Chapter 14: Bathroom Incident

“So what I’m saying is, why are they sucking up to some nobody like that?”

“The more I think about it, the weirder it gets.

Didn’t he, like, sleep with someone to get in?”

“Crazy bastard.

That’s disgusting.”

Hearing their vulgar snickering, I let go of the door handle.

It wasn’t that I was angry or hurt—just that I felt filthy listening to it, so I wanted to avoid it.

I figured I’d come back later and started to turn around when, suddenly, a long arm reached out from behind me.

Long, straight fingers wrapped around the handle, and with a sharp creak, the bathroom door swung open.

Before I knew it, the person behind me nudged me inside.

Because I stepped in unexpectedly, my sneaker scraped loudly across the floor.

At the same moment, all conversation inside stopped.

“Hi.”

A soft voice spread through the now-silent bathroom like an echo.

“You’re Sim Jaeseo, right?”

The instant my name was spoken, I heard someone inside one of the stalls suck in a small breath.

I turned around, and there he was—K-STARS’ visual genius, Seo Jun-jae.

“I’ve been wanting to talk to you, actually.

Oh, and I think we’re the same age, right?

Mind if I drop the honorifics?”

“Huh?

Oh, uh, sure.”

“I’m Seo Jun-jae.

Nice to meet you.”

Then he held out his hand as if asking for a handshake.

A greeting—or a handshake—could’ve happened outside the bathroom, so why here of all places?

But I hid my discomfort and took his hand.

“You left an impression during the agency evaluation.

Well, not so much because of your performance—more because of what you said.”

It was strange.

Everything about Seo Jun-jae—his face, his voice, his tone—was gentle, yet beneath it, I could faintly sense a familiar sharpness.

For someone who approached me first, his eyes showed a surprisingly negative mix of emotions.

He said what I said left an impression more than my performance.

Meaning… was it his way of saying I had no real skill, but still flapped my mouth about my ranking to grab screen time—and he found that memorably obnoxious?

“I heard you practice really hard.

What a shame.

If you really had slept your way in, you could’ve gotten an A grade and we could’ve trained together.”

So he had heard that earlier.

I couldn’t help glancing toward the stalls, and the faint smile hanging on Seo Jun-jae’s lips deepened, as if drawn on with ink.

“Ah, that was a pretty low-level thing for me to say.

You must’ve been offended, right?”

It was your low-level conversation that disgusted me.

Anyone could hear that was exactly what he meant.

From inside the stall came a loud thunk.

Either they were pissed at being called low-level or panicked because it struck a nerve—one of the two.

But even after making that noise, they didn’t come out; apparently they were still embarrassed about getting caught talking trash.

Seo Jun-jae shifted his gaze back toward the stall, then let out a soft laugh.

“I was in the middle of practice, so I should get going.

See you around.”

And with that, he turned and left without waiting for a reply.

Only then did I remember the “affection score” I’d seen in the character encyclopedia.

If my earlier guess was right, the final trainees’ affection scores would play an important role in my debut chances—and if so, this might have been the perfect opportunity to raise the score of someone like Seo Jun-jae, who had a high likelihood of debuting.

Too bad he didn’t seem to like me one bit… so nothing I did probably would’ve helped anyway.

Bang—

At that moment, the bathroom door swung open with a crash loud enough to make it seem like it might break.

Lee Kwon and another C-rank trainee burst out—only to freeze when they saw me still standing right outside the door.

Right… I had completely forgotten about them for a moment.

For people who got so flustered just because the person they bad-mouthed overheard them, what were they thinking, talking that kind of trash in a public bathroom anyone could walk into?

The absurdity of it all left me embarrassed for them.

…With guts that tiny, how did they expect to survive on a survival show?

And with that, I was certain.

If one of us—me or Lee Kwon—had to be eliminated, it would absolutely be him.

After the bathroom incident, Lee Kwon never picked fights with me again.

Well… sometimes I could still feel him shooting nasty looks at me through the mirror, and he continued placing me and the trainees close to me in the worst spots during group practice.

But that was about it.

We ignored it, helped each other check our moves, and got through our practice time.

And then came the day of the re-evaluation video shoot.

A camera was already set up in the training room.

Each trainee would go up one by one in alphabetical order, dance “Me and Me,” and record a full-length performance.

Our rank’s assigned staff member began calling out names.

In no time, nine trainees had already gone.

Among them, one trainee seemed to forget the choreography, stumbled around awkwardly, and eventually burst into tears.

Another trainee went off-pitch every two or three lines and hung his head like a criminal.

For reference, the latter was one of the guys who had talked trash about me with Lee Kwon.

Honestly, if he had time to gossip, he could’ve spent it practicing at least once more.

Watching that pitiful display somehow made me understand why Seo Jun-jae disliked me so much.

Loudmouths with no skill really are the worst, huh?

I thought as I stood up.

It was finally my turn.

“Hello.

I’m independent trainee Sim Jaeseo.

I’ll begin.”

As soon as I finished speaking and struck the starting pose, the staff immediately played the music.

It hadn’t even been a full week, but after practicing all day—and often through the night—my vocal and dance stat points had shot up, nearly hitting 400.

On top of that, my Intelligence stat helped keep me from forgetting lyrics or choreography, and my Stamina stat reduced the chance of getting breathless and losing pitch or going off-key.

…Meaning, in short: I wrapped up my performance without a single mistake.

“As expected of our class’s Sim-bot!”

I returned to my seat without showing any sign of exhaustion, and the friends I’d grown close with teased me as I passed.

Meanwhile, the staff called out the next name: Lee Kwon.

As soon as he stepped forward, Cha Han-ul—who was sitting glued to my side—jabbed my ribs with his finger, blinking furiously and wiggling his eyebrows up and down.

Apparently he was trying to send me some kind of message, but I had absolutely no idea what he meant, so I pretended not to see and looked away.

He then lowered his voice as much as possible and whispered that he hoped the guy would flop.

The training room had gone silent without my noticing.

As the instrumental played, Lee Kwon danced and then began rapping over the melody.

Just like Won Jooha mentioned on the first day of training, he had converted the entire song into rap.

Understandable, since the one time I heard him sing during training, his vocal ability was… frankly atrocious.

His rap was definitely better than his singing—but for someone who paraded around calling himself a rapper, he wasn’t that good at rapping either.

Besides—

“Ah, I want to hear Chanseo hyung’s rap again.”

The other trainee who had switched the song to rap—the one Won Jooha had mentioned—was none other than A-rank trainee Lee Chanseo, the only one who received praise for rap during the agency evaluation.

Apparently, he was already somewhat known among trainees who specialized in rap.

Even as someone ignorant about rap, I could clearly tell that Lee Chanseo’s rap was on a completely different level.

And since only Lee Chanseo and Lee Kwon had changed the song to rap, the two of them were bound to be compared.

“Thank you….”

Because of all that, although Lee Kwon only stumbled a few times, he returned to his seat with a stiff, frozen expression.

And until the reshoot for the grade evaluation videos concluded, he didn’t say a single word, maintaining a heavy, suffocating silence.

After the filming wrapped up, the official schedule ended earlier than usual.

Even though my Stamina stat was over 900, cutting down my sleep over the past four days while chanting a “sleep is death” mindset had finally caught up with me—My Idol Diary even sent me a status ailment notification telling me I needed rest.

I hurriedly washed up, returned to my room, and threw myself onto my bed.

I silently thanked my past self for choosing a bottom bunk instead of a top one during check-in and fell asleep almost instantly.

After sleeping deeply for the first time in a while, most of my fatigue had lifted, and the status ailment icon on My Idol Diary had disappeared.

Since today was the last day of the first stay, I packed my things, went down to the lobby to drop off my bag, and headed into the cafeteria.

I’d be stuck eating nutritionally barren meals again for a while, so I figured I should fill up today while I could.

With that painfully realistic thought, I picked up my tray.

After finishing two full trays of food, I headed to the C-rank training room, where vocal trainer Won Jooha had already arrived and was preparing for filming.

Once all the C-rank trainees had gathered, the shoot began.

“You all worked so, so hard.

Some of you will go up a grade today, some will go down—but there’s still plenty of time ahead, so don’t get too discouraged.

I hope you all continue to work hard.”

After wrapping up what might have sounded like the usual line, Won Jooha began calling out trainees one by one, handing out envelopes with the grade evaluation results inside.

Each trainee had to take their envelope outside, check their results, and then move to the training room corresponding to the grade written inside.

While some trainees left and came back, and others from different grades walked in either cheering or looking gloomy, my name was finally called.

I bowed to Won Jooha, accepted my envelope, and stepped out of the room.

Standing before the camera set up in the hallway, I opened the envelope—and inside, written in big letters, was “B.”

My four days of “sleep-is-death” had finally paid off.

At this rate, I should be able to appear safely at least until episode 8, shouldn’t I?

Following the staff’s instructions, I flipped the card to show my grade to the camera, bowed my head, and said I’d work even harder.

Then I headed toward the B-class training room.

After receiving the newly issued training clothes and changing, I went down to the first-floor hall.

I hadn’t particularly wanted to see him, but on my way in, I caught sight of Lee Kwon.

His clothes had changed to green—the color that signified D-class.

The moment our eyes met, he frowned sharply and hurried his pace to walk past me.

“Hey, I heard Lee Kwon gave you a bit of a hard time?”

I turned my head at the sudden voice.

Standing to my left was a contestant wearing the same orange outfit as me.

‘DWK, Park Kang-hoon.’

He was from the same agency as Lee Kwon—in other words, a member of Juke, the group Lee Kwon belonged to.