Chapter 50
We were the stars of the first episode. I was sure of it as soon as I saw the heavily edited scenes of our dorm—although my members seemed to dislike it.
“Ah...”
“Was our dorm always this small...?”
“Why does it look worse on the screen...?”
The members seemed to be shocked by our poor living environment shown on the screen and began to self-console themselves by saying it wasn’t as bad as it looked on TV. However, everyone implicitly knew that it was just as shown on TV so the atmosphere became gloomy.
“Hey~ We can just do well and move~ It’ll be impactful and nice!” Dong-Jun said something to turn the mood around, and the members felt a bit better after hearing him. Meanwhile, the show was continuing.
—We don’t have a team greeting yet, so can we just do a basic greeting?
The scene where we greeted the viewers for the first time appeared on screen.
—Hello! This is Siren! Nice to meet you!
Compared to how narrow and rundown the dorm was, we were edited as being bright and hopeful. The next scene that immediately followed was of us eating.
—Okay! Get the table out! Ah come on, set up the table!
—Yeahhh!
Do-Seung brought out a steaming hot soybean paste stew while shouting at us to get the table out. When that part came out, Do-Seung almost spat out the water he was drinking.
“...Hmph! Ah, no! Why was that on the show?” Do-Seung seemed embarrassed as it was the first time that an idol got annoyed so far in the first episode. Of course, from an outsider’s perspective, his annoyance didn’t seem like he was genuinely angry but more like a natural annoyance to his family members. However, that wasn’t the only problem.
“We’re the only group who boiled stew in a pot with heaping portions of rice...?”
Our breakfast menu was also too contrasting to the others.
“Wow...”
“We’re legendary in many ways...”
Frankly, we didn’t eat like that every day. In fact, we might eat the least among the groups participating in The Showcase, but that day just happened to be the day we ate a lot. Since we were coming out on TV, we tried to take out high-quality ingredients, and the only ingredients we found in our dorm were food like spam and eggs.
Thus, that’s why we had cooked spam and rolled omelets in addition to our normal meal. As for the soybean paste stew, we ate that every single day. As a result, our breakfast table coincidentally became full of salty side dishes, and Dong-Jun couldn’t stand all the salty food and piled up a lot of rice in his bowl to combat the salty taste. And because of all this, our breakfast table appeared as if we all had massive portions.
‘We became a group with the highest Engel’s coefficient.’
None of the scenes after this were exactly normal as well.
—Park Dong-Jun, I told you that you can’t eat double portions of rice.
—Come on! You said I can eat a lot for breakfast!
—There’s still a limit.
—But if there’s spam and egg rolls, you need to eat a lot of rice.
— No, you should eat moderately.
Do-Seung and Dong-Jun fought early in the morning on screen.
—Do-Seung, don’t be too hard on Dong-Jun.
Meanwhile, Woon was elegant all by himself.
—It’s good~ So good~ I’m starting to hum because of how good it is~
And Yeon-Hoon suddenly began singing while eating. Our breakfast scene was a chaotic mess, and I was shown as a man sitting in the corner and picking at my food. In other words, I didn’t get much footage, but it was hard to get airtime in this kind of situation as the other members were a natural at hogging all the camera’s attention.
Afterward, there was a scene where we ate and cleaned up the table. From up to here, there was nothing particularly strange as the other groups also showed scenes of eating and cleaning the dorm together.
The only difference was that we looked a lot more natural. Other groups seemed aware of the cameras and showed a stiff appearance, but our group didn’t have anything like that. It seemed as if my repeated emphasis to my members from the day before the shooting to show their natural selves had been effective.
However, maybe it was too natural, as the laundry drying rack was clearly exposed on screen. Usually, when a broadcasting crew came, it was normal to clean up things like that, and to make it worse, all the laundry on the drying rack was dry.
—Aren’t you going to take out the clothes?
—Ah, it’s a drying rack that we also use as a hanger...
—You don’t use a hanger?
—It’s because we put our laundry in there right now
—What? You hang clothes on the drying rack and dry the laundry on the hanger?
—Well, that’s how things turned out.
This was a scene that I hadn’t expected to air. Writer Kim Min-Young kept asking me various questions about this and that, so I just roughly gave her answers. And this scene must have been created in the process. I didn’t think too much on the day of the shooting but—
‘Now, I came out as a weird guy.’ I came out as a person who used a hanger to dry clothes and a laundry dryer as a hanger.
“All furniture is hybrid these days~”
“When did you do that kind of interview?”
“Tae-Yoon’s expression looks so serious.”
After cleaning the dorm, it immediately led to the scene of us going to the practice room. Other groups going to their practice rooms were edited out, but ours wasn’t cut and appeared all on air.
“I think we got a lot of screen time, right?”
“Wait a minute, huh? Yeah?”
Currently, our group received a lot more screen time compared to the others. The dorm scene was 1.5 times longer than Only One and almost twice as long as OnebyOne and Luminin. Since the scene where we moved to our practice room was not edited out, our screen time got even longer.
Even when we went to the practice room, the direction of our storyline didn’t change much–we were shown as having bright and energetic attitudes despite our poor living conditions. By this point, we could clearly see what type of character the production crew wanted to portray us as: idols who were poor with no support but bright and hopeful.
‘This is also the core identity of The Showcase 2’s theme.’ I think we were the perfect idols they had in mind when they were imagining and planning this program. The scenes of us warming up and practicing in the practice room were quickly edited and played on screen. Among them, the highlight was Yeon-Hoon’s singing. A person, who always ran around with a smile, showed a 180-degree different side of him when he started singing.
—In the dead of night, I am too restless to sleep
—You are a ray of light, warm and soft
— who embraced and awakened me.
This scene must have been quite shocking to the production crew. They even used a shaky cut that a camera director took because he was so shocked by Yeon-Hoon’s singing. Normally, they didn’t use cuts like that.
‘But they must have used it on purpose.’
I thought this cut was intentionally added to show the shock value of Yeon-Hoon’s singing.
—Even if I run away, it chases after me
—This emotion called love
—is a flower that has bloomed belatedly
—but will never wither and that...ack!
However, before the atmosphere could got too serious, it turned light-hearted once again.
—A bug entered my mouth! Eeeeeckkkk!
The song stopped because a bug entered Yeon-Hoon’s mouth, and the next scene was where we all laughed out loud. In the subtitles, the phrase ‘the entertainment god has descended on Siren’ came out on screen, and then the scene where I sang came out briefly. Then Woon, Do-Seung, and Dong-Jun’s singing came out. Although Yeon-Hoon had actually sung the last, they must have changed the order to increase the entertainment value of the show.
After that, the cut changed again and the final scene came out. It was a scene where we turned the wheel to select a target to make our declaration of war. I don’t think they put as much effort into this scene. However, they seemed to want to emphasize our friendship as they aired us having a meeting in front of the spinning wheel for a long time.
—Can I spin the wheel?
—It could be risky for you.
—Will you be all right?
—Then we can all spin the wheel together and provoke the other group together!
When I tried to spin it alone, the members tried to stop me.
—No, the mission is for only one of you guys to spin the spinning wheel and declare war on the chosen group!
And the production team tried to stop us from using any tricks. It was an editing typical of entertainment shows. After that, the spinning wheel turned and excitement began to build up for who would come out. However, the cut was over without telling the group we made our declaration of war, and then the scene shifted to another group.
“Wow!”
“I was completely immersed!”
“I knew all the content, but it kept my attention because of how it’s edited.”
“Amazing.”
The members were immersed in the broadcast and let out their various impressions of the episode. I also thought they did a good job in making the show fun. However, this wasn’t the important part.
“We got a lot of screen time, right?”
“Yeah.”
“I think we came out too much.”
We took up too much screen time compared to the others. Of course, this was a good thing, but I didn’t think it would be to this extent. There was a saying that more was just as bad as less. Of course, I would have to see how things actually turn out to make a clear assessment. The screen showed other groups going to the practice room and practicing. The group that came out right after us was Only One.
Only One’s practice room looked comfortable and spacious, incomparable to ours. Based on other normal companies, it was actually not that spacious, but because it came out after us, it looked extra nice. After that, Bleshu, OnebyOne, and Luminin’s practice videos followed. When I roughly calculated the amount of screen time, it seemed that we all generally received around the same amount.
‘But the impact is different for showing everything at once without cutting it in the middle.’ There was no way the production crew didn’t know this. Perhaps, the production crew might have only given everyone an equal amount of time to avoid getting insulted. Then the next scene changed to the studio. All the groups came up to the studio and greeted each other; even here, we stepped out of the norm. While other groups exchanged greetings that ended with hello, nice to meet you, we were the only ones who shouted our team slogan.
—One, two, say yes! Hello! We’re Siren! We look forward to meeting you all!”
“Ah.”
“Damn.”
Sigh. “...I’m so embarrassed.”
We didn’t know how to give our greeting at the time so we just went with our team greeting, but I didn’t know the other groups just said hello and nice to meet you. I had no idea it would be like this. Since we were the last to come up to the studio, we had no idea what kind of greeting came by and went. Like this, we became a group that overreacted, and a reaction cut of other groups blinking at us and reacting awkwardly was added.
“Yeon-Hoon, are you okay?”
“Me? Oh, no problem! I’m fine!”
I asked Yeon-Hoon if he was all right because his face had turned so red that it looked like it was about to explode. Since then, miscellaneous scenes from the studio were aired. Scenes where different groups chatted amongst each other and nervously glanced at each other. The scene where we greeted the hosts and watched the declaration of war videos. In our part, the content was edited to focus mostly on our pitiful circumstances. It seemed as if the production crew had taken a liking to our sad story. Then the scene changed to our performance.
“Oh!”
“Wow!”
“The energy is different on the show.”
The production crew didn’t mess around when editing the stage video, since everyone got the same amount of screen time and cuts. They only added reaction cuts in the middle and camera movements tailored to the stage movement. If they messed around with even the stage performance, they would be criticized these days.
Therefore, it seemed that they had given a fair amount of screen time for the different performances. However, just because they provided the same amount of editing and screen time, it didn’t mean that the performances were all of the same quality. Rather, thanks to their limited editing, the difference in abilities between the teams were more starkly revealed. Frankly, Luminin, OnebyOne, and Bleshu, I couldn’t even remember what the difference between them was.
‘I can’t tell between them.’ However, when Only One came out—
“Wow!”
“Awesome...”
“Senior Hyun-Sung is really good with facial expressions...”
Their performance was so good that we exclaimed despite having seen it once before. I thought they had done well in the actual performance, but it was even more noticeable when I saw it on the screen. After Only One’s performance ended, our performance began.
“Hmm.”
“Pwehh.”
The members all seemed nervous as they closed their mouths and focused only on the screen.
“Oh...?”
“Ohhh...”
“Wow...!”
However, as the performance progressed, the members’ faces began to change.
“Wow, we were this good?” The reason was simple–we clearly did well.
Honestly, I thought we were better than Only One. Our performance looked better than Only One, which seemed to be the best among them all. However, the members’ expressions were not just bright. Since we placed last for this performance, they had mixed emotions about it. Complex emotions began to appear on their faces. After that performance ended, the stage performance ended and the ranking announcement started.
The broadcast showed Only One ranking first and us ranking last. The camera zoomed to the members’ expressions slightly falling when we were ranked last and with this—
Da-dum!
“Wow, they ended it here.”
“Haha...”
Episode 1 of The Showcase 2 was over. In the preview of the second episode, which followed immediately, an interview according to the ranking announcement briefly appeared. Fierce reactions to the next mission, and the group’s determination to do really well came out in the preview, and with this, Episode 1 of The Showcase completely ended. Now, there was a TV commercial on the screen. The members stared blankly at the laptop screen without saying a word. The atmosphere was ambiguous. Although we performed well on stage, the show ended with us placing last.
“Well, um, I guess this is good for us...?” Besides our mixed feelings about being last, we all shared similar sentiments.
“...Probably?”
“...We got a lot of screen time.”
The first episode was centered around us. No, the show itself blatantly edited around us.
“We did it, right?”
“I think we won.”
“To be honest, I couldn’t even see the other teams.”
Aside from finishing last, we reaped all the benefits of being on a show.
“...We did it!”
“...We made it!”
“Aghhhh!”
“We did it! We did it!”
The members kept shouting we did it and jumped up from their seats and cheered.
“Tae-Yoon, we did it! We really did it!”
I wasn’t exactly sure what we did so far, but their reactions were enough for me. At the same time, I worried about the internet’s reaction. We became the main characters of episode 1.
‘Then that means the fans of the original main characters won’t stay still.’ This also meant that we would earn the resentment of those who got their positions stolen from us.
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