Diamonds, huh.

It had a nice, sizable weight that looked to be about 1 carat.

While the functionality was useful, the only international trip he had coming up was Korea, so he only needed one.

Maybe he could sell the other one…

[If you dare to sell it, I'll take it back.]

NOVA quickly interrupted his thoughts.

Ari: ಠ_ಠ

"I didn't say anything."

[You didn't have to.]

[I can see the thoughts on your face. Save it.]

[You'll definitely need it later.]

"Fine. Fine. I can't use it right now because I don't have my ears pierced, so it's not really useful for my issue right now. Can I get the new mission board? And please make it missions that will actually help me out.

[Ding!]