With the skies finally turning black, the group settled in front of the TV to watch the fifth episode of Rising Stars. They tuned into Azure's YouWatch channel, where numerous comments could be seen floating at the side.
"Look," C-Jay pointed, still snacking on June's ramen. "They're talking about you, brother! You've become so popular that you can even compete with Jaeyong's fans."
June squinted his eyes to read the comments.
"June is my little kitty cat. I raised him, fed him, and taught him how to use the toilet. Please give him lots of love!"
"I can't wait for June's team to suffer again."
"I'm always looking forward to watching June struggle during these missions. It's my joy in life."
"Fighting, June! Let's see a fight this time."
June sighed. It's hard to decipher whether these are really fan's comments or not.
How come Jaeyong and the others get such cute comments from their fanbases?
Jangmoon cracked up as he read the comments out loud. Truly, June's fans were the funniest of their kind.
June clicked his tongue and placed a piece of lettuce in Jangmoon's mouth, effectively shutting him up.
"The song choosing is up first," Jisung said. "This was legendary. I really thought the bottom ranks would finally be able to pick the songs first."
C-Jay sighed. "I thought so too. But of course, Azure wouldn't give us what we wanted that easily."
The scene continued until it was time for June to choose a song. The people in the comments were excited to see another stage from Akira and June, but little did they know…
Ren came into the room, pacing back and forth between the two song choices. In the end, he mercilessly kicked June out of team 'Beside Me,' so he naturally went to 'I Love You, Leave; I Don't Love You, Don't Leave.'
"June and Akira!!! But it's okay; at least he'll be with Jisung."
"I wonder how they're going to perform this song. The team has so many good members already."
"This song is tough to sing, isn't it? I don't have a good feeling about it."
Then, Ren's interview was shown on screen. "I had to do it," he said. "Hwan's song had way too many competitors. It'll be very hard to arrange too."
June sighed. He understood Ren's reasoning. As one of the few members of the show who actually has producing skills, ''I Love You, Leave; I Don't Love You, Don't Leave' was something he had to avoid.
Afterward, the birth of the legendary team was born. The comment section was going nuts for the unexpected combination. Almost all of the top ten trainees were in June's team.
"Good luck, black kitty."
"As expected, he's really a black kitty. How can he compete with these monsters?"
"He probably got last during the second mission."
June scoffed. These people—if they only knew June got second place!
The team performances started with Akira's team, and their process wasn't the smoothest out of all too. Ren ran into some problems with the arrangement, and his other groupmates started blaming him for doing a mediocre job.
Jangmoon frowned. "I thought you didn't run into any problems at all. You did well during the interim evaluations."
Akira sighed. "Yeah, my other teammates are just pieces of shit, honestly. They gave Ren all the work to arrange the song, but they blamed him for not doing a satisfactory job. I helped Ren the second time, so we were able to make another one on the same day."
"That's good," Jisung said. "Ren looked really sad in those scenes."
The team performances continued until the team that performed "Forever Young" came on screen. This team comprised of the Phoenix trainees and four other unknown trainees.
Naturally, Hyunwoo won the personal benefit since he had the highest rank.
"These two are like two peas of a pod, aren't they?" Akira asked. "I rarely see them without the other."
"It's natural," Jaeyong responded. "They're from the same agency."
"Still," Akira said, looking to be in deep thought. "There's something strange between them. I wonder if they've trained together for a long time."
"They have," C-Jay suddenly said, causing June to turn to him.
"You know them?" June asked.
"Duh," C-Jay said in an obvious tone. "I know most of the trainees in the competition. Especially those who came from bigger companies."
"So you knew about me already?" Jisung asked.
C-Jay proudly nodded. "I came to one of your dance competitions too. You were great, man."
Jisung looked at him with wide eyes, but C-Jay remained unfazed. Akira, too, was weirded out.
"Just how much do you gossip around?" Akira asked.
"A lot," he responded. "You'd be surprised by what I know."
"What do you know?" June couldn't help but ask. Maybe he could learn about Alex and Hyunwoo through C-Jay.
"Let's start with the basics—the kid stuff. Alex and Hyunwoo had been training for a long time. I think five or six years? At a young age, they started training with Phoenix, and they were even bound to debut with CHAOS at that time."
Jisung gasped in surprise. "Really? Did that fall through then?"
"Well, of course," C-Jay said. "They wouldn't be in Rising Stars if it went well. It just so happened that they were taken out of the debut team six months before the set debut date. I think it had something to do with another unknown trainee?"
June's frown deepened. "The unknown trainee? Do you know about him?"
"No," C-Jay said. "I don't keep up with the unknown losers."
"Ah, so you don't keep up with yourself?" Jangmoon nonchalantly asked as he continued eating.
C-Jay slapped the back of his head, and the two of them proceeded to brawl on the floor, causing the others to laugh.
June, however, remained silent.
So, he definitely had something to do with the fallthrough of Alex's and Hyunwoo's debut.
But in what way?
June cleared his throat. "Don't you have any other details on why they didn't debut?"
C-Jay and Jangmoon stopped fighting and finally let go of each other.
"There is something else," he slowly said. "Come here," he whispered, gesturing for them to come closer.
The five of them huddled together.
"The reason why they didn't debut is because...
...they murdered someone."
