A Blank Slate Regression for the Idol That Lost His Original Mindset - Chapter 429

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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A Regression Guide for Idols Who Lost Their Initial Intentions Episode 429

Fortunately, Ryu Jaehee’s fever went down considerably in just one day. Of course, only the fever went down – his physical condition hadn’t improved, so we had no choice but to extend the break by another day.

Seo Yehyeon, who was weakest at dancing, said he should at least do some individual practice and dragged Kim Dobin to the practice room.

“Because of me, we can’t even do group practice… I need to quickly finish learning the formations and choreography…”

“Everyone’s taking a break while they’re tired anyway. There are people here who’d thank you, but no one who resents you.”

I lightly tapped the forehead that still had some residual fever with my palm, telling him not to feel unnecessary guilt over Ryu Jaehee’s gloomy muttering as he couldn’t leave his bed today.

“You need to take medicine, so tell me if there’s anything you want for breakfast.”

“Yeah, hurry up and say it while that calorie ghost isn’t here. You can eat comfortably without worrying.”

Now that Seo Yehyeon had disappeared to the practice room was our chance. When I urged Ryu Jaehee, the guy who had been thinking for a moment slowly spoke.

“Ottogi mushroom soup. Was it cream soup? Anyway, when I was sick as a kid, they said Bonjuk from the neighborhood was expensive, so they always bought that soup from the mart and boiled it for me.”

There was no subject, but I could guess what the omitted subject was.

“So when I’m sick, that goes down much better than porridge. I guess it became a habit.”

No, he did say it was what he wanted to eat, but is this right…? Is it right to let him eat something that’s a product of bitter memories from the past?

In the midst of my confusion, I had a question after hearing Ryu Jaehee’s words and immediately asked.

“Then why on earth did you think of tteokbokki yesterday?”

Thinking about yesterday when I almost got branded as a cooking disaster again if it wasn’t for Seo Yehyeon rushing me, goosebumps rose all over my arms.

“Since I was sick, I kept thinking about Mom for some reason. Then my thoughts branched out to Hyung’s tteokbokki that I felt tasted similar to Mom’s tteokbokki. It was a stream of consciousness that happened because I was sick and out of it.”

Ryu Jaehee shrugged his shoulders, regaining his usual shamelessness.

But while only he who spoke seemed nonchalant, we who were listening became damn serious.

I mean, wouldn’t you be a psycho if you weren’t affected after hearing this?

“Eden, could you go buy some Ottogi cream soup and mushroom soup powder from the nearby mart? I’ll look up the recipe for making it most deliciously.”

“Yeah, I’ll leave covering those memories with good ones to you, Jun. My hands aren’t warmed up yet since it’s morning.”

I felt like I’d only end up giving Ryu Jaehee another intensely negative memory. It was more comfortable to leave this kind of thing to Gyeon Hajun.

Right now it’s morning, so there’s no Seo Yehyeon nagging from the side to hurry up and make it since we can’t eat anything after 8 PM, and soup ingredients just need soup powder and water or milk, so there’s no way to run short.

In other words, I had no excuse to fail at cooking.

I could only make the excuse that my hands weren’t warmed up yet and pass it off to Gyeon Hajun.

While roughly slipping my feet into slippers and leaving the dorm, trudging toward the nearby convenience store, I got a call from Jiwon Hyung.

-Hey, Eden. I watched the 【WAVE】 cover video well. Wow, you filmed it really stylishly, didn’t you?

After scratching my head at his playful exclamation, it was brief.

-Anyone could see it had professional touches in the composition and video aesthetics. Isn’t this timing exactly when you’d be entering music video filming after finishing recording and receiving choreography?

As expected of someone in the same industry, Jiwon Hyung knew all the schedules.

Thanks to that, my act of being a kind and thoughtful younger brother who made time to film a cover video with full preparation just for Yongcheol Hyung while being frantically busy with comeback preparations was ruined in front of this hyung.

“We filmed it after finishing the music video shoot while we were at it. Almost like leftover footage? But as expected, you watched it too, Hyung. I thought there was a 100% chance you’d watch it.”

-You’re not mistaken thinking I watched it because you covered it, are you?

At Jiwon Hyung’s giggling words, I asked playfully.

“Wasn’t it because I was in it?”

-That’s excessive self-consciousness, Eden.

“Then give me another reason I can accept? Right now, no matter how much I think about it, I’m the only reason.”

When I cheekily retorted, Jiwon Hyung let out a hollow laugh and replied.

-It’s because I’m the one who produced 【WAVE】. Are you convinced now?

Hmm, that was definitely a convincing reason. By the way, I became curious about how Jiwon Hyung came to handle Yongcheol Hyung’s regular album title track.

“Oh, the song definitely had a serious vibe to it. But how did you end up working together?”

-Yongcheol asked me through Wonbaek Hyung. He said the song he had selected as the title track seemed a bit weak. So I gave him a beat and produced it.

Wait, his closest younger brother is a producing genius right now, but he passed me over and asked Jiwon Hyung for a beat and producing?

-Don’t feel too hurt since Yongcheol said he couldn’t ask you because you seemed busy.

As if reading my thoughts, Jiwon Hyung added at perfect timing.

“I never felt hurt about it.”

-What do you mean, your voice is completely dripping with hurt feelings.

“If you misinterpret curiosity as hurt feelings, I’ll look too petty.”

When I grumbled, Jiwon Hyung burst into laughter.

-Anyway, thanks to you opening up the 【WAVE】 cover video trend, the song really took off and I felt proud for no reason. Now instead of beam screen backgrounds, filming with real ocean backgrounds is trending, right? So AJA is going to the ocean to film that.

“So even AJA ended up jumping on the trend.”

Seeing the trend develop from wave background screens to real oceans, I was relieved it wouldn’t die down quickly and would probably last at least a few more weeks.

Oh, if it keeps going at this rate, we might even hit number 1?

“You’ll have another reason to feel proud soon. This time our pre-release track is also a song you produced, Hyung.”

-After singing so much about how it’s a shame to make it a B-side track, it’s finally becoming a pre-release song.

“Ah, Hyung, I need to enter the convenience store soon. Do you have any other business?”

-Ah, the cover video aside, I called about the vocals for Seo Raon Noona’s duet song.

“Duet song?”

I searched through my now hazy memories to find Seo Raon’s song. Since every song she released was a hit, it wasn’t hard to remember.

Seo Raon’s duet song coming out around this time became quite famous as a long-running male-female vocal duet while simultaneously becoming known as Seo Raon’s male vocalist destruction song.

Despite collaborating on cover song collabs with so many renowned male vocalists, only exactly three male vocalists didn’t get overpowered or pushed back by Seo Raon’s vocals.

The audition-born solo singer who participated as the original male vocalist before my regression, a veteran R&B group singer famous for vocals, and Altair Cha Yeonho.

As for our group’s vocalists, well, at that time I was handling Seo Yehyeon and the lesser members among the lesser members, so I didn’t have a chance to sing cover songs with Seo Raon.

-Actually, Yeonho, ah, you know him right? Altair Cha Yeonho? Somehow Yeonho contacted me first saying he wanted to do a duet song with Seo Raon Noona, but I already had a vocalist I had my eye on, so I put it on hold.

Hmm, Gyeon Hajun?

-Was it your youngest member? The main vocalist?

It wasn’t.

I thought it would naturally be Gyeon Hajun since he’s an upgraded version of Cha Yeonho, but it wasn’t Gyeon Hajun – it was Ryu Jaehee. I guess vocal tone really is a matter of preference.

Well, Jiwon Hyung would point out Gyeon Hajun’s nasal quality when producing, but he never seemed to like it.

‘Ryu Jaehee would definitely not get overpowered and sing it better than the original before regression, right?’

Ryu Jaehee singing this duet song would be beneficial if anything – there was no way this could be harmful. Plus, Ryu Jaehee was a long-time fan of Seo Raon Sunbae.

He was so envious of the featuring I did before, so how happy would he be if he got to do not just featuring but a full duet?

And the most important reason.

I had absolutely no desire to graciously hand over such a good opportunity to Cha Yeonho.

The better Cha Yeonho does, the higher the probability that bastard will make me and our group more troublesome.

If only he hadn’t spouted nonsense about me leaving the team, I might have yielded… no, I wouldn’t have. That’s how it turned out, Yeonho.

Cha Yeonho was two or three years older than me, but even Seo Yehyeon can’t get me to truly call him hyung right now, so where does he get off.

-Listening to him while producing this time, that kid’s vocals are pretty good, you know? He follows the producing quite well too. Seo Raon Noona also readily agreed, so before contacting your agency, I wanted to call you first to ask if it’s okay.

I did worry that Cha Yeonho might throw a fit thinking I intentionally stole it, but honestly, I didn’t care.

If he’s upset, he should improve his skills more than our youngest member.

“I’ll go back to the dorm, ask our youngest member, and contact you right back. From what I can see, he’ll 100% say okay, but I should still ask.”

-Yeah, ask and contact me right away. I need to set up a rough schedule at least.

“Ah, by the way, when did Seo Raon Sunbae set her comeback date?”

Only after hearing that the music release date and timing wouldn’t overlap with ours did I feel relieved and hang up.

I could somewhat understand why Kim Junbeom praised connections so much. Still, my belief that skill is superior to connections remains unchanged, right?

I bought various types of Ottogi soup powder from the convenience store and returned to the dorm with steps light as if I could fly.

Gyeon Hajun, who received the bag containing five soup powder packs, asked in confusion.

“Why did you buy so many soup powders?”

“No, there were several types of soup. I didn’t know which was right, so I just swept them all up. You can boil and eat them instead of porridge whenever you’re sick.”

After replying to Gyeon Hajun, I loudly called for Ryu Jaehee.

“Hey, Youngest! This hyung brought some news that’ll cure your sickness completely!”

“The five soups you bought…? I just heard about that too.”

Ryu Jaehee slowly blinked as he came down the loft stairs.

“Not that, man. You’re going to sing a duet song with Seo Raon Sunbae.”

“Me…?”

Just 30 seconds after he pointed to himself with a sullen face and asked, I smiled contentedly watching Ryu Jaehee let out incomprehensible screams of joy and run around the dorm living room.

Wow, he’s already completely recovered.

* * *

-…so it’ll probably be difficult… next time we’ll do it together…

“It can’t be helped. If there’s a next opportunity like hyung said, please call me then. But who is that vocalist? I’m quite curious about the vocalist that hyung chose, giving up on me when you used to praise me so much.”

Cha Yeonho’s brow furrowed at the answer coming from the other end of the handset.

Cha Yeonho, who had finished the call with G1 without losing his smile until the very end, let out a sigh as soon as he lowered his cell phone from his ear.

Normally it would have been a bitter sneer, but the face of someone from that group mentioned by G1 reflexively came to mind, making it impossible for him to laugh.

‘Well, thanks to this I won’t need to come up with another plan.’

Cha Yeonho thought indifferently as he swallowed a painkiller to calm the headache that had now become chronic.

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