It's a pretty packed chapter fr fr, minji-yearners are eating good for once, I've missed her teasing yoil ever since she got relegated to background char. Poor Yuri having to watch the whole thing lmao. What even sadder is Hyojeong... it has never ever been so hyover ever before, she's dead dead. 6 feet underground dead. wallahi, first it's Mooyeong then it's Hyojeong. My favorite characters are all dropping like flies! I knew it was pretty over for her for a while, but I didn't expect her execution to be this cold. Poor gal never had a chance and only got used as motivation for younger trainees to hurry it up, Guducer says it so plainly. So much so that there isn't much room for her to wiggle out of this at all!
At best, there's probably just that little bit of glimmer of hope for her to be hired as a backstage staff. But I wouldn't rest your laurels on it, seems just like something the other execs said to placate Guducer when he's asking why Hyojeong is being strung along. Also shows Guducer's true heart I guess, shows the a modicum of tough love he has on trainees and questions why they'd would give trainees false hope. Hyojeong seems to know it deep down (that or she got the private notification that she's getting cut lol), she's nice enough to not let her friends mood down though. So she's bearing that weight up by herself, tough gal.
The story is pretty apt at showing the darker side of the entertainment industry, the author doesn't why away from it at all. Ties in back to Suryeon and Yoil being tied for 1st rank though, you know for sure that they did so to stoke up the rivalry and tension between them to unseen heights and try to squeeze more out of them both than ever before. Suryeon seems shell-shocked at the ananouncement though, it'd be too if the greenhorn trainee that's only joined 2 evals ago nearly eclipse her. Yoil seems pretty happy at the result though, good for her!
It's also fun to see Sanghyun having to talk to someone he's already well acquainted to in his Yoil form, reverse soae in a way. (soae, being well acquainted with Sanghyun with Yoil having to interact with her like a stranger) Sanghyun made enough of an impression for Wonjin to recognize him from the one encounter they get on an arcade, helps that she rarely goes out tho lol. We also get to see a little inside Wonjin's mind for a second, and we can see that she is not the self-assured rowdy girl that she makes herself out to be on the inside.
Makes me wonder what we have in store for the next chapter and season, I'm guessing the next chapter will be the setup for a major cliffhanger (as is the case with most season ends). But next season we'll probably getting one last showdown between Yoil and Suryeon, their rivalry is reaching a boiling point.