Debut or Die - Chapter 28

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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 28
Let me be honest.
If someone asked me whether “Burning Like the Sun” was a good song, I could answer that it was.
But if they asked whether it was a good song for an idol Stage performance, I’d want to tell them to drop it immediately.
This song had the typical lyrical style and sound of a 2000s rock band….
You can trust me on this. Every time I went to film idols I was producing, I heard this song.
It was just an upbeat band song that didn’t even suit cheerleader formations. One whose strength lay in its piercing high notes at that.
In conclusion… the arrangement difficulty was absurdly high.
“….”
Could I not draw a composition-related trait? I need one right now.
Regardless of my helpless feelings, the conversation between the original artist and the participants was hopeful.
The other team members seemed to only know one or two of the song’s addictive choruses.
“We haven’t been active for long, so we haven’t performed this song much. I’d be grateful if you all could make it shine this time.”
“We’ll do our absolute best to create a fantastic Stage!”
How exactly?
…No, stop stressing unnecessarily. I’ll consider this team match a pass as long as the editing doesn’t beat me up, and just preserve myself.
At this rate, I should be able to land a mid-sized Entertainment Agency and debut quickly enough.
‘Still, the Stage… I thought I knew how to pull off at least something decent.’
I felt oddly regretful. I didn’t even start this of my own volition, so I couldn’t understand why I’d come to care about the Stage.
‘I’d have nothing to say even if someone mocked me for being overly invested.’
“….”
…Still, it was fun.
Fine. Let me pay a bit of attention during the discussion and contribute. Maybe another participant will come up with a good idea.
The original artist left the Filming Studio shortly after. They said they’d watch the practice with a trainer during the mid-evaluation in a few days.
And then the team members gathered around, and finally the conversation about Stage composition began.

* * *
Ryu Chung-woo was the first to propose a concept—something like a model answer.
“A cheerleading concept would be the best, wouldn’t it? It suits the song, and we can incorporate some challenging choreography.”
“Cheerleading? Hmm… that could be good experience.”
“It seems decent.”
“Sounds fun.”
Cha Yu-jin and a few others chimed in with approval—the general sentiment was a cautious okay.
“What do you all think? Rae-bin, Moon-dae, Sae-jin?”
Ryu Chung-woo quickly scanned the team’s reactions and zeroed in on the three silent participants. Including me.
It’s always better to hold back on first impressions and choose your words carefully after gauging the situation.
So I’d naturally just glance toward where the other two were sitting.
“Let’s start by hearing Sae-jin’s thoughts?”
“…Cheerleading just seems like it would look tacky.”
She hit us with the truth right there.
Since Lee Sae-jin hadn’t received any malicious editing up to this point, her uncooperative attitude had rarely been highlighted on broadcast.
Just from searching Park Moon-dae online, Lee Sae-jin’s fans believed him to be a ‘shy, sensitive hard worker.’
But since Ryu Chung-woo was the kind of person who received excellent editing, Lee Sae-jin might actually get torn apart by the editors this time.
In any case, Ryu Chung-woo didn’t seem particularly shaken. He simply asked calmly.
“Any other opinions then?”
“Since there aren’t any, I didn’t really want to say anything…”
“Hmm, okay. Got it.”
Ryu Chung-woo immediately turned to Kim Rae-bin with the same question.
“What do you think, Rae-bin?”
“Since I’m not familiar with this song yet, I think I need to hear it first.”
“Fair enough. Let’s play it then.”
I activated the provided smart pad, and the song began with a classic drum intro, flowing into a chorus melody played on electric guitar.
“…”
After everyone listened to the entire song in silence, Kim Rae-bin was the first to murmur, his face turning pale.
“This is…”
Finally, someone had recognized this song selection disaster.
The lyrics were a youth anthem that had been popular back in the day. To put it kindly, it was retro; to be blunt, it was dated.
Naturally, there was no distinctive concept like flower fairies or vampires, and it would be awkward to force one on.
And since it was originally written for one skilled vocalist to stand alone and sing, the chorus octave was brutally high—enough to shred your throat.
If we adjusted the octave? The song’s appeal would vanish entirely.
Because the song’s charm was rooted in the exhilarating piercing quality of those high notes.
“Hmm, the pitch is quite high. Did you notice any other difficulties?”
“…”
Kim Rae-bin drew in a breath as if about to pour out his thoughts, then glanced at the camera and closed his mouth.
After the last team competition aired and he got hammered with character controversy, he’d learned to be cautious.
“So… yes. The song is good, but I think it would be difficult to rearrange.”
“Is that so? The way you’re saying it makes it sound genuinely difficult.”
Ryu Chung-woo nodded readily. Kim Rae-bin’s broadcast had flopped during the first team competition, but he’d taken the lead on the arrangement and still produced a proper song, which seemed to be why.
‘He’d transformed a mass-produced late-2000s EDM track into a well-executed EDM trap by keeping only the sample beat.’
“So what about Park Moon-dae?”
Finally, it was my turn.
“I think there’s something I need to decide before the arrangement.”
“What’s that?”
“Part distribution.”
The song selection doesn’t show an answer? Then the focus shouldn’t be on what we do well.
It should be on what we don’t fail at.
I say with certainty—right now, I’m the only one in this team who can properly sing the chorus.
To pull it off immediately, you’d need vocals at A-minus or higher, and I’m the only one in this team with that.
‘But I can’t sing the entire chorus by myself.’
So we had to start by cutting the parts cleanly and practicing to avoid any off-key moments.
The arrangement can wait—nothing seems to work anyway, so let’s put that off for now.
This isn’t the time to paint the big picture. This is a crisis.
Explaining this as diplomatically as possible comes down to this.
“Since the song is difficult to sing, I think we should start practicing quickly first.”
“Part distribution… it’s certainly important.”
Ryu Chung-woo looked surprised.
“But that’s unexpected. Didn’t you say we should decide on the arrangement first in the last team competition?”
“Pardon?”
That wasn’t even aired on the broadcast—I had no idea how he knew.
“Oh, Big Sae-jin told me.”
“….”
‘When did Big Sae-jin talk to Ryu Chung-woo?’
He really wasn’t an ordinary guy.
“Rae-bin, since you handle arrangements the best, I’m asking you. What do you think of Park Moon-dae’s opinion?”
“…Yes. It’s fine. I’ll consider various options while we practice.”
Kim Rae-bin agreed readily, though his expression was like that of someone who’d just spotted an asteroid about to hit Earth tomorrow.
“Alright, we’ve heard everyone’s opinions, so let’s proceed by show of hands until we come up with something better.”
Ryu Chung-woo wasted no time and immediately organized the situation.
“First, hands up if you agree with proceeding with practice using a cheering squad concept.”
The majority raised their hands. I raised mine too, at least for now.
Ryu Chung-woo didn’t give Lee Sae-jin, who didn’t raise her hand, any special attention and moved straight to the next item.
“Then, hands up if it’s okay to do part distribution first.”
Fortunately, that passed by majority as well. Seeing that even Lee Sae-jin raised her hand, my explanation must have made some sense.
Lee Sae-jin lowered her hand right before our eyes could meet and avoided my gaze.
“….”
Was she trying to show that she agreed with the opinion, not with me? Really?
“Alright. Let’s start with distributing the parts.”
The part distribution seemed to proceed methodically at first, but we soon hit the anticipated obstacle.
“I don’t think I can handle this part.”
“Yeah, me neither…”
“This key is way too high.”
The chorus’s high-note melody appeared four times, taking up roughly half the song.
Yet every team member except Park Moon-dae either failed when attempting it or grabbed their throat with an awkward expression.
One member with decent vocal skills—rated B+ in singing ability—grew anxious about pitch deviation, and eventually voiced ‘that’ opinion.
“I think it would be better to rearrange it and lower the key first. Since we have two members who rap anyway, what if we added some rap sections?”
They were talking about rearranging from scratch. Damn it.
“Lowering the key…”
Kim Rae-bin’s expression darkened. His already poor impression became even worse.
But the tide had already turned against him.
“I think lowering it is the right call.”
“I agree.”
“Hmm, well, the team members do need to be able to handle it. What if we lower the key and rearrange it to match that?”
Kim Rae-bin glanced around, then eventually nodded.
“Yes… We’ll proceed with that then.”
It was clear he was conceding preemptively, worried that refusing would get him torn apart in editing.
In the end, the rearrangement proceeded with all these inconsistent opinions reflected—’lowering the key,’ ‘adding rap sections,’ and ‘accompaniment fitting the cheerleader concept.’
When people without musical sense speak loudly, this is how smoothly things fall apart, I thought.
The Stage was already ruined.
I didn’t bother objecting throughout this entire process. Either way, I was outnumbered.
Even if I got lucky and triggered 【That Actually Makes Sense】, without a proper alternative, I’d just come across as a complainer.
And if someone started saying things like, “You can sing it fine, so you just want to keep it as is?” there was no winning.
I already came across as unsociable on broadcast—I couldn’t afford to look selfish too.
So what I really needed was an outside person to honestly tell us this was terribly bad.
‘In the end, is endurance the answer?’
The mid-evaluation, where they’d only assess the first verse, was four days away. If the judges had ears, someone would point out what was wrong.
Until then, I’d have to come up with some kind of alternative.
“Now let’s create the choreography!”
But the choreography Cha Yu-jin created that day with that shout was movement with difficulty on par with 【Me Myself】—absurdly complex.
As a result, I had to resist the urge to dump my remaining stat points into dancing and forget about alternatives.
Those four days melted away my stamina.
And finally, we entered the mid-evaluation.

* * *
“This team’s ranking is quite impressive~”
“Rae-bin has sharpened his blade!”
“Everyone performed well at the ranking announcement ceremony.”
The judges spoke of rankings first and foremost.
The Production Team must have asked them to mention it beforehand, but regardless, it was fact and would serve as a point of reference.
“Oh, you already have a demo track?”
“Yes!”
It was thanks to Kim Rae-bin having worked directly with the arranger.
“Excellent~”
“Right. This team is the only one! They’re already performing their own arrangement instead of the original.”
“Truly a team of capable people!”
The judges seemed satisfied from the start.
However.
“Hmm….”
Once the Stage performance ended, the reaction turned lukewarm.
The judges, who had been exchanging glances with shrugged shoulders, eventually picked up their microphones one by one.
“Actually, your Stage itself doesn’t feel particularly bad, you know? But it lacks charm.”
“Right. The choreography is well-structured. There’s some wit to it. Um, the cheering squad concept… well, it should naturally match the song, but why does it feel so dreary?”
“The rap insertion feels too abrupt. You modified the original quite a bit, but it feels inferior to the original.”
As the judges’ feedback accumulated, the problems became more concrete.
Finally, when judge Young-rin picked up the microphone last, she asked.
“Who did the arrangement?”
I deliberately didn’t look at Kim Rae-bin. The problem was with whoever spoke, not him.
But looking around, everyone else was staring at Kim Rae-bin, so it didn’t matter much.
“We all discussed it together and did it as a team.”
Ryu Chung-woo quickly grasped the situation and shifted it to collective responsibility. As the leader, he seemed about to neutralize it by saying he had guided the team poorly.
A reasonable judgment.
But there’s always a troll somewhere.
“Yes. And… Rae-bin handled the arrangement work.”
Was he really going to throw someone under the bus like this?
‘Is he insane?’
Making such a stupid move while the cameras are rolling?
Looking at him, his face showed panic—apparently he’d reflexively named someone else out of fear after receiving harsh criticism.
‘Damn it….’
If this went wrong, it could be edited into a bullying incident.
Worried it might spiral out of control, I opened my mouth.

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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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