Damn Idol, Episode 15
Even Kim Seongu, who had snorted when he heard my song choice, came up and spoke to me.
“Wow, hyung. You were seriously good. I never imagined you’d sing it like that.”
“Thanks.”
“Can I ask where you got training?”
“Home training.”
“Sorry?”
He kept trying to make conversation, acting like we were close, but sorry—you’re eliminated.
I saw your preliminary mission stage, and there wasn’t a single distinctive thing about it.
If I were a judge, you’d be the kind of character I would never pick, regardless of skill.
Anyway, the reason he was talking to me was because his own stage was already over.
Everyone still waiting for their turn was deliberately ignoring me.
“……”
“……”
Well, I think that’s a good attitude.
There’s nothing they can change at this point, but they can still change their mindset.
If I were a judge, from here on out, I would give more points for immersion than skill.
A contestant who could erase my stage from their mind and focus on their own had guaranteed mental strength.
While I was thinking that, filming resumed.
“Fifth, contestant Lee Ion.”
Lee Ion.
He wasn’t someone I remembered from my previous life.
But I think I’ll remember him from my next life onward.
Because he was ridiculously handsome.
So much so that the moment I saw him, I wondered, “How many albums would I have sold if I looked like that?”
However, his stage was just so-so.
Should I say it was a stage where you could see the effort, but not the talent?
He danced with his teeth clenched, and his singing wasn’t bad either, but his vocal tone was awful.
Lee Ion’s tone was rough.
A tone that would be difficult to put in a team.
If you wanted to put him in a team, you’d have no choice but to make him the center of the song, but his skills were too lacking for that.
The worst part was that it wasn’t the kind of vocal tone that could be corrected.
Some vocal tones could be corrected, and some couldn’t. His was the latter.
But still……
“Wow……”
“What the hell is that?”
With a face like that, did he really need to become a singer?
It wasn’t as if he had to sell albums because of infinite regression.
“Thank you!”
The stages continued after that.
I’m someone more sincere than anyone about discovering good singers, and I’ve spent a long time making that effort.
In the early days of my regressions, I didn’t even think about discovering rookies.
Since I already knew who would hit it big in the future anyway, I thought I could just make use of them.
But when I actually tried it, that wasn’t how it worked.
When I joined a band that had recorded tremendous success in my previous life as their vocalist, the band failed.
Even though I was clearly far better than their original vocalist.
And that wasn’t all.
I brought in and produced a vocalist who, amid all kinds of tragedies, had made a debut album alone that went double platinum (two million copies), and they only sold eight hundred thousand copies.
Even though I protected them so they wouldn’t experience any of those tragedies.
Fortunately, their next album sold four million copies, but then they suddenly developed panic disorder and announced their retirement.
When I hadn’t interfered, they had been a consistent singer who released seven albums over nine years.
After experiencing things like that countless times, I had no choice but to admit it.
Recruiting a future star didn’t mean I could bring their results over as they were.
After that, I devoted myself to discovering rookies, and I developed my own know-how.
From that perspective, among the cast members I met today, the people I wanted to be on the same team with were……
None.
Not a single one met my standards.
Of course, there were some with charm.
Gu Taehwan, who had gone first.
On Saemiro, who had gone sixth.
Those two had charm and potential, and they knew how to immerse themselves.
Especially Gu Taehwan in the dancer position. His skill right now wasn’t much, but if he could just get the hang of it, he would explode all at once.
He himself didn’t seem to know it, but his sense of rhythm was outstanding.
On Saemiro was already good.
Among the ten contestants, excluding me, he was overwhelmingly the best vocalist.
But I didn’t want him as a teammate.
If someone heard these thoughts, they’d call me arrogant.
Still, there was nothing I could do about it.
To me, a teammate wasn’t simply someone I would promote with.
They were someone who had to go with me toward the absurd goal of selling two hundred million physical albums.
They needed to have an immense desire to improve, they had to be optimistic, and they had to possess talent with a high ceiling.
On top of that, they needed sincerity, and a core that wouldn’t easily waver in the face of temptation.
There probably weren’t people like that among the cast of Coming Up Next.
Most likely, at least.
“……”
The long-standing melancholy of a regressor began to creep out.
I thought Coming Up Next was a good opportunity, and that thought hadn’t changed.
But it only took an instant for unpleasant emotion to encroach upon rational judgment.
Maybe all of this was utterly useless.
Would there be anything for me to gain from a bullshit show where the results were decided in advance?
Wouldn’t it be better to just enter a major agency as a trainee and check out the people with potential there?
Or else……
Wouldn’t it be right to simply withdraw from this damned idol challenge?
Melancholy mixed into my swirling thoughts and rushed in.
I tried to drive it out with rational judgment, but negative emotions didn’t disappear that easily.
And finally……
Disappointment arrived.
Vrooooom!
It felt as if I could hear the sound of a car from somewhere, even though there was no way I could.
When I turned my head and looked around, I was still in the convention center.
But if I closed and opened my eyes……
I felt like I’d be at the intersection.
* * *
When was it that I first realized the “rules of regression”?
Ah, right.
I think it was at an after-party hosted by Billboard Magazine.
Probably around my twelfth round.
Until then, I’d thought regression happened naturally.
I had believed that if I judged there was no possibility of selling two hundred million copies, the regression would trigger.
Because that was how it had always been until then.
It had been like that when I appeared on Stage Number Zero and placed second.
When I felt that no matter what I did, I could never escape the image created by Snumje.
When I concluded that because of that image, I’d never get anywhere near two hundred million copies.
Vrooooom!
My body had been at the intersection.
But in truth, that wasn’t it.
“Zion. Do you expect your third album to go diamond (ten million copies)?”
A question from a reporter attending the after-party.
It was nothing special.
There was no malice in it, nothing like “You’ll never be able to do it,” only pure curiosity.
If anything, it was a question in which I could even sense goodwill, as if they wanted to write a favorable article.
But the moment I heard the reporter’s words, everything felt empty.
It had taken me a long time to leave familiar Korea and adapt to America.
In my eighth round, when I first chose to go to America, I couldn’t even make it out of the underground scene, and it was only in my ninth round that I entered the mainstream.
It took more time to enter the Billboard Hot 100, and the Billboard 200 wasn’t easy either.
From the eighth round to the thirteenth.
I didn’t count precisely, but it was probably close to sixty years.
Those stretches of time accumulated and accumulated, and finally, I achieved proper success.
I reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100, and number one on the Billboard 200. I was treated as a superstar across America, and I went on a world tour.
In Korea, my success made headlines, and I was a spokesperson representing all Asians.
No matter what anyone said, it was a flawless success that could not be criticized.
But……
What meaning did that have?
I still didn’t have a single diamond album.
It seemed like I had achieved tremendous success, but if you combined my first and second albums, the sales were only eight million copies.
My third album achieving diamond?
Even then, my total sales wouldn’t reach twenty million.
How many more albums would I have to release to fill two hundred million copies?
Ten? Twenty?
How many years would that take?
Would my popularity last until then?
Would the public continue to prefer me?
“Why aren’t you saying anything? Don’t tell me you’re not confident. You, Zion?”
I don’t remember what I answered then.
But the answer didn’t matter.
Because my body had already begun moving as if it were being sucked into a black hole.
Every scene around me distorted and was pushed back, brushing past me.
At first, the scenery appeared in all sorts of colors, then as it flashed past faster and faster, it became orange, and finally white.
And then……
Vrooooom!
I was at the intersection.
That was when I realized.
What my true rule of regression was.
The moment I give up, I regress.
It wasn’t that I regressed when I truly couldn’t sell two hundred million copies.
If my heart gave up, I regressed.
Giving up is subjective.
Even if I could actually accomplish it, if my heart broke, it was over.
Also, giving up is subconscious.
For a regressor repeating long, arduous lives, melancholy comes easily, and disappointment maximizes it.
Disappointment draws in despair, and despair draws in surrender.
That was why I didn’t remember exactly what number regression I was on.
There was a time when I arrived in America and was going through immigration, only to come to my senses at the intersection.
There was a time when I was being discharged from the hospital with Uncle Hyeonsu seeing me off, only to open my eyes at the intersection.
That was why……
This damned regression was cruel.
* * *
“……Mr. On.”
“……”
“Mr. Han Sion!”
I blinked.
The sound of the car was nowhere to be found, and people were looking at me.
Before I knew it, all the contestants except me had gone up onto the convention hall stage.
“Did you perhaps doze off?”
“I’m sorry. I was dizzy for a moment.”
“Do you have any chronic illness?”
“No. I don’t.”
“Please come up to the stage at once.”
I quickly went up to the stage, but something felt a little strange.
No matter how well I had done in my performance just before, in a situation like this, I should have been told off.
Even if it didn’t make the broadcast, judges needed to show that sort of thing periodically.
If that wasn’t the case, there was no reason to film me right now, yet the main camera was following me.
Were they perhaps collecting material for evil editing?
But I soon realized that wasn’t it.
This was because of my parents.
At this point in time, I was a pitiful guy whose parents had become comatose only one month ago.
They had gotten footage they could mix in with my backstory.
Well, I didn’t care.
They could pity me, or they could look at me and feel a sense of relative superiority, thinking, “At least I’m happier than him.”
They could mock me as a poser orphan, saying they didn’t even know whether I had parents or not, and I wouldn’t care even if a tabloid rumor broke out claiming that I had orchestrated the car accident to take my parents’ money.
Whoever they were, whatever they felt.
As long as they bought my album.
As long as they could save me.
None of it mattered.
At that moment, the judges, who had been throwing out empty words, began announcing the scores for the preliminary mission.
“First place goes to contestant Han Sion, who received a perfect score of forty.”
“Thank you.”
I bowed deeply, but to be honest, I didn’t think it had been a stage worthy of every judge giving me full marks.
It was because of the unique tendency of audition programs to go wild for freshness and to be sincere about creating an ace.
“Second place is……”
The second place that followed was On Saemiro.
Because his name was pure Korean, it was easy to remember.
I think the meaning was probably “an unchanged state.”
If he changes after becoming famous, does he become Off Saemiro?
Mm. I shouldn’t say that out loud.
It shows my age.
“Third place is……”
The announcement of only ten people ended in an instant, and the rankings appeared on the screen above the stage.