Debut or Die - Chapter 40

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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 40
I was somewhat taken aback.
Given Sun Ah-hyun’s temperament, I’d expected him to be huddled in a corner crying his eyes out, but his face showed far more composure than I anticipated.
How should I describe it? It was as if he’d actually gained some discipline.
He wasn’t even holding his smartphone.
When Sun Ah-hyun noticed I’d called him over but said nothing, he finally looked frightened and asked back.
“Why, why…?”
“No, well…”
There was no point in stirring up trouble. I trailed off and instead pulled a chocolate bar from my bag.
It was a learned behavior from the Cha Yu-jin incident.
“Want one?”
“Y-yes! Thank you…”
Sun Ah-hyun accepted the chocolate bar with both hands as if handling a sacred relic, then carefully tucked it into his own bag.
“…?”
Wasn’t he going to eat it?
Noticing my confusion, Sun Ah-hyun stammered awkwardly.
“I-I have to manage my weight… If m-my body gets heavier, my dancing gets weird. I c-can’t get used to late-night snacks.”
“Is that so?”
So dance majors really are different. I was about to accept this and move on when I suddenly spotted a contradiction.
“Didn’t you give me a chocolate bar past midnight during the ranking evaluation?”
“P-Park Moon-dae is different! Y-you were so thin back then…”
“…”
So there was this backstory.
As I was about to be exasperated, laughter came from the adjacent bed.
“Right, Park Moon-dae was seriously skinny back then—I thought he was managing his weight to the extreme.”
“But it’s just his constitution, right? Watching you eat… you don’t gain weight compared to how much you put away. If it were me, I’d have turned into a pig by now.”
Big Sae-jin and Gold 1 each chimed in. Unbelievable.
‘I was eating a lot because of my stamina, but I’ve been misunderstood all this time.’
Though it was frustrating, thanks to their nonsense, the atmosphere in the room seemed to loosen up a bit.
Sun Ah-hyun was laughing quietly below when his eyes met mine, cold and expressionless, and he startled, choking on his own saliva and coughing.
“…”
Quite the peculiar fellow.
Without a word, I tossed him the water bottle from the head of my bed.
After a few fumbling attempts, Sun Ah-hyun caught the bottle and drank from it.
Then he murmured quietly.
“I w-want to do well. Even more this time.”
“…Yeah.”
From that comment, it seemed Sun Ah-hyun had indeed checked the Internet opinions, but since he hadn’t examined them closely, he was maintaining his composure.
I deliberated for a moment, then broached the subject subtly.
“…Just don’t get caught up in unnecessary worry. Stick to research on the Internet and don’t look for anything else.”
“Ah….”
Sun Ah-hyun exhaled a wistful sigh, then suddenly straightened up with renewed determination.
“I, I already knew about it, s-so it’s fine. I, I was prepared.”
“Hm?”
‘What is he talking about?’
Sun Ah-hyun muttered sheepishly.
“I, I saw all those posts before filming started. K-kept searching and they just kept coming up….”
“….”
So that’s why he looked so haggard when we first met on filming day.
The public sentiment wasn’t nearly as bad back then, but that’s the Internet for you—all sorts of posts bubble up beneath the surface.
Sun Ah-hyun probably wasn’t very familiar with the Internet, so he ended up diving into everything without realizing how deep it went.
‘Just how far did he search?’
From the feel of it, he probably even checked those absolute cesspools of communities where people spend all day insulting idols.
Sun Ah-hyun continued rambling like he was making excuses.
“I, I figured something like this would happen eventually. I, I prepared myself mentally. It’s, it’s fine. I, I’m used to it.”
“Is that so.”
“Y, yes!”
Sun Ah-hyun nodded quickly, but something about his words unsettled me.
‘When he says he’s “used to it,” he’s probably talking about being mocked for his stutter.’
I’d suspected it before, but this guy had clearly been through hell in his peer relationships. Kids these days are terrifying.
I clicked my tongue inwardly.
“It won’t last long. Once you nail the Stage performance, it’ll all blow over.”
“R, really?”
“Yeah. It’s a survival show.”
Either you’re someone who genuinely deserves the hate, or it’s just armchair criticism from people stuck in their rooms. When reality sucks, people find entertainment in venting on the Internet. That’s all it is.
Once another celebrity becomes the hot topic, the masses will swarm over there instead.
I shrugged.
“Starting tomorrow, I could be the one getting hate.”
“Wh, no, that’s not it…! You didn’t do anything wrong….”
“Neither did you.”
“….”
As Sun Ah-hyun fell silent in confusion, Big Sae-jin answered in his place from beside him.
“So you’re basically telling Ah-hyun not to take the hate for granted, right? Wow~ Park Moon-dae, that’s so cool. If I were a viewer, I’d already be buying stock in you.”
“Yeah.”
“Wow. That doesn’t work anymore?”
Big Sae-jin laughed heartily while rolling around on the bed. Gold 1, who slept in the lower bunk, yelped in alarm but didn’t hold back on encouraging words for the team.
“Stop it, you crazy bastard, you’ll break the bed! …Yeah. Let’s just work hard. Let’s absolutely nail this Stage performance!”
“Let’s do it!”
The relentless effort to transform the situation into enthusiasm lifted the Bedroom atmosphere. A lively, harmonious energy was deliberately cultivated.
And Kim Rae-bin, who had been silent the whole time, murmured softly.
“Yes. In that sense, I found reference materials for costumes and patterns for props and organized them. Is it okay if I upload them to the group chat now…?”
“…Ah.”
“Oh.”
Right. That’s why I was checking my phone.
It seems he’d found everything long ago but couldn’t bring it up because of the atmosphere.
From Kim Rae-bin’s perspective, he’d endured all sorts of criticism during the first team competition, so the Internet sentiment right now would actually feel refreshing. There would have been no problems with the search itself.
“…Ahem, of course.”
“Yes. I’ll upload it.”
The moment Gold 1’s throat-clearing echoed through the bedroom, vibrations came through everyone’s phones.
I checked the materials Kim Rae-bin had uploaded.
[Color_Material_Pattern List Organization_Clothing Base.xlsx]
[Prop Pattern_Detail List Organization_No Base.xlsx]
When I clicked on them, the meticulous organization by category was far beyond ordinary skill. The Production Team probably hadn’t even expected this level of quality.
‘He’s got real talent.’
Everyone seemed to share the same thought, as exclamations and brief compliments were exchanged. Big Sae-jin even whistled.
“…Thank you.”
After Kim Rae-bin’s bashful thanks, the team members continued discussing costumes and Stage props until 3 AM.
The determination to create an excellent Stage somehow manifested itself in the action of “I’ll sleep when I’m dead.”
I had my status window, so I could manage, but these guys were truly impressive.

* * *
After spending another two days grinding through labor and practice from dawn to dawn, that damned mid-evaluation time came around again.
This time, the Stage director and music director, along with the costume team, sat down and evaluated together with the trainers.
As for my own self-evaluation, even thinking as objectively as possible, our team’s current direction was solid.
Still, I wasn’t particularly hopeful. We’d never received positive feedback during the mid-evaluations so far.
But this time’s result was… openly good.
“I really loved it.”
“Let’s keep going like this!”
The feedback started with those sentences.
Watching the smiling trainers and the impressed judges, the team members gradually grasped the situation.
First, the Choreographer Judge.
“Who choreographed this? You all did it together? No, there must be someone who led it. …Wait, did you all really do it together? …Alright. We’ll find out who did it on broadcast anyway. Either way, you did well, so I have nothing more to say.”
Next was vocal trainer Moody.
“I’m first of all so proud that your pitch doesn’t waver even while moving like that! And the way you sing differs from the original, matching your new interpretation—that’s really charming. Let’s keep this feeling all the way through the full performance!”
Even Young-rin offered rare, outright praise.
“I can tell this Stage involved considerable thought and practice, but you don’t present it in an amateurish way—that’s what’s most excellent. Even for a mid-evaluation, there’s already completeness to it. I can’t wait to see it on Stage.”
Up to this point, the team members had become “thank you” bots, spewing gratitude endlessly.
Amid a stream of such glowing reviews that someone could have shed tears of emotion without it being strange, even the director and costume team spared no praise.
“Looking at the designs you submitted, we immediately felt how much attention you paid to the details. From what you’re preparing now, I think it’ll look wonderful on Stage.”
“This team handled the arrangement very smoothly. You already have people who know a lot, and without any unnecessary talk among yourselves, you brought exactly what you wanted organized, so pulling the sound was enjoyable for us too. Seeing the Stage today, it’s really as impressive as we expected.”
“This team’s costumes entered production incredibly quickly. The concept was so clear that there weren’t many ambiguous parts. I really can’t wait to see you all perform on the Stage wearing the clothes we made~”
After this whirlwind of praise ended, my teammates’ faces were truly a sight to behold.
They were happy but seemed unable to process it, just nodding blankly with dazed expressions.
Even Big Sae-jin couldn’t deliver his closing remarks properly.
“Team, no, um… Thank you so much. We’ll work even harder!”
“Just don’t work so hard that you hurt yourselves!”
Clap clap clap. With the judges’ applause, we bowed as a group and returned to our seats.
My teammates, completely out of it, just reflexively reacted along with the crowd as the other teams performed. There was no separate audience to play to.
I was bewildered too.
‘Things are going this well?’
Having barely slept for days and poured everything into completing this, I couldn’t be certain how impressive it would actually look.
At best, I’d thought it would be ‘decent enough.’
‘…Either way, I feel good about it.’
I was elevated slightly by the sense of accomplishment.
I simply watched the other teams’ performances, savoring that achievement for a moment.
The mid-evaluation ended completely around midnight.
“That was so good.”
“Yeah.”
“Me too.”
My teammates murmured from the beds. Only after it was all over did they truly feel it, and their voices overflowed with a happiness we hadn’t heard before.
“I think we can really do this.”
“Y-yeah, that’s right.”
This pattern of agreement continued a few more times.
‘Are we just going to sleep like this?’
For the first time in a while, I’d be able to sleep more than four hours.
I quickly closed my eyes. But in that moment, work talk came up again.
“Oh, we never decided on the sleeve color for the costumes.”
“Oh, that’s right.”
These guys were relentless. I forced my eyes open. Damn it.
“I’ve got a few options saved. Just a second.”
The soft sound of Big Sae-jin tapping his smartphone screen echoed quietly.
“I saw this one…”
But the next words didn’t come. Big Sae-jin just froze, still holding his smartphone.
“What?”
“What’s wrong?”
Big Sae-jin’s face had gone completely pale as he stared at something on the screen.
In the dark Bedroom, the glowing smartphone screen was far enough away, but the colors were unmistakably visible.
‘It’s a gossip forum.’
Connected to a portal site, it was a notorious bulletin board infamous as a breeding ground for all manner of conflicts, rumors, and controversies.
Without saying anything more to Big Sae-jin, I accessed the forum on my own smartphone.
And even though it had been posted just thirty minutes ago, I saw a thread that had already climbed into the rankings.
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[3rd Place! Ajusa’s Big Sae-jin School Violence Exposé. (425)]
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It was a massive, glaring landmine.
‘Damn it.’
No wonder my luck had been running so well today.

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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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