Peninsula: From Water Injection to Stardom

Inside the Major team's dormitory, Mina, who hadn't gotten out of bed yet, was lying on her side in bed, holding her phone and staring blankly at the screen.

More than half an hour has passed since the message was sent, but there has been no response yet.

"He probably doesn't have time to check his messages..."

Mina slowly put down her phone, intending to check it later.

She was just about to get out of bed when she heard a noise at the door, and then saw Hirai Momo walk in with a troubled expression.

"What's wrong, Momming?" Mina wondered why the other person was making such a bitter face.

"Mitan, do you understand what PDnim means by 'star'?" Hirai Momo asked directly as she entered.

In a few days, these trainees who were selected for the "SIXTEEN" project will be recording the first round of competition for the show.

However, Hirai Momo couldn't figure out what Park Jin-young meant by the first round's challenge, "Exploring one's own star quality," even after thinking about it all night. So now she can only ask Mina for help.

As for why she didn't approach Minatozaki Sana first, it's because Minatozaki Sana wasn't initially assigned to the same team as the two of them.

Mina and Momo were initially grouped into the Major team, while Sana Minatozaki was in the Minor team.

The two teams' training times in the practice room are forcibly staggered, and they also live in different dormitories, making it difficult for Hirai Momo to meet Minatozaki Sana at this stage.

As for the other trainees in the Major team, Hirai Momo wasn't familiar with them either, so she had no choice but to ask Mina.

"I guess... all I need to do is show what I'm good at."

Mina didn't actually understand what Park Jin-young meant, but she had already decided to perform her best skill, ballet, during her individual star showcase a week later.

"What you're best at? I get it!"

After listening, Hirai Momo's eyes widened in realization. With her extraordinary intelligence, she gradually understood everything.

Her greatest talent is dancing!

Feeling confident she had the answer, Hirai Momo rushed out of Mina's room. She couldn't wait to head to the other practice rooms in the JYPE training building to choreograph a solo dance show for the performance a week later.

After watching Hirai Momo leave in a flustered manner, Mina, unfazed, looked away and continued getting out of bed.

However, just as he finished changing into his casual clothes, his phone, which was on the bed, vibrated a few times.

Mina picked up her phone and glanced at it, a slight smile unconsciously curving her lips.

After reading it, she opened the chat box, paused for a few seconds, and then typed a line of text.

But just as he was about to press send, his finger froze in mid-air.

"Would it seem like I'm being too verbose to go out of my way to explain how to play this game?"

"He must be very busy right now, will I be bothering him?"

"Maybe... we should wait a little longer."

Mina stared blankly at the screen for a while, and after a dozen seconds, she hesitated and deleted the sentence she had planned to send.

……

After leaving the TV station, Jiang Yan first sent the four dancers back to the Starship, and then his next stop was to return to CUBE for a meeting.

It's been exactly 12 hours since the entire album was released at midnight, and the marketing department released some data in no time.

The four songs from the album are currently ranked as follows on Melon's real-time charts: the title track "I Am You, You Are Me" is at number 11, "All I Wanna Do" is at number 17, "If You Do" is at number 29, and "Lotto" is at number 30.

Upon seeing these results, Jiang Yan's first reaction was that the record marketing company's channels were indeed effective, just as previously mentioned, the entire album's digital sales had entered the top thirty.

However, "All I Wanna Do," a non-title track, ranked much higher than he had expected.

Putting aside the data at hand for the moment, Jiang Yan took out his phone, opened the Melon app, found the real-time chart, and clicked on the song's listening trend.

When it first entered the charts, "All I Wanna Do" was only ranked 27th. Obviously, this ranking was achieved by taking advantage of the overall audience's attention and then stabilizing there.

For the first few hours, there were no significant changes, and it wasn't until after 7 o'clock that the listening curve began to slowly rise.

The reason for this change is that, aside from inflated listenership, casual listeners have started to join in and continuously increase the number of listeners.

In layman's terms, it attracted passersby to listen.

The same is true for the title track, and its listenership growth is even greater.

However, Jiang Yan also noticed that there were some familiar faces on the real-time rankings.

All nine songs from BTS's "The Most Beautiful Moment in Life pt.1" are on the charts, with several of them ranking ahead of them.

But this is not surprising, as everyone is using the same channel.

You inject water, I inject water, and we both have a bright future.

However, Jiang Yan had to admit that after looking at the real-time rankings, he felt that Fang Shihe's current strategy of inflating the numbers was a bit crude.

I can understand everything else, but why did they also include the intro track at the beginning of the album?

Isn't this obviously fake? Even the most die-hard fans wouldn't listen to this stuff.

They really don't even bother to pretend anymore.

Shaking his head slightly, Jiang Yan put down his phone and continued looking at the data.

Besides Melon, his songs also appeared on the real-time charts of Genie and Bugs.

However, there are only two songs, "I Am You, You Are Me" and "All I Wanna Do," and they are not ranked high, both around 50th place.

But this is a good thing.

Because Jiang Yan only purchased Melon's inflated subscription service, it means that the listenership of Genie and Bugs was entirely accumulated from the general public.

"The album's streaming growth in half a day was outstanding. At this rate, all four songs should be able to enter the daily charts tomorrow, and the title track may be ranked within the top 30. The situation looks very promising."

Right now, the analyst is standing there, interpreting this data report.

The CUBE and Yuehua representatives sitting around listening all looked at the data in their hands with very surprised expressions.

In fact, everyone was already mentally prepared for the data to be quite bad, after all, what good prospects can a green card holder have on their own?

But the data presented now tells them that this is a sign of great prosperity.

This doesn't make sense, does it?

This is a level of success that many second-tier K-pop groups cannot achieve.

But the facts are right in front of them, leaving them no choice but to believe them.

The meeting lasted for more than an hour. After it ended, Jiang Yan quickly left CUBE and got back into his van.

According to his schedule, he will next go to Starship for his second Vlive live stream.

As for why we're going to Starship, it's because today's live stream includes a practice room version of "I Am You, You Are Me" performed for fans, so the live stream location will be the Starship practice room.

Sending Cheng Xiao and the others back to the starship first was to allow them to prepare beforehand, as they would appear together on camera for a period of time during the live broadcast. This was also arranged by Yuehua Entertainment, serving as a way to warm up WJSN in advance.