A Blank Slate Regression for the Idol That Lost His Original Mindset - Chapter 230

—————
This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
—————

A Regression Guide for Idols Who Lost Their Initial Intentions Episode 230

Ryu Jaehee and I, having returned to the hotel, began searching for suitable songs to perform for the busking we had to do the day after tomorrow.

Real hip-hop in the homeland of hip-hop was quite an attractive option, but as long as I was Rev’s leader, for Rev’s future, I had no choice but to tearfully turn away from that option.

First, we need to get attention, attention. Would anyone even care if I was rapping on the street?

If some East Coast hip-hop fanatic punched me asking what I was doing performing West Coast hip-hop in the holy land of East Coast hip-hop, at least that would become an issue.

“How about this? It’s a masterpiece that would let you show off your high notes, Jaehee, and it’s so famous that no one in the world wouldn’t know it. If we do this well, we might even get ten million YouTube views?”

“What is it?”

Ryu Jaehee seemed interested, apparently enticed by the mention of ten million YouTube views.

When I touched the play button, the high notes of the Queen of the Night aria resonated majestically. The light of interest immediately faded from Ryu Jaehee’s eyes.

“As Hyung said, it’s a globally famous masterpiece.”

“Right, classics are eternal and there’s no divided opinions. How about it, isn’t it good?”

“My voice doesn’t go up that high. If I could handle that song, I would have done classical music. And what would Hyung do while I’m singing that?”

“Clap from the side?”

“How about Hyung singing your favorite hip-hop song?”

“Oh, West Coast hip-hop in Brooklyn, the main stage of East Coast hip-hop? That’s perfect for getting shot.”

Ryu Jaehee blinked and asked slyly.

“Really?”

“Of course it’s a joke. There’s no particular regionalism now. It was the 90s when West and East were divided and in fierce opposition.”

When I shrugged, Ryu Jaehee narrowed his eyes and hit the nail on the head.

“Then why are you uncharacteristically avoiding doing real hip-hop in the homeland of hip-hop when you could?”

“What if a rapper who absolutely loves East Coast hip-hop passes by while we’re busking and challenges me to a cypher when I’m singing a West Coast hip-hop song? Korean would be one thing, but I’m not yet at the level to immediately counter with English diss rap, especially freestyle.”

“What’s a cypher?”

“You know, freestyle rap battle.”

Ryu Jaehee clapped with coldly disappointed eyes.

“Hyung could write the scenario for our next music video.”

Anyway, Ryu Jaehee had no intention of performing an opera aria in the middle of a New York street rather than at the Metropolitan Opera House, and I had no intention of singing my favorite West Coast hip-hop song in Brooklyn, the homeland of East Coast hip-hop.

“How about this? The featuring has a moderately high range, and the rap part is long, which I like.”

“Rejected.”

Why are there so many F-words? If I sing that once, my initial intentions would hit zero points and I’d regress back to debut days.

If we self-censored this, the rap would be so choppy it would be unpleasant to listen to.

After discussing with Ryu Jaehee for a while, we agreed to just ask fans for recommendations and turned on the live stream. It was killing two birds with one stone since we could also complete the Weekly Quest.

“If possible, please choose songs that highlight vocal techniques. I would be truly grateful. We need to show Rev’s main vocalist’s potential overseas too.”

“Songs where rap has vocal featuring as an addition are fine too. When it comes to hip-hop, isn’t it America?”

While trying to read through the recommended songs pouring in at an almost unreadable speed, one chat caught my eye.

[Eden, the towel on Youngest Member’s head is coming loose]

Looking to the side, the towel wrapped around Ryu Jaehee’s head was indeed precariously close to sliding down.

To prevent hair color spoilers before the comeback, I immediately held up my phone high and pressed down on Ryu Jaehee’s head.

“Oh, thank you. We’re all dyeing our hair together right now… Hint? The concept worst is Yehyeon Hyung, and the best is me. Pink? No. You said pink hair suited me best? That’s quite shocking.”

“Wow, really? Pink Eden Hyung looked like a villain who accidentally got trapped in Barbie World.”

Since I couldn’t demonstrate scalp massage or neck massage in front of the fans, as part of my revenge, I diligently selected only 100% vocal recommendation songs.

* * *

Finally, the day of busking arrived.

Despite singing two songs in a row, our busking audience consisted only of our members, managers, and pigeons.

There weren’t many passersby to begin with, and the few pedestrians we occasionally saw just glanced at us and walked past.

When the second song ended, I plucked the guitar strings with a twang and slumped over the guitar, looking at Ryu Jaehee.

“See, Youngest Member? I told you we should do the Queen of the Night aria. It’s not too late even now.”

“Wouldn’t it create more buzz if Hyung had a rap battle with a local?”

“But I can’t just grab a passing Black gentleman and randomly ask for a rap battle.”

“I’ll bring someone over. Don’t worry and think of lyrics.”

I barely managed to stop Ryu Jaehee, who was about to get up as if he’d really grab a passerby, even putting down my guitar.

“Yehyeon Hyung! Help!”

Eventually, Ryu Jaehee sent an SOS to Seo Yehyeon.

“Just sit there holding the microphone. We’ll do everything else. That much is okay, right?”

“That much, well…”

Perhaps relieved that they weren’t asking him to sing, Seo Yehyeon readily agreed.

Before the busking started, Seo Yehyeon had been annoyingly smiling and clapping, telling us to cheer up for our punishment performance, but even he seemed to find our lonely singing with no audience quite pitiful.

So we started the performance again with one more person added.

Was this coincidence, or did Seo Yehyeon’s face buff really work? While it wasn’t a large number, an audience began to form in front of us.

To be precise, the number of passing pedestrians increased from the point Seo Yehyeon joined.

While rapping, I glanced at Ryu Jaehee from the corner of my eye, and he also showed a slightly displeased expression.

I worried for a moment that the Youngest Member might get hurt thinking it was because his singing skills were lacking.

As they say, the bear does the tricks but the king gets the money – we were doing all the singing, but Seo Yehyeon, who was receiving 70% of the audience’s attention, felt awkward just sitting there and began to subtly lift the microphone to add harmonies to the song.

But isn’t adding harmonies during the rap part a bit much?

After finishing all the prepared songs, we concluded our busking where there were more pigeons than people.

Kim Dobin, who had his arm around the shoulder of Ryu Jaehee (who had a sullen expression for some reason), playfully interviewed him.

“How many tens of thousands of views do you expect for the video?”

“Was it even filmed? I think we should worry about whether it gets uploaded first.”

“Manager Hyung was filming. Other people… hmm, I don’t know.”

“Then it won’t become an overseas issue. Doby Hyung, now Rev’s overseas expansion depends on you. Fighting.”

Perhaps only now realizing it was his turn, Kim Dobin’s expression immediately became deathly.

The punishment Kim Dobin had to perform was being thrown into dance busking. Usually, New York b-boying busking tends to encourage quite a bit of audience participation, so we just had to push him in.

However, since there was no dance busking performance here for Kim Dobin to join, after finishing our cleanup, we moved to find a place where busking was happening.

“They said this was a busking hotspot, but why isn’t there a single performance team? Kim Dobin, did you research this properly?”

“Yes, it was definitely here. It was supposed to be around this area.”

“Around this area and here are definitely different expressions, you know? It’s my fault for leaving it to you, my fault.”

“Yehyeon Hyung! It really was here!”

“Oh, that building was in the blog photos too.”

“Then did the hotspot disappear just when we came?”

After grumbling and passing three alleys, we heard music and saw audiences watching performances, and I muttered in dismay.

“…So this was the busking hotspot.”

It was like setting up a stall next to the market selling goods and lamenting why no customers were coming.

Kim Dobin and Seo Yehyeon, who had agreed with him, subtly avoided my gaze.

“Youngest Member and Eden, want to do one more here before we go?”

At Gyeon Hajun’s suggestion, Ryu Jaehee rubbed his throat and shook his head.

“My throat condition seems a bit off right now, so it would be better to rest. Or how about Hajun Hyung busking with Eden Hyung?”

“Wasn’t this a punishment?”

“A punishment? This is clearly a foundation-building project for overseas expansion…!”

I pressed down on Kim Dobin’s head and cut off his nonsense.

“Right, Doby will fulfill the dream of overseas buzz. Don’t worry and rest, Youngest Member.”

Three men who seemed to be preparing for a busking performance, placing speakers on the ground and tuning guitars, made eye contact with me and began whispering among themselves.

A man urgently approached us as we were about to move locations, pointing in the direction where we had just been busking and speaking to me.

「We just saw you guys busking over there.」

The trio, who introduced themselves as a band that films and uploads busking videos, made a proposal to me.

The gist was whether I was willing to appear in their video with freestyle rap.

“Do you have separate rap lyrics?”

“Nope, it’s a real 30-second freestyle. Are you confident?”

At his provocative question asked with a sly smile, I pondered for a moment, then hung a crooked smile on my lips and answered coolly.

“Of course.”

Ryu Jaehee, who had been listening to our conversation as intently as if doing English listening practice, widened his eyes as soon as I accepted.

“Hyung, you said you weren’t confident about freestyle rap in English.”

Of course, even though I could hold conversations to some extent, doing a 30-second freestyle rap in English was difficult.

Even in Korean, I’d have to rack my brains thinking about rhymes and punchlines, so how could I do it in English, which wasn’t even my native language?

But I had 30 seconds worth of rap lyrics in my memory. From before my regression, songs I had worked on collaborating with artists there during my failed early attempt at breaking into America.

Though time had passed and the memories had grown somewhat hazy, there was one song whose lyrics I could spit out with my eyes closed. Well, it never got an official release due to various circumstances.

‘The day has come when my suffering before regression actually helps.’

The lyrics were also the kind that would roughly fit with any song, whether it was a love song or a breakup song, so there wouldn’t be any problems.

“30 seconds is enough.”

With a sly smile and a wave of my hand, I strode confidently toward the band’s vocalist, who had already finished preparing for the performance.

The vocalist tapped my shoulder and spoke into the microphone for the audience to hear.

“Okay, good. When I hand you the microphone, show us what you’ve got. Go all out.”

The performance began with the sound of electric guitar accompaniment.

—————
This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
—————