Free Web Novel“That was good. You prepared well, didn’t you?”
“Thank you!”
“It’s usually best not to mess with the song arrangement too much, but this time, by giving it a slight variation, I think your vocal colors actually came out more attractively.”
As Hyeryeong and Ahn Seongho gave positive evaluations, the tense expressions on the contestants’ faces eased, and they answered back with strong voices.
The Summer Glow team, the last song of the Vocal & Rap Position, seemed to gain confidence and came down from the platform with bright expressions.
“The kids have all gotten better overall, right?”
“Yes. I guess the last Ranking Ceremony really lit a fire under them.”
“Well, it’s only natural. It’s a cruel thing to say, but survival shows really do seem effective for improving the contestants’ skills.” freēwēbηovel.c૦m
Final Check.
It was the last process before the stage, where all the judges gathered to review the teams’ finished products.
During the mid-check, the evaluations had been done separately by each judge, and even if they received harsh criticism, there had still been time to make up for it; but the Final Check was, literally, an evaluation that was directly tied to the stage.
You could practically feel the determination in the expressions of the contestants standing on stage.
And as they evaluated those contestants’ stages, the judges were once again struck by how the teams’ overall level had risen compared to the first mission.
Was it because they had seen eliminated contestants right in front of their eyes after the last stage?
In the eyes of the contestants doing their Final Check stages, there was a fierceness that hadn’t been there before.
“Next is Bang! Bang! Love Team. Seriously, how did they even end up making a team like this?”
“Come to think of it, Jungyoon, you were the only one who did this team’s mid-check. How were they?”
“Hmm··· a complete mess?”
With the Summer Glow team as the last, the Vocal & Rap Position judging finished, and now only the Dance Position evaluations were left.
As they talked about Bang! Bang! Love Team, the first team up in that category, Hyeryeong and Ahn Seongho weren’t particularly surprised by Lee Jungyoon’s evaluation, as she was the only one who had seen that team’s mid-check stage.
“Was Ayeon the same as always?”
“Yeah.”
“Contestant Ryu Ayeon’s skills are really good, though. Maybe she really does need to go solo rather than be in a team?”
It was only natural; the judges had all witnessed what had happened during the previous Group Battle Mission, so they were expecting that in this Position Evaluation as well, the team with Ryu Ayeon would struggle.
“Something’s fishy.”
“Why?”
“If you had really seen a stage that was a complete mess, your expression right now wouldn’t look like that. It would look murderous.”
“You know me too well, don’t you?”
“Come on, are you seriously hiding something?”
To Hyeryeong’s question, Jungyoon toyed with her, acting like she was about to say something and then holding back.
When Hyeryeong, frustrated by Jungyoon’s push-and-pull, deliberately put on an angry face, Jungyoon finally opened her mouth.
“The Group Battle Mission team members and the Position Evaluation team members aren’t the same, right?”
“And?”
“But the Bang! Bang! Love team members this time were interesting.”
“What’s that supposed to mean? That the team members were interesting··· ah! Don’t tell me, Lee Sion?”
At Jungyoon’s answer, Hyeryeong looked dumbfounded for a moment, then soon wore a face like she’d realized something.
“Our Hyeryeong really does have an eye for people. I didn’t expect that kid to be this good.”
“What did Sion do?”
“Watch it on the broadcast.”
“Wow, that’s really stingy.”
Hyeryeong clung to Jungyoon, whining at her to please tell her what on earth had happened, but Jungyoon truly had nothing more to say.
Bang! Bang! Love ❀ Nоvеlігht ❀ (Don’t copy, read here) Team’s mid-check stage had undeniably been a mess.
Regardless of the choreography’s completeness, the team’s overall level hadn’t been able to keep up, so everyone had just been doing their own thing.
But what Jungyoon was pinning her hopes on with Bang! Bang! Love Team was the tight team cohesion they had shown at the very end.
Starting with Lee Sion, who had stepped up and said it was their own fault on behalf of Ryu Ayeon, the Bang! Bang! Love team members’ behavior had been very different from how Ryu Ayeon’s team members in the previous Group Battle Mission had reacted.
Seeing that, Jungyoon couldn’t help but place some expectations on them.
“First Dance Position team, please come in!”
Just then, while Jungyoon was thinking about Bang! Bang! Love Team and Ryu Ayeon, the staff’s voice rang out.
‘Now we’ll get to see.’
It wasn’t just Hyeryeong and Ahn Seongho who were curious about Bang! Bang! Love Team’s stage.
Jungyoon, more than anyone, was also eager to see whether this team had really changed.
***
“Hoo···.”
Ryu Ayeon slowly took a deep breath.
It was one of the routines she always did before going on stage.
Idol trainees had more to learn than people might think.
Singing and dancing were basic, and these days, trainees who didn’t also learn foreign languages and acting were rare.
And in large agencies like TSP, they even taught mental coaching to trainees.
-To show exactly what you’ve practiced on stage, you have to create your own routine and make it a part of your daily life.
One of those things was a routine.
By creating a specific sequence of actions and doing them in the same order before practice and before going on stage, it became a sort of mental coaching that allowed you to perform on stage the same way you practiced without even realizing it.
In Ayeon’s case, she started with stretching, then ran through the stage in her head once, and finished her routine with deep breathing.
“Wuss?”
And the moment her routine ended, before she even knew when she’d approached, Lee Sion fired off a provocative line at Ayeon.
“··· I’ll say it again, I’ve never once chickened out.”
“Sure··· it’s all my fault. I ruined everything! Go ahead and yell at me!”
Sion was imitating the words Ayeon had said, sunk in despair after the mid-check.
“···.”
Ayeon wanted to pinch the mouth of this demon named Lee Sion who kept breaking her routine.
If there hadn’t been people around, she would have thrown in some strangling for good measure.
Smack.
“Ow! Unni, why are you hitting me!”
“Why are you poking at Ayeon right before the stage! Please, can you be nervous for once!!!”
Fortunately, before Ayeon had to do anything, Lee Gahyeon appeared, smacked Sion on the back, grabbed her by the ear, and dragged her away.
‘I’m actually used to this now.’
At first it had been a scene she just couldn’t get used to, but at this point, it would feel strange not to see it.
Ayeon thought back to when she had created the new choreography.
-This is an amazing score! With 9.9 points, contestant Ryu Ayeon’s Pink Spell takes first place!!!
A few days ago, at the talent show stage, Ayeon had imitated Lee Sion and used it as a springboard to come up with a new choreography.
Back then, the version of Lee Sion that Ayeon had imitated could only be described as the very picture of a beginner.
The moves didn’t connect at all; each move was choppy and stiff.
Even the basic eye-line work that any trainee would do was missing, her face just fixed straight forward.
And the singing was all over the place, ignoring the beat.
Every last part of Lee Sion’s Entrance Ceremony stage had been a total mess.
But when Ayeon watched that stage, she realized that, without even knowing it, she had been having fun.
And it wasn’t just Ayeon.
The judges watching, the other contestants, and even the production crew had all been smiling happily.
And it wasn’t a smile that came from laughing at someone who was bad, but a smile that came from genuinely enjoying themselves.
‘Now that I think about it, that stage was exactly like Lee Sion.’
After thinking carefully about why that stage, which by her standards was so insufficient, had brought joy not just to the performer but to everyone else as well, Ayeon came to the conclusion that maybe it was because that stage resembled Lee Sion’s essence.
Lee Sion.
She was a contestant who was always, almost strangely, overflowing with energy.
At the same time, she was shameless; she might say otherwise with her mouth, but she had that nosy streak that couldn’t stop her from sticking her oar in other people’s problems.
If there was even the tiniest thing she could tease someone about, she just couldn’t let it go.
But unexpectedly, when it came to the stage and practice, Lee Sion was just as serious as Ayeon, and worked even harder.
The Entrance Ceremony stage had been like that too.
Honestly, with skills that messy, most people wouldn’t even be able to finish the song; they’d shrink back halfway through.
But Lee Sion had brazenly finished that stage like she really was some top idol.
That was why she was charming.
Ayeon realized that the person named Lee Sion had seeped into the stage exactly as she was, and people had enjoyed watching that.
“Bang! Bang! Love Team, it’s time to go up now!”
“Guys, you’re ready, right?”
“Yes.”
The staff’s voice signaled the start of the Final Check stage.
When leader Yoo Jihae turned to ask if they were ready, the team members answered like they had been waiting for it.
And then Bang! Bang! Love Team went up onto the platform in a line.
As she walked out onto the platform, Ayeon steadied the heart that had been shaken by Sion.
The evaluation judge Lee Jungyoon had given during the last mid-check was still so sharp and incisive to Ayeon that she couldn’t forget it.
‘My previous choreography wasn’t made with my teammates in mind.’
The problem hadn’t just been the difficulty level.
Because she had created the choreography only to look cool, the teammates hadn’t been able to keep up, and even if they had executed that choreography perfectly, people would have just thought they were good, not found them attractive.
That was why the new choreography she had made was similar to the previous one but also different.
She had freshly reworked it so that it could bring out both the feel of the song and the members’ individual colors.
And now it was time to see if that judgment had been right.
***
“Captain, give me a piggyback ride!”
As they left the auditorium after finishing the Final Check, Yunkyung’s whole body went limp.
Her entire body felt so drained that if she stayed like this, she’d probably collapse.
So Yunkyung whined to Lee Sion.
“What a cheeky little brat, daring to work me like this. But since you did well on stage today, I’ll give you a special piggyback.”
“Yes!”
Grumbling with her mouth as usual, but already turning her back toward Yunkyung, Sion presented herself, and Yunkyung immediately ran over and hopped onto her back.
“Me too··· give me a piggyback too!”
Seeing Yunkyung, Lee Gahyeon must have been jealous, because she spoke to Sion in a voice weighed down with exhaustion.
“That’s impossible!”
“Why?”
“If I give you a piggyback, unni, people might misunderstand and think it’s some kind of senicide ritual···”
“Are you out of your mind?!”
Tap-tap-tap.
Even after just finishing the stage, Sion, with Yunkyung on her back, darted away at high speed from the enraged Lee Gahyeon.
On Sion’s back, Yunkyung couldn’t help being amazed.
‘Is this unni really human?’
Every team member except Sion was drooping from having barely slept for several days while learning the new choreography.
Sion alone looked full of life, like someone who had just come back from playing.
Yunkyung herself was so tired she could barely even move a finger, and yet.
Regardless of how tired her body was, Yunkyung’s head felt clearer than ever.
‘I’ve never felt like this before.’
It hadn’t even been a full year yet since Yunkyung had started living as a trainee.
On top of that, among the agency’s trainees, Yunkyung was young enough that the company had kept the standards relatively loose and hadn’t demanded too much, so her total practice hours had been lacking compared to the other contestants.
During practice, whenever things got too hard, Yunkyung would pour on the aegyo for the unnies or trainers, and everyone had found her cute and never treated her harshly, so up until now, Yunkyung had never experienced truly grueling practice.
But Idol Ground 100 was different.
“To put it really harshly, if it weren’t for you three, this stage could have been one of the top-tier stages in this entire program.”
Judge Lee Jungyoon had given that sharp evaluation to the three lower-tier members of the team, including Yunkyung, during the mid-check.
And she’d been right.
Once she’d already come out on a survival program, the fact that Yunkyung was young could no longer be an excuse.
When she first saw the choreography Ryu Ayeon had made, Yunkyung had honestly wanted to give up.
It was too hard, too exhausting, too demanding.
Because of that, Yunkyung hadn’t truly thought, from the bottom of her heart, that she had to master that choreography.
She had just practiced with the mindset that she’d at least get dirty looks if she slacked off too obviously, so she might as well pretend to follow along with the others.
But,
“Yunkyung, if you half-ass it now, you’ll regret it for the rest of your life.”
“Huh?”
“If it were something you didn’t like, that would be one thing. But the moment you half-ass something you do like, people always end up regretting it someday.”
Sion had seen right through her.
Those were the words Sion had said to Yunkyung when, as usual, she was about to wrap up practice half-heartedly, using “it’s too hard” as an excuse.
At first, Sion’s words had really upset Yunkyung.
She’d felt like she really had done her best, that she’d done at least as much as everyone else.
More than anything, she thought it was really unfair for Sion to talk like that.
‘The Captain only talks like that because she’s talented.’
When they’d first met in F class, Sion’s skills had definitely been below Yunkyung’s, but at some point she had caught up, then soon sprinted far ahead on her own.
Before long, she’d been promoted to A class, she’d taken the main vocal role in the Group Battle Mission and handled it brilliantly.
And now, in this Position Evaluation, Sion had even mastered the high-difficulty choreography that Ryu Ayeon had created, so to Yunkyung, she looked like a genius.
So she had thought that someone like her, just an ordinary person, couldn’t be understood by someone like Sion.
However,
♬
One late dawn.
Even after all the team members had gone back to the dorm, including even Ryu Ayeon, who seemed obsessed with practice, Yunkyung happened to see Sion alone in the practice room, working on the choreography.
Seeing that, she’d felt so ashamed.
Sion, who hadn’t been scolded alone in the previous mid-check, was working this hard, while she, who had been criticized, had already given up; it wasn’t just embarrassing, it was downright disgraceful.
Yunkyung liked Sion.
Even though Sion treated her like a little kid, she could still feel that Sion was always paying attention to her and looking out for her in subtle ways.
And even though she grumbled with her mouth, when it came to really important things, Sion always protected the team members like a solid shield, which was cool.
That was why she wanted to stay with her.
“Captain, I did well today, right?”
“You did. I’m in a good mood, so from now on, you’re Captain Yoon.”
“Is Captain really a high rank?”
“Of course.”
Sion told her she’d done well and said she’d give her a special chocolate.
“Where’d you get that?”
“A little while ago, the shoot staff were eating snacks, so I went over and got some.”
“And you’re giving that to me?”
“I told them if they didn’t give me some, I’d cover the practice room camera 24 hours a day.”
“As expected of the Captain!!!”
Every day was fun when she was with Sion.
So, in order to stay by her side, Yunkyung had gritted her teeth and worked herself to death during this practice period, thinking that she’d really give it a shot this time.
Because if she got eliminated due to lack of effort, she felt like she really would regret it for the rest of her life, just like Sion had said.
***
“We need to change the stage order.”
“Sorry?”
Miyoung was startled by what Jungyoon said when she came to her after the Final Check.
Changing the contestants’ stage order was a very sensitive matter, because it could undermine the fairness of the broadcast.
“I don’t care about the other teams, but Bang! Bang! Love Team’s stage absolutely has to be last.”
“Could I hear the reason, maybe?”
At Jungyoon’s suggestion that Bang! Bang! Love Team’s stage be placed last, Miyoung’s head started spinning.
Honestly, Bang! Bang! Love Team’s buzz was already so high that, if she were going purely by what she wanted, Miyoung had been dying to put them in the last slot, the highlight of the show.
But if she did that, there would obviously be noise about fairness and favoritism, so she’d deliberately decided to run this Position Evaluation in the order of the songs.
“If that team goes first, all the other teams are ruined. What I just said is something Hyeryeong, Producer Ahn Seongho, and I all agree on, so I don’t mind it going out on air, but you still have to change the order.”
When she finished speaking, Jungyoon’s expression was deadly serious.
