From Skid Row to Superstardom: An Idol System Novel-Chapter 344: Vacation (6)

"Uhhh? I’m not sure." Daniel eventually mumbled while looking down at the paper full of words that had become blurry.

To be honest, academics were not his strong suit.

As soon as he was able, he dropped out of high school and devoted all his time to practicing dance and doing everything he could to become an idol.

The only academic classes he tried to keep up with were learning to speak English and Japanese, and that was only because the agency mandated that every trainee learn them.

His English speaking had now become okay due to learning to rap a variety of songs in English, but reading it quickly and understanding things was a little bit tough for him.

Back when he was still a student, he rarely paid attention in class and usually just did the bare minimum to pass since all his time was devoted to practicing to be an idol, so this situation, where he was supposed to be the local expert and figure out things like riddles in front of the camera and his teammates and eventually the fans, was his worst nightmare. 𝑓𝑟𝑒𝘦𝓌𝑒𝑏𝑛𝑜𝘷𝑒𝘭.𝒸𝘰𝑚

Worse than the monthly evaluations he used to go through.

Worse even than some of the things the PD made them go through.

Under the pressure with everyone staring at him and the flashing red dot for the camera reminding him of a laser, Daniel’s mind went blank, and he began to panic.

"I-I I’m sorry. I don’t know."

"Are you sure? Take a deep breath and think it through. No need to panic. We have time. Okay?" Vishal calmly urged him as he gently patted his back, but to Daniel, it felt like he was adding more pressure on top of his shoulders.

"I don’t know." Daniel could only repeat himself as he stared at the paper, hoping to burn the blurry words into his brain so that he could magically understand.

"Seriously? And here I thought we would have an advantage because you grew up in Seoul. Think! Use your brain. We’re depending on you." William began nagging with a fake smile on his face.

"I’m thinking! I’m thinking!"

"Think harder! You’re from here, right? Think!"

"Oi, stop nagging him. It’s a team effort, so we should all put our thinking caps on and try to figure it out. It can’t be that hard. The PD might be wicked, but she can’t be too evil and give us an impossible problem."

Ari calmly interrupted William, who shot him a dirty look behind the camera, while PD Emily gave him a fake look of shock at being called evil.

"You’re saying a lot for somebody who doesn’t have an idea of what the answer is," William replied snidely.

Who said I don’t have an idea? I’ve already figured out what the answer is!

Do you know how many tourist sites and books I’ve read over the last couple of weeks while trying to learn to read Korean so it doesn’t look weird when I use the earring to speak it naturally?

I’ll have you know that you’re looking at the almost perfect foreign ace of Quiz on Block, who missed only one question.

I guarantee that right now, nobody has as much useless tourist knowledge about Seoul than me!

From the way things were presented, Ari was sure the PD wanted to see a heartwarming scene of the team struggling to figure out what the riddle meant, and then followed by the excitement of someone realizing the answer, rather than someone just spitting out the right answer like a robot.

Right now, he truly didn’t need to stand out, but he also didn’t plan on watching William needlessly pressure Daniel, who looked like he was about to cry for not immediately understanding the riddle.

It didn’t matter if he was Korean or not; some people just weren’t good at riddles, especially when they weren’t in their first language.

Instead of stating the answer and taking the shine, it would be better to guide someone else to say it, and thankfully, as a Korean, Daniel should at least be familiar with the landmarks within the city, right?

He would just treat him like one of the students he used to tutor and guide him to the answer.

Ari silently thought things through before holding out his hand to William.

"What?"

"Gimme. The paper. Please."

William stared at him coldly before reluctantly handing over the paper with the riddle.

Ari grabbed it, careful to avoid touching him, then pretended to read it again and talked to Daniel.

"I have an idea, but I’m not too sure about some things. Do you mind if I ask you some clarifying questions?"

"I can try, though I don’t think I’ll be any help," Daniel muttered quietly.

"I think you will be! Then, let’s take the riddle line by line. The first line is ’mountain behind me, wide avenue in front’. So I’m assuming it’s some type of building. Since the place is in front of a mountain, let’s start there. How many mountains are in Seoul that are near a big road and a building? And can someone open the map so we can look?"

Vishal rolled out the modern-looking paper map that had little emojis next to the names of important landmarks and roads.

"Point the camera that way, please." Ari pointed at William, who reluctantly focused on the map.

"Daniel. Do you know the mountain names? Are these accurate?"

"Uhm, the mountains. Mountains. Right. There’s Bukhansan, Namsan, Inwangsan...there’s quite a lot of them." Daniel began pointing them out on the map before stopping.

"That’s fine. We’ll just keep their position loosely in mind. Let’s move on to the next line. Do you remember hearing about any buildings near the mountains that burned down and are around 500 years old or older?"

"I don’t know. Sorry."

As Daniel clammed up again, his faint smile drooping, Ari began reasoning outloud in hopes that he would get the hint and think of something.

"If you think about the olden dynasties based out of Seoul, something should have right? It might be an old building like a fortress, a government building, or even a Palace? Anything that burned down, maybe during invasions of one of the Asian countries to the east? Does any of that ring a bell?"

"Oh! Wait! That’s right! There’s a palace. Gyeongbokgung Palace! It’s right in front of Bugaksan Mountain, it’s close to the Blue House, and it was burned down during the Japanese invasions. One of the gates is red, the roof tiled, and it gets hundreds of tourists a day! It’s definitely that palace!" Daniel yelled as he jumped to his feet excitedly.

Bingo.

"You think so? Can you show us on the map? Does it fit?"

Daniel immediately knelt down and accurately pointed to the little castle emoji by a mountain that said Bugaksan.

"It’s right here. You see, there’s a castle, and it’s on a main road! It fits! Plus, it’s not that far from here. It will take 30 minutes at the most! And if we rent hanbok from a nearby store, we can even get in for free!"

Seeing that he looked pretty confident, Ari glanced at PD Emily with a sly smile.

"Are we right? Is the answer Gyeongbokgung Palace?"

"I wonder?" PD Emily replied noncommittally, although she was impressed that they figured it out so quickly.

She was originally going to give a hint since the riddle was a bit difficult, but it seemed it wasn’t needed.

As expected of their high school valedictorian, he figured things out quickly.

Still, she couldn’t let them be too happy and complacent. "But I would get a move on if I were you; several other teams are already on the way to their first location. You’re the last one here."

"Alright. Shall we go check it out then? Daniel, can you help direct us? None of us is too familiar with traversing the city, so we’ll be depending on you. Me, especially since I get lost easily and don’t really know my way around."

At Ari’s blatant lie, both Vishal and PD Emily’s heads whipped around to stare at him.

What kind of blatant lie was this?

Get lost easily?

Don’t know your way around?

With the way you traverse the city each night, aren’t you basically Batman?!

You’ve even become a regular at different places.

"Leave it to me! I’ll guide you safely!" Daniel patted his chest confidently, his bright smile restored once more, while Ari smiled innocently before shooting a look at the PD out of sight of the camera.

Don’t mess up the mood with your nonsense; he’s finally happy again.

"Thank you, Mr. Kim. I appreciate you." Ari playfully bowed deeply.

"Of course, Mr. Matisse. It’s my pleasure." Daniel bowed even deeper.

"I look forward to working with you once more, Mr. Kim. It was a pleasure." Ari got even deeper than Daniel.

"Likewise, Mr. Matisse. The pleasure is all mine."

Then the two of them began bowing lower and lower. William interrupted, since he couldn’t stand the disgusting sight of people acting childish.

"Okay. Enough of that nonsense. Let’s go call a taxi and head to the whatever palace."

"Why a taxi?" Ari replied quickly.

"Because I don’t do public transportation," William said simply as if that explained everything.

It didn’t.

"Let’s just take the train, it’s cheaper since we have a limited budget and we have a local to guide us."

"I don’t want to get into dirty public transportation. Besides, the PD said we were provided enough money for the whole day."

And you believed her?

I guarantee there’s only enough money to be frugal because she wants lots of people to give up or suffer!

"So let’s take a taxi since it will be quicker and more efficient. Besides, I’m the captain, not you. I make the final decision. And nobody else disagrees, right?"

Ari glanced between the recording cameras, the rest of his teammates who didn’t say anything to William, and held both hands up in surrender.

If nobody else wanted to speak up, then he wouldn’t keep fighting it and look like the person causing trouble all the time.

If they ran out of money, so be it.

It wouldn’t be his fault.

"Fine. Let’s take a taxi."

"Good. Follow me."

Still recording with the camera mainly pointed at him like a selfie, William began walking out of the building, and the three of them silently followed behind after putting on the ugly branded vest.

As they stepped outside of the building, Ari quickly put on his sunglasses to stop the sun from blinding him and stopped a fair distance from William, who was walking around with a stupid, confused expression on his face.

"What’s wrong?"

"How do I call a taxi? There are no yellow cabs driving around. They’re all ignoring me." William asked awkwardly as he looked up and down the street with his hand up.

Are you dumb?

Do you think this is New York City, where yellow taxis are always driving around?

That’s not even the right color for taxis in this country, you stupid idiot!

Holding back a sigh, Ari realized that, as always, the PD was a liar.

No part of this felt like a vacation, and today would be a very, very long day.