Chapter 108

After writing our universe and lyrics, the work proceeded quickly. Do-Seung was extremely fast and quick-handed among composers. As the concept and lyrics became clear, there was nothing stopping him from making the song anymore. It was to the extent that he showed us the rough prototype in the morning of the same day.

“Since is the concept, I’ve mixed a lot of these refreshing electronic sounds.”

“It sounds nice.”

“The chord progression is designed to be light in general without being too heavy.”

Although it was a prototype, the highlights were close to the completed version, so we could practice straight away. As soon as he heard the prototype version, Woon immediately began to draft what kind of performance he wanted to make.

“Hmm. I think it would be cool if the movements are big and change frequently since the song itself is light and cheerful.”

“Change quickly...and often...?” Yeon-Hoon, who was the weakest dancer in our group, looked slightly scared. Honestly, I would have also been scared in the past, but—

‘Seriously, hooray for Insight.’

Thanks to the ability given by the system, I’ve escaped stiff dancing a while ago. Since I’ve used Insight so frequently, my dancing skills have also improved considerably. Now, the weakest dancer in the group was Yeon-Hoon, not me.

“You’re going to make the choreography so that I can at least sing, right...?”

“Of course, don’t worry.”

“Thank goodness.”

“You’ll be able to sing it somehow.”

“...You’re seriously making me nervous.”

While Yeon-Hoon and Woon conversed about adjusting the difficulty level of the choreography–

“All the

hyungs

are so busy~” I stepped back with Dong-Jun and watched the situation unfold. Dong-Jun was flicking through pages while looking at his phone screen. Frankly, I was a bit worried about Dong-Jun recently.

‘I hope he doesn’t feel left out.’

The other members all had one thing they were good at, and I was in charge of writing the lyrics these days. I worried that Dong-Jun might feel left out or inferior because he was the only one who didn’t have a special role, but—

“Tae-Yoon, lend me your ear for a bit.”

“What?”

Dong-Jun suddenly told me to lend an ear and then said, “...Should we go out early this morning and order chicken?”

...As expected, he was not the type to wallow in sadness or put himself down for something like this.

I cried out, “Do-Seung!”

Dong-Jun cried out, “Huh? Whaat? Bong Tae-Yoon! How can you do this to me!”

I called Do-Seung without hesitation, but Do-Seung, who was in the middle of writing songs in his room, did not hear my cry.

Dong-Jun complained, “What if Do-Seung heard!”

“Fried chicken is crossing the line.”

“I’m never going...to buy you a late-night snack ever again...”

While Dong-Jun looked at me with betrayal—

Squeak.

The door suddenly opened, and Do-Seung came out, massaging his neck muscles. “Did anyone call for me?”

“Hmph!”

While Dong-Jun closed his mouth and dug himself deeper into the corner of the sofa, I answered him calmly, “Ah, I called you.”

Then I continued, “Well, I was thinking about extending the bridge part a bit more in the song. Since it’s the final, I think it would be nice to have a section that really pops out in the middle.” I talked about the length of the song’s bridge part, not Dong-Jun’s chicken.

“Ah, yeah. I’ll try lengthening it.” Do-Seung nodded as if my suggestion was an easy fix and went back into the room. When Do-Seung went back inside, Dong-Jun looked up and tapped me on the shoulder.

He complained, “You’re so mean.”

I thought Dong-Jun must have had a very difficult time yesterday with Do-Seung in the gym as he was usually not the type to be scared of Do-Seung. And that’s how we spent all morning and afternoon working together on the song. Since both Do-Seung and Woon worked fast, we were able to get a rough sketch of the performance to start matching our choreography together.

“Shall we go down and start practicing together?” Do-Seung had lightly sung a guide recording to the melody and even finished recording it. We followed the guide recording with Do-Seung’s voice and performed the choreography that Woon made one by one.

“I made it really difficult first, so l can lower the difficulty level depending on how we do.”

We continued our usual practice while listening to the guide recording, memorized the choreography, and made adjustments to any difficult parts or areas that were not feasible. However, there was one problem.

“Wow, but this choreography...I think it’s the hardest one yet.” Even Dong-Jun, who hardly ever complained about being tired during practice, said this. There was nothing difficult about the choreography itself. However, the problem was that choreography was the fastest we’ve ever done.

“Why is it so fast?”

“Because I thought we could really liven up the beat if we moved this fast.”

“We can do it! Let’s all focus and match our choreography one more time!” Yeon-Hoon encouraged the members falling behind and continued to practice the choreography.

* * *

Like this, the first day of practice ended. On the second day, we started setting up and arranging the accompaniment. On the third day, we divided our parts and recorded our singing. On the fourth day, the choreography was finalized to the completed music. On the fifth day—

“Woooow!”

“We did it!”

“Wow, I’m so tired!”

We tried singing live with the finished music and the choreography. Overall, it was a success, but the problem was that everyone collapsed to the ground as soon as we went through one round. There was no shortcut now; all we could do was repeat training like crazy.

“Huff, puff.”

“Pwehhh.”

“M-my lungs...hurt...” I looked at the members on the ground and pulled them up one by one. One useful thing I learned from Kang Hyun-Sung in the last competition was that it was possible for humans to go beyond their limits if they were pushed hard enough.

I told them, “I heard that if you’re having a hard time, it gets a little easier next time if you take one more step past your limit.”

The members lay on the floor of the practice room and didn’t budge, but then—

“...Let’s do it.”

“...We can do it!”

“Ackkkk!”

They all began to get up one by one and continue practicing.

“Think of it as high-intensity cardio! And let’s do our best!” Yeon-Hoon shouted and encouraged the members with a strange slogan.

“High-intensity cardio!”

“High-intensity cardio!”

“Diet!”

The members chanted their strange slogan and burned with enthusiasm. Truthfully, it really was high-intensity cardio. I emptied my brain and danced to the music. After practicing till our bones ached again on the fifth day—

“Haaaa.”

“I think we got more or less the basic formation down now.”

“Pwehhh.”

“It’s so hard to get the formation down...”

The members and I sat against the wall of the practice room and looked blankly into the air with soulless eyes. Then—

Zing—

Yeon-Hoon’s phone suddenly vibrated.

“...A text...arrived.” Yeon-Hoon murmured in a blank voice and checked his phone screen. In cases where only the leader got texts, it was usually a broadcast announcement.

The rest of the members and I wondered what kind of announcement it was and looked at Yeon-Hoon’s phone. We hoped it was nothing much; something like a spam message. Everyone looked at Yeon-Hoon with desperate eyes, afraid to say anything.

“...Ahhhh....Noooo....” As soon as Yeon-Hoon saw the text, he fell on his stomach on the floor with a groan.

“...What is it?” I picked up Yeon-Hoon’s phone and checked the contents.

Sighh...

“...Ah damn it...” Then, I was able to empathize with Yeon-Hoon’s painfully.

“Why is it that you guys are acting like that?”

“Did something bad happen...?” Do-Seung and Woon approached us. Then the two saw the text, and their eyes widened.

“Ah, crazy.”

“No way....”

There was only one reason why we were all reacting so strongly.

“Why...are they filming a commercial now...?”

“No! How can they tell us this just two days before the shooting!”

The Pepcola’s commercial shooting rights, which we won in the mini-game before, were starting soon of all days. Usually, people would be glad to shoot a commercial, and it was the same for us. However, the reason why we were all lamenting was because first, the commercial shooting was on April 1st but they gave us a heads-up today, on March 30th. Secondly—

“When are we going to practice?”

“Let’s just do more now.”

Sigh....

We would have to break the practice flow for our final performance—a performance we had to pay the most attention to out of all the performances we've done so far.

“We’re not the only ones suffering, though.”

“What?”

“I just got a call from Bleshu Do-Young, and he said they have to leave for Jeju Island the day after tomorrow instead of practicing.”

“Are the special perks we earned from the mini-game all starting now?”

“Geez...how terrible.”

We all knew that the production crew never considered our time or convenience, but even then, I thought,

‘This is too much.’

They went over the line, considering that they did this near the final performance. However, there was nothing we could do.

“Let’s make sure to learn the choreography so well today that we can do it even as soon as we wake up.”

“Yeah, let’s do a bit more.”

“Let’s go!”

We had no choice but to follow the production crew’s schedule. I had already squeezed out the last remaining bit of strength I had in my body, but I thought,

‘I might have to squeeze till the very last drop.’

I had a strong premonition that we would overwork ourselves today. Like this, the practice, which I thought was finally over, began again on the fifth day.

* * *

After the hellish fifth day of practice ended, the even more hellish practice on the sixth day ended.

And on April 1st, the morning of the commercial shooting began. After increasing the amount of practice by 1.5 times for two days in preparation for the commercial shooting day, I felt like my whole body would crumble. Nevertheless, rather than complain about the schedule and show how tired we were, we needed to gather our last remaining strength and do well on the shooting.

“No matter how hard it is, let’s not show how tired we are. Let’s pull through and do a good job.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Got it.”

The members and I woke up at dawn and went to the underground parking lot to meet Ms. Seung-Yeon and Ms. Hyuna.

“We’re heading to the salon~”

“Everyone got the script for the commercial shooting today and read over it, right?”

“Yes.”

“Yes~”

“And everyone checked that there was a live event in the middle of the commercial shooting, right?”

“Yes, we did!”

“Yes, I did it~”

While heading to the salon to get our makeup done for the shooting, Ms. Hyuna and Ms. Seung-Yeon briefly went over the Pepcola commercial. Honestly, we already got the shooting schedule, script, concept, and everything else over email, but since there was no harm in listening to the information one more time, I listened carefully to them.

“For the commercial shoot, I heard you just have to listen to the directors well, so I don’t think there’s anything to worry about,” Ms. Seung-Yeon said. Then she made a troubled expression and said, “But the real problem is this...”

With a pause, Ms. Seung-Yeon revealed what she was most worried about. “It’s that the Pepcola promotion event will be done live. But I’m sure you guys will do a great job, right?”

The commercial we had to shoot was a serious concern, but the real dilemma was the live broadcast that began in the middle of today’s commercial shoot.

“When you go live, you have to think one more time before you say something.”

“Um, these are recent sensitive topics that Hyuna and I came up with yesterday and any vocabulary that could be controversial. Please read through the list at least once.”

The members and I read the materials prepared by Ms. Hyuna and Ms. Seung-Yeon.

“Wow, I’m so touched...” Yeon-Hoon was very moved that they went out of their way to make this guide for us.

‘Both of them are good at their jobs now.’

Frankly, it was quite surprising for me too. It felt like they were also growing better in their jobs, just like us. However, I pushed away unnecessary thoughts and emotions and focused on reading the materials. The materials were clearly well-organized. I memorized what I shouldn't do on a live broadcast and ran a simulation of worst-case scenarios when—

[A surprise mission.]

‘...Ah.’

It had been a really long time since I’ve received a surprise mission. However, when I stayed still to check out what they’ve given me this time—

[Record a higher number of retweets than OnlyOne on Bluebird on today’s live.]

[Upon success, control of Insight will increase]

[Upon failure, control of Insight will be retrieved.]

‘...They’re crossing the line.’

It felt like this damn system was playing with me more and more.