NOVEL NEXT chapter 29 - Mid-check
‘Boyvicious sunbaenim’s Lucid Dive seduces the other side with a refreshing vibe.’
Shinyu said that, in order to make a definite impact in this group battle mission, change was essential.
‘If it were summer, it wouldn’t be a problem to tweak that concept just a little, but right now it’s winter! So I think it would be good for us to add a slightly more passionate feeling.’
So the concepts chosen were tomboy and incubus.
And although Shinyu had already finished reshaping the song to fit that concept, once we chose the last slot this time, she went back into master-potter mode all over again.
‘This isn’t it!’
The arrangement studio the broadcast station had prepared was currently in a state where Geum Shinyu was practically monopolizing it.
The production staff hadn’t expected there to be anyone among the participants who could self-produce, so they had at least provided a minimum amount of staff and equipment facilities for the contestants.
In that prepared studio, alongside Geum Shinyu, a composer with a face that screamed they were tired to death was working hard at the DAW (composition/arrangement program), tapping at the keyboard and mouse in accordance with Shinyu’s various requests.
And so, after pulling yet another all-nighter, Shinyu completed a new arrangement.
‘Sion unni can do it!’
Shinyu entrusted the main vocal of the newly completed song to me.
‘Ugh··· yeah. I have to do it···.’
What kind of expression had I worn back then when I answered Shinyu’s request?
I was the one who had picked the team members.
I was the one who had decided we would take the very last slot.
I was the one who had told Shinyu I would trust her completely, so she should make the best possible piece.
I couldn’t say I couldn’t do it.
‘This arrangement focuses on sexy and dreamy! Among those, the most important part is the main vocal! With Sion unni’s voice, you’ll be able to completely bewitch the audience!’
Seeing the look in Shinyu’s eyes as she said she believed in me reminded me of when I’d been marching in the army.
It was back when I’d been a platoon leader.
Right after being assigned to my unit and facing my first march, I didn’t want to be looked down on by the platoon members, so I packed my rucksack FM-style and marched the same way as the soldiers.
‘I was so intent on preserving my pride that I stayed standing even during breaks.’
The looks in the platoon members’ eyes back then were different from before.
In the eyes of the soldiers, who stared at me as if I were some kind of awe-inspiring superhuman, there was clearly respect, and drunk on that look, I finished the whole march without resting once, carrying my pack to the end.
— Platoon Leader, I was right, wasn’t I? This really is a direct hit!
Staff Sergeant Kim Hayoon, my assistant platoon leader, who had recommended it to me, saying it was the best way to leave a strong first impression on the platoon members.
Of course, I ended up unable to walk properly for about a week afterward, but thinking back on it now, I think I must have been extremely vulnerable to attention ever since then.
Even now, with Shinyu looking at me the same way my platoon members had back then, there was no way I could answer that I absolutely couldn’t do sexy.
“So you’re saying you want to know how to sound sexy in your vocals?”
“Yes, teacher.”
At my words, Seo Ryujin’s expression turned serious for the first time in a while.
The practice room at three in the morning.
She was clearly busy herself as a team leader, and yet I was only grateful that she was helping me.
Honestly, even if she hadn’t helped and only complained verbally, it would have been fully understandable, but,
‘It’s not just because of you. It’s also because of Gahyeon unni.’
That was what Ryujin said to me when I tried to brush it off as a joke and refuse, so as not to burden her when she offered to help me.
‘You know Gahyeon unni?’
‘How could I not? Gahyeon unni was originally a trainee at Logic.’
‘She’s with Daon Music now, though?’
‘···She got cut.’
It was the first time I’d seen such a bitter expression on Ryujin’s face.
Listening to what she said next, I learned that it was common for trainees to be picked up and dropped until debut.
And,
‘Right before Gahyeon unni got cut, we were on the same team for the last end-of-month company evaluation.’
The end-of-month evaluations that were said to be held monthly at the company.
According to Ryujin, in the case of Logic Entertainment, if you scored below a certain cutoff at the end-of-month evaluation, you were cut.
‘I still can’t forget how she looked when she got cut. If I’d been just a little better back then, unni wouldn’t have been dropped.’
The look in Ryujin’s eyes as she spoke to me seemed full of regret.
Anyway, for those reasons, Ryujin had ended up personally training me.
“Do you want to look sexy on stage, or do you want your vocals to sound sexy?”
“Shinyu’s a good kid, but sometimes she has this tendency to demand things ➤ NоvеⅠight ➤ (Read more on our source) that are way too much.”
After hearing my answer, Ryujin thought for a moment, then started speaking again.
“Basically, the elements that make a voice sound sexy are vocalization and pronunciation.”
“Vocalization and pronunciation?”
“Ah— and ah~ do you feel the difference between those two?”
Ah—
And ah~
If the first sound felt like it stretched out cleanly, the second had a slight tremble to it.
“Exactly. The first is the voice you get when you sing normally with diaphragmatic breathing. It stretches straight out, so it feels stable, right?”
“Yeah!”
“But the second isn’t easy. You still use diaphragmatic breathing, but this time, when you let the sound out, you include a bit more air and make your vocal cords vibrate.”
When Ryujin finished speaking and demonstrated again, I finally understood how the difference I’d felt was being created.
‘Air. When you mix in air, a tremor appears in the voice. And that’s what gives it that slightly more intriguing feeling.’
I tried mimicking the vocalization Ryujin had shown me and felt a strange sensation.
I’d only changed the method a little, but the sound that came out felt completely different from my usual voice.
“This isn’t the end of vocalization; you have to keep adjusting it yourself to match your song.”
“Got it.”
But even separate from understanding it, I had a hunch it wouldn’t be easy.
Unlike just singing normally, you had to constantly pay attention to your breathing and control of the vocal cords from start to finish··· to the point where I wondered if I could really pull it off perfectly on stage.
“Next is pronunciation. In general, there are a lot of singers who have their own characteristic pronunciation. Do you know why?”
“Isn’t it just because that’s how they talk?”
“No. They deliberately shape their pronunciation that way when they sing. Like, whenever you say ‘I’, if you draw it out like ‘I aaam~’, it gives more of a slurred, spilling feeling, right?”
Ryujin explained this as diction, and it was fascinating how the feel of a song could change completely just by altering pronunciation.
“I can only teach you the basics up to here. After this, we’ll have you sing it yourself and I’ll look at the parts I can correct.”
“Okay!”
***
“It’s good.”
After finishing practice with her own team, Ryujin stayed behind alone to watch another team’s practice. More precisely, she was watching Lucid Dive A team’s practice.
‘Haah··· Ryujin unni, let’s stop here for today.’
In her heart, Ryujin had wanted to do this kind of all-night practice with her own team members as well, but she knew it would only damage team cohesion if she did, so she couldn’t bring herself to attempt dawn practices.
“Gahyeon unni, how long are you going to rely on that weapon and just brute-force it with your body?”
“Wh-what···!”
“You have to use your expressions a bit more and make use of the curves of your body in the choreography for the feeling to really come alive!”
“Fine, fine, I get it! And why do you keep calling it a weapon and this and that, you sound just like Lee Sion right now!”
“What did you say?!”
But right now, in Ryujin’s eyes, Lucid Dive A team’s dawn practice looked genuinely fun.
Whether they’d been infected by Sion or not, Sion’s teammates were sweating desperately not with worry or anxiety, but purely to put on a better stage.
To the point where, if someone else saw them, it would look more like they were playing together than practicing.
“Behold! This is vibrato! Ah~ah~~ah~~~”
“Unni, why do you sound more and more like a goat toward the end?”
“Wasn’t that sexy?”
“That was a bit···.”
“It’s because Seo Ryujin taught me wrong.”
Of course, when she saw Sion in the middle of it all blaming her, Ryujin had nearly stormed into the practice room to pinch that annoying mouth of hers, but she held back with superhuman patience.
“···What are you doing here?”
“Huh? Ryu Ayeon, what are you doing here at this hour···.”
“Practice.”
As Ryujin was watching Lucid Dive A team’s practice, she heard a voice behind her, turned her head, and checked who it was.
And when she confirmed the person’s identity, she couldn’t help but be slightly surprised.
Ryu Ayeon.
The one person among the contestants Ryujin still found awkward to deal with was standing right in front of her.
“I also came to practice, but since there was already a prior guest, I’m just watching.”
“Prior guest?”
At Ryujin’s words, Ryu Ayeon craned her neck and peeked into the practice room, and her expression twisted in an instant.
Then she turned her body and tried to leave.
“Have you thanked Lee Sion?”
“What?”
“On the last live stage, Lee Sion helped you.”
“···I will.”
“Sure you will.”
Seeing Ayeon turn her gaze away as she said she would, Ryujin felt frustrated.
Even though they had practiced together in the same A class for the whole two-week dorm stay last time, the number of times Ryu Ayeon and Ryujin had actually talked could be counted on one hand.
‘From the start she built a wall telling people not to approach.’
For whatever reason, it seemed that Ryu Ayeon intentionally avoided getting close with the other contestants.
“Is your stage coming along well?”
“Instead of worrying about someone else’s business, how about you worry about your own practice?”
“Huh?”
“If you spend your time like this, just watching other teams’ practices and helping other people train every day, when are you going to practice for yourself?”
At Ayeon’s words, Ryujin simply met her eyes in silence.
Not with an upset look, but with a gaze containing a hint of pity.
“So the rumor was true, then?”
“What rumor?”
“That you got dropped from the TSP debut lineup.”
“How do you even know about that···.”
Ryujin had already been a trainee for over four years, heading toward five.
Once you had been a trainee that long, it was inevitable that you’d have at least one or two acquaintances at other agencies as well, so she had heard about Ryu Ayeon’s situation through the grapevine.
Of course, it wasn’t confirmed information, and she hadn’t wanted to talk carelessly about someone else’s business, so she had never asked directly.
“Your own skill is important, like you said. But before we’re competitors, we’re people who have gathered to debut together. It’s natural to help each other.”
“···Not everyone. Only seven out of a hundred can debut. Do you really think that Lee Sion you’re always dragging along to practice has the skill to actually debut?”
“Lee Sion?”
At Ayeon’s words, Ryujin recalled Sion, whom she had been helping with practice these last few days.
The silly one who was always slacking off and joking around, sometimes dropping ridiculously lame dad jokes.
Of course, if that were all there was to her, Ryujin wouldn’t have taken her under her wing, but,
‘She doesn’t just talk.’
Even while grumbling with her mouth, Sion had never once failed to keep up with Ryujin’s brutal training.
The kind of training that even participants who had already been trainees for years found overwhelming.
On top of that, watching Sion learn at an annoyingly fast pace was unexpectedly very fun.
“Do you want to bet on it?”
“What kind of bet are you talking about out of nowhere···.”
“I think Lee Sion is going to survive all the way to the end.”
“That could happen. But that would be surviving on popularity, not on pure skill···.”
“And I think she could even beat you if you went head-to-head.”
“What? Are you··· serious right now?”
“I’m not the type to spout nonsense like Lee Sion.”
The result of this group battle mission?
People would probably be shocked when they saw how much Sion’s skills had improved.
Just like Ryujin had been.
“Don’t be ridiculous. I haven’t trained this hard just to lose to a kid like that.”
“The moment you started talking about winning and losing, you’d already lost.”
Hearing Ayeon’s words, Ryujin saw her own early trainee days overlap with her.
The Ryujin who had been convinced that she could only rise by crushing others beneath her.
“You’re going to get scolded a lot at tomorrow’s evaluation with Judge Hyeryeong.”
On Idol Ground 100, once a week, the judges who acted as trainers would visit for mid-checks.
Producer Ahn Seongho’s mid-check was already done, and tomorrow it would be Hyeryeong, the vocal trainer, coming to mid-check the teams’ stages.
Ryujin hoped that by then, Ryu Ayeon would realize what she was thinking about wrong.
‘Because Sion’s team looks more like an idol group than Ryu Ayeon’s team.’
For some reason, because Sion annoyed her, she didn’t want to admit it, but in Ryujin’s eyes, the team closest to a real idol group among the current participating teams was Lucid Dive A team, the one with Sion in it.