Save a Failed Idol's Life

Thanks to the makeup team who hurried up, I was able to head to the group waiting room that was prepared for the first shoot without being late.

“Are we filming here all day?”

I didn’t feel like going back to that huge stage and sitting face to face with those bastards I never wanted to see again.

And it seemed like the other members felt the same way. The only one who might have been disappointed not to play with the other teams was Yi-jun.

“First, they’ll review the group stages and conduct the ace voting, and then they’ll move to the main hall to announce the results.”

As soon as the camera was turned off, everyone’s tension was relieved. The staff who sat in the same place with a temporary chair greeted us with a friendly smile.

I still have to go to that damn hall. I swallowed a sigh and quietly sat on the left side of the sofa.

Soon, the MC who was in charge of the show greeted us from the familiar stage.

[The bloody pride battle of Korea’s representative boy groups! Boys Be Ambitious, you’ve all done a great job on the second mission!]

[The unique stages of the seven units! The position battle to determine the best unit, let’s see the stages right now!]

We had already seen them all on the monitor while waiting for our turn. There was not as much tension as yesterday, since we already knew which unit did well and which did not.

[Let’s meet the vocal A unit first!]

Following the MC’s loud introduction, the names of the members in each group appeared.

The members in group A were Floss, Playground, Climax.

It was probably not intentional, but I had a silly thought that the first and last letters of each group name were strangely connected.

I had already seen the stage once, so I clapped without much reaction.

Among the three stages, it was the one that showed the most clean and vocal skills.

[Now, we’ll start the ACE voting! The ACE voting consists of internal and external voting.]

What’s internal and what’s external? I narrowed my eyes and stared at the screen, and as if to say that they thought we wouldn’t understand at once, they switched to a summary screen.

[ACE evaluation]

Internal evaluation (+10Points)

Select one member who showed the best performance during the preparation of the stage by majority vote within the unit

External evaluation (+5Points)

Select one member who stood out the most by watching the stage video by majority vote outside the unit

If the internal ACE and the external ACE match, get double points (+20Points).

They really do everything. But… It wasn’t a bad improvement if we could get the ace.

[As you can see on the screen, the internal ace who is decided by the vote of the unit members will get 10 points, and the external ace will get 5 points for each group.]

[If the internal ace and the external ace are the same member, you will get the honor of getting double points, a total of 20 points.]

“Wow…”

Yi-jun, who seemed to believe that he was the internal ace, whistled lightly.

I guess we can count on getting 10 points for sure.

Of course, I also thought that I should be the internal ace, but that was just my wish.

If those bastards who I carried by the scruff of their necks stabbed me in the back, I would be at a disadvantage since I was the only one in the team of two.

[The internal ace of the vocal A unit is…]

The MC’s voice dragged on, and the screen showed the faces of the three members.

Floss, Playground, Climax.

Who would it be?

I clenched my fists and waited for the result.

We should have recruited two or three more people from somewhere. It was too late to realize that we were outnumbered by the other team. It was quite fatal, but there was nothing we could do.

[Now, we will start the ace voting for the vocal A unit right away!]

The monitor screen showed a voting screen that looked scientific and error-free, but the reality was far from it.

“I’ll give you some papers. Please write down the internal ace of your unit on the yellow paper and put it in the box. And on the blue paper, please write down the external ace of the other units.”

It was a very traditional voting method that had not changed much from the class president election in the 90s elementary school.

And it was not even a secret ballot. The camera followed and filmed how each person wrote their vote.

“Oh, this is not a secret ballot?”

Yi-jun jokingly joked and hid the note in his hand, but it did not work at all.

“Who did you vote for, Yi-jun?”

“Hey, what are you going to do if you ask me that~!”

There was a reason why the camera was so persistent in filming Yi-jun. He was in the same team as Seon-won, who was considered the ace candidate of the A unit. Would he support him, or would he prioritize his personal grudge and choose another participant?

Everyone was interested in whether Yi-jun would choose profit or revenge.

While Yi-jun shrugged it off, Seon-won seemed to be nervous, but he turned his head and crossed his arms.

Just don’t fight. I quickly wrote down Seon-won’s name on the voting paper and folded it neatly and put it in the ballot box.

That’s how the voting for the vocal A unit ended and the vocal B unit’s stage started.

“Ah…”

Everyone knew how this stage turned out, so they became less talkative. They messed it up badly. Everyone rolled their eyes as the production team edited the stage video and played it.

Until the middle, it was not that bad… It was just that Shim Naru got too many parts.

Everyone watched with the same thought as the problematic part where he went off-key was getting closer.

‘How did they fix that?’

As soon as it was revealed, it was obvious that Shim Naru would be humiliated. Would the production team really show it like that?

They must have had a hard time getting Floss to join the show, and they also had a stage accident, so they must have been very careful about their side.

Everyone was watching with half anticipation and half worry when something unexpected happened.

[An endless wait-.]

Shim Naru’s off-key part disappeared. To be precise, they corrected it with auto-tune to make it sound as natural as possible.

Everyone was expecting his mistake, but they doubted their ears when they heard the pitch smoother than they remembered.

“Huh?”

“What?”

“What is this…?”

The vocal A unit’s stage was almost live without any correction except for the minimum echo, so everyone’s eyes widened.

If they knew they would correct it like this, they would have tried more daring arrangements. Why didn’t they say anything and suddenly?

Of course, they heard that some programs sometimes edited some participants’ recordings more naturally for production reasons.

Especially in the competition programs where the final stage was approaching, each of the remaining participants had a fandom that surpassed the established debut singers, so they used this method to make the participants who would benefit the broadcast survive longer.

But this was… It was not a vocalist competition, but a stage where they competed by dividing the parts by unit. How could they let only one person benefit from this?

Everyone looked unhappy.

“What the hell…”

Seong-won was about to protest to the staff as if he was going to do something rash, but Kyunghwa quickly stopped him.

“Sit down.”

“No, just a minute.”

“Let’s talk after the recording is over.”

Seong-won looked around as if he couldn’t accept it. Neither I, Yi-jun, nor Seon-woo looked pleased either.

But we were in front of the camera right now, and we didn’t know how the editing would turn out later if we acted impulsively. Seong-won must have realized what we were worried about, and he closed his mouth, biting his lips.

The rookie who followed up and took over the part after the accident looked like a weird person who had barged in and snatched the part.

This is a blatant attempt to save Shin Naru by screwing over the rookie. The other members also swallowed their words and focused on the screen.

In the cold atmosphere, the B team’s stage ended and the ace voting started again.

Since our group didn’t have any B team participants, we quickly picked the external ace and finished.

Anyone who saw the unedited stage and remembered what happened would have known who to pick from the beginning.

“Ah…”

Yi-jun rubbed his head as if he was not feeling good, and soon the vocal C team’s stage started.

[Empty night, everybody drunken and slept-. A hollow night, the city is asleep]

The retro beat filled the conference room, but everyone was gloomy because of what had happened earlier.

Of course, it wasn’t something that affected us, so it was a relief. But no one was happy with the situation where the production team gave an obvious advantage to a certain participant.

I wonder how VESPER is doing. I shook my head as if I didn’t want to think about them.

Soon, the C team’s stage ended and it was time to vote for the ace again.

Everyone picked up their pens silently, and Seon-woo opened his mouth nervously.

“Don’t pick me!”

He looked so desperate and earnest. Kyunghwa, who was trying to keep a poker face, spat out the water he was drinking on his pants.

“Hey, what the hell. It splashed on me too.”

Yi-jun, who was sitting next to Kyunghwa, grumbled and poked Kyunghwa’s waist with the pen cap.

“Seon-woo is begging us to pick someone else, so let’s do as he wants, right?”

Everyone knew who had the hardest time in the C team, so our votes naturally went to Kyunghwa.

It was a pity for Seon-woo, who probably wouldn’t get a single vote from the outside. But Kyunghwa had worked hard too, and we didn’t know if he could actually get the ace from the outside, so there was no need to split the votes.

‘Judging by the weight… he doesn’t seem to have a lot of votes from the outside either.’

The vocal battle, which left only a bitter feeling, ended, and right away…

[Yes! This is how the vocal ABC teams have finished their stages. We will start the rap A and B teams’ stages right away!]

Damn, they’re going in the opposite order of the shooting. The review of the rap battle, which was the most relaxing of all the units, began.

The rap A team’s stage was… well, there was no big mistake, and it was just bland and unattractive, so there was nothing to be disappointed or expectant about.

‘The important thing is the next one.’

I glanced at Yi-jun’s expression, and he was smiling happily, thinking that his stage would be on soon.

‘He’s so peaceful.’

Really. I could learn from his mindset.

Admiring Yi-jun’s transcendent peace of mind, I moved my eyes back to the screen.