Damn Idol Chapter 157
It was a greeting anyone could tell was forced, but it didn’t matter.
It wasn’t as if I was glad to see Fade either.
There was just something I wanted to say to him.
I stared at Fade for a moment, then opened my mouth.
“Go your own way.”
“……
What?”
“Let’s stop being hostile. You and me both.”
I murmured it quietly, but the other Take Scene members probably heard it too.
It didn’t matter if they heard, and it didn’t matter that the cameras set up for the Self Made shoot were there either.
We weren’t wearing microphones right now, and they were only capturing the background.
The producer called it cutting out the background or something.
“…….”
At my words, a flash of confusion crossed Fade’s face.
He’d probably thought I was going to pick a fight with him or mock him.
Well, I might have.
It wasn’t as if I’d never wanted to.
Sometimes even I got confused about what exactly I was thinking as I lived.
Even after waking from a nightmare, I often found myself unsure whether it was still a nightmare or not.
But one thing was certain.
Emotions were wasteful.
Hating someone meant I was spending that much less time doing something productive.
But Fade no longer held that much meaning to me.
Originally, when I thought of Fade, I was reminded of my days in For The Youth.
The first K-pop idol career I had ever challenged myself with.
It was a distant past from well over a hundred years ago now, so far away that I couldn’t even tell whether those flickering memories were real or distorted.
But now it was different.
Even if I were to fail in this life……
I didn’t think I would remember Fade as For The Youth anymore.
The bastard who stood against Sedalbaegil.
Or the bastard who tormented Onsaemiro.
That was probably how I would remember him.
And this revenge wasn’t mine to take.
Sedalbaegil would have to succeed, and Onsaemiro would have to take his revenge himself.
It wasn’t that I was forgiving him.
It just stopped mattering.
Because my emotions were no longer bound to my days in For The Youth.
Fade stood there quietly, avoiding my eyes, and since I hadn’t said it expecting an answer, I stepped back as well.
An awkward silence settled over the waiting room.
See You, Take Scene’s leader, seemed to think he ought to say something and opened his mouth, but then a production staff member hurried in.
They asked why we were here.
They said we had to prepare for the opening stage.
Hearing that, I realized this must have been our private waiting room.
They hadn’t said they were giving us a private waiting room, so had it changed because of the Self Made shoot?
Then Take Scene really had just come to greet us?
While I was thinking that, Take Scene said their goodbyes and left the waiting room.
“Why did you do that?”
“Do what?”
“No, I thought you were going to say something to Fade.”
At I Ion’s words, I shrugged.
“I don’t have a hobby of tormenting people.”
I wasn’t the type to avoid conflict, but I wasn’t the type to seek someone’s submission either.
If we fought and I won, that was the end of it.
That was what I thought, but the members reacted extremely strongly.
“Liar.”
“Big fat lie.”
“No way.”
What’s with them?
“If you remember what you were like in the recording studio, you cannot say that.”
“That was recording.”
Our first album’s schedule had been a bit tight.
Choe Jaeseong in particular had a hard time.
It wasn’t as if I had gathered them myself, but somehow Sedalbaegil had ended up consisting of people with very strong individual colors.
Playing the role of balancing them out wasn’t easy.
So I had no choice but to direct Choe Jaeseong like I was catching a rat…… no, with a little difficulty.
Still, well, we did it, didn’t we?
“I ate an insane number of chocolate bars while recording, but I still lost weight.”
“That’s because your muscle mass increased.”
“Ugh.”
When Choe Jaeseong shuddered, all the members wore expressions of sympathy.
I felt a little hurt.
Choe Jaeseong didn’t seem to know it, but after that forced march for the album, his skills had improved quite a lot.
It looked like he would soon be doing proper performances at Seuneomje, so he would feel it soon enough.
While I was thinking that, the sound of fireworks came from outside.
The stage by Scene Stealer, which I had already heard about, had begun.
“Shall we run through the choreography once?”
At I Ion’s words, everyone rose from their seats.
Take Scene was the opening, and we were the ending, so it would take two hours before we performed……
I liked their diligence.
* * *
University festivals were fairly welcome schedules for idol fans.
There was no need for ticketing, and it didn’t cost money either.
Depending on the university, current students were given good spots first and the general public was guided to later viewing areas, but Gunam University was not one of them.
It was strictly first come, first served!
So it was only natural that Sedalbaegil’s fandom had flocked in to see today’s festival.
Waiting until the ending time was rather long, but it wasn’t as if watching other singers’ stages was unpleasant.
Except for just one team, Take Scene.
“They’re leaving.”
“They were the opening.”
“I’m jealous of that.”
TT looked at the Prisms leaving the venue after Take Scene’s performance ended.
In the past, there had been cases where idol fandoms clashed even in real life, but not these days.
Most simply ignored one another, and in fact, they could even get along fine in real life.
Of course, this was leniency they could afford to show because Sedalbaegil had completely escaped Lion Entertainment’s influence.
If Sedalbaegil had continued being pressed down, unable to appear on music shows, it absolutely wouldn’t have been the case.
“Still, there are more of them than I expected.”
“They’re totally united right now. Their ability to mobilize is no joke.”
Prism had the momentum of one person doing the work of a hundred these days.
Because Take Scene was being mocked in every direction, their fandom had banded tightly together.
But whether they did or not, there was only one thing TT was curious about.
‘The non-promoted songs!’
K-Pop Struggle, State of Mind, and Pin Point.
Those were the promoted songs for this album.
Naturally, the promoted songs had choreography, and now that Sedalbaegil had become an enormous success,
even the places that had created the choreography had all been revealed.
It wasn’t because netizen detectives had uncovered them.
The performance teams that had been commissioned to make the choreography were promoting it everywhere on their own YouTube channels.
But absurdly enough, the most successful song on Sedalbaegil’s first album was not the title track.
Since their music show performances, Pin Point had consistently recorded first place on the real-time chart, but the story changed when looking at the monthly chart.
On the monthly chart rankings, Summer Cream was higher than Pin Point.
The funny thing was that Summer Cream was not even a promoted song, but merely track ten.
This was, quite literally, the power of the song.
Marketing, buzz, music shows—all of it was beaten down, and its pure streaming performance was insanely strong.
And there was good reason for that. Pin Point divided tastes.
While there were people who liked it extremely, there were also people who hated it extremely.
The reason was that the techno’s distinctive beeping sounds mixed into the song were noisy.
The same went for the other songs.
There were people who disliked K-Pop Struggle’s lo-fi chipmunk sound, and there were people who disliked State of Mind’s sparse, distinctive emo hip-hop feel.
But Summer Cream was different.
A song you wanted to listen to in the car on the way to the beach.
A song you wanted to listen to while looking at the blue sky from a plane headed on vacation.
It was the kind of song chosen first for playlists with titles like that.
It had the sentiment Koreans liked, and it was easy listening that hooked you the moment you heard the first line.
On top of that, I didn’t know what Han Sion had done, but no matter how much you listened to it, you didn’t get tired of it.
The person who explained the reason was a classical musician.
K-pop fans were originally fairly accustomed to reaction culture and liked watching reaction videos.
They especially loved it when experts in certain fields praised our kids.
But not long ago, a major YouTuber had uploaded content where they played Sedalbaegil’s album for a member of the Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra.
At that time, a violin major who barely listened to K-pop and didn’t know much about Sedalbaegil had revealed Summer Cream’s secret.
[Wait, is this rubato (deliberate spontaneity)? A song shouldn’t be able to unfold like this.]
[Isn’t it strange for rubato to be included while recording an album?]
[It is, but…… then you’re saying this precarious feeling was intentional? And inside such a soft, lively song at that?]
[Could you explain in a little more detail?]
[To put it as an analogy…… it’s like one book being slotted crookedly into a bookshelf that’s otherwise perfectly arranged. So you keep looking at it.]
[Is that difficult?]
[It is. With something like this, if you’re even a little off, the balance breaks or the immersion breaks. Wow, this is fascinating. The composer who made this majored in classical composition, right?]
[No?]
[Then are they older?]
[I think he’s twenty?]
[Come on. That’s a lie.]
[It’s true.]
That video got picked up by the YouTube algorithm and once again pushed Summer Cream to number one on the chart.
But absurdly enough, Sedalbaegil had never once performed Summer Cream on stage.
During their university events in September, they had decorated the stage with Résumé, Colorful Struggle + K-Pop Struggle, State of Mind, and Pin Point.
Other than that, they occasionally sang Coming Up Next songs like Seoul Town Funk or Sedalbaegil.
Looking only at the circumstances before and after, it was natural.
Unless it was their own concert, events were originally handled with famous promoted songs.
On top of that, for idols, choreography was important.
But……
‘If it’s Summer Cream, couldn’t they sing it lying down?’
Track ten of Sedalbaegil’s album had that much power.
But yesterday, a notice had gone up on the official homepage and SNS.
For the remaining university events in October, they would only be singing songs from the album.
What did that mean?
It meant they would sing non-promoted songs, including Summer Cream.
And the first of those events was today.
TT wasn’t the only one looking forward to today’s stage.
-Is it abnormal for a guy who’s done his military service to be watching a male idol fancam?
-Lololol, honestly, I desperately want to see a Summer Cream stage too.
-It seems like they’re not doing it because there’s no choreography, but who cares if there’s no choreography? They have the skill.
-Lololololol agreed.
-You guys don’t understand the usage manual for Hip Sion. If you ask him to do something, he won’t do it. You have to beg him not to sing it for him to sing it.
-That sounds plausible.
-Day 1 of the Summer Cream refusal movement begins.
The general public’s expectations were also quite high.
Amid people’s anticipation, Gunam University’s festival began to proceed step by step.
In truth, except for Sedalbaegil, it wasn’t a particularly well-structured lineup.
There weren’t many famous singers either.
It was to the point that the audience was saying Take Scene’s stage, which had been the opening, was the best.
“Isn’t Take Scene the best so far?”
“Right. What’s the name of the bleached-haired one?”
“Ready?”
“He was handsome.”
TT, who was listening, was rejecting it with her whole body, but in truth, Take Scene wasn’t an unskilled team.
What someone had joked about—“Hey, maybe Take Scene really is good. They went toe-to-toe with Sedalbaegil, after all”—wasn’t entirely false.
Of course, Sedalbaegil during Coming Up Next and Sedalbaegil now were on different levels.
‘Just you watch.’
‘Once our kids come out, it’ll be completely different.’
Around the time TT was thinking that,
the festival finally reached its ending.
And then.
“Sedalbaegil!”
Together with the MC’s call, Sedalbaegil ran onto the stage.
There was no greeting.
The beat immediately burst out……
and track one, bearing the same title as the album, began.
People didn’t know it yet, but
it was the beginning of the “full-album performance” that would remain legendary.