Damn Idol, Episode 112
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[Holy shit, I’m on my way to a café with a friend and Sedalbaegil suddenly showed up!]
[(Photo)(Photo)(Photo)]
[Looks like they’re going to busk in Hongdae!]
-Huh? Is this a shoot?
-There aren’t any cameras! Looks like they just came to busk by themselves!
-Has their company lost its mind? Seems dangerous;;
-Your precious Sedalbaegil aren’t that big of a deal
-Sedalbaegil’s tracks were tuned to an unethical degree lol Can they even sing live? lol
-lololol It’s so damn funny how Has-been Out and the NOP stans have been pressed about Sedalbaegil all week lololol
-For real lololol They always show up whenever a post about Sedalbaegil goes up on the forums lol
-Ah, but some composer YouTubers have been saying the tuning was kind of excessive.
-Yeah, yeah. I saw a comparison video too, and rather than Sedalbaegil being talented, maybe Han Sion is the talented one?
-I didn’t watch it. Why Han Sion??
-They tuned the hell out of the vocals, and Han Sion did all the mixing and mastering too.
-Please;; As if their own idols don’t get touched up.
-They don’t touch them up to that level lol That wasn’t correction, it was creation.
Just as Han Sion had been concerned about, negative issues regarding Sedalbaegil’s skills were slowly beginning to leak out.
The general public often disregards the influence idol fandoms have on public opinion.
They say it’s all just talk among themselves, beneath the surface, anyway.
But more idol-related issues than one might expect are born among fandoms, picked up by reporters, and then spread to the public.
Whether they’re good or bad.
Whether they have a basis or not.
That was why Sedalbaegil’s fans couldn’t shake the impression that the current situation was precarious.
Unless something big exploded, this nonsense seemed like it would drag on for a long time.
Considering the state of Sedalbaegil’s fandom, this was rather dangerous.
Sedalbaegil wasn’t a group with low recognition.
They had debuted through a variety show that surpassed 11% in viewership, and Han Sion, a genius acknowledged by all, had continuously created buzz without rest.
But the fandom itself was small.
There had been neither time nor an opportunity for the fans to become a solid core.
It was to the point where one might think the fandom activity during Coming Up Next, when they were competing with Take Scene, had been more active.
Yet in a situation like this, the already weak cohesion of the fandom would only weaken further.
Fatigue kept piling up, but there was no content enjoyable enough to endure it for.
And it didn’t seem like there would be a satisfying moment that would put those spouting nonsense in their place, either.
In every way, it was not a good situation for fangirling.
That was why comments like this were also appearing.
-Honestly, there’s way too little to enjoy.
-Even after Resume blew up, they haven’t done a single stage performance. They don’t go on music shows either.
-I became a fan because of their skills, but they aren’t proving anything;
Of course, among those writing such comments, almost none were sincerely Sedalbaegil fans.
They were either casual samplers, multifandom stans, or trolls trying to stir things up.
-Please;; It hasn’t even been three months since the show ended. Isn’t it amazing that they hit No. 1 on the charts in that time?
-What are you talking about? Their self-produced content views were damn good.
-No real fan says stuff like that.
-Take Scene isn’t doing anything either, so why are you only giving our boys shit?
The fans responded harshly, but they knew it was difficult to refute the logic itself.
And so they hoped Sedalbaegil would do something, but…….
‘Busking?’
It was ambiguous.
Far too ambiguous.
It wasn’t that it was bad, but it didn’t seem like it would have much effect.
Besides, judging by the fact that there were no cameras filming them, it didn’t seem to be part of their self-produced content either.
Then it meant they had literally gone out on an outing by themselves…….
It was nice that the members were close, but it was a bit off-putting that none of them seemed to feel any sense of crisis.
As expected, without a company, they couldn’t properly grasp the situation.
‘They’d be better off doing a collab with one of those street karaoke YouTubers.’
Of course, that wasn’t a good method either.
You never knew what view-hungry YouTubers might do, and one wrong move could make them look cheap rather than desperate.
But even so, it seemed better than going out busking for fun.
Sedalbaegil’s fandom thought this way, but what was about to happen would differ from what they imagined.
* * *
Sedalbaegil’s Resume was, at the present moment, a hit song occupying No. 1 on both the daily chart and the weekly chart.
Sedalbaegil hadn’t lucked into a chart full of holes.
After all, Drop Out and NOP were still splitting second and third place between them.
So when the intro to Resume began to play, it was only natural that people let out cheers.
They thought it was far too great a stroke of luck to encounter this while simply walking down the streets of Hongdae by chance.
But not everyone felt that way.
Among the people gathered here, there were also those who had little interest in Sedalbaegil, or even harbored feelings close to dislike.
It wasn’t necessarily because they were fans of Drop Out or NOP, who had lost first place to them.
Because people like that simply existed in the world.
‘I saw online that they only sound good because of correction.’
Some even thought this.
Then, as if to quiet their thoughts, Gu Taehwan’s voice flowed out.
Woo
— Hello
Those who often enjoyed busking content were startled the moment they heard Gu Taehwan’s voice.
The sound was too clear.
Most buskers output both the beat and their voice through a single speaker with a high rated output.
In contrast, Sedalbaegil had even set up a mixer and was using as many as four speakers.
Naturally, the sound quality would be better.
But even taking that into account, the sound was far too clean.
It was a sound they had never heard in busking before.
And soon, people were able to realize it.
This wasn’t simply a matter of equipment.
Gu Taehwan was just good at singing.
To a degree that couldn’t be compared to ordinary people.
The same was true of Lee Ion, Choi Jaeseong, On Saemiro, and Han Sion, who took over the song after Gu Taehwan.
“Holy shit.”
“They sing so damn well.”
There was little difference from the recorded track.
If anything, because of the live presence, an even more pleasant sound burst forth.
It was to the point that passersby far away stopped in their tracks to listen.
“Whoa, damn. Those high notes.”
“Who is it?”
“Did some singer come?”
Even though Sedalbaegil, already surrounded by people, could not be seen at all.
The moment the first song ended, thunderous cheers erupted.
“Hello. We’re Sedalbaegil!”
“We’re planning to try busking for a while, and today is our first time out.”
“We prepared seven songs! We’ll get started right away!”
Sedalbaegil didn’t say much, but they somehow looked practiced.
This was because they had experience performing while going around the indie scene.
It was also because they had learned from watching Han Sion on stage.
Sedalbaegil went on to sing three songs in a row.
They were all songs released on Coming Up Next, and each had once reached the upper ranks of the music charts.
Yet they sang them so well it was almost absurd.
They even seemed better than when they had sung them on Coming Up Next, with stage production and stage outfits.
‘What is this live performance?’
Because it was a weekday, there were hardly any buskers nearby.
But that didn’t mean there wasn’t a single busker at all, and one busker who sang at this time every day was staring at Sedalbaegil with his mouth hanging open.
He knew Sedalbaegil had shown decent performances in the indie scene, and that among idols, they were a group well-regarded for their vocal ability.
Han Sion’s singles had also been covered surprisingly often in the indie scene lately.
But what on earth was this level of skill?
Even if he tried to console himself by saying it was a difference in sound quality, as a musician, he could tell.
This was a difference in skill.
He was envious.
So terribly envious.
He envied them for having reached a realm he could not reach even after singing for years.
At that moment, the busker’s eyes met Han Sion’s.
Han Sion took hold of the microphone.
— We need to rest for a moment. Could you sing a song for us?
When his voice came through the speakers, the people all looked in the direction Han Sion was looking.
Under the sudden barrage of gazes, the busker froze.
“M-Me?”
— Aren’t you here to busk?
To say no, the guitar slung over his shoulder and the speaker in one hand looked far too pitiful.
For a moment, the busker wanted to run away from the overwhelming attention of the crowd.
But when he thought about it, it was funny.
He had come out to busk because he wanted attention, yet now that attention was focused on him, he wanted to run away.
So he nodded.
As the Sedalbaegil members smiled and led the applause, the crowd burst into clapping.
Han Sion threw a question at the busker who had come into the temporary stage area.
It was a conversation that the nearby spectators could hear, and quite a few people were also recording videos on their phones.
“Hello. Do you sing while playing guitar?”
“Usually, yes…… Would that be all right?”
“What song were you going to sing?”
“I was going to sing Nod’s
At the busker’s words, Han Sion nodded.
It was a song that had ranked seventh on the Billboard Hot 100 right after release, and in Korea, it had gained even greater popularity than its Billboard ranking.
Among foreign singers, there were those who strangely fit well with Korean sensibilities, and Nod was exactly that.
And
It was a fairly good song choice, and Han Sion knew the song well too.
“Would it be all right if I played the guitar?”
“Huh, um, you mean you, Han Sion?”
“Yes. I think it could be fun on electric.”
From the busker’s perspective, it was a welcome offer.
When would he ever get to do a joint performance with a celebrity?
He had never seen Han Sion play guitar, but he seemed confident.
However…….
‘It doesn’t seem like it would go well with an electric guitar, though?’
That thought occurred to him.
Of course, if one played it, it wasn’t impossible.
An electric guitar and an acoustic guitar were both guitars anyway.
But in terms of expression, it seemed like it wouldn’t fit at all.
Though he thought that, the busker simply nodded.
Because he could feel far too many people paying attention to this conversation.
After setting up the guitar, Han Sion smiled faintly and said to the busker,
“The beat and melody are exactly the same. I didn’t touch a thing.”
“Pardon?”
“Here we go.”
Without warning, Han Sion began to play the guitar.
The busker was rather flustered.
Because it wasn’t the
An extremely aggressive and dazzling sound poured out.
No, beyond dazzling, it felt like a bombardment.
It had the feeling of describing a dandelion swaying gently by the roadside.
But the guitar Han Sion was playing was like a dandelion blooming on a battlefield under aerial bombardment.
What was astonishing was that, just as Han Sion had said, the beat and melody were unchanged.
His mind was confused for a moment, but the busker had no choice but to start singing.
And then he was shocked.
The song flowed forward so easily.
At some point, Han Sion’s guitar sound stopped reaching his ears, and all he could hear was the song filling his own body.
And yet even amid that, the guitar’s rhythm and melody lodged themselves in his mind as if someone were injecting them there.
The busker, who had been singing as though possessed by a spirit, jolted in surprise.
He didn’t know which part he was singing now, but the sudden thunderous cheers had snapped him out of his concentration.
‘Where was I singing?’
Startled, he turned around, and Han Sion was no longer holding the guitar.
He was smiling and applauding.
Before he knew it, the song had ended.
Once again, cheers and applause poured from the crowd…….
And the busker, without realizing it, shed tears.
It was not because he was moved by the crowd’s response.
He had been moved by the musical elevation he was experiencing for the first time in his life.
Seeing that, the people shouted as if they, too, had been moved, and the Sedalbaegil members also applauded.
But there was someone who could not empathize with this situation at all.
‘What’s with him? Why is he crying?’
Because that was what Han Sion was thinking.