Chapter 96
“This is fucking bullshit. Why the hell are we having to do this? We came to an audition to be judged as bands, so what are they thinking, giving us a mission to disband our bands?”
The filming set was in a chaotic mood, thanks to the PD who had announced the format and rules for Round 3 before leaving, as well as the bands denouncing him. Mystica was caught up in the same atmosphere.
“Shouldn’t we protest as a group?”
The guitarist, Jung Jaehyuk, asked Kim Seungjae, the vocalist and leader.
“The others went to protest last week, but it sounds like the staff just brushed them off by saying there was nothing they could do. Protesting probably won’t help, unless you’re planning to withdraw.”
At Seungjae’s words, Jaehyuk shut his mouth, apparently unwilling to withdraw. Seungjae let out a deep sigh. They had already set foot on the filming set, so what else could they do? All they could do was keep quiet and film.
With the staff’s signal announcing the start, filming for Round 3 began. The first part was supposed to introduce the members of each band for the draft.
“All right… then! Let’s begin by introducing the first band. [Cuban Missile Crisis]!”
The applause was merely ceremonial. Seungjae looked at the band being introduced. If the eighteen bands were divided into four top-tier, ten mid-tier, and four bottom-tier bands, this team belonged near the top of the middle tier. As its name suggested, it pursued jazz, particularly Cuban jazz, and was known for having a particularly skilled bassist.
“Are you still going to pick them like you said?”
“Of course. With the rules this fucked.”
As the introductions of the less interesting bands continued, the drummer’s question reached him. Seungjae answered indifferently.
To sum it up, it was the sort of rookie baseball draft everyone had seen before. The leaders of the eighteen teams took turns selecting people. They could declare that they would not pick anyone else once they no longer needed members, and there were a few additional details to the rules, but that was the gist of it.
The problem was that baseball drafts had the bottom-ranked teams pick first, whereas this draft had the top teams—the ones with the highest audience scores in Round 2—pick first. In other words, the higher a team ranked, the better and more members it could select.
‘Is this right?’
It was a blatantly unfair rule. But the PD had responded with something along the lines of, ‘If you’re upset, you should have gotten a better score in Round 2.’ Because of that, a few bands had once again made a fuss about boycotting the show… but it had remained nothing more than a fuss. Not a single band had actually followed through.
“Next up… 2MAJOR!!”
They were one of the four bottom-tier bands. Since they had advanced through the repêchage in the first place, they were not an especially skilled band. As a band under an agency, the individual members did not seem bad, though.
“Next, we’ll introduce Muzaku!”
They had been highly regarded when the audition began, but had since fallen to the middle tier. They relied heavily on their leader’s charisma in particular, so their chances of surviving this round did not seem very high.
The bands introduced after that were much the same. They had escaped the survival competition and made it this far, so they had their own skills and distinctive qualities, but they were not teams that stood out very much.
“Next…! We’ll introduce Mystica! The fourth pick in Round 1, with 82 points! Second place in Round 2, with 94 points! They’re one of the strongest contenders for the championship! The team leader is… vocals, Kim Seungjae! Guitar, Jung Jaehyuk! …”
Next came Mystica, their own band. Seungjae gave a small wave at the applause from the bands before sitting down. He could see several participants who were friendly with him appealing to him to pick them. Were they calculating that they could at least earn member points if they joined his band?
‘I don’t think we’ll be eliminated as long as I don’t screw things up.’
There might be exceptions, but Seungjae did not think that would apply to the members of Mystica. His bandmates… since he had chosen each of them himself, they all possessed considerable skill. He expected them to come back with fairly good scores.
“Still, they won’t be as good as those guys.”
“Huh?”
“Nothing.”
Seungjae muttered unconsciously, then closed his mouth when one of the members asked what he meant. It was time to introduce ‘those guys.’
“Next up! The fifth pick in Round 1! Although they had the dismal result of sixteenth place in Round 2, they proved their skills once again by defeating their repêchage opponents, ‘Ulim Stones,’ by an overwhelming margin! And they shine as the overwhelming number-one choice in the survey asking the participating bands about their ‘chances of winning’!!”
The MC poured out the words, then paused for a beat before beginning to shout again.
“We’ll now introduce Group Sound!!”
Amid applause, the four girls stood and waved. Second among the top four. Group Sound was a talented band led by the incredibly skilled guitarist and vocalist, ‘Ha Suyeon.’
Among the participating bands that knew them, people were saying things like, “If you get Ha Suyeon’s pick, or can take even two members of Group Sound, you might be able to make it to the middle of the pack.”
‘It can’t be helped.’
Even setting aside the guitarist ‘Ha Suyeon,’ who seemed to have spent a hundred years training in the Room of Spirit and Time, Group Sound’s other members were far from ordinary. Their most notable trait was… their fundamentals.
Someone had once said, “They feel like students who were coached one-on-one for months by a teacher obsessed with fundamentals.” Kids their age would normally be fixated on flashy playing or technical tricks, but the members of Group Sound rarely showed off those things.
“You said you were going to pick a drummer first, right?”
“Yeah. Yoo Seha. I’ve met her a few times, and she’s good at drums.”
At Seungjae’s words, the band members made comments like, “You know a high school girl? That’s insane.” Seungjae merely chuckled.
But Seha had not originally been that good. She had been just a young girl who asked things like, “Could I join Mystica in a few years?” Yet ever since joining that band, she seemed to have grown tremendously.
“But they’re minors. What are they going to do about the camp filming?”
“These days there’s something called experiential learning or whatever. They must have taken care of it themselves.”
Seungjae said that as he looked ahead. Apparently, things had changed a lot since the days when he attended school, if students could legally take time off for filming.
* * *
The draft, during which countless emotions had passed back and forth—sighs, shrieks, outbursts, and tears—finally came to an end.
“Hello. I’m Ha Suyeon.”
In one of the practice rooms prepared for the camp, Myeongjeon and the members selected through the draft faced one another. The others gave a small round of applause at Myeongjeon’s greeting. Myeongjeon looked over at them.
“We’ve been appearing on the same show, but we don’t really know one another… Would it be all right if we started by introducing ourselves?”
As he spoke, Myeongjeon glanced to the side. A camera was recording. Hadn’t they said, ‘Everything will be recorded twenty-four hours a day except in places where sleep or privacy could be seriously violated’? What kind of human-rights violation was this…? But apparently all idol auditions were like this, so there was nothing he could do but accept it.
“Hello~! I’m Yoon Jihoon on bass!”
The voice was cheerful. He was one of the boy-band members. He did not have much presence, but he had decent fundamentals. There was not much to get excited about, but there was no obvious weakness in his skill, either.
“Drums, Hwang Seongmin from Mystica. It’s a pleasure to work with you.”
Drums. Hwang Seongmin, a member of Mystica. Since he was quite skilled, Myeongjeon had picked him first.
“Hello! I’m Taeyoung, the vocalist of WEKIDS! I look forward to working with you!”
The vocalist. Taeyoung from the boy band WEKIDS, if he remembered correctly. Myeongjeon could sing as well, but the song he had in mind for the competition needed to be sung by a man, so he had no choice but to pick a vocalist.
“Hello. I’m Jung Jaehoon on guitar.”
Last was the rhythm guitarist. The guitarist seemed to be a member of Muzaku, though Myeongjeon had received the player almost as if he had been passed along. There was not much to expect from the guitarist. Myeongjeon would be satisfied if the player simply refrained from ‘trolling.’
“It’s a somewhat awkward mission, but now that things have turned out this way, I look forward to working with you during the camp.”
Applause broke out again, followed by an awkward atmosphere. Myeongjeon remained silent for a moment before speaking again.
“Even though we have a camp period, we’re still a hastily assembled band. It may be difficult to coordinate all the details. And the mission itself doesn’t seem to demand very much, so I think it would be best to choose a song quickly and move on. I’d like to hear everyone’s opinions first… Does anyone have any suggestions?”
This mission was a free-choice song competition.
Myeongjeon was relieved that, after doing something as bizarre as ‘splitting up bands at a band audition,’ the production staff had not given them another mission like a selected-song competition, composition, arrangement, or genre-specific competition. Even so, he could clearly sense the production staff’s malicious intentions.
‘Because these assholes had ordered us to choose the competition song by majority vote.’
They had announced that a song would not be accepted as their competition song unless it was approved by majority vote. After tearing the bands apart, they had ordered the resulting bands to reach a ‘majority consensus,’ guaranteeing that the members would fight over their opinions. Myeongjeon could do nothing but marvel. He had heard that people in television were crazy, but he had not realized they were this crazy for ratings.
“I… don’t really have anything.”
“I’d like to do something with a strong sound. A song that could leave a powerful impact.”
Those were the bass and drums speaking. Myeongjeon nodded. So they did not have any particular opinions of their own.
“I… well, since Leader Ha Suyeon usually chooses songs with a low vocal presence, I’d like to do a song with vocals!”
“You don’t have a particular song in mind?”
“Nothing comes to mind right now.”
Myeongjeon took that as a good sign. He had a song in mind. If the rhythm guitarist had no particular ideas either, they could simply go with Myeongjeon’s choice.
“There is a song I’d like to do.”
“…What song is it?”
The rhythm guitarist, however, seemed to have something in mind, judging by the way the guitarist answered Myeongjeon’s question.
“Blonde Redhead’s ‘The One I Love.’”
“…What song is that?”
The vocalist stared blankly after hearing the song title and asked the question. Myeongjeon pressed a hand to his forehead. He understood that it was a decent song, but was it really suitable for this lineup? It was not a song that could leave much of an impact. It would also require a considerable amount of rearranging.
“I know it’s a good song, but… I don’t think it suits our lineup at all. The sound isn’t particularly strong, either. And the original has a female vocalist.”
“I think it could work perfectly well. You say it doesn’t fit, but I think it would fit just fine. You do vocals too, don’t you?”
“I don’t know…”
Myeongjeon tried to persuade the guitarist, but the rhythm guitarist remained extremely uncooperative. Myeongjeon found that strange. Surely the guitarist knew that this was not a song to bring to a competition. Why was the guitarist acting like this?
‘Maybe there’s some kind of complaint.’
Still, they had to follow the procedure. There was no point in digging in the guitarist’s heels like that by himself. If the guitarist continued being uncooperative, Myeongjeon could simply ask the staff to exclude the player… Besides, if Myeongjeon told them about the song he had in mind, they would have no choice but to agree. He opened his mouth.
If he named the song he had in mind, they’d have no choice but to agree. With that thought, Myeongjeon opened his mouth.
“The song I have in mind is…”
A classic among classics, a song that was bound to suit a competition like this… one of the songs Myeongjeon was most confident in. No, the song he was most confident in.
“Cream’s ‘White Room.’”