From Skid Row to Superstardom: An Idol System Novel-Chapter 356: Is This Your Prince (4)?

Say it ain’t so!

Grace watched the train wreck of a team performance with her mouth open and, for a second, wanted to reach through and smack Ari on the back of the head.

"Ari no!" Justine looked like she wanted to fall to her knees, while Rachel was on the verge of tears.

"Tell me it ain’t so, Ari."

Please!

Tell me your song file actually got messed up, and this isn’t what you spent all your time working on.

Because if it is, perhaps you actually deserve the slander that’s going to be heading your way!

Unfortunately, despite Grace’s best wishes, that was the real performance, and as the 5 boys stood in a line with Ari at the front, the critique began.

Starting with Larry Jackson’s sarcastic comments.

As Larry Jackson was ripping into the team’s evaluation, a quick glance at the comments made it apparent that Ari was also getting flamed there as well.

Badly.

└ ’It’s my fault’ OBVIOUSLY! IF NOT YOU, THEN WHO’S FAULT WOULD IT BE!?????

└ ’I take full accountability’? Take accountability by dropping dead!

└ There’s no way my kid is stuck with this person as his producer and team leader. Rei, let’s just switch teams, okay. It’s better to go join William’s football team and get 5 seconds of lines than to suffer here. They at least have a song. I don’t know what this is.

└ bruh, this is what he was working on the whole time? I wanna smack the nonsense outta him.

└ I knew he didn’t know what he was doing! He just searched a bunch of sounds and added them at the last minute. What a waste of time.

└ I’m glad the truth has come out. He’s probably been secretly getting help from Jamie the whole time, and Jamie finally said no. Good job, my golden retriever!

For a full 3 minutes, Ari was torn apart by the judges and online, and honestly, if Grace were him, she would have wanted to cry from how harsh Larry Jackson was being to him.

To make matters worse, even though she didn’t say anything, even Jelissa, who was known as one of Ari’s strongest supporters among the judges, was shown shaking her head sadly.

As if she were disappointed in them.

When Ari’s team finally went to sit down, it was now William’s turn, and Grace hoped with all of her heart that he would fail, that an earthquake would happen only to him, so that he would perform terribly.

Unfortunately...

William’s team actually performed well.

Although the camera mainly focused on William without really panning to the others, it was still a good performance, and he did well.

The one-minute snippet they got shown was catchy; the choreography flowed well and was properly anchored by William, who was the center, and while some of his teammates seemed less polished than usual, it looked like it could be fixed with more practice.

As the judges began giving their feedback, Larry Jackson seemed quite impressed with what he saw, reiterating multiple times that he hadn’t needed to help William with anything and that William was so incredibly talented that he had done everything by himself, in such a short amount of time, and to a high level of perfection, and other contestants should look to him for advice on how to be a producer.

It was one of the highest praises given on the show, only comparable to Bing Yongsun’s praise for Ari’s arrangements and ideas for his previous performances.

Each time Larry Jackson praised William, the camera panned to Ari, who was clapping expressionlessly as he stared at the blonde boy.

And at the reappearance of the slightly judgmental look that Ari was known for, Grace wanted to shake some sense into him.

’Please, Ari! Even if you’re completely within your rights to hate him, fix your facial expression. You can’t be seen with that kind of expression right now because your performance was bad!’

Unfortunately, she couldn’t go back in the past to stop him, so she watched the other judges agree with Larry Jackson.

Jelissa seemed to nod in approval toward William, and Jaywalks only offered feedback here and there, telling them to continue practicing and working hard.

Unanimously, William’s team had the best performance among the three, while Ari’s was the worst.

The problem now was...

└ Didn’t William’s song get copied by Ariel?

The copying allegations.

Both Ari and William’s songs had some similarities.

Not in the sound department, but in the content.

└ The lyrics are obviously the same.

└ The production team had better do something about the copying. As we all saw, William finished his song, choreography, and concept before Ariel’s team did, yet somehow they ended up with similar lyrics. Somebody copied somebody else, and I know it’s not William.

└ Isn’t Ariel being a blatant copycat? William chooses to write a song about idols, Ariel writes a song about idols. William uses live instruments in his song; Ariel does the same. William mentions a god, so does Ari. Coincidence? I think the f**k not.

└└ What if they came up with the same idea, and that’s why the songs are similar?

└└└ You’re telling me two different groups came up with the exact same idea for a song? When one person was finished with their song 5 days ahead of the other? Ha! Just admit your pick is a thief and a copycat!

└ William did everything by himself, so it’s clear that he was the one who was copied. The production team needs to do something about it! Cheating should not be allowed!

The Royal Family fans in the chat were completely enraged, cursing at everyone and even reporting accounts that supported Ari.

As for Grace, even if the production team brought her footage of Ari listening at Williams’ door to steal his lyrics and song ideas, she would never believe it.

Firstly, the Ari that she knew couldn’t be bothered to do such a thing, and secondly, the hatred that Ari had for William was second to none.

Truth be told, she thought that Ari would rather die than copy William.

This raised the question: What was the discussion like when each team came up with ideas and set the performance direction?

She had seen snippets of Ari and Jamie talking about it here and there, but the production team never showed the team meeting stage, which would directly clear up who copied whom.

As she continued to think about the copying issue, Grace’s suspicions about William grew.

Firstly, about his whole song-making process.

No matter how she looked at it, none of it made sense.

Cranking out a full song in a day sounded crazy to her.

It didn’t sound possible, and she couldn’t believe that HE was the one who did it.

Even if William was faster than Ari in making songs, did it make sense that he would be faster than Jamie?

Out of all the contestants, Jamie had the most writing and producing credits and had been in the music industry since childhood.

He played multiple instruments and had even demoed a mini impromptu jingle, so it was clear he was talented.

Even though he was so talented, Jamie wasn’t done producing the song in a single day. It took him several days, and he worked with Jelissa as well.

And you’re telling her that William could do it in a day and do it alone with no help?

She’d rather believe pigs could fly.

Additionally, throughout the episode, they saw Jamie’s entire process, had him talk through it on camera, and even watched him create a quick, unrelated demo.

During the checkups, he pointed out the things he worked on and improved, and each snippet was clearly improved upon the last.

Even with Ari, although the production team edited it in a way that seemed to mock how slow he was compared to the other producers and the lack of progress he was making, to Grace, it was also the most realistic version of how a newbie would make a song, and it helped her understand the process a bit more.

Each day the camera team visited him, they could see that the song length grew, the number of tracks in the software grew, and, thanks to Ari’s clear and overly descriptive labeling, it was easy to track how many iterations he had tested and improved since the previous day.

It might seem like nothing, but there was clear progress, and in the end, he had something to present during evaluations, even though their practice performance hadn’t gone well.

Additionally, Grace was sure that if they pulled up papers he used to write lyrics, that iterative process would definitely exist there as well.

But for William? Nothing.

It was like the song just spawned out of thin air.

It was the same with the choreography and the lyrics.

He just said he was done and started teaching his entire team the choreography that seemed to spawn out of nowhere.

To Grace, it just didn’t make sense.

Why wouldn’t you want to show your work and demonstrate your genius?

She remembered that William had confidently said he would be number one, and from his personality, it was apparent he was cocky and believed he was better than everyone else.

William, not wanting to spotlight the genius process by which he amazingly created a song in a day weird.

Very, very weird.

Once again, Grace wondered whether she was falling victim to editing magic or being excessively nitpicky, since nobody else seemed to notice or mention anything in the chat.

Well, they were too busy fighting over who copied whom and lamenting that Ari ruined the stock for his teammates, so she would have to monitor that later.

With a heavy sigh, she hoped Ari would quickly turn this situation around and watched as each team went back to their practice room to review the feedback and continue preparing for the performance.

Originally, she thought that Ari’s team would seem down after their feedback, but to her surprise, it seemed like business as usual.

They all sat down and talked things over and planned their schedule.

But to her surprise, the person in the lead wasn’t Ari, the team leader, it was-

[Levi Temple - Assistant Producer]

As Levi appeared on the screen in front of a chalkboard, Grace could only stare in confusion at what was happening.