Chapter 123

Chapter 123

Seon Ahyeon hadn’t stammered.

“We’ll take this to mean... that you want us to continue doing our best... You can count on it.” He spoke slowly, pausing to take deep breaths. He would sometimes slow down in the middle of a sentence but ultimately continued. Nevertheless, he didn’t stammer, not even once. “And to the Loviewers who cheer us on... Thank you very much. We love you!”

“Love you, Loviewers!” Cha Eugene called.

“Thank you!”

The other members rushed to praise Ahyeon as he finished his final sentence, but it was hardly necessary. The fans were utterly overcome with emotion.

“Oh my god!”

“You did so good!”

“That was great!”

“My goodness!” Even the audience watching the live broadcast at home were able to hear the fans’ screaming, picked up by the members’ microphones.

- LMAO. I can hear the fans all the way from here!

- Ahyeon’s fans are losing it

- I didn’t want to admit it, but I’m feeling a little touched as well

└ Same here haha T_T

└ This is what it felt like being a shareholder, huh? LOL

- Good for Ahyeon T_T

- It can’t have been easy. That’s amazing

- Congrats TeSTAR! You deserve the award!

The ceremony ended on a high note, TeSTAR proving their worth once more. All of the criticism and mockery aimed at them had disappeared, unable to follow them into the new year.

***

The members all showered Ahyeon in compliments as we returned to our seats after receiving the award.

“Congrats on achieving your goal, Ahyeon!”

“Congratulations!”

Ahyeon blushed. “Th-thank you...”

He deserved it since he’d been working quite hard at it for a while now.

He practiced for what... a month and a half? Ahyeon had started therapy for his stammer around the same time we’d been swamped with practice for the end-of-year performances. Because he was still in the early stages of his recovery, he’d been asked to set a short-term goal that would be easier to tackle.

The goal he’d chosen for himself was speaking at an awards ceremony without stammering. We’d seen him muttering the short speech to himself constantly at the dorm, the practice room, and even the van at all hours of the day.

Even the managers had memorized his speech after only a week. Before long, the members had begun to think of Ahyeon’s muttering as ASMR of sorts, relaxing and consistent enough to send them into a deep sleep. In any case, it was really impressive that he’d practiced so diligently for so long and successfully accomplished his goal.

And this small success will probably help him keep at it. If the likelihood of Ahyeon’s status abnormality relapsing was going to fall, it only meant good things for the group. I made sure to compliment him, too.

“You said you wouldn’t mind if you didn’t manage to do the whole speech perfectly. But I don’t think you need to worry. You did really well.”

“ I-I wasn’t that good... I paused for too long a c-couple of times... I’ll do b-better next time!”

No… As I said, you were so good. He was deflecting. Before I could correct him, though, Ahyeon said, “Th-thanks for suggesting I g-go to therapy.”

Hmm. I suppose I can take some credit for that. I nodded.

“Don’t mention it.”

“Oh, how heartwarming!”

“I love our team’s good vibes.”

The controversy had been dealt with and we had another Rookie of the Year award under our belts. The members had nothing more to worry about and laughed among themselves as we returned to our seats. My mood, however, grew more sour the closer we got. Our seats were right next to VTIC’s.

Why did they place rookies like us next to them? Thus, we were forced to greet them every time we passed. It was doable, of course.

“Congratulations!”

“Thank you!”

The problem was that Cheongryeo grinned at me nastily every time we did.

F*ck. Anyone watching would just think he was simply proud of us, since he’d covered his tracks quite well after fanning the flames of controversy with his social media post all those weeks ago. He uploaded a handful of pictures to social media every time he attended an end-of-year show, including random staff and adding captions similar to the one he’d written about Onyx.

In other words, he was muddying the waters. This, coupled with eager excuses provided by VTIC’s fans, made people think that the Onyx incident was all just a big misunderstanding.

For the record, I found it rage-inducing whenever someone commented something along the lines of, He’s close with Park Moondae. No wonder it seemed so out of character!

After we greeted them, I purposely trailed behind my group and chose the seat that was located farthest from VTIC. It didn’t accomplish much, but I wanted to hide how pissed I was if I could.

Not long after, the first part of the show came to an end, and ads began to play on the live broadcast. These same ads appeared on the large screens inside the studio as well.

[The mystical AI assistant of magical boys, TeSTAR!]

“Oh god...”

“Please... no...”

The members groaned and began banging their heads against the table as the embarrassing ads—which would not be finishing their run on air any time soon—appeared again. The terrifying Russian roulette had begun once more.

[Kyu! Curious!]

This time, Bae Sejin was the victim. Bae Sejin’s acting was on point, with hamster ears drawn on top of his head on screen, but the real Bae Sejin was about to lose it.

“B-bathroom,” he muttered, red in the face as he fled to the bathroom in a hurry.

The members managed to be both sympathetic and amused at the same time.

“Hahaha!”

“Sejin, it’s fine— Pfft!”

Some of them were clapping and others burying their faces in their laps to hide their laughter.

So they can laugh as long as it’s not theirs, huh? That was pretty much how they reacted every time we were confronted with the ads. Nodding to myself, I opened a water bottle.

Someone sat down in Bae Sejin’s seat as I brought the bottle to my mouth. Then a voice said, “There’s one for each member, right? That’s pretty fun.”

I nearly snorted water out of my nose.

F*ck. It was Cheongryeo. The members, who’d still been laughing, turned and began to bow hastily, surprised.

“Hello!”

“Yes, Hello. I’m just gonna have a quick word with Moondae before I leave.”

“All right!”

You bastards, you could at least try and look a little displeased on my behalf. But there was nobody here to do that since Bae Sejin was gone.

Sh*t.

Big Sejin, at least, seemed almost certain that Cheongryeo’s social media post had been purposely done to stir the pot, but for now, he simply smiled and nodded. And this was the right thing to do on his part, to be honest.

Dozens of phone cameras are trained on us right now. People in the audience were without a doubt filming us. Our interaction would be caught by at least twenty cameras, be it me or Cheongryeo they were trying to film.

I need to keep calm. Nobody would be able to hear our conversation anyway, since it was so noisy. My members wouldn’t hear me either unless I raised my voice on purpose.

“What do you want to talk about?” I asked.

“I told you during our last phone call... Don’t you remember?”

Oh right, he said he didn’t upload those pictures to be malicious, or something like that. Essentially, he wanted to explain at length why he hadn’t, in fact, been trying to screw me over. I could just let him talk and pretend like I understood his reasoning, but there was a slight problem.

“You’re going to explain all that... before the ads end?”

“Of course. Listen up.” Cheongryeo smiled and nodded, tapping his knuckles against the table. “It’s convenient to just get dying once out of the way towards the beginning. I’ve been thinking about it and that’s what I struggled with the most. I disliked the idea of having to start over. But once you do it just once, you’ll realize that it’s not a big deal. Things get much easier after that.”

This was an even more ludicrous reason than I’d even imagined. Wow. What the hell is the matter with him? I forced myself to drink from my bottle of water again.

My palms were sweating.

“There are things you think you could have done better this time around, aren’t there? Go back and fix it. Give it a shot. You’ll feel less burdened... and a sense of accomplishment, too.”

“Hold it,” I said, putting down the bottle.

“So you really were trying to kill me by trying to sabotage our Rookie of the Year award.”

“What I posted would never have damaged your chances of getting one of those awards. That’s not it... I just threw a wrench in the gears, is all.” He continued kindly, “With public opinion growing sour and the situation becoming so annoying, you might have felt like starting over.”

“So you mean to say... you wanted to help me by chipping away at any reservations I might have for dying?”

“Yes.”

“Don’t lie to me.”

“What... did you say?”

“Whether I get better at this or not has nothing to do with you.”

There was no reason for him to have sabotaged me for such an altruistic reason. We weren’t friends, and he wasn’t the kind of person to go out of his way for other people. I’d intended to let him just drone on, but at this point, I realized I had no idea what absurd sh*t he was going to try saying next. So I decided to put an end to it.

Cheongryeo looked slightly embarrassed. “Well, it wasn’t entirely for your sake, of course. Nothing personal... but I was curious.” He cracked his neck. “I wanted to know if I would get to start over too if you died. If that were the case, I wouldn’t have to go back to the very beginning... I wouldn’t mind going back to your reset point. There are a few things that happened in the early half of this year that I’d like to set right.”

This bastard was completely nuts. He was suffering from reset syndrome in the truest sense of the word.

“I’m not saying I want to keep starting over, of course... but it would be nice to know if it would work in advance. Don’t you agree?”

“One moment.” I had a feeling that he might decide to bury me alive if a scandal ever broke out with VTIC unless I tread very carefully right now.

This is stupid as all hell. I hadn’t wanted to tell him this, but saying it now seemed to be the less risky option. He seemed receptive to logic, at least at the moment, so I decided to explain what I was thinking.

“First of all, I don’t think I’ll get another chance if I die.”

“Huh?”

“That’s the feeling I’m getting. Death is the end for me.”

I couldn’t tell him about the status window, so I had to just describe it as a gut feeling. But it was true.

My status abnormality only says “death.” Unlike Cheongryeo’s status abnormality, there was nothing to suggest I would ever get a second try.

This is probably my one and only chance. And even if I could somehow start over, there was no need to risk it. It was better to simply act as though I would never get another opportunity.

Cheongryeo laughed, however. “Yeah, you think that way at first. I’ll bet you’re wrong, though.”

I stared at him.

“Don’t be scared, just try it.”

This son of a b*tch. I grew angry. “No. I don’t ever want to start over. I want to end things on this run. My members are great and our fans are, too. I don’t want to change anything.”

Cheongryeo was silent, staring into space with no expression on his face.

Did I push him too far? I dearly hoped he wasn’t going to suddenly produce a sledgehammer and try to smash my skull open.

He eventually nodded, however. “I think I felt the same way... once. Hmm, fine. If that’s how you want it.”

That actually worked? I nearly slumped in my seat as the tension drained from me, but I kept it together. Who knew? He might still go behind my back again after this.

He looked a little apologetic as he looked at me now, though. “In any case, if my post gave you a hard time... I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine. But why don’t you just ask whether I want your help first next time?”

“Yes. Maybe I should give you a helpful hint... Hmm, how about this? I’ll tell you how you can satisfy the award condition.” Cheongryeo laughed. “It’s the Rookie of the Year award at the Korean Music Awards.”

The Korean Music Awards? It was the awards show that judged artists only by their musicality, rather than their commercial success. As far as I knew, no idol had ever won the Rookie of the Year award there.

Wait, that means he didn’t get one, either.

“Haha! That was a joke, of course.”

One of these days, when my status abnormality was gone, I was going to smash TeSTAR’s grand prize trophy smack into his face. He finally gave me some actual information before my patience ran out, thankfully.

“What matters most is the direction public opinion takes after you receive the Rookie of the Year award. The public has to believe you deserve it. That’s the only way you can pass. Given that you also receive a majority score in the actual awards ceremonies, of course.”

I see. So the “most reputable awards ceremony” was the court of public opinion. It made sense. No wonder I hadn’t gotten a successful popup after the Gold Disc award. I would probably only find out whether we’d succeeded come February.

The moment I came to this conclusion, Bae Sejin returned. “Excuse me.”

“Oh, I’m sorry. I’ll get going now. Moondae, I’ll be in touch.”

I couldn’t force myself to say anything nice in response, but I nodded if only because of the cameras our fans probably had trained on us.

Cheongryeo waved to everyone in the group and returned to his seat.

Bae Sejin looked mildly displeased at the sight of Cheongryeo and sat down reluctantly in his seat. “Are you close to that guy?”

I wondered why he didn’t have a lot of respect when he spoke for Cheongryeo as a much senior idol but then remembered that Bae Sejin had debuted in the industry over fourteen years ago. I didn’t bother to pretend. “No. He talked about work.”

“Work?”

“Oho! Moondae, our little social butterfly!” Big Sejin said, laughing.

Apparently, my voice had carried. He seemed to have guessed that Cheongryeo had been making excuses for his social media post.

Bae Sejin looked serious, though. He whispered, “Tell me if he’s picking on you.”

I stared. Bae Sejin was no doubt thinking of his experiences as a child actor and had assumed I was being bullied by the senior idol.

Wait, that’s not actually that far off the mark. But this situation wasn’t something I could just come out and explain to him, so I smiled and nodded.

“I’ll tell you if he does. Thank you.”

“Don’t mention it.”

TeSTAR even received one of the main prizes for our album and pulled off our performance without any mistakes before returning to the dorm. The grand prize went to VTIC. I hoped that they would continue to get every grand prize until the day that my status abnormality wore off.

Otherwise, a certain lunatic might come for me in the night, hoping to reset his progress.

***

The day after the Gold Disc Awards, we were greeted with very unwelcome news. I’d braced myself for it, but that didn’t make it any easier to swallow.

“Apparently, he came to work today.”

A new director had been assigned to the agency.