Free Web Novel[Who wants to come with me and go catch the Today in History production staff?]
「No matter how ratings-crazed those bastards at the network are, this crossed the line.
They aired 'Fascism? Nah, cheese' without editing it out?
That’s basically asking for a fight, isn’t it?
Even if a kid that young had no variety sense and made a fucking painfully unfunny joke, they still aired it?」
⤷ This bastard is the worst one here
⤷ Since Lee Sion’s Pink Spell, this is the first time I’ve felt synesthetic secondhand embarrassment
⤷ After she said it, the look of anticipation on her face was even scarier
⤷ What the hell is Lee Sion doing!!! Are you not going to stop your leader from going on TV anymore?!
⤷ I will never forget Today’s Humiliation, EBS
⤷ KJ Entertainment needs to confiscate Ryujin’s smartphone for the time being. If she watches the broadcast again, she’s gonna run away from home ƒreeωebnovel.ƈom
There were a few videos that were spoken of as legends among Iam fans.
For example, Lee Sion’s livestream.
For example, Lee Sion’s Great Escape show.
For example, Lee Sion’s Pink Spell Entrance Ceremony stage. freёwebnovel.com
If there was one characteristic shared by the videos called legendary, it was that most of them either had Lee Sion as the main character, or included Lee Sion.
But among them, there was one that was called legendary even though Lee Sion did not appear in it.
[Anyone got a recording of Seo Ryujin’s livestream?]
"Just how unfunny was it that every time it gets mentioned the comments go insane screaming eek?
I got into the fandom late so I never saw it, can someone share the video"
⤷ I can send it, but if you’re a Seo Ryujin fan I recommend not watching it
⤷ Ah···you don’t know? That incident where 8,000 people entered and only 500 made it back alive
⤷ What, 500 people actually made it to the end?
⤷ fr that’s even scarier. I ran after five minutes
⤷ The academic consensus is that around 90 percent fell asleep while watching
⤷ There was a kid who proved they watched the whole livestream last time and I thought it was some kind of creepypasta
Seo Ryujin’s Agbaek livestream.
It was Ryujin’s dark history, the one where the production staff gave everyone time to promote themselves and she put countless fans to sleep by launching into a long speech about the history of idols.
After that, the nickname Seo Jigglypuff was added, though in truth that was what fans called her in official settings.
-Seo No-Fun got the mic!
The nickname used in everyday life was Seo No-Fun.
That overwhelming lack of entertainment value that instantly left viewers not just cold, but horrified.
Still, after the livestream, Iam members including Lee Sion were always by her side, so no additional catastrophe occurred.
On the contrary, she showed good chemistry with the members, and just around the time fans had slowly started to say that maybe Seo Ryujin was actually funny after all, another disaster struck.
-Did the Seo Ryujin episode of Today in History drop?
Iam fans had been buzzing with excitement because individual member activities had become rare after the Iam charity auction content.
Kurosawa Yuri’s Life-Experience On-Site episode, which had kicked things off, was rated more fun than expected since, despite being in a girl group, she worked through rough boat labor without backing down and even showed good chemistry with the other foreign sailors.
As for Ryu Ayeon, who had appeared on the popular variety show Working Man,
-Ayeon, can you do this too?
-Yes, I can!
Following The Guy Next Door, where she had gone viral for the thirty-minute dance initiation, she once again showed off a dance medley with new songs.
Then in the nametag-ripping game that followed, she proved why, in Iam, she competed with Lee Sion for first and second place in physical ability, and even as a rookie managed to secure a good amount of airtime.
Then there was Lee Sion, who appeared in a drama as the lead and caused an enormous stir.
-Hello, kids! I’m Yunkyung, Uni Hani’s one-day special MC!
Im Yunkyung appeared as a one-day MC on a children’s program and, though she was terribly embarrassed, she fit the program’s image perfectly, drawing a great response along with countless memes.
As for Paldo Man, where Lee Gahyeon had been sold off, there was no need to even mention it.
Starting with Raon, who got dragged along thanks to the echo of Lee Sion’s curse, and even including Lee Sion, who made a surprise appearance as a special trainee.
[Are Lee Gahyeon and Lee Sion insane?]
(a gif of Lee Sion and Lee Gahyeon lying prone and firing)
"What kind of girl-group idols hit a perfect score and 19 shots?"
⤷ It wasn’t combat shooting, it was just prone firing. I can hit a perfect score in that stance too
⤷ Bullshit. Even in the military, the ratio of people who get expert marksmanship is barely ten percent at best
⤷ Lee Sion’s posture is really good. She seriously looks like someone who’s handled a gun before
⤷ Lee Gahyeon’s the surprising one. She doesn’t look like someone who can shoot
⤷ Ahem ahem, probably because she’s bigger, so the recoil was easier to control
⤷ What? Are you saying Raon had worse recoil because she’s small?
Starting from the astonishing shooting show Lee Sion and Lee Gahyeon put on as a duo,
-Raon, trainee! Are you showing off that you’re older right now?!
-···No, sir! But I’m not old!
-Then show it with your actions! While moving, sing a military song! The military song is Paldo Man!
And even the unexpected back-and-forth the tiger instructor and Raon showed throughout the shoot.
[Was Raon this kind of character?]
Paldo Man had pulled in not only Iam fans, but Raon’s fans and the general public as well, since it showed a side of Raon that hadn’t often appeared on variety shows even during her active days.
Thanks to that, it was well known inside KJ Entertainment that the PD of Paldo Man, after breaking the program’s own highest ratings record, begged for Iam to please do a full-group special and come on just one more time, and Sanghyeok had a hard time politely refusing.
So the member-by-member programs were released one by one, and now only two remained.
Jungle Expedition, which Geum Shinyu was supposed to appear on, and the educational program Today in History, which Seo Ryujin appeared on.
As for Jungle Expedition, not only Geum Shinyu, who had originally been scheduled to appear, but Lee Sion as well had joined, and since filming wrapped not long ago and they had already returned, it was set to air soon.
As for the World War II episode of Today in History featuring Seo Ryujin, filming had wrapped last week and it had been freshly released just yesterday.
"Isn’t this seriously vicious?!"
"Haah···we shouldn’t have sent Ryujin out alone."
And right now the internet was exploding over Seo Ryujin and Today in History.
Watching people’s reactions online, Raon regretted sending Ryujin out alone, while Hakyun was angry for some reason.
'These bastards! We were going to use Ryujin’s boring image for content first!'
In Hakyun’s case, she had been preparing to later film in-house content about learning variety from Lee Sion, and one of the key parts of that had been Seo Ryujin’s boring image, so she was furious it had been stolen.
And Raon was thinking,
'At this point I thought she’d built up enough variety experience that even without much special preparation, Ryujin would do fine!'
Raon was blaming herself for having underestimated Seo Ryujin’s lack of entertainment value far too much.
Which made sense. Iam were still rookies barely in their first year after debut, but in contrast to that short career, the number of variety shows they had already appeared on was at the level of veteran idols.
That was possible in the first place because they had started out on a survival variety program, and after debut they had appeared on variety shows nonstop.
And with that much experience built up, even the company hadn’t been especially worried about Seo Ryujin appearing on a program alone, no matter how weak her variety sense was.
What the company had worried about instead was that, since it was an educational program, if she went on without knowing much about the topic, she might end up with an ignorant image. So KJ Entertainment had prepared materials related to the topic just in case, only for Seo Ryujin to go and prepare a joke nobody had asked for.
-···From now on, it would probably be best to make preparations even when going on educational programs.
Thanks to that, an incident occurred where the expression of Sanghyeok, KJ Entertainment’s CEO, hardened for the first time in a long while when he came into work this morning.
"To think she’d bury the incident Lee Sion caused."
"Right. I heard Sion caught a crocodile in the jungle?"
"Yes. It wasn’t a really huge crocodile or anything, just a baby caiman, but apparently the production staff caused an uproar over it too."
Right now Raon’s head hurt because of the catastrophe Seo Ryujin had caused, but until just yesterday, the one giving her a headache had been Lee Sion, who had gone off to the jungle.
-This isn’t something I really show just anyone, but I’ll make a special exception and show it to you, Producer.
When Lee Sion came back to the company from the airport in Yunshik’s car and cheerfully showed off photos on her phone, Raon had simply thought she was excited because it was the first time she’d come back from the jungle.
That was, until Raon saw the photo of Lee Sion smiling brightly while holding a crocodile in the photo gallery.
-···A crocodile?
-It’s called a caiman! If someone who isn’t a local native catches one, it’s punishable, so we got questioned by the police at the airport.
-Shinyu, for the sake of the great cause, little things like that can happen, so there’s no need to explain every detail.
-Is that so? It was my first time being questioned by the police, so I was really scared!
-It’s okay. This too is experience.
-···.
Not long ago there had been that minor incident where Raon briefly lost consciousness at Lee Sion’s perfectly calm words, and Sanghyeok had panicked and immediately contacted the Jungle Expedition production team.
'Does she really have heaven-defying luck?'
Still, fortunately, the situation was not as serious as expected.
-You were lucky. Even though caimans are on the smaller side among crocodiles, full-grown ones can easily go over one meter, but this happened to be one that hadn’t fully matured yet, so Miss Sion wasn’t hurt.
Just as Sanghyeok had said before, maybe Lee Sion really was under heaven’s protection, because even after doing something as dangerous as catching a crocodile, she hadn’t suffered a single injury.
-First of all, some crocodile species are protected and some aren’t, but the one Miss Sion caught this time was a caiman, so there was no real issue. And she didn’t kill it either. The camera caught everything, including releasing it again after catching it, so it wasn’t treated as a problem locally either.
On top of that, the Jungle Expedition production staff brought good news, saying that among the crocodiles living in the Amazon, caimans were relatively common, so live capture rather than hunting was not a problem.
If anything, it sounded like the production team was thinking about how they could get Lee Sion catching a crocodile onto the broadcast.
-The Idol Athletic Championships already showed the precedent, so there’s a good chance they’ll just air it first and deal with it later.
-This is driving me insane, seriously!!!
They seemed to be planning to force their way through without editing out anything that might become controversial, following the example of the Idol Athletic Championships production team, who had shown that controversy could be buried under ratings, and that was driving Raon crazy.
There was no need to look far. Just looking at the Today in History production team, who aired the Fascism? Nah, cheese incident exactly as it was without editing even though it was educational broadcasting, it was obvious the Jungle Expedition team would probably air Lee Sion’s crocodile hunting too.
"If you think of it positively, won’t this be more than enough to keep people talking until the comeback, even if the girls don’t do any broadcasts or variety appearances for a while?"
"More than enough. It’s overflowing."
Hakyun offered words of comfort to Raon, who had been turned into a wreck after taking Lee Sion’s straight punch and Seo Ryujin’s surprise body shot back to back.
Certainly, the current situation wasn’t all bad.
'They’ve been causing incidents ever since debut anyway.'
Iam kept causing major incidents one after another, the kind where for other idols even a single one would be huge, so by now ordinary incidents and accidents hardly even became controversies at all.
Which meant the only thing left was buzz.
In that sense, with the situation now such that they had to put all broadcasts and variety appearances on hold for a while in order to prepare for the comeback, this kind of attention was definitely not a bad thing.
"Then I’ll head back."
"Ah, you were working, right?"
"Yes. If anything else happens, please contact me."
"I’ll keep monitoring things."
With that, Raon wrapped up the conversation and headed for a studio inside the company.
It was time to start working on the comeback album again.
***
"You even wrote the lyrics?"
"Yes! I thought of them while filming Jungle Expedition this time, so I wrote them down little by little whenever I had a chance!"
"Sorry···I’ve learned a lot of speaking, but I’m still clumsy when it comes to reading."
Looking at Geum Shinyu, who wore an apologetic expression, Lucas shook his head.
'I didn’t even expect lyrics.'
There were composers who both composed and wrote lyrics, but in Lucas’s case, that wasn’t true.
Even with "DON’T BLINK," the title track from the last album he made, Raon had handled the lyrics.
His Korean still wasn’t good enough yet, and he had never ✧ NоvеIight ✧ (Original source) had much talent for lyric-writing in the first place, so the fact that Geum Shinyu had brought lyrics was something he was grateful for instead.
Of course, they couldn’t use them exactly as they were, and later he would need to review them with Raon again to see if they suited the song, but Lucas had something close to certainty, an intuitive feeling that the lyrics Geum Shinyu had written would suit it extremely well.
'I was arrogant. I have to admit what needs admitting.'
That was because by now, Lucas had fully accepted Geum Shinyu’s talent.
-You want me to combine Shinyu’s song and mine?
-Yeah. The CEO suggested we try mixing the two songs together, and I agreed because I thought it might work if we did it right.
-···.
When Lucas was informed of the results of the title-track selection meeting, even the shocking instruction to combine the two songs didn’t shock him that much.
'Pirate absolutely wasn’t inferior to my song.'
"Trace," the song he had presented, was certainly polished enough for him to call it a work he had confidence in.
On the other hand, "Pirate," which Shinyu had presented, was rough and unpolished by the standards of a professional composer.
But he clearly remembered the astonishing synergy that rough, unpolished feeling had created when it met the explosive chorus.
"The chorus chord progression here is··· F – G – Em – Am. What if we lay the trap part over these chords too?"
"Then wouldn’t the trap get pulled too much toward the emotional side?"
"That’s right! So I’m thinking of taking the bass in a slightly different direction!"
"Hmm···then I think that might work."
"You think so?"
"Yeah."
Maybe that was why.
Even at the result of the title-track selection meeting, which in a way could be seen as him being caught up to by his student, Lucas’s heart beat faster rather than feeling angry.
'This song is definitely going to work.'
The work of combining two different songs was by no means easy, but because the two of them were, in a sense, teacher and student, the process of merging the songs was already nearly finished before they knew it.
"But the song feels like it’s gotten a little more intense. Is there a reason for that?"
"Ah, that?"
If there was one slightly strange part, it was that before going to the jungle it had definitely been a song with a powerful feel, but after she came back, the direction of the song had changed from merely powerful to something beyond that, something fervent.
"Lucas, have you ever hunted a crocodile by any chance?"
"Hm?"
"I have!"
Even when he asked about it, Shinyu answered with words that explained nothing.
