Top Girl Group Scenario Rewritten with My Own Hands - Chapter 55

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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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Episode 55
“Hm?”
“What’s wrong?”
“Oh, it’s nothing much. I’ll tell you later.”
I nodded at Hyun Jae-yi’s words and turned my attention back to the stage in front of me.
Right after our performance ended, they presented the Rookie Award. It felt like the kind of award given to groups that didn’t quite deserve nothing, being a tier below the top prize. The group that won was a male idol group that had performed before the main Rookie Award ceremony.
We returned to the singer’s section, and immediately after, Ashcode’s stage began.
Ashcode, despite the modest scale of the awards show, brought a large entourage and launched their stage with grandiose Arrangement and Dance Break, as if flaunting their capital.
The colorful flags, the formations, and Ashcode’s dance line with backup dancers was certainly worth watching.
Ashcode’s real problem wasn’t dancing but singing—so they had the ability to pull off this kind of spectacle convincingly.
‘Was it called the Survival Series, I think…….’
That’s what I’d seen in recent PN Entertainment articles.
Ashcode’s overall concept was apocalypse, specifically survival as the keyword. Thinking of the teasers and visual content I’d seen before, it was a concept easy to grasp quickly.
Their debut track, , and their latest comeback song, . Both were said to be too complex for mainstream appeal and not title-track material, but both times, Ashcode topped 300,000 albums sold.
‘Whether they successfully captured the overseas fandom they aimed for in the first place, I’m not sure.’
I don’t know if PN thought the same way, though.
No, if PN had aimed for domestic popularity too, they would have had to secure a title that was either catchy or easy to listen to—one of the two. They wouldn’t not know that.
A song that was awkwardly quiet and awkwardly loud might have captured the apocalypse atmosphere, but it never shines in pop music.
Plus, with an unclear vocal range jumping between low and high notes, maintaining that delicate yet solid recording sound was difficult to pull off live—so the live performance had no merit either.
It was thoroughgoing production that only considered worldbuilding, concept, visuals, and performance.
Since Ashcode’s producer is known for that direction, maybe the overall approach leaned that way even more.
Burn it for ASHES
Scatter as ashes
I wouldn’t say that was wrong.
The story of girls who are fragile yet resilient enough not to burn, somehow surviving no matter what. I understand the desire to realize that kind of narrative, and their ability itself is definitely worth acknowledging.
The stage is all gray yet somehow dazzling. Silver Confetti falls like ashes, wrapping the six dancing members.
If you define an idol as “a well-designed dance performer,” then Ashcode is truly an excellent idol. At least, I felt that way—their visuals, dance performance, and stage direction were beautifully coordinated.
Especially Noah at center embodied the team’s identity so completely that her ability and visuals harmonized perfectly. That image of a “precarious yet resilient girl” that wouldn’t exist without her is amplified and expressed brilliantly through Noah.
You could criticize it as a stage impossible without capital, but K-pop markets treat capital as a form of ability or a weapon.
The handicap of limited capital given to us is a kind of wing for Ashcode. That’s the biggest difference between major and minor companies.
When the stage ended, what was caught on the main screen last was Noah’s solemn gaze—unsmiling.
A righteous yet unwavering impression, a beauty who gives off unconscious appeal even in blankness yet never looks like an easy opponent. Definitely Noah is this team’s center.
……It’s not easy.
I never viewed Ashcode and PN Entertainment as easy opponents to begin with, and it’s still not easy.
***
“Jae-yi.”
“Yeah?”
“What were you trying to say earlier?”
“Oh, that…… It’s really nothing much.”
“Tell me anyway.”
The drive back to the dorm after the awards show wasn’t exactly pleasant.
After our relatively early Rookie Award win and performance, other artists’ performances continued for nearly three hours straight, and we had to constantly worry whether our expressions were off, whether our reactions could be used against us.
In one word: exhaustingly draining.
Both facial management and reactions come from stamina. By the end, I was practically squeezing out reactions with nothing but the determination not to get caught in a character controversy.
So I wanted to rest the moment we arrived at the dorm, but I still had to hear what Hyun Jae-yi had to say.
Hyun Jae-yi, who’d been trying to tell me something, sprawled across my bed with an expression saying it was really nothing and spoke.
“Well, just, when Ashcode’s kids were performing earlier.”
“Yeah.”
“During the Dance Break, I saw one of the Ashcode kids waiting on the side of the stage, and their expression was like…….”
“Their expression?”
“……Ah, really, it’s nothing much, okay? They looked kind of anxious. Since they don’t do live vocals, I can’t tell about the singing, but seeing how they performed the moves all the way through, it doesn’t seem like there was a real problem.”
“You mean they looked like they could’ve messed up the stage?”
“Well, um, maybe? That kid’s probably friends with Hae-rin and Lee Han-byul, right? Like you said, since they’re young, they seem to be worried about it.”
When I stayed silent, thinking, Hyun Jae-yi got a bit irritated, saying, “See, I told you it was really nothing!”
Not that—just thinking it over. She seemed embarrassed, so she started rolling around on the bed. That’s my bed, though.
“You’re going to pull the bed cover off…….”
“Ugh, I’m embarrassed! It really is nothing, I’m telling you!”
“You can be concerned about it. But it’s not a situation where we can do anything, so let’s just forget about it. That kid didn’t mess up the stage anyway.”
Hyun Jae-yi nodded, her face flushed slightly.
She doesn’t seem to like being concerned about other teams, but apparently Hyun Jae-yi also has things she can’t just let slide. Ha.
“Still, we got a Rookie Award! Honestly, when you mentioned it, I thought it would be really difficult…….”
“I thought it’d be tough too. You’re pretty quick at reading the situation.”
“I mean, I understand the perks of major companies and how small ours is…….”
“Then why’d you come here from a major?”
“Because it didn’t look like they’d debut me.”
Oops, I’d tried to change the subject but accidentally steered into an even heavier one.
This is something I hadn’t even asked about before coming.
When I stayed quiet and watched her carefully, Hyun Jae-yi eventually giggled and looked at me.
“No, it’s not serious. You were thinking something similar about Ashcode’s kids too, weren’t you? I wouldn’t have debuted if I’d been there.”
“I thought about it a bit……. Well, somewhat.”
“The Youth Project at PN was originally under Division Three. When Division Four was created, the senior members went there, and supposedly the male group debuting soon would go to Division Four, and the female team to Division Three.”
“Right, I’m listening.”
“But then things got kind of twisted. Rumors spread that the senior members wouldn’t renew their contracts, that the Division Four producer wanted to take the female team, and then the Youth Project producer at Division Three quit and the male group debuted under Division Three instead. I think it was all company politics?”
As I listened to Hyun Jae-yi’s story, the picture came together in my head.
At major companies with in-house producers, this kind of power struggle happens fairly often. The girl group producer who’d planned and overseen PN Entertainment Youth must have lost out in the company’s internal politics.
The new producer wanted to reshape a group to their taste, so instead of the trainees originally slated for debut, they picked other trainees they preferred for the debut line.
The ones who suffer in situations like that are usually the innocent trainees.
Hyun Jae-yi had been a victim of that situation.
“That’s rough.”
“Not really that rough. How do I put it…… When they said the producer was changing, my fellow Youth team members and I didn’t think much of it. But then the company said they’d assign a new producer soon, and it dragged on forever.”
Hyun Jae-yi sat up on the bed and tilted her head slightly, as if recalling those times.
“So everyone got anxious, some members started looking for a way out…… Even the staff who’d been pushing us to work hard kept saying they didn’t know how things would go, so everyone got super nervous. But I was young and came from out of town, so I just…… kept pushing through.”
“Did you live in the trainee dorm back then too?”
“Yeah. But it wasn’t nearly as nice there.”
“Was our dorm that nice?”
“Compared to there, incredibly so. Before the Youth casting, everyone was playing politics something fierce, and after the casting, things were okay for a bit, but after things dragged on, it got really bad. There were kids who harassed you in ways you couldn’t see, kids who were super wary of new arrivals…… I got sick of it.”
Small communities really are terrifying.
When you think about it as mind games among young kids with their lives on the line for one debut, it makes sense.
I just quietly nodded. I sensed there was a reason she was telling me all this, so I was prepared to keep listening.
“Then the Youth Project fizzled out too, and all the seniors left. I didn’t have the guts to leave, so I just pushed through, and then I got offered to be connected here and just went for it.”
“‘Went for it’? Use prettier words.”
“Well, but I don’t know how else to say it. I didn’t have confidence I’d make the debut line if I stayed at the major longer, and I started thinking maybe I’d just age out without debuting, and the new debut line was being put together but the producer didn’t seem to like me much…….”
Then Hyun Jae-yi suddenly looked at me and smiled.
“Honestly, what I’m most grateful for is, even when I came here, I was basically just looking for somewhere, anywhere to debut because it didn’t seem like I would there. I never expected things to go well from the start. But ever since you came, something just felt like things were coming together really smoothly, and that feels so refreshing. Like today’s Rookie Award too.”
“Refreshing?”
“Honestly, I wanted us to do better than PN’s new group. I know it’s tough. You know I said I’m not close with Jo Eun-bin? But really, I just don’t like her that much. When the new producer came to the company, they really liked Jo Eun-bin, who had just joined, and they didn’t like me much, so that’s why it was awkward.”
Hyun Jae-yi pouted as she confessed her shortcomings, and it seemed like she’d wanted to tell someone this for a while.
It had to be someone she could trust by her standards, so she’d been holding these words deep inside.
“……Now that I think about it, I know it’s pretty immature of me, so no harsh truths allowed.”
“No, I understand. That doesn’t mean you bullied her or did anything to her. Rather, you came to the conclusion that it was better not to see her, right?”
But I don’t think that’s immature. The real immaturity is kids who can’t handle their own emotions and end up hurting others.
By just facing her own shortcomings instead of running from them, Hyun Jae-yi passes the test of being decent. Of course, her reasons for leaving PN were complex, but the fact that she didn’t try to eliminate the person she found awkward and instead removed herself is enough.
But I’m not sure if it’s okay to talk like this now. She’s always been like this, but she’s very sensitive to atmosphere.
“Emotions arise naturally—how are you supposed to control that? Controlling emotions means restraining the impulsive actions that come from them. In that sense, you handled it well.”
“Wow, that’s actually moving.”
“And save the thank-yous for when you win a Rookie Award solo at VMA or the Lemon Music Awards. A shared award at an awards show that barely recognizes us? If you’re already grateful, what happens then.”
“…… I think the moving feeling I just had is about to be destroyed. How are you so consistently such a T? The mood was so nice!”
“What, was I wrong? You should definitely win before you say thank you or anything.”
“That’s true, but! You don’t understand the concept of mood, that’s all!”
The serious atmosphere dissolved as quickly as if it had been weeks ago, and the heavy air cleared instantly.
“Go on up and sleep. That’s my bed.”
“Ugh, that’s such a hassle. I should tell Go Hyun-seo to let me sleep in her bed…….”
“You’re the one who told me to use the bottom bunk…… And now you keep saying it’s annoying?”
“We need to succeed quickly so we can move. At least two people per room, and a dorm without a bunk bed…….”
In the end, Hyun Jae-yi took over Go Hyun-seo’s bed and fell asleep right there, forcing Go Hyun-seo up to the top bunk.
Go Hyun-seo stood at the foot of the bed with an expression of “kill me or save me,” staring at the sleeping Hyun Jae-yi, and honestly, it was pretty funny.
If this was going to happen, why did she insist I use the bottom bunk? One way or another, it was a day wrapped up in laughter.
Rewriting the Top Girl Group Scenario with My Own Hands
Author
: Nam Seo-rang
Production Date
: January 30, 2026
Publisher
: AcesMedia Inc.
Editor
: AcesMedia Editorial Team
Address
: 4F Urban Bench Building, 325 Teheran-ro, Gangnam District, Seoul
Email
: [email protected]
※ This work is published by AcesMedia Inc. under contract with the copyright holder,
and its contents may not be used in any form or means without permission from the company and author.
This e-book is protected by copyright law, and unauthorized reprinting or reproduction may result in legal liability.
UCI
: G720:N+A129-20260102083.0055

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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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