Episode 178
* * *
Memories of the past truly come back out of nowhere.
It feels as though human memory has a fixed capacity, so it stays compressed most of the time, then decompresses when something triggers it.
The moment I arrived in the waiting room for the year-end music festival hosted by MBN, I was reminded of my days in For the Youth.
I don’t know if my memory is accurate, but it felt like the waiting room was in the exact same place.
Of course, only the waiting room was the same. The situation was very different from now.
Leaving aside the difference between Sedalbaegil and For the Youth, for starters, it wasn’t 2017 but 2020.
No, I think it was 2019.
I remember promoting for exactly a year and a half before COVID placed restrictions on our activities.
Naturally, the results we achieved as a team were different too.
Sedalbaegil is far superior.
Back then, I was a regressor too, but I wasn’t a perfected regressor like I am now.
I sang decently enough, but the only instruments I could play were guitar and piano, and even those weren’t at the very top level.
Just enough to be counted among the best domestic pop singers?
That was why, back then, I needed my teammates’ help.
So I had suggested something similar to today’s stage to the members of For the Youth for the year-end music festival stage, and…….
“Come on, why go that far?”
“Yeah. It’s not like doing well today is going to raise our music show ranking.”
“It’s a year-end stage. Let’s just enjoy it.”
I was rejected.
At the time, it wasn’t as if I had a bad relationship with For the Youth.
We had been on the road to success immediately after debuting, so there hadn’t been anything to fight about.
We were too busy.
So their refusal, and their reasons, were sincere.
I think I got angry.
I wondered if that was really something people living their one and only life should say.
When, if anything, I was the one who didn’t have to stake my life on a single stage.
Of course, now I understand how they felt.
Not everyone lives a life where they throw themselves into everything with all their might, and that alone isn’t the correct answer to life.
But at the very least, I want teammates who do throw themselves in with all their might.
I want people with an aspiration for improvement so high that no one can approach it.
Like Sedalbaegil.
But how did it end up that way?
“Gu Taehwan.”
“Yeah?”
“Wasn’t it hard when we were practicing?”
“It was hard, yeah?”
“Then why did you do it?”
“Huh? Because we had to.”
“That’s what I’m asking. Why go this far? We could’ve just put together a decent stage.”
At my words, Gu Taehwan rolled his eyes around.
It was a rare sight from Gu Taehwan.
He was so quick-witted that he lived with most situations already taken into account.
Gu Taehwan couldn’t answer this simple question for a while, then barely managed to open his mouth.
And even that was in the form of a question.
“Was it because of the sense of achievement?”
Since that wasn’t much of an answer, I asked the other members similar questions and got similar replies.
It was thanks to On Saemiro that I realized the right answer.
“Then why did you go that far?”
On Saemiro asked, but it felt exactly like a question I had received back in my For the Youth days.
Before our relationship soured, the members would often ask me why I went that far.
My answer to that was always simple.
“Just because.”
“What the heck. You’re the same.”
“…….”
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.”
Right. Just because.
I do it simply because I can.
Maybe aspiration or a sense of achievement aren’t grand reasons you gain from somewhere.
Even before I became a regressor, whenever I practiced a song, I was the kind of person who would stubbornly dig into it until the very end.
It was simply that similar guys had gathered together.
Not because I, a regressor, gathered them.
It was by sheer coincidence.
Come to think of it, the only idols I’ve ever been part of are For the Youth and Sedalbaegil, and I only lived through the second round of For the Youth.
That’s astonishing.
Whenever I dive into a genre, I live at least five rounds in it.
Except for things like being a classical musician, which I gave up after feeling the wall of talent, or gospel, where the gap between genre and race was too wide.
So…….
Perhaps today’s stage is an answer to the For the Youth members of the past.
An answer to the question of why I went that far, and to the denial that they didn’t want to go that far.
And that answer will probably be quite fitting.
“Two, three, four, snap, two, three, four, bam.”
Seeing the members go over moves that should already be ingrained in their bodies after countless practices, saying they were nervous, gave me that confidence.
* * *
2017 was a year when the domestic economy was quite strong.
Thanks to that, the streets were brimming with the year-end atmosphere, and the broadcasting world was no different.
The ratings for pilot programs and special programs that the broadcasting stations had crammed in for their seasonal business were fairly excellent.
Some might say that’s an excessive interpretation, but surprisingly, the total ratings pie for TV programs is heavily influenced by the real economy of that year.
It isn’t that the physical amount of time people can watch TV changes depending on whether the economy is good or bad, but that their emotional leeway changes.
In the midst of this situation, MBN was the first to kick off the year-end music festivals.
In the distant past, when terrestrial networks held hegemony over Korea’s content market, the broadcasting stations aired their year-end music festivals on the same day, at the same time.
But not anymore.
The broadcasting stations discussed things and adjusted their schedules, and capitalist logic entered into that.
For example, other stations would watch MBN’s year-end music festival ratings while fiddling with their advertising rate cards.
But that was a story for the show business industry, not for the viewers.
They simply wanted to support a certain singer or hear a certain song.
-Why is the camera work at year-end music festivals always so bad? Even all three terrestrial networks.
-It’s like a rule of year-end music festivals. No idea why. Anyway, it just is.
-Isn’t it because they don’t get much rehearsal?
-Even so, this is too much.
-It’s absurd, but the sound is better than any other day lol. I can hear everything so clearly.
-For real lol. I think I can tell the AR and the live vocals apart lol
By the time Part 1, which had been arranged in the format of a perfect performance show, ended, viewers could tell that the singers who hadn’t performed yet were the award nominees.
From Part 2 onward, the singers who received awards would perform.
In truth, there had been so much controversy and trouble surrounding the year-end music festival awards that in 2006, the three terrestrial networks abolished them after discussion.
But after that, the buzz and ratings for the year-end festivals began to decline, and in the end, SBN revived them in 2012.
MBN revived them in 2014, while KBN was still only thinking about it and had no plans yet.
Of course, although they had revived the awards, it felt less like they were ranking artists and handing out prizes the way they used to, and more like they were distributing titles.
M-SHOW, unlike the terrestrial networks, was properly ranking artists and giving out awards.
Because of this, those watching MBN’s year-end music festival today weren’t particularly curious about the various trivial awards either.
What they were curious about were the Grand Prize and Rookie Award.
For starters, Sedalbaegil seemed certain to win the Rookie Award, but no one knew whether they would take the Grand Prize too.
It wasn’t as if there had never been a singer who won both the Rookie Award and the Grand Prize at once, but there weren’t many.
However, the ones who received the Rookie Award at MBN’s year-end music festival were FFBA, who had debuted in January of that year.
-FFBA really seems like the luckiest rookie idol group this year lol. They cleaned up from January to June, then went off to do schedules in China.
-Why’s that?
-They dodged Sedalbaegil.
-Aha lolol
-It’s amazing they blew up in China right after debuting. They’re more popular in China than Korea, aren’t they?
-I thought they’d give Sedalbaegil the Rookie Award;
-Maybe they’re going to give them the Grand Prize.
-No no, FFBA’s agency is super close with MBN. They’re basically the legitimate heirs.
-They are handsome though lol
FFBA, who had received the Rookie Award, performed, and then more minor awards followed.
The surprising thing happened after that.
Sedalbaegil received an award called [Trend of the Year], something no one had ever heard of before.
Considering it hadn’t existed last year, it was a hastily made-up award.
-Wow, they’re really showing the sorrow of an independent idol like this?
-Sedalbaegil’s independence diary isn’t over yet lolol
-Is MBN insane? Are they ignoring Apple’s eye for talent?
-No, but Sedalbaegil basically never appeared on MBN. It could happen. It’s not like this is the Korean Music Awards.
-What are you talking about? Among the three terrestrial networks, the one Sedalbaegil promoted on the hardest was MBN.
-Huh? Really? Where did they appear?
-Masked Singer.
-lolololololololololololol
-Ah, right, On Saemiro showed up four weeks in a row.
-He even graduated with honors and took off his mask lolol
In truth, it was only the general public, who didn’t think much about the entertainment industry, who were surprised. In the idol scene, it was something that could have been predicted.
TT didn’t have much of a reaction either.
Of course, on the private accounts where they communicated among themselves, all hell had broken loose, but outwardly, that was how it was.
Meanwhile, Han Sion took the microphone and opened his mouth.
But just as he was about to say something, he stopped and looked at the lights.
After a very brief silence, his mouth opened again.
No one would know, but the words now flowing from Han Sion’s mouth were not the ones he had prepared in advance.
They were improvised.
Because a certain moment had come to mind.
[……It feels like it’s been a long time since I gave an acceptance speech. Though, to be honest, it hasn’t been that long.]
The public simply accepted it, but TT tilted their heads.
As far as they knew, Han Sion had never given an acceptance speech before.
What Han Sion was recalling was the final scene of his previous life.
The acceptance speech he had given after receiving a main award at the 2028 Grammy Awards.
“Thank you for everything until now. All of you.”
“I’ll never forget this. No matter how many more lives I repeat from here on, there will never be a band more perfect than this one.”
With that speech as the end, he had regressed and begun his life in Korea.
And exactly one year had passed.
For a regressor living a long, long life, one year was nothing, but strangely, it had felt long.
[I’m always grateful. To my teammates and to TT.]
[Even if I repeat several more lives from here on, I don’t think there will ever be a team more comfortable and perfect than this one.]
Sedalbaegil’s fandom was surprised that Han Sion had called them TT instead of Time Traveler, but the members of Sedalbaegil were different.
They were surprised that the word “comfortable” had come out of Han Sion’s mouth.
Han Sion himself didn’t seem to think much of it, but in the eyes of the Sedalbaegil members, Han Sion was a fairly self-destructive person.
Especially when he fell into bouts of inexplicable melancholy, or when he ran toward a goal.
But the one more surprised than any of them was Han Sion himself.
Because he lived within closed time, he rarely closed off an ending.
The words “it can’t be any more perfect than this” were like a declaration of the end to Han Sion.
Because the fact that he had failed to sell two hundred million copies despite forming the perfect band meant there was no longer any reason to be in a band.
Originally, Han Sion had intended to challenge himself as a K-pop idol again someday, even after his life with Sedalbaegil came to an end.
But…….
Perhaps this might be his final idol life.
Even if he failed.
And so, after an acceptance speech that the public did not attach much significance to, but which was important to those involved, the stage began.
At the venue, time was needed to prepare the stage after the acceptance speech, but not for the broadcast.
Even if it was live, the footage wasn’t truly being transmitted in real time.
Usually, there was a delay of about three to five minutes.
So the viewers were able to see the stage appear immediately after the acceptance speech.
“Huh?”
They were a little bewildered.
Because on the stage, there was only a single grand piano sitting there by itself.