Translator: Dreamscribe
'A-yeon, being an idol isn't something you can do alone.'
Those words resurfaced again in Ryu A-yeon’s mind.
She still found it hard to understand those words.
“The beat where you move your arms and legs there is a bit different. At that moment, the camera captures the upper body, so do it on beat, and for the lower body, which isn’t on camera, prepare the next movement half a beat faster.”
“No way, no way. Seo Ryu-jin seonsaengnim, is that really possible?”
“Use the time you're flapping your mouth to practice!”
Even now, when she looked at the two contestants practicing in front of her as if they were just messing around, Ryu A-yeon couldn’t understand what she was seeing.
‘Is socializing with others more important than actual skills?’
TSP, A-yeon's entertainment agency.
TSP, one of the leading idol entertainment agencies in Korea, hadn’t made it official yet, but they had recently finalized the debut team for their upcoming girl group.
‘Did you hear the rumor? A-yeon didn’t make the debut team.’
‘That’s seriously unbelievable. Honestly, A-yeon is the best among the trainees.’
‘Did she do something seriously wrong or something?’
And A-yeon, who everyone said was guaranteed to debut, shocked everyone when she was dropped from the debut team.
In fact, A-yeon could have accepted being cut.
If it had been due to lack of skill, that is.
‘Why was I dropped? My stage performance was the best.’
‘A-yeon, do you have any close friends among the trainees?’
‘...No.’
‘Your skills are definitely excellent, and you work harder than anyone else. I’ve watched you and can vouch for that.’
-But you can’t do idol work alone. I hope you understand that.
Ryu A-yeon could not accept the words spoken with regret by Park Tae-soo, the CEO of TSP.
To her, friends were unnecessary for a trainee’s life.
Even practice time wasn’t enough, and wasting emotional energy and time to socialize and maintain relationships with others felt like a complete waste to A-yeon.
So unless it was related to the performance, she didn’t even have personal conversations with other trainees.
She couldn’t understand how that could be a reason for her being cut from the debut team.
“Okay! Then let’s get back into formation and try practicing again.”
As the voice of Seo Ryu-jin, who was leading A Class’s practice, rang out, the contestants scattered around the practice room doing individual training began gathering to get into formation.
‘Seo Ryu-jin, doesn’t she ever get tired of this?’
Ryu A-yeon had very strict standards for evaluating skill.
Even among the members of A Class, supposedly the best among the Idol Ground 100 contestants, most of them still seemed lacking in her eyes.
However, there were a few contestants who met A-yeon’s standards, and one of them was Seo Ryu-jin.
Even under a strict lens, Seo Ryu-jin had flawless, well-rounded skills.
On the other hand, there were some trainees who were an absolute mess, not even close to meeting the standards.
“You! I told you to open your eyes properly on stage, didn’t I?!”
“I mean, I’m practically showing eyes full of love, though?”
“You’re not facing the person who killed your parents, right? Why do you keep opening your eyes like that!”
That person was Lee Si-on.
‘Why did they put her in A Class?’
It would’ve been a lie if A-yeon said she had no complaints about the judges’ mid-evaluation results.
Lee Si-on.
She was certainly a standout contestant.
Even A-yeon, who rarely cared about others, had inadvertently glanced at Si-on when she saw her by chance in the waiting room before the show began, her looks had that kind of magnetic pull.
However, during the entrance ceremony performance that followed, A-yeon quickly lost interest in Si-on.
A level of skill that couldn’t even be evaluated, an absolute mess.
That was one of the things A-yeon hated most.
She despised trainees who neglected practice and lacked skill, relying solely on their pretty faces.
‘Idol? Isn’t it enough to just be pretty? Honestly, who expects idols to actually have skills?’
That was the kind of thing often said by people around her when they talked about becoming an idol.
But.
‘Being an idol isn’t like that! It’s because they have dancing, singing, and looks all together that they’re loved by fans.’
The idol, as A-yeon saw it, had to be perfect in every way.
Just like G.G, who had made her dream of becoming an idol in the first place.
Five years ago, A-yeon had once happened to see a G.G performance in person.
It was at an amusement park her parents had taken her to on a holiday.
The moment she saw G.G's performance there, A-yeon felt as if the world she had known until then had shattered.
Even while dancing intensely, the members’ vocals rang out clearly.
And even while delivering such a perfect performance, G.G’s members smiled at the audience members they made eye contact with.
Idols.
Could there be anyone more fitting for the word "idol," which originally meant “object of worship” than them?
After seeing that performance, A-yeon couldn’t fall asleep for a while.
Whenever she closed her eyes to sleep, that performance would vividly come to mind as if it had just happened, and her excitement wouldn't settle, making it impossible to sleep.
That’s how she came to dream of becoming an idol, and although she had initially wanted to join SY, G.G's agency, A-yeon ended up getting accepted into TSP instead, since SY was notoriously selective when choosing trainees.
Since then, Ryu A-yeon had devoted herself to practice with a single goal in mind: to become an idol like G.G.
To someone like A-yeon, Si-on’s existence was unacceptable.
No, it wasn’t a problem that Si-on, who also dreamed of being an idol, had entered the competition, but it was unacceptable that she had made it into A Class.
-Si-on has improved a lot. There are still some weak points, but somehow, I feel like you could really pull it off.
Certainly, during the recent mid-evaluation, the stage performed by Class F was so improved that even A-yeon had been surprised.
Especially Si-on, who had taken the center position in Class F, was unrecognizable from the person who had delivered that disastrous performance during the entrance ceremony.
Still, even so, Si-on, who was still full of shortcomings in A-yeon’s eyes, being placed in A Class, especially by Hye-ryeong, who was no different from an idol to A-yeon, was something she couldn’t accept.
Skills.
A-yeon never changed her belief that it was not personality, effort, or talent, those vague and subjective measures, but only skill that should be the standard for evaluating idols.
Even if it was that very belief that had caused her to be cut from TSP’s girl group debut team, this was A-yeon’s conviction.
***
“Like this?”
The large mirror in the practice room wasn’t just there for decoration.
Because you could see yourself in real time while moving, any mistakes stood out immediately, and you could see at a glance how you appeared to others.
“No, from there, you need to connect the movements more smoothly.”
“Like this?”
At Seo Ryu-jin’s words, I immediately stretched out both arms like in a gymnastics pose and started moving fluidly.
The basic Step 1 wave I had learned from Na-yeon.
I had almost completely mastered it by now, so it had become like my signature move.
“Don’t mess around!”
“...Okay.”
That special move of mine that once made everyone in Class F burst into laughter whenever I did it because of how wobbly I looked, wasn’t working here. That reaction was just like Seo Ryu-jin, the leader and tyrant of A Class.
“Were you thinking something weird again?”
“No! Absolutely not?!”
Seo Ryu-jin was now looking at me with suspicious eyes.
‘Hey, I’ll coach you separately.’
When I first entered A Class, Ryu-jin didn’t show much interest in me, but the next day she approached me on her own and offered to teach me.
At first, I thought it might be some new form of hazing, but surprisingly, Ryu-jin was sincerely teaching me as if I were her own student.
Of course, compared to my former mentor Na-yeon, she was a bit no, very forceful, but I actually liked that.
‘Getting pushed this hard is what makes it feel like real practice, you know?’
Even now, Ryu-jin’s eyes were filled with madness as she tried to correct each of my poses one by one, determined to shape me into a proper person.
Looking at her like that reminded me of my military days and the company sergeant major.
'Company Commander, I'll use the guys to organize the barracks while we're at it!'
That sergeant major who lit up like a boy in love the moment he spotted work to be done, always requesting personnel from me.
The way Seo Ryu-jin looked at me now was exactly like how that sergeant major looked at the barracks with a hole in the roof.
***
‘What is with this girl?’
Seo Ryu-jin looked at Lee Si-on, who was currently flailing her arms in front of her, and thought.
Judging by her face alone, she looked like a cold beauty who had probably made more than a few men cry, but her behavior wasn’t much different from that of a teenage younger brother at home.
"But when I do the movement here, this doesn't work well, how do you do it?"
“Waist. You have to think of it as starting from the waist, that way your balance doesn’t break and the movement comes out smoothly.”
“Okay, got it.”
Still, Si-on’s talent wasn’t at an ordinary level.
Having stuck by Si-on like a personal marker for the past three days to coach her, Ryu-jin found herself surprised every time by how fast Si-on absorbed what she was taught.
‘She has an excellent sense of her body. Seems like she has good motor skills, too.’
Usually, dancing wasn’t easy to follow for someone with a short training period, no matter how much they were taught.
But Si-on reacted as if she were relearning something she already knew, copying everything exactly as it was taught to her.
Ryu-jin could understand why the judges had said Si-on was talented and had promoted her to A Class despite her lack of skill.
Moreover,
‘If it was just talent, I wouldn’t have cared.’
Ryu-jin recalled the time she saw Si-on practicing the parts she had taught her over and over again in the training room at dawn.
‘Urban dance is a genre that blends various types of dance. Instead of just moving to the beat like before, you have to interpret the music itself and express it through your dance.’
‘So, it’s kind of like mixed martial arts, if we compare it to martial arts?’
‘Huh? Anyway, the key thing is detail. Urban dance is generally performed with a camera in mind, so think of it as expressing the emotions you feel.’
3 a.m.
A time when all contestants were supposed to be asleep.
But the lights were on in A Class’s practice room, and Si-on was there practicing with two other contestants.
‘That’s Na-yeon… and the other one was Kim Soo-yeon from B Class, right?’
Since Si-on stood out so much, Ryu-jin had become familiar with the contestants who usually hung around her.
One of the two with Si-on was Kim Na-yeon, who had moved up from Class F to A Class alongside her, and the other was Kim Soo-yeon from B Class. They were the ones always stuck to Si-on.
‘Wouldn’t it be awkward to go in now?’
Usually, the training room at this hour would be empty, which was why Ryu-jin visited it every night.
But since Si-on and her friends had already claimed it, Ryu-jin hesitated to go in and instead peeked inside out of curiosity.
And then.
‘She’s working so hard.’
Ryu-jin’s perception of Si-on shifted a little.
At first, Ryu-jin didn’t like Si-on, thinking she had been placed in A Class because of favoritism from the judges, but she was also someone who understood the value of effort better than anyone.
Si-on’s skills had been a mess in the beginning.
Though she was still lacking, there was only one way for her to have improved this much in such a short time.
Only practice, Ryu-jin knew better than anyone that this was the only answer, so watching Si-on’s practice stirred something inside her.
‘Unnie, honestly... it's really hard practicing with you.’
Ryu-jin was known as a practice fanatic even in her agency, Logic.
Because of that, the other trainees respected her, but many also kept their distance, unable to keep up with her grueling practice intensity.
It was the same during Idol Ground 100.
At first, many A Class members were eager and practiced with Ryu-jin late into the night, but now none remained except for Ryu-jin herself.
‘Has she been practicing at dawn since day one?’
Since they had been in different classes before, Ryu-jin hadn’t known, but to improve so much in such a short time, Si-on must have cut down on sleep to keep practicing.
After watching Si-on practice for a while, Ryu-jin noticed it was already 5 a.m.
Seeing the Si-on crew finally wrapping up and getting ready to leave, Ryu-jin hurriedly slipped away and returned to the dorm.
‘So I didn’t get to practice today after all.’
She felt a bit disappointed at missing what had become her routine dawn practice, but her mood wasn’t all that bad.
Because just as much as she hated those who relied only on talent, Ryu-jin liked those who made the effort.