The Maknae Has to Be an Idol

We decided to pretend that we didn’t know victory0505 was Do-Seung’s account. However, when the next day arrived, Do-Seung made an important announcement to us sitting around the practice room.

He said, “Um, I have something to say.”

We were sitting in a circle looking for a song in accordance with the promise we made yesterday. Do-Seung slowly opened his mouth in a serious tone. There was probably only one reason why he was saying something so seriously in this atmosphere–

“I’m victory0505.” It was to reveal his identity.

Woon and I had made a promise to pretend to not know it was him yesterday, but Do-Seung revealed it himself the next day. I had never thought this would happen. Woon and I looked at each other and laughed humorlessly. The situation progressed so fast that it made us almost embarrassed that we made such a fuss last night. On the other hand, Yeon-Hoon and Dong-Jun were so shocked that their eyes became as big as saucers.

“What did you say, Do-Seung?” Yeon-Hoon’s reaction was actually on the milder side.

“Do-Seung was Sir victory0505…?” Dong-Jun acted completely bamboozled. No, he really was shocked to that extent. Seeing that he added the title ‘Sir’ to victory0505, he must have personally admired victory0505 as it was surprisingly rare for idols to be good composers.

Since victory0505 was someone who produced and gave out such good music for free, Dong-Jun must have admired him greatly. However, after finding out that this person’s identity was Do-Seung, who he teased and played around with every day, he must have felt a strong dissonance between them.

“You’re the composer?” Dong-Jun stared at Do-Seung’s face in disbelief.

“Is this a hidden prank?” Then he went through the early stages of denial and began to show signs of delusions. “The Showcase staff! Come out now! I caught your prank now!”

Lastly, Dong-Jun began to express simple, infantile levels of emotions. “There’s no way Do-Seung can be victory0505. No way! It can’t be! I refuse to believe it.” In short, he threw a tantrum.

“Geez! Come on! I told you it’s me!” Do-Seung couldn’t stand it any longer and shouted at Dong-Jun.

Dong-Jun shouted back, “Prove it! Prove it to me!” At this point, he was being completely unreasonable.

Do-Seung showed his account information after entering SoundClown with his phone.

“You see this?”

“Haha. Hahaha.” Dong-Jun began laughing hollowly now. I guessed he gave up now.

“In the first place, you can guess it’s me by the user account, since my name is Do-‘Seung’[1] and my birthday is May 5th,” Do-Seung said as if he was frustrated.

“…I thought the composer was just a winner who likes children’s day[2].” Dong-Jun murmured to himself, and Do-Seung smirked at how ridiculous he was being. Dong-Jun seemed as if he didn’t want to admit that Do-Seung, who he frequently joked around with and pranked, was the person he admired so much.

But besides that, I was surprised by Dong-Jun’s reaction. ‘It’s my first time seeing Dong-Jun react so intensely.’

It was something I’ve never seen even in my previous life. He was someone who always lived leisurely like a sailboat drifting in the calm sea. He was also someone who wanted to be an idol because it looked fun.

“Then why didn’t you tell us and try to hide it? Can you tell us, Do-Seung?” It was then Yeon-Hoon carefully asked Do-Seung.

Do-Seung began to answer calmly as if he knew he would get this question. “In my previous agency, there was a songwriting assignment, so I had to present a song every week.”

“What! Every week?”

“Yes. I was fine with creating a new song every week because I could just give up on sleeping for a few days, but the cold and tense atmosphere after the presentation was the hardest for me.”

I could understand what he meant. There must have been some kind of war of nerves between the trainees taking composition classes when they released their songs every week. No matter how good the song was, they must have given harsh criticisms and probably tried to keep each other in check rather than encourage one another.

Since the atmosphere at that time must have been imprinted in his head, he must have hesitated to let us hear his songs. If our responses were not good, he must have been afraid that it would bring back old memories. Since then, he must have confirmed that his songs elicited good reactions through The Showcase, but he must have still felt hesitant as painful memories sometimes obscured our judgment enough to interfere with our rational thinking. It was then I finally understood Do-Seung a bit more clearly.

“When Tae-Yoon brought out my SoundClown account and said let’s contact this person to use their song, I thought I should reveal it then, but I couldn’t bring myself to say it.” Do-Seung bowed his head with an uncharacteristically emotional expression.

“On the day we were on stage, I made up my mind to reveal it, but I pushed it off again. I tried to say it in the car on our way back to the dorm, but I pushed it off again. I tried to say it at the meeting last night, but I postponed it once again, and it’s only now that I'm finally revealing it.” Do-Seung sincerely apologized, saying that he felt like he had tricked us for no good reason.

“No, not at all! What are you sorry about! If it was me, I would have also worried a lot about it. You’ve gone through a lot, Do-Seung,” Yeon-Hoon said and tried to hug Do-Seung.

However, Do-Seung slightly moved away to avoid Yeon-Hoon. A slightly awkward atmosphere passed between a person who hated PDA, and a person who liked PDA.

“Anyway, I’ll reveal that I’m victory0505 to the production team and ask them to register the music with my real name.” Do-Seung organized what he said. “And as far as my abilities go, I will try to create our group’s music.”

Yeon-Hoon’s expression brightened up at Do-Seung’s words. “Really? You can do that? Isn’t it hard?” He looked worried but couldn’t hide the excitement in his voice as it was a huge advantage to have a member who could produce songs that fit our team’s color.

“Yes. Of course, I’ll say it if I can’t do something, but I got a rough picture of what song to make for this mission.” His words gave us strong confidence for this mission.

“Then shall we go to make a song?” There was a moment of silence in the practice room at Do-Seung’s words.

Yeon-Hoon asked, “What, where are we going?”

“Ah, right. I didn’t tell you. I have a separate studio. Let’s go there.” Do-Seung revealed that he had a separate studio, and Yeon-Hoon and Dong-Jun looked shocked once again when they heard that.

‘Since you need equipment to make a song, isn’t it natural that he has a separate studio?’ Furthermore, there was no place to put equipment in our small, rooftop dorm.

“It’s not very far. Let’s walk there.” We followed Do-Seung out of the practice room.

* * *

Do-Seung’s statement that the studio was not far from here was true. It was just across the crosswalk from the building where our practice room was.

He said, “I’m not renting this place. Someone I got to know while studying composition at the agency lent it to me for free. This is a public studio run by him.”

I couldn’t believe that he met such a generous benefactor. Do-Seung seemed to be rather lucky—no, I corrected my thought. If he had been really lucky, he wouldn’t have come to WD Entertainment. In the end, it felt like his luck was plus and minus and ended up as zero. Do-Seung explained that the studio lent by the benefactor was a public studio that lent the customers for an hourly fee. Do-Seung used the room at the end of the large studio.

“It’s not very big, but if five of us sit together, I think we’ll all fit.”

When he opened the door, there was definitely not much space to move around as he said. However, if we all stuck closely to each other, we could all fit. We sat close together on the mini sofa in the back. Do-Seung sat in front of a table with a desktop computer and other equipment. We were amazed by how he turned on the desktop with ease and turned on the songwriting program. Do-Seung said not to overreact, but he seemed pleased by our reactions. Dong-Jun, who initially was in denial, began to now genuinely admire Do-Seung’s unexpected side.

Do-Seung said, “First, these are songs that I made a long time ago, but do you want to hear them first? There are about three or four songs that can fit the theme of melancholy blue.”

Dong-Jun asked, “That many?”

“Well, they may not be good because they’re all practice songs. Don’t expect too much.”

“Bro, that’s so cool!”

“Don’t talk like that to me, Dong-Jun. I’m older than you.”

“Booo. What a bore.”

While Do-Seung and Dong-Jun bantered, I waited for what song Do-Seung would show us.

He said, “For the very first song, this one first.” Do-Seung clicked a composition file and played the file, and we sat still and listened to the song.

The introduction began with a drum sound that felt somewhat cold. It was a very unique sound, so it instantly grabbed the audience’s attention. It was a song that was slightly slower than medium tempo.

The tempo was slower than “Sailing”, so I think I could use more words when writing the lyrics. The overall atmosphere of the song could be described as dreamy.

“That’s nice.”

“Yeah, I agree.”

“This is a practice song?”

Yeon-Hoon, Dong-Jun, and Woon were all surprised. I thought it was good as well.

“What about you, Tae-Yoon?” At that moment, Do-Seung specially called me out.

I was about to say it was good but said, “Can we listen to the next song?" instead. I hurriedly added, “Ah, the song was good.”

“Okay. I guess it was not that catchy. Let’s listen to the next one.” Do-Seung must have read the meaning between my words, and I felt apologetic that I was giving a poor reaction to someone who had trauma about composing.

“When it comes to songs, it’s better to be honest. Don’t worry about it.” After saying this, Do-Seung picked the next song and said, “This is a song that I made when I was hooked on violin melody.”

As he said, the melody of the strings demanded attention right from the hook. The completion of the song was quite high, and it was good enough to be used as a title song just as it was. However, the problem was—

I said, “I think this feels more like spring than gloomy blue?”

“Yeah, that’s what bothered me too. I thought I could rearrange it and make it more melancholy, so that’s why I showed it to you.”

“But this song seems to have already been completed in this state, so I don’t think you should touch it anymore. If just one thing goes wrong from here, I think the whole song would be ruined.”

Do-Seung looked at me unexpectedly and twitched his brows. Yeon-Hoon, Dong-Jun, and Woon also turned their heads and looked at me. Rather than wary eyes, they looked a little surprised. Despite just giving my honest thoughts, I wondered if I had been too forward.

“I’m really not trying to rebuke you, but you have a good ear, Tae-Yoon. I mean it,” Do-Seung said and played the last song. The last song was a song with a piano melody in the beginning ike droplets of rain. Piano music on a minor scale flowed out in the introduction.

“Uh?”

“Oh!”

It was definitely better than the previous songs and fitted well with the image of melancholy blue. It seemed as if the only instrument he used was the piano. It had a chord progression that could be considered a minor ballad, but when looking at the tempo and overall composition of the song, I thought we could certainly add dancing to it. Above all, it was impressive that he made the tempo a little faster than medium while highlighting the abstract image of melancholy blue since it was normal to think of slow songs as sad songs.

‘It’s strange.’ It had the power to draw people in.

At that moment, Ziing—

The Insight ability was suddenly activated.

‘Right now?’ I didn’t know why this skill popped out while listening to Do-Seung’s song.

Whoosh!

My thoughts accelerated to the point where the world seemed to be slowing down.

‘Huhh?’ At the same time, knowledge about Do-Seung’s song entered my head. Information about how the song was made, what instrument would be suitable, and which parts should be kept or strengthened entered my mind. Based on the information about the song that just came into my ear, the Insight ability was correcting the song with maximum efficiency. The song, which had been good to start with, began to transform and develop in my head and began to form a clear image as if I were drawing a picture.

“Ack!” The Insight ended, and the world returned to its original pace.

“What?”

“Tae-Yoon, what’s wrong?”

“Are you sick?”

The other members looked at me with concern and asked.

Rather than that, there was something else that was more important. “Do-Seung.”

Do-Seung replied, “Yeah?”

“Gugak[3]…Please look for a sample of gugak.” I needed to manifest the same picture that I just saw into reality.

1. Seung means victory in Korean. ☜

2. In Korea, Children's day is a national holiday that falls on May 5th every year. ☜

3. Gugak is Korean traditional music. ☜