LIGHTNOVELSTORY Chapter 1
Translator: MarcTempest
Editor: Rxel
Chapter 1
Prologue
Not only did they decorate various media, but they also made people wonder how they became idol singers who spread K-POP worldwide.
‘How did they succeed?’
Experts cited visual, vocal, dance, and entertainment skills as the success factors of these idols. Of course, this was not an accurate analysis.
There was no law that said that skill necessarily led to popularity.
But it was true that the more talented you were, the more likely you were to succeed.
Why was he telling you this?
That was because he had a talent.
A talent that others didn’t have, a very special talent.
Chapter 1 I got a strange ability
“Huh?”
His head buzzed.
He was called to the top office of the headquarters and asked a question that was like a bolt from the blue.
“What did you say?”
“It’s exactly what you heard.”
He could only open his mouth blankly at the sight of the director who was adjusting his glasses with an embarrassed expression.
“So… you want me to leave the company?”
“It’s not that I want you to leave the company. To be precise, it’s that you’ve been dropped from the debut team.”
“Why?”
He couldn’t accept it.
“Why did I get dropped from the debut team?”
“Woojoo.”
“No, you told me three weeks ago that I was confirmed for the debut team. You also said that the group name was TNT. But now you suddenly…”
“Debut can be overturned at any time. Woojoo, you know how this business is. No one can relax until they debut perfectly. This kind of thing happened a lot when your seniors debuted.”
It wasn’t a wrong statement.
TJ Entertainment.
TJ Entertainment, commonly known as one of the four major agencies in Korea, was an entertainment agency that had produced numerous boy groups and girl groups since the 2000s and had earned the nickname of an idol powerhouse in the industry.
That was why they produced a lot of idol groups. And when he saw the cases of the senior groups who debuted from TJ Entertainment, it was common for the members to change at the last minute.
But he didn’t think it would be his story.
“I know it’s hard to accept. I do too. But…”
“Is it because of the dance?”
There was no answer, but it was enough to be a positive.
“There was a planning team meeting a while ago and there was a lot of talk. They said the choreography balance didn’t seem right. They said it would affect the team color if they debuted like this.”
“…”
“I and the management director tried to protect you, saying that you were a promising kid, but it was a decision made by my superiors, so I couldn’t do anything about it.”
There was only one person above the director.
Park Tae-joon, the president.
The CEO of TJ Entertainment and the Hand of Midas who was famous in the entertainment industry.
The top manager of this company decided to drop him from the debut team.
There was nothing more to say.
“I’m sorry it turned out this way, Woojoo.”
It felt like the sky was falling.
A feeling that couldn’t be explained by anything.
The company that he had devoted nearly six years of his time to, and that he was about to debut, was trying to cut him off.
With the words that he was defective as their product.
He felt nauseous.
The heat rose up to his face and it felt like his internal organs were twisting.
The cucumber he ate for dieting came up to his throat and went down.
The director gave him a sympathetic look as he tried to calm down his rough breath.
“Are you okay?”
What was unfair was that he couldn’t argue at all.
Because what the company said was true.
Trainee Seon Woojoo.
A trainee with good singing skills, but lacking in dancing skills, who always survives by his face in the monthly evaluations.
It wasn’t strange to be eliminated for that reason.
But even if that was true, he couldn’t help but be angry.
They shouldn’t have picked him for the debut team in the first place.
He took profile pictures, unpacked his luggage at the dorm with the debut team members, and now they were telling him to leave?
It was infuriating.
“Woojoo.”
“I’m sorry.”
He grabbed a tissue and dabbed at his eyes, which were streaming with tears without him realizing it.
Maybe it was because he had burst into tears once.
The tears kept coming.
It was the first time he had cried in front of someone else since his grandmother had been sick.
After a while, Seon Woojoo felt a bit calmer and took a deep breath. He sat down quietly.
“Are you feeling better now?”
“Yes.”
The director had a calm expression.
Well.
He was someone who cut off trainees every month.
Seon Woojoo’s tears must have been a common sight for him.
“So…”
Seon Woojoo’s voice was choked.
“What will happen to me?”
“You have three options.”
The director explained.
“First, you can quit the idol trainee program and switch to the Acting Department.”
“Acting?”
Why acting all of a sudden?
“This is an opinion from the Management Department. You have poor dancing skills, but you have excellent visuals. You also have good camera presence. There was a lot of feedback that your visuals were too good to waste on being an idol.”
The director smiled, trying to lighten the mood.
“How about switching to the Acting Department since it’s come to this? We’ve recruited a lot of actors over the years and we have a lot of know-how now. We’re going to produce our own drama soon. If you agree, we’re willing to support you a lot from the company’s perspective.”
“What’s the second option?”
“If you still want to be an idol, we can connect you to another agency.”
“Another agency?”
“Lemon or DNS, for example. They’re smaller agencies, but they’re close to us.”
In other words, they were medium or small agencies.
He continued.
“If you don’t like these options, well… The only thing left is to terminate the contract.”
In the end, he was telling Seon Woojoo to choose one of three things: stay and switch to the Acting Department, go to another agency and prepare to be an idol trainee, or terminate the contract.
Seon Woojoo asked, “Can I debut if I go to another agency?”
“That depends on you.”
The director gave him an ambiguous smile.
He was basically telling Seon Woojoo to start over from scratch at another agency.
He let out a bitter laugh without knowing it.
“I’ll respect whatever you choose, but we’d prefer you to go to the Acting Department…”
The director said something, but he didn’t hear it.
Seon Woojoo was just spaced out.
He couldn’t feel more detached from reality even if the world was ending tomorrow.
All sorts of thoughts flooded his mind.
Was this really happening?
Was he really getting cut from the debut team?
What was he going to tell his grandma?
How was he going to face the others when he packed his stuff from the dorm?
What had Seon Woojoo done for the past six years?
His thoughts branched out like a stem sprouting from a seed, making his head a mess.
When he finally sorted out his thoughts, he made a decision.
“Manager.”
“Yes. Have you decided?”
“Yes.”
It was a decision he would surely regret later.
“I’ll… terminate the contract.”
***
“…Joo.”
“…”
“Hey, Seon Woojoo.”
“…”
Someone shook his shoulder.
He must have dozed off.
When he came to his senses, he saw a young man looking at him with concern from the driver’s seat.
A man with glasses.
He looked like the ghost from the book
Yoon Seokhwan.
He was someone Seon Woojoo had known for a long time.
His title was the deputy of the Management Team that handled the trainees.
His face showed a worried expression.
“Are you okay?”
“Sorry, Hyung. I guess I fell asleep.”
“We’re here. You have to get up.”
The car stopped at an apartment complex in Gangnam-gu.
This was the dorm of the boy group TNT that Seon Woojoo belonged to.
Seon Woojoo came here to pack his stuff after terminating the contract with the company.
The car that Seokhwan Hyung drove was the last courtesy from the company.
“It’s funny.”
“What is?”
“When I was confirmed to debut, I felt like I was in heaven, but now I feel like I’m at the gates of hell.”
Yoon Seokhwan couldn’t say anything.
“Where are the others? Not in the dorm?”
“They’re all at the training center at this time.”
“Right, they must be busy with the choreography practice.”
They already felt like strangers to him.
They probably thought he was gone for a while for some profile shooting or something.
Yoon Seokhwan adjusted his glasses and asked, “Are you really not going to say anything to them?”
“It’ll be awkward for both sides.”
“But you’ve been together for so long. They’ll be hurt. Especially Taehyun, he’ll be…”
“Seokhwan Hyung.”
Seon Woojoo’s voice was choked.
“I’m sorry, but I don’t think I have the energy to care about anyone else’s feelings right now.”
“I’m sorry.”
“What are you sorry for, Hyung? I’ll just pack my stuff quickly and get out.”
17th floor.
The elevator went straight up to the dorm without stopping.
“…”
Inside the dorm.
As expected of an eight-member group, there were hangers lined up in the living room, and clothes were piled up on top of them.
Seon Woojoo quickly went into the room and packed his stuff.
He hadn’t brought all his clothes from his hometown in Gunsan yet, so he didn’t have much to take.
A family photo he took with his parents when he was a kid.
And a few clothes.
Lastly, some unwashed training suits that smelled bad.
As Seon Woojoo came out with his stuff, emotions welled up inside him.
He bit his lip hard to stop the tears from bursting out.
He was holding back his tears when he got back in the car.
Yoon Seokhwan asked him with concern, “Do you have a place to stay tonight?”
“I don’t know…”
“Do you want to stay at my place?”
“No, thanks. I don’t want to bother your family.”
“I live alone, you know?”
“That’s even worse.”
Yoon Seokhwan chuckled at Seon Woojoo’s joke.
“I’m going back to Gunsan, Hyung.”
“Wasn’t your school in Seoul?”
“I dropped out to focus on the debut group.”
The company told Seon Woojoo not to do that, that it wasn’t necessary, but back then he only wanted to focus on debuting.
Stupid Seon Woojoo.
“Did you tell your grandmother?”
“Not yet.”
“She must be worried…”
“Worried? She’ll probably curse me out. Like ‘You son of a bitch, I knew you would do this’.”
Seon Woojoo shivered at the thought of his grandmother’s harsh words.
Well.
At least he wouldn’t starve.
His grandmother wasn’t the president of the company, but she was a great cook who ran a restaurant.
“Are you really giving up?”
“Yeah.”
The spring breeze blew in as Seon Woojoo rolled down the window, tickling his hair.
“You’re being too extreme. You should take some time to think about this. Being an idol isn’t the only way to be an entertainer. There are so many other paths. You could be an actor, a model…”
“Why do you seem more regretful than me, Hyung?”
“Of course. If I had your face, I wouldn’t do this.”
“Am I that good-looking?”
“Look in the mirror, man.”
“There are so many handsome and pretty people in the world.”
Yoon Seokhwan snorted as if that was absurd.
When Seon Woojoo was a rookie trainee, he was the intern in the Management Team.
They had spent six years together, building a strong bond.
But he went from being an intern to an Assistant Manager.
And Seon Woojoo was still a perpetual trainee.
Seon Woojoo said with a smile, “I don’t want to be an entertainer anymore.”
“Why?”
“Just. I think I’m tired of preparing for this for six years.”
“Then what are you going to do?”
“I don’t know…”
Maybe it was because of the warm spring weather, but the streets of Gangnam were crowded with people. Seon Woojoo looked out the window and opened his lips.
“I want to live a normal life. Go to college, see the cherry blossoms in spring, date someone. And go to the army when the time comes.”
“Ugh.”
“What?”
“The army… never mind.”
He made a face as if to say ‘You’ll see when you experience it’. Seon Woojoo just shrugged.
By the time they knew it, the car had stopped.
“We’re here.”
When they arrived at the bus terminal, Yoon Seokhwan handed Seon Woojoo his card.
“Joo-ah.”
“Yeah?”
“You might be too upset to make a good decision right now. You might say you want to quit being an idol or whatever, but you never know what will happen in life. So if you change your mind…”
“I can call you at this number, right?”
“Yeah.”
Yoon Seokhwan smiled and reached out his hand.
“Take care. See you again.”
After shaking hands, Seon Woojoo got out of the car.
With a backpack on his shoulder.
Seon Woojoo waved at the car that left a long trail of exhaust.
Before he entered the terminal, he looked around.
Everything was spring.
The people’s clothes, the flowers around, everything was spring.
“Ah, the weather is nice.”
Seon Woojoo looked at the clear sky and entered the terminal.
That was when he thought.
He would never have anything to do with idols again.
But that was his mistake.
Three years later, his life turned upside down.