Damn Idol Chapter 133
* * *
The day he returned to Korea.
After meeting Kim Hyeonsu and returning to Three Months and a Hundred Days’ dorm, Han Sion assumed the members would be asleep.
After all, he had shared a few drinks with Uncle Hyeonsu, and it was already past midnight.
Unexpectedly, however, the members of Three Months and a Hundred Days were gathered in the shared living room instead of their own bedrooms.
“What’s this? Why aren’t you sleeping?”
“I can’t sleep.”
At Choi Jaeseong’s answer, Han Sion tilted his head.
One person could be unable to sleep.
But if all four of them couldn’t sleep at the same time, hadn’t they eaten something bad?
That thought crossed his mind, but for the moment, he opened his suitcase and handed out the gifts first.
“Huh? You bought us gifts?”
“Yes. I had a reason to buy some.”
They had all gone to America together and he had simply returned a little later, so there was no need for him to buy gifts.
But as far as Han Sion knew, aside from Gu Taehwan, none of them had much breathing room financially.
To be precise, On Saemiro was poor, and Lee Ion didn’t ask his parents for money.
Choi Jaeseong was a little ambiguous; the clothes and items he owned were quite expensive, but he seemed to have almost no cash.
So while buying things for Uncle Hyeonsu, Han Sion had picked up various things for them as well.
They hadn’t been able to shop at all in America, either.
On Saemiro, who received Han Sion’s gift, was horrified.
“Isn’t this way too expensive?”
“It’s an imitation.”
“……
No matter how I look at it, it really doesn’t seem like one?”
“It’s an imitation.”
“Sion hyung, then shouldn’t we not wear this around? It’ll be obvious it’s a knockoff.”
“It absolutely won’t be obvious.”
“Because it’s genuine?”
“It’s an imitation.”
“Is it perhaps an imitation that comes with a quality guarantee?”
“Stop asking.”
“Because it’s an imitation?”
“It’s an imitation.”
Seeing Han Sion possessed by an imitation bot, the members burst into incredulous laughter, then gratefully enjoyed their gifts.
Once the brief gift-unboxing ceremony ended, Han Sion spoke.
“But why are you still awake?”
“We’re nervous. We were waiting for you.”
At Gu Taehwan’s words, Han Sion tilted his head.
“Nervous? Nervous about what?”
“Color Show gets released tomorrow.”
“So?”
“People seem to be expecting a lot from it. What if it doesn’t do as well as they think?”
None of the members of Three Months and a Hundred Days thought their music was lacking.
But separate from the quality of the music, there was always a possibility it wouldn’t do as well as expected.
Color Show was content that caught fire slowly rather than causing a huge sensation all at once.
And yet the current atmosphere made it feel like it had to hit tens of millions of views immediately.
At first, Han Sion couldn’t relate to the members’ anxiety, but as they talked, he understood.
The reason was simple.
It was their first time being expected to succeed.
From the moment Coming Up Next ended until now, they had only ever been attacked.
The people of show business, led by Choi Daeho, had been watching for any chance to go after them.
When they weren’t being attacked, they were abandoned to indifference.
Even when they hit number one on the music charts, they couldn’t appear on a single music show, and not even one article was written about them.
So Three Months and a Hundred Days gritted their teeth harder and immersed themselves even deeper.
They used negativity as fuel, made flames through effort, and burned their passion.
But the situation had changed.
Now people expected things from them.
They clapped and told them they were incredible, urging them to live up to that applause.
That had become a huge pressure on Three Months and a Hundred Days.
In truth, it was common.
There were more than a few athletes who armed themselves with the venom and hungry spirit of an underdog, rose to become champions, and then collapsed.
There were also more than a few people who gritted their teeth in hostile situations, only to freeze under the public’s love.
“Hmm.” Han Sion rubbed his chin.
He knew that pressure was a difficult emotion to overcome.
That was why, when forming teams, he had always excluded those who were faint of heart.
No matter how outstanding their skill or talent was, people with small hearts were bound to cause problems in real situations.
But from Han Sion’s experience, the members of Three Months and a Hundred Days were not faint of heart.
If they had been, they wouldn’t have felt exhilaration on the Coming Up Next stage.
It was only a temporary phenomenon, so he needed to solve it.
Han Sion briefly recalled his own past.
He, too, had certainly had immature days, and there had been a time when he first received people’s attention.
How had he resolved the pressure he felt back then?
“……?”
Han Sion was momentarily flustered.
Because he had no memory of ever feeling pressure.
But that couldn’t be true.
He had lived for such a long time; how could he have never felt pressured even once?
Right, the Super Bowl halftime show.
How had he felt when he first stood on the Super Bowl stage, where only superstars of the Western world could perform?
“…….”
He felt like he had wanted to perform alone, without any of the other performers.
He also seemed to remember thinking that the singers who kept talking to him were annoying.
Right, it was probably because of the infinite regressions.
To him, life was a game with infinite coins until he achieved his goal.
It was too desperate to simply call it a game, but in any case, that was what it was.
So he just had to think back to his first run.
After reflecting on the life of his first run, Han Sion realized the truth.
Even before he met the devil, he had never felt pressure.
Otherwise, why would he have given casting directors from entertainment companies quizzes with songs every time they handed him their business cards?
He had told them that if they got it right, he would visit their agency.
‘Come to think of it, there was someone who got it right not long ago, wasn’t there?’
When he had stopped by Gu Taehwan’s parents’ restaurant and busked, a casting director from Double M had gotten the quiz right.
It had been a truly difficult question, too.
Thinking that, Han Sion reached a conclusion.
He didn’t know why, but he had never felt pressure.
On top of that, he had never recruited teammates who felt pressure, and he didn’t think the members of Three Months and a Hundred Days had small hearts, either.
So the method to resolve their temporary pressure over Color Show was simple.
‘I just need to give them even greater pressure.’
Then their pressure over Color Show would vanish without a trace.
Han Sion sprang up from his seat and connected the audio system in the living room to his phone.
“I haven’t decided the track order yet, and I don’t know which number tracks Resume and Colorful Struggle will be.”
“What are you suddenly talking about?”
At Gu Taehwan’s words, Han Sion tapped his phone with his index finger.
“I finished an album.”
“An album? An EP?”
“No, our first full-length album. The title is…… The First Day.”
Hadn’t the fans who loved Three Months and a Hundred Days most in this world said so?
If they only promoted for three months and a hundred days, they would swim through that time forever.
Time Traveler.
So what they could do for their fans was clear.
They had to live faithfully in every moment.
From the first day of the hundred days to the last day of the hundred days.
Not a single moment could be disappointing or lacking.
Even if regression waited at the end, they had to take great steps forward.
The First Day was an album title that carried that meaning.
In another sense, it also meant the first day they overcame Choi Daeho’s pressure and greeted the world.
At Han Sion’s words, the members’ faces twisted strangely.
‘Weren’t we talking about Color Show?’
‘A full-length album all of a sudden?’
Of course, their curiosity about the album was a hundred, a thousand, ten thousand times greater, but they simply couldn’t follow the flow of the conversation.
But those thoughts lasted only a moment.
When Han Sion played the song, the members’ faces turned serious.
The helmsman holding the wheel of the ship called Three Months and a Hundred Days was clearly Han Sion.
But that didn’t mean they could take an attitude of not caring where the ship drifted.
Han Sion possessed musical ability so deep and vast that it was impossible to understand, but someday, some problem could arise.
So the members made an effort to understand even fragments of the music Han Sion showed them.
“Listen comfortably. There are eleven tracks.”
“Including Resume and Colorful Struggle?”
“No, excluding them.”
Then there were thirteen tracks.
It really was a full-length album.
They had already been serious enough, but the members focused on the music with even more solemn expressions.
As the music flowed, conflicting emotions began to appear on all of their faces.
Someone felt goosebump-inducing ecstasy, and became uneasy.
Someone else felt the comfort of drifting through space, yet grew worried.
On Saemiro even repeatedly lit up with joy because he liked it so much, only to suddenly become gloomy.
And so, after exactly 45 minutes and 32 seconds, the playback of the eleven tracks ended.
Han Sion quietly studied the members’ faces, then spoke.
“How is it? What do you think?”
For a while, the members said nothing.
Then they looked at Gu Taehwan.
There was one unspoken rule shared among the members of Three Months and a Hundred Days, excluding Han Sion: when something incomprehensible happened, look at Gu Taehwan.
Then Gu Taehwan would explain the inexpressible emotions they were feeling with perfect accuracy.
This time was no different.
“It’s such a beautiful and perfect performance. But it’s so perfect that it feels like we shouldn’t touch it.”
Yes, that was the exact expression.
The 45 minutes and 32 seconds Han Sion had played for them had seized their minds.
Forty-five minutes was by no means a short time, yet it passed in an instant.
As if they had experienced 4 minutes and 5 seconds.
It was beautiful, ecstatic, and comfortable.
But despite that, the reason they felt anxious and uncomfortable was because they couldn’t feel a place for Three Months and a Hundred Days in it.
The songs were already complete with just the performance.
They were instrumentals that felt as if they might play in a New York cafeteria in a film.
How could they dare add anything to this?
On top of that, even if they sang over it, it felt like it would become something like a year-end performance by the New York Philharmonic.
It didn’t have the feel of idol music.
The moment the members, starting with Gu Taehwan, voiced their worries, Han Sion smiled like a mischievous child.
It was the first time they had seen Han Sion smile that way, so the members paused.
Looking at him now, it seemed Han Sion’s atmosphere had changed somewhat in just a week.
Even when he joked or smiled, the damp melancholy that had always lingered around him was gone.
That was because Han Sion had come to truly feel the meaning of the words “I’ll see it through to the end,” but the members did not know that.
“First of all, you know the main piano melody in the songs you just heard? That’s the part we’ll sing.”
“Ah?”
“In other words, I already put the vocal parts into the songs. We won’t be adding anything on top of this.”
“But won’t it be awkward if we sing that piano line?”
“Of course it’ll be awkward. I’ll have to adjust it to fit human voices. But the emotion will stay as it is. For reference, the sections without piano are the rap or bridge parts.”
“What’s the second thing?”
Han Sion shrugged.
“With this, we’re going to put on an extremely, extremely K-pop-style stage and promote with it.”
They weren’t going to make music suited to Lincoln Center for the New York Philharmonic, but music suited to Jamsil Indoor Stadium or Gocheok Dome.
“With this music?”
The members looked as if they couldn’t imagine it, but Han Sion didn’t think so.
He wanted to make an album where the pleasure of listening with your ears and the pleasure of watching the stage were different.
When listened to on its own, the songs would flow gracefully, but once performance was added, they would become dazzling.
“Choi Jaeseong.”
“Yes?”
“In K-pop, who’s the best at creating choreography? As a person or team. From a general perspective.”
“Um, for boy group choreography……”
When three or four names came from Choi Jaeseong’s mouth, Han Sion nodded.
He remembered them all, and he would try commissioning them.
To do that, they first needed guide versions of the songs.
They didn’t need to record every song right away anyway.
Colorful Struggle and the album’s pre-release track would be enough.
“We’re recording Colorful Struggle again?”
“I told you. There’s a K-pop version, not just the Color Show version.”
“Ah, right.”
Han Sion shrugged.
“Now, let’s sleep for now. Starting tomorrow, we’ll be on a forced march.”
“Sion, can you send us the album tracks too?”
“I’ll send them right away.”
As Han Sion sent the album tracks to the members, he smiled inwardly in satisfaction.
He was glad the method of erasing pressure with pressure seemed to have worked.
But that was the perspective of a regressor whose ordinary sensibilities had broken down……
‘My stomach hurts twice as much now…….’
The members thought somewhat differently.
Several days passed like that.
Color Show was released, and Take Scene was buried.
A little later than in America, Seaside Heights’ performance became a hot topic in Korea, and Take Scene was buried.
Three Months and a Hundred Days’ name appeared on Billboard, and Take Scene was completely buried.
Those were the days that passed.
And at last, when Three Months and a Hundred Days’ music show promotions were announced, Three Months and a Hundred Days’ fandom, Titi, let out a cheer.
But the cheering was short-lived.
The moment they were about to excitedly rush to the official site—
Ding.
—“Huh?”
A notification from the official site app popped up.
“……!”
[Could you perhaps choose our promotional track for us, T.T?]