The Maknae Has to Be an Idol

I watched as Han Do-Young moved farther away from me. Then, I thought about the content of the mission I just heard.

‘I have to stop them from debuting?’ It was an unbelievable mission. What kind of power did I have to stop a group of guys who already had released their music video teaser and came all this way to do their interviews from debuting? Furthermore, the thing that stuck in my mind was…

‘Why do we ‘definitely’ fail the Triple Crown All-Kill?’

The risk of failing this mission was that we wouldn’t be able to achieve Triple Crown All-Kill. The word ‘definite’ hung on my mind. How could Bleshu’s debut block our Triple Crown All-Kill ‘definitely’? There was a possibility that Bleshu’s song could be better than ours, and they took first place in a music show at least once. It could happen but there was no way the consumers of this industry would raise a song shrouded by plagiarism controversies to such a level.

There weren’t many possibilities on how that would occur, but if I had to choose the most realistic possibility among them…it was chart manipulation. I had to think about the possibility of Bleshu’s company, G&B manipulating the numbers so that Bleshu got first place in a music show. There were many means they could employ to achieve this.

They could buy so many of Bleshu’s songs so that they could reach the desired number of sales or they could personally contact the music show’s producer. Of course, all of these methods had the risk of being found out by somebody else, but I was sure that the company was willing to risk anything.

G&B was a small company. If they failed to produce results that could draw in more investment from this debut album, the matter won’t end with just a couple of managers writing an apology letter. It would shake up the entire company. If they were going to fall to their doom, either way, it was better for them to try everything they could first. If I was an employee under G&B, I might have thought the same as them.

‘Haaa.’ I rushed behind Han Do-Young and clutched his wrist.

“…What?” Seeing my hands around his wrist, Do-Young looked at me blankly and in shock.

“…?” Do-Young looked more shocked then.

“If it’s all right with you, do you want to exchange numbers?” After I said my real motive, my members looked at me astonishedly.

“Bong Tae-Yoon?”

“What…what’s with him suddenly?”

“Hahaha…haha.”

“You don’t have to be that surprised.” It appeared Han Do-Young was very startled by my behavior. Yet, I didn’t pay any heed to his response and continued to fix my gaze on Do-Young. Even if people looked at me strangely now, it was better than failing my mission and crying about it later.

“Ah…yes…I will give you my number. Haha…” Do-Young gave me his number while smiling awkwardly. He probably felt like he didn’t have much of a choice when I was asking him so boldly like this. Nevertheless, I succeeded in getting his number.

“But why do you want my number…?”

“Ah, well, we could work at the same time now, so I thought it would be better for us to keep in touch.”

Do-Young still looked at me incomprehensibly but I remained unconcerned and said, “I will contact you later.”

“Ah…haha. Yes.”

Eventually, Bleshu departed and only we remained.

“Tae-Yoon what was that?”

“Did you really want his phone number?”

“You don’t usually do stuff like this.”

“You are acting suspiciously, Tae-Yoon.”

My members wanted an explanation for my unexpected behavior. But based on my past experiences, I knew I had a high chance of success the more brazen I acted.

“I just thought it would be a good idea to get his number. There’s nothing else to it.”

“Really?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t think you are telling the truth.”

“But I am.”

“Hm…”

“Your shooting will begin! Please be on standby!”

Though I didn’t free myself from my members’ suspicions easily, we immediately turned our attention to the staff looking for us.

***

The photoshoot ended without much trouble. The only notable part about it was that the photographer really loved beautiful faces. As soon as Yeon-Hoon stood in front of the camera, he let out a squeal and blatantly favored Yeon-Hoon the most. I thought it was natural that a person who photographed people for a living would be so sensitive to beauty, and it could be said that he had a lot of passion for his job.

I felt a strange sense of pride seeing the photographer openly praise Yeon-Hoon’s visuals. It was like seeing someone fuss over my member in place of me.

“Oh my gosh, Mr. Yeon-Hoon! What haaaaapened! You are so handsome!”

“Yes, please smile slightly like that, a little bit! Yes, yes! What is this? Did someone turn on another spotlight?”

“Mr. Yeon-Hoon, could you make a salute since you are wearing a military uniform? Oh my god. You did your share of service with that, Mr. Yeon-Hoon. I want to go to the military one more time in place of you, really.”

The photographer’s last comment took me by surprise. It was the highest form of praise for a man to say that he wanted to go to the military in place of you. That was how sincere he was about Yeon-Hoon’s face; and as a result of that sincerity, the quality of the A-cut and B-cuts were all unbelievably high.

Though not as much as Yeon-Hoon, the photographer also hyped the other members and screamed.

“Kyaaah! Mr. Do-Seung! You are so handsome! You are the man! Roar!” He turned Do-Seung‘s usual cat persona into a tiger.

“Mr. Woon! Oh. My. Gosh. Light is beaming out of your skin! Your skin is so smooth!” He even fussed over Woon’s perfect skin.

“Oh my gosh, so cute. Awww! Who told you to be so cute, Mr. Dong-Jun? You are just like a puppy.” To Dong-Jun who would have been quite the troublesome pet if he was, he didn’t refrain from screaming about how cute he was. Yet, the problem was that he tried to do the same thing to me.

“You are the maknae? What, why is the maknae so mature? What are we going to do with this position and appearance gap?”

On this day, I realized that I had no immunity to people making a fuss over me. Every time the photographer complimented me, my body froze, and the pictures came out a mess. But the photographer was really a professional and as soon as he realized that I was the type of person who couldn’t endure compliments, he immediately turned serious and bland.

“Try raising one arm.”

“Make a slightly confident pose.”

“Could you try making a salute like the other members?”

And with his change of attitude, I was able to finish the rest of the shooting comfortably. After that, we prepared for an interview with the questions we got beforehand. Then, after we greeted the staff, our magazine schedule ended.

Perhaps, the styling team liked us in our sailor uniforms, and they also prepared sailor uniforms for our next schedule: the fan signing. Of course, we returned the sailor uniforms we wore during our magazine shooting and got sailor uniforms that were closer to what we wore on stage. As usual, the fan signing ended without anything extraordinary happening. By the time we finished all of our schedule, it was night, 11 pm.

“Ahhh. The day passed by so fast again,” Yeon-Hoon said while returning to the dorm. It was always night 11 pm or 12 am by the time we returned home these days. That was how rigorous our schedule was.

“Can I wash up first, you guys?”

“Yeah, sure.”

“Quickly take a shower and go to sleep. You look really tired.”

“Thank you. I will shower first then,” Yeon-Hoon said and went into the bathroom. I thought the next people to go wash themselves would be Do-Seung, Woon, and then Dong-Jun in that order since there were a total of three bathrooms in this dorm. Since Yeon-Hoon took one bathroom, two more people could also go to take a shower, yet no one got up even after I heard water rush out from the bathroom that Yeon-Hoon went into.

Not only did they not go to wash themselves, but they didn’t depart from the living room to go to the individual rooms to play. They didn’t go to the kitchen and look inside the fridge. Though there was a great variety of things they could do at the dorm, the rest of my members stayed inside the living room as if they planned it. Instead, Woon, Do-Seung, and Dong-Jun slowly edged closer to me. I got an inkling of what was going on then.

‘It seems they realized that I got a mission about Bleshu.’ They probably guessed it when I tried to get Han Do-Young’s phone number, and their mouths seemed to be itching to talk. It appeared Woon and Do-Seung were wary about speaking since Dong-Jun was next to them while Dong-Jun was wary about Woon and Do-Seung.

‘Seems like I have to set things in order again…’ I thought. Like I did when Do-Seung and Woon met as regressors I needed to set things straight.

“Should we all go inside my room?” I called everyone to my place.

***

I carefully chose my words, not knowing where to begin. No matter how much I thought about it, this was a very messy situation. But since Yeon-Hoon won’t be showering forever, I didn’t have enough time to get into the complicated details and I got right to the point.

“This side is Kang Do-Seung and Lee Woon who have experienced regressing in different worlds dozens of times, and this is normal Dong-Jun who recently found out that I was a regressor.” This was the first line I said when I got them together. Naturally, everyone was stunned into silence but eventually Do-Seung and Woon spoke.

“You told Dong-Jun? Really?”

“What… Bong Tae-Yoon…what…?”

Though the two regressed dozens of times, they had never told any of the members about their regressions. Thus, they were shocked that I took a path they had never taken. Yet, Dong-Jun didn’t appear that surprised.

“Well, I was already aware of it before so I’m not that surprised. But of course, I didn’t know you regressed dozens of times.”

I already told Dong-Jun that these two were regressors; yet, they didn’t regress but had their regressor memories temporarily inputted into them.

“And you really believe all that? Shouldn’t there be a limit to how understanding a person is?” Do-Seung seemed shocked that Dong-Jun even believed in this news about ‘regressors’ and the ‘system’. It was natural. I also wouldn’t have believed any of these things before experiencing it in person.

“There’s no reason not to believe. Besides, there were a couple of things that hung in my mind so I feel like things make more sense now.”

“Wow…”

“You sure are amazing, Dong-Jun…”

Do-Seung and Woon were impressed with Dong-Jun’s attitude. Yet, that wasn’t the important part—the mission was.

“You guys must have realized that I tried to get Mr. Han Do-Young’s phone number because of a mission, right?”

“Ah, yeah.”

“I guessed it.”

“You got a mission about Bleshu right?”

“Yes, that’s right.”

As I thought, everyone had been staying inside the living room for this reason.

“What is the mission about?” Dong-Jun asked.

“It was to block Bleshu from debuting.”

“Block their debut?”

“Why?”

“It said that when Bleshu debuted, our group would definitely be unable to accomplish Triple Crown All-Kill.”

“Ha…”

A heavy silence surrounded the room. It seemed everyone was lamenting the difficulty of the mission.

“Did you guys ever get a Bleshu mission before?” I asked, wondering if I could find a solution through them.

“No, the majority of our missions were kept within the group.”

“Yeah.”

“Ah…is that so?” I was surprised to hear this since I got quite a few missions related to Only One too. Nevertheless, it seemed I wouldn’t be able to get a solution from them. Yet, things didn’t appear completely hopeless because Woon appeared to know some information.

“I think I know why it says you would definitely fail the Triple Crown,” Woon said, “Bleshu’s company was caught manipulating sales using outside sources a couple of times.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. The news said Bleshu’s company and the business that manipulated sales were close to each other.”

This was quite useful information. The ‘sales manipulation’ that I suspected them to do was revealed as fact, yet my situation remained bleak. The beginning of Bleshu’s debut could spell out the doom of my universe.

“If we don’t do the Triple Crown All-Kill, someone dies, right…Right?” Dong-Jun asked about the mission’s content.

‘Yes. Specifically, Dong-Jun would die.’ But I didn’t reveal this part since it could just bring down the team’s mood and raise our general anxiety level. It seemed Dong-Jun caught on that I didn’t want to speak more and didn’t pry in deeper.

“That means we have to stop Bleshu’s debut.’ In the end, that was what we concluded.

Yet, the problem was how we would go about doing that. We didn’t have the power to decide whether another group would debut or not. We couldn’t do anything if another group set their minds on debuting. Moreover, we also had to think about whether it was the right thing to do to stop another group from debuting besides clearing the mission.

‘But it doesn’t matter what’s right or wrong. I need to put my members first.’ Though it was unfortunate for the Bleshu members, this was what I truly felt.

“What do I need to do to stop Bleshu from debuting?” I asked my members for suggestions.

“Honestly, we don’t have the power to stop them”, Do-Seung said. I already knew this. That was why I was asking for their suggestions. Perhaps, it couldn’t be helped since it was everyone’s first time encountering a mission like this.

It was then, Do-Seung showed me a completely different path that I could take. “But though I never fought against the system like Tae-Yoon, there was a time when I unintentionally caused an error in the system.”