Second Try Idol

“It's really okay. I will enjoy it. I am already deeply touched just by the thought.”

Yoon-Chan managed to say this through his teary eyes, and both Goh Yoo-Joon and I were left in awe. How could anyone be this kind-hearted? After all, all we had prepared for Yoon-Chan's birthday was a lonely bowl of seaweed soup on our big dining table.

Sure, we had plans to dig into some delicious fried chicken after the livestream, but as birthday feasts go, this was embarrassingly modest.

“No, wait up, Yoon-Chan. I will heat up some rice for us," I said. I slipped away to fetch the instant rice while Goh Yoo-Joon discreetly placed the chocolate cake that Joo-Han had bought on the table.

“Don't worry, guys. This is just the appetizer. We've got a whole feast coming up," Joo-Han reassured our audience and popped into frame.

- Lol, are you explaining after putting in all that effort?

- Seaweed soup as an appetizer? 😂

- What are you going to eat later???

- Why the explanation after cooking it so well? 😭

Despite the modest spread, we weren't tormenting Yoon-Chan for sure.

“But you all know, right? Didn’t everyone see it? Hyun-Woo and I really put our all into making this. Just remember that, Yoon-Chan. We truly tried our best."

Yoon-Chan responded, “It's really okay... I mean I made soy sauce soup for Hyun-Woo hyung's birthday."

- AHAHAHA, soy sauce soup 😂

- So the Rings knows it as soy sauce soup too lol 😂

- Can we make seaweed soup for every member's birthday from now on? 😢

- LOL, just casually calling it soy sauce soup 😆

I placed the warmed rice on the table and sat next to Yoon-Chan, who seemed overwhelmed by the attention. He hesitantly looked at the seaweed soup again before suddenly sniffling.

“…Are you crying again, hyung? Wow, you are really soft. Too kind."

Despite Jin-Sung's murmurs, Yoon-Chan tried to hold back tears and scooped up a spoonful of the seaweed soup, tasting it. “Uh-huh, delicious…"

It was quite literally a tear-soaked seaweed soup.

“Why are you crying? Cut it out! Who made Yoon-Chan cry?" reprimanded Joo-Han.

“Hey, Joo-Han! How is it our fault? Yoon-Chan, it's delicious, right? Tasty?" Goh Yoo-Joon mimicked Daniele. I then nudged him and pushed the cake toward Yoon-Chan.

“Quiet down a bit, Yoo-Joon. Don't force yourself to eat just because we have cake, okay Yoon-Chan?"

From experience, homemade seaweed soup always tasted good, even if it was not.

Yoon-Chan sobbed heavily and shook his head vigorously. “No, I really mean it. It's delicious…"

Seeing Yoon-Chan cry from being moved made the other members uproariously noisy.

“See? Told you it's good. Hyung, try a bite."

“No thanks."

“Come on, I will give you five thousand won. Please, just one bite. It's a gesture from your brother!" Goh Yoo-Joon teased Joo-Han as he was unable to stand the gloomy atmosphere. However, as a result, he got slapped on the back.

I took the chance to tap Jin-Sung on the back and whispered, “Jin-Sung, take Yoon-Chan to wash his face, will you?"

“Uh? Okay." Jin-Sung led Yoon-Chan to the bathroom.

Joo-Han finally took a bite of the seaweed soup and refused to have any more. With that, the chaotic scene somehow came to a close.

When Yoon-Chan finally stopped crying and returned, we moved to the more spacious living room. We lit candles on the cake and sang the birthday song to celebrate Yoon-Chan's first birthday since Chronos's debut.

Afterward, we reflected on the activities during the "Joy" promotion period as we enjoyed the cake.

“Didn't we try a lot of new things during this period?"

“Yeah, especially the variety shows. Hyun-Woo and Yoo-Joon did Graduation, while Joo-Han hyung and I appeared on variety shows too."

“Most importantly, we had the fandom inauguration ceremony. Yeah, Rings, the ceremony!" Goh Yoo-Joon boasted, causing Jin-Sung to rummage behind the bed and come back waving a light stick.

“Did you all enjoy our last album?” Joo-Han's question prompted rapid responses in the chat.

“We will make the next album even cooler. Let's try concerts and overseas promotions for Chronos next time!"

“Yeah!"

Unlike the "Parade" activities that focused more on performances, "Joy" aimed to boost the domestic recognition of the members. Although we achieved our goals to some extent with individual variety show appearances, it was disappointing that the overseas reaction was lukewarm. Indeed, raising overseas recognition from scratch was a challenging task.

The buzz created by the previous dance challenge fizzled out impressively fast after the activities ended. While the music videos and universe concept managed to catch the attention of overseas K-POP fans, "Joy," which was filled with ad-libs that mostly resonated with the domestic audience, barely attracted any core fans from overseas.

On top of that, YMM was passive with their marketing and would only put in significant effort when clear opportunities presented themselves. Without a noticeable international breakthrough, akin to the response seen from the last dance challenge, any substantial overseas expansion seemed unlikely.

Also, Allure only started having concerts overseas many years after their debut.

Therefore, Joo-Han and I thought about giving Again After Rainfall a shot.

“Anyway, we will bring some great news soon, so stay healthy and take good care of yourselves until then."

“We will make time to communicate with you while we prepare, Rings!"

“You will see us sooner than you expect!" Goh Yoo-Joon spoke with a swagger.

As we kept adding comments, Su-Hwan gave us a signal to wrap up.

“Alright, then it's time to end the live. Let's say goodbye. We are!"

“We are Chronos! Thank you!"

“See you next time!"

The livestream ended. As some of us cleaned up the kitchen and lounged in the living room, Yoon-Chan scooped up a bit more of the seaweed soup despite knowing about the chicken order. Perhaps he was being considerate and eating more, thinking that Goh Yoo-Joon and I might feel bad if he didn’t.

Soon, the fried chicken arrived at the dorm, and we called it a day after celebrating Yoon-Chan's birthday once more.

I slept early because we had our final meeting and rehearsal for Again After Rainfall the next morning. Yoo-Joon then told me that Yoon-Chan had turned on the Q-app live session again by himself right after we wrapped up.

It was his first time doing it alone, and he did a great job continuing the broadcast while lying on the bed, sharing his stories and answering the Rings’ questions. I saw a few short videos on BlueBird, and when a fan asked why Yoon-Chan cried so much while eating seaweed soup, he responded like this…

“I realized I'm a precious little brother to my hyungs as they went through the trouble of cooking for me, even if they didn’t enjoy cooking. After all, I joined them much later during trainee days and didn’t have much interaction with them. But now, I realize they love me so much…"

Yoon-Chan's live broadcast was filled with stories of love from us. After watching it, Joo-Han happily decided that the next solo song would be Yoon-Chan's.

***

The shooting of Again After Rainfall was coming up soon. However, the original plan to shoot in both Japan and the USA was changed to staying in the USA the whole time. Various websites and social media also shared news of Chronos, Reina, and other cast members participating in the show.

The lineup announcement was quite a hot topic, especially because Reina personally recruited the famous international artist Callia Lawrence for a regular appearance on the show. Our members and the agency took a very serious approach to preparing for this variety show, which was as popular as ever and had received several times more investment than the previous season.

In the meeting room, Supervisor Kim looked back and forth between Joo-Han and me and said, “We've discussed the ideas that Joo-Han and Hyun-Woo proposed, and we decided to go with your suggestion. We asked with the Again After Rainfall team, and they said they were planning to release all the songs on UTube anyway. It would help with promotion if it becomes a trend clip before the broadcast.”

“But they are going to restrict the overall filming, and only street performances can be filmed," Mr. Seong added.

I nodded in satisfaction. "That's enough."

Joo-Han and I recently suggested through YMM that some part of the performance in Again After Rainfall should be allowed to be filmed by the audience. It would help with the pre-promotion of the show, and we also had to pay attention to the overseas K-POP fans. Performances filmed by the audience could be uploaded to their social media as if they were pre-released, creating a secondary promotional effect.

Also, Chronos’s UTube camera should be able to film us as well. While it needed to be discussed separately before we uploaded it, this meant we could upload Chronos's street performances and famous international cover songs to our channel for overseas-targeted marketing.

Supervisor Kim viewed our proposal very favorably and would surely discuss it well with the Again After Rainfall team as he was a negotiation genius.

He flipped through his notebook and said, “You are all practicing English, right? It's okay if it's a bit awkward. At least, you should be able to immerse yourself in the song without being disturbed by the pronunciation."

Hearing Supervisor Kim's words, Jin-Sung made a sad face. “My tongue doesn't move as I want it to, Supervisor. I feel like I'm going to be estranged from English for life."

Supervisor Kim chuckled and comforted Jin-Sung. “You can't be estranged from English. It looks so cool to be able to sing and rap well in English, don’t you think?"

“…That's true. I saw Jin-Wook hyung's cover the other day—" Jin-Sung excitedly poured out his fan love for Kim Jin-Wook.

Supervisor Kim shook his head as if he was tired of Jin-Sung fanboying, and I quickly covered Jin-Sung's mouth with my hand. “Please continue, Supervisor."

“Right, anyway, do your best during English lessons. Since you are all going to the USA together, keep checking the pronunciation from time to time. Uh…." Supervisor Kim paused, coughed, and seemed to be gearing up to say something important.

When everyone's attention focused on him, he said, “I will talk about our personal goal here. Our biggest goal is to impress Callia Lawrence."

“…Excuse me?"

“Of course, finishing the filming safely is one thing, but the goal is to impress the top-tier artist Callia Lawrence and lay the groundwork for a collaboration."

Out of nowhere? Callia Lawrence was a leading star of this era and, fortunately, we got the opportunity to film with her together. However, would such a sought-after person think about collaborating with us, who were practically unknown overseas?

Supervisor Kim seemed to read my thoughts and continued, “Just sing and dance hard as you always do, but a bit better. We will handle the negotiations."

“It is just one goal, but if we succeed in that, it could be a significant turning point for Chronos. Let’s prepare thoroughly with that idea in mind,” Mr. Seong added.

Usually, the YMM’s marketing strategy would be so passive that it was frustrating, but the moment an opportunity arose, they kicked into high gear to get ready for a big shot. This time, our company once again prepared to quietly set aside the oars it was holding and attach a motor to the boat for greater success—cough, money.

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