Since our number was toward the back, I took my sweet time getting there, only to find the waiting room completely empty. Tch. What the hell kind of prep had they done for the place to be this much of a mess? Clothes were strewn everywhere, and some of the makeup wasn’t even closed. While I was looking for somewhere to put my feet in that filthy room, my phone rang. Kang Yejun, that son of a bitch, had been calling me every minute. I clicked my tongue and answered. Kang Yejun whispered in a voice that gave me chills.
“Where are you?! Are you insane, Park Yuha?!”
“Where are you?”
“I’m waiting! We’re almost up! Are you even planning to come?!”
“I’m in the waiting room.”
“Come right now! No, wait, change into the school uniform there. Park Yuha, what about your makeup? Do you even know how to do it yourself?”
“Even without makeup, I’ll look better than you after all that powder you slapped on.”
“Fuck, what?! You son of a—”
I hung up and shoved my phone into my bag. Looking around, I did see one school uniform lying around. I tossed my bag into a corner piled with luggage and picked up the uniform.
I buttoned the white shirt irritably. What the hell was I doing in a school uniform at this age? Did it make any sense for people to see this and like it without cracking up? The producer bastard had chosen one hell of a concept.
And why was the blazer this thin when it was cold enough to freeze to death? Was this a spring-fall uniform? I threw the long padded coat I’d taken off earlier over it. I looked myself over, roughly swept my messy hair back, and stepped out into the hall.
The closer I got to the stage, the louder the music became. The man’s voice layered over the track was completely ruining it. It got even worse toward the end. For the finale, he even cracked on the high note.
I saw Kang Yejun and Yoon Jiwoo in the waiting area behind the stage. Looked like we were up in two turns. I stood beside Kang Yejun and tossed out a casual remark.
“Even a bastard like that gets to be an idol?”
“Ugh, fuck!”
“Are you desperate for attention? Why do you keep screaming like an idiot?”
Kang Yejun, whose face had turned bright red, lowered his voice sharply.
“Make some noise when you walk around…! What are you, an assassin?”
“If I were an assassin, do you think you’d still be breathing right now?”
“You always have to say it like that….”
Yoon Jiwoo, who had been beside Kang Yejun, peeked out and looked at me.
“You weren’t here, so… Yejun and I matched the choreography by ourselves a little while ago. Should we run through it one more time now?”
“I memorized all of it. What else is there?”
“You think memorizing everything is the end of it? Then again, what would a guy who dances like a board know?”
“You think everything’s over if all you do is shit out of your mouth?”
I grabbed Kang Yejun’s hair and yanked it upward. Kang Yejun started bitching about why I was touching his hair after he’d gotten it done, so I tugged even harder, and only then did he beg and say he was sorry. I let go of his hair and leaned against the wall, looking around. There were quite a few baby-faced ones. Not a single person had no makeup on, and not a single person looked relaxed.
“Yuha… you’re going to take off that long padded coat before you go out, right?”
There also wasn’t a single person wearing a long padded coat. I shrugged.
“What’s the stage like?”
“What do you mean?”
“Do you think they turned the heater on?”
“I’m not sure….”
“They probably didn’t.”
Every celebrity judge was wearing a thick coat.
“You’re going out wearing it…?”
“What should I do?”
“…….”
“You think I’d actually wear it? Of course I’m taking it off. I’m not an attention-starved bastard like Kang Yejun.”
I answered with a playful grin. I ignored Kang Yejun as he squawked about why I had to drag him into it again and took off the long padded coat. Standing out was the last thing I wanted. Even if I told the producer to cut my broadcast footage down to a speck of snot, making sure the other contestants didn’t notice me was my job.
How could I relax when I had no idea which one of them was a leash sent by Park Yuhyeon or that rich conglomerate bastard? I wiped the crooked smile off my face and handed the long padded coat to a staff member. When I smiled kindly and asked, “Could you hold this for me for a moment?” the staff member nodded.
There weren’t many turns left. I leaned against the wall and closed my eyes. Reality suddenly felt vividly clear. I had to behave as quietly and tamely as possible, like I was barely there. I shouldn’t talk much either. If I only said what I absolutely had to say, like usual, nobody would care about some boring bastard. Around the time I finished that thought, they called my name from the stage.
When I stepped out of the darkness, the bright light dazzled my eyes. I stared blankly at the ninety-nine seats arranged behind me in the shape of a pyramid.
“Park Yuha, trainee? What are you looking at like that?”
A judge who looked like an idol asked me. I took a microphone from a staff member and opened my mouth.
“The seats are interesting.”
“You can sit wherever you think suits you. Where do you want to sit?”
“Ninety-ninth.”
At my answer, the idol bastard gave an awkward smile and spoke in a disgustingly greasy voice.
“Is that humility?”
Humility, my ass. Trampling people and climbing up one step at a time while knocking them down was fucking fun. The trainees I’d glimpsed all had innocent faces, but it was obvious their insides were a mud pit. Maybe because they were young, they managed their expressions pretty well, but they couldn’t manage the wary looks in their eyes. They were probably ranking themselves, separating the people better than them from the people worse than them. Only ten people would debut in the end.
After the man finished speaking according to the producer’s instructions and told us to get ready for the stage, he settled in to watch. The music started. It was a song by an idol group famous for razor-sharp synchronized choreography. For me, who already danced like absolute shit, it was a fucking nightmare of a song, but I had chosen it to suit Yoon Jiwoo, who danced fucking well. That bastard had to get to A-rank quickly for the sponsored prick under that rich conglomerate bastard to approach him.
I poured all my focus into dancing and made my body creak through the moves. The faces that had gone ooh at Yoon Jiwoo changed to hmm at Kang Yejun, then reached me and crumpled into ugh, fuck. They say God is fair, and I guess he didn’t give flexibility to someone like me, who had everything else—face, personality, the works. Even to my own eyes, I was so goddamn bad at dancing it made me want to curse. After I matched the pounding music with my creaking dance through sheer force of will, a heavy silence fell. I was fucking used to this silence that always came after I danced.
Kang Yejun and Yoon Jiwoo were so nervous they were only panting. I looked at the judges with confidence. The problem was that idols were a profession that had to dance. I hadn’t done anything wrong. The judges, all wearing grave faces, looked at me at once. Ignoring the others, who all looked like they had plenty to say, the idol bastard spoke to me again. That bastard was hopeless too. Acting gentle seemed to be his concept, but he’d gone past the line into fucking greasy, and apparently that bastard was the only one who didn’t realize it, because my eardrums felt like they’d been fucked raw since earlier.
“Yuha, you are an idol, correct?”
“Yes.”
“How many years has it been since your debut?”
“Three years.”
The cooking-oil bastard stiffened his face like he was about to say something meaningful.
“You’ve been debuted for three years, and from what I know, you’re rather old as well. And you dance like that?”
“I’ve improved a great deal.”
“Pardon? Yuha, do you not understand the situation right now?”
The oil-slick bastard let out a painfully theatrical “Ha!” What did he want from me? I answered him so fucking meekly. Did I need to answer even more meekly?
“Your dancing is a mess, and your singing is only so-so. It’s strange that you were ever an idol at all. Aren’t you embarrassed in front of the members who came here with you?”
“No.”
This time, I felt quietly proud of myself because I’d answered really meekly. But the oil-slick bastard shouted, veins standing out in his neck.
“Park Yuha!”
“Yes?”
“What is that attitude? Are you joking with me right now?”
“Oh, were you joking?”
Was that not it either? Just as the mood was about to turn strange, Kang Yejun cut in and spoke urgently.
“Yuha really! …works hard. He practices dancing twice as hard as we do. More than ten hours a day, but he just doesn’t improve… All of us members know how hard he tries.”
“…….”
“He just doesn’t understand people well and says things in ways that cause misunderstandings, but he really is someone who works hard. None of us members are ashamed of Yuha, who works harder than anyone, so I think that’s why he answered like that.”
What the hell kind of bullshit was this? It was true that I danced like a dog, but I did not work harder than other people. I only did as much as everyone else. When I stared at Kang Yejun with a weird look on my face, Kang Yejun smiled awkwardly and mouthed at me.
Shut up, please.
In any case, Kang Yejun’s words seemed to work, because the oil-slick bastard gave a cough and started rambling. Then he apologized, saying he thought he’d been too harsh. Beside me, I heard Yoon Jiwoo sigh. That bastard must have been nervous too. For what? It wasn’t like anything had happened. I thought that meant we were done, but the oil-slick bastard didn’t know when to stop.
“Then since it would be unfair to rank Yuha by dance alone, how about singing one song?”
“Any song?”
“Yes. That’s fine, right?”
I didn’t particularly care. I said all right and thought about what to sing. There was nothing to think about. Aside from our group’s songs, there were only a few songs whose lyrics I knew all the way through. I spoke the title into the microphone.
“Full Moon Angel OST, ‘Eternal Snowman,’ please.”
The room stirred. The oil-slick bastard looked like a mangled squid barely holding back a sneer. Kang Yejun fidgeted anxiously and grabbed my arm. Why was this bastard acting all disgusting and cute? I shook my arm roughly, threw off his hand, and took a step away.
I told the staff to set it to a male key, then cleared my throat. The worried expressions on my two bandmates’ faces were absurd. They looked convinced I couldn’t sing it. I smiled crookedly and stepped toward the front of the stage.