A Blank Slate Regression for the Idol That Lost His Original Mindset - Chapter 542

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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 Original Intent Episode 542

“The youngest member is the one going on stage, so why am I more nervous…”

Seo Yehyeon, sitting next to me, muttered while clasping his hands together as if praying.

I was about to scold him for being so nervous when he wasn’t even the one performing in the finals, but suddenly curious, I changed direction and asked a question.

“Hyung, were you this nervous during my DTB Final too?”

“No?”

I looked at Seo Yehyeon with great displeasure as he answered without a moment’s hesitation. That answer was absolutely full of sincerity.

“Please stop discriminating against non-youngest members. Oh, and stop the non-Gyeon Hajun discrimination and non-Kim Dobin discrimination too.”

“If it’s that much, isn’t it just Yoon Eden discrimination?”

I lowered my voice threateningly at Kim Dobin’s cheeky comment.

“Yoon Eden? Am I your friend?”

“Hey, it’s just a figure of speech, a figure of speech.”

In our early debut days, this guy would tremble in fear at anything I said, but now Kim Dobin had reached the level of smoothly deflecting and brushing off my words. Time really was fleeting.

The live broadcast filming began in earnest, and the MC came up on stage.

“The long-awaited finals of 【Voice Legacy】 begins now!”

Clap clap clap-! Thunderous applause echoed through the hall.

“The final results will be determined by combining votes from 100 audience members and real-time text voting. You can only vote for one person, so please choose carefully.”

Having watched Ryu Jaehee carefully select his final competition song and practice so diligently from right beside him, I really hoped Jaehee could win this time.

Last time he was eliminated in the 3rd round, but seeing him make it to the finals this time felt strange. If I had helped him back then, could Jaehee have made it to the finals?

Could Rev, which was Seo Yehyeon’s group at that time, have gotten a bit more attention?

“We can’t turn on our phones, so we can’t do text voting either, right?”

I whispered very quietly while looking at the judges sitting in front holding remotes. We were regular audience members, so we didn’t have voting rights.

I had contacted all my acquaintances telling them to watch 【Voice Legacy】 today and text vote for Yuje, but it was disappointing that my one vote couldn’t contribute to Ryu Jaehee’s victory.

The order was Noh Gangyeol Sunbaenim first and Ryu Jaehee second.

I was worried because if the first performance was too overwhelming, the second performance might get buried, and watching it might demoralize Ryu Jaehee.

A pre-recorded personal interview video of Noh Gangyeol Sunbaenim was broadcast on the screen.

[Noh Gangyeol: I’ve prepared our band’s signature song, 【All Things in Life】, as today’s competition song.]

[Noh Gangyeol: It’s a song with really deep meaning for me, no, for us. As those who know will know well, we had quite a long period of obscurity. The walls of reality were too high to live on passion for music alone. So everyone worked, and we’d gather after work at night to practice and even got noise complaints.(laughs)]

[Construction sites, package delivery, part-time jobs – there was nothing they hadn’t done during those days]

[But the moment came when they had to choose between music and livelihood…]

[Noh Gangyeol: Then my mother suddenly became ill, so (we had no choice but to) give up music… So before we disbanded the band, we decided to release just one last song, and that was 【All Things in Life】.]

[The song that introduced the long-obscure rock band ‘Red Cloud’ to the world]

[After that, ‘Red Cloud’ became a legend that left its mark on Korean music history]

[Noh Gangyeol: Thanks to this song, our band’s days of obscurity ended, and we didn’t have to give up music.]

[Noh Gangyeol: I’m going to revive that original intent and sing this song on stage after a long time.]

[The 【All Things in Life】 stage, which is no different from his life story, begins now…★]

This is trouble. The narrative behind the competition song is too strong.

Plus, the obscurity narrative overlaps with ours, but theirs is much harsher. Their obscure period was much longer too.

We didn’t have such a dramatic narrative. Our narrative of pushing 【One Chance】 as a follow-up song wasn’t touching at all.

By the finals, the competition song’s narrative accounts for half the impact rather than vocal ability, and it seemed difficult for Ryu Jaehee to beat that narrative.

Moreover, Red Cloud is a national band that even elderly people know, while we’re an idol group whose main fanbase is young people.

How could the few weeks of idol obscurity of some young kids whose names you’ve only heard of compare to the years of obscurity of a legendary national band everyone knows, who even did manual labor while threatened with their livelihood? I’d choose the former too.

If we had competed with our pre-regression narrative, it might have been somewhat comparable. If we had included Ryu Jaehee’s civil service exam preparation, we might have touched the toes of the manual labor narrative.

But now it’s not Rev that spent years as failed idols before rising through a reverse run, but Rev that climbed up very systematically from 【One Chance】 right after debut.

Moreover, having the competition song be his own band’s song was a huge merit. Especially considering that sunbaenim is the vocalist of that band.

Noh Gangyeol Sunbaenim on stage, holding the standing microphone and singing, seemed to have become one with the song, performing it perfectly. Showing without reservation what it means to have vocals that overwhelm even the band sound.

Unless Ryu Jaehee shows a stage that surpasses this, victory is out of reach. And that… looked quite difficult.

[All things in life aren’t like that]

As Noh Gangyeol Sunbaenim on stage finished the last verse, thunderous applause poured out along with cheers. I could occasionally see audience members taking out handkerchiefs to wipe their tears or wiping tears with their sleeves or hands.

“What do we do? I feel so discouraged. What about our youngest member?”

Seo Yehyeon whispered anxiously while tugging at my sleeve. He said he wasn’t even worried during the DTB Final. I was so annoyed that I just shrugged my shoulders and didn’t answer.

What do you mean what do we do. Ryu Jaehee will handle it well on his own.

I trusted Ryu Jaehee. Our youngest member who has a competitive spirit as disgustingly strong as mine, persistent, ambitious, good at reading public psychology, and smart.

Soon after, Ryu Jaehee’s pre-interview video was broadcast.

[Yuje: The competition song I’ll sing in today’s finals is 【Against the River, Embracing the Wind】.]

[Yuje: Since it’s the finals, I thought I should sing a meaningful song with a story, but this song doesn’t have that kind of story.(laughs)]

[Yuje: It doesn’t fit my vocal range, it’s not a singing style I’m confident in, and it’s not my main genre.]

[Yuje: However, it’s the song I’ve listened to most consistently and frequently from childhood until now. I could draw the sheet music with my eyes closed.]

[Yuje: That’s right. Since it’s the last time, I wanted to sing my favorite song.]

[The song that has held the #1 spot among Yuje’s favorite songs from childhood to present]

[Yuje: The lyrics about breaking through limits and moving toward the end have personally comforted me whenever things were difficult, and it also fits the finals narrative best. Personally, I prefer this kind of rough comfort over gentle consolation.]

[Yuje: I hope everyone watching this stage can also gain some comfort and strength from this song, from this stage.]

[The desire to share with others the comfort he received while savoring it alone…]

[Yuje: And I hope that I, singing this song, can also overcome my limits like the lyrics and safely reach the end.]

[Yuje’s 【Against the River, Embracing the Wind】 stage, offering somewhat rough and raw comfort, begins now!]

Rather than trying to compete with Noh Gangyeol Sunbaenim’s deep narrative with a clumsy story, Ryu Jaehee chose to reveal his own long history and deep affection for the competition song he selected. From my perspective, that was quite a wise choice.

On top of that, by mentioning that today’s chosen competition song doesn’t suit him in various ways, he also raised expectations about how he would handle such a song.

The song’s lyrics also fit well with the finals narrative of “challenge and overcoming.”

If Noh Gangyeol Sunbaenim created a stage to comfort his past self during difficult times, Ryu Jaehee differentiated himself by creating a stage where the listening audience could receive comfort.

He completely changed direction, creating an entirely different purpose so it wouldn’t feel like an imitation.

The competition song Ryu Jaehee chose, 【Against the River, Embracing the Wind】, was also a famous song that anyone would have heard at least once in their father’s car radio, so it didn’t fall behind Noh Gangyeol Sunbaenim’s competition song 【All Things in Life】 in recognition.

Then all that remained was the stage’s completeness.

Ryu Jaehee came up onto the dark stage where only a single beam of light fell. In the quiet silence where all the audience held their breath, Ryu Jaehee raised the microphone in his hand.

A short intro flowed out, and Ryu Jaehee’s refreshing first verse, which didn’t match the dark stage atmosphere, opened the curtain.

As the music intensified, the lighting gradually brightened as well. The stage that digested the modern rock genre in Ryu Jaehee’s own style while preserving the song’s original feel succeeded in making a deep impression with dramatic direction during the climactic high note section.

The song Ryu Jaehee chose had to be not just a competition song, but a cry proving himself at this moment.

And Ryu Jaehee very clearly proved the vocalist named Yuje with his favorite song.

[Against that endlessly flowing river today too

Embracing the current and wind that push me away]

The last verse delivered like a recitation.

As soon as Ryu Jaehee lowered his microphone, cheers no less than the previous stage erupted from all directions. The four of us also jumped up from our seats and applauded enthusiastically.

“Our youngest member is the best!”

Perhaps hearing Kim Dobin’s shout, Ryu Jaehee spotted us and waved while winking with one eye.

“Now, let’s begin voting. Judges, please press your buttons. And viewers currently watching, your one vote will determine the final winner!”

If you were watching on TV right now, the text voting method and time remaining until deadline would probably be displayed at the bottom of the screen.

Since there was nothing we could do, though we’re non-religious, we chose the prayer meta. Surely one of the heavenly gods, Buddha, God, etc. would listen.

“10 seconds until voting closes! Who will be your choice? 10, 9, 8…”

During the countdown, I could see Ryu Jaehee on stage clasping his hands tightly together just like us.

“Voting closed!”

While tallying after the voting deadline, brief comments from the two victory candidates and their impressions of each other’s stages were presented.

“I was very surprised watching Yuje’s stage. Is this really the kind of emotion a young person can produce? Even if he had been born 20 years earlier, this friend would have left his mark on the music industry in my generation, I thought.”

“No, I was the most nervous today. Not because it was the final round, but because Noh Gangyeol Sunbaenim’s stage was so, so perfect that I wondered if I could really present a performance that could compare to that stage… I felt that kind of pressure.”

A heartwarming scene unfolded as they exchanged compliments with each other. If Ryu Jaehee had been born 20 years earlier, he’d be like my uncle.

“All voting has been closed. Now the time for revealing the results has arrived. The result created by your precious votes—who will claim today’s glorious first place!”

Two streams of spotlights poured down over Noh Gangyeol Sunbaenim and Ryu Jaehee’s heads. Building up the tension to its peak, the MC shouted.

“The final winner of 【Voice Legacy】 is…!”

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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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