The Reincarnated Idol Hard Carries an Indie Band - Chapter 6

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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 Former Idol Does Hard Carry in an Indie Band
Chapter 6
Honestly, I don’t know myself.
Or more precisely, it’s hard to choose.
There was always an “if” trailing through my head.
If I’d kept playing in a band with my friends, what kind of music would we be making now, and what activities would we be doing?
While hip-hop became mainstream music and K-pop was set to conquer the world.
What kind of music would we have been playing, and what kind of faces would we have worn?
Of course, if more time passed, a band boom would eventually come, but would we have held out that long?
Since it was imagination, the future was always rosy.
In my imagination, we had rebuilt the Korean band scene with an identity only we possessed, and we’d become a world-famous band.
This wasn’t mere fantasy.
It was my only hobby, the medicine that let me endure reality, and the way I picked up my regrets.
But then imagination became reality.
Now came the moment to choose from among all the countless futures I’d pictured.
So I still don’t know.
But at least if I could gather all the members, I had no intention of making music quietly.
I was going to make a stir.
I’d make the whole world listen to our music.
‘Maybe the school festival will be a turning point?’
As I was thinking that, my thoughts circled back to square one.
“How am I supposed to recruit Kang Min and Kim Ji-hu?”
The keyboardist Kim Ji-hu at least has a connection—he goes to the same music academy as Heo Jun-seong—but the drummer Kang Min, I really have no idea.
‘Where would Kang Min show up in this day and age……?’
That guy was a genuine otaku doing normie cosplay, so maybe he was lurking somewhere like a Japanese music site?
While I was thinking that, a call came in from Heo Jun-seong.
“Yeah, what’s up?”
-Hey, you know there’s a Kim Ji-hu at the music academy where I take lessons? Plays keyboard and guitar.
“Huh?”
-He’s pretty cool. I mean, his manners are rough, but.
“Yeah.”
-But when he heard I joined a band, he started showing interest? Don’t we need a keyboard?
“Yeah……?”
-What’s wrong with you? Why are you responding like that? Did you forget how to talk?
I came to my senses at Heo Jun-seong’s reproach.
“Yeah yeah. Kim Ji-hu. That’s good. Really good.”
-You know him?
“I think I’ve heard some things. Kind of rough around the edges, but plays keyboard pretty well.”
A thought suddenly struck me.
Not that I’d call it fate or anything, but maybe we were people destined to be drawn to each other.
Come to think of it, meeting Lee Do-yeong at Nakwon Arcade was just too much of a coincidence.
-But he says he needs to hear your singing?
“My singing?”
-Yeah. He’s calling me an idiot. He says how could I not have heard our band’s vocalist yet.
Classic Kim Ji-hu.
Rough manners, but sharp as a tack.
He’s right.
We’re in the same class, and we became a team like fate at Nakwon Arcade, but normally you weigh your teammates’ music before joining a band.
Especially what kind of songs the vocalist sings—that’s extremely important.
“That works out.”
-What does?
“You should all hear me too, right? Let’s all do it at once.”
-You confident? This guy’s picky.
Does Heo Jun-seong know when I went solo as a vocalist?
When rumors of group discord spread like wildfire, the members who’d pushed me out posted unhappy stuff on SNS, and my agency cranked out garbage statements?
Well, technically the order was reversed.
The members were pulling schemes because they were afraid I’d blow up as a solo artist.
Even in that mess, I was the one who satisfied the watching public.
There’s no way Kim Ji-hu could be pickier than those people.
“Set a date.”
-He’s asking what about right now?
“Right now? Are you with Kim Ji-hu?”
-Yeah. He’s listening from beside me.
“Then get Do-yeong too.”
-Where to?
* * *
Heo Jun-seong, Lee Do-yeong, and Kim Ji-hu.
I met the three of them exactly one hour later.
We were able to use the school band club practice room thanks to Lee Do-yeong, the model student.
It was a space now unused and thick with dust.
From within it, a familiar face in a Cheongsol High School uniform opened their mouth sharply.
“Sorry to just demand a song out of nowhere, but I’m someone who thinks vocal talent is innate.”
Well, he probably wasn’t trying to be intentionally sharp.
That’s just how he was.
If Lee Do-yeong was the kind-hearted, gentle model student who only knew textbooks, then Kim Ji-hu gave off the vibe of a cantankerous, picky elite student council president.
And he actually was the student council president.
His sharp, upturned eyes and firmly set mouth only reinforced that impression.
“Yeah, it’s fine. I’m a natural talent.”
“……Your credibility just dropped a bit.”
“Any song you want to hear?”
“Your best one.”
I could feel Kim Ji-hu, Lee Do-yeong, and Heo Jun-seong staring at me.
They must have been curious.
How well I could sing.
I grinned and picked up the guitar, taking my position.
What song should I sing?
The deliberation was brief.
Yeah, this song feels right.
* * *
Late night. I can’t sleep
I’m Chasing something brilliant.
The moment a smooth voice cut through the space between the clean-toned guitar, something felt off to Kim Ji-hu.
It was a song he’d never heard before.
But the instant he heard the first verse, he wanted to know it, and that sense of wrongness took shape.
Not that it differed from his expectations, or that he regretted his cold attitude—nothing like that.
‘Is it possible to sing this well?’
The comparison was strange, but Cha Seo-ha sang so well that it felt like something was wrong.
Some might think he was overstating it, hearing only the intro, but music doesn’t work that way.
A word, a riff, a note.
Music is an art where you stake everything on a fleeting moment.
From that perspective, Cha Seo-ha knew how to lay it all bare.
It’s dark and scary.
But you’re my Moon
Emotion stacked carefully over the melody.
There were no dramatic shifts in vocal tone, but the emotional richness was extraordinary.
Like something might burst at any second.
Night on. I can’t stop
I’m chasing something glorious
But it doesn’t burst right away.
He caught the subtle shifts while drawing forward just the right amount of tension.
People call that kind of vocal immersive.
It’s easy to say, but never easy to do.
Even if I fall apart
I’ll rise with your light
Notes connected, sound flowed, emotion spread outward.
At some point, the thought of evaluating it had vanished.
This wasn’t a song he could evaluate.
He didn’t trust himself to capture his impressions fully.
He just wanted to hear the finished recording.
He’d probably be able to listen to it a hundred times over.
Then the chorus burst forth.
I’m a moon chaser-
Following the moon of you–!
Not a clean high note, but raw.
Rough, gravelly—a high note.
The kind that cuts through unknowable darkness hunting for that moon-like light called you.
The moment his tightened throat cracked on the falsettos, Kim Ji-hu felt something catch in his chest too.
Simultaneously, the guitar strumming surged and vocal ad-libs poured forth.
Kim Ji-hu’s mind held exactly one thought.
‘I have to join this band.’
An instinctive, almost fated intuition struck him.
This was where he would make music.
With Cha Seo-ha, he’d be able to realize all the stages he’d only imagined.
But then something happened.
“Huh?”
Some kind of change occurred in Cha Seo-ha.
* * *
The moment Heo Jun-seong and Lee Do-yeong heard Cha Seo-ha sing, they woke up.
To their eyes, Cha Seo-ha was an interesting person, a headstrong friend.
And yet he also possessed remarkably skilled guitar ability.
But because they’d all gathered at the same high school as friends, they’d unconsciously assumed they stood on equal ground.
But the moment they heard Cha Seo-ha’s singing, everything changed.
This was…….
This wasn’t that kind of song.
Cha Seo-ha stood at a height they could never reach.
Reality crashed down on them.
Everything depended on them now.
They couldn’t ruin such sublime singing with their own playing.
If they did, playing in a band with Cha Seo-ha would only hold him back.
So…….
‘I want to follow him.’
‘I want to stand beside him.’
If they practiced hard and could keep up with Cha Seo-ha, they could present perfect music.
The urge to pull out their instruments and start practicing right now surged through them.
The two turned their full attention to Cha Seo-ha, thinking in the same key.
Then, suddenly, the song stopped.
“Huh?”
Something strange had happened.
* * *
As an idol, I heard something said often.
Cha Seo-ha doesn’t get nervous.
No situation ever intimidates him.
That’s why I went straight to the debut line after a short trainee period, and why I accumulated fans so quickly.
The company trainers were Taekwondo athletes, so they said I was used to competition.
That I was trained to perform under high-intensity pressure.
Managers and team leads said I was someone born with a big heart.
And my fans…….
They called me a genius idol who’d crash-landed from the idol planet.
All kind words, all things to be grateful for.
Because of them, I succeeded quickly as an idol and could even raise money for my grandmother’s surgery.
But those weren’t the answer.
The reason I didn’t get nervous was simple.
I felt like I’d left the real thing behind.
No matter how spectacular the stage, the real me was in a Hongdae jam studio.
In a sweltering rooftop room where the air conditioner barely worked in the middle of summer.
In our nest so cold in deep winter that breath hung in clouds.
And next to my friends.
That’s where I was.
That’s why I never got nervous.
So…….
Suddenly, I was nervous.
Me, who felt nothing filling Gocheok Dome or on year-end music shows watched by the whole nation.
Here in a school practice room with only three spectators, I felt nervous.
Because this was real.
The moment I realized that, my thoughts drifted back slightly into the past.
“Man, you guys have terrible ears.”
“That’s just the guitar riff doing the heavy lifting.”
“You disrespecting the guitar? Why are you even in a band?”
“Hey, you guys really like that……?”
“Let’s just listen to Japanese music.”
We were different in personality, different in character, different in taste—it was hard to find a song we all loved together—but there was one song we all loved together.
Adam Fritz’s “Moon Chaser.”
That was the song I was singing right now.
It wasn’t a famous song.
Adam Fritz was a minor artist even in America.
So why did we love this song?
It was a movie OST we’d happened to watch together in the studio.
This movie, released about ten years ago, was absolutely terrible.
Kim Ji-hu had cursed at Heo Jun-seong for renting such a terrible DVD.
But the moment the OST came on, everything changed.
We were all watching the movie on that free-giveaway couch with its musty smell, and the second the music started, we all jumped up.
So this wasn’t a song.
It was a memory.
Absurd as it sounds, it suddenly felt real—returning.
That day, that moment.
That space, that smell, that temperature.
Could I meet them again?
The most beautiful moments from my life that I thought had disappeared.
My vision blurred suddenly.
Tears.

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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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