Chapter 20

Chapter 20. Studying Is the Easiest

The anti-China sentiment caused by Astra created a backlash in the form of patriotic hype, and Blue Moon managed to turn that timing into an opportunity with their hanbok photos.

Because traffic to Universe’s website had increased due to Astra, more people ended up seeing Blue Moon’s hanbok profile pictures as well.

The power of that spam message was truly incredible.

Thanks to the hanbok profile photos I had uploaded in advance after seeing the future picture, more and more people started saying they wanted to see Blue Moon perform in hanbok.

After all, the hanbok concept had only appeared in photographs.

It had never been used for a music video, nor had there ever been a recorded stage using that concept.

In other words, this upcoming Music Bang Bang could become an opportunity Blue Moon had never had before.

I immediately told the Blue Moon members that they would also be participating in Kim Yoonja’s I Love Party as backup dancers.

The members had only recently heard about Music Bang Bang, so this new announcement nearly made them faint.

Even though Music Bang Bang was scheduled for September 9th and I Love Party for September 28th, meaning they were about to become insanely busy.

The members went so far as to spread blankets across Practice Room B.

They said even the time spent traveling back to the dorm was a waste.

Unless they had a scheduled activity, they spent practically every waking hour practicing for Music Bang Bang and creating choreography for I Love Party.

But among Blue Moon’s otherwise bright future, there was one member who couldn’t smile.

Anna.

It was because of the controversy involving Zeus and their foreign members leaving the group.

It wasn’t as though people had suddenly turned against every foreign idol.

But Universe—and especially Blue Moon, which had ended up right at the center of all this patriotic attention—was being held to a much harsher standard.

Their argument was simple.

In the end, Zeus and Anna were both foreigners who had come to Korea to earn Korean money.

At first, as Blue Moon’s team leader and manager, I even posted an official statement.

Anna might be Thai, but she had absolutely no intention of returning to the Thai entertainment industry, and something like what happened with Zeus would never happen with her.

But the people who rejected Anna were stubborn.

—How do you know Anna won’t leave? Did people know Zeus would leave when they debuted?

—Exactly. I saw her before and her Korean is insanely good. The fact that she still hasn’t changed nationality tells you everything.

—What wouldn’t someone say when there’s money to be made? They always say this stuff, then change their story later and run away. That’s why people call it betrayal.

Honestly, disliking her simply because she was a foreign member wasn’t exactly reasonable.

There weren’t even that many people saying it, so we could have ignored them.

But there were enough to chip away at Anna’s confidence.

Eventually, she came to me with an unexpected request.

“Manager. There are some exams I want to take…”

“What?”

“The KBC Korean Language Test and the Korean History Proficiency Test.”

There probably wasn’t a better way to silence people who suspected she would eventually leave Korea just because she was foreign.

If someone spoke Korean well and knew Korean history, who wouldn’t jokingly call them an honorary Korean?

It wasn’t as though she could just suddenly naturalize.

So for now, this seemed like the best option.

Even if it would be difficult.

“Okay. Let’s try it. I’ll help you as much as I can. For Korean history… Level 4 should probably be enough. And since your Korean is already good, what level are you aiming for on the Korean test?”

“No. I’m getting Level 1 on both.”

“What?”

For the Korean History Proficiency Test, even if someone studied intensely, it would normally take at least two months to reach Level 1.

It wasn’t impossible.

But it definitely required time.

The KBC Korean Language Test was even worse.

It was difficult enough that some sessions barely gave out any Level 1 scores at all.

And she wanted Level 1 in both?

“…All right. For now.”

I registered her for the exams and bought past exam workbooks.

Two for each test.

For Korean history, she needed at least seventy points.

For the KBC Korean test, she would usually need to place somewhere within the top ten out of roughly five thousand examinees.

Anna was good at Korean.

But whether she could actually earn Level 1 on both exams was another matter entirely.

The very next night, I took the workbooks to the practice room.

Anna was practicing alone in the empty room with earphones in.

The other members had only just fallen asleep in Practice Room A next door.

She looked exhausted after practicing all day.

Her skin was so pale that a faint blue vein could be seen running from her left cheek down toward her neck.

Had Anna always been this pale?

Her face looked tired.

And yet, strangely, she also seemed full of life.

Until now, I had only looked at her and thought she was pretty.

But when I changed my perspective, she suddenly reminded me of that one girl every school seemed to have.

The girl who always got good grades, never did outdoor activities, had pale skin, and somehow seemed difficult to approach.

Of course, that impression felt strange when you considered that she could rap and dance so well.

That contrast was probably part of her charm.

“First, I need to know your current level. Let’s have you solve this.”

“Ah. Okay.”

Anna, who looked like she might burst if someone poked her too hard, accepted the thick Korean history workbook.

Her pronunciation was always so precise that she sounded like an announcer, so seeing her holding a book didn’t look unnatural.

Still, I was used to watching her dance and rap.

This felt completely different.

Her white T-shirt almost looked like a researcher’s lab coat.

And her green training shorts somehow made her resemble a doctor preparing for surgery.

On an ordinary person, the same clothes would have looked like pajamas worn while lazing around at home.

Yet Anna somehow made them look stylish.

I handed her a mechanical pencil.

Anna immediately started solving the questions without hesitation.

It took her thirty minutes.

Her score was one hundred.

“…One hundred?”

“Hmm. Looks like it.”

I genuinely couldn’t understand what had just happened in this practice room.

A perfect score wasn’t impossible.

But a girl who had spent the last few years in Korea doing nothing but idol training shouldn’t have been able to suddenly score one hundred.

She hadn’t even started seriously studying yet.

And the Korean language test was no different.

“Which of the following words means ‘to have a cheeky and rather forward appearance’? Number one—”

“Yasalseureopda? It’s in both the Standard Korean Language Dictionary and Urimalsaem.”

How the hell did she know a word like yasalseureopda?

Anna answered before I could even finish reading the choices.

Don’t tell me she had some insane childhood résumé where she mastered algebra at three, learned ten languages by five, published a comparative literature paper, became interested in history at six, organized the entire history of Asia within a year, then published a collection of criticism titled something like The Aesthetics of Collapse at age ten and shocked the global literary world, and then at twelve—

……

There was no way, right?

“Were you Ju Sigyeong in your past life or something…?”

“Hehehe.”

Apparently, when Anna first told her parents that she wanted to become an idol and move to Korea, they had refused to let her go until she memorized an entire Korean dictionary.

Their reasoning was that if she went to Korea without knowing the language, she would obviously end up being treated like some kind of servant.

Then they had actually handed her a Korean-Thai dictionary and a Korean dictionary.

Those were some terrifyingly strict parents.

That was basically the same as telling her not to become an idol.

But Anna had actually memorized both books.

Her parents had been so stunned that they eventually gave up trying to stop her.

She memorized those enormous books.

Human beings really were amazing.

No.

Anna was amazing.

“Then why are you so good at Korean history?”

“Well… I watched a lot of Korean historical dramas when I was young. And my family was strict, so I received history education for a long time.”

Wasn’t family history education usually about your own country’s history?

And even if she had memorized every Korean historical drama ever made, getting a perfect score in Korean history still shouldn’t have been possible.

Some of the people appearing in these questions had never even shown up in dramas.

“Who was the eldest son of King Gyeongsun of Unified Silla, who entered Mount Geumgang after surrendering to Goryeo, lived on wild plants, and eventually died there?”

“Prince Maui.”

“Which writer made his literary debut in 1920 with the short story titled ‘Sacrificial Flower’?”

“Hyeon Jingeon, the writer of A Lucky Day?”

Anna answered even the weird questions that most Koreans probably wouldn’t know.

It was so bizarre that I asked how she knew all this.

She simply said she had picked it up here and there.

I couldn’t help feeling respect for the sheer depth of her knowledge.

“Hey, at this level… you could honestly just take the exams right now.”

“Absolutely not. It only means something if I get a perfect score.”

“That’s what I’m saying. You’re definitely getting a perfect score.”

At this point, she was practically a scholar.

Anna kept insisting she wasn’t prepared enough, so I had to force her to stop.

She argued,

What if she solved one thousand questions?

Two thousand?

And then one question she had never seen appeared on the actual test?

But I had deliberately chosen questions considered exceptionally difficult even among real exam questions.

Starting from the Prince Maui question, I had even begun making up my own.

Most actual questions weren’t anywhere near the level I had been asking.

The timing worked out well, so Anna was able to take both exams without delay.

And the result?

A perfect score on both.

No exceptions.

For the Korean language test, she even became the only person in that session to achieve a perfect score, and news articles were written about it.

—An idol? And she’s a foreigner, but she got perfect scores in Korean history AND Korean? She didn’t cheat?

—Typical dumb person logic: anyone smarter than them must have cheated.

—Anna Mararak? She’s from the group that took those hanbok photos recently. Blue Moon. She’s the Thai member.

—Wow… Why is she an idol instead of a professor? I heard those tests are insanely hard. She must’ve studied forever.

At this point, she had practically become the foreigner Koreans were being told to learn from.

With skills like that, it felt like everyone would automatically nod along with anything Anna said.

As long as she didn’t suddenly say something like Dokdo belonged to Japan.

But Anna didn’t look relieved.

If anything, she seemed even more nervous than before taking the exams.

For the next several days, Anna stayed alone in the practice room and practiced dancing.

The theme of the upcoming Music Bang Bang Chuseok special was ‘Song Swap.’

The song assigned to Astra was Four Boys’ Shooting, a hip-hop-based track meant to emphasize a masculine image.

By performing choreography from a boy group, the members could show off their girl-crush appeal and potentially win over female fans of other groups.

Normally, Youngchae would have been the one staying behind the longest.

But now Anna was staying even later than Youngchae to practice Shooting.

Her oversized hip-hop T-shirt was soaked with sweat from the collar downward.

Maybe because I had recently discovered just how broad and deep Anna’s knowledge was, the sight made it feel as though some fierce research experiment had been taking place in this room.

The air conditioner was set to twenty-four degrees.

I turned it off completely and spoke.

“Anna. That’s enough. Let’s go inside and sleep. It’s way too late.”

It was already three in the morning.

The moment I opened the practice room door and spoke, Anna quickly turned around.

Her eyes were red.

At first, I thought they were bloodshot from exhaustion.

But she was crying.

While practicing, she had only looked miserable.

But the moment I spoke to her, her brows drew together, her lower lip tightened—

And she finally burst into tears.

“What’s wrong? Why are you crying?”

Anna answered without even trying to suppress her choking voice.

“I can’t do this part properly. It’s so frustrating. Seriously…”

Anna showed me the section she couldn’t perform the way she wanted.

It was a move where she rapidly switched the positions of her left and right feet while striking her chest.

The timing was important.

The heavy sound of her foot hitting the floor while switching positions had to line up perfectly with the moment she struck her chest.

“But you’re doing it well. There’s still some time before the performance, right? Just practice it before then.”

“That’s not the problem.”

Anna showed me a mirrored choreography video of Four Boys.

“Look. When these guys kick the floor, their upper bodies shake nicely too. But no matter how hard I stomp, I can’t make mine look like that. When I do it, it doesn’t look cool at all. I just look like I’m trembling. Look.”

Anna was exaggerating a little.

But she wasn’t entirely wrong.

“Your dance lines are different from theirs. What can you do about that? Look at this guy. His shoulders are broad. Your arms and legs are long, but your shoulders are narrow. You can’t create exactly the same feeling as him in the first place.”

“Then what am I supposed to do? I have to dance this choreography. Manager, you were Victory’s manager for a long time, so you know boy-group dances well, right? What should I do?”

Reasonable reassurance wasn’t reaching Anna at all right now.

She was simply upset that she couldn’t perform the choreography exactly like Four Boys.

But some things couldn’t be solved no matter how hard you practiced.

Even if I had given this part to Youngchae, our ace dancer, she probably would have run into the same problem.

Still, I tried to help.

For the actual performance, they would be wearing loose hanbok.

So I told Anna to spread the impact a little wider when striking her chest and let the fluttering fabric replace the visible vibration of her upper body.

At the same time, she should keep her shoulders as still as possible so the movement would be easier for the audience to notice.

The more noticeable it was, the larger the motion would appear.

Anna tried it the way I explained.

“I think… I think it looks a little better. But there are other moves too.”

Her expression finally relaxed a little.

“It’s good to work as hard as possible, but don’t destroy yourself over it. Four Boys dance one way, and Blue Moon dances another. Of course you can’t dance exactly like Four Boys.”

“……”

“Present-day Muju County in North Jeolla Province was created during King Taejong’s reign by combining two counties into Mujuhyeon before it was later promoted to a county. What were the names of those two counties?”

Anna gave a small laugh at my sudden question.

“Uh… Mupunghyeon and… Jugaehyeon?”

Wasn’t this girl genuinely insane?

“Exactly. Those idiots from Four Boys probably don’t even know Mupunghyeon and Jugaehyeon. But you do. So that’s enough.”

“Hehe. There’s no way they wouldn’t know something that basic.”

I only learned it after searching it up the other day, you little monster.

Anna grinned foolishly, showing all her teeth.

Her hair was pitch-black while her teeth were so white they almost made the room brighter.

She was this pretty.

And smart enough to do all that studying.

And she could dance.

And rap.

Anyway, the comfort worked that night.

But it didn’t dramatically reduce Anna’s practice time.

Instead, until Anna finally went to sleep each night, I stayed awake with her and did my best to keep her mentally steady.

If the members slept ten hours, the manager slept nine.

If the members slept one hour, the manager stayed awake all night.

That was the manager’s duty.

And while Anna and I continued spending nights like that, the day of the Music Bang Bang recording drew closer.