When I walked into the company with a slightly uncomfortable feeling, I saw the members gathered closely in the place we often used for V-Live sessions. As I opened the door, Jeong Dajun, with his bag still strapped on, sprang up.
“Hyung! Why are you so late? I feel let down!!”
“The traffic was bad.”
“After all that noise about waiting at the school gates…!”
“Ahaha, you believed that?”
“…!!”
Dajun’s eyes shook left and right, stunned by Seong Jiwon’s words.
Back when Seo Hojin took his CSAT, I smoked cigarettes one after another and paced around my room. In the end, I couldn’t take it anymore and ended up waiting in front of his school.
But how could I possibly go there now?
Dajun’s cheeks were already puffed up in annoyance, so I asked him nonchalantly,
“So, did you do well?”
“I feel totally great!”
“Is that so?”
“What’s with that look? It’s not false hope, I really did well!”
Well, that’s a relief. Far from being downcast, he was brimming with confidence.
But as I leisurely walked inside, I had a weird hunch.
“…?”
Something was off.
The members were lined up in the usual V-Live room, and even a tablet was fixed in front of them.
“Live broadcast? Or recording?”
“Wow~, Hyung really got burned last time.”
Kang Ichae chuckled. I still couldn’t forget the faces of the members and the manager who entered brightly, carrying a cake, and popping paper fireworks.
When I urged them with my eyes to speak up quickly, the reply came from Kim Seonghyeon.
“Recording.”
“Ahaha~.”
Then, for some reason, Ichae gave me a slimy smile and gestured with his eyes to look at Dajun.
The moment I slightly furrowed my brows, Dajun giggled, turned his backpack around, and clumsily pulled out some papers.
“Now that Hoyun-hyung is here too—”
…Now that I was here?
“I will begin grading my first-ever college entrance exam!!”
“Woahhhhh!”
“Wow~.”
Are you out of your mind?
What kind of idol recorded their own exam grading?
Just as I was about to reproach them for not stopping him, I quickly scanned the other members. Ichae was nearly burying his face in his knees, chuckling helplessly and unable to explain.
Ignoring the ever-joyous main rapper, I turned my gaze to the older members, but surprisingly, they all seemed nonchalant. Dajun snorted as I looked on in confusion.
“Don’t get me wrong, Hoyun-hyung. It’s not what you think! This is for my personal collection and to send to my mom and dad.”
“…Oh, is that so?”
“Whenever something big happens in Dajun’s family, they always record it or take photos to keep.”
With Seong Jiwon’s interjection, Jeong Dajun proudly gave a thumbs up.
“My parents have been busy lately, and I’ve been living in the dorms. I want to show them how hard I studied through a video! Right, hyungs?!”
“Of course, Dajun worked hard~.”
Ichae subtly joined in, urging me to smile for the camera. The idea was to enjoy this moment amongst ourselves and keep the video for our personal collection, since it wasn’t meant for public release.
Wow, Jeong Dajun…
You’ve grown up a lot.
If it had been live, I would have panicked and stopped him. I thought Dajun would have been yapping and whining, “Hyung how can you do this? It’s my birthday event tomorrow.”
Seeing Dajun humming a tune while preparing to grade the exam with the answer sheet already printed and spread out, I took back my previous thought of him being a baby.
Kids really did grow up fast.
I had a hunch that he was well-loved from the moment I heard the story about his childhood savings account, but I felt it anew when he mentioned sending the video to his parents.
Well, it’s good to be on good terms with your parents.
However, no matter how much I thought about it, I couldn’t imagine Jeong Dajun getting excellent grades to boast about to anyone. It wasn’t just about the possibility; I couldn’t even envision such a scene.
Based on what I had seen during our cram sessions, “good grades” seemed impossible for Dajun.
“What, what’s this? Why do I feel so bad?”
“Just get on with the grading.”
“…Yes!”
Since he was ready to grade it, it meant he had actually gone to the exam hall and managed to answer the problems without falling asleep. He had studied earnestly, at least for the past few days, so I decided to leave him be and give him credit for that effort.
Jeong Dajun finished preparing and gripped a pen tightly in one hand.
“Alright, I’m ready! Please turn on the song!”
“What do you like?”
“Could you play ‘Kill the Lights’ to pump me up?”
“Ooh, wow~!!”
…Hey, wasn’t that a bit much?? Weren’t you sending this to your parents?
Dajun clenched his fist as if he knew exactly what was being implied.
“Mother, Father!! If you’re watching, give me the right answer!!”
“…”
Right…
Without a moment to intervene, Kang Ichae, with a mischievous smile spreading across his lips, swiftly clicked the mouse. The beat of a song that we had heard hundreds—if not thousands of times began to play.
“Okay, Here we go,
I see the timing, we once caught our breath together,
Now we must go again.”
“Okay! Let’s get it!!”
“Starting with Korean! Call them out!”
“3-2-4-1-2!”
“Oooh, got three right!”
“Ooh, Yes We can definitely kill this light,
Overturn everything, change the game.”
“Seonghyeon-hyung! It’s your part! Hurry and sing!”
“My, my part?”
“Yeah!! I need the energy!”
“Uh… uh…”
Kim Seonghyeon, stuttering and realizing there was no escape, began to sing while looking at the sparkling eyes of Dajun.
“My trembling fingertips turn blue… How much do you know? Calculate.”
Were you really going to sing that?
“4-3-1-1-1! Okay, Jiwon-hyung!!”
“I know this game is against me~, Yet I must go on until the end.”
“5-3-2-1-1!”
“…Is it just me, or have there been a lot of 1’s lately?”
I never thought the song “Kill the Lights” could be so perfectly used for CSAT.
I took another sip of my Frappuccino, nibbling it while watching Jeong Dajun flutter his fingers nervously over the absurd sequence of numbers.
The results were disastrous.
But you really stuck with it till the end, good job.
“Wow, it’s like the rainy season here.”
“Aaaaaack… No, let’s get the energy back! Hyung, quickly!”
As Kang Ichae joked about the rain of marks on the scoring sheet, it was my turn again.
“To you, it might have happened several times, but for me, it’s just once.”
“Eeeeh?? You’re singing?”
“What the… what’s with Seo Hoyun all of a sudden?”
If the maknae wanted to get in the mood for the exam scoring, then this much was fine.
Whatever.
I ignored the murmurs of the members around me and watched without much expectation, but then Dajun’s scores were revealed. As expected, Korean and Math were a total loss, but Classical Chinese was surprisingly not bad.
Actually, it was unbelievably good.
Though why he’d taken Classical Chinese after studying Japanese was beyond me.
Jeong Dajun also tilted his head in wonder.
“Huh? Did I do this well?”
“What? Does Dajun know Chinese characters well?”
“Not really. Whenever he turns on a lecture, he’s always dozing off.”
The members around me, seemingly having the same thoughts, passed around the answer sheet and mock exam paper, their eyes wide with surprise.
“What’s this?”
“So, he did well?”
“Let me see.”
“Only now does Sub Vocal No. 1 take an interest.”
Despite doubt that Jeong Dajun could have done so well, I was about to pat his head and praise him when Kim Seonghyeon and Seong Jiwon, behind me, joyfully held hands and spun around, playing ganggangsullae, as if they were the ones who had aced the test.
No, I didn’t expect Dajun to do so well either…. Is he actually good at studying? Or maybe a Chinese character genius?
“Hyung! I’m not done grading yet, please give it here.”
Dajun, still not done looking through the answers and score sheet, spoke up petulantly and reached out his hand. He was quite full of himself for doing well in one subject despite bombing the others.
“Fine, take it. Keep calling out the answers.”
“Alright~, 3-2-1-1-3.”
“Hmm…?”
Just when I thought it was enough and was about to turn off the camera and clean up, Jeong Dajun, who had been busily marking with a red pen, cocked his head in confusion and clicked his pen.
“…Huh. But why is there no number at the end?”
“What?”
“No… Huh? One moment, please.”
Jeong Dajun shuffled through the paper with the scores once more. Then he mumbled blankly.
“Wait, did I mess up the scoring sheet?”
“…!!”
Everyone looked on in shock. My mind went blank in an instant, and Seong Jiwon blinked his eyes before finally managing to speak.
“…Did you write your answers to the Chinese characters in the wrong order, and that’s why your score looks good?”
“What about the scantron?”
“?? But at that time… I didn’t miss any numbers? It’s different from the scoring sheet….”
Jeong Dajun’s mouth twitched as he stammered out a response.
“…Huh?”
“Uwahahahaha!”
Whether the actual Chinese character score was good or not, Kang Ichae collapsed on the table, laughing as if he’d die of amusement because the score turned out to be a fake due to a mistake on the scoring sheet. He had wrapped his arms around Dajun’s shoulders saying “Of course” as if the current situation was extremely amusing.
This kid was terrifying…
“No way, that can’t be right!”
“Hey, hey, it’s okay, it’s okay.”
“Even if you did well on that, you bombed the rest anyway.”
“Seonghyeon-hyung!!”
As a tutor who had long since given up (though unintentionally), I managed to laugh genuinely and gently spoke to the maknae who was clutching his head in despair.
“Dajun-ah, it’s okay even if you didn’t do well on the CSAT.”
“Wow, Hoyun-hyung….”
Jeong Dajun looked up, touched by my words. I replied while sipping through a straw.
“Still, being born with a silver spoon isn’t so bad, right?”
“…”
Jeong Dajun glared at me with fiery eyes, but I ignored him.
***
[Guys, I heard Jeong Dajun totally bombed the CSAT
└Not really surprising
└└Huh?? Doesn’t matter, didn’t Dajun just take the college entrance exam just for show?
└└ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋAhㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ]
[Thanks for taking the fall, Dajun
└ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ
└└Seriously, thank you Dajun!!]
[In the midst of that, Jiwon went live on V-Live and spilled some behind-the-scenes about Jeong Dajun’s CSAT… ㅠHe said he’s proud of Dajun no matter the results, that he worked hard until the end. And he said all the Noeuls worked so hardㅜㅜ We’ve been through a lot… really awesome… ㅠㅠ
└Jiwon is really…. an angel…. I wonder where his wings are hidden…
└└PD Lee Jeonghun: He must’ve left them behind
└└Ah really ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ]
True idol Jeong Dajun laid down the college entrance exam for the Noeuls, and the mock exam video became a personal keepsake for the members, as they couldn’t bear to show it to Dajun’s parents.
Meanwhile, a high school senior Noeul who just finished with the CSAT, was sitting in front of the TV, overexcited.
“Dajun!!! I’ve finished the CSAT too!!”
Looking at Jeong Dajun, this high school senior wasn’t inspired by a competitive spirit to study… not really, but still, by her own standards, she had studied diligently, thus being able to wrap up the year with a sense of accomplishment.
Having taken the essay exam, now there was only fun left to have.
And naturally, the anticipation and excitement for the year-end stage performances hit the maximum. The high school senior Noeul was nervously punching a cushion they were hugging as they waited in front of the TV.
“Is it true that The Dawn is in this year’s lineup?”
Since the popularity of the year often dictated who made it to the stage, naturally, the higher the profile, the more likely it was to get a spot. Also, it was understood that the more popular acts would perform later in the show.
The first thing the senior did after finishing the CSAT and reviving their phone was to search for The Dawn.
[Is The Dawn’s year-end stage for real? I’m part of a super popular idol farm shit]
[Oh I love it so much, can’t wait to see how they’ve performed]
The main page was filled with positive comments and gifs because it was sorted by popularity, but as soon as they checked the latest posts, an unexpected post caught their eye.
[Please, I just hope the collab goes without any controversy… ㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠ]
Right, are they doing a collab stage?
Having recently returned to the secular world, the high school senior was unaware of what that tweet meant, tilting their head curiously as they dived further into that poster’s account.
In the idol world, a single steamy choreography of a mixed-gender pair could draw ire from fandoms, no matter how beautiful the overall stage was.
While another group was performing, the senior scoured through posts with the highest concentration they had ever mustered.
[The moment we see steamy choreography… We’re… dead. Have faith in Paseong, you’ve been doing well lately (laughter)]
[Even thinking about the collab pisses me off, our kids have been living right, you know? ㅜ?
└Dunkings have been living right too, fuckㅋㅋ
└ㅋㅋ?]
What, what’s this? Why so violent??
The harsh criticism and rivalry were so overwhelming, it made their head spin. They quickly exited that account and returned to their newly created, comfortable timeline.
[Looking forward to the collab >_<]
[Hehe, I love Lea Purpleㅜ Wondering what concept the kids will have, so excited]
Unaware that such posts were the struggles of those already in the know about the rivalry, the senior regained a sense of calm amidst the nice comments.
What to do…? No, well, it should be nothing.
As the current group’s performance ended, all the lights went out. Because the previous stage had been decorated with brilliant lights, it now seemed relatively darker.
Only the words “The Dawn” appeared on the darkened screen.
[The Dawn]
The Dawn’s first year-end stage had begun.
