Became The Leader of a Girl Group Destined To Fail - Chapter 85

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com

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Chapter 85.

“I agree.”

Ryu Bora immediately raised her hand in consent.
Wait.
Hold on.

“I don’t like it. I can’t be the leader!”

Why didn’t anyone ask what I wanted?

“Why can’t you?”

Seo Baek-young’s eyes widened as she asked.
It was terrifying.

“No. I just… I can’t do something like that. Just looking at me, it’s obvious I’m not cut out for it!”
“On the contrary. You look perfectly suited for it. In fact, you look so naturally suited to be a leader that it’s practically written in your face. Even if you got lost, people would bring you straight to Colors saying, ‘Aren’t you the leader of this group?'”
“Exactly!”

I had no idea why everyone was speaking so formally, but this absolutely wasn’t happening.

“That’s not me! Is there anyone who looks more like a leader than Baek-young? Then why won’t Baek-young do it? She was the leader the entire time we were at Make a New Color! Experienced people always do better at their jobs! We should have her do it!”

My voice grew louder.
My words came faster and faster.
I was genuinely desperate to avoid the leader position.

“Experience doesn’t make you better—effort does!”
“I’m not going to put in the effort!”
“Fans! Look at this rookie! She’s saying she won’t work hard before she’s even debuted!”
“Yes! That’s just how I am! I’ll work hard at everything except being the leader! But I hate being the leader!”

Why did I hate the leader position so much?
A strong instinct told me so.
The moment I became the leader…

“I just need to exclude myself. Anyone else is fine.”
“Wow. The winner gets to claim me as theirs.”
“If you debuted me, take responsibility, Yun Chung.”

A strong instinct told me I’d have to take charge of these three troublemakers and shape them into proper people.
Absolutely not.
I’m someone without any talent for childcare or nurturing.
I’ve only done solo activities for ten years, after all.
This is driving me insane.
I looked at Seo Baek-young with desperate eyes.
Baek-young.
Why are you doing this?
We were good together, weren’t we?

“Actually, I never intended to refuse the leader position at first.”

Then Seo Baek-young spoke with a serious expression.

“But… while doing Menukal, I really came to understand something. I’m not the right person to be a leader.”
“No, why would you even think something so ridiculous—”

I was taken aback.
When did she start thinking like that?

“Well then.”

That’s when Oh PD suddenly interjected.
Damn Oh PD.
This seems like a really important conversation.
I had a strong feeling I’d need to ask Seo Baek-young about this separately later.

“How about the two of you propose a pledge to not be leader instead?”
“….”
“You’d put forward a pledge to convince the other members. Then the remaining three would free whoever has the better pledge from the leader position.”
“Oh. I absolutely love that.”

That bastard Oh PD is the worst.
A pledge to not be leader? What kind of nonsense is that?

“I’ll go first! Let me speak.”

Seo Baek-young adapted immediately and raised her hand.

“If I can’t be the leader, then I’ll take responsibility for all the household chores in this house.”
“Approved.”
“Approved.”
“Yun Chung, just be the leader.”

….
Should I just quit?

***

“Today’s content is~ reassigning rooms. Let’s keep it light and smooth, yeah? We’re not the type to push hard from day one.”

Ugh.
I wanted to do something about that creepy tone of his.
Once the camera setup was finished, all five of us gathered in the living room.

“We have four rooms and five people… so how should we divide them?”
“The master bedroom is the largest, so we could put two people there and the rest can each have their own room.”
“God, I really want my own private room.”

In truth, giving such a large and nice dormitory to a rookie idol group was unusual.
Only a major label like Colors could manage something like this.

“Is anyone interested in sharing a double room?”

Seo Baek-young broached the difficult topic first.
No one raised their hand.
Well, naturally everyone would prefer their own room.

“Then should we decide rooms with a game?”
“I knew you’d say that! We’ve prepared a game for you~!”

The moment Ryu Bora made the suggestion, Oh PD excitedly chimed in.
…I wondered why he hadn’t jumped in earlier.

“What kind of game is this!?”

It was strange—whenever Yeon Ju-hong played games, her eyes would go wide like that.

“Right away! The Eye of Truth game~!”

…?

“The Eye of Truth game works like this: you hear one piece of TMI about a member, and you have to guess which member it belongs to!”

Hmm.
My stomach immediately turned sour.
Whenever a game had “truth” in the name, it always felt dangerous.

“From now on, you are members of the idol group StillBlue, sharing both joy and hardship! But… how well do you really know each other?!”

Not very well.
Honestly, before the program started, we weren’t particularly close.
At best, Kim Geum and Ryu Bora were close, and Seo Baek-young got along well with everyone.
Ryu Bora was the type to put up walls with people, and Yeon Ju-hong got along with everyone but had no one she was especially close to.
It seemed opening her heart to people was surprisingly difficult for her.
And as for me….
There’s nothing to say.
I’m Yun Chung with zero social skills.
Before Make a New Color, I had kept my distance from everyone, so we had no information about each other.
During the program, we barely had time to share personal stories.
…I have a feeling the fans are going to find out just how unfamiliar we are with each other.

“The member who guesses the most correctly gets to assign rooms to the other members~! In other words, winner takes all!”

So roughly, the game worked like this.
You hear a question, and if you think it’s about a particular member, you write their name on the whiteboard and reveal it together.
Of course, if you correctly identify your own story, that doesn’t count as a correct answer.
The important thing was maintaining a poker face so no one could tell when your own story was being discussed.
In short, it was a game that required acting ability.
…Wouldn’t Ryu Bora have a bit of an advantage?
I glanced at Ryu Bora, and sure enough, her eyes were gleaming—she was thinking the same thing.

“Alright, the first question! Since we’re starting out, I’ll keep it easy. ‘A person who has never felt the emotion of love even once.’ In other words, someone who hasn’t even experienced their first love yet. Who could this person be?”

…Is this problem really that easy?
I thought hard about all five members.
No matter how much I thought about it… there wasn’t a single member who seemed like they’d have a first love?
Everyone had the same thought—their expressions weren’t good.
Especially Yeon Ju-hong, whose eyes were spinning in circles as if she’d half lost her mind.
Hmm. If that’s the reaction….
I studied Oh PD’s expression.
And I wrote the answer on the whiteboard.

“!”

Everyone looked shocked as I wrote with such confidence.

“Oh, trainee Yun Chung. I like that confident look. Everyone else, please write your answers within 5 seconds.”
“Gasp.”
“Oh, I can’t do this.”
“Yes, you can!”

In the end, everyone frantically scribbled and held up their whiteboards.

“Oh.”

Laughter erupted among the production crew.
The members… had all written their own names.
Except for me.

“Wow. Yun Chung got it right alone?”
“Wow. Look how cunning that is.”
“? It’s a competitive society.”

Yeon Ju-hong and Kim Geum tried hard to give me hints, but I ignored them.

“Trainee Yun Chung… please read your answer.”
“Oh, yes.”

I lowered the whiteboard and read it aloud.

“All of StillBlue.”
“….”

Everyone seemed oddly melancholic at my answer.
Why were they sad?

“…People without a romantic bone in their bodies.”
“How is it possible that none of you have ever experienced unrequited love?”

Kim Geum spoke with a catch in her voice.

“You haven’t either.”
“I chose not to!”

At Baek-young’s point, Kim Geum bristled, but it was futile.
Pointless.

“So, is that the correct answer?”
“It is correct!”

Satisfying.
Another correct answer magnet was added to my whiteboard.
…Anyway.
Did they all give broadcast-friendly answers, or was it… the truth?
I’d have to ask later.

“Which member was so desperate to debut that she named her pet dog ‘Debut’?!”
“Seo Baek-young.”
“Correct!”
“Which member speaks four languages? Korean, Chinese, Japanese, and English!”
“I genuinely have no idea.”
“The answer is~ Yun Chung!”
“What?!”
“You’ve now won our speaker prize.”

…I’d better not mention that I also speak a bit of Thai and Vietnamese.

“When on earth did you learn all those languages…?”
“Do you have 72 hours in a day or something?”
“I just did a bit of self-study… that’s all.”

Of course, it was closer to conversational language ability that I’d naturally picked up from touring so much.
But I couldn’t explain it that way here.

“Which member loved White Noise so much that she even attended a fan signing and workshop?”
“…How on earth did you even get into a White Noise fan meet? That’s more surprising than being a fan in the first place.”
“Is it Ju-hong? Whenever Ju-hong gets fixated on something, she goes a little crazy.”
“What do you all think I am, Baek-young…”
“Wrong. The answer was Kim Geum.”
“??”

Faced with such an unexpected answer, all the members turned to look at Kim Geum.
She didn’t seem like the type who’d ever been a fan of a celebrity.

“Why are you all staring? Do I look like someone who spent every holiday allowance she’d ever received in her entire life just to go to a fan meet?”
“This is genuine…”
“Who was your favorite?”

She was serious.
It was fascinating.
This was the first time I’d ever seen anyone actually be a fan of a celebrity.

“It’s a secret.”
“Why?”
“Because that person might find me burdensome… My unrequited love is something I want to keep secret, quietly in the background… just for myself…”
“That’s kind of scary…”
“Creepy.”
“Do you all even understand what love is?!”

Who could it be?
I’d have to probe her about it later when she was sleep-talking.

“Which member stated that her ultimate career goal was to become a director at Colors when she joined the company?”
“Her ambitions are quite…”
“Why specifically become a director at Colors? You could just start your own company.”
“Hey, this person’s a traitor. We should beat her up.”
“I’m not! I actually love the company so much. I love Colors. We’re forever.”

While Seo Baek-young and Kim Geum were bickering.

“I have a feeling this one is Ju-hong.”

I quietly announced the answer.

“Correct!”
“Oh.”
“Wow. People say seventeen-year-olds are scary these days. When I joined, the best I could come up with was ‘award-winning singer’ for ten years straight as my dream job. I was way too naive.”
“…Not really that naive.”

Kim Geum brushed off Ryu Bora’s criticism lightly.

“Why is Ju-hong’s dream to be a director?”
“Well, my real dream is to be the Shop Owner, but if I said that honestly, I was worried he might hate me… so I quietly picked the second-in-command instead!”

This girl is truly terrifying.
Anyway.
Beyond that, trivial information kept pouring out.
Half of the questions were answered immediately, but I couldn’t get the other half right.
Still, I had gotten quite a few correct.
But what was slightly awkward was that Seo Baek-young had also gotten quite a few right.
It looked like first place would come down to just one or two questions.

“I will now announce the final first place winner.”

Everyone waited nervously for Oh PD’s announcement.
Why were the other three getting nervous besides Seo Baek-young?
They had barely gotten one or two questions right.
It’s absolutely not because I’m disappointed that I’m thinking this.

“It’s Seo Baek-young! Baek-young, please designate the two people who will use the double room!”
“Yes!”
“Sigh.”
“Sigh… I’ll just go ahead and take the double room myself.”
“I’ll go pack my things.”

Everyone had resigned themselves to the thought that they would be the ones chosen.
But I was confident.
I had been nice to Seo Baek-young. Of course she would put me in the single room—

“I’ll share a double room with Yun Chung.”
“?!”

It wasn’t what I expected.
She’d done something kind for me.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com

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