Chapter 41
“Hmm… I’m not sure?”
“What would you do if you were me?”
“Can’t you just do it?”
I glared at Yuseolha, who had answered so simply.
What I’d asked her about was which song I should choose for the next round.
Should I swallow my pride, sing an idol song, and perform some cute little choreography, or should I sing a ballad that didn’t quite suit my tone but was good in its own right?
Or should I bring out the band song ‘Your Name Is Blue,’ which I’d been saving to give to Blooming someday?
“Hmm. Couldn’t you save the last one for later?”
“…For now, okay.”
“Hehe. Our Siyeon’s the best!”
In fact, I didn’t even know whether this song would end up in their hands after the audition was over.
We didn’t know where either of us would end up, and for now, it was completely impossible to know which companies we would join or what kind of work we would do.
“Come to think of it, is your father really buying a company?”
“That? I heard he acquired it ages ago!”
“Wow.”
Clearly, being practically chaebol-level meant he spent money with style.
I casually asked which agency he had acquired.
“BlueSky Entertainment…? I heard that’s where Winter Girl used to be.”
“Aha. That place? He acquired a pretty good company…”
BlueSky Entertainment was a fairly well-known company. It had been a while, but it had produced top-tier idols before…
‘Come to think of it, it doesn’t really have anything else going for it.’
In any case, companies with that level of name recognition were quite rare in this industry.
That was why it had been one of the companies I sent songs to after possessing this body…
‘They didn’t even read it.’
Well, I didn’t have any particular grudge against them, but the CEO clearly lacked an eye for talent. Otherwise, he couldn’t have failed to recognize my songs.
“So, of the two remaining options, which one do you think looks better?”
“Obviously, the completed version of Jellypop.”
“But I told you I’m embarrassed, didn’t I? Whether it’s worth enduring that level of embarrassment… That’s the problem.”
“Sometimes, you act way too much like a man, you know? What’s so bad about a girl doing a cute little dance?”
“Ugh.”
I trembled at Yuseolha’s incisive remark, wanting to tell her, You just hit the nail on the head!
Even so, lately I’d thought I had started acting more like an elementary-school girl than before. Was that not how I looked to other people, after all?
“Honestly, Jellypop is a good song. You’ve already sung it, so it’s not like we can give it to someone else. Wouldn’t it be better to use it for your stage now?”
“You’re just stating the obvious.”
“Heheh. Did I seem smart?”
Yuseolha’s words were common sense itself.
In fact, letting Jellypop rot like this would be the worst possible move. It was a song that had reached the very top of the charts in my previous life, and it was even the debut song of the first idol group I had personally produced.
It had been a huge hit, and I had many memories tied to it.
Since I was reluctant to give such a song to anyone other than those girls, I had planned to sing it myself and officially release it someday anyway.
In that case, rather than inefficiently remaking it later, I might as well use it on this stage and release it…
“You’re right. That would be more efficient.”
“Right? But if you’re still reluctant, do something else. It’s your stage anyway.”
“No, Jellypop really was the right choice from the start. I’m sorry I made you waste your time for nothing.”
“Heheh. I don’t mind.”
As she said that, she tightened the arm wrapped around me.
Right now, I was being held in Yuseolha’s arms and receiving endless affectionate pats.
These days, now that I had stopped resisting altogether, Yuseolha had developed the habit of putting me in her arms the moment she saw me.
In fact, she enjoyed being able to hug a cute little kid to her heart’s content, while I enjoyed healing in the arms of a beautiful woman, so it was a mutually beneficial habit.
But now it was time for me to go.
Because, damn it, this song needed at least some choreography. And I had to create a dance that was as cute as possible to match this bouncy song.
At the same time, it couldn’t contain too many painfully embarrassing moves. I needed choreography within the limits of what I could pull off.
“Aaaah… Has the time come to watch YouTube again…?”
Naturally, I couldn’t make something like that alone, so I would have to copy bits from here and there and stitch them together like a raggedy golem.
But Yuseolha, sitting beside me, came up with a revolutionary idea that completely overturned my thinking.
“Couldn’t you ask that person among the older girls from the orphanage? You know, the one who made the choreography for the cheer song!”
“…That’s an option! Unni, you’re a genius?”
“Hah!”
* * *
Seo Ina’s daily life at Neulneul Orphanage was peaceful.
On weekdays, she went to school, her academy, and the orphanage.
On weekends, she repeated the routine of going back and forth between her academy and the orphanage.
Then, whenever she had a music-show schedule, she went all the way to Seoul with the older girls from her academy, appeared on music shows, and ate delicious meat that wasn’t available at Neulneul Orphanage.
She carefully saved the daily pay she received from those appearances in her bank account.
She was the very model of an exemplary middle schooler! The fact that she earned money at that age and saved every bit of it instead of spending it put her in the top one percent.
Today, too, after enduring grueling practice, Seo Ina returned to Neulneul Orphanage with her exhausted body, only to find a message from a completely unexpected source waiting for her.
-By any chance
-Could you make the choreography for me just this once?
“Huh?”
It was a message from Seo Siyeon, the hero of Neulneul Orphanage.
Naturally, Ina herself didn’t have the ability to create decent choreography. But the instructors at her academy were another matter.
-I’m planning to pay you after Singerstar ends.
-I can send you a song sample right away, too.
After seeing the message, Ina immediately began contacting the instructors at her academy.
Naturally, money was very important when creating choreography. But even more important than that were promoting the academy itself and proving its abilities.
The academy she attended was fairly large in Incheon, but nationwide, it was hard to say that it possessed top-tier talent.
That was why there was no way the academy’s instructors would turn down the opportunity to have choreography they had created performed nationwide.
Strictly speaking, cases like this didn’t really require monetary compensation, but…
“If she’s offering, we should take it.”
As someone with one foot in the industry, Ina could roughly sense how much money Seo Siyeon would soon be making.
She had seen and heard so much on set that she didn’t feel particularly guilty about taking money from Seo Siyeon, who would become a dazzling celestial being too radiant to even look toward.
However, it seemed that her fellow orphans and the academy instructors thought differently.
-No, no, no! Ina!
-Could you tell her we won’t accept any money? We’ll start making the choreography right away!
-Get the song sample and send it over as quickly as possible.
“Why wouldn’t they take it if she’s offering?”
Anyway, Ina downloaded the song file Seo Siyeon had sent and forwarded it to one of the instructors.
“Yaaawn… I’m sleepy…”
The choreography was finished before Ina even woke up the next day.
When she got up in the morning and checked her smartphone,
-I put something together quickly for now, okay?
-Tell her to feel free to mention anything she wants changed or any parts she doesn’t like!
“Wow. That’s insanely fast. I’ve never seen anyone work this quickly before.”
Her chat was already full of choreography demonstration videos filmed by the academy instructors themselves.
* * *
“Gaaah…! This is too much.”
As I watched the choreography demonstration video Seo Ina had sent me, I couldn’t take it anymore and pressed the pause button.
The reason was that every single move in the choreography was incredibly embarrassing.
The academy instructor’s pose frozen on the screen was the very embodiment of cuteness.
With both hands curled into cat paws beside her cheeks, she had one leg slightly raised.
If I’d seen moves like these in my previous life, I would have cringed so hard just watching them that I might have died.
"……Am I supposed to dance to this?"
When I pressed play again, the full choreography poured out.
During the intro, the dancer continued taking light steps while pointing toward the sky with her fingers, and when the highlight began, the choreography’s madness exploded.
She brought both hands to her mouth in time with the lyrics, then spread them wide as if a flower were blooming, followed by tiny hip shakes from side to side and steps that tapped her heels.
There was even a section where I had to wink while making a biting gesture accompanied by a “Nom!”
”This is a bit much. It feels like they made it this way because I’m young…
The choreography itself wasn’t difficult, but the level of cringe resistance required to perform it was impossible to measure.
Was the choreography quality low?
Not that either.
So, with time already so tight, if I deliberately asked them to revise it…
That would likely make things uncomfortable for both sides.
“Still, the song is good… Let’s give it a try.”
Since Jellypop was already a finished song, the only thing I needed to focus on was the choreography. The vocals were so simple and easy that there was no need to practice them separately.
I played the choreography video on my laptop and copied the dancer’s movements exactly, matching them to the song playing in the video.
Seo Siyeon’s body had a fair amount of talent for moving, so she was also fairly gifted when it came to dancing.
Of course, it wasn’t as talented as she was at singing, but choreography at this level was easy enough to master.
So I was able to follow the movements and learn them without much difficulty, but…
Suddenly, a strange laugh came from the back of the practice room.
“Pff, hehehe…! Ah, S-Siyeon’s so cuuute…!”
There was Yuseolha, barely managing to hold back her laughter as she watched me.
I glared at Yuseolha, my face turning bright red, and said,
“Get out. Right now.”