Chapter 2: If Mangdol Returns Three Times (2)

…Quitting immediately failed.

I seriously said I would quit the trainee life, but no one took the words of an eighteen-year-old, fourth-year trainee seriously.

It wasn’t surprising.

It was because I had said I was quitting so often, practically quarterly, before my debut.

What could I do?

I might have joined without knowing anything at a young age, but compared to the kids who dropped out of school to focus on debuting or those with a burning desire to succeed as idols, I lacked the will to endure the trainee life.

Thinking back, the agency that gave the leader position to a kid who threatened to quit every quarter seemed even less trustworthy.

The agency director called me separately and added words in a lecturing tone.

Hyeonoh, what are we going to do if you keep saying you’ll quit like this.

You’re practically confirmed for the debut team, don’t bring down the morale of the other kids… blah blah blah.

Words that would have deeply hurt my heart if I were truly eighteen poured out from the mouth of the much older director, disguised as comfort or encouragement.

I let those words go in one ear and out the other, rapidly thinking about how I could actually quit being a trainee.

Should I endure just a few more days?

That futile thought crossed my mind but didn’t last long.

The underground practice room, poorly ventilated, always smelled of damp mold and bulk-purchased deodorizer.

There were always guys who romanticized this as the scent of youth or whatever.

Eight years later, one of them was scheduled to become an idol dad due to premarital pregnancy, and another was slated to reveal his flashy high school past even earlier and flee into the military.

Even trying not to show my contempt and disgust, if I turned my head, there was the club rat.

If I turned the other way, there was the drunk driving attempted murderer.

Endure for a few days? Endure what?

If I stayed like this, I was sure I’d end up shouting at the kids practicing normally, unaware of their futures, telling them their futures were rotten and they should live carefully.

In the end, I skipped the vocal training scheduled until dawn and escaped from the practice room.

I turned off my phone, planning to ignore all contact, but having nowhere else to go, I slumped onto a swing in the nearby apartment playground, which few people used anymore.

I wondered what kind of time waste this was, having finally returned to the past.

In novels and stuff, people usually figure out exactly what to do the moment they return.

Reality wasn’t that easy.

Ah, I wish someone would give me a notification telling me what to do.

I had no clue what I should do.

If I quit being a trainee, could I follow high school studies well and get into a good university?

A rather cold ‘no’ followed that self-posed question.

Having been a trainee since middle school, I had long given up on studying, and my school attendance was barely maintained.

Hoping for luck on the college entrance exam less than a year and a half away wasn’t just shameless, it was groveling.

Maybe if I studied for an extra year after repeating.

While endlessly having such negative thoughts, a fact suddenly occurred to me.

Huh, why wasn’t Ji Cheonseong in that stuffy underground practice room?

Ji Cheonseong should have entered this unknown agency as a trainee when he was eighteen and immediately secured a spot in the debut lineup.

I stared at the turned-off phone screen for a long time.

‘If there is a next time… no matter what, start at Saesom.’

‘And then let’s debut together again.’

Thinking about it again, it was truly crazy talk.

Agencies giving their boy groups tacky names were a dime a dozen, but among them, this unknown small agency was definitely number one in being behind the times.

When ‘Overflash’ was confirmed as the group name, the agency director would never know, even if he died and came back to life, how many times I inwardly thought, ‘Isn’t this name overkill?’

Ji Cheonseong was the most ‘over’ member even within Overflash.

Why such a tall, handsome kid who could even sing well – although he couldn’t dance well, it wasn’t terrible – was in this kind of over-the-top samba group was something even I, as a fellow member, often couldn’t understand.

If I had Ji Cheonseong’s level of visuals and singing ability, I would have gone straight to Saesom’s main gate and protested for them to debut me.

Even that… Ji Cheonseong turned twenty-six and went crazy… wait a minute, he’s the same age as me now, so he’s eighteen.

Ji Cheonseong was a really strange guy.

He didn’t escape even when the group was failing.

Even though he had overflowing talent and plenty of ways to make a living if he quit being an idol, he didn’t leave the idol scene, seemingly unfazed by his aging years.

He must have received modeling offers three times due to his slender height, and acting offers a couple of times thanks to his honey-dripping mask that fans called ‘Bambi’s father.’

But until the group completely fell apart, that guy kicked away those good opportunities himself.

He even did so when the agency pushed him, telling him to at least save himself.

As if staying in the entertainment industry meant nothing if he wasn’t an idol, Ji Cheonseong was diligent every time he performed on the few stages they had from debut until disbandment.

Back then, I was too obsessed with the thought that I had nothing else if not an idol, so I couldn’t look around properly.

But looking back now, I couldn’t quite understand why someone like Ji Cheonseong, who wouldn’t be lacking anywhere he went, was so hung up on being an idol.

I reached two conclusions while abusing the playground swing, which can be roughly summarized as follows.

1. Ji Cheonseong is, with a very high probability, a regressor.

2. Being an idol is either a lifelong dream Ji Cheonseong must achieve, or there’s a reason he must live as an idol.

I was about 90% certain about the guess that Ji Cheonseong was a regressor.

First, even from my perspective, my own regression lacked plausibility just because God pitied my messed-up life.

How many people in the world are more pitiful and have more messed-up lives than me?

Why would God specifically pick the life of a (former) idol group leader who got hit by a car while walking thoughtlessly after drinking and give him a restart?

Besides, compared to Ji Cheonseong, I had nothing outstanding except for being good at dancing.

Putting aside all subjective opinions and summing up only the objective facts, Ji Cheonseong’s cryptic Saesom remark bothered me.

I turned the phone I had switched off back on.

A flood of missed messages and calls filled the notification bar at the top.

Even searching the phonebook, I couldn’t find Ji Cheonseong’s number.

It was natural.

At this time, if not for the unknown small agency, there would be no connection between Ji Cheonseong and me.

I sighed at my stupid brain for not remembering the 11 digits of a group member’s phone number whom I had known for at least 8 years, including the trainee period, but there was nothing I could do.

If Ji Cheonseong is really a regressor as I concluded, then aren’t I just someone swept along?

I agree it’s a hundred, a thousand times better than dying as a f*cking failed idol, but the uncertainty of the future was similar to before the regression.

The determination to definitely quit being an idol, which I had when leaving home today, had subtly diminished.

If Ji Cheonseong is at Saesom, isn’t it worth trying?

My stubborn mind kept reaching that conclusion.

‘Ji Cheonseong is… a regressor, right?’

‘Ji Cheonseong is… handsome, right?’

Conclusions like these.

I ran both hands through my hair frantically and stood up from the swing.

Whatever.

First, let’s escape this unknown small agency and find the light.

Life is real combat.

Nothing goes as planned.

Escaping the unknown small agency took a whopping month and a half.

First, it took two weeks just to counter-persuade my parents who were trying to convince me not to waste the four years and money invested so far, and to maturely state that if I wanted to be an idol later, I would find a new agency, not this one.

And during those two weeks, while persuading my parents, I simultaneously appealed to the agency director and various officials how serious I was about quitting the trainee life.

At first, I randomly skipped training sessions.

Later, pretending to be an eighteen-year-old who suddenly decided to focus on studies, I even signed up for the high school’s night self-study sessions, which I had never participated in before, staying at school until 10 PM.

Naturally, I didn’t study. I just desperately tried to recall how my life would turn out, what stocks to buy, and if there were any lottery numbers I remembered.

Compared to stocks, where the timing and items for major ones came to mind, I couldn’t remember a single lottery number.

I just roughly organized where in Seoul I should buy buildings later.

If I had known this would happen, I should have memorized a few lottery numbers and listened to some real estate videos on YouTube.

Trying to utilize the regression this way made me feel sorry for numerous investors, but life is originally real combat.

Financial planning is the future.

That was the best lesson learned from my previous life.

Even if the group goes bankrupt, life flows on.

Well, mine flowed and then reversed, but still.

I also succeeded in remembering the name of the boy group Saesom would debut in the latter half of next year.

This was also a 6-member group, but perhaps even large companies lack naming sense, as the group name was tacky.

Perfection.

Of course, as the group followed its agency and name, this group didn’t fail like the over-the-top samba Overflash but hit it big.

Since they were a senior group to us, we had exchanged greetings fleetingly a couple of times in music show waiting rooms or at year-end award ceremonies.

At that time, the club rat member had blabbered that Perfection’s leader was the main dancer and danced incredibly well, and his face had a perfect harmony of shadows and angles like a statue stolen from the Louvre Museum.

That gossip remained like residual data in a corner of my brain capacity.

I had seen their dance collaboration stage at a year-end award ceremony, and he really did dance well.

Especially his ability to powerfully control popping and street styles, which I wasn’t good at, was impressive in many ways.

Thanks to that, I quickly recalled the name of Perfection’s leader, whom Saesom would debut in about a year.

Was it Son Minyoung?

His real name was ordinary, yet he didn’t use a stage name, which paradoxically made him memorable.

I vaguely recalled the names of one or two other debut members, but I wasn’t sure because I confused a letter or two.

It would be strange to remember all the names of another group’s members when I was busy worrying about my own group.

I’ll probably know when I see their faces.

Even Perfection, which was riding high like this, started to falter in the same year we failed.

About 80% of male idols tend to cause trouble, and Perfection’s main vocal couldn’t avoid that high probability.

How did this group’s main vocal explode again?

At that point, Overflash was in a state of ‘members exploding, yay fireworks,’ so I didn’t have the capacity to pay detailed attention to other groups’ incidents.

Was it a gambling addiction… I was certain it was reported on the society section of the news.