Well, damn. The adults have done so much wrong to the kid that I can’t even really blame him for being suspicious.
But, well, if he says he’ll push ahead with this song and bear the noise that comes with it himself, isn’t it the marketing team’s role from here on, not mine?
Set the promotion direction for February 14th so it brings drunk driving to mind as little as possible...
—Through the unknown fog.
“Hm?”
The audio for <DRIFT>, lower in quality than before, flowed out of the speakers again. When I turned toward the monitor, a video in the same folder was playing.
Choreography practice video?
In the center was Gowon, dressed comfortably, with a practice room in the background.
...Was that you?
The quest window couldn’t have much influence on reality, but sometimes it gave me a push like this while pretending it was coincidence.
This seemed to be exactly one of those moments.
“...I had autoplay on.”
“Ah, okay.”
I mean, it wasn’t like I’d been staring at you that hard or anything...
Either way, it probably meant I should watch this now. Or else it was the quest window’s little trick to persuade me when I still felt reluctant about this job...
Huh.
What the hell.
Was this really the same person as the limp, lifeless guy sitting here now? He was... good?
He wasn’t just good. He danced every movement with enough force to look like he might shatter his bones, yet never once showed any sign of strain. He simply stared stubbornly forward and performed.
As if he refused to miss even a single gaze that landed on him.
That applied to me outside the screen too. I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the video, and the question slipped out in a dazed voice.
“...What was your position during the survival competition?”
“......”
You should at least answer that, you brat. But what came back was something completely different.
“...That was from a month ago.”
“Huh?”
His voice was the same as the one coming from the speakers, but somehow more muttered as he continued.
“So I’m saying I wasn’t good there. The choreography wasn’t even fully fixed yet, and it changed again while I was practicing it for the stage.”
No, I wasn’t saying you were bad at dancing.
“The moves I got wrong back then are all correct now.”
His voice, saying that, sounded genuinely furious.
It was the longest thing Gowon had said since coming here.
And hearing those words after watching a video of him dancing like that made my impression completely different from before.
“Wow... haha.”
The practice video ended. The Gowon on the screen held his ending pose, panting, and then the video cut off.
I stood up and grabbed Gowon’s wrist.
“?!”
He flinched so hard he almost seemed to have a fit. It was the biggest change in expression he’d shown since coming here, but that wasn’t important.
“Follow me.”
“Pardon?”
Oh, when he asked back in a tone that sounded like, “What the hell is this bastard saying?” that vocal projection from his rap came out a little.
Gowon couldn’t bring himself to shake off the hand of a senior so far above him. I dragged him out of the studio like that.
My heart rate climbed sharply, and the corners of my mouth crept upward. But I was in such a hurry I didn’t even notice it myself.
I barged into the nearest practice room. As always, Division Five’s practice room was empty.
“What... is this?”
When we arrived and I let go of his wrist, Gowon hid it against his chest as if he had recovered something that had been stolen from him. The wariness he’d been suppressing deepened until spikes bristled out in every direction.
But that wasn’t important right now.
I settled down on the floor. Then, showing proper audience manners, I even clapped like a seal.
“Dance.”
“What?”
“Dance. Sing with it too.”
“......”
I’m pretty good at reading lips, and I definitely saw him mutter “crazy bastard” just now.
Whether he did or not, I looked at the deathly pale Gowon and thumped the practice room floor.
“Why... are you doing this?”
Gowon squeezed out a sentence.
“Hey.”
“...Yes.”
“You can’t push ahead with your debut using that song. Every single line of the lyrics makes people think of drunk driving. You think that’ll work? And if your debut gets pushed back like that, the old man from earlier will snatch your song clean away within a month.”
“......”
“Perform it like you’re dancing in front of your last audience. I brought you here so I could watch that and clap for you.”
“Hah...”
Gowon made a terribly weary, pessimistic expression.
As if he had once again realized there wasn’t a single adult in the world he could trust.
I played the track Kwon Taeyoung had sent me on my phone.
He hesitated until the intro began, then slowly extended his arms and legs. Since his senior was forcing him, he did dance, but he was seriously half-assing it.
“Oh, the practice video from earlier was better. Should we just make that the final record of this song?”
When I poked him with that, the eyes that had never properly looked at me until now lifted and met mine.
The stiffly moving body began to flow smoothly in an instant.
It was a solo performance without proper outfits, lighting, or even dancers.
And yet Gowon drew every gaze around him into himself.
I wouldn’t say people who performed well were everywhere, but after living as a singer for twelve years, I’d seen plenty of them.
But Gowon’s stage—setting aside whether he was good—how should I put it?
Yes. A sticky, clinging obsession dripped from it.
Even when you’re absentmindedly flipping TV channels, if you see footage of someone risking their life to climb a cliff, wouldn’t your hand stop on its own and make you feel the vertigo with them?
Gowon’s stage had that kind of desperate appeal. I couldn’t tear my eyes away from it, and it stole my field of vision until the stage looked full with him alone.
Wow, what the hell is this bastard?
Why are you so gloomy when you have talent like this?
Thump, thump, thump. My heartbeat grew louder than the fast beat.
Behind the palm covering my lower face, the corners of my mouth kept rising.
Hey, with skills like this, you should have been smashing up Kwon Taeyoung’s office and throwing a fit about what he was going to do with your debut.
Now I understood why all of Division Five rushed in as if their own child had been scammed, trying to fix this.
Of course they’d feel it was a waste. This bastard’s face, story, atmosphere, and skill. They must have been preparing one decisive blow that combined all of it.
Bang! For the final move, Gowon stomped down like he meant to break the floor. Since he was twenty, his joints and bones must have been made of steel.
“That’s enough, right?”
Gowon approached, panting, and snatched up my phone. Then he turned off the music before it could repeat.
“Yeah. You’re good.”
“......”
“No wonder you don’t want the song taken away.”
“......”
And now that I’d seen this, there was no way I’d let it be taken away.
Quest window.
A Senior Paving the Road to Glory Part 1
Debut as a K-pop singer in South Korea.
Q1-1. Crisis on the Brink!
The debut prepared with the utmost effort is on the verge of falling apart.
Overcome the situation and safely release the precious album.
Success: Successful solo debut, obtain title [Rookie Singer]
Failure: Forced termination of the quest scenario
Time Limit: 526h 45m 49s (D-22)
A debut within twenty-two days...
Since we were short on time, we couldn’t completely throw away that incredible F1 driver concept they already had.
More than anything, a racer suited this song almost too well.
In the sense of moving forward alone on a life-or-death circuit, holding a blue-hot heat inside himself.
In that sense, this song called <DRIFT> absolutely had to be protected. The problem was that no matter how I thought about it, the gap from the incident was too short.
“Is there really no way to push back the debut date? Even just fifteen more days would put some distance from the drunk driving.”
Stage 1 Goal: A flawless debut
...Well, since the official account had already blown the trumpets nearly a month early, it was basically the same as boasting to fans, “Ah, something big is coming! Something good is coming!”
In this situation, quietly pushing the date back would look pathetic.
It would also be the perfect excuse for the already-poisoned fandom of the survival competition’s first-place winner to throw spears at the company, asking if this was how they treated their boy after taking him in.
Ha. Then excluding everything else, within twenty-two days... What method could work...
“What could there be...”
The stage Gowon had shown me still flickered before my eyes. It felt like I could somehow combine this with something.
“...I’ll be going now.”
He looked at me, muttering to myself, like I was strange, and tried to slip away.
Until earlier, that half-hearted attitude of his had been unbearably displeasing, but after seeing his stage overflowing with passion, it looked a little different.
You really look like you could have a debut that turns K-pop upside down.
It’d be a waste for you to fall flat because of this bullshit, you bastard.
Then, suddenly, I realized.
Ah.
...People just need to see the stage.
Then their impression changes.
If they only see the <DRIFT> song and concept, of course they’ll think of the current incident.
But even I, who had no expectations of him at all, felt differently after seeing his stage. For three minutes, nothing came to mind except the thought that this song was “Gowon’s song.”
If we can deliver that image to other people too.
I ran toward his back as he hurried away like he was escaping.
“Hey!”
Then I hugged my impressive junior tightly from behind.
“Where do you think you’re going?”
“What, what is this! Why are you doing this!”
This time, Gowon truly thrashed like he was having a fit.
In his trembling black eyes, I saw myself reflected with my eyes glaring wide.
“Junior, let me ask you one thing. Don’t bluff. Answer honestly.”
“Let, g-go of...”
“How many days does it take you to learn the choreography for one song? Ah, I’ll let go if you answer.”
He looked horrified, but he couldn’t quite bring himself to shake off a senior so far above him. The disadvantage of being grabbed from behind when we were similar in build also played a part. In the end, he answered as if grinding his teeth.
“...If it’s easy, an hour is enough. If it’s tough, I need three hours...”
“Damn, you pass.”
He was the perfect person for what I was about to pull off.
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