The Goal is the Ending Fairy

The reason I could play this game calmly until now…

was because of my confidence as a user of this game.

I had participated in many events within this game and achieved good results in most of them.

Of course, I also benefited greatly from the passives I’d earned before. That’s why everything had been going smoothly until now.

But perhaps because of that. Somehow this felt like a penalty given to me.

I should have known from the generous early rewards. The character itself was hard mode from the start, but I didn’t realize it.

A trainee with lots of controversy is at a disadvantage for debut.

Moreover, what if the scheduled debut members have such misunderstandings too?

Sure, Yoon Hee-jo and Lee Jinyu get along well with me. But there’s no guarantee the other members will be the same.

The last thing I want is to be hated by them, but that seems inevitable now.

“Haah…”

[Miss Dan-ah?]

“Give me a moment to think.”

Anyway, in this situation…

While the ultimate goal hasn’t changed, it’s just added more problems to solve along the way.

This is truly the worst.

It’s obvious things have gotten complicated for various reasons, and they expect me to deal with it?

As I pressed my brow with a tired expression, the helper floated closer.

[B-but during team evaluations, you didn’t miss any practice or cause major problems!]

“What, my skills were probably the problem.”

[Ah… I can’t deny that.]

Either way, it’s not great.

Just participating in team evaluations won’t make up for it. That only makes things worse for someone who’s already disliked.

“Fine, I get it.”

Damn. The more I think about it, the more annoyingly complicated it gets.

But I can’t just ignore this… Though I shouldn’t get hasty either.

It’s incredibly complex.

Anyway, now that I roughly understand the situation, I needed to deal with the immediate issues first.

What’s most urgent for me right now is the 1st mission. And the main assignment.

Plus, very soon there will be an extremely important filming for both of those.

What kind of filming, you ask…

It’s the ‘self PR video.’

Today, with ten days left until the first mission, is the day to film the self PR video.

……

…But right after that momentous filming ended.

“Thank you for your hard work.”

“Good work everyone~”

Even as I bowed to the staff, my mind was in emergency mode.

‘Singing in front of a camera really is different.’

I should never let my guard down on stage in the game from now on.

Even as I made that resolution, unavoidable regret washed over me.

Of all times, not getting a ‘Perfect’ on the first try…

‘Are you crazy, Seo Dan-ah?’

Yes. I had made a huge mistake during the filming just now.

It started when I hit the wrong note from the very beginning of the song I sang for the special talent portion.

But since suddenly changing key would have been even more awkward, I had no choice but to continue with that flow.

As a result, the song became slightly flat with a minor tone, creating a profound atmosphere different from the original.

The problem with this was due to the genre of the song I chose.

The song I had just sung was the opening theme of a children’s animation.

Taking a hopeful and bright song… and singing it like that was the issue.

⟦Dragging my tired body once again~ I look up at the sky⟧

‘…This is driving me crazy, seriously.’

Right then, my voice from the video could be heard.

The hopeful lyrics I sang were flowing from the staff doing monitoring in the corner.

⟦The warmly shining sunlight~ guides our hearts⟧

⟦The sound of footsteps walking~ listen~ carefully~⟧

‘Please.’

Since everyone only gets one chance, I couldn’t even beg to film again.

Meanwhile, it was hard to listen to my mistake-ridden singing, making me want to cover my ears.

But none of this process reflected my own choices. (And I emphasize, absolutely none of it.)

From claiming vocal as my specialty to singing an anime theme song… It was all the result of interference from the selection window.

To retrace that process, we need to go back to when I was practicing alone the day before yesterday.

That’s when this screen suddenly appeared without warning.

—– —–

>Vocal

>Rap

>Dance

>Comedy

—– —–

There was no explanation, but I could tell intuitively. This unfriendly selection was clearly related to the special talent for the self PR video.

The options shown were just four items.

Among them, rap wasn’t even in my stat window so that was obviously out. The randomly inserted comedy concept was also impossible.

With my charm and likability currently very low, I’d be lucky not to be labeled an attention-seeker with the wrong concept.

So rather than that, I needed to rely on my main stats. In other words, it would be better to appeal through skill.

By that logic, I had to choose between two options anyway.

Vocal and dance, that is.

>Vocal: 40/100

>Dance: 35/100

And these were their current values.

Setting dance aside, if you’re wondering whether I raised vocal this much by practicing alone for several days… That wasn’t the case.

Like when raising my dance stat, I had help from someone with vocal too.

Surprisingly, that helper was Kim Se-i. She turned out to be quite the vocal powerhouse.

It was unexpected since I thought she’d be in the dance position due to her good physique, but anyway, she was incredibly good at singing.

Almost good enough to be considered main vocal level.

She often shared the vocal room with me during the limited time we had.

And she gave me a lot of musical help too.

I have no idea what made her do it, but I didn’t ask in case it jinxed things.

She even deliberately practiced in the vocal room where I was during dawn when there were few trainees.

Since my vocal ability improved quickly thanks to her, I didn’t show any discomfort either.

Thanks to that, I could now handle fairly substantial vocal parts without much trouble.

So without hesitation, I…

>Vocal ◁(Selected!)

…did that.

But the selection window didn’t end there, and committed the infuriating act of predetermining song choices too.

Moreover, the list of songs was so shocking that I still can’t forget it.

—– —–

>Children’s Animation Theme “Green Green Journey!”

>Famous Horror Game OST ‘Anybody’

—– —–

‘Oh for f*ck’s…’

Just two choices with completely opposite vibes, and genres I didn’t want to pick either of.

And since I didn’t know either song, I had to quickly search for them.

Looking them up, the former was a bright and hopeful band song, while the latter was just… beyond words.

First off, it had no lyrics. I couldn’t tell if they wanted me to just sing the melody or write lyrics myself.

And even setting that aside, choosing the former would be more advantageous.

The latter was too niche of a genre, and singing it in front of people who don’t know it would just make the atmosphere awkward.

At least the cartoon theme song had decent recognition. The official video alone was approaching 4 million views.

Maybe because it was such an old cartoon, there seemed to be many people seeking it out for nostalgia.

So I chose that song, and the result was like this… Hmm.

While unconsciously touching my forehead from the incoming headache, I had to suddenly stop walking.

“Wow. You have a nice voice.”

Because someone called out to me from behind.

Thinking it was probably the trainee scheduled after me, I hid my fatigue and turned around.

It was Cha Sihyun, a trainee who hadn’t been with the company long.

She was one of the few people who were friendly towards me, so I could recognize her right away.

“That was really good to listen to.”

“…Thank you.”

I had exchanged some brief conversations with her over the past few days.

Though her subtly cold smile was a bit uncomfortable…

But that could just be because things were still awkward between us, right? So I put aside any hasty judgments.

“Haha, you’re being so shy.”

Cha Sihyun heard my brief response and smiled good-naturedly.

‘It’s not shyness, it’s awkwardness.’

Internally retorting like that, I smiled back.

But it seems that was all she had to say despite approaching so friendly.

Shortly after, she just said she’d be going now and left for her filming.

‘She always just says hi and leaves like that.’

After watching her bouncing away, I resumed walking too.

Lately when I saw Cha Sihyun, I had an unexpected thought – that she showed surprising passion for the mission.

I heard she was an acting trainee, appearing for marketing purposes to promote her face. So I didn’t expect her to try this hard.

In my prediction, that was probably ordered by HON too.

Since this was an in-company broadcast, they probably planned to have her show her face on camera before dropping her at the right time.

That kind of thing was common in debut programs.

‘…Maybe I should have wished her luck with the filming though.’

I unconsciously turned my head and glanced at the distant Cha Sihyun.

I felt a bit awkward as my response seemed somewhat cold. Though it wasn’t intentional, still.

Why did I do that?

Either way, she was a trainee who was being friendly to me, so pushing her away would be my loss.

But… even knowing that, it somehow wasn’t easy to approach her.

‘For some reason… it still feels uncomfortable.’

After recalling the occasional encounters with Cha Sihyun, I shook my head slightly.

“Trainees who are done can change clothes here and go practice~!”

Ah right, I needed to hurry too.

Obviously, since these clothes were all provided by the company, I needed to return them quickly.

I hurried my steps towards the staff member who spotted me and gestured.

On the way, I glanced at Cha Sihyun’s back one more time, and our eyes met again at that moment.

The timing was strange for a coincidence.

I wondered if she had just seen me too, or if she had been watching me the whole time.

Feeling that unsettling sensation again, I didn’t look back this time.

…And that evening.

“Our teaser is up!”

Lee Jinyu, who kept knocking on the room where Chae Seonha and I were, shouted excitedly.

The company had uploaded a teaser without notice one day before the individual PR videos went up.

They probably wanted to quickly let people know what kind of show this was, since viewers might be confused if trainee videos suddenly appeared.

– Hi.Light | Teaser 1. HON Entertainment’s own debut survival show starts October 13th! | #HON #HiLight #TBQ #YLIVE_YApp

They’re already announcing the broadcast date when we haven’t even started the first mission.

Well, the staff must have calculated the broadcast dates themselves. That wasn’t something I needed to worry about as a trainee.

The important thing was, did they have enough content for a teaser when we hadn’t done anything yet?

Sure enough, the trainees barely appeared in the video. They just included some footage of us caught on practice room cameras here and there.

The rest was mainly content of the production team and company staff having meetings.

The agency must have been quite rushed too.

Seeing how they hastily put together this promotional teaser, it was obvious they thought their own recommendation mission wasn’t working out.

Still, thanks to the editing heavily influenced by their big company resources, it seemed sufficient to raise expectations.

The biggest credit would obviously go to the company name recognition though.

People weren’t becoming interested because they saw the teaser video.

They were just intrigued that ‘that HON Entertainment’, famous for idols, was revealing their trainees’ debut process.

Fortunately, that interest was gradually heating up.

‘Real-time Popular Videos #27’…

Not bad for just releasing a teaser.

Actually, reaching this rank so soon after upload was quite impressive.

Moreover, it didn’t stop there but kept climbing in real-time rankings.

When I checked again later, it had risen to #5, showing surprisingly strong momentum.

Seeing that made me somewhat realize what it meant to belong to a major entertainment company.

“……”

I shifted my gaze slightly to the person watching the teaser beside me.

My roommate Chae Seonha.

She too seemed secretly relieved at the high interest in the broadcast.

But it was too early to feel at ease. The real test would be tomorrow.

The true start of the first mission would begin the moment our self PR videos go up tomorrow.

Reminding myself of that once again, I turned off my phone and lay down in bed.