From Thug to Idol: Transmigrating to a Survival Show

"Why is everybody talking about our rejected song?" Xion asked, entering their conference room.

The three other members of CHAOS were already there, busily scrolling through their phones. They were gathered by their manager to talk about their upcoming tour, but it seemed like the employees of the company had something more important to talk about.

"Do you live under a rock?" Gideon asked. "Check Durian."

Xion frowned as he sat on one of the chairs and scrolled through his phone. He smiled when he saw their song still on the third spot. However, his smile quickly dropped when he saw the song below them.

Just one song below them, to be specific.

"They actually managed to break through the top five?" Xion exclaimed.

Kwon leaned against his seat and nodded.

"A lot of new groups have achieved that, though," Xion defended.

"Yeah," Nashon, their main rapper, said. "But all of them have been girl groups. Boy groups don't have a chance these days."

Xion bit his lip.

"And to make matters worse, the song that managed to get this achievement is Oasis," Gideon said.

"Oasis, where have I heard that again?" Xion placed his hands over his head. "Don't tell me...is it the song we rejected?"

Gideon nodded. "That's why the staff are causing a frenzy. They're bickering about who let the song go when it could have been another hit. None of our other songs on the albums managed to get into the top 20 of the charts this time, so it's kind of hectic."

Just then, another member entered the room, a frown on his face.

"Why's everyone so noisy?" he asked.

"Haruki!" Xion exclaimed. "Have you seen this?" he asked, showing Haruki his phone.

Haruki sighed before nonchalantly sitting. "Is this what it's all about?"

"Why do you look unfazed?" Kwon asked. "The song we rejected is occupying the fifth spot on the charts right now."

"Did it beat our rank?" Haruki asked, inspecting his nails.

"No," Xion said. "But still…"

"Then, I don't care," Haruki said. "You guys are way too threatened by a rookie group. If you ask me, I'll be more afraid of OCTA. They're from Esper Entertainment. That EVE group will disband in the end…and if something bad happens, they might end up disbanding earlier."

His teammates didn't speak anymore.

"So, let's stop talking about them," Haruki said, crossing his arms in front of his chest.

"And let's focus on our tour instead."

***

June continued gazing at the Durian chart like a little kid in a candy store.

The other members, on the other hand, were busy watching their uploaded fan cams on Navel.

The smiles on their faces couldn't be painted with how happy they were. Not only were they able to accomplish much more than they had expected, but the mishap in their performance a while ago was also quickly becoming viral.

"Our name's on top of the trends list," Sehun giddily said.

"OCTA and the other groups are trailing behind us, but I don't think they'll catch up anytime soon," Zeth observed. "I thought they would reach number one during their performance, too."

Indeed, although the other performances after EVEs were impressive, it couldn't be denied that the impact of their acapella singing outshone the succeeding performances.

June stood from his seat and let out an incomprehensible noise, causing the other members to shift their focus from their phones to their pink-haired center.

"What?" Zeth asked.

"Our song," June said.

"It just moved to fourth place."

His members quickly went to where he was to confirm the revelation. Indeed, their song was now on the fourth spot in Durian's Hot 100 songs.

Ren and Akira, who couldn't contain their happiness, encased each other in manly hugs. However, when they realized who they were hugging, they quickly let go of each other.

Jisung squeezed June's bicep, but the latter didn't flinch. He was too focused on looking at their song on the fourth spot.

Zeth and Sehun jumped like high school girls, while Casper immediately called his sisters to tell them the good news. Jaeyong, on the other hand, observed his teammates with a fond smile.

Their celebration was cut off, however, when a staff member entered the room and called them for the last stage of the night.

The group excitedly trudged to the hallways, not giving a damn if the other artists were giving them envious looks.

They also ran along BOYMYSTIC, and Nico looked at June with a bitter expression.

"You must be happy, huh?" Nico started off. "You got lucky right there, buddy. If we would have gotten the technical difficulty, then I would have nailed it too—"

"Hey, Ji," June said, not bothering to look at Nico. "How do you take a picture of the screen again?"

"You mean screen capture?" Jisung asked.

"Yes, that," June said. "I forgot."

Nico pursed his lips in anger and was about to speak once more when Jordan covered his mouth and shook his head.

"Stop being petty," he reprimanded his youngest teammate.

As they waited for Poison to finish his last song of the night—Gangnam Spice, OCTA emerged from behind EVE.

June made eye contact with Uno, and just as June was about to smile, Uno quickly looked away.

June shrugged and went back to sending his achievement to Grandma and Minjun.

Fortunately, they didn't have to wait long before the final stage of the night. All the artists went out to the stage, garnering the loudest screams of the night.

The iconic intro of Woojin's Caterpillar played through the speakers, and the students all exclaimed in nostalgia.

As the artists simultaneously sang the first lines, the audience sang along with them too.

Ren once again offered the microphone to June, but the latter quickly shook his head.

June knew he had forgotten something.

He forgot to learn their last song.

June looked at his user interface to see if there was something that could help him learn songs faster, even though he knew he didn't have any boosters left.

However, much to his surprise, there was one booster remaining.

[Breath of Eternity - 1]

He frowned as he selected the booster. Didn't he use this during the bridge's high note?

[Breath of Eternity. Expiring in 3 days]

[To activate, do three consecutive hip thrusts.]

June stared at it in disbelief before shaking his head. Due to his busyness yesterday, he forgot to learn how to activate the booster.

"Huh," he whispered, not quite believing that he still had the booster.

How was he able to pull off the high note, then?