The Gates Opened on the First Day of Debut - Chapter 91

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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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The Gate Burst Open on My Debut Day (91)
“Is there someone you want to discuss things with?”
Jiyu tilted her head curiously as she asked.
Seo Ijae hesitated, gauging her reaction carefully.
“Yes. There’s a junior I received a lot of help from before. His name is Kim Chowol….”
“Ah.”
Upon hearing Kim Chowol’s name, Jiyu let out an exclamation as if she’d understood something.
“Do as you like. Just don’t take too long. The others are waiting.”
“Yes, thank you.”
Seo Ijae sprang to his feet, grabbed his laptop, and left the Practice Room.
He then walked along the Hallway and found the Practice Room where Kim Chowol’s Team was training.
“Found it.”
Seo Ijae pressed his face against the translucent window on the Practice Room door.
Kim Chowol and nine other trainees were drenched in sweat, practicing with intense focus.
―Knock, knock.
When Seo Ijae knocked gently, all ten trainees lifted their heads like meerkats.
“Ijae hyung?”
“Hey.”
Kim Chowol, recognizing Seo Ijae’s face, opened the door.
“What brings you here?”
“Well, I wanted to talk about something for a moment.”
“Talk? Ah….”
Kim Chowol noticed the laptop Seo Ijae was holding and his expression shifted with understanding.
Seo Ijae laughed awkwardly and scratched his cheek.
‘Is this really too much trouble?’
No matter how close they were, Seo Ijae was Kim Chowol’s competitor.
With such an important stage—one that determined debut—looming ahead, how many would willingly help their rival?
“If you’re busy, it’s fine.”
“No. Just for a moment… I can wait here.”
Yet Kim Chowol calmly held Seo Ijae in place and turned to his teammates, who were staring blankly, to ask for their understanding.
“I need to talk with Ijae hyung for a bit, so I’ll step out for about thirty minutes. I already pointed out the parts you kept making mistakes on earlier, so it would be good if you all focused on practicing those sections while I’m gone.”
“Oh, okay…! Go ahead! Don’t worry about us!”
Kim Chowol gave his teammates a light bow before turning back to Seo Ijae.
“Let’s go. There’s an empty Practice Room next door. Should we talk there?”
“Oh, yeah. Sounds good. Thanks.”
Kim Chowol and Seo Ijae entered the adjacent Practice Room and settled in.
“How are things going?”
“Huh?”
“Aren’t you preparing everything from scratch because of the plagiarism controversy?”
“Oh, right. You already knew about it.”
“I couldn’t possibly not know.”
“Well, that’s true….”
Seo Ijae smiled bitterly at Kim Chowol’s response.
“Actually, Chowol, I wanted to hear your opinion.”
“Of course.”
“We’re in the middle of choosing a song right now, but we’re in a bit of a bind—time is tight and everything feels uncertain.”
Seo Ijae continued speaking as he set up his laptop.
“We’ve narrowed it down from twenty to five. Want to listen to them?”
“Yes, I’d like that.”
Kim Chowol nodded with a serene expression.
Watching that crystalline gaze, Seo Ijae felt his own mind settling into calm as well.
Seo Ijae pressed the spacebar on his laptop and played the five songs in sequence.
Starting from number two, then ascending: seven, thirteen, seventeen, and finally nineteen.
“Hmm….”
After listening to all five songs, Kim Chowol stroked his chin with his finger, lost in thought.
About three minutes passed like that.
“What about you, Ijae?”
“Hm?”
“Which song do you like?”
“Oh, me? Number two and seventeen.”
“I see.”
Kim Chowol nodded with a look of understanding and continued.
“You’re thinking of blending the two together?”
“Huh? How did you…?”
“If arranged well, it could work quite nicely. However….”
Kim Chowol, who had instantly grasped what Seo Ijae was thinking, paused before speaking.
“…wouldn’t time be a bit tight?”
“Yeah, exactly. That’s why the arrangement would be a little… difficult.”
“Hmm.”
Like someone having their personal information stripped bare before a fortune teller, Seo Ijae stared at Kim Chowol with a bewildered expression.
“Who’s the leader of your team?”
“Leader?”
“Yes. In our team, Jin Seok is the leader.”
“Oh… really?”
Seo Ijae tilted his head with an uncertain expression.
He had naturally assumed Kim Chowol was the leader.
The way he gave instructions to the members in the Practice Room had seemed so natural.
“Well… that would be me.”
“Well?”
“I’m a bit older, you know. So I ended up becoming the leader somewhat by accident, but I’m not very good at it—the other members help me out a lot. And Jiyu also….”
“Ah, I see. If it’s Jiyu, then I can definitely trust it.”
Kim Chowol nodded with an understanding expression.
“But why is that?”
“There’s a way to use both Track 2 and Track 17.”
“Really?”
“Yes, but… I might need to convince the team members a little.”
“What method?”
“Hmm….”
After a moment of thought, Kim Chowol began explaining calmly.
“First of all, the stage we’re preparing isn’t an ordinary comeback showcase or music broadcast stage.”
“Right. That’s true.”
“It’s the final live broadcast stage of the Survival Audition Program… there’s a method that can only be used on a special stage like this.”
“What is it?”
Kim Chowol spread his index fingers on both hands.
“The method I’m thinking of is making one plus one equal one. Usually that’s the standard approach. One stage, one song. Unless you’re aiming for a full mashup, focusing on one song gives much better completion quality.”
Kim Chowol continued, touching the tips of his index fingers together.
“But for a one-time stage like this, completion quality isn’t really that important. Especially not for the final live broadcast stage.”
With his fingertips still touching, Kim Chowol lowered one hand and made a V-sign with the other.
“What matters is impact. Keep the two songs as two. As long as the storytelling is good, it doesn’t matter.”
“But… won’t it look too rough?”
At Seo Ijae’s concerned question, Kim Chowol grinned with the corners of his mouth raised.
Like a mischievous brat plotting a prank.
“That’s why we need to use a little… shock therapy.”
“Shock therapy?”
Kim Chowol gestured toward Seo Ijae.
As Seo Ijae leaned his head closer to Kim Chowol, Kim Chowol whispered softly into his ear.
Seo Ijae’s eyes grew wider and wider as he listened to Kim Chowol’s explanation.
* * *
After a brief ten-minute break, the Hero Team gathered back in the Practice Room.
But as time passed, the last member didn’t appear.
“Where’s Lee Jae?”
One trainee tilted his head curiously and looked around.
“Did everyone get some good rest?”
The trainees who had been waiting anxiously for Seo Ijae all turned their heads toward the direction of the voice.
Composer Jiyu was entering the Practice Room with a paper cup in hand.
“Composer.”
“Composer? That’s too stiff. Just call me Jiyu. Jiyu, like that.”
Jiyu waved her hand dismissively and sipped her steaming coffee.
“Why do you all look so serious?”
“It’s just… Lee Jae isn’t showing up.”
“Ah, Lee Jae? Don’t worry. I know where he is.”
At Jiyu’s words, the trainees exhaled in relief.
“It’ll probably take about an hour.”
“An hour?”
But their relief was short-lived.
The trainees startled at what Jiyu said next.
“Shouldn’t we bring him back quickly?”
“What? I said don’t worry.”
“But we still haven’t decided anything yet….”
The trainees began murmuring with serious expressions.
However, Jiyu, seated on a simple chair, remained utterly composed as she drained her coffee cup cleanly.
“I told him to go and come back.”
“Pardon?”
“I’m giving you about an hour, so I told him to go and come back.”
“Go where?”
“The Media Room at the Filming Set.”
“Why there…?”
“Just wait and see. There’s a saying that too many boatmen steer the boat up the mountain, right? When time is this tight, it’s far more efficient to have one person take the lead and pull everyone along.”
The trainees fell silent.
They didn’t entirely understand Jiyu’s reasoning.
But it felt awkward to argue with the composer who had come to help them.
And so an hour passed in silence.
Seo Ijae finally returned to the Practice Room.
“Is everyone here? I’m a bit late, aren’t I?”
“What were you doing all this time?”
Some trainees shot back curtly, their eyes tinged with discontent.
Seo Ijae’s eyes darted awkwardly as he carefully lifted the laptop he’d been holding.
“I finished the demo for our song.”
“What?”
“I just sketched out the basic framework… but at this point, we should be able to practice with it.”
He completed a demo in just an hour?
The trainees stared at Seo Ijae with blank expressions.
But whether the trainees were flabbergasted or not, Seo Ijae calmly entered the Practice Room and set up his laptop.
“The arrangement was minimal, so it finished faster than expected. Oh, and….”
Seo Ijae pressed the spacebar on his laptop.
A bright, upbeat beat flowed from the speakers connected to the laptop.
It was Track 17, the one Seo Ijae had mentioned would be good for emphasizing “the strongest hero.”
‘So we’re dropping Track 2 entirely and going with Track 17 as the focus?’
The trainees tilted their heads in confusion as they listened to the demo Seo Ijae had created.
Just as Seo Ijae said, the arrangement was minimal.
“…I might need to change the concept a bit. Actually, I need to.”
“Pardon?”
“The existing concept of ‘the strongest hero who never yields to any hardship or adversity’—I think we need to modify it somewhat.”
“That….”
The trainees were taken aback by Seo Ijae’s announcement.
No, even if we’re in a rush, shouldn’t we discuss and decide on a concept change separately?
“I told him to do it.”
That’s when Jiyu interjected at just the right moment.
“Ijae’s idea doesn’t seem bad, so I told him to go ahead with it.”
“I don’t mind if we change it.”
Han Theo, who had been sitting quietly, also spoke up.
“I’m fine with it too.”
“Could you explain how you’re planning to change it?”
With Okada and Kang Hae-soo adding their opinions as well, the other trainees had no choice but to fall silent and nod in agreement.
“Our concept is….”
Seo Ijae, who had let out an inward sigh of relief, continued speaking.
By then, the demo had already finished the first verse.
And then.
The song’s atmosphere shifted 180 degrees.
The trainees’ eyes widened, and Seo Ijae spoke slowly.
“A dark hero.”
The dark and intense beat of the second track, which had a completely opposite atmosphere from the seventeenth, filled the Practice Room.

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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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