Episode 167: Passion (3)
The surprise guests that Ryu Je-hyuk had brought faithfully completed their role and left.
“Hehe.”
“Hehe…”
The owners of the slightly silly laughter were So Young-I and Jin Ro-a.
It had already been nearly three hours since the stage ended and they returned to the dorm.
The glamorous aura that had wrapped around their bodies had long since been completely wiped away, yet So Young-I kept opening and closing her hands as if searching for something, and Jin Ro-a was tilting her head slightly while letting out a dazed laugh.
‘So Young-I seems unable to forget the feel of the microphone.’
The sensation in the hand when sound poured out toward the microphone aimed at the audience seats was definitely thrilling.
Some might say it was purely psychological, but well.
Since he personally had never experienced that situation, he could understand to some extent how So Young-I, who had tasted that hot thrill for the first time, felt.
It was the same for Jin Ro-a.
‘She’s the kid who came all the way here searching for that moment.’
She was a countryside girl who had spent her entire life in a place no different from the remote countryside in that vast land, and she had finally held even a fragment of her dream in her hands.
Having spent 16 years with the kid who had left her family’s arms at a young age and lived alone across the sea in a foreign land, he could roughly guess the pleasure Jin Ro-a was savoring right now.
The other three weren’t very different either.
It was just that So Young-I and Jin Ro-a were the ones showing reactions easy enough to notice at a glance.
Nari, Chaekyung, and Kim Su-jin also had deep blushes coloring their cheeks.
‘For something like that, time is the answer.’
It couldn’t exactly be called the same, but if he had to give an example, it was probably similar to the intoxication from alcohol.
Even if one got drunk on that fuzzy daze without knowing the limit when first drinking, as the frequency increased, one gradually realized their own limit.
The true taste of the stage with real audiences in front would also become familiar little by little as experience accumulated.
Of course, just as one couldn’t simply overlook mistakes made while drunk, if they got drunk on that passionate cheer and their mindset became lax, he would have to scold them sternly.
Vrrr.
While he was thinking that, his phone vibrated lightly once.
The name that flashed across the briefly lit screen clearly belonged to one of the Project Trinity production staff.
This message that had just arrived was exactly the reason he had stayed here instead of going home even at this late hour.
“The results are here.”
The role of today’s audience, the military soldiers, was not only to enjoy the stage.
As was common in competition programs that competed on stage quality, they couldn’t simply pass over the evaluation of those who had enjoyed the stage most closely.
Since Project Trinity promoted the new format of deciding the winner purely through public choice without judges’ evaluation, it was only right to include their reactions in the evaluation even more.
The role left for him was to deliver the results to the kids.
Well, he could have left that role to the production staff and gone home, but things like this piled up to create the atmosphere, and the created atmosphere became the attitude.
‘Did someone else do that?’
He didn’t know about the other teams, but he didn’t want to pass his role onto someone else.
‘By the way, how many points did they get?’
In this kind of format, there were generally two ways to score.
Relative evaluation, where they voted for the one or two or three best stages and calculated the ratio.
Absolute evaluation, where they voted on whether they liked the stage or not and calculated the score.
The method chosen for this stage was the latter.
Moreover, it was a rather strict evaluation where they didn’t evaluate the team as a whole across the two stages, but gave separate evaluations for each stage.
Of course, separate from that strictness, the audience’s reaction had been so tremendous that it could have pierced the ceiling, so he wasn’t too worried.
“Waah!”
“It’s here!”
“How many points did we get?”
“Roa says she’s dizzy!”
He paused for a moment.
This kind of closeness in rushing toward him was something that could never have happened to Han Yujin, who had been called the devil producer before his regression.
Of course, he wasn’t upset.
Rather, he simply thought this kind of atmosphere was really nice.
“…yo.”
As if misunderstanding his reaction, Jin Ro-a, who was skillfully speaking Korean, hurriedly added the polite ending “yo” after bringing up the old meme of “dizzy” along with the meme of “the Chinese person’s standard as thought by Koreans.”
“PD is a person too. Wait a little.”
When he responded with an old meme as well, smiles bloomed and spread across the momentarily frozen atmosphere.
And then,
“‘Morning in blue’ 463 points. ‘In shadow’ 471 points.”
He opened the message and read part of its contents.
“As expected, In shadow got a higher score…”
“Ugh… yeah…”
Chaekyung muttered as if disappointed, and So Young-I fiddled with her hands while slightly pouting her lips.
‘This can’t be helped.’
Morning in blue was a stage centered on lyrical melody and lyrics with vocal ability as the point, while In shadow was a stage that tried to reveal performance within a bewitching atmosphere.
Because of that, Morning in blue inevitably had Chaekyung and So Young-I as the main vocal line, and In shadow had Nari, Jin Ro-a, and Kim Su-jin as the main axis.
“It can’t be helped.”
But before he could say anything, Nari spoke first.
“Rather than saying Chaekyung unnie or So Young-I didn’t do well, shouldn’t we see it as a difference in the audience’s preferences?”
Nari’s appearance as she encouraged Chaekyung and So Young-I with the exact same reason he had thought of cut off any room for him to intervene.
“Chaekyung, So Young. Look. Out of 500 people, 8 is just a little over 1%. With that small a difference, both Morning in blue and In shadow did well.”
“Is… that so…?”
“I don’t think we should judge who did well and who didn’t. Both Morning in blue and In shadow were done by all of us together.”
“Ah.”
On top of that, Jin Ro-a compared it numerically while Kim Su-jin brought up a fair argument and blocked Chaekyung and So Young-I from speaking further.
The sight was so heartwarming that he couldn’t help but like it, so he subtly covered his rising lips with his hand.
However, it wasn’t without regrettable parts.
‘Aren’t they forgetting what’s really important?’
It was the remaining content of the message that he had deliberately not read yet.
[Team Y Results]
[- Morning in blue : 463 points (Overall ranking 3rd)]
[- In shadow : 471 points (Overall ranking 1st)]
[Audience Vote Tally Ranking : 1st]
What mattered was not how many points they received, but what rank they achieved.
Because the audience atmosphere hadn’t been good only for them.
‘I’ll let it slide today.’
But he decided not to point it out.
Not only the three he had watched since before his regression, but Nari and Jin Ro-a as well had sufficient judgment ability.
If they had been the usual kids, they probably wouldn’t have been so happy and disappointed over a single score like this.
But right now the kids were close to being mentally and physically exhausted.
Just as there was no great meaning in saying something to someone drunk on alcohol, it might be a bit too much to expect rational judgment from kids drunk on the heat of passion they were tasting for the first time.
‘Well, it’s not like they missed 1st place.’
In any case, the audience vote was only part of the evaluation.
The real result for this stage would be decided one week later when this stage aired.
“Anyway, good work today. Rest well and see you tomorrow morning.”
Rather than spoiling the mood for no reason, he turned his body to give the kids space to enjoy their own atmosphere.
“Teacher, are you leaving already?”
So Young-i’s voice caught his ankle.
When he turned back, five pairs of slightly round eyes were looking at him.
“I really don’t have any feedback on the stage content because you all did so well, and you handled the necessary talk among yourselves well. So today ends here.”
He said that and tried to turn his body again, but
“It’s not that…”
So Young-I caught him again.
And then,
“You have to tell us what rank we got before you leave.”
A firm voice lightly tapped the back of his head.
It seemed he had been looking at the kids too lightly.
***
“Puhaha!”
A pleasant laugh tickled his ear.
“Yujin, that was your mistake! It’s not like you’re dealing with kindergarten kids.”
Of course, the problem was that the reason for that laughter was his own embarrassment(?).
Still, he didn’t really mind.
If Zia laughed like this, this much embarrassment was nothing.
‘How startled I was earlier.’
When he had seen her squatting on the sofa in the dark without the lights on, he really thought his heart was going to drop.
Well, once he realized she wasn’t depressed or anything but simply dozing off from exhaustion, he felt somewhat relieved.
“Oh my. My body is still heavy. But laughing makes it a bit better.”
“Don’t laugh. Your dignity is in shambles.”
“Dignity? We’re not even that far apart in age. It’s better than really difficult things…”
He hadn’t really meant for her not to laugh, but unfortunately Zia’s laughter didn’t last long.
He hadn’t said the reason directly, but there was no way she wouldn’t know it.
“Compared to Sunbae-nim Ahjeong, she is definitely a bit difficult.”
Cho Soon-deok.
It was definitely a name that couldn’t help but be difficult.
‘The quality of the scripts coming in has changed.’
The scripts that came in thanks to Lee Ahjeong’s halo weren’t bad, but now even those couldn’t compare.
When he heard the names of the people sending love calls, even Yoon Chanwoo PD, who could be considered a veteran, became a green rookie.
“Weren’t you uncomfortable, Yujin…?”
“With who?”
“With the president… or someone like Senior Kim Kwangyong.”
It was a question that wasn’t easy to answer.
Now he had his own experience, but if the him from around this time before his regression had gotten involved with Bang Ho-kyung, Seo Yoonje, Kim Kwangyong, and others, he might have been the same.
Don’t feel burdened.
Just do what you usually do and they’ll be satisfied enough.
Many words passed through his mind, but
“Well… it was difficult.”
He simply said that and reached out to wrap his arm around Zia’s small shoulder.
No matter what he said, there seemed to be no better answer than this gesture.
“Sigh…”
A small sigh came back, and for a moment he thought he should have said something, but Zia also reached out and pressed her body closer to him.
‘Phew.’
He let out a sigh of relief inwardly, lightly circling the answer he had written, while his hand continued to pat Zia’s back with a steady rhythm.
“Sniff. Sniff.”
And soon the small sound of breathing began to tickle his chest,
“Ah.”
Only then did he realize that a tremendous ordeal was flying toward him.
The soft, lumpy sensation that he couldn’t help but be conscious of no matter how hard he tried not to.
‘Think of a new song. Think of a new song.’
He fell asleep only after thinking for a long time about the new song that Team Y’s kids would perform on the final stage.
Of course, not a single note was written on the score in his head.
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