Stranger | Jikook/Kookmin

33 | Hide-And-Seek

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The second pledge in the line-up is trickier than building a bridge. 

[I promise to hold the MAMA ceremony on campus this year.]

Now for those of you who don't know what MAMA stands for, it is The Mnet Asian Music Awards: the annual South Korean music awards ceremony held by Mnet, Korean music channel owned by the entertainment company CJ E&M. And for those of you who are wondering if it's a big deal? Yes. Yes it very much is. MAMA is the mama of awards, so to say — every artist wants to be a part of it, every fan wants to attend it. 

With the information at hand, you might think it's impossible for a bunch of students to host a ceremony that prosperous on their campus illegally. But there is a way to accomplish anything if you know the right information and have the right team players. 

The star of the meeting is Shady that night. He lays low throughout the meal and coffee, only offering to speak when the heated debate between Minji and Jin on how to recruit idols gets unbearable.

"Look," he interlocks his fingers on the table. "Messing with the MAMA ceremony is like throwing a stone to a pitless well. I know you guys want to make this the next big thing, but we don't have to take every pledge literally."

Silence settles in the terrace, Shady's words serving as food for thought.

He might be right about that. 

Ever since their bridge prank which was a major success, they feel this pressure to outdo themselves. There has been unclarity among the students on the purpose of the first pledge's fulfillment. Most of them believe that the bridge was built as the mascot's comeback at Gidae University for cancelling its presidency. Gidae cancelled him, the mascot made its move, now they're even, kind of mindset. 

There is also that other bunch, drama starvees or legit foretellers unbeknownst — but they predict for the first pledge to only be the beginning of a cold war between the mascot and the university. Conspiracy blogs have taken off with pledge predictions, theories already made about the next move of the mascot, but they are yet to survive within the population. It's a slim shot. Some of the students don't like disorder. They are there to get a degree and shoot their asses off. They're not going to favor the idea of a potential uprising in the system.

 And that's where the fear comes in.

Jungkook doesn't want to look like an idiot, even if his face is technically masked by a costume. He wants to be a cultured threat to Gidae, and for that he needs to keep up with his initial mindset: the fans. 

The fans, the fans, oh his fans. 

There is no amount of enough stressing about how important they are.

If Jungkook can gradually gain fan support in the journey of his reprisal just like he did for the show, he'll be able to pull off anything within Gidae and that's when Gidae will be terrified of him. It's the only way he'll survive in case he gets that dreadful call from the Dean's office one day.

So far so good. The bridge idea was clever and brilliant. Everyone had a laugh, talked about it for a couple of days. But an illegal music awards show within the campus? That's going to be super controversial if they let a flame grow into a full-blown fire. 

What Shady is pointing out here is important. Maybe they shouldn't take everything literally. They should do some of what he calls wordplay.

"What does MAMA represent in the eyes of the public?"

"Notoriety?"

"Entertainment?"

"Popularity?"