The Maknae Has to Be an Idol

—Tae-Yoon???

—I don’t know what’s going on but thank you

—Hahahaha I can’t grasp the concept even more after seeing the teaser

—Wow…look at the scale of this teaser!! Siren is finally getting it

The evening that Siren uploaded their teaser, numerous response posts began to come up on Siren’s fans’ feeds. This was surely a positive flow of events since a teaser’s main purpose was to market the music video and raise fans’ expectations. Yet, Siren’s teaser raised more questions than expectations.

—How can a thirty-second video change genres three times?

The moment they began to predict what sort of concept the group would do, the next scene broke their predictions.

—Wow, Tae-Yoon fits the pure, refreshing concept so well

Reply: What are you talking about; he’s a sexy dynamite here

Reply: What are you all talking about? He’s the strongest boss character

Reply: hahaha this is chaos

Reply: All this came from one teaser?

People took images from the teaser video and played with them, pretending as if each of the images came from separate performances. Though various responses poured out, they were positive overall. This was because although several concepts came out at once, the visual quality of each concept was high, and people could tell that great efforts were made for the teaser.

—Regardless of everything else, the beat smells like a lot of money was used

Reply: They seriously got some sick beats

Reply: Did Kang Do-Seung produce the song again?

Reply: Yup

Reply: I see that you like our genius black cat, Kang Do-Seung’s beat…please stay tuned until June 20th for Siren’s debut

Even places that didn’t have much interest in Siren began to mention the teaser. In the idol market, positive responses were a great marketing phenomenon.

—So, what is the concept again?

—I am also curious about that haha

—Ah, I just came back from watching it again

Those who weren’t part of Siren’s fandom clicked to see Siren’s teaser, and they all gave the same responses.

—Ah, damn it. So, what is their concept exactly!

In the end, Siren’s debut concept couldn’t be pinpointed.

***

This was the Siren’s teaser video that people were so confused about. The opening scene started with Tae-Yoon sitting at the back of a classroom.

—He doesn’t look like a nineteen-year-old but when he wears a school uniform, it’s so fitting

—He kind of looks like the school gangster that is only nice to me

Reply: Hahaha I think know what you mean

Tae-Yoon looked outside the window with his hand on his chin. The bell eventually rang and people in the classroom broke into a chatter.

Booom! Then, an abrupt explosion sounded, and the screen turned black. A beat that was most likely the album’s title song began to flow out. Minimal base sounds began to spur out intermittently and created a medium-tempo beat that felt heavy and luxurious at the same time. The video continued to play.

—???

—What happened to all the classmates??

The school burned in a fire, and Tae-Yoon staggered away from the burning school with blood on his uniform. He heaved while walking like he had just come back from a fight. It was a question of whether this was the beginning of an apocalypse or a high-teen action genre.

Kieeeeeh! A monster’s screech suddenly wailed and the screen flashed. Inside a city in ruins, Tae-Yoon sat on top of irregular lumps that appeared to be strange, alien-like creatures. His school uniform also changed to a different outfit. He was wearing a mask with a strong cyber technology design and a black battle uniform from top to bottom. He looked ready to shoot out fire from his hands and battle monsters in this instance.

—What the hell? Is this actually a superpower genre??

—Our Tae-Yoon is a S-rank Superhuman?!

—Hahaha What is this constant change of genres?

A scene that had shown a high-schooler leisurely looking outside the window ended with an image of a superhuman surveying in his surroundings after beating up monsters. It was a teaser that was hard to summarize with just one line.

—So…Tae-Yoon, who was an ordinary high schooler, was actually a superhuman strong enough to destroy the whole school, and in the future, he becomes powerful enough to beat monsters on his own? This is just my thought

Reply: Hahaha A webnovel is made just like that

To make a connection between these abrupt images, people came up with their own stories. Many gave their theories and others who were more skilled basically wrote the storyline of a high-quality novel. This became another marketing ploy and acted as a trigger to pull in more interest. Though it was from a group that just debuted, the teaser was gaining interest from various fields because of all the money that had been poured into it.

—It just looks so expensive

—It looks as if they dumped money into this thing

—I thought the company would try to think about the cost-effectiveness of the video more, but it looks like they went all out

After reading all these responses, Tae-Yoon from Siren calmly turned off his phone. Then, he murmured to himself worriedly, ‘It’s iffy.’

Though everyone said the video looked expensive, was great, and was interesting, Tae-Yoon wasn’t trending first on Bluebird.

‘Why can’t I overtake the ranks?’ he wondered.

—1rst. Kang Hyun-Sung’s teaser (65,819)

—2nd. Bong Tae-Yoon’s teaser (65,575)

Though it was a small difference, he couldn’t surpass Kang Hyun-Sung.

***

My members and I had been foregoing sleep and play to come all this way to the teaser reveal. Since we needed to finish all our work in just a week, even sleep felt like a luxury. We couldn’t sleep more than two hours, and even those two hours were spent on the car or getting our hair or makeup done at a salon. Yet, thanks to that, we were able to reach the level of quality that we wanted from the teaser. Thus, I organized my thoughts calmly after seeing the teaser.

The teaser was definitely well-made. Its quality was high, and the fans’ responses were great.

‘But we aren’t number one.’

My teaser kept falling behind Kang Hyun-Sung’s teaser on Bluebird by a small margin. Fortunately, only our trending rank was second, and the view count for our teaser was twice as high. That was probably because of how impactful our video thumbnail was—it was a suspenseful, sci-fi apocalypse shot of me sitting on top of a pile of monsters. This image probably appealed to not only idol fans but also others who liked these subculture genres.

But for teaser videos, it wasn’t the view count that was so important. The important part was the Bluebird response since the responses there were significantly close to the main market responses.

‘And in that area, I am lagging behind Kang Hyun-Sung.’ It wasn’t like I was that far behind, but I appeared to be lacking in some ways. Of course, it would’ve been also very shocking for me to beat Kang Hyun-Sung since the only one in my team who had a chance of beating Kang Hyun-Sung’s fandom was Yeon-Hoon. Considering this, perhaps, it was amazing that my teaser had been able to go so neck-to-neck with Kang Hyung-Sung’s teaser.

“Should we…all look at Only One’s teaser together?” It was then, Yeon-Hoon asked.

My members and I gathered in front of the table in the living room. Though nobody had been saying anything, we were all quite curious about what kind of teaser Only One uploaded. Yet, I was certain that the quality of our video would be superior.

‘I mean…we dumped loads of money into this.’ Our teaser had many VFX effects, and to achieve this sort of quality and quantity of VFX effects in the short time frame we had, the company had to amass numerous human resources and employ all of them. The VFX effects alone would’ve cost as much as most idol music videos.

“Are you going to turn it on?”

“Yeah.”

We played Only One’s debut teaser video where only Kang Hyun-Sung came out.

“…?” I had been sure that Only One’s company could top our company in terms of the money and resources we could employ. Since ours was a joint company that one of the leading national corporations created, I thought the difference between our capital and Only One’s company would be huge.

‘But what are these guys?’ It seemed I had to change my judgment of AnotherOne. I simply thought the company was made up of very skilled individuals, where each person did the work of a hundred.

‘But they also have a lot of money?’ It seemed not only were they skilled, but they also had a lot of capital. Why couldn’t they just have one? Our boss, Yoo Won-Dong suddenly felt even more useless then.

***

Only Kang Hyun-Sung appeared in Only One’s first teaser. The teaser began with Kang Hyun-Sung sitting in a dark background. Then, someone lit up a torch, and light entered a large concrete area. Inside the dancing fire sparks, a golden throne came into view. The quality of the set was high enough to use as a background for an overseas TV series.

Thud, thud. Leather shoes thumped on the ground, and footstep sounds rang across the whole cavity. Soon afterward, Kang Hyun-Sung appeared in a black suit and walked while holding a crown. He looked both listless and dangerous at the same time.

Kang Hyun-Sung’s face came into view amid the flickering torch lights, and his resolute pupils stared toward the camera screen. Then, he slowly sat on the throne with his crown loosely hanging from his fingers. Like a person who lost all happiness in life from the torch lights, he stared arrogantly and blankly at the screen.

Boom! The castle walls began to crumble with an explosion.

The screen flashed and the date of the release date and song title came into view.

—22.06.20

—First one

The teaser ended with those letters. In comparison to Siren’s teaser, which contained as many various images as possible within thirty seconds of the teaser to spark people’s curiosity, Only One’s strategy was to pull out the quality of one scene to its highest completion and raise people’s expectations for the forthcoming album.

—Ah, Kang Hyun-Sung is insane!!

—I screamed as soon as I saw this

—Our genius idol is always at his peak

After seeing Kang Hyun-Sung’s teaser, Siren’s members quietly stared at the screen.

“…It’s amazing.”

“…They also…have a lot of money…”

“It looks so elegant and luxurious…”

Though everyone tried to repress another thought to their mind, Tae-Yoon muttered without meaning to, “…What if we can’t get first place in music shows at this rate…?”

“Hey!”

“Alalalala! I didn’t hear anything~”

“Don’t say things like that! It’s bad luck!”

“Haaa…Tae-Yoon, you rascal…”

I feared that we would keep falling behind and playing catch-up with Only One during our entire activity time.

***

“Hyun-Sung, did you see Siren’s teaser?”

“Yeah, I did.”

“Doesn’t…it…make you a bit nervours…”

“Hm.”

Yet, ironically, just like how Siren had felt threatened after seeing Only One’s teaser, Only One also felt the same about Siren’s teaser.