Chapter 89

The day of the second competition dawned.

In the meantime, one question had occurred to me.

...Does this Plausibility thing not have an auto-grind function?

Normally, if I left Gowon alone, he would raise his Vocals or Dance level on his own.

The current Gowon practiced just as much, so I had assumed there would be some degree of automatic increase in Plausibility too.

But apparently, improvements he made while practicing somewhere I couldn’t see weren’t counted toward Plausibility.

“Ah.”

Plausibility has increased.

Current Plausibility: 49% (▲4)

A notification suddenly appeared in front of me.

When I wondered why, I realized it was because I had happened to run into Gowon while walking down the hallway.

That confirmed it.

This Plausibility changed whenever I, someone who originally wasn’t supposed to exist here, exerted an influence.

Which meant that while we were apart, Plausibility remained frozen, so I had barely gained any during the preparation period for the second competition.

So do I seriously have to stay beside him and take care of every little thing?

Develop some independence, teenage Gowon.

“...Why are you looking at me like that?”

“Gowon, why are you like this as a person?”

“...? Were you... talking to me...?”

Who else would I be talking to?

Leaving behind Gowon, who for some reason looked genuinely shocked, I headed to the waiting room where my team had gathered.

“Oh.”

“...Wow.”

The team members in the waiting room turned toward me, each adding a comment.

“Baek Hanje, stage makeup seriously suits you.”

“You’re handsome, but somehow kind of scary too... haha....”

With the highly saturated makeup that matched our freewheeling hip-hop concept, everyone looked unable to hide how awkward they felt about their own appearance.

I had done every kind of concept imaginable, so naturally I was completely unfazed.

That probably made it look even more natural to the trainees.

“You seriously look like a delinquent.”

Could’ve done without the extra commentary.

The competition began, and before long, it was our team’s turn.

The lights above the members standing in formation went dark.

Boom— boom—

As the intro began reverberating through the speakers, cheers erupted from the audience.

I practically had no part in the first verse.

Even my position was toward the back of the formation.

I could come forward a little in the second verse by adding some doubling, but even that was mostly just to close out the section.

As we changed positions, I passed by the leader.

The moment our eyes met, I smiled faintly.

I know you’re in a situation where you have to do whatever it takes to survive.

And it was true that the entertainment industry was full of people awful enough to make someone like you look cute by comparison.

So I didn’t hold some enormous grudge against him.

Even so—

I’m definitely sending you home this time.

The next final round would probably have around twenty contestants left.

The leader was ranked fourteenth.

There was no telling how the results would shift depending on this stage.

I already had too little time when I needed to drag Gowon upward by the collar.

I couldn’t leave open even the possibility of ending up on the same team with someone like this again.

I looked straight into the lit camera lens.

What a relief.

That Gowon wasn’t on the same team as me for this mission.

Because if he had been—

Even I wouldn’t have been able to go this far.

***

“That team’s arrangement is really good. Baek Hanje probably did that too, right?”

A teammate spoke to him.

Gowon answered, “Looks like it,” but couldn’t tear his eyes away from the screen.

There wasn’t a single flaw he could find in the competition song.

Baek Hanje’s distinctive touch was thoroughly woven into the perfectly arranged track.

But the problem was—

...Doesn’t Baek Hanje have way too little to do?

On top of that, the other people filling the vocal parts were so much worse that they weren’t even comparable.

That would’ve had way more impact if Baek Hanje had sung it.

A trainee who was one year younger than him, yet so skilled and confident that sometimes that fact itself felt strangely unreal.

The dark crimson concept of this performance suited him far better than the soft knitwear from the first competition.

Perhaps Baek Hanje could have pulled off the original mood of the song during the previous competition too.

But considering how much thought he had put into creating a version that suited every member of the team, he seemed to have tremendous pride in and dedication to the quality of the stage.

This time too, he kept Nam Jeongho, who’s on his team again, behind after everyone else and made him practice vocals alone with him until dawn.

Even with the team atmosphere as bad as it was now, he seemed determined to make the stage good.

“......”

Baek Hanje retreated along the rear path and disappeared into the formation again.

“Is he some kind of pushover...?”

He gives everything away to his teammates.

Gowon muttered something that would have kept Baek Hanje awake all night in sheer disbelief if he had heard it.

After being tucked away in the back row for a while, Baek Hanje finally came forward when the second verse began.

In the brief instant when everyone’s eyes scattered as the formation shifted, he alone looked directly into the camera.

Then a smile appeared.

......!

For a moment, everyone else on the stage seemed to vanish, and all of Gowon’s attention locked onto Baek Hanje alone.

...What?

Even though it wasn’t a part where he was the main focus, Gowon’s eyes kept following him.

Only when Nam Jeongho finally unleashed the bridge did Gowon snap back to his senses enough to look at the person standing in the center.

The bridge ended.

Baek Hanje stepped into the middle of the formation.

And at that moment—

It was as though he had finally returned to where he belonged.

His presence became even more overwhelming.

“...Wow....”

“.......”

The waiting room fell silent.

Without letting go of the attention he had drawn to himself, Baek Hanje sang the chorus while executing the intense choreography.

His pitch didn’t waver by even a fraction.

His diction landed with such precision it felt as though the words were being engraved directly into the listener’s ears.

And on top of that was the emotional pull of his uniquely distinctive voice.

The chorus repeated three times, with three vocalists singing the same melody and the same lyrics.

Yet it was almost enough to make them sound like three completely different songs.

The first two had stopped dancing and stood still, pouring all their strength into singing.

Then there was Baek Hanje, who delivered his part at a vastly higher level while still performing the choreography.

The comparison was inevitable.

The vocalist doing ad-libs beside Baek Hanje even started to look ridiculous.

“...He’s absolutely destroying the other guys....”

“His vocals are insane. He’s seventeen?”

Even the audience on the other side of the monitor looked completely stunned.

And Baek Hanje didn’t stop there.

As the formation changed again, the camera switched to a full-group shot, but every pair of eyes—including Gowon’s—followed Baek Hanje alone.

In the brief time he had occupied the center, he had left behind an overwhelming presence.

The impact was like a meteor being driven straight into the stage.

It didn’t fade easily.

The aftershock was so immense that afterward, nothing on the stage seemed visible except him.

It almost felt like a solo performance....

My being here at all is already cheating.

Gowon remembered what Baek Hanje had said.

There hadn’t been even the slightest exaggeration in it.

“...Ha.”

It wasn’t as though he had deliberately interfered with everyone around him.

The sheer presence he naturally gave off was simply on a completely different level.

And he told me to try beating this?

A shudder ran through Gowon’s entire body.

He knew this was the same arrogant bastard he had seen in the practice room and the dorm, yet right now Baek Hanje looked like a star hanging impossibly high above him.

Genius.

Even that word didn’t feel sufficient.

In truth, Baek Hanje was a large part of the reason Gowon had thrown himself so intensely into preparing for this competition.

If I manage to keep first place overall even in this situation, wouldn’t that be incredibly humiliating for everyone else?

That single sentence had kept him in the practice room until he was so exhausted he couldn’t move a finger.

...And if Baek Hanje happened to lose first place because he’d had bad luck with his team, Gowon hadn’t wanted that position to go to someone else.

If that happens, I’d rather it be me....

That was what he had thought.

“......”

But now Baek Hanje had completely crushed Gowon’s competitive spirit.

And Gowon had already experienced Baek Hanje’s ability firsthand during the first competition.

If even he felt this way, the other trainees looked even more dumbfounded.

Until the very moment Baek Hanje took his place for the final ending, he made everyone focus on him and no one else.

The ending apparently was his part to begin with, but even the camera focused on just one person—the final pose, the soft smile blooming across his face, and even his closing greeting.

For a brief moment after the stage ended, there was silence.

WAAAAAAAAAH!!!!!

Then cheers and screams of admiration erupted so loudly they reverberated all the way into the waiting room.

Of all the names being shouted between them, Baek Hanje’s was overwhelmingly the loudest.

“Whew....”

Baek Hanje is definitely making the debut lineup.

No.

He wouldn’t merely make the debut lineup.

He would continue holding first place by an overwhelming margin.

Then he would become an idol and perform on many more stages.

...It seemed like watching those stages, wherever they happened, would be enjoyable.

But when that happens, I hope there aren’t people like these teammates around you.

“Debut Coming Soon team, please stand by below the stage.”

“Yes!”

It was Gowon’s turn to perform too.

He stood up together with his teammates.

Because the hand kiss he had done in the intro during the previous stage had become a hot topic, Gowon had once again been given the opening position.

...And since this was one of the songs written on the note Baek Hanje gave me, competing for center was a little easier too.

Gowon’s team was performing a sexy concept in uniforms tightened with harnesses.

Stand out for even one more second.

Catch even one more person’s eye.

Make them look at me with everything I have.

He had just learned how from Baek Hanje.

His heartbeat accelerated under the tension.

The moment the spotlight came on with the opening of the song he had practiced hundreds of times—

Gowon leaned his upper body forward as though he might spill straight toward the audience and stepped into the choreography.

The lit camera immediately entered his field of vision.

More force entered his eyes, and then the arms and legs moving through the choreography.

I know how to do it now.

After the second competition—

Across countless community sites he knew nothing about, mentions of “Gowon” began increasing exponentially.