Debut or Die - Chapter 54

—————
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 54
While I was left speechless by the number ’27 locations,’ the advertisement verification expedition team steadily swelled their numbers.
“Are you going now? Then I want to go too. There are some overlapping spots here!”
“Since there’s a team spoiler prohibition clause, wouldn’t it be better if someone from another team went with us?”
“Cha Yu-jin?”
“Yes.”
“I’m fine with it. What about Park Moon-dae?”
“Sure.”
“Okay!”
The plan to quietly check things out and return quickly ended right there.
The unexpected part was that Sun Ah-hyun dropped out looking absolutely devastated.
“I… I’m going on a trip with my parents.”
“Really?”
If that’s the reason, it’s funny that I’d be alone at Sun Ah-hyun’s Apartment anyway.
“Ah, then maybe I should stay somewhere else.”
“No, no! Please stay!”
Sun Ah-hyun panicked.
“I’ll… I’ll give you the key.”
“Thanks.”
I couldn’t fathom what he was trusting me with by lending me his key. As I accepted it reluctantly, Sun Ah-hyun suddenly confessed.
“Actually… I was originally going to ask you to come with us…”
…
I couldn’t understand why he’d wanted to include Park Moon-dae in a family trip.
Did his parents even agree to it?
“…I appreciate the thought.”
“Mm.”
At this point, the advertisement tour with Kim Rae-bin seemed like the better option. I’d almost ended up traveling with the parents of someone I’d barely met.
“See you on filming day~”
Led by Big Sae-jin waving his hands enthusiastically, we saw Sun Ah-hyun off. The moment his car disappeared, Cha Yu-jin appeared.
“I’m so excited!”
Cha Yu-jin’s eyes gleamed as he shook his backpack. I already had a bad feeling about this.
‘There goes my day off.’
Let me pay my respects to my lost holiday.

* * *
First, I rejected the insane proposal to move using public transportation with this many people. We already had a track record of failure.
“We couldn’t even make it one station before having to run.”
“Right.”
Cha Yu-jin was disappointed but quickly recovered.
He seemed to enjoy traveling by taxi instead. I wasn’t sure why.
In any case, our first stop was Yeouido Station, the closest to the Filming Studio.
“Should we take the photo?”
This one went smoothly enough.
Only Kim Rae-bin and I were assigned to Yeouido Station, so we each took our photos without fuss and left immediately.
A couple of people seemed to notice when I removed my mask, but since it was a weekday morning at a station packed with office workers, no commotion erupted.
“Perfect!”
As I got back into the taxi with my excited companions, who looked like they’d just completed a covert mission, a sudden doubt crept in.
‘…Doesn’t this defeat the entire purpose?’
Without eyewitness accounts, how was this different from just viewing the billboard in person alone?
Even if it counted as verification, I couldn’t post the photos on the Internet.
‘Maybe I should leak it myself as if it were an eyewitness account.’
But this worry proved pointless.
Because chaos erupted starting at our very next destination: Express Bus Terminal Station.
“Eeeeek!!”
“Cha Yu-jin! Hey, it’s Cha Yu-jin!”
“Are those them? Ajusa?”
“They must’ve come to see the billboard. Wow….”
I heard all of this the moment we approached within three meters of the Express Bus Terminal Station billboard.
Naturally, none of us had even removed our masks.
Learning from our previous failure, everyone had pulled on hats or hoodies, yet I couldn’t fathom how they recognized us. My hair wasn’t even visible.
And then an enormous crowd began surging toward us.
I’m not exaggerating—people were literally running toward us from the underground shopping area.
‘This is… a nuisance.’
It was the perfect setup for an accident.
‘Let’s bolt.’
We exchanged glances and quickly fled the station. We didn’t get a photo, obviously.
‘This is pointless now no matter where we go.’
I’d barely caught my breath in the taxi when I noticed another taxi tailing us.
“That taxi’s following us, right?”
“The person in the passenger seat is holding a camera.”
With Kim Rae-bin’s confirmation, the taxi’s atmosphere grew heavy.
The taxi driver had joked, “You folks sure know how to have fun~” but fell silent once he sensed the serious mood.
‘We’re done for.’
And so the billboard tour crashed spectacularly from the very beginning.
After barely shaking off the pursuing car, we all accepted the current situation.
“…Let’s go separately.”
“Yeah.”
“Okay….”
“Let’s wear mascot costumes!”
“…??”
Cha Yu-jin shattered the quiet consensus with a sudden, out-of-nowhere suggestion.
“Mascot costumes?”
“Yes! They’re cute and people won’t recognize us!”
Big Sae-jin was the first to react to that.
“Wait… ah, there’s a rental shop in the Gangnam area.”
“Oh!”
“The price is reasonable too! We’d only need to spend 50,000 to 60,000 won per person.”
50,000 won wasn’t exactly pocket change.
But it was actually a decent idea. I sighed and added my thoughts.
“It’s fine to do it, but let’s each go to the advertisement viewing on our own.”
“Huh?”
“Why?!”
Kim Rae-bin answered Cha Yu-jin’s question with a gloomy tone.
“Well, if four mascot costumes are walking around, it’ll draw even more attention….”
“Ah.”
Everyone immediately understood.
“Then let’s at least go together to rent them. That’s fine, right?”
“Yes!”
“Okay. Driver! We’d like to go here….”
Big Sae-jin immediately changed the taxi’s destination.
In less than twenty minutes, we arrived at a party supplies rental shop tucked away in a corner of some shopping complex.
“I’ll take this one!”
The moment we arrived, Cha Yu-jin immediately grabbed a mascot costume and excitedly headed to the register. It looked like some kind of white tiger.
“Fast.”
“Let’s pick ours quickly too.”
Then an employee approached us with sparkling eyes.
“Um, would it be possible to get your autographs?”
“…Of course.”
After asking them not to post anything on the Internet today, we lined up and signed.
It felt incredibly awkward.
“I’ll take this one.”
After signing, we picked out our costumes with the employee’s help. Big Sae-jin chose a giant bear mascot suit, and Kim Rae-bin picked a rabbit costume next to him.
It was clearly a choice made with fan sentiment in mind.
‘If it’s like this, then I guess I’m stuck with whatever’s left.’
I reluctantly grabbed one of the mascot costumes.
The costume felt heavy—the first time I’d worn one since that part-time job five years ago.
‘This is going to be rough.’
Just thinking about walking around in this made my vision swim.
First… I should plan out a new route.

* * *
Park Moon-dae’s fan sites had plastered advertisements across public transportation to drive voting for the finals, following their initial voting campaign.
While they’d secured everything from wrapped buses to movie theaters, only the Subway advertisements had been implemented so far due to the tight schedule.
The woman who’d claimed the large digital billboard near Gangnam Station’s underground shopping area was no exception.
‘It turned out great!’
She’d extracted that shot of Park Moon-dae’s cheek-poking pose from the production press conference and had it made into an advertisement.
‘I’m glad I saved it.’
Meanwhile, at Jamsil Station, a full-body digital poster of Park Moon-dae in the hero suit from the second team battle was on display. She was planning to visit that one next.
‘I wanted to do one more.’
Looking at Sun Ah-hyun on the opposite billboard, she swallowed her disappointment.
She’d been eyeing that spot.
In fact, she’d seen a post a few days ago saying that Sun Ah-hyun’s fans had essentially rented out Ahyeon Station entirely, covering everything from the Subway safety doors to the exits with advertisements.
‘If they went that far, they can spare Gangnam.’
Since the fundraising had been sufficient and she still had personal funds left over to contribute, it made it all the more regrettable.
‘Either way, the colors came out well. It’s fine.’
She took one more photo of the billboard with her camera.
Just then, her friend who’d gone to buy coffee returned and called out to her in a voice full of laughter.
“Hey, look at that!”
“What?”
She turned her head toward where the coffee straw was pointing, and a yellow dog costume with perky ears came waddling toward the billboard.
‘A Welsh Corgi?’
As she stared blankly, she noticed a sketchbook in the costume’s hands.
[Park Moon-dae, debut]
“What is that!”
She burst out laughing and made room for the Welsh Corgi. A few people nearby who’d been watching the billboard were also laughing at the costume.
It seemed someone had chosen a yellow dog costume to match Park Moon-dae’s hair color and nickname.
The way the tall person moved the costume in that waddling manner looked surprisingly cute.
“Would you like me to take a photo for you?”
Her friend asked the Welsh Corgi, who was standing blankly in front of the billboard. The costume nodded and handed over its phone.
‘Ah, there really are so many fun people.’
She couldn’t suppress her smile as she spoke to the Welsh Corgi.
“Would it be okay if I took this photo and posted it? That’s a great idea!”
The Welsh Corgi nodded enthusiastically. She quickly took the photo and uploaded it to her fan account.
========================
[Came to check out the ad and ran into a fan wearing a Park Moon-dae costume! 😀 (photo) (photo)]
========================
Because it was content people would enjoy, shares and likes multiplied in an instant.
Meanwhile, the Corgi finished taking verification photos and got her phone back from her friend.
“Have a great day~”
The Corgi bowed politely to her and her friend, then waddled off down the street again.
She giggled along with her friend as they headed toward Line 2. They planned to grab lunch near Jamsil Station and check out the advertisements there as well.
After eating at a nearby restaurant and heading to a café for their second stop, they waited for their drinks when her friend smiled and showed her something.
“Look at this! Looks like the Corgi fan visited Jamsil too. The photo popped up again.”
“Wow, that’s impressive. That costume must be hard to move around in.”
Thinking Park Moon-dae would find it funny too, she smiled and checked the photos circulating on social media.
The Corgi had diligently visited different stations throughout the morning and lunch, taking verification shots at each one.
‘Did they come all the way to Seoul just for this?’
She’d seen fans like this before occasionally, so it wasn’t entirely unfamiliar. Though the costume idea was certainly creative.
As she scrolled through, she spotted the photos she’d taken earlier.
Then she noticed something and stopped.
The scene of her friend taking a photo of the Corgi.
“…Huh?”
“What’s wrong?”
She asked her friend in a trembling voice.
“When you… took that photo of the Corgi earlier.”
“Yeah?”
“Did you… by any chance… check the phone?”
Her friend tilted her head in confusion.
“What… it’s just a smartphone. It looked pretty old… and didn’t have a case… wait, hold on.”
Her friend trailed off as realization dawned on her.
She didn’t even wait to hear the rest, frantically pulling up Park Moon-dae’s PR video.
‘That model.’
Then she checked her own photo again.
The phone in her friend’s hand that the Corgi was holding… looked exactly like the one in the PR video.
Goosebumps erupted down her spine.
“No, no, no, no…”
“…Really? Really? Really?”
“I mean, this is, how…”
As she and her friend stammered, unable to complete their sentences over their unbelievable suspicion, a new notification arrived on her smartphone.
========================
[Crazy, crazy, crazy, yellow dog mask, Moon Dae-im, fuck, he took off his mask just now ahhhhh (shaken photo) (photo of Moon Dae taking off his mask)]
========================
Attached to the post was a photo of Park Moon-dae’s upper body in front of the Sinchon Station digital billboard, sweaty and smiling as he removed the mask.
It was definitely the same costume they’d seen that morning.
“….”
The two of us sat in silence, mouths agape, waiting for our drinks to arrive.
Then the Americano came.
“Enjoy your beverage.”
“….”
Only then did I plunge the ice water down my throat, my inner voice screaming.
‘I should have asked for a handshake!!’
I was clearly thrilled to have won the lottery and dying over Park Moon-dae, yet simultaneously devastated with regret—a bizarre, nauseating mixture of emotions.
“Let’s go to the fan sign event.”
“I’m definitely going.”
With the fan sign event as our promise, we both burned quietly with anticipation.

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