The Maknae Has to Be an Idol

Chapter 174

Why in the world did I do this again? How could I push myself into a pit of mockery once again? Apart from my despair, the fans’ reactions were good. I didn’t know whether the fans were truly happy or were comforting me after seeing how embarrassed I was.

Sigh. I felt like my face was going to explode.

“Hahaha! How nice it was to hear our maknae Bong Tae-Yoon’s cute greeting! Then let’s listen to Park Dong-Jun’s last greeting. Mr. Dong-Jun, is there anything you want to say to Sailors?” The host progressed the script so that this chaos wouldn’t last for too long.

Dong-Jun glanced at me and then said, “I also debuted, nuna! Please take good care of me! Let’s see each other very, very often!”

“Hahaha!”

“Dong-Juuun!”

“Wow...Park Dong-Jun is...amazing...”

The nuna comment went on for a second round. Why the heck did he have to do it a second time, and how far did he seriously want to tease me? Woon must have caught that I might have a mental breakdown if this situation prolonged, so he made normal comments—no, I thought they would be normal.

“We would be able to see each other much more often in the future, so let’s make a lot of good memories together.” There was no problem up to this point. “Then let’s see each other again, nunas.” That dreaded nuna crawled back again without disappearing.

I trusted that Do-Seung of all people would not join in but...

Do-Seung said, “Judging by the flow of things...it feels like I have to say nuna no matter what...”

I didn’t know why he suddenly cared so much about the flow of things. Why was he caring so much about what other people were doing when he didn’t have such great social aptitude in the first place?

When I fiercely glared at him, it triggered Do-Seung even more instead. With a playful expression, he said, “I guess I have no choice but to say it since Tae-Yoon is staring at me with such loving eyes. Please look forward to our activities. We’ll make a lot of good songs and frequently come back with good performances. Then let’s meet again, nuna.”

“...”

It was the fourth round of nuna now, and by this point, nuna now became an unstoppable flow.

The last batter, Yeon-Hoon, was looking at the front with a very determined expression. “Honestly...I also really...wanted to try saying nuna once too...”

I was sure that Yeon-Hoon was 100% enjoying this situation. Judging by how the corners of his mouth were twitching, he was ready to spit it out at any moment.

“Sailors! Today is our first day, so don’t ever leave in the middle and stay by our sides forever! We’ll also continue to wait for you all here. Then let’s see each other again tomorrow, nuna!” Yeon-Hoon confidently said his comments as if he were making a confession he waited to say for a long time.

“Kyahhhh!” The concert hall was overflowing with the fans’ screams and cheers.

“Hahaha! That was Siren’s last greeting all finished with nuna.” The host said a conclusive remark to calm the audience and continued, “Then we want to thank the fans who’ve participated in Siren’s debut show so far, and we will conclude the show for now. Thank you!”

With these lines, the broadcast was over.

“Thank you!”

“Thank yooou!”

The fans who filled the concert hall began to leave one by one. We captured each and every fan leaving the concert hall while standing on stage. The fans waved at us or mouthed a line or two while leaving. We waved back to the fans who waved at us and replied to the fans who mouthed a line or two.

Soon after, we moved to the waiting room according to the staff’s instructions. Since confusion could occur if we stayed on the stage for any longer, it couldn’t be helped. After we moved to the waiting room, we exclaimed and cheered to our heart’s content.

“Well done, guys!”

“We debuted!”

“Wooow!”

“We finally debuted!”

“Ahhhhhh!”

I stared at my members wandering around the waiting room.

“We finally debuted Tae-Yoon! Debut! It’s a debut!” Yeon-Hoon grabbed my arm and did a little dance.

I replied, “I know. We finally debuted.”

“It only feels real after we did the debut show.”

“Great job everyone.”

“Whoa!”

“We debuteeeed!”

“We have to get beer with chicken on a day like this!”

“That’s going overboard, Dong-Jun.”

“...So boring.”

The members expressed their joy of debuting in their own ways.

“Shall we say something to each other to celebrate our debut?” It was then Yeon-Hoon made this suggestion.

“One word each?”

“Suddenly?”

“Why, it’s nice.”

“Yeah, that’s true.”

“Can I curse?”

“No, you can’t do that, Dong-Jun.”

“...All right.”

Thus, starting from Yeon-Hoon, we began to say nice words of encouragement or blessing to each other.

“Since we’ve just debuted, let’s not get in trouble, do bad things, and act impulsively. We all want to work together for a long time, right? Let’s keep this same mindset for a long, long time.”

The atmosphere turned serious at his words. He was right. We needed to keep the same mindset as now. Working as an idol could be unbearably difficult and annoying some days. Then we might naturally participate in immoral or bad actions that we shouldn’t do as stress was one of the things that drove people crazy. Furthermore, being a celebrity made it extremely easy to be exposed to those negative and immoral situations.

However, stress from work wasn’t something that only idols experienced. Everyone got stressed from working, studying, and participating in social life. Thus, there was no need to fall into self-pity and spiral into depression that we had the hardest job or make bad choices from those emotions. In order to not fall for those traps, we needed to keep our initial mindset and conviction for a long time.

“I think the same as Yeon-Hoon. To be honest, we went on a very long and difficult road with a lot of ups and downs to debut. We all didn’t have a short trainee period as well, so let’s not do anything that would embarrass this group and our fans and live with our heads up,” Woon also added to Yeon-Hoon’s words. They were similar to what Yeon-Hoon said.

“I agree 100% with what Yeon-Hoon and Woon said. If we want to be happy after coming through such a long, winded road, this is only the beginning. Let’s do this for a long, long time, healthy and free of unnecessary scandals,” Do-Seung said.

“We have to do Siren until our retirement age and open a dinner show for Sailors~ I’m definitely going to retire after 40 years,” Dong-Jun said in his usual playful tone. The last person was me.

My members said all the important comments and all I had to say was, “Let’s stay healthy and...survive in this industry for...a long, long time...!”

“Is that all, Bong Tae-Yoon?”

“That’s too short.”

“Boo, Bong Tae-Yoon putting in no effort.”

“...” I put my heart into it, but they were shaming me for not being sincere.

“I will do my best not to cause harm to the group and live in a way that our fans won’t be ashamed of me.”

“Good job.”

“That’s good.”

The members smiled, feeling finally satisfied by my comment.

Yeon-Hoon said, “Shall we hug together?”

“Ah, that’s a bit much.”

“That’s going too far, bro.”

“...All right.” Yeon-Hoon seemed to want to hug at this time, but it failed due to everyone’s strong opposition. Instead, he gently wrapped my shoulder and kept patting me.

“Great job, Tae-Yoon.”

“Yes.” I answered by tapping Yeon-Hoon’s head away with my finger.

Just in time, Ms. Seung-Yeon and Ms. Hyuna came into the waiting room.

“Great job, everyone!”

“Congratulations on your debut!”

They both congratulated us on our debut. However, there was one part that was different from before.

“Congratulations! Da-dun!”

There was a cameraman behind them, and Ms. Seung-Yeon had a cake in her hand to celebrate our debut.

“Oh my gosh!”

“Awesome!”

“Wow...”

“Did you get a customized cake?”

The cake was a square-shaped custom-made cake, and there was a model of us on top. I thought they were probably filming this to post a behind-the-scenes video, but...the members didn’t seem to be thinking about that at all. Regardless of whether there was a camera or not, the fact that they prepared a cake for us remained the same.

“Thank you so much. Really...”

“Wow...”

“I never imagined to get such a gift like this.”

“This cake...looks really good...”

We all sat together and ate a piece of cake.

“It’s good!”

“Wow, it’s really soft.”

“Seung-Yeon and I found this bakery after going to so many famous bakeries. It’s good, right?”

“Thank you so much, really.”

We all had cake together for the last time to celebrate our debut. The taste of our debut was...as expected, sweet.

*

After the debut show, we went back to our dorm. We changed into normal clothes and erased our thick makeup for the first time with a cleansing tissue.

“Haa. This is nice. I’m tired, but I feel great.”

The members sat in the vehicle and said things like they were happy, overjoyed, and everything felt surreal every 30 seconds. I hadn’t realized they would be this happy to debut, and it suddenly made me remember my past life when they couldn’t do what they liked so much.

My heart felt heavy, but at the same time, I thought, ‘I have to protect it.’ I strongly thought that I needed to protect them no matter what the system attacked us with.

‘Shall I check the number of views for the music video first.’ I picked up my phone and started checking data like this. The music video for our title song <Blue Summer Night> currently had 2 million views. Considering the time of upload, it was quite a significant number. I thought the number of views would explode tonight.

‘By tomorrow morning, it could go up to 5 million.’ At this rate, it wouldn’t be difficult to achieve 10 million views on our title track music video within a week.

The real problem was selling 500,000 album sales. ‘They said that we had about 300,000 pre-orders.’

There were 300,000 pre-orders sold on the first day. If I included on-site sales on the first day, I thought we could sell about 350,000 copies today. If I looked at it like this, selling 500,00 copies seemed like a walk in the park.

‘But from now on, we’ll only sell 10,000 to 20,000 copies at most a day.’ It was normal for the order volume to be crazy high on the first release date, and from then on, sales volume went down at a tremendous rate. Furthermore, since the number of pre-orders has increased these days, the rate of decline for sales volume after the first release date was sharper than in the past.

‘At this rate...selling about 450,000 copies might be our maximum...’ Even if I made optimistic projections, we wouldn’t be able to reach 500,000. Frankly, I wasn’t afraid because I had expected these numbers. What we did next was the truly important part.

“Oh? Tae-Yoon! What we ordered came to the front of our dorm!”

“Oh, really?”

“Wow, great timing.”

I prepared some events with the members to raise our album sales. Even if things like the broadcast schedule was prepared by the agency, we could prepare for other small events by ourselves. In any case, the idol industry was not an industry that appealed to the majority of the public.

It was an industry that had to appeal to a fandom who enthusiastically liked the group. This meant that as long as we took good care of that fandom, even that could act as a great promotion campaign. In other words, the key was to provide high-quality fan service to the fandom.

“Let’s quickly head to our dorm and get ready.”

“I’m looking forward to tomorrow.”

“Everyone will like it, right?”

We prepared quite a lot of things to provide great fan service to our fans.

*

Early in the morning the day after Siren debuted, Siren fans gathered in front of GBS’ live hall, where pre-recorded music broadcasts were held. Since it was June, the weather wasn’t bone-chillingly cold, but it was still the crack of dawn. It was not a comfortable situation at all, but the fans were hungry, tired, and their legs hurt.

“Did you watch the debut show yesterday?”

“Of course. Seriously...Do-Seung...Ha...”

“Hahaha! Whenever I ask the question, everyone starts with Do-Seung.”

“Ah, but Tae-Yoon was really cute too. Tae-Yoon only really feels like a maknae when he says nuna.”

“It was so cute when they were all teasing Tae-Yoon...”

Siren fans were enduring this early morning hours by sitting together with people who they knew, chatting, and sharing information. Then, from a distance, several large boxes began to pile up one by one.

“...Huh?”

“...What’s that?”

A delicious smell seemed to come from it, but it also seemed to smell fragrant. Before long, people found out what those boxes were.

“Oh my goodness...”

“Crazy...”

It was a thank-you gift prepared by Siren. What was important to note here was not the fact that they were giving gifts in return.

“How in the world...did they prepare all...? No...”

They were gifts that even surprised those who have been fans of idols for years and were well aware of this field.