The Maknae Has to Be an Idol

Siren’s fans were puzzled by a video posted after midnight.

—???

—What’s this?

—What did they post at this hour?

—What is this?

Although there was no set time for idols to make posts on social media, it was not common for them to post something at midnight during the peak of their activities as they had to wake up at 3 am every day during this time to get their makeup and outfits fitted and rarely stayed up at midnight. However, Siren went as far as uploading a video, not just a written post, on their social media.

—Siren’s mental training. Be strong against fact bombs! (Bong Tae-Yoon’s part)

The title of the video was like this, but the thumbnail was beyond lame.

—What did our babies do again lol

—Tae-Yoon hahhaha

—What the heck is this?

—Hahahhahah

—What did they make the maknae do again? Hahaha

Bong Tae-Yoon was standing straight in the thumbnail of the video. However, the composition and image quality felt like watching an amateur homemade video from more than 20 years ago. Bong Tae-Yoon stood awkwardly, and due to shooting him at a close-up, slightly high angle, his legs looked shorter while his upper body looked longer, and his head looked 1.3 times larger than usual. Since Y2K was popular these days, it seemed as if they had purposely lowered the video quality as a kind of video technique. However, they had reproduced the Y2K aesthetic too faithfully.

—Weren’t they in kindergarten back then?

—Hahahha how do know this type of aesthetic haha

—Who told Tae-Yoon to stand so awkwardly like that ahhahahahahahahhahahaha

—Tae-Yoon look confused af

—Pls stop making the maknae do all the weird stuff lol

People who saw the thumbnail couldn’t help but click on the video. When users clicked the video, Bong Tae-Yoon stood in the same position, and the only difference was that he now moved and talked. However, the content of the video was more shocking than the thumbnail.

—Mr. Bong Tae-Yoon, you’re an agent on a difficult mission.

—Me?’

—Yes.

—But I’m wearing pajamas?

—Yes. The mission is to infiltrate into the public and learn the standard of living of ordinary citizens in the Republic of Korea.

—...Is that something you even need to use a special agent to find out...

—Be quiet!

This ridiculous conversation had the power to make the listener think about what in the world they were looking at. The main subjects of the conversation were Bong Tae-Yoon and Yeon-Hoon. Although Park Dong-Jun usually took the lead in comedic sketches like this, it hadn’t been long after his controversy, so they wanted to be careful for a few days, and Yeon-Hoon took the lead instead.

—But the mission’s content is a bit strange.

—What’s so strange about it.

—Aren’t usually North Korean spies given the mission to learn the standard of living of ordinary citizens in the Republic of Korea?

—...Ah!

—No...

—...

—...Comrade! Watch your mouth!

—My goodness.

The fans were puzzled by Siren who continued a bizarre, impromptu skit.

—What am I watching right now?

—What in the world?

—What’s wrong with them lol

—I’m so confused that I can’t even laugh

—It’s super funny to me hahhahahahah

Usually, groups posted a standard message asking for votes tomorrow on the eve of a music show. They also attached some selfies for their fans. However, the day before the music broadcast, Siren posted a low-quality video that seemed to have been made from WindXws Movie MakXr. The content was even more crude.

—Comrade, from now on, go outside and learn about the lives of those South Korean compatriots.

—Are you seriously going to make me into a North Korean spy now?

—...Don’t laugh!

The content of the video began to become increasingly bizarre.

—We’ve received intelligence that South Koreans like fun content.

—Why is that even intelligence? Which country doesn’t like fun content?

—If you make us laugh, we’ll let you go on a mission.

—Am I now in the position to beg for a mission?

—No...That’s...

—You just told me to leave earlier.

—Ackkkk! Do-Seung!

In the end, Yeon-Hoon had to step down, and Do-Seung took his place.

—I, your instructor, is gravely disappointed in you, trainee.

—Isn’t this the South Korean army now? I guess any soldier is fine.

—Get down and do push-ups now!

—Wow...

Bong Tae-Yoon made a hollow laugh and got into pushup format.

—Follow me. I’ll obey at one, and my superiors at two. Start, one!

—I’ll obey...

—Two!

—My superiors.

—One!

—I’ll obey...

—Do it on your own now.

—Do it on your own now.

—...I told you to do it on your own.

—Do it on your own.

—Don’t copy me but do the one and two automatically!

—One, two.

—No...stop annoying me!

The concept of the video was for Bong Tae-Yoon to be one-sidedly knocked around by the Siren members, but Bong Tae-Yoon used his logical reasoning to batter down his opponents and continued the conversation in his favor. In the end, Lee Woon had no choice but to appear as the last batter.

—Sir, you don’t have to do push-ups.

Bong Tae-Yoon’s face was brightened by Woon’s friendly and respectful tone, which was different from the coercive tones so far.

—As long as you make us laugh, we’ll end this without further training.

—Make you guys laugh?

—Yes.

Bong Tae-Yoon began to be flustered by Woon’s earnest and honest request. It was the first time Bong Tae-Yoon lost his pace.

—I feel taken aback...after receiving such a normal request like this.

—What!

—Then are you saying we’re abnormal, Bong Tae-Yoon!

—Be quiet, you two.

—This is mutiny!

—Show respect to your superiors!

—How can you guys talk about respect when you haven’t even enlisted yet?

—...

—...

Woo Yeon-Hoon and Kang Do-Seung received critical damage after hearing that they hadn’t enlisted yet and closed their mouths. Then Bong Tae-Yoon fell into thought by himself; it seemed as if the members were feeling burdened by the heavy task of making others laugh.

—That...

Right before Bong Tae-Yoon was about to say something.

Flash.

The screen suddenly blacked out with a very lame flash- effect. It was a lame effect that was probably one of the basic effects set in WindXws Movie MakXr. After that, the screen turned on again, and an unexpected scene appeared.

—Aha Whaat...Tae-Yoon...ahhahahhaha!

—Bong Tae-Yoon...you’re crazy...hahhahahha!

—Ah...ahh...I feel like my stomach will rip...for real...

There was no Bong Tae-Yoon, who seemed to be the subject of the comedy, but only Siren members on the ground. The cameraman taking video of the Siren members also seemed unable to hold back his laughter as the camera shook.

—Pfff. Hmpff.

By the sound of trying to hold back his laughter, people figured out that the cameraman was Park Dong-Jun. Like this, there was no Bong Tae-Yoon and only Siren members, who were exploding in laughter due to Bong Tae-Yoon. The crucial part was now why the group had exploded like this.

—What, where is Bong?

—What in the world is going on here...

—How can they cut that part?

—Even though it’s such a messy edit and it hurts my pride to admit this but I’m super curious about the next episode

—So what did Bong do?

—hahahhahhahaha what’s with these guys ha

—Seriously, what are they doing? Haha

—Even though the video quality is so poor, I keep watching it because of how ridiculous they are haha

—So how did Bong Tae-Yoon make these guys laugh

—Ah, pls stop messing with me. Hurry up and release the cut video :0

—My hands are seriously shaking; guys I’m not joking :*) pls hurry up and release the video haha;

People poured our demands for the cut video, but Siren’s SNS remained quiet after they posted that one video. However, after about an hour—

—We’ll release Bong Tae-Yoon’s hilarious comedish video if we win first place on tomorrow’s music show.

A post was made on Siren’s SNS at 1 am.

—Wow, I guess they really want to win first place hahahha

—Ha...Seriously...guys...

—hahahhahahahahahahhahahahahahhahahah

—Let’s work hard...like Siren, who after winning first place in The Showcase 2, uploaded a comedish video to win first place on a music show...

—When was Siren’s concept to keep ppl on their toes?

Although all kinds of pledges were made by groups before the music broadcast, Siren was the only group that promised to upload a humorous video.

—Legendary promise made in real-time by a boy group

—A secret video would be released when they win first place on a music show...fan’s curiosity explodes

—The double life of idols who seemed innocent

SNS pages and Utube creators, who were crazy about views, began to scoop Siren’s video like crazy. Thus, it quickly spread among not only Siren fans but other idol fandoms and even to the general public. When the next morning came, the number of views of the video posted by Siren reached more than 500,000 times.

—What’s with the number of views?

—Why is the view count so high?

—Just how many ppl watched this???

—Pls just let Siren keep their embarrassing moments among us lol

—what in the world

The number of views of Siren’s video reached more than 500,000 views.

—But didn’t that channel with a lot of views illegally upload that video?

—Yep, that’s right lol

—seriously, they’re going too far.

The place where Siren posted their video was Bluebird, but it was on a Utube channel that Siren’s video reached 500,000 views. Even the process of how Siren’s humorous video spread was ridiculous.

***

While waking up at dawn and washing up, we checked the aftereffects of our video on the internet, including Bluebird. Everyone fell asleep late last night because we were filming and editing, but the reaction from our video was more than enough to offset.

“Tae-Yoon, did you see this?”

“Yes.”

“The number of views is insane right now.”

“But we have to report the channel after today’s music show, since they illegally uploaded it.”

“Yeah, that’s true but...Wow, I didn’t expect it to be this much.”

The reaction of our video was so good that the members made a huge fuss about it in the morning. Frankly, I didn’t think our video was that funny while filming it last night, and I thought the members were bad at skits the whole time we were filming. It was so obvious that their concepts didn’t match, and they were making up anything in their minds.

Thus, I also roughly said anything on my mind and tried to give advanced humor as much as I could when they instructed me to make them laugh.

I really didn’t think it was that funny, but my members loved it so much, and in particular, Dong-Jun was the number 1 contributor to yesterday’s video.

“People are going crazy about that part you cut out.”

“Good job, Dong-Jun.”

“I told you; I’m good at things like this~”

It was Dong-Jun who suggested cutting out that part, as our original goal had been to post the whole video up. In the first place, we didn’t even intend to edit it. However, Dong-Jun watched the completed video, said it was too flat, and took out his laptop and edited it on the spot. He purposely lowered the video quality to make it feel intentionally very homemade and narrowed the shots to make the angle even more awkward and forced. Moreover, he even used WindXw Movie MakXr on purpose, saying that it should not have a professional feeling to it at all.

‘With this kind of impact, we can win first place.’ Only One and our record, music chart, and music video views were mostly tied. Only One had different areas that they were better at than us, but if we added all the parts up, we would be almost tied. Therefore, it was crucial to lead the real-time text voting, and with this amount of feed, I thought we would definitely gain an advantage in text voting.

‘Let’s wait for now.’

I decided to calm down a bit and wait for the music show today, and we busily moved from dawn for the pre-recording shoot. We got our makeup done, set our hair, and put on our outfits. Then we sat in the waiting room of the music show, trying to relax individually, and checked the choreography again. Since we needed to win first place today, we took extra care of our appearance and all aspects of the performance.

“Huh?”

“What’s this?”

Woon and Yeon-Hoon, who were using their phones behind me, uttered ominous words at the same time.

“Ohhhhh!”

“Amazing!”

“Hahaha!”

Then they looked at the screen and began laughing their head off. I wondered what was going on.

“Tae-Yoon! Look at this! Only One edited and uploaded a comedy video like us!”

“...What?”

“This is so funny.”

They said Only One followed us and posted a comedy video. I hurriedly took out my phone and checked Only One’s SNS.

‘Damn it.’ I couldn’t help but sigh at the number of shares and views they received in an instant.

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