Page 61 of Idol Prize
Faces glum, the team’s walk back to the practice room was a funeral procession. Woo Jin did his best to rally them, breaking down the mentors’ notes into focus areas. The team went through the motions for the rest of the afternoon, drilling formations and cleaning up their lines, but Min Jae was a ghost. He moved with a dancer's precision, but his mind was worlds away, trapped in a paradox. To win, he needed to show heart. But the source of his artistic heart, the connection that had fueled his best performance, was the one person he was now being forced to treat as his sworn enemy. It was an unwinnable situation.
The team eventually broke for dinner, but Min Jae stayed behind. He’d done his best to put on a brave face for the others, just as they’d done their best to ignore the obvious truth of the situation. It didn’t matter how much they practiced, because Min Jae was the problem. It didn’t matter if he held the number one rank. He was the one holding them back. Maybe that was why Woo Jin didn’t put up much of a fuss when Min Jae insisted that he’d join them later. He still needed to work out how to find the heart in his performance. Until he did, he was a liability.
Once he had the practice room to himself, Min Jae lowered the intense overhead lighting, giving his strained vision a bit of a break. After spending a few minutes in a breathing exercise one of his physical therapists had taught him, centering himself as much as possible, he cued upSweet Toothand began to work through each section, one by one, going through the choreo practically on autopilot as he desperately searched for the heartof his performance. He fixed his gaze to the mirror, scrutinizing every move, gesture, and expression like some kind of mad poet digging for hidden meanings. Maybe it was in the lyrics? No, they were mostly rote and expected and wouldn’t win any songwriting awards.
Min Jae closed his eyes, using the empty space to run through the song blind, trying to lose himself in the moment and forget about all the worries weighing him down. He knew that’s where the problem was, trying to manufacture sincerity, forcing heart into a performance when his own felt like a cold, dead stone in his chest. His rage coiled tighter as Riki’s critique replayed in his head, reminding him of how he lacked an emotional connection with the audience. He pushed on into the bridge, his steps sharp with frustration. Desperate, he recklessly launched himself into the sweeping, powerful leap, putting every last ounce of his anger into the move.
Min Jae’s takeoff was a fraction of a second too early. His body was tilted at the wrong angle. He landed hard, all his weight coming down on his right leg with a sickening, familiar twist. A sharp, blinding explosion of pain shot up from his knee, obliterating every other thought from his mind. He collapsed, a piercing, strangled cry torn from his throat. The world dissolved into white-hot agony as he lay curled on the cold floor, cradling his right knee in his hands, his breath coming in ragged, shallow gasps, a single thought repeating on a vicious loop. No, not again.
The practice room door burst open. “Min Jae!” The overhead lights flickered to full strength as Andy, somehow there in Min Jae’s delirium when he should’ve been somewhere–no, anywhere–else, rushed to his side. “I heard you shouting. What happened?” He gasped. “Shit! Is it your knee?”
Min Jae managed a tight, pained nod, his knuckles white where he gripped his leg, before spitting a single question. “Why are you here?”
“Why am I here?” Andy repeated, his voice pitched up to an emotional whine. “Are you fucking serious right now? I was waiting and–” He stopped, his jaw flexing as he swallowed the response he couldn’t say aloud. Not on camera. Not without giving away the secret game within a game they’d been forced to play.
It didn’t matter. Min Jae somehow pulled the answer from his own screaming mind. He was supposed to meet Andy in the bathroom–their secret refuge. Somehow, all wrapped up in his spiraling self pity, he’d totally forgotten. “Sorry,” he hissed through gnashed teeth, finally managing to suck in a deeper breath as the pain made his vision swim. “I must’ve lost track of time.”
“Lost track of–” Andy cut himself off with a frustrated huff. “Is all this because of those critiques this morning?” Min Jae offered the barest nod. “Jesus fucking Christ, Min Jae!” Andy swore in English. “So you’ve been in here this whole time, pushing yourself to destruction?” He scoffed, loud and sharp. “Instead of trying to break yourself in fucking half, did you even consider the idea that the mentors were wrong?”
Wrong? The idea was so typically American, it was almost alien. How could the mentors be wrong? Sure, maybe Cipher played up his contrary opinions to maintain his image, but Riki and Hwa Young were some of the best at what they did. It was their critiques that had pushed him and Andy to rework theirForeverkilling part, leading to their victory, and his renewed number one ranking. To suggest they could be wrong flew in the face of traditions so old they were practically a religion, a terrifying, liberating, and utterly impossible idea. “I don’t think–”
“All you fucking do is think, dummy. Your performance was totally fine. I saw the whole thing, remember? And if you’d met up with me like we planned–”
Min Jae’s eyes shot toward the ceiling camera pointed right at them. “Don’t. Not here.”
“Or, what?” Andy huffed again, all pretense of propriety gone. “You think I give a shit about all that right now?” He stood, turning to face the camera directly. “You think I won’t just spill everything right here and right now, because I most certainly fucking will if it keeps you from hurting yourself again.”
“Stop.” Min Jae desperately reached for Andy before his righteous anger ruined everything they’d both fought so hard to achieve. “Please.”
Andy’s jaw worked, his chest heaving, a war playing out behind his furious, tear-sparkling eyes. Min Jae could see it all—the rage fighting against the fear, the desire to protect him warring with the desire to punish him. He finally threw his hands up, the fury draining out of him, replaced by a deep exasperation. “Fine. I’ll keep playing this stupid game. But you’re going to the infirmary. You’re no good to anybody if you’re crippled.” He reached for Min Jae’s hand, wrapping it in a firm grip. “Deal?”
What choice did Min Jae have? Never mind the fact that Andy was right about his knee. With Andy’s help, Min Jae slowly, agonizingly, got to his feet, putting no weight on his right leg. Before they took a single step, Andy leaned in whisper-close, his warm breath washing across the side of Min Jae’s neck.
“I’m serious about this,” Andy said, barely loud enough to be heard over the droning hum of the room’s fluorescent lights. “I can’t watch you self-destruct. You’re too important to me. I need you to win this thing with me. I can’t bear the idea of moving on without you. Understand?”
The words forced their way through the wall of Min Jae’s anguish to settle into a troubled orbit around his aching heart. Andy wasn’t actually angry. He was afraid. Min Jae nodded. “I do.”
“Good. Let’s get you looked at.”
Every movement was a fresh explosion of pain as Andy slowly, carefully walked him from the practice room to the SkyVillage’s small in-house infirmary. Of course, there was no hiding his injury in the corridors. As the show’s medic, a kind-faced woman with tired eyes, gently probed his swollen knee, one of the onsite producers, a younger man in a perpetually food-stained sweatshirt, hovered nearby, arms crossed, his expression one of annoyance rather than concern. Andy, for his efforts, had been banished to the corridor.
“On a scale of one to ten, what’s your pain level?” the medic asked.
Min Jae gritted his teeth, ignoring the sickening, grinding feeling in his knee he remembered all too well. “A four,” he managed, his voice tight. The truth a seven, maybe even an eight. “Maybe a five when I move it.”
The medic nodded, her face grim. “It’s probably just a sprain, if you’re lucky. It’s possible you re-aggravated the old ligament damage, but I’d need to scan for that. In the meantime, I’m ordering complete rest–”
The producer scoffed, his annoyance barely veiled. “Rest isn’t a good long-term option with the final performance in a few days. What can we do to get him on stage? There has to be something.” His tone carried the undeniable weight of a demand.
The medic hesitated, her gaze flickering from Min Jae to the producer. She finally relented, her shoulders slumping almost imperceptibly. “We could administer a corticosteroid injection directly into the joint. It will rapidly reduce the inflammation and numb the pain for at least a few days.” She turned back to Min Jae, a clear, somber warning in her eyes. “But, it’s a temporary fix. It doesn’t heal the injury, it only masks it. Performing on it would carry a significant risk of much more severe, potentially permanent damage.”
Min Jae almost laughed at the medic’s dire warning, stopping himself only because he knew she was just doing her job. She’d seen his medical records. She definitely saw the scars on his knee. She knew he’d already been through far worse. And heknew intimately what a career-ending injury felt like. As bad as his knee hurt at the moment, it was nowhere near the pain that had ended his trainee days. And he knew exactly what a steroid shot would do. His doctor had given him one just a couple days before entering the competition. It would do the trick, and he’d be fine. He was so close to the end, and Andy’s heartfelt plea echoed in his head.I can’t bear the idea of moving on without you.There’d be time for rest afterward.
Min Jae looked directly at the producer, his eyes burning with a desperate, singular focus. He gave a single, sharp nod. “Do it.”
23
The energy gushingoff the video mosaic was intense. A hundred Dream Maker faces from every global time zone dotted the giant monitor someone from production had set up in the Sky Village auditorium, all silently screaming for them. Andy soaked it in, a huge, goofy grin spreading across his face. He couldn't help himself, despite ending the previous day filled with anxiety. His eyes landed on a girl holding up a messy, passionate, hand-painted sign that readANDY, YOU STOLE MY HEART!Andy gave her a quick, conspiratorial wink and watched her absolutely lose it on screen, dissolving into a fit of happy, silent screams. That part of the job? The part where he could make someone's day from halfway across the world? He could get used to that. Easy.
