MyMrSmile

Eighteen-year-old Minjun has never fit into the mold his parents dreamed for him. While his friends chase university acceptances and stable futures, Minjun stands alone on a rain-soaked Seoul rooftop, whispering his hopes to the night sky and scribbling lyrics into a battered notebook. He’s not just another boy who wants to be a K-pop idol — he wants to write his own songs, sing his own truth, and stand under the stage lights as his own kind of star.

When a small but influential entertainment company unexpectedly invites him for an audition, Minjun thinks this might finally be his chance. But inside the dazzling world of K-pop, dreams cost more than just time and talent — they demand sacrifice, secrecy, and the strength to stand up every time the industry knocks him down.

As Minjun fights for a spot on the trainee roster, he navigates brutal competition, midnight rehearsals, and hidden rivalries that could break his spirit or make him stronger than ever. Along the way, he forges fragile friendships, clashes with idols who see him as a threat, and discovers how far he’s willing to go to keep his songs his own — in an industry where even dreams can be manufactured.

Idol of the Night is a raw, heartfelt journey through the shadows behind the spotlight — a story about finding your voice when everyone wants to rewrite your song, and the courage it takes to stand alone under the brightest lights.

Idol of the Night

The video didn't leave Minjun's mind.

The girl on the rooftop. Her voice. The way she'd said it — not with arrogance, but with a kind of weary reverence.

"I was the rooftop before you were."

It echoed in his skull like a ghost chorus.

And how long had she been listening?

The rooftop crew sat in silence as Miri looped the clip again. Jiwoo, uncharacteristically quiet, leaned forward with his elbows on his knees, watching the screen like it might speak again.

"I've never seen her before," Miri said. "No match in the rooftop logs, no circuit nodes, nothing."

Jiwoo scratched his head. "You think she's the Phantom?"

"No," Minjun said. "She's older. She's something else."

He turned to Miri. "Can we trace the footage origin?"

"Already tried. Metadata's stripped. Encoded with pre-2018 formatting. Might've been shot on a hacked training phone. I don't know how old it is."

Minjun leaned back and stared at the city. It buzzed like a hive below them.

"What if we weren't the first?" he said softly.

Miri raised an eyebrow. "The first what?"

"To use rooftops like this," he said. "To rebel. To perform outside the machine."

Jiwoo frowned. "You think there were other Circuits before us?"

"No," Minjun said. "Not Circuits. Seeds."

For two days, the team tore through the remnants of old rooftop threads, defunct K-pop forums, and half-buried message boards. They looked for anything — rumors, whispers, digital fingerprints — about underground performers who never debuted.

Until Miri landed on an old digital zine called PulseStrain, archived on a private mirror.

Inside: a feature on a group of anonymous female trainees from 2016 who went rogue after their company dropped them without notice. They called themselves RØ — pronounced "row," like a boat — and supposedly began staging rooftop "phantom concerts" around Seoul.

But on page three of the zine, blurry and pixelated, was a photo.

Minjun sat with the photo for a long time.

"This wasn't random," he said. "Collapse Sync wasn't a hack. It was a passing of the torch."

Jiwoo stared. "You think she meant to reveal herself?"

"No," Minjun replied. "I think she meant to remind us this was never about us to begin with."

Miri crossed her arms. "So what, we're echoes now? Just carrying a signal that started years ago?"

He turned to the skyline, where their feeds had once lit up the night.

"The ones who sang before us... they weren't just rebels. They were the first rooftop."

That night, Minjun couldn't sleep.

He went to the Yeonnam rooftop alone, notebook in hand, and sat where he first sang into an unplugged mic. The wind was sharp. The silence too loud.

"We are not origin.We are resound.We are stairwells full of feedbackAnd echoes passed down.We are rooftop bones and bloodless spotlights.We are the ones who came after.And the ones who will come next."

But the humming continued. Not from a speaker. Not from a phone.

Miri had once joked that rooftops remembered sound.

Now Minjun wasn't so sure she was joking.

And for the first time in a long time, he didn't sing back.

The Ones Who Sang Before