Save a Failed Idol’s Life

Chapter 274:

Translator: MarcTempest

Editor: NicoleTempest

Chapter 274 Side Story 05. Always the Same (2)

“It’s okay, you looked fine.”

What kind of vague answer is that? He should have said he was angry, like he did with Kyunghwa. His response was too neat and without a hint of disappointment, it made me lose my nerve.

“Aren’t you mad at me?”

I asked cautiously, trying to gauge his mood. Yi-jun shrugged his shoulders.

“Me?”

“Uh…”

I felt a bit hurt by his confirmation kill. I knew he was especially close with Kyunghwa, but it hit me hard that they had a different weight. It was like a father feeling neglected by his son who had a best friend. Not that I was his real father anyway.

As I was grumbling to myself in my head, Yi-jun spoke in a cheerful voice.

“I was in bad shape when I first met Kyunghwa hyung. I hadn’t fully recovered from my injury. And I wanted to do producing, but I was suddenly kidnapped into an idol debut.”

Oh. Now that I think about it, he was originally active on some amateur music site and got casted from there.

He was supposed to be hired as a composer staff, but they saw him at the meeting and he was more handsome than they expected, so they casted him as a trainee.

“I like learning new things, so I was fine with dancing and whatever else they made me do. But they kept saying this wasn’t allowed, that wasn’t allowed. And they told me to stop doing everything I used to do. It was annoying.”

He still runs around looking for fun things to do, but he must have been younger then. I could slowly picture how frustrated he was.

“Then what?”

I urged him to continue, and Yi-jun smiled slyly. His lips curved into a pleasant arc, which I had gotten used to by now. He had the most hearty laugh of anyone I had ever seen.

“I told the staff in charge that I wanted to quit this and they said I couldn’t cancel the contract because of a trainee’s personal reasons. I didn’t know at the time, because I was so clueless, but now that I think about it, it was actually half a threat.”

Considering what Wiplanet did to Flos, it wouldn’t be surprising if they pulled some dirty tricks back then.

“Ah…”

“Anyway, I was so pissed that I skipped all the practice and went to the PC room. I said I was going to eat and ran away, but Kyunghwa hyung blocked the door.”

“What? Cough, choke!”

I couldn’t help but swallow my saliva the wrong way at the sudden appearance of Kyunghwa’s name.

“Cough, hack, gag, choke…”

“What’s with the big reaction? It doesn’t seem like such a big deal. Do you want some water?”

Yi-jun offered me the water bottle he was holding. I quickly took it and coughed to calm myself, pounding my chest.

“Uh, don’t hit the side with the heart. I’m scared you’ll collapse again.”

I wasn’t sure if he was joking or serious, but his concern made me spit out the water like a fountain.

“Wow. If it was daytime, there would have been a rainbow.”

“Cough, hack, choke, gag…”

Stop making weird noises and making me laugh. I ended up hitting Yi-jun’s arm with my fist instead of my chest.

“Ow, your hand is spicy. I’m going to report this as employee abuse~.”

I had to pretend I didn’t hear anything. I desperately plugged my ears and finally calmed down.

“Ah, really.”

“Really what. You’re the one who laughed first when I was talking seriously.”

I looked at Yi-jun, who was smiling playfully, and realized that it had been a long time since we had a long one-on-one conversation.

He was the strongest among the members in many ways, so he naturally fell out of the focus of care.

He was fine on his own, but he was also the one I was afraid would cause trouble because he was too good. But he was still a kid.

He was immature and sometimes shaky and failed, but I felt a pang of guilt for neglecting him. Just then, Yi-jun continued his story.

“Anyway, where was I? Kyunghwa hyung blocked the door, right? He glared at me like he was some kind of gatekeeper with a grim expression. I just smiled and said I was going to eat and pushed him away.”

Yi-jun looked behind me at that moment and his face twisted.

‘What?’

Was there something behind me? I glanced back and saw Kyunghwa standing there like a ghost with a lantern in his hand.n/o/vel/b//in dot c//om

“When the hell are you talking about? You’re making up nonsense.”

Kyunghwa muttered with a frown, his face full of sleepiness.

“So what, it’s not like it’s a secret.”

“Are you making such a fuss because I don’t remember that?”

“Well, you didn’t remember, did you?”

Yi-jun pouted his lips and slowly moved away from Kyunghwa.

“I remember as soon as you tell me.”

“But you didn’t remember, did you?”

Why do you guys know and I don’t? I stepped in between them and raised my hand.

“So, you have to tell me what happened.”

“Ah~.”

“What do you mean, ah~?”

Even with Kyunghwa’s criticism, Yi-jun had a calm expression.

“Hyung, you were blocking me from leaving with such a determined look, saying I wouldn’t get any practice. So I just honestly said that I wasn’t sure if I could debut here, and that it might be better to get kicked out for being a troublemaker. I just thought I was a goner anyway, so move aside, and then you started getting angry.”

“That’s not how it was.”

“That’s exactly how it was.”

It was infuriating. Who would believe that someone with that level of skill and overwhelming physicality had no confidence?

It sounded like a lie. If he was like Kyunghwa, who had no producing ability, no clear strength in vocals or rap, and no flashy visuals, he would have felt the same way.

Back then, he hadn’t even debuted yet, so his inferiority complex must have been worse.

“I’ve never been scolded like that by my grandmother, you know? What the hell, from a hyung who’s only two years older and not even close. Wow, I never expected to get yelled at like that.”

Kyunghwa looked displeased at Yi-jun’s whining.

“Aren’t you exaggerating too much? I don’t think I scolded you that much.”

“Hyung, that’s how you remember it.”

Yi-jun raised a finger with a sly expression and snapped back.

“Do you know how shocked I was then? I still can’t stand up to you.”

“That’s funny.”

Seeing the two of them bickering, who were only two years apart, I couldn’t help but laugh.

“What, why are you laughing?”

Yi-jun narrowed his eyes and glared at me. I gulped down the water in the bottle and answered with a smile.

“It’s nothing. I just… enjoy seeing you all fight like this.”

It was a moment that I wouldn’t have been able to experience again if Cheon Ise hadn’t given up first.

These small moments suddenly felt precious to me, and I laughed first.

“Anyway, so! What’s so great about you that you scolded me like that! The fact that you left a huge scar on the young Oh Yi-jun’s heart, and it’s still there!”

“When did you say you stayed because of me?”

“I wanted to show you that I wasn’t an easy target for you to ignore and scold?”

I could imagine how much he got scolded by Kyunghwa after that.

“Good. Keep proving yourself like that.”

Maybe it was because it was still too early for summer weather. As soon as I came out of the caravan, my skin cooled down.

I was getting sleepy again, so I decided to go back to the sleeping bag and sleep warmly.

As I got up from the chair where I was sitting, Yi-jun and Kyunghwa also got up.

“Going back to sleep?”

“Yeah. I have to sleep so I can get through tomorrow’s schedule.”

“Good. That’s a good idea.”

I zipped up the sleeping bag again and closed my eyes comfortably. The two guys who were lying next to me seemed to be whispering something, but I couldn’t hear it clearly.

The next morning. We got up early and cleaned up our place. We boiled ramen with the seafood we harvested yesterday.

There was a commotion when Seon-woo spilled the pot once, but luckily we didn’t spill the cooked ramen, so we were able to clean up quickly.

“I’m sorry! I really didn’t mean to do that!”

Whether Seon-woo was aiming for quantity or wanted to give the members a hard time, everyone knew that he didn’t do it on purpose.

“Just check your knees. If you’re hurt, you need to disinfect it right away.”

Fortunately, there was only a bruise, no cuts, so we all filled our stomachs with ramen and headed back to Seoul.

Since it was a non-active period, there was no big schedule except for some personal ones.

Naturally, Yu-geon asked if we brought any gifts, which was quite brazen, but not enough to make me feel bad.

“How come you’re here more often than your own house?”

When I gave him a generous bowl of soy sauce crab that I bought separately from the store for lunch, Yu-geon finished a bowl of rice in no time and rubbed the rest of the rice on the crab shell.

“People naturally like noisy places at this age, you know.”

What nonsense. I didn’t understand, but I agreed that it was better to hang out with a few people at a distance than to be alone.

“Still, isn’t this too close?”

I swallowed my complaints and ate lunch, then checked the video that the production team of Crisis House Season 2 edited in real time after yesterday’s shooting.

“They really focused on making this funny.”

Anyway, it was an advantage to have a strong personality. The problem was…

“Isn’t this too embarrassing? I’m a little worried…”

Especially the scene where Yi-jun and Seong-won fought in the middle of the mudflat was edited with a very comic direction, and it was so funny that I had to keep snorting even though I knew the whole story.

Well… I guess it doesn’t matter if they send this out, since everyone knows they’re handsome anyway…

When I showed it to Seong-won for confirmation, he ran away like a ghost with salt on it, and I didn’t get a chance to show it properly.

“Can we just send this as it is and get an OK?”

“I don’t know! Just stop pushing it on me!”

Well, he didn’t say no, so I guess it’s fine. It was too funny to discard. I was sure this would become a meme as soon as we sent it out.

But after I gave the OK sign to the editing team, I started to worry that we only took pictures of things that were too ridiculous.

“Maybe we should also take some pictures that are not too embarrassing and show some visual appeal…”

What could that be? After pondering for a while, I decided to visit a farm where we could get some strawberries.

We went on a day trip to take some photos that looked like magazine spreads, with white strawberry flowers and red strawberries hanging on the green stems.

And the people who were waiting for us at the shooting location were really unexpected.