From Skid Row to Superstardom: An Idol System Novel-Chapter 80: Stage Research

"Daniel!"

Ari chased after the bright orange head of hair while calling his name, but the other boy ignored him and continued running up the steps at a breakneck speed.

Daniel took three flights of stairs, cut a corner in a different direction than where the rooms were located, jimmied open a door at the end of the hall, and ran up another flight of stairs.

Seriously out of breath with his legs shaking, Ari dashed up after him until he finally reached the shut door.

When he opened it, he was outside on the building’s rooftop, and all he could see was Daniel Kim’s back, faintly illuminated by a random light on the dark roof.

Daniel stood there without moving, just staring ahead.

"Daniel!"

Panting, Ari called the boy once more before walking over to tap his back.

"Aghhhhhhhhhaaa!" Screaming in fear, Daniel Kim jumped almost 4 feet into the air and turned around with his fists up in a fighting position.

As he landed on the ground, his tiny white wireless earbuds flew out of his ears, and his eyes were red with tears streaming down his cheeks.

Seeing it, Ari completely froze in place.

"Sniff, what do you want?" Daniel asked as he wiped his face with his sleeves.

"Uh?" Seeing the other boy’s eyes that were red and wet from clearly crying, Ari’s brain short-circuited, and he panicked for a moment.

When people cried, what did you do?

Yell at them? That was crazy!

Ask them what’s wrong? He was a random stranger.

Feed them food? Yes. Yes!

As his brain arrived at an answer, Ari began digging in his pocket for something to get him out of this situation.

All he had were his Post-it notes, a pen, and some milk candy from the snack pack that Granny Choi had packed for him. He ate it throughout the day to give himself an energy boost, and he instinctively held out the entire bunch to Daniel.

"What’s this?" Daniel opened his hand curiously, and Ari dumped it all on his hand.

"Candy. It’s tasty. Sorry to bother you. Feel better. I’ll leave now."

Ari immediately turned around and ran away after spitting out a random collection of words.

After seeing somebody cry, he would be a jerk if he asked the other person something unrelated to the reason for their tears.

Instead of being sucked into an emotional situation with somebody he didn’t know, it would be better to do some stage prop research.

When he came to the computer room, Vishal was hard at work, typing on the keyboard.

The room was empty, with only a staff member who was dozing off on a desk in the corner.

Sliding into the seat next to Vishal, Ari got his attention.

"How goes it?"

"Not so great. After tallying up everyone’s clothes, we have three choices: the uniform was given, an all black outfit, or blue jeans with a white shirt or our class shirts. Nobody brought makeup except you, and no hair styling tools either. There are quite a few accessories like bandanas and hats, and everyone has a pair of boots, so there is that. What are you thinking?" Vishal reported that as he read through the document he had made.

"Hmmm." Ari spun around on the chair while thinking before speaking again, "The song is called Warrior, so I think most teams are going to have a black themed outfit, so if we want to stand out, we should probably avoid that."

"It’s like you read my mind." Vishal gave him a small smile before pulling up a mini PowerPoint that he had made.

"I actually think we should go with the white outfit with jeans and boots, and see if we can borrow more accessories from people. If not, then the bandanas and hats will have to do. " Vishal showed some fierce concepts that other musical groups had done.

"And if you don’t mind sharing it, we could put war stripes on our faces like sports teams or paint these cool designs in black." Vishal clicked onto the next slide to show easy but cool designs that could be painted on the face.

"Wow. Thank you."

Ari was truly thankful for the large amount of work Vishal had done in such a short time, especially when he didn’t have to, since the work was dumped onto Ari by the rest of the team.

"It’s the least I can do since you’re dragging us toward success. I should try to do my part."

"Well, thank you again. Let me actually do my part and look for basic stage props that we can use."

"I’ll help."

Ari then began searching for different stage ideas for fierce songs by solo singers and boy-and-girl groups.

Of course, there were many stages with smoke, flames, and sparklers, but they weren’t allowed to use that, only simple props.

For about two hours, he kept watching stage performances and practice videos, trying to find something that inspired him, until he came across a random WeTube recommendation of an old dance movie scene.

In the scene, the main character broke the pipe at a dance competition, and his team had to improvise and dance in a flooded stage.

Even though the original routine was messed up, because of the flashy way that the water splashed with each of the dancers’ movements, it looked impressive and caught the eye, especially when they did large synchronized moves like jumping and stomping.

Ari compared the Warrior choreography as he rewatched the scene, and a smile slowly crept on his face.

This...

Wouldn’t this work as their prop?

He began urgently checking the list given by the production staff one more time, noting that water bottles, water guns, fake grass, a plastic pool, a tarp, and a large canvas were on the list.

Wouldn’t it just work if they somehow blended all those things to make a watery ground for them to dance on?

Or even better, if the stage they were going to record at had those capabilities.

Completely inspired, Ari double-checked the stage location the staff had mentioned and looked up past performances with the keyword water.

He scrolled and scrolled until he finally found it! freewebnøvel.coɱ

3 years ago, a dance group had performed a routine with water on the ground, meaning the stage already had the capabilities to do so.

"Vishal, take a look at this." Ari caught the half-asleep boy’s attention and made him watch the scene before pulling up the stage.

Vishal’s eyes immediately popped open as he immediately understood where Ari’s thoughts were going, "Water prop?"

"Water prop." Ari confirmed it with a smile.

Suddenly, Vishal began typing rapidly as he pulled up examples of rabid fan reactions to idols wearing white shirts that got wet while they were performing.

He excitedly tapped on the monitor and Ari began reading the comments with him.

Some were normal, but a few were very strange, which weirded Ari out, but then he began to laugh as he saw some truly funny ones.

"Heh."

Vishal glanced at it and began to laugh as well.

"Heh heh."

"Heh heh heh."

"Heh heh heh heh."

The two of them looked at each other before bursting out laughing and high-fiving each other aggressively.

Vishal began spinning Ari rapidly in the chair while he laughed maniacally until he got too dizzy and tumbled to the ground, bringing the mouse, keyboard, and Vishal with him.

Thud! Thud! Thud!

As the staff member woke up, afraid of the sudden noises, the two of them pretended that nothing had happened and sat still until the staff member went back to sleep.

After they began snoring once more, the two of them began to whisper.

"We shouldn’t tell the team, right? I don’t want other teams to steal our idea." Ari whispered as he closed all the windows he had just used.

"Definitely not. Since they dumped the work on you, it will surprise everyone. Actually, let me help you wipe the history properly so nobody else gets the same idea without putting in some effort."

Vishal began expertly clicking through the browser, deleting the history, cookies, the browser, and any other data Ari left behind during his session before searching for generic stage and costume ideas and even bookmarking a few and sticking them into a folder called ’D-Class (2)’

When Ari glanced at him curiously, Vishal whispered ’decoy’, before continuing with his efforts, rapidly clicking on a bunch of windows.

"You...are really good at this computer stuff," Ari commented lightly as he tried to figure out everything that Vishal was doing. The most he had ever done with a laptop was his experience trying to make a song, and even then, he looked up tutorials or asked Jamie for help.

This looked like magic to him.

"Well, that was a racist stereotype," Vishal commented lightly as he shut the computer down and stood up.

"Sorry." Ari immediately apologized, not wanting to offend. " You said you had a tech internship before, so I thought...never mind. Sorry again. I won’t say anything else."

"I was joking. Seriously. It was a bad joke, so sorry. But I’m glad you remembered. And yeah, I’m pretty good at it. It’s my major in college."

"I see." Feeling awkward, Ari stayed quietly until Vishal was done, and then they both headed back to their room in an awkward silence.

Of course, the door was locked, so after banging on it hard enough to wake up the next room, they were finally allowed to enter.

Ignoring the angry roommates, Ari proceeded to shower, apply his make up, and wash his clothes before he went to bed in his sleeping bag.

And then 3 hours later, his alarm went off to wake him up.