'The track changed.'
Yuri could immediately tell that the accompaniment playing onstage right now was MR, not AR.
Faced with an unexpected situation, she wanted to turn her gaze at once and check the surrounding situation and the members, but she could not.
Idol.
An idol’s stage always had to be perfect.
Before the stage began, maybe that would be one thing, but after it had already begun, the basics were that even a single glance and a single gesture moved according to the promised plan.
Unless it was a situation on the level of someone getting hurt, moving however one pleased was an act that broke the completeness of the stage.
And that was something Yuri hated more than death.
-Yuri, your angle is off by yourself right now.
When she had first started life as a trainee, she had wanted to stand out more than others, so she had danced the choreography a little more noticeably and a little more flashily, only to watch the recorded footage soon after and learn just how ugly that looked.
The reason an idol shone onstage was because there was beauty that came from fully carrying out the role given to oneself.
Doing things onstage that seemed impossible for a person to do, as if they were only natural.
For Yuri, making the fans watching the stage tremble with worry, anxiously afraid that they might make a mistake, was something she could not allow.
"Who owns the sea?"
"WE DO."
"Who takes the crown?"
"WE DO."
"Black flag up—."
And it seemed Yuri was not the only one with that thought.
The other members must have known, of course, that the track had changed too, but without caring about that, the opening of "Black Pearl" began precisely.
[Doesn’t the Black Pearl opening feel insane?]
「Every time I see the kids all appear together and chant the lines, it hits my exact taste」
⤷ Our kids usually fool around, but their face material has a lot of cold beauties, so it fits perfectly
⤷ Seriously my favorite part of this stage
⤷ Yeah, if you look at the lyrics, they’re deliberately provoking competing groups, but they prove it with results, so it’s even cooler
⤷ Please, let’s just do stages, Sion
⤷ KJ’s coordinator seriously works so well. If they’d dressed them in pretty outfits like other girl idols, I don’t think it would be as memorable as now
⤷ Iam are orthodox pirates! Sign here!
The narration part of the opening, already famous among fans and chosen by everyone as the best scene of this Black Pearl promotion.
'We really practiced this a lot.'
It was not a part that began right as the music started. Every member had to do it the same way, exactly in time with the hi-hat sound that came in after precisely three seconds, so it was more difficult than one might think.
How much had they practiced because it was timing easy to miss if one did not concentrate even a little?
Especially now, it was not AR that could cover for them if they missed the timing, but a difficult situation where they had to fill it entirely with the members’ voices, so each member had to make the sound on her own at the precise timing.
However, making Yuri’s worries look pointless, the Iam members carried out the opening part perfectly.
And then came the following part.
Deep night, destiny swaying over the waves
A broken compass, even if I lose my way, I still believe
The gazes that laughed at me, I throw them all behind
Even in the storm, I spread bigger
The first one to come out was Lee Sion.
"Sion!!!"
"Wow, she’s seriously pretty!"
"Is she really an idol? Isn’t she an actress? Someone that pretty existed?"
When Lee Sion, who had taken the first part of Black Pearl, came out to the center of the stage, cheers poured from the audience like screams.
'Sion deserves that.'
In truth, Yuri hated admitting it, but she knew better than anyone that Lee Sion’s looks were on a level that made a person gasp the first time they saw her.
She remembered how, when she first met Lee Sion during the Idol Ground 100 filming, she had unknowingly taken out a hand mirror and looked at her own face.
It was not a boast, but Yuri had been confident that her own looks did not fall behind even compared to Korean idols. And yet those looks had made her lose confidence for the first time.
Later, while talking by chance with the members about things related to Idol Ground 100, she had learned she had not been the only one.
-When I first saw Lee Sion in the waiting room, I was seriously shocked.
-That’s right! She was much prettier than when I saw her in the self-introduction video, so I wondered if that was the kind of person who became an idol.
-The commander’s face is definitely outside the discussion. I followed her right away after seeing her face in F Class too.
Lee Sion’s looks filled in the plausibility of how exactly she had survived intact until now while Yuri had watched her all this time.
Although in Korea, even those looks were slowly losing their medicinal effect, and people were starting to call her funny before they called her pretty, for the Japanese audience seeing Lee Sion for the first time, her visuals alone were enough to give them a shock.
Of course, it was not only the visuals.
Lee Sion’s clear and distinct voice was ringing through the concert hall right now.
Since there was no AR, unlike a normal music broadcast stage, basic vocal volume was important in order to fill this large, wide space.
And the one who could do that best among the Iam members, no matter what anyone said, was Lee Sion.
Even when her vocal skill had still been lacking, her explosive volume and stable breath had stood out, and now they had fully bloomed to a level where she could take on the role of a band vocalist, not an idol vocalist, without issue.
"Doesn’t her voice sound clearer than in the first song? Is it just me?"
Thanks to that, even though the accompaniment had changed from AR to MR, the audience only felt that the sound had become a little clearer.
Even if I fall, I get back up [N O V E L I G H T] again
The more I shake, the stronger I become
I don’t need things like maps
Because my name will become the road
As if refusing to lose to Lee Sion, this time Ryu Ayeon and Seo Ryujin took over the center of the stage one after another and began showing off their skills in front of the audience.
No matter how quickly Lee Sion improved her skills, the clear aces of Iam were still those two.
"Wow! Did you see that just now? How did they even dance that?"
"They’re completely different from Japanese idols! They’re cool!"
"I watched all of Idol Ground 100, and I think they’re way better than back then. Do skills improve this fast?"
The connecting move that was practically Black Pearl’s symbol.
It began from Ryu Ayeon, ended with Seo Ryujin, then began again with Seo Ryujin and ended with Ryu Ayeon. At the high-difficulty group choreography, cries of admiration poured down from the audience.
'They’re so reliable.'
If Lee Sion had shocked Yuri with her looks in Idol Ground 100, the trainees who had shocked her with skill were Ryu Ayeon and Seo Ryujin.
They had completely shattered Yuri’s confidence when she had received an A rank for her outstanding vocal skills during the first grade evaluation.
Ryu Ayeon, who proved why she was a trainee from one of the big three agencies by showing dance skills that could not possibly be considered those of the same trainee class.
And Seo Ryujin, the hexagon trainee who showed vocals, dance, and even leadership that commanded the A-rank contestants, each of whom had formidable skills.
When she had to compete with them, their terrifying skills had been nothing but bleak, but now that they were on the same team, they could not possibly feel more reliable.
Seeing the two cover the fact that it was MR without letting it show at all after Lee Sion, the confidence of Yuri and the other members naturally soared too.
Scars are medals, signs that make me shine
Even the abandoned moments are all my design
I don’t know fear, I already know
That the one who remains to the end becomes a legend
Shinyu also poured out the rap part she had taken with perfect rhythm despite the rough breathing, and Lee Gahyeon and Yunkyung, who followed, also carried out their parts perfectly without wavering.
-Don’t be under the delusion that your singers can always stand onstage in their best condition. Sometimes they have to perform when they have a cold and their voices barely come out properly, and sometimes they go onstage after barely sleeping even one hour a day for an entire week.
Seeing that, Yuri remembered what Raon had said while putting the members through especially brutal training as they practiced Black Pearl.
At the time, Yuri had not properly understood what the words meant and had only endured with the grit that she had to do it because she was being told to.
But now she could understand those words completely.
'I never expected Gahyeon, Yunkyung, and Shinyu to become this good.'
[Isn’t Im Yunkyung leeching off Lee Sion too much? If not for Lee Sion, this kid probably would’ve been eliminated in the second vote at best]
[How did Lee Gahyeon even get into Iam? It’s not like her skills are outstanding, and honestly she’s old too. It feels like she got in on pity votes]
[It feels way too much like they forced Geum Shinyu in just because she knows how to compose. Honestly, there were a lot of contestants better than Geum Shinyu in terms of skill, so it’s such a waste]
The Underachiever Trio.
It was a derogatory nickname grouping Lee Gahyeon, Geum Shinyu, and Im Yunkyung among the Iam members.
That was because, unlike the other members who had stayed in the upper ranks from the early days of Idol Ground 100, those three had risen in popularity and ranking only after getting involved with Lee Sion.
Fans, of course, knew how hard they had tried and how diligently they had worked not only on the program, but after debuting as Iam too, so they had no complaints. But to antis, they were nothing more than prey easy to tear into.
However,
-I don’t care at all!
-That’s right! There’s something more important than words like that.
-It was the most useful thing Lee Sion ever said.
It is not the strong who survive, but those who survive who are strong.
The trio, who had once wondered because of those antis whether they truly were unnecessary existences to the team, had soon overcome those things and were proving why they had been selected as Iam.
Even on this stage, if their skills had still been as they were in the past, it might truly have led to a disaster, but instead, as if to show them all, they were plainly showing in front of more than ten thousand audience members just how hard they had practiced and how much they had grown.
Slide.
Watching the members’ performances, many thoughts passed through Yuri’s mind.
The memory of being frustrated by the high skill level of Korean trainees when she first crossed from Japan to Korea.
The friends in Japan who had laughed at her and called her a stupid kid.
And her family, who had constantly believed in and supported her when no one knew when she would debut in Korea.
The Iam members, who smiled and let it pass even when she sometimes acted too mischievously.
She did not know why those memories came to mind right now, in this moment, but every single one of those moments came back vividly.
Even amid the ashes
I bloom again
While she was swimming through that sea of countless memories, the highlight part of the song that Yuri had taken finally began.
Not Yuri’s clear voice that could even feel slightly cute, but the firm, slightly tearing, rough voice she had practiced countless times for this song rang through Budokan.
-You don’t have enough damping.
There was no precedent for a Japanese person who was not Korean taking the role of main vocalist in a Korean idol group.
The difference between singing in one’s native language and singing in a foreign language.
That was by no means limited to pronunciation alone.
Putting in emotion, throwing the words out as if speaking, delicately adjusting the nuance of the lyrics.
Just singing while considering all of that doubled the difficulty compared to simply singing.
In that sense, Yuri taking the role of Iam’s main vocalist was the result of blood-soaked effort.
When she was told she lacked damping, she practiced every day with the vocal trainer while changing her existing vocal method in order to increase her volume.
And in order to produce the voice suited to each song, Yuri had not hesitated to do even things that others would call insane if they heard them, such as deliberately damaging her vocal cords.
'At first, I didn’t want to fall behind the others.'
For Yuri, until not long ago, the Iam members had been competitors before they were teammates.
When Lee Sion had first taken the main vocalist position from her on their second album, "DON’T BLINK," Yuri had not shown it outwardly, but in truth, she had been more anxious and restless than anyone.
She had thought that, at least in vocals, she did not fall behind anyone among the Iam members, but she had been pushed out by Lee Sion, whom she had inwardly thought was worse than her.
At that time, Yuri had dreamed for the first time in a while the nightmare she had often had during her trainee days.
-Yuri, I heard she went to Korea and debuted as an idol, but ended up getting pushed out because she had no skill?
-I knew it. Not just anyone can be an idol.
-If it were me, I’d be too embarrassed to come back to Japan.
It was a nightmare where the acquaintances around her, who had spoken badly about Yuri because she had not debuted during her trainee days, were this time laughing at her for losing the main vocalist position.
Raon and the other members comforted Yuri, saying that the song at the time simply suited Lee Sion’s vocals especially well, but back then, she had only been possessed by the thought that she had to somehow reclaim the main vocalist position.
But,
This sea is my stage
I survive to the end and dominate
Now it was different.
"Awesome! The person singing right now is the Japanese member, right?"
"Right! Kurosawa Yuri!"
"Isn’t this really high right now? That’s amazing."
The audience’s praise poured toward Yuri as she sang the highest and most difficult section of Black Pearl alone.
'Now I know.'
At first, she had only been happy that she had reclaimed the main vocalist position in the song and taken an important part, but the more stages she performed, the more she began to see things she had not seen before.
The Iam members who perfectly brought the song all the way to the highlight part so that she could sing to her heart’s content.
If there had been even the slightest misalignment or mistake before the highlight, would the song Yuri was singing right now with all her strength have been properly delivered to the audience?
It was not only now.
At other times, Yuri would take one step back to make the other members shine, and when she did, the members would trust Yuri and carry out their own roles without hesitation.
A stage made together with teammates one could trust and rely on.
For Yuri, who had practiced in order to survive, that was something more enjoyable than anything.
-If the sun is up twenty-four hours a day, we’ll die.
-What are you suddenly talking about, Sion?
-It’s tiring if you shine every time. You have to rest sometimes.
-What?
-Of course, I’m the type who shines even when I stay still, so it’s not easy.
Pfft.
A Black Pearl stage with a sharp and rough mood where they could not laugh.
That was why the Iam members always went up after resolving before the stage not to laugh, and Yuri, too, for the sake of the stage’s completeness, had absolutely never shown her usual smiling face onstage.
However, because Lee Sion’s words suddenly came to mind, a laugh slipped out without her realizing.
Crown on my head now
Nobody can stop me
At the end of the world
Black flag queen—It’s me
As she decorated the end of the song, she thought she might later be scolded by producer Raon or by choreography demon Ryu Ayeon, who would be watching the stage.
'It doesn’t matter.'
Right now, more than worrying about that, she wanted to fully enjoy this moment.