Chapter 63

Chapter 63

“I’ll accept a new member.”

“Ah! Park Moondae has made his choice!” shouted the emcee. The prize money vanished from the main screen and the words [Recruit a new member!] expanded to fill it. The other screens showed the audience members cheering and the judges clapping, enjoying the unfolding situation.

I resisted the urge to grit my teeth.

Thirty-nine million won... gone. But in the long term, there was no other choice I could make. Adding one more member meant more fans for the group, and when it came to things like this, the gains grew at an exponential rate. It would affect the amount of money we could make.

In the long run, I would earn much more than fifty thousand won. The problem was what came now that I’d given up that money.

“Now then, who is the last member you’ve selected, Park Moondae?”

The remaining contestants’ anxious expressions appeared onscreen.

“The contestant I choose is...” No matter who I chose, I was going to face backlash from the other contestants’ fans. I chose to deploy an evasive maneuver. “The person ranked seventh, according to the shareholder votes.”

“Ah!”

The murmuring grew louder. Most people seemed happy with this decision or relieved.

The production team is happy with it, too. How annoying.

“Park Moondae is leaving the decision to the shareholders!” The emcee announced passionately, glancing from time to time at the teleprompter. Soon enough, the person in seventh place appeared onscreen.

“Congratulations! Lee Sejin!”

I nearly choked on my own spit.

How’d he get all the way up to seventh? He’d probably gotten a lot of text votes during the final episodes from people who knew him from his time as a child actor, which made him widely recognized.

Can’t be helped. What’s done, was done. I tried to conceal my shock as I moved aside for Lee Sejin, who was now climbing up to the podium.

“Thank you...” After barely managing to mumble a few more words of thanks, he hung his head. His fans would probably defend him by claiming he was too shocked to speak. The emcee guided Lee Sejin to join the other debuting members. He mumbled as he passed me, “Thanks...”

I nodded back. I guess he really did want to debut. I’d like to leave the stage now.

My legs were starting to hurt. How long did the emcee intend to just leave me standing here like this? I was made to stay, however, since apparently they weren’t done with us yet.

“Only one more thing left to deal with! The name of the group our winning contestants will be forming!”

The emcee gave the usual explanation—that the shareholder’s opinions had been taken into account when making the decision—and a dazzling logo appeared onscreen. A capital T had been combined with a triangle, and a fancy particle animation burst from the top and sides before settling into small diamonds.

“Your proven investments.”

“Your idols, your stars.”

“TEST + STAR”

“TeSTAR”

“The name of the group, as selected by the shareholders, is... TeSTAR!”

I was confused. The name had changed. In my previous life, the male idol group that had debuted at the end of this show had been called STier. One of the options I’d seen on the website was this very name, accompanied by an explanation of how it was a combination of Star and Tier. I’d expected that this would be the name once more.

A different name had been chosen, perhaps because the group composition had changed considerably this time around, including my addition to the team. My guess was that the name had been a last-minute decision in my past life.

I think I prefer STier... I hadn’t thought the word star would end up taking up more than half the name. The situation was a bit confusing, but the fact of the matter was, the group name didn’t really matter all that much. Not unless it was extremely weird.

“The seven members of TeSTAR will be given a trophy engraved with the group logo!”

Youngrin appeared and handed me the trophy, which was in the shape of a graph depicting rapid growth.

So this is why they kept me here. The broadcast would probably end once I’d brought it over to the others.

“Congratulations,” Youngrin said.

“Thank you.”

After a quick handshake, I took the trophy, as well as the cushion it was perched atop.

She smiled calmly at me and said, “I wish you the best of luck with your career.”

“Thank you very much,” I muttered again. Then I made my way over to the others.

They were already on their feet, obviously ecstatic about their victory.

“Wow!”

“They gave us a trophy?”

I handed it over to the first person who approached me without a moment’s hesitation. They all crowded around it, throwing their arms around each other’s shoulders and making a huge fuss.

My shoulders hurt. My back ached where Eugene and Big Sejin had thumped me enthusiastically. I was sore all over, from head to toe, and the only reason my brain was still functioning was thanks to adrenaline. I could hear the emcee still talking from nearby.

“Congratulations, TeSTAR, on your debut!”

Fireworks went off all around the stage, and I listened to the crowd’s cheers from within the circle the other members had formed around the trophy.

It was at that moment I got a status pop-up.

[A Successful Debut!]

You debuted successfully by winning a well-known audition show!

Time cap: Satisfactory (Perfect)

Status Abnormality: “Debut or Die” removed!

: Reveal the Truth ☜ Click!

Really?

I opened my status window and saw that the status abnormality was missing. It was really over. It felt surreal. Since I didn’t know what the status window was for, I’d been plagued by the fear that the status abnormality might somehow be extended for some absurd reason.

I didn’t think it would just vanish like that. Slightly dazed, I turned the window off. Then I noticed the words at the bottom of the pop-up message, where a reward should have been.

Wait a second.

What’s this?

: Reveal the Truth ☜ Click!

The truth?

Before I’d even really thought it through, I’d clicked on it.

“Moondae?”

Everything around me suddenly warped, then there was darkness.

***

A gaunt-looking high school kid was lying on a mattress, holding an old smartphone. The mattress springs squeaked every time he moved. A WeTube video was playing on the cracked phone screen. The video quality wasn’t very good since he was connected to public WiFi with a weak signal, but the person behind the camera was an excellent videographer and the singer on screen was still a pleasure to watch despite the patchy connection.

That was really fun. The high schooler—Park Moondae—stared at the screen wistfully after the video was over. The last fancam to be uploaded to this WeTube account was footage taken at the “2X0412 Lilodawn Han River Water Festival.”

The account, named gun1234, uploaded fancams of singers and idols. They usually chose to film people who didn’t tend to get much recognition and even that seemed really cool to Moondae.

It’s like this person recognizes their potential. It made him feel good to know that the account owner was rooting for these essentially unknown performers.

I wish they’d upload more often. There weren’t many things left in his life that made him happy and didn’t cost any money. This was true even on WeTube, where videos were free to watch with ads. It wasn’t often he found a video that could ignite real excitement in him anymore, overcoming the weak WiFi signal and frequent pauses for buffering.

He’d also heard that all the proceeds from fancams went to the singers themselves, which meant this person wasn’t making any money from the videos. He was grateful that they consistently uploaded, all the same.

Moondae considered for a moment, scrolled down, and tapped out a comment.

- Big Moon: GUN1234, I always enjoy your fancams. Thank you for uploading them.

He knew that the owner of this account had never responded to any comments. They had never left a single reply, even when their fancam of Youngrin had gone viral. But knowing that the uploader might still be watching, Moondae gave his comment a quick read-over for grammatical errors, before pressing the send button.

- I always see this guy in the comments section LOL

- He’s a real fan, isn’t he?

A few people replied to his comment, embarrassing him a little. Wondering if he should respond, he found he just didn’t feel like it.

It’s not like I have anything to say to them... He could never think of anything to say about himself anyway. His home—if such a tiny box could be called a home—was a lonely place, and his life was completely uneventful.

There had been a time when he’d been driven and motivated—back when everything had been normal. Back when his parents were alive. It felt like only yesterday, but in truth, it had been a few years since then.

For those years, he had been lost wandering down a dark tunnel. Maybe he was just dreaming. He supposed the situation he found himself in had something to do with his fascination for these videos. Watching people sing and dance consoled him—he felt some vicarious sense of satisfaction despite how hopeless his situation was.

I need to sleep. Tomorrow was Monday. Probably.

Moondae slowly relaxed into his mattress, closed his eyes, and let time pass. Life moved on, flowing past him like a river in which Moondae was stationary as a rock.

Something terrible happened at school, and because quitting was an option, he’d done so. Nothing changed after he stopped going to school. It occurred to him that maybe giving up on life would be just as easy as dropping out of school had been.

Might be onto something. But he didn’t really want to die. He sought out part-time jobs, but the work soon ran out, and gun1234 stopped uploading their videos.

But why? Moondae wondered about this. In the end, he sent a private message to the account owner on the same day he failed to land himself a new part-time job. He got no response, of course. Not long after that, all the videos uploaded to the account vanished. The now-empty page had only one solitary post.

========================

[I’m quitting to play games. Ciao.]

========================

Games. Park Moondae tried installing a mobile game on his phone since he didn’t have the money to buy a desktop computer or game console. His old smartphone wasn’t powerful enough to handle running games, however, and it soon died after it became too hot to hold.

For some reason, Moondae felt very, very tired. It was strange, considering he hadn’t exerted himself in any way that day.

I’m exhausted. He was tired of living. He disconnected his phone number and neglected to extend his lease on the shabby single-room apartment he lived in. He went out and ate a proper meal, for the first time in a long time, and he had just enough remaining to get himself a motel room and some sleeping pills.

I heard lots of people die in motel rooms. The weather was so cold that drowning or jumping wasn’t an option. He would probably just give up midway if he tried either of those. And if he died in his apartment, he’d probably rot in there for at least a month.

I’m so sorry about this. Park Moondae uttered a silent apology to the gruff owner of the motel as he paid for a room. He went inside, lay on the bed, and swallowed the sleeping pills. Death found him disguised as sleep.

Moments later, the same boy groaned. He gasped and his eyes opened, still laying on the dingy motel mattress...

Only this time, it was me who was inside his body.

***

“Oh!” I exhaled.

“A-are you all right?”

Someone was patting me on the back. I turned and found Ahyeon’s worried gaze staring down at me.

“Sorry. I’m just a bit tired,” I managed to say before straightening up.

Almost no time seemed to have passed, and apparently, it just looked like I’d stumbled for a moment. I was surrounded by the other winners, so no one else had noticed, and the mood was still as exuberant as ever.

I swiped some of the sweat from my forehead. My mind was a confused, jumbled mess. Park Moondae loved the videos that gun1234 had uploaded.

That was me. It had been my account, which I’d deleted after I’d begun to study for the civil service exam.