The Maknae Has to Be an Idol

I wondered why I had to do something like this, but because Yeon-Hoon insisted, I ended up taking the paper. The very top of the page had the title, ‘Siren’s Regular Attitude Check-Up’ quite grandiosely written on it. It seemed Yeon-Hoon wanted to make the document look more official, but he chose the wrong font.

No company would type this sort of document in an archaic Joseon style. It had been a while since this particular font became a meme, but I supposed Yeon-Hoon was slow to catch up in these areas.

“But how can we each write ours separately when most of us share a room with one other person?” Dong-Jun asked reasonably.

“Two people have to write theirs in the bathroom.”

“That’s a human rights violation!”

“…No, it’s not.”

“Making a person write a document in the bathroom feels like a new kind of office bullying.”

“It’s not!”

In the end, we decided who would go to the bathroom with rock scissors and papers, and unfortunately, Yeon-Hoon was chosen. Yeon-Hoon seemed to actually be glad that he got the bathroom since he was the one who proposed this activity, but on the other hand, I was also picked as the other person who would write their document in the bathroom.

‘I guess it will be fine as long as I don’t get water on it.’

I didn’t think too much about this. All I wanted was to quickly finish this task. I tried to think of how I could write this as fast as possible but not make it noticeable that I put little effort into it. And while we were each moving to our set locations, Yeon-Hoon explained the reason for this activity.

“Anyone can see that we succeeded too fast. Our ‘Blue Ocean’ release was especially fast, so I hope we can take this time to reflect on ourselves and each other at least once.”

Yeon-Hoon appeared to be worried that we would let our recent success get into our heads. It was true that the brighter the light, the bigger the shadow it would cast. I understood his perspective, but…

‘Will this even be effective?’ I decided to think it was better than nothing so that I would be able to muster enough energy to finish this activity. I took a pen and went into the bathroom. I thought about what to write and tried to recall any moments when my members showed early symptoms of ‘celebrity disease’[1]. Were there any suspicious signs?

Since celebrity disease wasn’t a real disease, it was hard to come up with anything. First of all, the symptoms of celebrity diseases tended to be the following: talking down or acting rudely to staff, treating managers badly, a noticeable decrease in fan service, dispassionate eyes, and intoxication with oneself.

I didn’t notice any of these symptoms in my members. Thus, I needed to write about lesser symptoms—the subtle kinds that one couldn’t notice without careful observation but in retrospect, should’ve garnered a bit of suspicion.

I wrote down a couple of memories I thought of. I started with Yeon-Hoon. Yeon-Hoon searched for his name every day. That was fine but he didn’t stop there and kept saving his pictures on his phone. This action was worth noting since he could be developing a sense of narcissism. The second person was Do-Seung. Do-Seung clearly showed at least one symptom. It was one I spotted before we got in the car to head to our schedule recently.

Do-Seung’s searches on his phone had been suspicious. They were about apartments belonging to famous celebrities and the price of these apartments. It seemed he had made a rough estimate of the copyright fees he would receive and searched for types of loans he could get.

He was already thinking about buying a house. Though one could think that he was simply buying a house for investment, the fact that he added ‘famous celebrity’ in his key search revealed that Do-Seung already considered himself ‘famous’.

The next person was Woon. Because of how squeaky clean he was, there wasn’t anything to write about him, but if I had to write something, there was one. He went into Utube, looked up his individual fan cam, and replayed the most watched section of the video. Then, his ears turned red while scrolling through the comments and he quietly turned his phone over. It really was nothing much.

Finally, I got to Dong-Jun. I thought Dong-Jun was in the most serious condition. After searching Siren on Utube, he replayed videos titled, ‘An explosive new rising star, Siren’, ‘Collection of Global Responses about Siren’, or ‘New Boy Group Said to be Legendary Talents’

. Then, he continued to replay parts in which his name was mentioned. If he liked the video’s content, he pressed the like button and he even made the effort to press dislikes on content he didn’t like. At a single mishap, I thought Dong-Jun would become intoxicated with himself.

‘Did I go too hard?’ Then, after writing everything, I wondered. I planned to do a sloppy job in the beginning, but the content got long as I wrote it. Though I only wrote facts, I feared that my members would get hurt. Yet, since that was the purpose of this activity, I didn’t edit anything. But sure enough, after everyone came back out and gave their papers, the only person who wrote anything factual was me and I became the only bad guy in the room.

***

“Bong Tae-Yoon…I won’t forgive you…”

“…Was it such a crime that I looked up apartments…?”

“…I was just reevaluating…my dances…that was all, really…”

“I’m going to always click the ‘dislike’ button for Tae-Yoon’s videos now.”

After our regular attitude check-up ended, I became the sole enemy of the group and sat in the corner. I was the only one who stayed true to the original prompt but before I knew it, I found myself in this position. Perhaps, this was why people always went on about how ruthless internal politics was. Because of all the hidden and underlying meanings and interrelations connected to every activity, the person who failed to realize all that was outcasted.

The other members had simply written lines like, ‘Everyone, don’t worry and don’t feel so pressured since we are all doing awesome!’ or ‘No matter how hard we have to work, let’s not forget about our health and practice with our bodies in mind!’. The prompt was ‘Siren’s attitude check-up’ but they had simply written encouragement notes for each other.

“This wasn’t an attitude check-up but a time for us to write encouraging notes to each other?”

“I genuinely thought our team was doing super well and just wrote things we should be careful of.”

“Since none of you guys seem to have the celebrity disease, I just wrote encouraging letters.”

“…Tae-Yoon, you are too much…”

I complained, thinking they were being unfair but the four argued against me. Of course, I didn’t intend to back down.

“But I don’t think I said anything wrong.”

“What?”

“I’m the only one who stayed true to the prompt.”

“Seriously Tae-Yoon!”

My members seemed to be racking their heads to find points to refute, but, in the end, they admitted I was right.

“…Yeah.”

“…It’s true that Tae-Yoon alone followed the prompt.”

“…Let’s all be careful to not catch the celebrity disease you all.”

“This really opens my eyes.” In the end, we somehow accomplished our initial purpose of doing this activity. Though everyone except me looked like they had been slammed in the head, we still had taken the opportunity to check our attitudes. My members organized all the papers and sat in the living room.

“If we just do well this week, we can accomplish Triple Crown All-Kill,” Yeon-Hoon said, bringing up a new topic.

“If we accomplish that this time, we would be the tenth Triple Crown All-Kill in history, right?”

“Yeah, that’s right. It will be the tenth.”

“It will be really great if that happens.”

My members discussed whether or not we would really be able to achieve Triple Crown All-Kill. Truthfully, there was a group who achieved that feat before I regressed. But because of how quickly and boldly we were rushing forward in our activities, that group was holding themselves back. I felt a bit sorry for the group since originally, the group should’ve done much better than now.

“Shouldn’t we do something if we achieve Triple Crown All-Kill?”

“Like- do you want to make a pledge?”

“I think making at least one would be fine.”

“Yeah…” My members started to discuss our plans to achieve Triple Crown All-Kill. It was what we needed to talk about at least once this week.

I planned to bring up the topic if we placed first on tomorrow’s music show since if we received that, we would be able to upload a video talking about our commitments after receiving the Triple Crown All-Kill without looking like we were already leading people on. Yet, it wasn’t bad that my members were bringing up the conversation first even if we made our official pledge after winning tomorrow.

“Is there anything we can do?”

“Should we film a challenge video together and upload it?”

“We already did that.”

“We could upload another one where we wear special outfits like animal pajamas or a stage outfit the fans like.”

“Hm…I want to do something more than that.”

Yeon-Hoon and Woon discussed ideas. Yet, Do-Seung made a different kind of proposal.

“Should I upload another version of ‘Blue Ocean’? Like an acoustic or remix version? I think I will be able to quickly make one if I use the studio for three hours.”

If we did just that, it appeared that we would be able to reach Triple Crown All-Kill with no problems.

“Why don’t we just have a concert while we are at it? Or do a live busking or gallery concert? We could rent a small theater or just do it on the streets.” Dong-Jun’s suggestions were good too.

If we wanted to do something bigger, these suggestions were the best since in terms of fan service, the rule was: the more, the better. We would have to do a solo concert someday so this could be a great practice in the long run. If we followed all of their suggestions, it was a good plan that would please the fans.

Thus, I said, “Can’t we combine all of those ideas?” Rather than picking some of that out, I thought we could do them all.

“Oh?”

“Wow!”

“That sounds good.”

In the end, we decided to wear the outfits that our fans chose and hold a gallery concert with a new version of “Blue Ocean”. We shared our plans with Ms. Seung-Yeon and Ms. Hyuna and the two gained permission from the company before officially diving into the work. To appear on the camera, we took a shower, received light makeup, and took our pledge video for the Triple Crown All-Kill beforehand. I desperately prayed that we would be able to keep our pledge for this video.

***

The next day, we were able to obtain the first-place trophy for our first music show of the third week. This flow of success continued throughout the week until we got first place on Wednesday and Thursday. But since the shows didn’t belong to over-the-air television networks, they didn’t influence our Triple Crown All-Kill record at all.

Of course, since we were getting consecutive wins, our fans and the company were overjoyed. Soon afterward, our winning streak continued to Friday where we won first place in an over-the-air network music show and we got another win in the following Saturday music show. After finally receiving first place in the Sunday over-the-air television network, our group’s waiting room burst with festivity and cheers.

“Ahhhh!”

“We did it!”

“Ahhhhh! Really! It’s done!”

“Ohhhhh!”

[Tenth Triple Crown All-Kill in history! Siren shows no sign of slowing down!]

[Achieved Triple Crown All-Kill with a debut album. Can Siren receive the Grand Prize?]

[Siren achieved tenth Triple Crown All-Kill. Jaeil Group is seeing a rise in stock prices.]

All the entertainment news was talking about us.

1. A sickness that celebrities are often said to catch where they get haughty or think they are superior to others because of their elevated status. ☜