Debut or Die!

Chapter 7

The trainer in charge of the advanced vocal class was the judge, Mewdy. She’d given me a generous rating after my first audition, and she’d been pretty positive in her comments for all the other contestants, too. Perhaps because of this, she tended to be rather gentle during training as well.

That’s not to say she never got angry, of course.

“Wongil, that’s not it… ha…”

The contestant responsible for getting the same part of the song wrong over and over again for the last five days in a row hung his head. It looked to me as if he was trying to hide his irritation rather than any feelings of shame, but ultimately that didn’t matter. What did matter was that he’d made so many mistakes that even a coach as good-natured as Mewdy was having trouble concealing her frustration. And I knew what the root of the problem was.

“Moondae, will you sing this part for me, please?”

“Of course.”

I stepped forward when she called me over, and she began to play the song on the keyboard. I sang the familiar pre-chorus segment, perfectly in time with the music.

“Thinking of the future, like a shooting star!”

The trainer nodded, pleased with my clean tone and precise rhythm, and the contestant she was in the process of scolding shifted his feet nervously. Indeed, the root of the problem was that I’d been able to sing the theme song flawlessly right from the start. There was a nearly insurmountable gap between someone who already knew the song and someone who didn’t, there was no getting around that.

What was more, I hadn’t only listened to the demo track, I’d already heard the full release and could use what I remembered of it to my advantage. As it happened, my voice was also perfectly suited to the song. The vocal coach had been satisfied with my cleanly delivered vocals, and even now, Mewdy was gazing at me with a pleased smile. Some of the other contestants murmured among themselves.

“That guy is seriously good.”

“Yeah.”

This was the advanced class, meaning that the bar was higher. And since the best-performing candidate currently was a normal guy with no notable previous training or company, the others were probably feeling pretty stressed right about now. This was especially the case since the only thing I was good at was singing.

After the first round of auditions, there were two contestants this season with A-grade vocals. Both of them were C-rank or below in dancing. Because of this, no one was really standing out at the moment, myself included.

And Choi Wongil, who was currently being called out for his lackluster singing, was one of the two A-rank vocalists. Ironically, he was the same middle schooler who’d struck up a conversation with me and summarily decided I wasn’t worth being friends with. He was also a high school freshman, not a middle schooler. In any case, he was at the age where his ego was at its most inflated, so he was no doubt deeply upset by the endless criticism being piled on him. To make matters worse, he was also being compared to the guy he’d decided wasn’t worth his time the moment he’d met me.

“That’s exactly it!” Mewdy exclaimed. As soon as the pre-chorus came to an end, the trainer bounced her fingers against the keys, deeply satisfied with my performance.

Choi Wongil didn’t look up even once.

“Wongil, do you understand now how I want you to sing this part?”

Based on his stats, I was surprised he was making so little progress. He’d been desperate to pick a fight with me ever since I sang the whole song perfectly on the first day of training and apparently he was completely coming apart at the seams now. If I remembered correctly, the first day had gone something like this.

“Wow. You’re getting so much good feedback for your singing, at least. You should really work your way up from the lower-level dance class!”

“You sing like an amateur. I think that makes your vocals sound cleaner, which is a perfect match for this song.”

He’d directed many a sneaky insult my way. The way he worded things made it so I’d have looked like a fool if I’d reacted angrily. And he’d also made sure to take his microphone off before saying any of it. But apparently, the petty insults hadn’t been enough to satisfy his frustration.

“You have such good luck. I envy you. Having good luck is one of the most important parts of succeeding in the entertainment industry, you know. It’d be great if you could channel that good luck into making yourself a better dancer, too, what a shame. Don’t give up, though!”

“I guess people with good luck have it better than hard workers. Everyone here is really desperate to do well, you know. You got here by accident, but you’re getting pretty good feedback.”

He’d resorted to more blatant insults. He’d been harassing me openly by this point, and I’d started to feel a little uncomfortable just ignoring him. I didn’t really have any other options though, since I couldn’t pretend to not know a song that I was already familiar with. And though you might not know it, my life is on the line here…

“Calm down. Take a deep breath and take it slow,” the trainer encouraged gently.

“All right…” Choi Wongil began to sing again with great concentration, only to repeat the same mistake.

That’s too bad.

The trainer piled praises on me until the class ended for the day, as usual, while Choi Wongil and a handful of the other contestants watched with vicious glares. It had been a while since I’d had to deal with such hostility directed my way. It was tiresome, but I didn’t exactly hate the feeling. If I wasn’t a threat to them, they wouldn’t have bothered with me to begin with.

The status quo continued just the same in both classes as I steadily gained more and more practice achievements. Before long, the last day of training arrived.

On that day, the contestants in the advanced singing class spent the morning recording a song. Everyone sang together and no one was called on to perform a solo, so it probably wasn’t all that important. I directed all my focus on the coming evening when the long-awaited grading evaluation would take place.

***

The lights over the set turned on.

“How is everyone?”

“Oh, training was rough!”

“It was really intense. I was so tired... I nearly overslept.”

“Because you were training the contestants?”

“That’s right! I hope we’re able to see the results of our hard work today.”

The judges took their seats, exchanging small talk for the camera. They’d already met up in the lobby in the morning, but their current conversation was clearly meant to be used as the opening scene in a new episode. The set the judges had entered and taken seats around was arranged so they could interview the contestants.

It was also the same one that had been used two seasons ago, and various special effects had been prepared to go off at certain times within it. The judges, who’d been told they should act overly surprised, were pretending like it was their first time seeing the set.

“This place… It feels like a really important interview should take place here.”

“That’s exactly what’s happening, isn’t it? This is the grading interview!”

“Ah, we’ll be interviewing the potential recruits for Idol Incorporated today?”

As soon as the judges finished speaking, the desk in front of them lit up.

“Oh wow!”

There was a fancy sign decorating the front side of the desk that read in cursive lettering, “SHINE YOUR STAR.” Seeing the season’s catchphrase, the judges began to applaud, just as their predecessors had in previous seasons. However this time there was a surprising twist and the wall began to move.

“Wow!”

“What in the world?”

The judges were professional entertainers through and through, so they immediately began reacting loudly as one wall sank into the floor, revealing the wide space that made up the rest of the set. The emcee’s voice rang out from behind the judges, as they stared around, expressions of fake wonder plastered across their faces.

“Welcome to the new and improved, Idol Incorporated: Relisted! The first challenge our contestants will face is… a public evaluation!”

“Wow!”

Behind the judges was a seating area made up of bleachers, meant for the live audience. The seats below these bleachers were occupied by the contestants. As the emcee continued to explain what was going on, the gathered idol hopefuls were horrified to learn in real-time that the seating wasn’t only temporary.

“The seventy-seven contestants have all prepared the same song. In today’s evaluation, they will be performing in front of each other!”

Everyone had been able to see each other’s performances during the first round of auditions as well, but apparently, no one had guessed that they’d have to perform for their competition in the second round—the very people who’d practiced the same song over the same time period. Their stiff, unhappy expressions said as much. The evaluations had been done privately in the previous seasons, held in a smaller studio.

“Contestants will undertake their grading evaluation in ranking order—but in reverse!”

“...!”

“Chu Sunggu, in seventy-seventh place! Please step forward!”

The contestant who’d been named staggered toward the stage with the air of an already defeated man. He received many pitying glances and soft murmurs followed in his wake, but Park Moondae remained silent. Just as had been the case during Seon Ahyeon’s first audition, he was fully aware that pity could come across as arrogance depending on how the footage was edited. He’d developed an instinct for these things during all the time he’d spent in online fan communities trying to determine the right price to sell his fancams for.

“Ok. You put in a lot of effort.”

“Thank you…”

As was to be expected, the contestant in seventy-seventh place couldn’t even sing most of the first verse and completely failed his evaluation. The same cold and uneasy atmosphere hung over the studio during the next contestant’s performance and the one after that, both of them bungling the song entirely.

After five or six more performances proceeded in the same way, even the judges were beginning to look uncomfortable. Starting with the weakest contestants was cruel, but the production team had nothing to lose.

If they’re never going to become idol material, the staff want to get some entertainment out of them, at least to get their money’s worth for the wage they’re paying. The failures would be abandoned once they’d served their purpose. At the same time, anyone who had what it took to hang on despite the harrying ordeal would stand out from the crowd. The same went for anyone who showed significant growth after such a short period of time.

The production staff had probably decided that any contestant that wasn’t particularly talented was no doubt on the show because they were either extremely handsome or otherwise famous. They hadn’t been cast for their skills, which meant that going first ultimately wouldn’t make much of a difference to them. Interestingly, there was one contestant who exemplified both of these characteristics.

“Contestant Lee Sejin, we can see you put in a lot of effort.”

“Well done!”

“Th-thank you,” replied Lee Sejin, the former child actor. Though he was out of breath and red in the face, he’d completed the song all the way to the end. His performance had been lackluster and certainly couldn’t be considered well-executed, but he looked positively skilled compared to the contestants who’d come before him—all of whom had been disasters.

Park Moondae wondered briefly if it was this Lee Sejin who ended up debuting. It was hard to know, and he dismissed the thought for later, deciding to keep an eye on the guy. I need to stay away from the future drug addict, whomever it may be.

And then came the boring performances from the mid-ranked contestants. They grew increasingly and steadily more talented, and there were even a few standout performances. However, it would be unreasonable to expect that hearing the same song over and over again wouldn’t quickly grow tedious.

After the hot mess that was the lowest-ranked contestants, most of the young men performed well enough which meant the judges were quickly growing bored.

“Hmm...”

“Not bad.”

Their disinterest was at an all-time high when it came time for Park Moondae to take the stage. Seon Ahyeon held his fist for Park Moondae to bump in encouragement, his pale face expressionless. He’d performed for the judges just moments ago and done an okay job of it.

“G-good luck.”

Moondae paused, confused. “Uh, okay.”

Why is he acting so friendly, all of a sudden? Puzzled, he returned the greeting all the same. His need to look friendly had won out. Trudging onstage, he was filled with excitement—a strange, unfamiliar sensation.

“Park Moondae, in twenty-second place!”

“Yes.”

The judges wore weary expressions.

He sings well, but his dancing is terrible. The choreographer—who had zero expectations for Park Moondae’s performance after the disastrous practice sessions from the last few days—thought to himself gruffly, I’m getting sick of this.

“Let the evaluation begin,” the emcee called.

The by now tedious intro to the song began to play again, and Park Moondae launched into the first move, which required him to pull in both arms as he spun.

It was the choreographer who noticed something odd was happening before anyone else. His movements are different.

In the final class held only two days ago, Park Moondae’s dancing had still been a clunky mess. Dancing required fine motor control, a precise sense of when to tense and when to relax one’s body. That was what set real dancers apart from amateurs, and Park Moondae had definitely been the latter. Or at least, that was what the choreographer had thought.

Why is he suddenly so good?