Debut or Die - Chapter 41

—————

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

—————

A Fatal Illness if I Don’t Debut – Episode 41
In the idol industry, school violence is a scandal with absolutely no way out. The accumulated data from incidents that have erupted over the years proves it.
Especially once ostracism or physical violence makes the list, it’s over. I’ve never seen any method work other than withdrawal and military service.
But of all people, it had to blow up with a participant from the same team?
‘…Let me check first.’
I clicked on the post that had just been uploaded. More comments had accumulated in the meantime.
========================
[3rd Place! Ajusa Big Sae-jin School Violence Accusation (491)]
: I’ve been holding this in, but I feel like I’m dying, so I’m writing this.
Lee Sae-jin, a participant in Idol Stock Company who goes by the nickname Big Sae-jin, bullied people throughout her entire time at Cheongsol High School.
When I see posts online portraying her as a model student running for student council president in high school, I feel so wronged that I can’t sleep because of the tears.
Lee Sae-jin smoked and drank since middle school, and she bullied me while pretending to be kind and hanging out with a crowd that played around.
….
========================
The lengthy post that followed detailed Big Sae-jin’s subtle school violence history point by point.
The description of one-on-one harassment, complete with specific examples, was meticulous. Even as I skimmed it, I felt its persuasiveness.
‘This isn’t just some rumor written as bait.’
Whether true or not, it was posted with intent. There were even photos attached at the bottom.
The poster’s own high school graduation yearbook.
And a photo of Big Sae-jin with a cigarette between her fingers.
Below the photo was this additional text.
========================
[I have plenty of other photos. If you have any sense of the situation, withdraw now. I don’t care about anything else, but I absolutely can’t stand someone like you becoming an idol.]
========================
‘…Even if it’s not real, once a label sticks, it’s hard to remove. And they even posted photos.’
For an audition program, it was practically a death sentence. And it was a massive disaster for this team.
Whether Big Sae-jin held on or withdrew, either way was hell. We’d have to rearrange everything from part distribution to movements and practice all over again.
“….”
I held back a sigh and looked up.
‘Let me check first.’
“I just saw the post.”
“….”
A heavy silence fell.
Not even anyone asking what was wrong.
‘Looks like everyone else has seen it too.’
Big Sae-jin sat silently with her head bowed toward her phone screen.
“You’re sure that photo is you?”
“…I don’t know.”
Big Sae-jin muttered in a dazed voice.
“I’ve never had a photo like that taken….”
But I couldn’t give him a definitive denial.
I asked again.
“Did you smoke?”
“Wait, back in first year of high school… something happened. …But I quit right away. And I’ve never done anything like this. Really, why would I do something like this at school…?”
Big Sae-jin’s voice grew louder, then suddenly cut off as if he’d run out of breath. He lowered his gaze back to his smartphone.
‘He’s reading the comments.’
It was bound to be horrific regardless. Gold 1 sensed the situation and quickly intervened.
“Hey, don’t look at that. Just turn it off. Turn it off.”
“…I need to see it to respond. But… yeah, it’s already over.”
Big Sae-jin set down his smartphone. His hand trembled as he lowered it.
“Honestly, I wouldn’t believe myself either, right? I smoked, but I never took photos, and if I say everything except the smoking is a lie… it’s not convincing.”
As Big Sae-jin spoke, he gradually grew calmer. Or rather, not calmer so much as… resigned.
“…People won’t believe me, will they?”
“…”
With photos attached, it did seem difficult to overturn.
Separately, Big Sae-jin genuinely looked wronged. And the behavior described in the accusation post differed significantly from Big Sae-jin’s general pattern up to now.
‘Given his personality… I don’t think he’d bully someone in a way that leaves room for retaliation.’
He might subtly maneuver situations so the victim wouldn’t realize they were being bullied, making them suffer from their own doing.
But he wasn’t the type to use a method that could generate this kind of gossip.
However, this is just speculation. I haven’t known him long enough to make a definitive judgment. People have many sides to them, after all.
I’ve seen plenty of cases where someone is a terrible, stubborn boss to me but a dependable father to his own son.
“…”
I hesitated for a moment, then turned my smartphone screen back on. I began reading through Big Sae-jin’s accusation post carefully from the beginning.
Meanwhile, Big Sae-jin and his teammates began floundering in despair and sorrow.
Big Sae-jin muttered in a low voice.
“I’m… going to resign tomorrow.”
“…!!”
“Hey, wait.”
“C-c-calm down and th-think about it…”
“I’ve already thought about it enough. The smoking is a fact, and… if I keep holding on here, the controversy will only grow.”
Big Sae-jin seemed to be composing himself deliberately.
“After things die down a bit, if I explain myself well, couldn’t I debut a year later? And I really don’t remember taking any photos, so it’s scary too.”
“…”
With Big Sae-jin, who always maintained a sliver of composure, saying this much, the other teammates seemed unable to voice any objections.
I continued staring at my smartphone as I responded.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“…Why?”
“The person who wrote this post wrote ‘if you understand the situation, resign now.’ If you resign right now, that statement becomes established fact.”
Since I kept countering even though it wasn’t my own situation, Big Sae-jin seemed to be getting heated.
“Stop it. It just makes me feel worse. Even if I refute it in this situation, the result will be the same anyway.”
“Catching the right counterargument material is what matters.”
“What?”
I picked up my smartphone and turned the screen toward Big Sae-jin.
The screen displayed an enlarged version of the final photo included in the accusation post.
“This is a composite.”
“…!!”
His eyes looked ready to pop out of his head. Could he stop being so shocked for once?
If he’d thought about it calmly from the start, he probably would have suspected it was a composite himself, but fear had prevented that.
I handed my smartphone to Big Sae-jin and pointed with my index finger at the telltale part visible in the photo on the screen.
First, the hand holding the cigarette.
“Here—if you enlarge it with a design program and compare it, the pixels are slightly corrupted. They probably lowered the quality intentionally, but even so, several points give it away.”
And the cigarette itself.
“The cigarette’s brightness doesn’t match. Given this photo’s exposure level, it should be brighter than this, but it looks too white, so they lowered it further during the adjustment process.”
It was a rookie mistake people made when inserting white objects into photos. White stands out, sure, but when it looks unnatural, people just blur it out.
My smartphone’s performance was so poor that it did lag somewhat, but it had no problem with this kind of verification.
‘…I never thought I’d benefit from that data correction work.’
I briefly recalled the past, when I received extra money and listened to requests like ‘Please remove that damn pattern from my clothes.’
“How did you figure this out? Are you sure?”
“Yeah.”
Big Sae-jin stared silently at the smartphone.
Just as I thought I saw a glimmer of hope flash across his eyes, Gold 1 let out a shout.
“Hey!! Then post a clarification right now! Say it’s a composite!”
“Ah, yes… We should post it….”
“No, wait.”
He seemed unfamiliar with how the Internet worked, probably because he’d been doing well in the real world. I explained calmly.
“I figured it out, so some of your fans definitely noticed it’s a composite too.”
“Ah!”
“So, if we just wait, the fans will….”
“No, what I mean is… even if there are points suggesting it’s a composite, they’ll find it fun to curse you out, so they won’t believe it. They’ll sneer that you’re just claiming that because you like Big Sae-jin.”
“…I see.”
I needed to add clarification before the mood in the room completely fell apart.
“So find it.”
“What?”
“The original photo. If you post it together with the original, they won’t be able to refute the claim that it’s a composite.”
The fact that Big Sae-jin in the photo was staring directly at the lens meant he already knew the camera existed.
That meant someone among his acquaintances likely took it.
‘But contacting all my acquaintances in this situation would be risky.’
One of them might have posted it.
‘Judging by how confidently the person who posted the accusation included the photo, they seem certain that very few people have the original….’
Wait, actually, that might be wrong because it would be easy to identify.
‘Hmm, if that’s not it….’
I fell into thought before asking Big Sae-jin.
“Do you save all the photos you take with other people?”
“The ones I’m in, yeah.”
“Then maybe… start by checking the album for days when you took a bunch of photos at some event or gathering.”
If Big Sae-jin had cropped himself from a group photo taken in multiples and changed the background, there would be no way to find the original—I could afford to feel smug about that much.
“Moon Dae, what exactly were you doing before? Are you actually a National Intelligence Service agent?”
“That’s impossible.”
I quickly brushed past Gold 1’s nonsense.
The other team members had already clustered beside Big Sae-jin, their eyes gleaming as they searched through photos together.
“Look at group photos too, not just solo shots. They might have enlarged it.”
“Okay.”
Big Sae-jin, finally back to his usual tone, quickly opened his gallery on his smartphone.
And then came an eye-straining search.
This guy Big Sae-jin had taken so many photos. High school pictures seemed endless.
Half an hour had passed and we weren’t even done with first year yet.
“Sae-jin really… has a lot of friends.”
“…Haha.”
Sun Ah-hyun was so fed up he muttered this in an exasperated voice. Big Sae-jin let out an embarrassed laugh and flipped through photos rapidly.
And around the time second-year, first-semester photos appeared.
“Hyung, this one!”
“…!”
Kim Rae-bin tapped a photo that was about to be swiped past. Big Sae-jin quickly checked it.
It was a photo of five or six people standing together, smiling at the camera. Before and after this photo were several shots taken in the same place, just with different poses.
Big Sae-jin was standing slightly off to the side. And when I zoomed in on his upper body, it became clear.
It was the photo from the accusation post.
“…Phew.”
Big Sae-jin dropped his head and let out a long sigh of relief.
And he muttered in a strangely deflated voice.
“…It’s from the student council election campaign.”
“Hmm.”
Now that I thought about it, the accusation post did mention something about running for student council president at the beginning. Whoever it was must have really hated this.
‘Should’ve told him to search from this period first.’
But anyway, we found it, so that’s what matters.
“Whew….”
Big Sae-jin stretched backward as the tension drained from him. He nearly smacked his head against the wall behind the bed, but he clearly couldn’t care less about that now.
“Thank goodness it was in my photo album.”
“Right.”
I nodded in agreement.
Gold 1 spoke up energetically from beside us.
“Great! You have an agency, right? Send it to them! Tell them to file a rebuttal!”
It was sensible advice. Since the situation had already spiraled, it would be cleaner to respond officially with evidence and proper backing.
But the response that came back was lukewarm.
“To the agency?”
Big Sae-jin rubbed the back of his neck with an ambiguous expression.
“Well… that’s a bit…”
“…?”
That’s exactly what agencies were supposed to handle, so why the hesitation.

—————

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

—————