"…What?"
Aiden Lee didn't answer my question. Instead, he just looked at me with an innocent expression, as if asking what I'd even said.
"Want some more?"
"No...."
"Hm, tell me if you get hungry."
After saying that, Aiden Lee silently finished the food on his tray. I couldn't keep up with his energy and hesitated for a moment; instead of asking anything more, I focused on quietly finishing my own meal too.
But even as I did, my head was a mess.
'What was that?'
All because of what Aiden Lee had said.
'…Wasn't he sharp?'
As if something had displeased him, his tone had been like he might attack me for a moment.
"...."
Yet, despite that, his attitude didn't seem much different. Even now he was talking with the nearby teammates with a completely normal expression, and the aggression I'd glimpsed earlier was nowhere to be found.
'And I can't exactly ask what he meant by what he said then.'
Seeing that nonchalant face again, it might've just been something he tossed out casually. Aiden Lee was ruled by his moods, after all.
'…No need to poke at something that might cause trouble.'
After reaching that conclusion, I decided to stay quiet instead of digging into it.
I realized only later that Aiden Lee had been watching my reaction very carefully.
The next day, Aiden Lee brought in a rearrangement of "BINGO."
"…Oh."
"Whoa."
"I worked with the bass and synth sounds for now, but I'll add more instruments later. I think the tempo is good like this."
The slightly slow tempo of the original had been adjusted in Aiden Lee's arrangement, giving it a fast and lively feel. The strings used to create a sexy, relaxed vibe in the original song had been swapped for hipper, lighter electronic sounds.
Overall, the "refreshing" concept Aiden Lee had mentioned was expressed well, and all the team members nodded, satisfied.
"Then I'll try choreographing based on this tempo. Lyrics… Yuha, Danwoo-hyung, and Yeongoh are doing that, right?"
Kim Taeyoung—who had become the leader the day before—went over everyone's assigned roles again. Aiden Lee handled the overall arrangement; Park Won-hyo, Kim Taeyoung, and Zixuan handled choreography; lyrics were my job along with Joo Danwoo and Hwang Yeongoh.
We decided to split up: we'd each create rough drafts in the morning, then gather in the afternoon to assemble everything together.
And so, the four of us—me, Joo Danwoo, Hwang Yeongoh, and Aiden Lee, who had come up with the concept—put our heads together.
"What game concept were you even thinking of?"
"The boing-boing kind?"
Before writing lyrics, we hit a major wall.
It was… Aiden Lee's flimsy concept.
"No, I mean… what game did you have in mind, exactly? There are tons of games, right? Shooting games, retro games, RPGs… all kinds. Which one were you thinking of?"
"Hm, just MaXo Kart? I like MaXo Kart. Or, well, more specifically, the music from it."
"...."
Who asked what you liked? We're asking what concept you had in mind.
Answering Hwang Yeongoh cheerfully, Aiden Lee looked at us like he didn't see what the problem was. Swallowing down the urge to smack him in the head, I opened my mouth.
"You weren't thinking of MaXo Kart itself as the concept. What you meant was something like the BGM that plays in MaXo Kart, right?"
"Oh, right! That's what I meant."
"So basically… you only thought of that game-ish BGM, and you didn't think of the overall concept at all. Right?"
"Yeah, that's right!"
"...."
"...."
We went silent. But it wasn't hard to guess that we were all thinking the same thing.
This brat Aiden Lee really had zero plan.
'…He really just thought of a few keywords and ran with them.'
Thinking about it, I realized it was impressive he'd managed to arrange the song this well with just "electronic sound," "refreshing," and "boy concept" in mind.
At that moment, I understood Aiden Lee's strengths and weaknesses.
He was good at improvising, had great overall instincts and talent, and could come up with brilliant ideas—but he had no sense for planning out a full narrative.
In other words, he could think of keywords and vibes, but he lacked the ability to turn them into a cohesive story.
'…A song needs a narrative.'
You couldn't rely only on atmosphere or rhythm; a song needed a full arc—beginning, middle, end—and the worldbuilding that came with it. You had to be able to say what the song was, what story it told.
'He has musical talent, but zero talent for lyrics.'
Usually, this kind of storytelling was the lyricist's job, so Aiden Lee had technically done his part. But it was hard not to feel dumbfounded.
"Before we start writing lyrics, let's clarify our concept a bit."
I rubbed my temples and spoke. Hwang Yeongoh frowned in thought, then spoke first.
"So, 'refreshing,' 'boy,' 'game'… When you say boy-game, it makes me think of shooting games, battle games, RPGs?"
"Yeah, that's what comes to mind first."
"Then should we go with a more powerful vibe? But how do we add refreshing into that?"
"There are sports games too, aren't there? If we go for a sports concept, we could include refreshing vibes."
One after another, Hwang Yeongoh, Joo Danwoo, and even Aiden Lee started bringing up games they'd played.
Once familiar game genres came up, shooting, battle, and role-playing games jumped out first. Games each of us—or people our age—would've played.
'…This seems off.'
But the more I listened, the more I felt that we were headed in the wrong direction.
Would shooting, battle, role-playing, or sports games really capture the keywords "boy, refreshing, game"?
"I think we're targeting the wrong audience right now."
And that was the conclusion I reached: "No."
"What do you mean?"
At my words, Hwang Yeongoh—who had been leaning toward a shooting-game concept—frowned and asked.
"When you say boy-game, shooting games or sports games are what come to mind first."
"No, I think that's a concept that comes from our point of view."
"Then if not us, who are we supposed to think of?"
I didn't feel the need to think any deeper and answered straight away.
"The Idol Makers."
"...!"
We were people who went on stage to be seen. Meaning, we were not the ones who watched—we were the ones being watched. Which meant our concept should match the people watching us.
"We're people who perform on stage, not people who watch. The ones who watch our stages are the Idol Makers, so wouldn't it be better to choose a concept familiar to them?"
What we needed to prioritize wasn't our experiences, but the experiences of the people watching us.
A concept familiar to them—easy for them to accept. And when thinking of our target audience, all the candidate concepts we'd thrown around earlier felt vaguely off.
'Not everything is universally popular.'
It wasn't that shooting, battle, role-playing, sports, or RPG games were bad concept choices. In fact, with a good core image, they'd be great for building a narrative.
However, the target audience we could appeal to would become narrower. Those kinds of games were ultimately known only to people who played them.
"And we also need to think about what we want to show. Not what we're familiar with, but what we want to present."
What kind of version of ourselves did we want the viewers to see? That was the very first thing to consider before choosing a concept.
Perhaps my words sounded convincing, because the two who had been listening quietly—Aiden Lee and Joo Danwoo—spoke up first.
"…I think you're right. The ones watching us are the Idol Makers, after all. We should think of games that are familiar to them."
"I like it too!"
"…Makes sense. I agree. Then what game should we do?"
Hwang Yeongoh looked slightly reluctant, but he still nodded and followed up with the question.
At that, I tried to think of a concept familiar to everyone, while still allowing us to highlight "our characters."
The first thing I did was look back at the lyrics sheet for "BINGO." Even if we rewrote the lyrics, we couldn't change the entire structure of the song, so we had to carefully choose what to keep and what to change.
'The core of this song… is pleading.'
"BINGO" was a classic love song—one with a strongly delicate, vulnerable tone.
Not demanding but waiting, not insisting but pleading. A confession saying: I'm here, so please come find me, and I'll shape everything to fit you.
'In a way, that fits our current situation.'
The 100 trainees appearing on
The self-PR videos we'd filmed beforehand, the theme songs divided by grade, the guerrilla flash mobs—everything was meant to introduce "me" as a candidate and urge Idol Makers to choose us.
Every trainee wanted more screen time, wanted to gain a storyline and character. People pushed for bigger reactions, more relationships, even revealing their personal lives.
And everything they did had a single goal.
To appeal: "Please debut me."
'But the line is important.'
Desperation mattered. But we also had to show that "pleading" and "desperation" lightly—not in a heavy or suffocating way. You fold it naturally into the narrative; if you push too aggressively for votes, it backfires.
'No one wants to watch an idol who feels too desperate.'
An idol is an entertainer. Narrative is important, but in the end, we had to be "someone who's charming and enjoyable to watch."
That meant that the pleading tone in "BINGO" could either help or hurt us, depending on how we shaped it.
'Aiden Lee's refreshing concept isn't bad.'
A lively, cheerful rhythm—and the subtle kind of pleading that makes people think you're cute or charming. That was what we needed to show through "BINGO."
'And showing each person's charm is important....'
Unlike "Look," where 100 trainees had to fit themselves into the song's predetermined image, this first mission was our first chance to show Idol Makers who "I" was as an individual trainee.
Which meant the team that best showcased the trainees' diverse charms would win.
"...."
In that case—
"…How about ProXcess Maker?"
"Huh?"
"Mm?"
After long deliberation, I finally brought up one game I knew. The three who had been actively discussing looked at me, eyes wide.
It made sense—they all recognized the name I'd brought up. It was a classic among classics, practically the defining example of a raising-sim game that everyone had heard of at least once, regardless of gender.
"Pro… ProXcess Maker?"
"Oh, I know that one. A classic!"
Aiden Lee nodded brightly, but Joo Danwoo froze like he'd been startled, and Hwang Yeongoh stared at me with suspicion.
Facing their expressions, I added one more game to the table.
"And let's add a dating sim."
"...??"
ProXcess Maker and a pretty-boy romance simulation. Somehow both niche and incredibly mainstream at the same time.
I believed these elements could express "refreshing, boy, game"—the keywords Aiden Lee had mentioned—better than anything else.