The Second Chance of A Suicidal Idol

A Final Stretch (2)

As per Joon-woo's suggestion, two days later and despite a set schedule, all three teams were called to one exceptionally larger practice room.

It was awkward, trying to survive the last couple days. Joon-woo and his team were practically ostracized from the others', despite Reggie being a leader of one. He still didn't have control over his team, it seemed. But Joon-woo figured that's what this whole ordeal was for.

As Ha-rin, as the leader of Cheerleader– who were one of the only girl groups to branch K-Pop out globally, there wasn't really much power struggle at all. And whether that was because she was both the oldest member and also the longest trained member, or because she barely had any extra controls as a leader, she was the leader and she tried her best to do it well.

She would prompt introductions, saying "Hello, we are–" and the other members would join in on "Cheerleader!" She would represent Cheerleader's opinion in board meetings, if they ever were to be listened to. And when they first debuted, she was the one with a phone. She ran the live streams and filtered out the bad comments. She filtered the social media so no hateful posts were to be seen by her members. That was a task assigned to her by the company as the oldest and the leader. Ha-rin struggled to pretend the comments didn't affect her, though.

Maybe the hardships of leading Cheerleader through global markets, facing racism in the West and overwork all over the world, made leading Team Two through their ostracization a piece of cake.

As, Joon-woo found it quite simple to turn a blind eye when he got whistled or hollered at by other contestants who apparently lost their will to debut with how easy they were allowing the editors to collect bad clips of them for evil editing. And maybe it was thanks to Mi Yong's already-debuted and matured self that made it easier. After all, Winner was a mess of badlight and controversy. Mi Yong was the leader who picked up after his group mates, never even being in a scandal of his own.

Ryeo Hyun too, ignored the comments he got from other contestants. And the duo, though at first they were freaked out, ended up watching Ryeo Hyun and Mi Yong closely as their inspiration for how to ignore the mean comments.

When Joon-woo walked into the enlarged practice room, his team, despite all being older than him by two or more years, was behind him. Joon-woo pointed to an uninhabited wall space in the room, and they went there to do quick rehearsals.

Team Three, which had Jung Hyun-Ok in it, also did some light rehearsing, but ultimately Joon-woo caught their gaze a lot. Team One, the Reggie led team, didn't even stand or stretch. Baek Du-Ho sat, as usual, sat away from the team. And Reggie, god, looked the most sad Joon-woo had yet seen him.

Carre had teased Joon-woo more than help, about his worry for Reggie. Kite just watched along in silence and with petty eyes. The two sponsors were nothing short of useless. They acted as bickering house pets, though they were supernatural workers of the goddamned grim reaper! Joon-woo, though only mentally 29, thought himself to be 50 around his two sponsors. He had just blocked them out the last few days.

"Pretty boy, you have a visitor." Carre warned, barely moving her mouth in her standing position on Joon-woo's shoulder. Her ghost form bore no weight and nor did Kite's.

Joon-woo looked up from his strumming of his electric guitar. His lacking height was highlighted, as a contestant about as tall as Reggie, looked down on him with slightly angered eyes. Mi Yong stood, as if to come to Joon-woo's defense, but Joon-woo did a small hand gesture to stop him. The cameras were always rolling, and clearly, this contestant hadn't learned that.

The contestant was Kim Seo-jun and he was on Reggie's team. Joon-woo sent a look to Reggie who looked at Joon-woo with helpless begging eyes. Wasn't this tall guy Joon-woo's Hyung? Without the current circumstances, such a sight would've been one to laugh over. A shadow was cast over Joon-woo now. He signaled for Reggie to stay where he was too.