CHAPTER 187: EPISODE 3 (1)

"My client...my client’s reputation will hopefully make a turnaround?" Grace Choi muttered to herself as she performed her daily scanning of the Pop Star Academy community board while updating her spreadsheets.

As someone who religiously dug for spoilers in order to make sure her blog and videos were well ahead of the game, Grace had already seen that Ari’s face had been revealed and the resulting small wave of changing opinions about him.

But he was still getting quite a lot of hate for his harsh comments toward Leo, who was looking for advice.

As a supporter and aspiring reporter and PR firm owner, she was documenting the accounts of the fans who were spewing hatred towards Ari, documenting fans who secretly leaked things like results, team compositions, etc, with the full intention to write up a formal complaint document toward the parent company and the moderators to get them to do their jobs.

She was also documenting the contestants who had been eliminated and were making weird statements about Ari, making sure to save and clip their videos so that if things were resolved in the future, they couldn’t take back their words.

Additionally, she had already secured the user IDs ArisAngels and Arianators(Ari’s terminators), with the intention to keep one for herself and sell the other, and was diligently promoting Ari on both accounts.

And since Ari and Jamie were friends and he was extremely popular and well-connected as well, and she knew how the fandom community worked, she had also grabbed the usernames of their two most popular duo names, ArMie and Armes, since a few people were already pushing the friendship agenda, since the video of them singing Ari’s traffic song gained popularity.

If Ari and Jamie somehow made it to the end, she could sell them off or donate them to a deserving fan.

With the tedious grunt work finished, Grace pretended not to see her grandmother gesturing for her to help clean the restaurant and loaded up episode 3 along with the live chat.

Her only prayer was that Ari would be vindicated in this episode, since she knew that he was nothing like the image being presented by the team.

And as if the production team wanted to make sure everyone remembered the issue, after the signal song opening in which Ari barely appeared, even though she could hear his distinct voice, the recap of the last episode played once more, ending with Ari’s harsh words toward his teammate after his team had a huge fight.

Naturally, the chat blew up again with watchers calling him a mean bully and all sorts of names while sympathizing with Leo, who wasn’t even allowed to cry due to Ari threatening to leave.

"Please...please let them address this immediately." Grace crossed her fingers and hoped, but it seemed that the production team was hell bent on spreading the hate to other contestants as well because the scene changed to Benjamin, who was currently ranked number one and the most popular contestant, constantly berating and shooting down William every time he talked, causing William to look sadder and sadder.

Naturally, the chat blew up, and Grace could barely keep up with the rapid scrolling comments.

- Oh my gosh, poor William

- My baby prince! Come behind me, I’ll protect you from that brute!

- I didn’t know that Benjamin was like that. I thought he was a friendly big brother, but he’s just being mean!

- He’s trash! That friendly appearance is fake!

Benjamin and William’s drama continued until William finally blew up and ran away with tears in his eyes while Benjamin yelled at him.

And on the screen, as William was trying to leave, Ari ran into him and glared at him through his green mask as he ran off.

- You see, I told you that contestant is mean. First, he pushes him, then he doesn’t go after him when he clearly sees that William is sad.

- Swamp ogre mask over there doesn’t even care about his own teammate crying, so why would he care about somebody else crying?

- Why are you vilifying Benjamin?! Notice how nobody else on the team runs after William? He’s the problem!

- It doesn’t matter. As the team leader, he needs to take care of his team members equally!

- Omg, poor William.

- My poor, sensitive prince. It’s not wrong to speak your mind, even if they hate your ideas. We love you.

It was the moment that Benjamin’s previously spotless reputation began getting stained, and William’s started to rise from public pity.

Grace simply watched the scene with critical eyes, not falling for the production’s tricks. If you paid attention, it was clear that each time Benjamin and William talked, the clips were cut, only showing part of what William said and the entirety of Benjamin’s rejection.

Clearly, there was an agenda being pushed, but since those two weren’t her priority, she watched while hoping that Ari would get his name cleared.

Unfortunately, a couple of other teams were shown before Jamie’s team, which also had a conflict as they disagreed about how to distribute things.

Grace watched with cold eyes, tapping her feet impatiently as the scenes transitioned into the evaluation, where the judges ripped into some teams before transitioning into a montage of those contestants training hard and making revisions with the help of the celebrity trainers, and then getting ready to perform.

As the MC, Ryan Leary, filled the screen after explaining the rules, those teams performed, and Grace found herself a little bored, especially when several of the contestants had similar concepts as the original songs and didn’t even do half as well making the comparison and comments in the live chat quite harsh.

When Rex’s team finally performed, she was finally impressed at seeing his team’s interpretation of the song as a punk concept with Rex flying around the stage as if he had unlimited energy.

Although it didn’t live up to the original performance of the song, it was pretty good and better than any performance so far, showing his experience as a backup dancer for a major group.

The live chat seemed to agree as well, since quite a lot of Korean comments filled the chat.

- Yep. That’s what an ST-Entertainment trainee is like. Talented all-arounder.

- I want to be the silver choker around his neck, snapping from the force of his body that’s slicked with sweat.

- pause weirdo

The MC announced the best and worst performers on the team, with Rex naturally being the best before it transitioned to another mid-performance.

As Grace was getting bored, the scene changed to Benjamin and William having a private conversation where William apologized and Benjamin brushed him off, causing more pity toward William, a scene of Jamie reconciling with his team, and clips of their pre-performance ritual before they got on stage.

Benjamin’s team did a pre-cheer together before running out and performing on the stage, but as she watched them perform Run, Grace felt a bit strange.

Curious if others felt this way, she quickly read through the chat that was scrolling extra fast.

- This is....

- Why don’t I like it?

- It’s like they straight up copied everything from BTZ but did it 100x worse

- There’s no originality at all

- Isn’t this an exact copy of BTZ MAMA performance

- it’s so cheap ewww

- even the costumes

- Did they raid BTZ’s closet

- terrible cover

- and one of them can’t even sing, ugh.

- would I be wrong if I say they did better tan BTZ

Yeah, that was what that disconcerting feeling was.

It felt like she was watching an off-brand version of a BTZ performance.

The inflection and tone of their singing and rapping, along with the outfits and styling, felt like a plagiarized copy of a BTZ performance she had seen before.

And although it was supposed to be a cover of their song, and overall the boys did a pretty good job, Grace still felt a bit uncomfortable watching the performance.

As the chat continued to bubble away with fans of BTZ fighting and complaining about the performance, the MC then called upon the next team to perform, claiming they were the third-place team.

Seeing that Ari’s team had gotten into the top three, Grace let out a sigh of relief because that meant that he would have earned extra votes to keep him safe and tide him over so he wouldn’t be eliminated.

As she thought over the contestants that hadn’t performed yet, her money was on Jamie’s team being in first place, but to her surprise, his team came out first.

Seeing his entire team doing another suit concept as well, Grace was prepared to be disappointed, but then found herself amazed.

She already knew Jamie could sing and produce songs, but this was the first time she really saw him putting in his ideas in this type of performance.

The vocals, music production, and slick footwork all worked together, and Grace had to admit that he looked so cool in a suit that accentuated his large, muscular frame. She was extra glad he wasn’t wearing the cowboy hat that hid his boyish, handsome features and sparkling blue eyes.

She thought that if Jamie made the debut team, she would recommend a suit concept with all her might to their management team and also beg the staff to burn all of his cowboy hats down accidentally.

And although some BTZ fans were still arguing about Benjamin’s team performance, a lot of the commenters were happy to see this cool, slightly mature side of Jamie, which was quite a gap when compared to his usual happy-go-lucky cowboy style.

Then the MC announced that the second-place team would be performing.