The Maknae Has to Be an Idol

Bleshu’s teaser video came up. I quickly went into social media and checked Bleshu’s debut schedule. Their debut date was July 11th. It appeared that they had planned to debut right after us since Only One and Siren’s current album activities ended on July 4th. They were revealing one teaser at a time starting from today. Seeing this, I felt conflicted again.

‘Why now of all times?’ I planned to continue our activities right after this one to achieve the Triple Crown—no, not just a simple Triple Crown but a Triple Crown all-kill. I had to accomplish that for the system to not find any faults with my results and to accept my work as a mission success. Yet, a ‘moderately’ strong enemy appeared in our way of achieving that.

‘They don’t have a small fandom either.’ It was fortunate that I didn’t see articles saying that Only One would move on to their next activities. If they were also joining the scene, I would’ve really needed to scrap my plans and look for another opportunity. Yet, Bleshu wasn’t quite a force strong enough for us to put a stop to everything.

They definitely did have popularity and fame. After Only One and us, they would probably be the new male idol group that made the most impact this year. If I made a rough estimate, I thought they could get around 150,000 sales. Only One and Siren simply had an unbelievable number of sales, and 150,000 was enough for a new group to get the ‘Rising Star’ award for that year.

Thus, it was only natural that it hung on my mind that a group of this level was debuting at this time. We needed to get first place three weeks in a row at three important music shows, but…

‘Would we really not lose even once? Really?’ Though we probably wouldn’t lose to Bleshu in the attention and popularity we could garner, if we lost first place to them even once, my efforts to succeed in my mission would turn into nothing. Thus, I needed to be especially cautious.

I could find another date for our next activities to avoid Bleshu. Rather than us going from one album to the next, we could make some gap in between.

‘But what…?’ Yet, if we avoided Bleshu, another battlefield came into the picture.

‘Why are so many girl groups doing a comeback in August?’ Now that I thought about it, 2022 was the year when masses of girl groups made their debut or comeback. Not only were new groups going to make an impact, but this was the time when groups, who had dominated a generation for over seven years, would also be making a special comeback. All sorts of people’s comebacks were clustered around August and September.

‘That means I won’t even be able to dream of the Triple Crown if it’s not July.’ My head hurt to the point that it felt like it was splitting. It was another mountain to climb after another mountain.

Now that we were getting accessed comparatively instead of objectively, it seemed to suck the life out of me. Thinking all this, I couldn’t even go back home and circled in front of the entrance door. Perhaps, I was too focused on my thoughts that I didn’t realize how much time was passing.

Creak.

“I will see if Tae-Yoon is outside and if he is, I will bring him.”

“Let’s go together.”

“It will catch too much attention if we go in a group.”

The entrance door opened, and Yeon-Hoon came inside.

“Ah.”

“Huh? Tae-Yoon?”

I awkwardly met Yeon-Hoon in the middle of the apartment’s hallways.

“Hey guys! I found Tae-Yoon!” Yeon-Hoon said and pulled me inside.

“Ah.” Though I hadn’t yet organized my thoughts, I was pulled into the living room.

***

I had no idea that things would escalate to this level.

“Where did you go so early in the morning, Tae-Yoon?”

“I feel like you keep sneaking outside these days.”

“Yeah. I pretended not to notice that you went out at night and came back in late…where did you go again this morning?”

“How suspicious, Bong Tae-Yoon~”

My members placed me on the living room floor while they sat on the sofa side-to-side and interrogated me. I didn’t know how things led up to this. I thought since Dong-Jun’s name had been cleared, all my members would be jumping up and down in excitement, thinking about what kinds of delicious food to eat.

After all, I did work hard enough to receive that sort of welcome and treatment; I recalled the nosebleed I had after making the posters write the apology post. It felt unfair that I was getting interrogated like this after all that work, but then, I soon came to understand why they were acting like this.

“Tae-Yoon, are you dating someone?” Yeon-Hoon asked in a half-certain voice.

“…Sorry?’

What in the world? Me—dating? I was so shocked that I couldn’t close my mouth. But it seemed they interpreted my shocked expression to someone whose secret was revealed.

“You…! Bong Tae-Yoon! How dare you date!”

“You bastard!”

“What are we going to do with him!”

“Do you understand what this time is like for us? Huh?”

My members all looked ready to beat me up.

“No, wait, you all. Why are you all so sure? I’m not dating anyone!” I understood why they sat me down in the living room and interrogated me as soon as they came back home. I would’ve also done that if I thought one of my members was dating someone.

Of course, I wasn’t saying that they should never date forever, but if they were going to do it, they should do it cautiously after around twenty years with someone who didn’t make a fool of the fans. Yet, they certainly couldn’t do that right now.

Thus, even though I understood my members’ responses, I said, “I am really not dating. I swear. Please put down that baseball bat, Do-Seung. Please. And when did you get the mosquito net Yeon-Hoon?”

“…You really aren’t?”

“Yes.”

“…Really?”

“Yes, I didn’t.”

“Do you have proof?” It seemed my members still didn’t believe me.

“Give us evidence, quickly.”

But how could I provide evidence for a nonexistent issue?

“Ah, look at my messenger app.” This was all I could show to clear my accusations. My members took my phone and checked each of the chatrooms.

“…”

“…Wow.”

“…This is too much.”

“Do you not have any friends, Tae-Yoon?”

“You know, that’s a very hurtful thing to say.”

“Ah, sorry! I was just genuinely concerned about you.”

The members responded after seeing my bleak friend count and chat rooms. The only chat rooms I was part of were the Siren group chat room, another one with Ms. Seung-Yeon and Ms. Hyuna, an individual one with each of my members, and lastly, Kang Hyun-Sung. For any other person, it was normal for the number of chatrooms to pass multiple scrolls. Yet, most of my chat rooms were captured with just one scroll.

“How could you not have any other friends?”

“I don’t really add people to my friend list.” Since I didn’t even add brand accounts that businesses ran, my friend list was emptier than most people. It seemed my members thought it was unlikely that someone with such a small social life could date and placed their weapons down.

“You all realized that I’m not dating, right?”

“You can’t date but you should make some friends, Tae-Yoon.”

“…” I wondered how I could when there was no one to meet and responded with silence.

“Then why do you keep going outside these days—like this morning or yesterday night?” Woon asked the question that hadn’t been resolved yet.

“I wrote on our group chat that I’m going for a jog.”

“At night too?”

“Yes.”

“Don’t you jog in the morning? ‘Jo’ for the Chinese character that means morning, and ‘Ging’ for running.”

“Dong-Jun, you still believe that false internet meme?”

“…Seriously?”

“But why are you going on such long runs?”

My members didn’t seem to believe that I only went out for a jog. I had expected them to wonder at some point since I kept acting on my own. Thus, I did make some preparations.

“Um…I do jog but truthfully, I also…”

“Also, what?”

“…I go out to eat.” Using believable excuses and evidence, I decided to utilize basic human psychology.

“You go out to eat?”

“Yes.”

“Really?”

Then, I showed my members the pictures on my phone. Most of the pictures were of tasty restaurants near the dorm and the food there. And yesterday, I took pictures from restaurants that were a bit farther away. I didn’t actually go to these restaurants but just downloaded them off the internet in high quality.

And since I thought I would be suspected if I just downloaded the pictures as they were, I used the phone’s basic editing functions to slightly alter the angle or size of the pictures. As a result, it clearly looked like pictures that I took myself.

“I was never that interested in food, but I think I’ve been getting stressed these days. I keep craving food.”

“…Hm.”

“…Wow, that looks good.”

“Be quiet, Dong-Jun.”

My members appeared quite serious.

“Okay, I understand. But you have to control your diet while we are in the middle of our activities. Let’s try to restrict ourselves from now on.”

“Tell me if you get too hungry. We can find diet recipes and make them together.”

“Message me separately if you are truly hungry.”

“Park Dong-Jun!”

“…Just kidding. We should just look for a diet recipe together.”

My members said and looked at me a bit pitifully. In the end, I was the maknae of the team and was still in my growth phase. It was hard to tell since I was nineteen, but nevertheless, they probably felt bad that I was going out by myself to eat. After all, humans were animals who experienced critical stress when they were deprived of one of the three things: food, sleep, and clothes.

“I’m sorry for interrogating you first thing in the morning.”

“Let’s eat something tasty for breakfast to make up for it.”

“It’s already past 11 am…too late to have breakfast. But nevertheless, let’s just have something tasty.”

“Do we have a schedule in the afternoon?”

“Yeah, let’s quickly eat and prepare, guys.”

My members suggested eating good food as a prize for finishing the interrogation. But before that, there was a part of me that wanted to hear some compliments for the work I did.

“The rumors surrounding Dong-Jun disappeared. Did you all check the situation?”

“Yeah, we made a fuss this morning because of that.”

“Seriously…I didn’t think everything would get resolved so well.”

“I feel like we can eat chicken today, right? My scandal died down and if it’s not today, when can we eat chicken?”

“Yeah, let’s eat it today.”

“Wow, really?”

“Chicken breast poke is also chicken.”

“…Let’s kill Kang Do-Seung.”

“Let’s have something tasty and light today as brunch—not something that feels so much like diet food today.”

“Wow, Woon is an angel.”

“Devils usually come in the form of angels, Dong-Jun.”

“That’s so cringy.”

I felt thoroughly rewarded for yesterday night’s work to just hear my member converse like this. I was prepared to do anything to maintain this sort of everyday life. Yet, a message that broke this peace came up in the chatroom.

—I just heard Mr. Tae-Yoon visited the company this morning. I heard that he discussed with Director Yoo about this album’s follow-up activities. Should we also have a meeting about this today? I will reserve a conference room after your noon schedule.

It felt like Ms. Seung-Yeon dropped a bomb.

“…”

“…Bong Tae-Yoon?”

“I thought you just went to restaurants…?”

“…”

I realized then I had forgotten to tell Yoo Won-Dong to keep our entire meeting this morning a secret. I only told him to keep the deal about the suing confidential and forgot everything else.

“Explain yourself.”

This was very troublesome.