Translator: Dreamscribe
“This is the final contestant of today’s entrance ceremony performances. Contestant number 100, trainee Lee Si-on, please come up on stage!”
The MC’s voice rang out, and all eyes turned to me.
“Unnie, fighting!”
As I was about to get up from my seat, Soo-yeon clenched her fist tightly beside me, sending me an intense gaze.
'What if I just run away right now?'
I’m pretty fast at running, so people wouldn’t even realize what had happened and would just watch my escape in vain.
Then I’d quickly run home, cut off all contact for a while, and disappear.
Of course, Aunt would come to kill me, but still, wouldn’t Mrs. Sukja protect her one and only daughter?
‘Or not? She might even join in.’
A sigh naturally slipped out.
If only I had gone earlier in the order, I could’ve just been humiliated once and it would’ve been over.
'Does that Ryu A-yeon girl have some grudge against me?'
It was just so unfair that I had to go on stage right after Ryu A-yeon.
‘Regarding this performance, I have no criticisms to make. As a judge, that might be a wrong thing to say, but, contestant Ryu A-yeon.’
‘Yes.’
‘Thank you for showing us such a wonderful performance.’
I had never seen anything like this before.
Honestly, it would be a lie to say I had no prejudices against idols.
‘Idols? Aren’t they just talentless kids who rely on being pretty and handsome?’
That kind of prejudice.
But seeing it right in front of me today made me realize how shallow my thinking had been.
Ryu A-yeon, who returned to her seat as if switching places with me, completely shattered my previous perception of idols.
-A drama sparkling like a star
It’s all my stage
It was a song I had never heard before.
It was choreography I had never seen before.
But when Ryu A-yeon sang the highlight part of the song, I got goosebumps all over my body.
How could she dance with such intensity and still sing beautifully without showing a single expression of struggle?
Why did Ryu A-yeon’s solo performance seem fuller than the ones where several other contestants performed together?
My head was filled with incomprehensible questions, but my eyes stayed fixed on the performance, and I found myself simply staring at Ryu A-yeon in a daze.
“Um... you’re the final contestant. You’re an individual trainee without an agency. Could you tell us about your trainee experience?”
“Thre...”
“Three years?”
“No... three weeks.”
“What?”
But I didn’t have time to keep thinking about Ryu A-yeon’s performance.
Before I knew it, I was on stage, unable to run away, and the judges began asking questions as if they had been waiting for me.
They looked shocked when I said I had been a trainee for three weeks.
Behind the flustered judges, PD Kim Mi-young came into view, giving a sly smile. She always asked if she looked like she was still in her twenties, but anyone could see she looked like she was in her thirties.
-Since it’s obvious you’ll be found out as someone without trainee experience, it’s better to just be honest.
It was definitely a convincing point, so I had no choice but to go along with it.
“Then, contestant Lee Si-on, how did you end up participating in Idol Ground 100?”
The judge Hye-ryeong, now recovered from the surprise, continued with a sharp question.
Until now, Hye-ryeong had always spoken gently to contestants except when giving performance critiques, but for some reason, her tone suddenly felt sharp and probing.
-And the judges will definitely see that in a negative light. You might come across as someone who’s just trying to get on TV, not someone who’s genuinely here.
Kim Mi-young. Is she a psychic?
As things unfolded exactly the way Aunt described, I was relieved I hadn’t run away earlier.
With foresight like this, she would’ve surely laid some kind of trap in case I did try to flee.
“I’ve never lived according to my own will.”
“What?”
“When I was young, I actually entered the Education Center for Gifted. My mother was very passionate about education.”
I began to make sad eyes, as if recalling a painful memory.
I had never learned acting, but it wasn’t hard.
Because I was truly sad right now.
‘Ryu A-yeon, why did you have to do that kind of performance right before mine!!!’
Anyway, thanks to my passionate performance, the atmosphere on set was slowly shifting from a variety show to that of a documentary.
“After that, I only ever acted according to my mother’s wishes, but what I truly wanted wasn’t studying, it was to become an idol.”
“What made you want to become an idol?”
“At first, it was just curiosity, but after watching idol performances, I thought they looked so cool. That’s when I started dreaming of being on that kind of stage myself.”
As the conversation went on, the judges’ mood had softened considerably.
Just a moment ago, they were looking at me with suspicion and caution, but now their expressions had turned to sympathy and gentleness.
-A story always needs a villain. I’m sorry, unnie, but we’re going with the Cinderella and stepmother strategy.
I sincerely apologized to my mom from the bottom of my heart.
But this was all part of the process in a contract to receive 1 million won, so Mrs. Sukja would surely understand.
Filial duty is like vacation homework.
You’re not supposed to put it off, but you always end up doing it all at once.
If I earned 1 million won, hit the jackpot with Bitcoin, and gave back even more later, it would all be solved.
“I want to stop living a life predetermined by my mother and try living for the dream I really want…”
-If you can squeeze out tears here, do it!
‘But... it’s working?’
As I recalled all the harsh punishments I’d received from Mrs. Sukja over the years (slaps on the back, kicks to the butt, spoon spikes to the forehead, etc.), I could feel the tears start to flow naturally.
“Contestant Lee Si-on, I could really feel the sincerity in your answer. Honestly, I was quite worried since you’re an individual trainee with no agency experience. But with the passion you just showed us, I think you’ll do really well.”
“Well, no one’s perfect from the start. I hope you learn a lot through Idol Ground 100.”
“Chasing after a dream you truly want is always something admirable. I want to root for you.”
“...Thank you.”
This is insane.
Could it be that I actually had a hidden talent for acting?
Seeing the judges now looking at me with warm and encouraging eyes, I started to feel a faint stir of guilt, something I hadn’t felt since childhood.
But.
That guilt quickly vanished when I saw my aunt behind the judges, smiling with satisfaction and subtly giving me a thumbs-up.
That demon of viewership ratings had clearly lost all sense of human emotion.
“But we’ll still evaluate your stage performance objectively. What song have you prepared for us today?”
The heartwarming atmosphere ended in an instant.
As if they’d finished analyzing me as a person, the judges now asked to see the performance I had prepared.
“I….”
There was no more avoiding it.
***
‘This is hilarious!’
Hye-ryeong could barely hold back her laughter.
The performance she had just witnessed was, in another sense, something she had never seen before, it was ridiculous, but there was an undeniable entertainment value to it.
“She’s completely different from how she looks, right?”
“You felt that too, unnie?”
“Yeah. Honestly, I was planning to scold her after the performance, but I couldn’t stop myself from just laughing.”
Lee Jung-yoon, a choreographer serving as a judge alongside Hye-ryeong, had quite a close relationship with her.
She had choreographed several routines for Hye-ryeong’s group, G.G, and the two had bonded while working together.
One of the reasons Hye-ryeong accepted the judging role on Idol Ground 100 was because Jung-yoon had agreed to join as well.
"She's really shameless."
Even as she spoke, Jung-yoon couldn’t wipe the smile from her face.
“I know, right? Normally, someone that bad would shrink back or act super timid.”
“And strangely, she still manages to hit the poses?”
“Exactly. Her dancing completely ignores rhythm, the transitions are a mess, but somehow, she still manages to strike poses.”
The performance that the last contestant, Lee Si-on, had just performed was a shock and horror.
There’s a term called “empathic embarrassment”.
It describes the feeling of secondhand shame, when someone else is doing something so cringeworthy or laughable that even the observer feels embarrassed.
That was exactly what Lee Si-on’s performance was.
A performance so disastrous it made the viewers feel ashamed just by watching.
‘I knew she’d be bad with no trainee experience, but the fact that she brazenly finished the performance like that is unbelievable.’
Still, what surprised Hye-ryeong and Jung-yoon wasn’t how bad contestant Lee Si-on was, but the fact that she completed the performance from start to finish.
Usually, when a performance goes that badly, the contestant gets discouraged by the stares from the audience and ends up making the performance even more of a disaster.
But contestant number 100, Lee Si-on, held her expression with such confidence, almost enough to rival Ryu A-yeon, that it left a strong impression.
“Her visuals are insane.”
“Don’t even get me started. Honestly, if a seasoned director chopped up and edited that performance, they could make it look decent.”
Setting aside skill, her visuals were arguably the best among all the contestants this round.
It felt like her messy singing and dancing were covered by her face.
“But unnie, I don’t think you caught it either.”
“Caught what?”
At Jung-yoon’s question, Hye-ryeong gave her a cryptic smile and began teasing.
“This is something only active idols like me would notice.”
“Ugh, what is it? Tell me already.”
“Did you notice she didn’t catch her breath even once during that performance?”
“What? Wait… hold on.”
Prompted by Hye-ryeong’s words, Jung-yoon quickly replayed the performance she had just watched in her head.
As she carefully retraced her memory, she realized, Si-on had indeed gone through the entire performance without taking a single breath.
“What?! Is that even possible?”
“It’s not. Especially with ‘that song’, even if it looks silly, you know how hard it actually is to perform, right?”
Hye-ryeong knew the song Si-on had chosen was by no means easy.
To the average person, it might sound like, “That’s hard?” But there’s a huge difference between watching and doing.
And that song, in particular, was deceptive.
On the surface, it looked mild and easy, even like simple children’s choreography.
‘But if you actually try singing it, you’ll be gasping in less than a minute.’
The original singer was a powerhouse, which made it seem effortless, but the song itself was much harder than most average tracks.
And yet, even though the performance was a total mess, Si-on managed to sing the entire song from start to finish, without taking a breath.
“Could you do that?”
"Me? You want me to be honest?"
“Yeah, now I’m curious.”
“It’s a secret.”
“What?! You can’t just say that!”
Hye-ryeong answered with a teasing 'secret', as if to mess with Jung-yoon.
‘I can’t. And if I can’t, how many female singers in Korea could actually do it like that?’
Hye-ryeong was confident in her own skills.
When she debuted, she pushed herself hard to erase the early criticism that she lacked vocal talent, so much that she eventually took on the main vocal parts.
But even for her, while she could probably cover that song, doing it like Si-on, without catching her breath, wasn’t something she could pull off.
***
“I had no idea unnie went through all that… sniffle.”
A tearful, snotty voice from beside me.
“It’s okay.”
“I thought I was the only one having a hard time, but unnie kept chasing her dream even under pressure from her parents! That’s really amazing.”
Please. Just. Stop.
If I could shut Soo-yeon up with force, I would’ve done it already.
Grade F.
It was humiliating enough having that miserable grade stuck to my contestant number, but now Soo-yeon was making a scene next to me, sobbing and saying my performance was so touching, I was going crazy.
‘They’re going to edit that out, right? No matter how obsessed Aunt is with ratings, surely she wouldn’t sell out her own niece?’
If that performance footage actually made it on air, I might be forced to live a life of exile, not by choice, but by public demand.
Oblivious to my feelings, Soo-yeon just kept saying how great my performance was.
Grade B.
What made me feel even more miserable was the B-grade label stuck to Soo-yeon’s number.
“I think the judges liked it.”
Unlike how she was trembling before going up, Soo-yeon returned from the stage calm and even humble.
And I, who had given her clueless advice, just wanted to disappear off the face of the earth.
“They say we’re heading to the dorms next. I hope I get to share a room with unnie.”
“…Yeah.”
No, I don't have the confidence to see this kid's face anymore.
I’d rather be with total strangers than be stuck with someone who had witnessed my utter disgrace.
But.
“Unnie, we are in the same room!!!”
The heavens had forsaken me.