The Maknae Has to Be an Idol

My vision became blurred, and I felt faint. I didn’t how a person could say such lines in their right state of mind. Seeing my response, my members also became curious about the content.

“What is it!”

“How hard is it?”

Sitting right next to me, Dong-Jun glanced at my hand and read the shocking sentence written on my post-it note.

“Hahaha!”

“What?”

“Seriously what is it!!”

They all laughed their hearts out. That made the other members more curious and the fan in front of me spoke.

“...I’m sorry if it’s too much.”

I couldn’t bear to say that was certainly the case and said, “...No.”

“...!”

Perhaps, the fan saw how determined I was and also turned serious. I gripped the Post-it note tight. Then, I thought hard about how I would properly express this line. If I sloppily spat out the words, it would be worse than nothing, and I had to do a proper job if I was going to do it. If I was going to be embarrassed, I needed to be through with it. If I went halfway, this could end with neither party satisfied.

“Haa...this is crazy.” Following the instructions, I slightly arched my head and pretended to be as seductive as possible. I finally spat out the problematic sentence, “Nuna...do you like me that much...?”

‘Should I just die here...?’ I wondered. I thought it would be nice if an asteroid fell from the sky and crashed into this place. The damage I got from this was so critical that it should be considered a new type of self-harm.

“...”

“Wow...”

“That was hard...!”

Perhaps, it was because I had carried out the task so seriously but the area went dead silent for a second.

“Hahahahh!”

“Tae-Yoon, that was amazing...”

“I’m really, genuinely impressed.”

My members burst out laughing again. Simultaneously, the audience’s responses also exploded.

“Tae-Yooon!”

“Kyaaah!”

“Haaaaaaah!”

Fans cheered and burst out laughing too. I got quite a dramatic response and saw that the camera shutters were clicking maddeningly.

“Pft! Thank you...!” The fan in front of me clasped her mouth tightly. It seemed she was trying with all her might not to laugh. She appeared to be very satisfied with my performance.

“...No problem,” I said. Soon afterward, the next fan approached me and the fan who socially executed me in public moved on Dong-Jun. I hoped to get lines of lower difficulty from now on, but I soon read:

—Hello Hyuna. It’s me. ____. I called you because the stars in the night sky looked especially bright today. It felt as if those stars in the sky made up your face. Yes. I am confessing to you right now...

As expected, moments of hardships didn’t end easily.

***

Siren’s fan meeting ended successfully. The idea of saying confession lines in fan meetings spread across not just the Siren fandom but diverse fandoms; and after the fan meeting ended, all sorts of keywords including Siren’s name began to top the trending charts.

—Tae-Yoon looks like he wants to die but suddenly smiles when a fan comes. He really is insane

Reply: As expected of the politician, Tae-Yoon

—His self-deprecating expressions provoke me

Reply: Maybe I prefer stuff like this...?

Videos of Siren members saying cheesy lines circulated Bluebird all day long. Among them, videos related to Tae-Yoon got the most reposts. It was because of the gap that formed when a member who clearly hated doing these tasks carried them out most sincerely.

—I had no thoughts about Tae-Yoon before, but I think I get why people like him now...he’s like the younger tsundere character...

Reply: You finally realized it now

Reply: Yes, I was in the wrong and will make amends

Though Yeon-Hoon had been the one who was expected to shine the most in the fan meeting, Tae-Yoon’s popularity was shooting up the most from the event.

—They look so cute performing with the fan meeting items

—How many cat ears did Do-Seung get? (Do-Seung dancing with hair bands hanging from both arms.jpg)

Reply: Hahahaha

Reply: He wanted to put on all the hair bands that his baby fans gave him, so he put them on his arms. He has so much love for his fans :(((

—Dong-Jun’s dog earbands are also so cute

—Everyone looked so good that day

—Yeon-Hoon looked like a real-life fairy today

—Everyone, see how pretty our princess looked (Woon making eye contact while signing.gif)

Reply: Wow this is crazy

Because of the countless content that was coming out from the fan meeting, Siren fandoms’ feed showed no signs of cooling down. Compared to even the Only One’s fan meeting from the previous day, they were getting noticeably more attention.

—I think the idea of saying confession lines was really good. I hope they do that again next time...Plz

—Even if it’s not the exact same thing, I hope they do another fan meeting with a specific concept

—Since they did school uniforms, can they do tech wear next time?

Reply: If they wear that, I want to ask them to say superhero lines

Reply: Wow that already makes my heart pound

People who missed this fan meeting expressed their lamentations and those who went were already anticipating for the next one and getting lost in their imaginations. Like that, the fan meeting received good responses thanks to Yeon-Hoon’s idea and ended.

***

The night after the fan meeting was over, my members didn’t immediately go to their rooms and sat on the sofa to talk about what happened today.

“It was really fun today. Especially when Tae-Yoon said his first line, I thought my stomach was going to rip.”

“It was funnier because of how shameless some of the lines our fans brought were.”

“My head became blank when I saw the post-it note, but when I saw their face, waiting for me so expectantly, I couldn’t not do it.”

“I think it really was a good idea to do a fan meeting with a set concept, Yeon-Hoon.”

“See? I told you. I feel so proud of myself because the responses were so good!”

My members talked about the memorable and funny parts of today’s fan meeting. I studied each of my members as they chatted joyfully. They were so excited from just a single fan meeting that they couldn’t go to sleep. I thought people like them should really become idols. If I had become an idol with a different group of people, I probably would’ve experienced a whole different atmosphere.

‘It’s nice. This fan meeting. ‘ I felt like because I did this fan meeting with my members, it became a valuable memory. After we talked about the fan meeting for a while, we talked about what we would do in the later ones. We discussed additional fan service we could do until it was over 11 pm.

“Wow, it got so late.”

“We have to go to sleep now.”

“This is bad. We have to wake up early in the morning tomorrow.”

“Haaa...even if we go to sleep now, we will only be sleeping for three to four hours....”

Most men our age would still be busy at 11 pm but for us who had to wake up early in the morning for our pre-recording, it was very late. I planned to organize my belongings and get up when Yeon-Hoon’s phone rang.

Zing.

“Hm? Hold on a minute guys.” My members all stopped in their tracks. I wondered what was going on.

“Guys!” Yeon-Hoon suddenly yelled.

“...Yes?”

“Why...?”

It seemed something big happened.

“Our music video just passed 10 million views!”

“Really?”

“Whaat!”

“That’s amazing!”

This was huge. All my members got their phones and went into Nutube at once. I also followed them and saw that the music video’s total view count surpassed 10 million views.

—Siren ‘Blue Summer Night’ MV

—View count: 10,000,507

“Ahhhhh! Thank goodness!”

“Wow, isn’t that really fast?”

“Amazing...”

“I think we have a bigger overseas fandom than we think...? There are a lot of English comments on our music video.”

My members each said their impressions while looking at the view count. Among them, Dong-Jun kept screen-shotting the screen like a madman.

“Dong-Jun...?”

“We need to leave this as evidence at least a hundred times! This is a huge achievement!” Dong-Jun looked mad enough to fill up all his phone’s memory with screenshot pictures. I thought we would pass 10 million views about tomorrow, so this was earlier than I predicted.

‘Is this the effect of the fan meeting we had today?’ Throughout our activity period, we had been hitting all our targets faster than I expected. It was probably because I underestimated my team’s influence, and my estimates for all my plans had been too conservative.

“Haaa. But now that we hit 10 million, I feel relieved.”

“Yeah. Of course, selling half a million albums made me realize it too, but...achieving 10 million in a music video gives me a whole different feeling.”

“Will I get copyright fees...for this too...?”

“Damn, Do-Seung, you are obsessed with money now.”

“Damn, you bastard.”

Too busy talking about our new achievement, my members couldn’t leave and sat back on the sofa. Today, it seemed as if God was telling us not to sleep for today and talk about our success.

‘Hm.’ It was then I thought I should strike the iron when it was hot and decided to discuss my next mission. Though I was able to clear Woon’s death flag, I still hadn’t cleared my other mission to reach 1 million in our choreography video. Since we were able to reach our goal for the music video faster than we expected, we might be able to clear this goal faster than I expected too.

I thought we would be able to achieve the numbers even faster if we quickly uploaded the video before the buzz of our debut wore off. Yet, I didn’t feel at peace uploading just any video. We needed to prepare something that could guarantee us more views.

“Did you all hear anything about us filming the choreography video?”

“Choreography video?”

“No, not really?”

“Yeah, but it is around time to upload that.”

“Don’t people usually upload it on the first or second week of activities?”

After asking them, it seemed my members didn’t have many plans for our choreography video. Thus, I thought I could push my opinions forward more strongly.

“Then, how about this for the choreography video?”

“What is it?”

My members gathered around my phone. As they had always done, they showed a strong resistance to my idea.

“No, but isn’t this a bit...”

“This is our first choreography video, Tae-Yoon. Isn’t this too much?”

“Hahaha! I think it’s funny.”

“...Hm...it does seem like you are pushing it.”

Yet, if I had backed down here, we wouldn’t have been able to win The Showcase 2.

“Hear me out you all.” While feeling a strange sense of déjà vu, I began to persuade my members. My members’ weakness or perhaps, strength was that they were easy to convince. If I just gave them a suitable reason...

“Hm...”

“That’s true...”

“...Your intentions are good...”

“Tae-Yoon has gone insane~”

Everyone easily changed their mind except for Dong-Jun who was always on my side.

“But it will be fun. I’m on board!” With Dong-Jun’s support, my members began to agree one by one.

“Yeah, we never suffered losses by listening to Tae-Yoon.”

“Let’s try it.”

“I should ask Ms. Seung-Yeon and Ms. Hyuna to check our schedules so that we can film our choreography video.”

At this point, I thought we were already close to reaching 1 million views on our choreography video.

***

The next day, Siren fans were able to see a video that came up on Siren’s official Nutube channel. As soon as they saw the video, they unanimously thought that there was no way the Siren members, uploaded the video themselves.

—Did Siren get the Nutube channel hacked???