Prince From Another Dimension Becomes An Idol [EN]: Chapter 72

#72.

***

– Most finally got 1st place, congrats! ㅊㅋㅊㅋ [Korean abbreviation for ‘congratulations’]

– Cindy was so close; it’s a pity. If she had gotten 1st place for one more week, it would have been 7 weeks in a row.

– Cindy’s fans don’t think that way… MOST fighting! Congrats on 1st place!

– They had a nosebleed, so they *had* to get 1st place!

– I thought they might get 1st place because their album sales were good, but their digital scores are also quite high.

– MOST’s digital scores are really good for an idol group.

– The song is good this time.

– What’s with the nosebleed passion? ㅋㅋㅋㅋ [Korean laughter marker, similar to ‘lol’] Is that member okay?

– They had a collision with another member on stage. ㅋㅋ I saw in the article that they’re okay. ㅋㅋ

– Min *oppa*, please take care of your health. ㅠㅠ [Korean term used by females to address older brothers or close male friends]

– They said he’s not sick. ㅋㅋㅋㅋ

– I thought the nosebleed was staged and said it was too provocative… Sorry.

– I was so surprised while watching the broadcast. ㅋㅋ

– Congrats on 1st place! ㅊㅋ

– Are these guys the type to get 1st place as soon as they comeback?

– Look at their scores; it would be weirder if they *didn’t* get 1st place.

– But I don’t think they’re at Cindy’s level… I don’t even know their song.

– Don’t feed the troll.

– I really don’t know; that’s why I’m asking.

– They must be ignorant.

– The song is just okay; it’s weird that their digital scores are so high.

– Is it rigged?

– The song is good; you only say it’s rigged if it doesn’t suit your taste.

– Nosebleed passion ㅋㅋㅋㅋ It’s memorable ㅋㅋㅋㅋ

– But they handled it well.

– After watching them today, I can really trust their performances.

– They perform really well.

– Kang Do-jae’s acting was crazy; he could be an actor.

– He has the face of an actor.

…After the broadcast.

The MOST members, covered in confetti, were in high spirits as they came down from the stage.

Heung-min’s self-reproach for the mishap on stage was erased by the joy of winning 1st place.

Thanks to that, Heung-min took a picture with the 1st place trophy and left a tweet with jokes.

@most#_official

[MIN] It’s Min! 1st place as soon as we comeback! I can’t believe it! It’s all thanks to BEST [MOST’s fan name], you know?! Don’t worry about the nosebleed… I just saw stars for a moment… I’m fine now! Wasn’t it cool to have a nosebleed?!

“He was saying he was embarrassed a while ago…….”

Woo-cheol clicked his tongue after seeing Heung-min’s tweet.

He knew that Cindy played a part in Heung-min’s regained confidence, as much as winning 1st place.

***

After the 1st place announcement, Cindy, who was congratulating MOST, spoke to Heung-min separately.

“Congratulations on 1st place!”

“Haha. Th, thank you.”

“But, are you okay with the nosebleed just now?”

“D, did you see it?! I’m okay, but you, *sunbaenim*, saw such an unsightly sight…….” [Korean term for a senior or someone with more experience in a field]

Cindy waved her hand at Heung-min, who was about to fall into self-loathing.

“Oh, no. It’s not an unsightly sight… It happened because you were working hard on stage. I’m glad you weren’t seriously hurt.”

“Ahahaha. Thank you! *Sunbaenim*!”

They were the same age, but she was a *sunbae* who debuted 4 years earlier, like the sky [implying a vast difference in status].

Cindy gave a relaxed smile to Heung-min, who bowed his head deeply, and said.

“I enjoyed your performance.”

At those words, Heung-min’s heart swelled with pure joy.

He couldn’t help but be happy that his favorite singer said his performance was great.

“Thank you. Thank you!”

Cindy smiled slightly at Heung-min’s enthusiastic greeting and turned back behind the stage.

From her up close, she had a relaxed and unapproachable aura of an artist that Heung-min didn’t have.

It was the aura of someone who could fill the stage by themselves.

Enough to know why she was able to reach the top at a young age…….

‘Ah, can I ever be like that someday?’

Heung-min thought.

Right now, he was struggling to handle 1/6 of MOST.

The other members were filling in the parts that Heung-min was lacking.

But someday, he wanted to do more than that.

‘Like Do-jae or Gi-jun *hyung* [Korean term used by males to address older brothers or close male friends].’

He wanted to become someone who filled the team and the entire stage without any gaps.

He seemed to understand what Gi-jun meant when he pointed out Heung-min’s rap making every time, saying, ‘You have to do more than what you can do.’

‘I have to keep surpassing myself.’

It was an realization that he could do more than one person’s worth only then.

Cindy didn’t give Heung-min confidence, but rather stimulated him.

***

MOST also won 1st place on SVS’s the next day.

The sight of MOST hugging each other and rejoicing was broadcast once again.

At the restaurant where they came to eat dinner, the members celebrated their 1st place noisily.

Because they rented the entire meat restaurant, the members were able to fully enjoy the joy with the dancers and staff who were on stage with them.

“Team Leader Kim.”

Gi-jun, who was sitting next to Team Leader Kim Seok-cheol, quietly called out to Team Leader Kim.

“Yes. What is it?”

“I was wondering if we could buy one more display case for the dorm.”

“A display case?”

“Yes.”

Team Leader Kim Seok-cheol, who was nervous about what he was going to say because Gi-jun called him very seriously, nodded lightly.

A smile spread across Do-jae’s lips as he listened from the side.

“The trophies are increasing, so there won’t be enough space in the original display case.”

At Do-jae’s words, Gi-jun blushed at the tips of his ears and replied, “That’s right.”

At that time, Woo-cheol, who had become obsessed with checking the music charts every hour these days, shouted.

“Wow…. Our digital ranking is going up again!”

The digital ranking had risen to 3rd place.

“Is this even possible?”

Heung-min muttered in a daze.

The other members were also looking at the music site every day, but they couldn’t believe it.

Every day had been like a dream since they made their comeback with the fan meeting.

3 | Yours | MOST

Louis rubbed his eyes and checked the site several times.

After entering the top 10, the digital ranking was steadily rising every day.

Spring, the season when cherry blossoms fall, loneliness, etc…….

It seemed that the ranking continued to rise as [MOST’s song title] was added to the concept playlist without fail.

“What are you surprised about! The song is good, so it keeps rising.”

Jeong Gil-ju chuckled pleasantly and urged the members to eat quickly.

They were very hungry after finishing the stage, but they felt full just by looking at the digital ranking.

‘Still, you have to eat to replenish your energy. Of course.’

Do-jae thought.

Whether it was the Korean Empire or the Republic of Korea, rice was more important than anything to people from Joseon [Historical Korean kingdom].

Do-jae, who took a large spoonful of white rice and put meat on it, found Louis still holding his cell phone across from him.

“Unbelievable!”

Do-jae put a piece of well-cooked meat on Louis’s plate, who kept exclaiming.

“Eat first.”

Louis quickly put down his cell phone and picked up his chopsticks at Do-jae’s meticulous care.

Saturday, Sunday.

Except for a small incident, a series of enjoyable weekends were passing.

***

Monday morning.

Inside the ‘Nara Ilbo’ office, where only the occasional ringing of the telephone and the sound of keyboards quietly echoed.

Someone tapped on the desk of Lee, who was also typing on the keyboard.

Son Jeong-gi took his hands off the keyboard and looked up at the person who tapped his desk.

“Reporter Son. The chief is calling for you.”

“The chief?”

“Yeah. I heard Reporter Son did something big?”

“Ah…. Well.”

Son Jeong-gi, who pushed up the black horn-rimmed glasses that had slipped down towards the bridge of his nose, got up from his seat and headed towards the desk where the chief was sitting.

His superior, Park Dong-man, was engrossed in GoStop [Korean card game], with the main screen of a portal site on one side of the dual monitor screen and a game screen on the other.

“Chief.”

“Oh! Reporter Son. Just a moment. Ah, damn it…. I lost this round too. It’s a bust. It’s a bust [Referring to a bad hand in the card game].”

Park Dong-man, who muttered irritably, took his eyes off the monitor and looked at Son Jeong-gi.

The team they belonged to was Digital News Team 3.

It was a place where only flawed people came, a team that wrote articles based on real-time searches or issues from various internet communities.

Strictly speaking, they couldn’t even be said to be ‘writing’ articles.

Because they were churning out dozens of abusive articles by scraping things from here and there that would increase views, without any special coverage or confirmation of facts.

‘It’s a waste of the title of reporter. Well…. Most of the articles are released by part-timers anyway.’

Even among the digital news teams in charge of internet articles, Team 3 was treated as the most trashy.

Because they were always one or two steps slower than others in grasping issues, even though they were in charge of the entertainment category, so even when writing abusive articles, the number of views was insignificant.

‘They’re *aggro*-merchants [slang for attention-seeking], but they can’t even attract *aggro*…. It’s natural that they’re treated like idiots.’

That was Son Jeong-gi’s thought after being assigned to Digital News Team 3 for a month.

Originally, Son Jeong-gi was a fairly well-known entertainment reporter.

He did a lot of interviews, and with the connections he built up, he was good at getting news of actors’ scandals and marriages, and he did a lot of exclusive reports.

Then he caused an accident and came to Digital News Team 3 for a while, so to speak, he was exiled.

The higher-ups said they would call him back if he stayed in Team 3 for a while, but if he was stuck in such an obscure position, he would soon be forgotten, no matter how successful he was.

‘There are more than one or two reporters.’

So Son Jeong-gi watched for a month and then asked for work.

Since there was no future in the company anyway, he was trying to make a killing.

‘The timing was good.’

There was a suitable target.

A target that wasn’t too big, but was moderately topical and would make the internet noisy.

Park Dong-man, who slurped the coffee next to him, praised Son Jeong-gi.

“The article that Reporter Son released this morning. The number of views is very good. It’s been a while since we first reported something. Huh?”

“Haha.”

“There must be a lot of things to do, but when did you prepare this article?”

Son Jeong-gi smiled with appropriate humility.

“As I was browsing the internet, I wondered if it made sense that they were doing so well all of a sudden. There were suspicions.”

Park Dong-man looked at the article Son Jeong-gi had written one more time and suddenly asked.

“The number of clicks is amazing! But is this real? I didn’t know that even idols, not some unknown singers, would rig the charts.”

He didn’t even check the contents properly when he released the article, but the person in charge was belatedly asking questions.

Son Jeong-gi sighed and answered nonchalantly.

“They’re rookies.”

“Hmm. Well, they’ll do anything to get famous.”

“And. What does it matter if it’s not real. You know that.”

It wasn’t an article that definitively hammered down the verdict.

There’s this controversy on the internet, it’s probably like this…….

It was a speculative article written like that.

But if the article was released and thousands of abusive articles came out, it would become a fact.

At Son Jeong-gi’s words, Park Dong-man slurped his coffee one more time and smiled contentedly.

“Thanks to you, our D3 team has saved face for the first time in a while. Let’s do well in the future!”

“Yes. Then, is there anything else you wanted to say…….”

“No. I called you to praise you! I’m a person who gives credit where credit is due!”

Thinking that he had wasted valuable time, Son Jeong-gi greeted him roughly and went back to his seat.

As he sat down, the title of the article he had written was clearly visible on the monitor.

The number of clicks had increased even more in a short period of time.

The news ranking in the entertainment category was also 1st.

‘I’ll probably get a call to take down the article soon, right?’

Son Jeong-gi stared intently at the phone on his desk and raised the corners of his lips.