From Skid Row to Superstardom: An Idol System Novel-Chapter 81: Warrior (1)

As his alarm rang, Ari woke up immediately, went to brush his teeth, ate some snacks, and headed to the practice room.

Although he was 20 minutes early and exhausted, he used the time to complete the pushups, lunges, and situps required for the repeat missions before sitting on the ground to recover.

"Huff, huff, let me see my stats?" Ari spoke out loud as he stared at himself in the mirror.

[Ariel Matisse]

[Vocals: A]

[Dance: F+ (Currently E- with Otterly adorable tracksuit)]

[Visual: F+ (Currently E- with Otterly adorable headband)]

[Rap: F]

[Charm: A]

[Skills: Picky Listener (B), Pen Pal (C)]

[Surprise Missions: Instead Of Being As Blind As A Bat, Become A Detective Like Sherlock Holmes!, I Am The Leader, Hear Me Roar!]

[Current Rewards: 5 Stat Points & 5.55 Visual Stat Points]

[What would you like to do?]

"First, add all my visual stat points to my visual, please."

[Visual + 5]

[Visual: F+ -> D]

"Let’s do the same for the dance stat."

[Dance + 5]

[Dance: F+ -> D]

Ari looked it over in satisfaction before playing the music and following up with the warm-up choreography video that Jaywalk had taught them.

He suspected that the hidden dance would be in here, but unfortunately, he couldn’t tell what it was, which is why he wanted to ask the best but friendliest dancer, which, from his observations, was Daniel Kim.

Unfortunately, it seemed he had awkwardly made a mess of it, so that plan had to be scrapped.

As Ari was almost finished warming up, his teammates began to trickle in right before 5:30 am.

They all looked exhausted, but each person was properly dressed, even if their eyes were crusty and their hair was messy.

Ari counted them off, noting that the only person missing was Caleb.

His loss.

"Let’s warm up for 15 minutes and get right to the choreography team," Ari told them as he played the warmup music.

Each person began doing their preferred warmup, with some people half-heartedly following along with Ari as he repeated the warmup once more, marveling at how much smoother his moves looked and felt with the upgraded dance stat.

Midway through the warm-up, a cameraman enters the room with one of the assistant PDs, Joel Stuggs.

"Oh, you guys are actually here on time? I thought you were bluffing for the cameras and would just sleep in." Joel looked at the sweaty contestants frantically trying to tidy themselves up before turning to look at the strangely masked boy in front.

Like PD Park Ji-ho said, he was the one to watch out for, as he seemed completely unsurprised to see the camera crew trying to catch them slacking after that bold claim.

"Why would we lie? All of us plan on following the schedule we submitted to the best of our abilities." Ari confidently said.

"Almost all of us." Somebody muttered in a bitter tone, and Joel had the cameraman turn to look at them with interest.

"Is there an issue? I see only 10 people. Who’s missing?"

"One of our teammates isn’t here yet, which means practice got extended 15 minutes. I’m actually on my way to wake him up since he might have overslept."

Ari quickly explained before smiling mischievously, "Do you want to come along?"

"Sure."

Then let’s go! Everybody should come too. Let’s go give our dear teammate a lovely wakeup call."

As if they sensed that Ari wanted to get back at Caleb, the boys excitedly followed Ari, their tiredness completely gone.

He led them all to the kitchens, quickly arming everyone with metal spoons and metal serving containers from the kitchen staff before heading to B2, where Caleb was sleeping.

Turning to look at Joel and the cameraman, Ari bowed apologetically before explaining, "I told everyone that if they were late, I would wake them as loudly as possible, causing their roommates to hate them, so this was done with our teammate’s implicit permission. Caleb, the PD has your signature of agreement."

Having cleared his name with the disclaimer and seeing the assistant PD laugh mischievously, Ari opened the door, counted down with his fingers.

On 3, the sound of metallic objects clashing sounded out as 11 boys burst into the room, banging wildly on the metal pots while shouting Caleb’s name.

"Caleb!"

"Caleb, get up!"

"Bruh! Get up!"

"Practice got extended, bro, get up!"

The boys in the bunk beds quickly sat up, some of them smacking their heads on the ceiling while others looked around before covering their heads with their blankets.

Caleb, who apparently slept in his boxers, rolled out of his bed onto the floor and began yelling, as his face turned red.

"What is wrong with all of you?!!"

"Don’t yell at them, it was my idea." Ari quickly waved the boys out of the room

"Then what is wrong with you?!!!! You freaking dictator!!!"

"It’s 5:45. You’re late to practice. Get dressed, and let’s go. The cameraman’s back there, so watch what you say and act." Ari pointed his thumb behind him before nodding politely to all of Caleb’s roommates.

"Sorry about the wake-up call, Caleb was late and was warned that this would happen."

Seeing their glares turn to Caleb, Ari left the room with a light heart and smiled at the rest of his teammates waiting in the hallway.

"Let’s go practice and try not to be late from now on, okay? Otherwise, your roommates might really hate you."

***

Caleb quickly showed up, and the choreography practice went as well as could be expected, with everyone having subpar skills.

The only thing that improved was the synchronization rate and fewer collisions as they switched positions in the formation.

After a quick breakfast, Ari went to vocal classes with Jelissa, which went well.

Unfortunately, he never had a free moment to ask Carlos what was going on with his team, so he finished and then went to practice with his own team.

After a quick lunch, he had to meet with the production team to put in his prop request, which was accepted, and have another interview with the PD explaining his vision.

On his way back to the practice room, he found a person with bright orange hair pacing in circles in the hallway.

It was Daniel Kim.

"Are you looking for me?" Ari caught his attention, and Daniel turned to look at him before smiling brightly and exposing his dimple.

"Yes. Thank you for the candy. Here." Daniel Kim dropped a massive bag of candy in his arms before turning and running away.

"...is it a competition?" Ari stared at the bag of candy in confusion before entering the room and resuming practice.

When it was time for Selena to come and train them, surprisingly, she came along with X-ponent, who pulled Vishal aside and had a private talk with him.

Although Ari was curious about what they talked about, he still felt a bit awkward after their interaction yesterday, so he focused his attention on getting his choreography mistakes corrected by Selena and helping correct the vocal mistakes of the rest of his teammates while curbing Caleb’s trolling that magically showed up whenever the cameras or trainers weren’t there.

The rest of the week passed quickly, and by the morning of the performance, which was also the last day of his surprise mission to discover the secret dance, Ari had completed his mission to help people improve their skills, gaining an additional stat point that took his dance skill from D -> D+

Although it wasn’t the improvement he wanted, he would have to hope that it was enough.

As the bus shuttled them to the location they would record the performance at, like everybody else on his team, Ari leaned back and took a nap.

And when he woke up, he was being rushed out of the bus inside the building.