“Hyung, I’m truly sorry. In my haste to judge the situation on my own, I carelessly shared the private experience you had told me about…….”
“I told you it’s fine.”
If I heard it one more time, that would make five.
I accepted Kim Raebin’s apology with a trace of exasperation.
‘Anyone would think he’d falsely accused me of something.’
All he’d done was tell the members that ‘Moondae hyung seemed to have remembered something from the past while he was sleeping.’
And there was a good chance he’d only done that because he was frightened or tense.
He’d probably been trying to somehow interpret my rampage based on that and figure out how to respond.
‘……I thought I’d hidden it pretty well.’
I had been mistaken.
After returning to Korea and checking the Summer Package footage, I looked horribly awkward and gloomy.
‘Even I would’ve handled someone who looked like that with care in case something happened.’
The members’ worried or tense expressions had even been caught on camera here and there.
The fact that filming had gone smoothly was entirely thanks to Big Sejin, who’d talked about twice as much as usual by himself.
‘…Ryu Chungwoo held himself back.’
He had clearly realized from the beginning of filming that I felt uncomfortable around him.
Suppressing a groan, I spoke to Kim Raebin.
“Then I should be apologizing too. Sorry for bringing down the mood.”
“What?? Absolutely not! There is no need for you to apologize for an unexpected incident that occurred in a situation where filming was being conducted continuously in the first place…….”
“Right. And by the same logic, you don’t need to apologize either.”
“…! Understood. Thank you!”
Once I made him understand why he had no reason to apologize, Kim Raebin finally stopped talking, said goodbye, and left.
“I’ll be going now. I hope you have a comfortable rest.”
“Yeah. You too.”
The room immediately fell silent.
One roommate was away for a schedule, and the other had quiet hobbies.
‘The world is peaceful.’
I sighed and sank into the bed.
Then a sound came from the bed beside mine.
‘…It hasn’t even been three seconds since I said it was quiet.’
It was Bae Sejin.
“…Are you feeling… better?”
“What? Yes.”
It was an obvious answer, but my condition actually had stabilized quite a bit.
I didn’t know whether it was because I’d gotten some things off my chest while drinking at the end, or because I’d left the unfamiliar country where the incident had happened and returned to our familiar dorm room.
Whichever it was, I no longer felt like I couldn’t endure it the way I had immediately afterward.
Now, whenever I suddenly remembered it, I merely broke out in a cold sweat.
So I could easily add an explanation.
“I won’t interfere with filming anymore. Don’t worry.”
“I-I wasn’t worried about that!!”
Bae Sejin suddenly shouted, then apparently startled himself and quickly raised the book he’d been reading back in front of his face.
“…….”
What was I supposed to do with that?
Anyway, that was why, after checking the Summer Package footage, I’d immediately marked today’s date.
Today was the day the Summer Package went on sale.
‘Just in case.’
I picked up my smartphone and finally began monitoring everything.
“……Hmm.”
I’d been a little worried, but fortunately, there wasn’t any particular problem.
Once the magic of editing had been applied, my attitude merely looked moderately subdued.
The reactions weren’t bad either.
-Moondae really must’ve been sick, seeing him try not to show it makes my heart hurt even moreㅠㅠ
-Park Moondae’s eyes are completely dead, motivation gone, rookie spirit gone, good grief
└Yeah no, he looks fucking sick, what bullshit are you talking about
└There’s really nothing you won’t say about a kid who was so sick he couldn’t even appear on W Live, you crazy bastard
-The members taking care of Moondae seriously warms my heart, TeSTAR forever
-Soft-spoken well-behaved puppy in the Summer Package (Moondae GIF)
‘As expected, reducing my reactions altogether was better than reacting sharply.’
It seemed I’d made the right choice by minimizing both my reactions to the other members and situations and the amount of emotion I showed.
Of course, there were occasional troll accounts saying things like ‘Where did Park Moondae’s rookie spirit go?’
But they failed to get any support, got beaten down, and disappeared.
It had been a one-off incident, and because I’d even missed a W Live before the filming, public opinion had settled on the idea that I’d genuinely been sick.
……I felt a little guilty.
‘It’s not like I was particularly physically sick.’
I’d already used illness as an excuse once, so for the next half year or so, I should really take proper care of my health.
If I got sick again, it wouldn’t be a one-time thing anymore.
Then people really might start saying unnecessary things.
Something like a Summer Package was mostly purchased and watched only by fans, so it seemed to have passed without much trouble this time, but there was no telling what would happen in the future.
‘I need to be careful.’
I shrugged and turned off my smartphone.
Seeing how clean the internet situation was made me think it had been worth pushing myself a little back then.
…And I was also keeping the promise I’d made at the time.
Beep-beep-beep.
[Counseling Time]
Just as I turned off the alarm sounding on my smartphone, Bae Sejin quietly spoke up again.
“…You’re going?”
“Yes.”
“You made the right choice.”
“Well, yeah.”
I had decided to get counseling at the same time Seon Ahyeon went for his sessions.
Thanks to that, today too, I went out together with Seon Ahyeon after he’d returned from his schedule.
“M-Moondae. Let’s contact each other when we’re done…!”
“Uh… sure.”
But to be frank, it wasn’t particularly useful.
“So, what would you say has been your biggest concern recently?”
“…The same things everyone worries about.”
“I see~ Could you give me an example?”
“Hmm. I worry about whether I’ll be able to do my job properly.”
It wasn’t as if I could tell the counselor, ‘If I don’t resolve my Status Abnormality, I’ll fucking die, and this bastard even showed me some bizarre vision, so now PTSD symptoms keep bursting out like attacks.’
So I was mostly going through the motions.
“Mr. Moondae, you’re already doing more than well enough. Have you ever considered that it might be all right to be a little more generous with yourself?”
“……Sometimes.”
Well, still……
there was a certain sense of stability that came simply from talking to a professional.
My frayed nerves seemed to settle slightly, and my inner composure felt sturdier.
Combined with the fact that we weren’t in the middle of domestic promotions and therefore our schedules weren’t quite as excessive, I finally began to think I could attempt ‘that’ again.
Read only on MUGEX
Inside the dorm bathroom after returning from counseling.
I inhaled.
“……Status Window.”
A shiver ran straight down my spine, but it wasn’t enough to make me quit.
And so, after a long time, I checked the Status Window again.
…In order to properly confirm the new Status Abnormality.
[‘Audience or Die!’]
: Failure to meet an audience totaling at least 200,000 people within the designated period will result in death.
Current Count: 2,219 / 200,000
Time Remaining: D-339
‘Are you insane?’
Once again, the number had no conscience.
‘There’s no way to reach this number without an overseas tour.’
At least we’d already reached two thousand thanks to festival appearances, but there was a limit to that too.
It wasn’t as if festivals happened throughout the entire year.
According to our plans, we would probably begin a tour around autumn, starting with domestic concerts, so there wasn’t really a timing problem…
but now it was a matter of scale.
It wasn’t so impossible that I should immediately give up.
If I combined festivals and everything else, it was roughly within the range of something worth attempting.
‘In the end, the only answer is to release a good album.’
I had come all the way back around to the basic principle.
…Still, thinking that this was the last one did calm me down somewhat.
‘At least they’re not asking for a Daesang.’
I almost tried to dismiss the Status Window with a slightly trembling hand.
Then I suddenly realized there was no need to use my hand at all.
Which meant my head wasn’t working properly.
‘…I’m not normal.’
The Status Window disappeared.
I resisted the impulse to shove my head into the sink again.
And thought,
‘…What the hell does it want?’
I had absolutely no idea why this Status Window was doing this.
When the first reward showed me Park Moondae’s…
that is, the real Park Moondae’s circumstances, or when the second one gave me a painstaking account of Cheongryeo’s circumstances, it had felt different.
I’d thought those things were clues about how the current situation worked.
But what I’d seen in America…
fuck, anyway, that…
……wasn’t.
It wasn’t an explanation.
It wasn’t help.
…It wasn’t any of that.
“……Haa.”
Stop.
I took a deep breath and emptied my head.
Thinking about it more wouldn’t produce an answer anyway.
I should just do what I had to do.
That was best.
‘First, the biggest immediate schedule.’
My solo schedule.
The one I’d already been thinking about back when I’d gotten drunk with Ryu Chungwoo and spilled everything.
‘Having some time to work by myself isn’t bad either.’
…Actually, since coming back to Korea, I hadn’t had a proper sit-down conversation with Ryu Chungwoo.
I could now handle greetings, light small talk, or reading scripted lines in front of a camera without too much difficulty.
Anything beyond that…
given what had already happened, I wasn’t eager to push it recklessly.
‘I can use this to keep some distance.’
I gladly accepted the solo schedule.
-Moondae, are you sure you’ll be okay? Isn’t it too soon?
-I’m fine.
And in truth, there was also one part I was somewhat looking forward to.
The stat I’d raised last time had been specifically for this variety show.
‘I’m actually appearing later than I expected.’
It was exactly the sort of thing that would make a good change of pace.
I pushed all the useless residue out of my head and grinned faintly as I focused only on clean facts.
This was a variety show about singing.
And my current Singing stat was……
S-.
<The Singer I Made>.
It was a variety show that had recently become a major hit on MBS.
The format—famous people hiding their identities, singing, and then competing in a survival format to determine a winner—might have seemed somewhat stale.
MBS itself had once had a massive hit with a now-ended variety show using the same basic format.
But <The Singer I Made> had one distinctive difference.
The cast members themselves never appeared.
That’s right.
They appeared onstage as holograms.
And not holograms of themselves, either, but of ‘characters’ they’d personally designed.
The participants created profiles covering everything from appearance to personality, preferences, and age, then produced mascot-like singer characters.
Then a hologram machine backed by a major corporation brought those characters to life onstage.
Viewers were fascinated by the cutting-edge technology that even reproduced the performers’ movements linked from below the stage, while the familiar format let them get absorbed without feeling too alienated.
And so, a high school student flipping idly through channels stopped with the remote when he saw the familiar stage of the program.
“Ooh~ Knockoff Singer~”
The male high schooler snickered as he used the show’s crude nickname and stared at the screen without much thought.
His older sister had gone into her room to watch those guys called TeSTAR or TeSTer or whatever.
He would probably be able to lie comfortably in front of the TV without worrying about her taking it over for quite a while.
The program had just finished its mid-show commercials and was beginning Part Two.
[A survival stage where imagination becomes reality!]
[<The Singer I Made>! The ‘singer’ who will take the fifth stage is ready… right now!]
[Waaaaaaaah!]
From baseball players to triangular rice balls, characters of every imaginable type appeared without warning.
That unpredictable moment was always fairly entertaining.
‘It’s about time another dinosaur showed up~ Ah, please don’t let it be something boring!’
Thinking of the previous winner, ‘Tyrannosauron,’ a red, one-eyed dinosaur with short forelegs, the high school student grinned.
The MC shouted energetically.
[Here comes our next singer~!]
[His name is…….]
Badum-badum.
As a drumroll sounded, spotlights darted chaotically across the stage.
Then a tall silhouette slowly began to form onstage.
A white veil covered a well-proportioned body dressed in a white formal wedding suit.
Behind him, holographic white butterflies drifted past, winding around the figure before disappearing.
Just as the high schooler was about to jeer, ‘Ah, another human~,’ the camera zoomed in through the veil.
Where a face should have been, brilliantly colored flowers had been arranged like a bouquet.
“Whoa.”
[Please welcome, the ‘May Groom’~!]
Cheers and applause that sounded almost artificially inserted rang through the screen.