Chapter 210

Chapter 210

Chungwoo continued speaking, though his voice wasn’t particularly grave anymore.

“When I first started suffering from side effects following my accident, I thought it could be managed, you know? Everyone told me I would be fine after rehabilitation. The doctor told me he saw potential, too, so I kept at it… But it was no use.” He balled his fist, then opened it again, seemingly reflexively. “Potential was only that, potential… Realistically, there was no recovery. That’s why I got so angry at the agency. In my opinion, someone could have gotten hurt. But then, it occurred to me that maybe I was wasting my time again.”

Had this been the cause of his listlessness? Reminded of his pointless rehabilitation, he seemed to have thought he was once again doing something pointless.

It’s easy to understand why he felt this way… The feeling was probably even stronger for him since his workload was so heavy. I considered for a moment, then gulped back the last of my drink.

“You never wasted your time,” I said.

“Yeah?”

“Yes. You’ve helped everyone so much… including me.”

“Is that right? Haha. I don’t think I’ve done anything all that special for you.”

Actually, you proved yourself to be pretty angelic simply by not getting angry at me when I acted like sh*t. If that situation had gotten worse, I might have been killed by a status abnormality by now.

“Don’t tell me you’re talking about that time in the summer? I disagree. You hardly made any trouble. I already told you this, didn’t I? I behaved the same way when they told me I’d never recover.” Chungwoo smirked. “I was horrible. I got angry at the doctor and on the day of the team trials… Gosh, it makes me so embarrassed just thinking about it.”

I wasn’t really all that curious, but the obvious thing to do was to ask him about it. So I did.

“What did you do?”

“I broke my bow.”

Damn, he’s got a temper on him. Professional bows were not easy to break under normal circumstances. I guessed he must have kicked up a hell of a fuss. It would have been stupid, however, if I’d told him exactly what I was thinking.

“Well, at least you didn’t hit anyone. That’s all that matters.”

“Is it? Haha! Well, yeah. It was just a practice bow.” Chungwoo laughed, looking relaxed.

I wasn’t sure if this conversation was all that refreshing, but I left him be. He visibly gathered himself, then added in a more casual tone, “Oh, sorry. I guess that might have been uncomfortable for you to listen to…” He seemed to be implying that his words might have reminded me of the time I’d been acting out.

“It’s fine. It doesn’t bother me much anymore. I shouldn’t have treated you like that.”

“It’s fine.”

One way to defeat a worry was to think about a bigger one. After I’d seen the status window go batsh*t, the truth that I’d been exposed to in the past meant very little to me.

Chungwoo fiddled with his bottle, then spoke up, seemingly impulsively. “Uh, Moondae?”

“Yes?”

“There’s something that’s been bothering me for a while…” Chungwoo frowned. “Are your memories all right? I just feel like you should consult an expert about that.”

Now this, I hadn’t been expecting. To be honest, I’d almost forgotten that I was supposed to have lost my memories and was slowly gaining them back. Too many things had happened to keep track of.

Now that I think about it, it all sounds like the plot of some cheap fantasy drama. In any case, I wasn’t expecting a random excuse I’d tossed out there to come back around like this.

Chungwoo said more, making chills run down my back. “I don’t think you’ve ever gone to see your parents, looked at photos of them, or even mentioned them.”

I didn’t know what to say.

“We’ve been living together for over a year and a half now. It’s strange that you never mention them, even in passing.”

“Uh…” I thought quickly. “I have almost no memories regarding my family. And I’m not in any particular hurry to get them back.”

“I see.”

“Yes. I’m content with the way things are now.”

“Uh, all right.” Chungwoo crumpled the bottle, folded it, and then took a deep breath. “Right. I like how things are right now, too.”

Wanting to hear him refute me, I asked, “But I thought you were tired?”

“You can’t help but get tired sometimes, no matter what you’re doing. What matters most is staying on top of things.”

Right. He was right.

“Frankly, I was on the fence when we left Idol Inc. I’m grateful we were so much more successful than we expected to be.”

“That’s true.”

Stress aside, TeSTAR had been a massive hit, though I’d always known the show would succeed, of course.

“I’m going to try to make sure I never take our success for granted.”

Huh. That’s a very healthy mindset to have.

I grinned. “Still, you should only do as much as an idol is required to do like you were doing the past few days. You don’t have to do the agency’s work for them.”

“Haha, well… I was just trying my best since I’d been made the leader and all.”

Eugene, who’d just broken the high score, gave a shout in the distance. “Woooo!”

“Shut up, Eugene! It’s already late. You can’t be making all this noise—”

“It’s fine! We’re the only ones here!”

“There are people living nearby—”

“No, there aren’t!”

“Yes, there are!”

I ended up muttering pretty sincerely, “Frankly, I think you’re doing more than enough as the leader just by handling those guys.”

“Hmm.”

He seemed unable to refute this.

“I think that’s more than enough. At this rate, the manager will start to forget why he’s being paid at all,” I added, adopting the voice of a stuck-up celebrity.

Chungwoo burst out laughing. “Haha! All right. I get it.” He held out his fist for a fist bump. “Let’s keep up the good work.”

“Right.”

I bumped it back. It was a bit embarrassing, but if I was honest, there was something pleasant about it, too.

“We’re done with packing up!”

“Right! Please move to the van, TeSTAR!”

Chungwoo seemed to be back to his normal self as we returned to the dorm.

“Eugene, go and get some sleep. We have a music show tomorrow.”

“Right!”

Even Eugene seemed moved to have him back and became more obedient as a result. The members all seemed to be in a celebratory mood, giving me thumbs up and whatnot to indicate that the shooting range had been a fabulous idea.

“That’s Moondae for you. The Tibetan fox’s talent is reading people’s minds—” Big Sejin began.

“Get some sleep.”

Everyone slept well, even if it was only brief.

The best thing to come of it happened the next day. The first manager, sensing that Chungwoo was back to his usual self, decided to slack off immediately.

“Chungwoo, anything the other members need tending to?”

Chungwoo smiled faintly. “How would I know? You should ask the members yourself.”

And that was that. Chungwoo stretched as he got into the van, and the manager climbed in after him, looking shocked. He’d gotten a scolding from the chief manager only a few days ago, so he wouldn’t be able to rebuff Chungwoo for this response.

I guess that’s that, then. It bought us some time until we could find a better manager. And when I checked social media for the first time in a while, the silly claims that Chungwoo had hit somebody were gone entirely—people were instead talking about our stream at the shooting range.

- That’s our boy straight from the Korea National Training Center

- How is that possible

- Archery athletes seem superhuman

- Wow. So he can shoot like that, too? He must have been so sad when he had to give up archery

- I’m just grateful he chose to be an idol instead

“Wow! They’re all saying how amazing you were at the shooting range!” Big Sejin said, showering Chungwoo in praise very intentionally after peeking at my screen.

Chungwoo smiled, looking embarrassed. “That was just for fun.”

“Not at all! I thought to myself that your reputation was only likely to improve while I was watching you shooting yesterday. I guess I was right,” Raebin said.

“I-it was amazing!”

The members, happy that Chungwoo was feeling more relaxed, showered him with praise. Big Sejin seemed to have zeroed in on a few of the comments. He asked, “By the way, why did you decide to become an idol?”

“Oh, me?” Chungwoo smiled mysteriously. “Actually, it was my parents who recommended it.”

“No way!”

“Your parents?”

“Yes. They said I’d always danced and sang pretty well since I was little, and kept telling me to try… So I started it as a hobby.”

It seemed they’d done so to get him out of the house since he’d probably been moping after quitting archery. And it had become a new career for him.

“What about you? I’m particularly curious about how you became an idol, Eugene.”

“A stranger talked to me!” Eugene said.

“A beat I submitted to a contest was selected, and I was offered a contract when I came to Seoul…” Raebin said.

Everyone spoke up, explaining how they’d come to be idols. The question eventually came to me as well.

“What about you, Moondae?”

Me? I didn’t mind answering, despite my answer being a little embarrassing.

“I got cast… by a writer for Idol Inc. at a noraebang.”

“Really?”

“I thought that was just a made-up story. It was actually true!”

Everyone was suddenly talking over one another in the van. The topic that had gotten them so fired up seemed to be just how much talent I’d been wasting.

“So you weren’t a trainee, just a total amateur?”

“Y-you have s-such amazing talent! Y-you also put in a lot of hard work, of course!” Ahyeon said.

“Impressive…” Bae Sejin said.

“Uh, thank you.”

They’d probably stone me if I ever told them about the status window. In any case, thinking back to when I’d first entered this body made me feel pretty nostalgic. If it hadn’t been for the stat boosts and the trait draws from the status window, I wouldn’t have been able to achieve the growth I’d needed to succeed in my current occupation, after all.

It would have been quite a fulfilling few years if the status abnormalities hadn’t been hanging over my head this whole time. Actually... strike that. All that I’d achieved was still pretty fulfilling, even with the status abnormalities. The past few years spent in another person’s body had been so jam-packed with action that it was sometimes so confusing trying to keep it all straight in my head.

Maybe it’s because death was always just around the corner. It made me very eager to live. This was a pretty persuasive reason in my mind.

“So you weren’t trying to become an idol at first. Are you okay with it now?”

“What?”

“Our busy schedule… Are you all right with it?” Bae Sejin asked gravely.

I spoke without hesitation. “Yes. It’s fun.”

“That’s right!” Big Sejin said playfully.

“Y-you don’t regret it, right?” Ahyeon asked.

I grinned. “Nope.”

“Yeah! That’s what I’m talking about!”

The members responded noisily, clapping their hands. Raebin even took out his phone to play a tune for us.

“I don’t know what I was thinking, but I had the sudden urge to make an EDM version of ‘Magical Boys’ one day…”

“Let’s go!”

Soon the boys, filled with pride in their job, bobbed their heads to the music as the van drove on.

I like this view. I decided to be nice and didn’t upload a picture of the scene to social media.

***

Our promotions in Korea seemed to go smoothly after that.

“Standby, TeSTAR!”

The pre-recordings for the second week’s music shows went well, and the variety shows we’d filmed the week before our comeback and the week immediately after soon went to air. Our schedules weren’t just packed with music shows and variety shows, of course.

“Please look this way. Raise your chin a little!”

We’d done a few appearances at different events, but we’d become a top-tier group. These days we were focusing not on distant events that were inefficient to travel to, but on something that paid much better—advertisements.

“Please touch your collar!”

We’d been filming ads ever since our debut, but it was on a completely different scale now. The agency did a pretty good job of choosing the best ads out of the barrage of requests that had come our way. I believed they’d picked out ones that wouldn’t impact our reputation negatively while paying handsomely.

There’s nothing silly like that Curious AI ad, either. What I failed to realize, however, was that the agency was hoping to gain more than just their share of the profit. They were pursuing their own goals, not just that of their parent company, T1. The ad we were filming today was a good example of this behavior.

“Oh, hello! We weren’t expecting to see you here!”

We ran into Miry-nay, the other group managed by our agency, on the set of a smartphone ad shoot.

Ah. I could immediately see the agency’s desire to bundle us together, all the better to bolster their reputation. This was definitely something I could take advantage of.