The Maknae Has to Be an Idol

Utilizing available resources was one of the first parts to consider when making a plan. I thought of the strengths we currently had. All the members had good skills as idols, so I could list several strengths, but—

‘I need something I can use right now.’ We didn’t have a second chance. In order to make use of The Showcase, which was the safest and surest card we had at our disposal, we needed to make thorough plans.

We needed one solid and effective bang to make our name known. No matter how hard I thought about it, there was only one solution.

“I think we need to use our visuals.” The only way to get famous quickly was using our group’s visuals. As soon as I said this, the members’ eyes turned to Yeon-Hoon in unison.

Yeon-Hoon avoided the gaze directed toward him by bowing his head. “W-why are you guys all looking at me?”

Yeon-Hoon seemed embarrassed, but we all implicitly knew that Yeon-Hoon’s visual was too good for a small-sized agency like this. Judging by only his visuals, it made one wonder if any of the male idols who recently debuted were as good-looking as him. Rather than a classic handsome face, he had soft features that made him look more like a pretty boy, but the combination of his features were so perfect that even those who had different personal tastes would find him incredibly handsome.

Even if our songs or style didn’t suit their personal taste, there were fans who would be willing to check us out if there were good-looking members. In that sense, Yeon-Hoon’s face was a Michelin-star-level delicacy that hadn’t been known yet.

“Yeon-Hoon, let’s sell your face and get some viral feed.”

“W-what. How can we gain popularity with my face…?”

“It’ll work.” Frankly, it would be hard to make headlines just on visuals alone, so I had other plans as well. However, I couldn’t tell the other members my plans for now, so I just pushed forward with the idea that we should use Yeon-Hoon’s visuals.

“Trust me. We’ll get a good reaction.”

“Hmm.”

“I’m all for it~” Dong-Jun was the first to agree.

“I also don’t think it’s a bad idea either. Whether it works or not, we’re free to participate.” Woon also showed that he was in favor.

“Yeah, we never know what’s going to happen.” Do-Seung also nodded.

The only one left was now Yeon-Hoon. “If you guys think that—then, yeah, let’s try it.”

“So it’s okay for us to use your face to market our group?”

“Ye….yeah.” Yeon-Hoon’s face was now so red as if it was going to explode. He was a person who always lacked confidence in his appearance.

However, Yeon-Hoon soon calmed down and said, “Before that, we have to tell the head manager first.”

“I’ll tell him.” I came out of the dorm with my phone.

* * *

I came out of the dorm and stood in the corner of the rooftop. Since it was still winter, it was chilly outside, but I paid no attention to it. I held up my phone and searched through the address book. Since it was the phone I used 5 years ago, it still felt unfamiliar in my hand.

— Head Manager Yoon Tae-Hyung

Before I pressed call, I thought briefly, ‘This guy was trash during this time too.’

Yoon Tae-Hyung was both Siren’s manager and head manager of WD Etertainment. The reason why he was the manager of Siren and the head manager of WD was because he was the only one in WD entertainment’s management team. As a result, he was the head manager who was also responsible for doing all the grunt work as well. On paper, he seemed like a high-quality worker struggling in a small place. But in fact—

‘He’s a man who’s only looking out for himself.’ He didn’t even have the basic work ethics as an office worker.

When I pressed the call button and put the phone on my ear, the call line was immediately cut off.

‘As expected, he doesn’t answer in one try.’ When I tried calling him again, I heard a voice after a brief pause.

— …Hello?

He sounded like he hadn’t fully woken up yet. No, considering his usual behavior, he might be groggy from drinking.

“Hello, head manager. It’s Bong Tae-Yoon.”

— Ah, yeah. So, what’s up?

“We’re planning to apply for Season 2 of TheShowcase. Is that okay?” I got straight to the point, as it was more convenient for both of us if I spoke bluntly.

— Well, are you guys busy? Isn’t The Showcase

a big program? Can you guys participate in that show even if you didn’t debut yet?

“No, we aren’t busy, and this time, groups that didn’t debut yet can also receive support. I know we might not get accepted, but we just wanted to give it a try.”

— Okay. Just go ahead and tell me the results. As long as it doesn’t cost money, it’s fine.

As expected, I knew he would answer like this. As long as it was not bothersome for him, he didn’t care about what happened. The first thing he asked was if we were busy after all. I just needed to deliver the most basic news to him like this. It would be extremely annoying to work with a person like this later on in our career, but as of right now, it was better for me if he didn’t care whatever we did. I hung up the phone and went back to the dorm.

I told everyone, “He said we can go ahead.”

“You got permission that fast?”

“He didn’t say anything else?”

“Yes,” I reported the results of the call to my members and sat down at the table to finish the meal. Then I said, “Let’s hurry up and eat and go to the practice room.”

“Ah, yep.”

“Yeah.”

“It feels so hectic even in the morning.”

From today on, we had a lot of work waiting for us.

* * *

We arrived at the practice room. Frankly, the place was too sad to be called a practice room. The WD Entertainment workplace was largely divided into two spaces. One was a real office where office workers worked. The office was housed in a large venture center building, where small and medium-sized enterprises usually resided. The other place was our practice room. We were renting and using a place near our dorm. But the problem was—

“Let’s turn on the air purifier~”

“I’ll leave the door open.”

“It seems the air has become stuffy after not coming for only a few days.”

Just like our dorm, the environment was extremely poor. It was a space of about 534 sq ft underground, but the building itself was old, so there was little ventilation. The only thing helping this situation was an air purifier in the corner. If I recall correctly, that was not even provided by the company but purchased from the money we saved as a group.

‘It’s still a mystery why WD wanted to launch an idol group.’ I didn’t understand why they had accepted idol trainees when they weren’t going to support us to this extent. In the past, they supported us a little bit, but the current state was nothing short of neglect.

‘Are they indirectly telling us to leave?’ Perhaps, this was their intention. Although not many companies did this, I have heard of companies that gathered idols who dropped out from other companies to make easy money but kept pushing off the debut date because they didn’t have enough investment funds. But for us, it would be a relief if they just decided to push off the debut date.

‘They might be trying to throw us away because it seems like we’re not going to make money.’

After making assessments and judging that we would only be losing money, they might have cut off all support, hoping that we would all drop out on our own. I wasn’t sure if this was what WD was attempting to do—no, WD was a company that was more than capable of carrying out such shady practice as it was clear as day that they didn’t have the funds. I couldn’t believe that I needed to get our group to make 100,000 album sales in the first week at such a shady company.

‘This is fucking insane.’ I couldn’t help but curse.

“Pwehh.” When I sighed in frustration—

“Hmm! The air is so bad here right now! Don’t take a deep breath!” Yeon-Hoon misunderstood my sigh as having difficulty breathing and worried about me. My head hurt from Yeon-Hoon, who was worrying about things like this, and the condition of the practice room that made him have such concerns.

“Since we have to film a video today, let’s clean up the practice room,” Do-Seung suggested.

We decided to clean the practice room as a replacement for stretching. After cleaning, we sat around and started a meeting about the video concept. I said meeting, but everyone was looking at me as I was the one who suggested this plan in the first place.

“First of all, this is the concept and song I came up with.” We could post the application video on The Showcase’s home page on the application page, and I planned to gain popularity by using the time of upload and the thumbnail to my advantage.

The song that made the best use of the place I had in my head was—

“What do you think of <Sweet Boy>?”

“Huh?”

“What?”

<Sweet Boy> was a viral internet meme that everyone knew. It was from a video of elementary school students coming out and introducing themselves as made-up idols. It was first spotlighted as a cringe-fest video that gave all viewers intense second-hand embarrassment, but these days, it was just treated as a funny meme and was trendy among people.

“Are you out of your damn mind?” Do-Seung was angry. “Did you ask us to apply to do something dumb like this?”

It seemed as if Do-Seung had wanted to do something more befitting of an idol. I could understand his sentiments as he probably wanted to do something cool for our first official activity under our group name, Siren.

“This is the best way to do something that can utilize our visuals.” As I said this, I showed everyone the <Sweet Boy> reference that I had searched for beforehand. When I showed them the video, the members began to be persuaded.

“We’re seriously doing that?”

“Yes.”

“Well, if Yeon-Hoon does that, it’ll definitely get attention.”

Although it was a ridiculous video and proposal, the only reason why it was persuasive was because of Yeon-Hoon’s face. The term, ‘his face did everything’, was applicable to this situation.

On the other side, Yeon-Hoon’s eyes were trembling. “A-are you serious, Tae-Yoon…? For real…you want to do this…?”

“Yes, I’m dead serious.” I have never been anything but serious.

* * *

A little past lunchtime, the Siren members were a little solemn. They checked the final edit of the application video to post on The Showcase website. Even though it was a simple video, it took quite a while to shoot because they had no cameraman and had to take the video by changing the viewpoint with only a tripod. The result of all that hard work in the morning was—

“Seriously? This is going to be our application video?”

“Yes.”

“Tae-Yoon…”

“Yes?”

“Are you pranking us?”

It was a terrible video with poor quality; nevertheless, Bong Tae-Yoon was as calm as ever.

“Are we really going to upload it like this?” Woon asked Tae-Yoon again to make sure.

“Yes, it came out exactly as I expected.”

“This trash is the quality you wanted?” Kang Do-Seung asked again with a slightly stronger wording.

“Yes.” But Tae-Yoon was as firm as ever.

“I’m asking to be sure, but are you really, really sure you want to upload this…Tae-Yoon?” Woo Yeon-Hoo asked.

But as expected, Tae-Yoon’s answer was the same. “Yes.”

“Personally, I think it’s funny and good. Who cares? These are all going to be good memories in the end.” The only one who was carefree about this was Park Dong-Jun, but that was his usual personality. Everyone stared at Tae-Yoon with suspicion, but he closed the computer without paying heed to their wary gazes.

Tae-Yoon said, “I think this will be enough.”

“Can’t we just film again?”

“Just one video more like an actual idol.”

“Won’t it be better to do our best if we’ve already decided to participate?”

Everyone voiced their concerns.

“If we post the same idol-like thing on the application page where only idol debut group members apply, it won’t have any competitive edge,” Tae-Yoon replied firmly.

“Then we can do something different than this!”

Tae-Yoon refuted, “No, this is perfect.”

“Geez, this is going nowhere.”

Tae-Yoon refused to back down, and the rest of the group members desperately tried to change his mind. All the group members, excluding Dong-Jun, who didn’t care, exchanged tense looks as they sat in the practice room.

However, to their surprise, Tae-Yoon then suggested, “Then I’ll upload this and take it down right away if we don’t get a response in a day. How about it?”

The members were surprised that Tae-Yoon took a step back after seeming as if he wouldn’t ever back down.

“Really?”

“Yes.”

Woo Yeon-Hoon, Kang Do-Seung, and Lee Woon exchanged glances. Would this video get a response within a day? To be frank—

‘No, that’ll never happen.’

‘I feel bad for Tae-Yoon, but it’s not going to happen.’

‘It’ll be hard to get a response from that.’

The three judged that it would be difficult for this video to garner attention within a day. Not just a day, but a year. The video they filmed was just plain funny and ridiculous, and these types of videos were only well-received by popular and famous idols who were showing a new, unexpected side of them. But if nobodies like them made such a video, it would be just plain sad. The three accepted Tae-Yoon’s suggestion.

“Okay, then let’s upload it and wait a day.”

“Yes, but I’ll decide the time to post it.”

Like this, the confrontation between the four and one carefree person ended.

* * *

Three days later.

“G-guys, our video…the view count is strange…?”

Their poor-quality video with low-level humor got 101,476 views. It was a number that they thought they would never be able to see as a group of nobodies.