From Skid Row to Superstardom: An Idol System Novel-Chapter 77: Schedule from H*ll (1)

Ari led he entire D (2) class team into the practice room they had been using, entering and locking the door after everyone was inside. freewёbnoνel.com

He grabbed the whiteboard and markers before sitting with his back against the door, staring silently until everyone, including Caleb, had taken a seat.

They all looked at each other for several seconds before he started speaking first.

"I don’t know about the rest of you, but I think that our performance today was really embarrassing, especially because I think we can be better than what we displayed today. I don’t think that we should point fingers since the judges have already tackled that portion. Instead, I think we should speak about how we will improve from now until the performance day. Anyone with ideas?"

Michael immediately raised his hand, "I think that we need to put in more practice as a group and individually."

"Okay, more practice." Ari wrote it down on the whiteboard before looking around, "Anyone else?"

"Uhm, getting the words down for the song." Sachi raised his hand and spoke, before rubbing his head sheepishly, "I guess that falls under more practice."

"No, that’s fine. I think we can all agree that more practice will solve he problem, so what do you think about this?" Ari quickly wiped the words on the whiteboard and scribbled out the schedule he had thought about before flipping it around to show them.

"Firstly, let’s make a schedule to structure the practice. The PD said there are no more events apart from lessons, so starting tomorrow, we’ll meet from 5 - 8:30 a.m. for choreography practice. We’ll have 8:30 - 9:00 a.m. for breakfast, attend vocal lessons, and then come here to continue practicing vocals from 10 am -1:30 pm. 1:30-2 pm for lunch. Then, 2 pm-4 pm formation practice before Selena comes for an hour. 5 - 5:30 pm is lunch, and afterward, we’ll spend the remaining time practicing singing and dancing together until midnight. We’ll sleep for five hours and wake up and do it again. What do you think?"

Ari asked them in a bright voice, but the faces of everybody in the room, except for Vishal, immediately went pale as they read through the packed daily schedule that had no free time except for the five hours set aside for sleep and the three 30-minute meals.

It meant that they would be awake and working for a full 18.5 hours a day for the next five days.

Seeing that nobody spoke up and everybody avoided meeting his eyes, Ari continued speaking to his teammates.

"Does anyone have any thoughts, questions, or concerns? Rather than vague words like we should practice more, I prefer a defined schedule. Let’s grind our bodies down and try our best to refine our skills. Questions? Or objections?"

Diego raised his hand before speaking, "When will we have time to shower? We’re all sharing bathrooms."

"Good point. I’ll give you an extra 30 minutes in the morning, so do your best to rearrange the bathroom schedule." Ari changed the starting time from 5 to 5:30 am.

"Any other questions?"

"When will we have time to hang out with our friends? Or make new ones. With this schedule, you’re just keeping us isolated with the team members." Caleb grumbled.

"If you need a new friend, make one on this team, meet somebody during the thirty-minute lunch, or craft one from your imagination. You can sacrifice your sleep and lunch time for hanging out if you want." Ari coldly replied at the stupid question, "Next question?"

"Don’t you think that this is a bit much? There’s literally no time to rest, and I don’t think we’re that bad, and there were worse teams. It was just one person who messed us up." Jacob, one of the other members of the team, asked while glaring at Caleb.

"While Caleb has his own faults, he wasn’t the only person who messed up. Quite a few people were off-key, I messed the choreography up repeatedly, and the judges didn’t have a single nice thing to say about our team. At all." Ari replied honestly, "I came here to debut, and I plan on working hard to do it instead of hoping that somebody does worse than me. If you don’t agree with this schedule or don’t want me to be the leader, then someone else can do it. But this is what I plan to do, and I hope you all join me so we can at least aim for being one of the top performances."

Jacob blushed at Ari’s harsh words but shut his mouth and didn’t say anything more.

"Hmph! Even if we do all these practices, it’s not like we’ll get the top spot, especially since we only have crappy stage props to work with." Caleb grumbled while glaring at Ari, who boldly called him out.

It was one thing to be embarrassed by the judges, but he hated the fact that Ari had taken not only his leadership role, but he had not skated over his faults, and blatantly called it out.

"We’ll discuss that next. For now, let’s settle on the practice schedule. Does anybody have complaints or want to drop out because they think they’re too weak to handle it?"

At the instigating words, the young boys, some of whom were still in high school, all glared at each other in a challenging manner.

They didn’t want to be the one to speak out against the grueling schedule and be called a weakling in front of their peers, so they hoped that somebody would cave in first.

Unfortunately, there was too much pride in each person, so the room was just silent with people’s heads swiveling around.

Seeing that the room was silent, Ari quietly laughed to himself before passing around a Post-it and a marker to each person while he added small text to the whiteboard.

"Signatures, please."

"Why?"

"This is a contract, and you’re agreeing to it. If anyone is late to practice, we’re going to add 15 more minutes to our practice, and if they don’t show up after 30 minutes, we’ll go tell the production team. When it’s time for my interview, I’ll show the PD the signature and the schedule to display our commitment to taking the judges. That way, nobody can take it back."

At his words, those who were happily signing the post-it notes froze, but Ari just stared at them blankly until they resumed and happily collected each signature and stuck it to the whiteboard.

Knock Knock!

As if they were waiting for their discussion to finish, a staff member knocked on the door, and Ari shifted out of the way.

"Contestant. Ari, time for your interview."

"Coming." Ari grabbed the whiteboard before turning to the room, "Vishal’s in charge while I’m gone. You guys should discuss prop ideas that we can use and costumes that can be made from everybody’s clothing. I’ll be back."

"Look at him acting like a dictator," Caleb grumbled loud enough to be heard, but Ari just ignored him and followed the staff member sitting in the interview room that he had been in before.

The setup was still the same, except that the PD had changed from PD Emily to PD Park Ji-ho.