Free Web Novel-For the guerrilla concert stage list, I’m thinking we include “Lucid Dive” and “Our Spring Isn’t Over Yet” among the stages you showed during Agbaek.
A pro really was different.
The guerrilla concert set list that got pushed through at lightning speed the moment Raon came back.
-Start with “Spotlight,” then you’ll do two of your own songs back-to-back. After that, we’ll need a breather, so we’ll drop the tempo a bit with “Our Spring Isn’t Over Yet,” and for the ending we need impact, so “Lucid Dive” would be good. And to wrap up, it’d be best to finish by singing a fan song.
Looking at Raon’s guerrilla concert set list—built around how to cram the stage full within thirty minutes—every one of us members, including me, could agree without hesitation.
-The most important thing is that even though it’s a thirty-minute concert, the stamina drain is on a completely different level from anything you’ve experienced so far. With the time we have left, condition management is mandatory, so we’re going into full management on everything from diet to sleep.
She also carefully explained all the other things we needed to keep in mind for a concert, and since Raon was the only one in the company who had experience with those details, it helped a lot.
Even now, while watching our stage practice, she was helping us modify our paths and formations in a way that fit a concert.
"But where did PD Raon go?"
Raon had been sitting in on practice since morning, giving feedback. freewebnσvel.cѳm
But in the middle of practice, a question came up about the formation, and when I looked for Raon and couldn’t see her, I asked.
"She said she was going to catch the CEO."
"Still hasn’t caught him?"
"Impressive. With PD Raon’s combat power right now, it shouldn’t be easy to run away."
"He never stays alone. He’s always with staff, so PD Raon can’t do anything about it."
"Oh."
Kim Sanghyeok—our CEO—was a shameless bastard who’d sacrificed me to dodge the crisis, but there was something to learn from him.
In front of us, PD Raon had long since thrown dignity to the wind, but to think he’d been using the fact that she still hesitated to show her true nature in front of the staff to pull evasive maneuvers.
Either way, since Raon wasn’t here right now, syncing the stage again ⊛ Nоvеlιght ⊛ (Read the full story) among ourselves came first.
♬
'We’ve definitely improved.'
As the song started again and I danced the choreography, I suddenly felt it—my skills, and the members’ too, had improved so much it was unrecognizable.
A quiet night falls
When I close my eyes, I see
That smile when you look at me
And my heart sinks again
Boyvicious’s “Lucid Dive,” the first stage we’d shown as our opening performance back in Agbaek.
Back then, I’d been out of my mind just memorizing the choreography and lyrics, and when it came time to actually go on stage, my whole body had been overflowing with tension because all I could think about was not messing up.
Whoosh.
Now, even while performing, I could see every movement in my body, and the members too.
And while doing that, my details and my vocals were coming out more stable than when I’d been performing with total concentration, which really drove home just how lacking my skills had been back then.
And the surprising part was—
♬
Seo Ryujin, Ryu Ayeon, and Kurosawa Yuri, perfectly digesting their parts right now.
For me, and for Lee Gahyeon, Shinyu, and Yunkyung, we’d performed this stage before, so we had memories of practicing it—but those three should’ve been practicing it for the first time this time around, and even so, they adapted fast and handled their parts with ease.
"This is the minimum you should be able to do."
When Shinyu got all worked up in shock at that, Ryu Ayeon answered like it was nothing.
"When it’s year-end stages later, we’ll have to prepare different stages for each network in a short amount of time. Compared to that, this is doable."
At Ryu Ayeon’s words, Seo Ryujin and Yuri nodded along in agreement.
But—
"Yunkyung, weren’t you too far forward just now?"
"···Yes. I’ll be careful."
If anything, it was Yunkyung—the one with experience—who kept making mistakes during the stage.
'Are they really mistakes?'
Most of them were too ambiguous to call outright mistakes.
For example, like just now, she’d stick out a little farther than the formation we’d agreed on, or she’d be the only one who popped out in the choreography.
Normally, mistakes like that came out when your concentration dropped, but looking at Yunkyung right now, it didn’t seem like concentration was the issue.
Because—
"Haa···."
Even as she let out rough breaths, her eyes were vividly alive.
And unlike usual, when she got pointed out she’d flinch like she’d committed some unforgivable crime and wouldn’t know what to do, now even if Seo Ryujin or Ryu Ayeon pointed something out, she just answered quietly, with no sign of panic at all.
Even in the practice that followed, Yunkyung looked different from usual in some way.
"Alright, take ten minutes and then we’ll go back into practice."
After practice had gone on for a while like that, Seo Ryujin announced a short break, and this time Yunkyung immediately left the practice room in silence.
"That’s suspicious."
"Yunkyung?"
"You felt it too."
"Of course. You think you’re the only one with eyes? The other members all know Yunkyung’s been kind of weird too."
As I watched her and said it was suspicious, Ryu Ayeon beside me answered.
Even Ryu Ayeon—who had about as much awareness as an ant’s eye booger—had felt the sense of wrongness coming off Yunkyung, so it seemed the situation was pretty serious, and I fell into thought.
'Should I intervene?'
I knew Yunkyung had been feeling pressure, even normally.
We were glued together every day, so even if I didn’t want to know, I couldn’t help knowing.
So I was thinking.
Should I stick to Yunkyung right now, ask what happened, and soothe her a bit, or should I just leave her alone?
Tap.
While I hesitated, Ryu Ayeon’s rude palm landed on top of my head.
"What is this, a challenge?"
"Does anyone challenge a scrub?"
Ryu Ayeon’s mouth had gotten just as vicious as Seo Ryujin’s lately, so I was about to teach her that fists were a better solution than words when—
"Just leave Yunkyung alone."
"What?"
At Ryu Ayeon’s next words, I loosened my grip for now.
"Yunkyung’s doing well right now. There’s nothing to worry about."
"You know why Yunkyung’s like that?"
At my question, Ryu Ayeon nodded.
"When you live trainee life, you hit a big wall."
"A wall?"
"You’re doing the same moves, the same choreography, so why do you stand out less than other people? Or why do your moves look weird?"
Was this from personal experience?
Ryu Ayeon kept talking with eyes that looked a little wistful, like she was remembering the past.
"You keep practicing, but it feels like you’re running in place, and when you look at people who are good, you start thinking you don’t have talent."
"You went through that too?"
"Yeah. Honestly, looking back now, I was definitely improving, but I think my heart was just impatient. From the outside you can tell, but you can’t tell when it’s you, right?"
I agreed with Ryu Ayeon.
Most of the time, you don’t feel your own growth yourself.
"But if you give up there, it’s over. If you take one more step, you’ll start seeing what changes, but because you can’t see that yet, you get tired and it’s hard, so you stop."
Listening to Ryu Ayeon, I suddenly thought of that story about a miner.
The story where one miner stops even though just one more step of digging would’ve hit a gold vein, while another keeps digging until the end.
"I can tell Yunkyung’s thinking about what she needs to do."
"So that’s what it was?"
"Yeah. Even at a glance, it wasn’t just a simple mistake—she was trying to do something, and it slipped."
"Not bad."
"You think I’m you?"
Ryu Ayeon—the one among us with the longest trainee period—had figured out right away what Yunkyung was worrying about.
"Then shouldn’t we help her?"
"If she was floundering, sure, but right now, however she did it, Yunkyung’s moves have been getting more and more precise every day."
At Ryu Ayeon’s words, I looked back on how Yunkyung had been during practice over the last few days.
'She really has been getting some kind of framework, little by little.'
Her moves being off kept repeating, but if you looked closely, you could feel how it changed bit by bit.
To put it more exactly, it was like she was performing on a different stage alone, in a different time and space.
"But it’s still unstable."
"Yeah. It feels like it’s about to break, but it’s barely not breaking. If we try to help clumsily in a situation like this, it’ll just get harder for her."
There was nothing more clumsy than right before an egg cracks and hatches, and if Yunkyung stayed in this unstable state, that was definitely dangerous.
We didn’t have much time left until Three Kingdoms’ third round, the guerrilla concert.
[VYNNIA Kaella] : We’re preparing really hard too
[Me] : Preparing what?
[VYNNIA Kaella] : Uh, at the company... no, wait, I can’t tell you that!
[Me] : lmao
I’d unfortunately failed to squeeze out the other side’s information, but since it was the last round, I could tell VYNNIA wasn’t preparing halfheartedly either.
"Should we sweet-talk Jia and find out what they’re doing?"
"I already tried."
"Seriously? So what’s LYNX preparing?"
So I was going to tell Ryu Ayeon to sweet-talk Lee Jia—who followed Ryu Ayeon well—and find out what LYNX was preparing, but she’d already tried before I even said it. Ryu Ayeon had improved so much I barely recognized her.
Slide.
But my excitement at being able to sniff out a rival team’s next stage quickly faded, and when I saw the smartphone screen Ryu Ayeon showed me, I had no choice but to shut my mouth.
[LYNX Esther] : Ryu Ayeon, did Lee Sion make you do this? Seriously, if you sweet-talk Jia one more time, I’m going to handle it myself
"Not easy."
"Esther’s gotten more wary because of you."
"Why because of me!"
"After you recommended Jia that Chinese drama or whatever last time, she watched it and got sleepy at practice, and Esther got really mad, didn’t she?"
"Chu-Han Contention is worth it."
"Huh? What kind of drama is that?"
The drama I’d recommended to Lee Jia—LYNX’s youngest—was Chu-Han Contention.
"What is this, Kongming Three Kingdoms is so boring."
"If you watch it all, it’s fun."
"I watched it all and it was still boring though?" fɾeeweɓnѳveɭ.com
"···"
"If you watched all 120 episodes of Kongming Three Kingdoms, your basic training’s done. Next is Chu-Han Contention."
"What’s that?"
"It’s a masterpiece historical drama that beats Kongming Three Kingdoms in battle scenes, at least."
Lee Jia had come whining that Kongming Three Kingdoms was boring after watching it somewhere because I’d recommended it in an interview as a drama you had to watch before you died.
Normally I would’ve corrected that blasphemous mouth with a little “touch,” but the fact she’d watched a 120-episode epic meant she had enough qualifications to join the historical-drama lovers’ club, so I recommended the next step—Chu-Han Contention.
"What’s the historical-drama lovers’ club? Just hearing it sounds nasty."
"It’s a club for people who like historical dramas."
The historical-drama lovers’ club.
It was the name of a private Naver café I personally used a lot.
From new historical drama news, to subtitles for historical dramas that still hadn’t been officially released in Korea, to limited-edition figure news—it was an excellent place that delivered all kinds of info.
But since it was packed with that kind of high-quality material, it ran as a private café, so to get promoted to full member status, you had to go through a quiz show.
'Right now it’s all from Kongming Three Kingdoms and Chu-Han Contention.'
A full-member promotion quiz for the historical-drama lovers’ club, with a process strict enough that if you watched carelessly, your upgrade request would get rejected.
Next time I saw Lee Jia, I was planning to recommend she try it once.
"Anyway, that’s not what matters right now. The other teams are going to be preparing just as thoroughly as we are, and if Yunkyung slips, we might get pushed back on the stages we’re going to show at the guerrilla concert."
We got sidetracked for a moment, but like Ryu Ayeon was worried about, since the final ranking gets decided in this third round, even if you pour in everything you have to prepare the stage, it still won’t be enough.
If Yunkyung goes on stage with the same vague, in-between look she had before she started changing like this, there was a high chance it would lead to a fatal result.
But—
"If she messes up, is she not on the team?"
"What?"
"If she’s floundering, that’s one thing, but if she knows exactly what she needs to do and she’s trying to get better, trusting her with it is what it means to be teammates."
"That’s..."
In the military, there are assignments.
Even within one squad, assignments are split and each person gets a role, and surprisingly, that structure is built on faith that everyone will carry out their mission.
For example, a rifleman handles assault and search-and-security, and the machine gunner covers that rifleman, while the grenadier gets the role of taking out enemies behind cover that the rifleman can’t handle.
At a glance, it looks like a rational setup, but in truth, if even one person can’t do their role properly, it’s a structure that becomes weak beyond belief.
That’s why squad members have to trust that each of them will fulfill their duty.
Like a top laner who dives the enemy believing the jungler is coming.
In my eyes, an idol group was the same.
"If Yunkyung does well and our team’s stage shines, then if she makes a mistake and we drop, that’s our mistake."
I had no intention whatsoever of dumping the responsibility on one person.
"If we’re going to beat both VYNNIA and LYNX, we have to do better than we have so far anyway, and that’s why Yunkyung’s going through all that hell right now..."
"That’s why?"
"Then we should do our part."
At my last words, Ryu Ayeon tilted her head.
"You remember what they told us about the promotion method this time, right?"
"Yeah."
As you’d expect from producers with the ratings demon as their leader, ahead of the last guerrilla concert they’d delivered cruel promotion rules to each agency.
-Promotion is only possible with members; participation by any other personnel is not allowed. Vehicles such as cars cannot be used. The location will be announced on the day, but for fairness among all three teams, we have secured three places with similar foot traffic.
A message from the production team packed with a fierce will: don’t allow promotions to be pushed with money power—promote using only the members’ strength.
Because of this, even the company staff who’d been looking into every possible method ahead of guerrilla concert promotion could only shake their heads and give up.
But who am I?
'If it won’t work, make it work.'
In my past life, the rebirth of 21st-century Hannibal. The reincarnation of Zhuge Liang. The half-moon–chested bear of the Korean Peninsula who stands up to the Desert Fox.
"If Yunkyung’s preparing a badass stage, then it only makes sense for us to do badass promotion."
"What are you thinking up now, you psycho! Seo Ryujin! Lee Sion’s lost it!"
"What now again!"
"Sion, you can’t solve problems with your fists!"
"Sion, did you think of something fun?"
"Ugh! Please, just let one day pass peacefully!!"
Before I could even say my grand plan, I heard the wails of the blind ones, but it was already too late.
If I made up my mind to do it, I had to do it to feel satisfied.
