Chapter 62: Singing Their Way to Debut

[Please Take Care of My Idol Season 2 Episode 10 3rd Ranking Announcement Results]

[1st Place Yeo Hyun-tae
2nd Place Seo Jun-jae
3rd Place Sim Jae-seo
4th Place Yoon Ji-heon
5th Place Kim Jae-ho
6th Place Lee Chan-seo
7th Place Park Kang-hoon
8th Place Lee Woo-rim
9th Place Kim Woo-hyun
10th Place Chae Han-ul
11th Place Park Hyun-jin
12th Place Park Seo-hu
13th Place Kwak Jun-sung
14th Place Ha Jin-woo
15th Place Lee Ha-jin
16th Place Ki Jae-young
…]

[Comments]

The top ranks are fixed, but the mid-rank battle is quite fierce.

Is the new voting also 2-pick?

↳ No, it’s 1-pick.

Han-ul, I hope he makes it, but it probably won’t happen..ㅠㅠ

↳ He’s 10th this week, I think there’s a chance.

The 1st place is just being shared between the K-Stars every time lol

Wow what’s up with Sim Jae-seo?

↳ He really shot upㄷㄷ

Did Jae-seo gather that much voting power in just one day after Beautiful Hate aired??

↳ Probably combined: fans of trainees eliminated while practicing with Beautiful Hate + the fact that Jae-seo being in Beautiful Hate was revealed to be due to other fandoms trying to sabotage him + viewers who voted to support them because of the guy who left the day before the contest + new fans drawn in by the explosive reaction to the Beautiful Hate stage.

Who are the current safe zone for debut?

↳ CheonSangJeu + Chan-seo

↳↳ Same, seems only those four are truly certain.

CheonSangJeu and Chan-seo, I also think Woo-rim is almost certain.

Cautiously, I’d include Jae-seo too.

↳ Fr, I think Beautiful Hate sealed the deal for him.

…

***

A week had already passed since the final camp began.

During previous camps, this would be the time when they were busy preparing for the contest, so sitting quietly in the recording studio felt strangely unfamiliar.

As he was repeatedly scanning the lyric sheet for no reason, the studio door suddenly burst open with a bang.

“Hello!”

With bright greetings, a Korean woman and a foreign man entered the studio smiling.

He hadn’t seen their faces before, but judging by the situation, they seemed to be the composers of their team’s contest song, ‘Time Killer’.

He stood up along with the other team members who were busily rising, bowed in greeting, and the two familiar-looking people bowed back, introducing themselves as Joe&Soul.

“Thank you for choosing our song first.”

As the woman among the two said with a smile, Kim Jae-ho answered that they were more grateful for the good song.

The woman laughed heartily at Jae-ho’s words and whispered something in English to the man, and the two exchanged a brief conversation.

Soon finishing their talk, the woman turned her head back towards them and spoke.

“We’ve heard so many compliments from Chae-i, so we have high expectations.

Please do well with the recording today.”

“Yes!”

After that brief introduction, not long after, Kim Woo-hyun, the first to be called, went through the inner door into the recording booth.

As Kim Woo-hyun briefly warmed up his voice and body, the female composer from Joe&Soul, now with a serious expression, tapped the microphone connected to the booth twice and began.

“We’ll start the recording.”

Kim Woo-hyun, who had already debuted, nodded with a fairly relaxed face.

Soon, the accompaniment for ‘Time Killer’ played briefly, and the moment it transitioned into the intro of the first verse, Kim Woo-hyun skillfully began to layer his voice over it.

The man operating the recording equipment nodded with satisfaction after finishing the first phrase and muttered, “Nice.”

“It was good!”

The woman also praised him, smiling pleasantly.

After having him sing some lyrics a few more times to complete the recording, the two signaled to move on and played the accompaniment for Kim Woo-hyun’s second part, the chorus of the second verse.

This time, with the man tilting his head thoughtfully, the recording took a bit longer than the first part, but it didn’t take too long before Kim Woo-hyun finished his recording and came out of the booth.

The recording continued, filling in the parts in order starting from those with the earlier parts, so it was only when his turn came up later that his name was called.

Receiving a word of encouragement from each of the teammates who had already finished recording, he entered the booth.

Standing in front of the microphone, he lifted the mounted headphones and put them on awkwardly.

“Don’t be too nervous, just be comfortable!”

At the woman’s words coming through the headphones, he nodded, but of course, his nervousness didn’t disappear with just one comment.

Since this was only his second recording experience, following ‘Beautiful Hate’ from the previous contest, he kept feeling hesitant.

“We’ll try recording first.”

He nodded largely so they could see through the window, shook his shoulders a couple of times as the producer had shown him during the last recording, and straightened his posture.

Soon, through the headphones, Lee Chan-seo’s rap, the part right before his, began to flow along with the accompaniment.

Wetting his lips once, he opened his mouth to the beat.

After singing the first part of the chorus in the first verse, he looked through the window.

The woman, who had looked worried before the recording started, was now smiling faintly.

Judging by that reaction, it seemed it wasn’t too bad.

“Good!

But in the first line, on ‘Time’, the ‘i’ part in ‘Ti-me’, the note was a bit flat, okay?”

The woman pointed out the parts to correct through the microphone.

After repeating the recording two to four times per lyric, they moved on to the next section.

The bridge part received an okay sign with almost no corrections, and while recording the latter part of the final chorus, a truly unexpected request came.

“Could you try adding an ad-lib, keeping the feeling going into the following part?”

This was the first time he had been instructed not to follow something but to do something on his own, so he was flustered and asked back, “Huh?”

But the woman casually nodded, saying it was fine even if he couldn’t, and just to try freely, then immediately played back the last part where his voice was recorded.

In this awkward situation, his mind was complicated with worries about what to do.

Suddenly, he remembered the ad-lib that Park Seo-hu had taught him, which had been praised by the vocal trainers during ‘A Letter’.

Without time to think, listening to his own voice nearing its end, he thought ah, whatever, and let out an ad-lib in a similar style to ‘A Letter’.

“That feeling was good!”

His ad-lib was cut off as the song abruptly stopped, and the woman, her voice raised an octave, said let’s go again and restarted the music.

As he repeated the recording several times, refining the ad-lib in his own way, after eleven attempts, the woman stopped the song and clapped her hands together.

“Oh!

That was really good!”

With the words that the recording was done, he let out a sigh of relief and took off the headphones.

As he came out of the booth, Lee Ha-jin, sitting on the outermost chair, gave him a thumbs-up.

Was it really okay?

With a slightly dazed expression, he found his seat and sat down.

Park Seo-hu next to him whispered quietly.

“Now you can go back down the mountain.”

With a somewhat indignant expression, Seo-hu turned away.

Jae-seo watched his profile with his mouth hanging open stupidly.

Having worked on stages together, he knew that Park Seo-hu was quite demanding when it came to vocals, almost excessively so.

For him to give a compliment meaning he did well…

As he stared blankly, flustered, Park Seo-hu was called for the next turn.

“But I’ll do better.”

Muttering that, Park Seo-hu got up with a face burning with determination.

His steps towards the recording booth seemed full of tension.

Even through the window, Park Seo-hu’s eyes kept blazing, and not long after, he managed to receive a standing ovation from Joe&Soul.

***

After successfully finishing the recording, they returned to the camp, but there was no time to rest.

The recording for ‘Wanna be your star’ was scheduled for the very next day.

Kim Jae-ho, the leader of their team, and Yoon Ji-heon, the leader of the ‘ALL Time’ team, gathered all the participants.

As Seo Jun-jae had mentioned earlier, it seemed they wanted to practice together as a group before going for the recording.

They sat in a circle, twice as large as usual, and the suggestion was made to sing ‘Wanna be your star’ from beginning to end once.

Everyone’s eyes landed on him.

Starting it off felt a bit awkward, but he soon steeled himself and began singing the intro, hitting the first note.

“Wanna be your star, to you who always watched over me.”

After him, Park Kang-hoon opened his mouth.

The unaccompanied singing continued like that.

With twenty people singing one song, each person’s part wasn’t that large.

So it was only after a long while following the intro that his second and final part, the bridge, came.

“I’ll be with you anytime, on our brightest days.”

The same lyrics he sang were repeated twice more, heightened by Lee Woo-rim and Park Seo-hu, before the two simultaneously hit high notes.

Some participants, watching this blankly, began to clap involuntarily.

The not-yet-finished song continued with Lee Chan-seo’s rap.

The participants, seeming to have forgotten their applause, stared at Lee Chan-seo with mouths agape.

“Holy shit, I almost cursed without meaning to.”

As the song ended with Chae Han-ul’s part, Ki Jae-young, sitting next to him, muttered in a small voice.

He probably meant something like “That was f*cking amazing,” Jae-seo thought, nodding.

The section from Lee Woo-rim to Lee Chan-seo was truly, literally, art.

The words of Won Ju-ha and Son Chae-i, that they divided the parts while thinking of each individual trainee, resonated deeply.

“Ah, why am I getting choked up over this?”

Kim Jae-ho, who had been quietly looking down at the lyrics, suddenly spoke, his eyes reddening.

Kim Woo-hyun, sitting next to him, teased him, saying, “Look at this guy,” but then his own face became emotional, and he bowed his head.

Starting with those two, someone pretended nothing was wrong while wiping away tears forming in their eyes, and someone else cleared their throat, moist with emotion.

“Alright, let’s practice once more with the accompaniment.”

Yoon Ji-heon clapped his hands as if to change the mood, and the other participants nodded and began to straighten up one by one.

As Yoon Ji-heon connected the tablet PC to the speakers, the accompaniment for ‘Wanna be your star’ began to flow gently.