Debut or Die - Chapter 106

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

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A Fatal Illness if I Don’t Debut – Episode 106
Bae Sae-jin’s name change garnered moderate attention and passed without incident.
Since only his surname had changed and the new name was one of the nicknames we’d been using to distinguish him from Big Sae-jin, there was hardly any sense of dissonance.
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[Wow, Testa’s Bae Sae-jin actually changed his name to Bae Sae-jin]
: His mom’s surname is Bae lolol He changed his name out of respect since his mother raised him alone, and it’s hilarious that a nickname became his actual name lol (article link)
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-Wait, is this real? lol
-That’s interesting lol
-Filial piety we never imagined
└lolololol
-I mean, there are personal family circumstances, but Testa has two Lee Sae-jins so it was confusing anyway. You can’t keep adding letters to the alphabet lol
-lol Fans won’t get confused, that’s nice
However, the fans themselves weren’t entirely pleased.
Bae Sae-jin wasn’t so much a pet name fans called him, but rather a nickname that had settled after spreading from Ajusa viewers sarcastically asking if he was an “actor,” and it had stuck.
As time passed, the negative connotation had largely faded, but fans who remembered the original context couldn’t help but feel conflicted.
However, after reading the full article, a subtle atmosphere formed among fans to accept this name change positively.
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According to T1 Stars Entertainment, Bae Sae-jin stated: “We’re aware that the new name overlaps with an existing nickname. It’s a curious coincidence, and we’d like to accept it as an opportunity. We hope this nickname can feel fresh and new to our fans.”
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You could feel Bae Sae-jin’s determination to face this head-on.
-Bae Sae-jin’s name is like a gift from his mother, and that’s the official story going forward
-I never used that nickname because I was worried Sae-jin might get hurt. But he’s saying it’s okay for him to use it…
-There are a lot of people who cheated on his father, but our Bae Se is a completely dutiful son. He is a dutiful son to his mother and a dutiful son to his fans.
-Hmm, it was bold to suggest changing the younger Sae-jin’s name to that specific nickname, but reading the full statement, it makes sense. Sae-jin seems like a much stronger person than I thought.
Within Testa’s fanbase rather than Bae Sae-jin’s personal fanbase, people simply said “good, no more confusion, that’s cute” and moved on.
Since the general atmosphere was already to refer to the Lee Sae-jins by their real names to avoid confusion, there wasn’t much resistance.
However, Big Sae-jin’s malicious fan accounts did stir up briefly.
-Ah, finally Lee Sae-jin got his name back. It was annoying having to search for just the nickname when there’s a perfectly good name, so thank goodness
-My kid’s got quick instincts and I got pissed seeing him make up nicknames to cater to someone’s mood, but ‘that person’ is even managing his image while changing his name. Wow, what a move ^^
-Instead of framing our kid with political schemes, shouldn’t ‘that person’ be looking at himself?
But this reaction too only rippled briefly beneath the surface before subsiding.
Thus, as Testa and the company wished, the name change settled naturally into the public consciousness as if it had always been that way.
And around the time Bae Sae-jin’s name change was no longer breaking news.
The comeback date drew near.

* * *
“Finally.”
After two sleepless nights in the lab, the graduate student stumbled through the entrance, unsteady on her feet. Her dog was napping contentedly in the Living Room.
But she couldn’t rest.
‘I have to watch the Testa music video.’
Despite it being released at midnight yesterday, she still hadn’t seen it.
All she knew was the teaser she’d watched last time.
Even that was just short clips similar to the concept photos strung together to a single melody—nothing substantial or revealing.
So she was absolutely dying to see the music video, but…
Since she was already late anyway, she’d gritted her teeth and rushed home determined to watch it on a bigger screen.
The graduate student washed her face with cold water and immediately sat down at her computer. Her heart pounding, she opened YouTube.
Without needing to search, the title she’d been waiting for appeared right at the top of the trending tab.
[TeSTAR ‘Airplane’ Official MV]
“…Ahh!!”
Finally she could watch it. Finally!! She didn’t even glance at the thumbnail—she clicked straight into the music video.
The first thing that appeared was a white school Corridor stretching across a blue sky.
The fantastical image, as if plucked from abstract art, oddly reminded her of their previous magical boy concept.
But before she could properly examine it, the scene abruptly cut to a pitch-black Corridor from the same angle.
‘What?’
Water dripped steadily from all sides of the dark Corridor. Graffiti drawn in glow-in-the-dark paint and flickering emergency lights warped and glimmered strangely in the flowing water.
And in that moment, someone appeared from the end of the Corridor.
“…!”
A dark silhouette staggered forward urgently, bracing against the wall.
The instant she thought she recognized who it was.
The dark figure’s outstretched palm suddenly covered the camera.
[…]
The screen went black. And then…
An acoustic guitar began to play.
“…?!”
A sound she hadn’t anticipated at all—hauntingly pure and wistful.
And the palm withdrew from the screen.
A brilliant blue sky filled with white clouds. Beneath it stood an old school.
Yet it didn’t look decrepit. The small school nestled between mountains and trees, framed like a painting, looked like something from a coming-of-age novel.
And the next moment.
A boy stood in front of the school’s entrance.
[…]
The boy’s back seemed to hesitate for a moment, then he grasped the door handle.
As the door slowly began to open.
A clear, fresh voice began to sing.
-My heart is fluttering
I want to send it somewhere far away
Every last bit of it
-Open the window now
I’ll send it flying into the sky
The paper airplane I folded today
The boy rushed through the open door into the Corridor. The camera panned slightly to the side, revealing his profile.
It was Park Moon-dae.
At that moment, a crisp drum sound rang out.
Tang Tang! Drdrdrdrdr!
Over it, band sounds and violin melodies layered richly, filling the ears.
Though the classical instruments and sounds seemed like they belonged to the early 2000s, the rhythmic arrangement and synthesizer details gave it a modern touch, capturing retro sensibility without any sense of tackiness.
Meanwhile, the boy who had reached the door at the end of the Corridor burst it open.
Bang!
Beyond the open door was a Dormitory room.
The boys who had been playing around widened their eyes and turned to look at the camera.
[…?]
And the video had completely transformed into a youth story.
Testa’s daily life unfolded—attending classes at a small Rural School, enjoying their youth.
Whenever the school area they occupied changed, dance cuts were inserted. Even the desks pushed awkwardly into corners, as if the students had moved them themselves, added to the atmosphere.
‘Goodness.’
The graduate student’s heart was already pierced by this music video that blended youth and nostalgia so poignantly, but this wasn’t the end.
As the second verse began, new cuts started mixing in.
Testa began encountering specific situations and props throughout the school and forest, experiencing subtle supernatural phenomena.
For instance, the moment Sun Ah-hyun turned on the water at the Sports Field faucet, instead of water, shimmering soap bubbles poured out.
“Wow….”
She gasped reflexively.
The glittering bubbles drifting on the wind circling around Sun Ah-hyun was truly a spectacular shot….
After that, most of the members discovering the abilities they had shown in “Magical Boy” for the first time was depicted without being too obvious.
‘What about Moon-dae?’
Worried that he might have appeared in the opening and been skipped, Moon-dae’s ability appeared on screen.
The moment Moon-dae, trying to follow his friends leaving the Music Room after class, grasped the doorknob, a mysterious pattern flickered across it in a vision.
And the door locked.
‘Gasp.’
As the graduate student stifled a scream, the music video rushed toward its climax.
The seven boys planned to use their abilities to sneak out of school during curfew and have fun.
So in the middle of the night, filled with stars.
A playful escape began.
When Big Sae-jin closed his eyes and confirmed the Corridor outside was clear, Cha Yu-jin frantically wound up a small bear toy decoration to human size and covered it with a blanket.
However, Kim Rae-bin carefully tried to open the window with a compass, but ended up making a round, pretty hole in the window and turned to his friends with an awkward expression.
In any case, after various twists and turns, the boys ultimately succeeded in sneaking out of the school building.
The final chorus flowed out.
-I’ll let you go without holding on
Joy too
And longing
When they well up again
I’ll create and send them once more
An Airplane toward you
-Airplane
As the drop kicked in with contemporary electronic instruments, a group choreography shot appeared against a backdrop of a starlit field.
And the moment that dazzling choreography came to a halt.
The members stopped dancing and began running through the field. The storyline continued seamlessly in one unbroken take.
[Hahahaha!]
The moment the boys’ laughter was layered over the backing track, the drums dropped out.
The bridge was reinterpreted, gently bringing the song to its close.
-Far away, fly high
My heart soaring away
Beyond the Milky Way
I wish to become a shining star
Ryu Chung-woo laughed and fired a toy gun toward the sky.
With a crisp burst, the bullets exploded like fireworks, light scattering across the night sky.
-Hands clasped, pray again
To draw closer to you
Beyond our line
I want our hands to touch
The boys laughed and dashed out into the field.
The camera held their receding figures on screen for quite some time.
‘Ah… that was good.’
She felt the tension drain from her body as her fingers tapped weakly against the keyboard—a gesture born of exhaustion despite her overwhelming satisfaction.
But the video was not yet finished.
The moment the music ended, the screen suddenly turned black.
“…?”
The black screen was… a classroom window in the dead of night. Yet beyond the glass lay nothing but pitch darkness—no city lights, no stars—creating an eerie sense of wrongness.
And then, suddenly, light flashed across the curtain.
“…!”
The luminescent graffiti she’d seen at the start of the video filled the curtain densely.
Thanks to that eerie glow, In-young finally came into view, hunched over by the window.
It was a composition familiar to any Testa fan.
‘…The magical girl teaser!’
The composition was identical.
…But this time, no magic happened at all.
[….]
The video ended just like that.
“…Phew!”
The graduate student exhaled a long breath.
‘The cliffhanger at the end… no, before I even think about that… it was so good…!’
The song was excellent, the choreography was excellent, and even the costumes were perfect!
Only the physical exhaustion prevented her from fully articulating her impressions in her mind—they just floated around as vague feelings.
‘This is when I should look at what other people are saying…!’
That way, she didn’t have to think hard and could just empathize with their enthusiasm. Excited, she scrolled down to the comments section.
“….”
And she froze when she saw the screen filled with English.
It was YouTube’s policy to prioritize English comments at the top.
There was barely a single Korean comment visible among them.
-Looking for Koreans. Love Testa! (laughing-crying emoticon)
“….”
The graduate student made a decision to create an SNS account.

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

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