I’m Debuting With The Bias I Killed - Chapter 53

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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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Episode 53
“Honestly, I never imagined I’d actually end up dancing in my life.”
“Really?”
The simultaneous reactions drew a short laugh from me.
“What do you mean? You all saw how I danced in the first class.”
“Man, we’ll never forget that—”
“That felt like a past life, honestly.”
Everyone nodded with a smile. Everyone except Kang I-yul.
Something had occurred to him; his expression had gone rigid.
“The truth is, before I joined the company, I really hated dancing.”
“Why?”
“Because of my sister, what else.”
Everyone’s face immediately registered understanding.
“She could dance well even as a kid. It was just natural talent.”
I stared absently at the lyric sheet.
“I wasn’t like that.”
The mood had grown quiet.
“But she kept dragging me up onto the stage.”
I mimicked the moment with a gesture.
“Come on, get up here— like that.”
Of course, this was a heavily sanitized version.
In reality, Yu Seong-ah had clenched her fist and sworn she’d kill me if I didn’t come up.
Song Woo-ju burst out laughing.
“I actually cried on stage once. Cried hard.”
“Seriously?”
“Yeah. My sister still teases me about it.”
“Is there a video of you in that footage?”
‘A video?’
I hadn’t simply regressed—my age had been recalibrated. So the event where I performed a talent show stage with Yu Seong-ah, exactly as it had happened before the regression, shouldn’t exist anymore.
Yet there was supposedly a video of me and Yu Seong-ah dancing together?
“What video?”
“From the Yooz Region Festival, sir.”
Suspicion gnawed at me, so I searched YouTube for “Yooz Region Festival.” And my vision went dizzy.
Whether it was the seven-year age gap or not, Yu Seong-ah was wearing a school uniform. Beside her, I was dancing mechanically, my face streaked with tears, indistinguishable from the pre-regression footage.
‘So I’m destined to suffer forever….’
The team members watched the video with fascination. Embarrassment made me scratch my head.
“The thing I heard most back then was: ‘Your sister does it so well—why are you like this?'”
The mood shifted slightly. Everyone seemed to recall their own memories.
“You know, those kinds of comments. They just wear you down.”
One by one, heads nodded.
Anyone with a sibling had probably felt that way at least once.
Kwon Ki-hyun, who had been quiet, spoke up first.
“……My brother is really good at studying.”
From the opening sentence alone, I could predict where this was going.
“So I was always being compared to him.”
A bitter laugh rippled through the group.
“He’s always coming home with first place, and I’m just stuck practicing…….”
His voice trailed off.
“Oh, I know exactly what that’s like.”
“Yeah.”
Once someone started, the words they’d been holding back spilled out.
“Holiday gatherings are the worst.”
“When relatives get together, it’s seriously stressful.”
“They ask when you’re going to be on TV—”
“They asked me when I was going to get my act together.”
I didn’t join in deliberately.
“Man, that’s rough.”
I just offered my support here and there.
As the conversation continued, Kang I-yul, who had been quietly listening in the corner, finally spoke.
“Actually, my situation’s kind of the opposite of yours…….”
My gaze drifted naturally in that direction. Kang I-yul, who had been worrying at his lips, continued.
“I was scared of having so many expectations placed on me.”
……
“……Of course I’ll debut this time.”
His fingernail scraped slowly across his knuckle—an old habit.
“I’m going to make it this time.”
A bitter smile crossed his face.
“But every time it slips away right in front of me…”
The Practice Room fell silent. For a long moment, no one spoke, but no one rushed him either.
“Like I just want to disappear somewhere?”
This was the first time I’d heard him say it like that.
Before the regression, Kang I-yul had been called “the icon of misfortune.” The insult I’d hated most—the one they called him—was “Byul,” a portmanteau of the word for “misfortune” and his name “I-yul.”
‘I still remember all the hate comments.’
—Honestly, didn’t this activity fail because Byul was slapped into the Center?
└I work at Nix Entertainment and yeah, that’s right
—You know that? All the agencies Byul was in either shut down or went under?
└What are you talking about? Only the very first place fell apart because the CEO got caught up in a gambling scandal—the whole agency dissolved. Stop spreading fake news like it’s real;;;
—Byul fans need to be quiet. You just speak loud and deny everything;;;
—No matter how much you deny it, every group with Byul has failed and every group that cut ties with Byul succeeded ㅇㅇ
He was so infamous for being unlucky that eventually people even said Impacter’s collapse was because Kang I-yul had been selected. And it was true—the two teams that eliminated him from debut consideration both became famous idols.
It was absurd.
But when you hear that kind of talk over and over, it starts to feel like the truth.
Kang I-yul spoke again.
“That’s why I think this is really my last chance.”
Silence hung for a moment. No one tried to brush it aside lightly.
What could anyone say to a boy of eighteen who was already talking about his last chance?
“I’m sorry.”
Kang I-yul laughed awkwardly.
“I feel like I’ve just made the mood heavy—”
I shook my head.
“That’s exactly it.”
“What is?”
“What you just said.”
Kang I-yul looked at me.
“That’s your real story right there.”
I handed out fresh sheets of paper, one to each of us.
“Let’s try again. Write about anything you want—just write comfortably about your own story.”
“Can I really write anything?”
“Anything except like, ‘What should I eat for dinner tonight?'”
“Ah, come on! We’re not that bad, are we?”
Laughter rippled through. I-yul was laughing along now too.
I erased all the lyrics I’d written before and looked down at the blank page again.
‘What story should I write?’
I rolled my pen for a moment.
My sister was different from the beginning.
She knew what she loved, what she was good at—faster than anyone, without hesitation.
I wasn’t like that.
People used to say it.
“Seong-ah’s such a good dancer, you should try it too.”
“Seong-ah loves being in front of people, so you must too, right?”
The standard was always my sister.
That’s why I clung to my studies.
It was the only thing I could do better than her.
But not until I became a university student did I understand.
What I really loved, what I was really good at.
It wasn’t following someone else or being compared to them.
It was entirely my own.
‘So this was a kind of trainee life too.’
I adjusted my pen and began writing my own story.
* * *
While his teammates filled their blank pages, Kang I-yul was turning over what had just happened.
Caught up in the moment, he’d opened up about himself—far more than he usually did.
He wasn’t the type to talk about his own life.
He’d never had anything worth bragging about, and besides, he hated being pitied.
Everyone who heard his story said the same thing, without fail.
“How hard that must have been for you.”
“You’ve suffered so much for someone so young.”
He understood the kindness behind it.
But the moment he heard those words, everything he’d endured felt reduced to nothing but a pitiful past.
So he’d learned not to speak of it.
He’d affect indifference, and laugh before anyone could ask.
Yet today, for some reason, the words had come naturally.
It was because Yu Seong-woo hadn’t looked at him that way.
“But that’s your real story.”
That single sentence kept turning over in his mind.
He hadn’t called it pitiful. Hadn’t called it remarkable.
Just—your story.
The fact stayed with him, strange and bright.
“I-yul, how’s it going? Getting anything down?”
Instinctively, Kang I-yul covered the page with his palm. The still-blank sheet embarrassed him.
“I’m… still stuck.”
“Can’t blame you. Songwriting’s all new to you.”
“Yeah.”
Yu Seong-woo gazed into the empty air for a moment, thinking, before he spoke.
“What if you just wrote down whatever comes to mind?”
Kang I-yul laughed bitterly to himself. He’d already thought of that. He was about to nod passively at the unhelpful suggestion when—
“Or… is that the hard part?”
“Sorry?”
A brief silence fell. Misreading I-yul’s hesitation, Yu Seong-woo waved his hands in alarm.
“No, wait—I didn’t mean it like that.”
Even his bandaged arm flailed about nervously.
“I’m not saying you can’t do it. I’m genuinely asking.”
He stuttered like a broken machine, so flustered that I-yul found himself calming the other man instead.
“I didn’t misunderstand. And you’re right—that is the hard part.”
Only then did Yu Seong-woo’s eyes, which had been darting about in confusion, still.
“Maybe it’s because there’s something you don’t want to express lightly.”
“What?”
“You keep refining it because you’re afraid of being misunderstood.”
……
He’d struck the mark.
Countless sentences were already swirling in I-yul’s head.
But pick one, and it seemed too meager. Choose another, and it felt too desperate.
He kept editing, trying to make it less pathetic, a bit more composed.
In the end, rewriting and crossing out, he’d written nothing at all.
“But in my experience, the more you polish something, the more fake it becomes.”
……
“You start with something you really want to say, but the more you dress it up, the less of it’s yours—it’s just what you think people want to hear.”
In that moment, something cracked inside Kang I-yul’s chest. A hairline fracture appeared in the wall he’d built over so long.
……
“You end up looking for what you meant to say in the first place. But time passes, and you forget.”
Without thinking, Kang I-yul found himself nodding.
“And then you regret it.”
Those words struck his heart with strange force.
Every time a debut fell through, he’d spent entire nights wondering how to tell his parents, searching for the right words.
That it hadn’t worked out this time.
That they should wait a little longer.
How to say it so they wouldn’t be too disappointed, how to make sure they understood his sincerity—
But no matter how carefully he chose his words, the result was always the same.
“I’m sorry.”
Suddenly, that thought struck him.
Maybe all it took was that one simple phrase: ‘I’m not ready to give up yet.’
“Of course, there are some lines you’ll need to refine multiple times.”
Yu Seong-woo added this.
“But always write down whatever comes to mind first, no matter what.”
He smiled.
“It’ll definitely help later.”
It was a first.
Never before had anyone seen so deeply into him.
Kang I-yul slowly picked up his pen. Among the sentences drifting through his mind, he chose the one underlined most heavily.
At last he wrote the first line on the blank page.
[Please, anyone
tell me
that I can shine]
Once he’d written one line, the next came to him.
Just as he was about to move his pen again, he realized the gaze on the back of his head had vanished.
“Seong-woo?”
Song Woo-ju answered without looking up.
“He left a minute ago.”
“Why?”
“Said something got in his eye.”
It was clearly a lie. He’d stepped away on purpose to give him space to work freely.
Along with gratitude, Kang I-yul found himself thinking he owed another debt to him.
‘How many times is this now, really…….’
A moment later, the practice room door opened.
“Geez, we really need to clean this place.”
Yu Seong-woo came in, making a show of rubbing his eyes vigorously.
“I thought my eye was going to fall out from the dust!”
The skin around his eyes was flushed red.
Kang I-yul watched him for a moment, then rose from his seat.
“Seong-woo.”
“Yeah?”
“Thanks to you, I think I know what to write…… kind of.”
“Didn’t I tell you?”
Yu Seong-woo grinned as if he’d been waiting for this.
“Team up with me and we’re guaranteed first place—”
Kang I-yul bowed again, and Yu Seong-woo waved his hands in embarrassment.
“Why do you keep bowing like that all the time?”
“It’s a thank you……?”
“It feels too formal between us.”
Yu Seong-woo lowered his voice and clumsily mimicked Kang I-yul’s manner.
“From now on, when you thank me, just say something like ‘Thanks, Seong-woo.’ Keep it simple.”
…….
“Try it.”
“Right now?”
“Yeah!”
Kang I-yul hesitated for a moment.
But Yu Seong-woo was looking at him with such eager eyes.
Finally, he spoke softly.
“Thanks, Seong-woo.”
“There we go!”
The corners of Yu Seong-woo’s mouth rose in satisfaction.
The corners of Kang I-yul’s mouth followed, just slightly.
Once the dam had broken, the pen hardly stopped. Word after word poured out onto the blank page.
After half a day had passed, four of them stood before Yu Seong-woo again.
Each of them held a lyric sheet tightly in hand.
“Why do you all look so grave??”
“You wouldn’t understand.”
Kwon Ki-hyun clutched the paper to his chest.
“This is lyrics I poured my soul into.”
“If you grind away your whole soul in half a day, what are you going to live on from now on?”
“Oh, really!”
Laughter rippled through the room.
Yu Seong-woo took the papers from all four of them and unfolded them one by one.
As he examined the lyrics, turning them this way and that, he cross-referenced the lyric sheets as if fitting together a puzzle.
Scratch-scratch.
The only sound in the practice room was the scrape of pen nibs against paper.
How much time had passed?
Yu Seong-woo rewrote one final line.
Whoosh—
He spread the completed lyric sheets open like a fan.
“Done.”
Four pairs of eyes fixed on the papers.
Yu Seong-woo smiled brightly.
“So, shall we move on to the next stage?”
I Kill My Favorite and Make Our Debut (Ongoing Series)
Author │ Yu Sseu
Publisher │ Kim Joo-hyung
Published by │ J Plus Media Co., Ltd.
Marketing │ Han Jae-hyuk
Address │ 401, Ace Techno Tower 8th, 11 Digital-ro 33-gil, Guro-gu, Seoul (Guro-dong)
Email │ [email protected]
Website │ www.jayplemedia.com
ⓒ Yu Sseu 2026
※This work is published by J Plus Media Co., Ltd. under contract with the copyright holder. No part of this work may be used in any form or by any means without permission from the publisher and author.
Violation of this notice may result in civil and criminal legal liability.

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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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