Top Girl Group Scenario Rewritten with My Own Hands - Chapter 29

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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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Chapter 29
I began observing Daylight carefully around the end of October last year, a period when I was juggling schoolwork, trainee life, and producer work all at once—teetering on the very edge of collapse.
“Hey, Sim Yu-jeong.”
“Yeah? What’s up?”
“It’s about Daylight.”
“Oh, that. They contacted me out of the blue last summer and finished the directing before classes started.”
“No, that’s not what I’m asking about, you oblivious senior.”
Even if you work in the music industry, you can’t possibly remember every single development in it.
Especially lately, the idol scene had shifted toward building hardcore fandoms rather than mainstream appeal, and many were targeting overseas audiences instead, making it even harder to keep track of everything. I mean, I don’t go around meticulously listening to and remembering music that doesn’t suit my taste.
That’s why before the Regression, at this point in time, I knew Daylight existed as a group, but I had no idea what songs they had—I only knew idols at this level of awareness.
But popular songs are different.
Released around mid-October, an autumn city pop-style synth-pop track called “Fallin'”. This song was composed by Sim Yu-jeong, and moreover, it wasn’t supposed to be released now.
More precisely…….
“V-IBE put it on hold too, remember? I got annoyed about it with you—they said the song’s good but not right for now and they want to use it later.”
V-IBE. By definition it should be read as “vibe,” but that stubbornly insistent agency insists on pronouncing it as “V-IBE,” and that agency is Daylight’s company.
Originally, V-IBE had put Sim Yu-jeong’s demo on hold. Too good to throw away, they’d said, but not suitable for current use—they’d made an oral agreement to use it later, and I remembered cursing together about their shoddy, arbitrary big-company bullying. (At this point in time, it had been less than a year since that incident.)
‘Originally, it was supposed to come out after the group disbanded, as a member’s solo.’
Tap, tap. I continued thinking as I struck my pen against the notebook at a steady rhythm.
The “Fallin'” I knew was a song that V-IBE had held onto for years and eventually released as the title track for a member who went solo after Daylight disbanded.
It was a song from a member who was the only one to survive as a solo act while other group members were struggling. It wasn’t a mega-hit, but it had a subtle appeal that became a hit, and it was one of the songs responsible for keeping Sim Yu-jeong’s bank account healthy. That’s why I remembered the exact release date and properly remembered this one song that wasn’t a group track.
“But they suddenly contacted me again. Late June, maybe early July. They asked if it was okay to use it even though it’s a bit soon, and I just said yes. I’m grateful you got annoyed about it with me…….”
“I’m not the type to get upset over stuff like that. Your royalty payments must be pretty nice these days, yeah?”
“Completely. Oh, and those girls seem really talented? Since they came from auditions, their ear for direction seemed pretty decent.”
“Why are you telling me that…….”
“They’ll be rivals once they debut, won’t they? You don’t need to watch out for talentless kids, but ones with skills—you should keep an eye on them.”
“Yeah, I guess that makes sense…….”
That day, I glossed over Sim Yu-jeong’s pointless worries—or perhaps her warnings—and spent the time until class started thinking about Daylight.
And……,
after the lecture ended, I simply forgot about it.
Of course, it nagged at me.
It did nag at me…….
“But you……, are you okay?”
“Do I look like I’m not?”
“I’m not…….”
“You’re seeing it clearly—I’m really not okay. Seriously, I’m dying.”
It was literally that period when I was working myself to the brink of collapse.
Whether it was Daylight or Fallin’ or Variables or whatever else—I just had to get my work done first before worrying about anything. It was that insane a time…….
Around then, my standard coffee order was an Iced Americano with four extra shots.
When I drank that bitter coffee, the taste would snap me awake immediately, but if my brain still wouldn’t function, I’d buy energy drinks from the convenience store too.
Ko Hyun-seo, an exercise fanatic, actually told me to skip working out and just sleep instead. She said exercise without sleep was poison…….
Anyway.
After barely dodging death-by-overwork and getting through that period, only to debut successfully, Daylight—as I observed it afterward—seemed riddled with Variables to a laughable degree.
Daylight’s regular first album title track was, even this time, a dreamy and exhilarating dance-pop called “Aurora”. Their last title track before disbanding had hit career-high streaming numbers, so fans had apparently lamented that a lot. The algorithm kept showing me Shorts about it on my YouTube feed.
From what I remembered, the fans had said things like, “The company is so incompetent—they only found a concept that perfectly fit the group right before it disbanded,” and some opinions went: “If they’d released it earlier, the group would’ve been known sooner.”
But after I came back from the past, Aurora was released a whole year earlier than it originally was—exactly as the fans had wished.
Which meant Daylight had released a song they’d already succeeded with once, just earlier this time.
Well, I could hypothesize that, like Fallin’, they’d somehow dug up an old song that had been sitting in storage for years and happened to release it early…….
Was it because I’d been reading web novels lately?
At this point, one absurdly improbable but plausible possibility came to mind.
It was possible that Daylight had a Regressor among them. Someone who knew the future and knew how to use that knowledge to create opportunities for the group.
……The thought was so unrealistic and otaku-like that I was hit with a wave of embarrassment even thinking it.
I pointlessly banged on the Master Keyboard in my Studio, churning out dissonant noise through the speakers.
Some of the voicings were decent enough that I recorded them for later use……, but anyway.
It’s now 9 p.m., and I’m in my Studio at the company.
In exactly thirty minutes, my manager will come pick me up and drive me to the Dormitory.
That much time is enough.
The reason I came to the Studio instead of heading straight to the Dormitory despite my members telling me to rest had its reasons.
[▷ EVENT: Perfect Debut Showcase CLEAR!]
[▷ Clear Rank: S]
[S Rank Clear—no Event Penalty incurred.]
[▷ Check Event Reward]
See? If you look at the problem carefully, you can see the model answer the test-maker intended.
I might not know much else, but I’m exceptionally good at understanding a test-maker’s intentions.
I pressed my fingers against the corners of my eyes—still wearing traces of stage makeup despite washing most of it off—and checked the Event Reward.
***
The next day: first appearance on a Terrestrial Music Show.
Someone knocked, and the Waiting Room door suddenly swung open without warning.
“Hyun-seo~~!!”
“Oh, whoa. Han Jeong-yeon!”
A bright, melodious voice called out to Ko Hyun-seo in a playful way. Ko Hyun-seo herself hadn’t heard any word of a visitor coming, so she jumped up from her seat, but the person who’d come to see her didn’t seem to mind at all.
I could roughly figure out who it was. Since I was leaning against the sofa with my back to the door, I couldn’t see her face, but I’d heard this voice yesterday.
“Hello, Senior Jeong-yeon.”
“Oh, hello! We said hello yesterday, but……, I’m Han Jeong-yeon from Daylight. I only saw you in person yesterday, so I wanted to talk for a bit. Hyun-seo!”
The person handing over a luxury bakery gift set with a bright, warm smile is Han Jeong-yeon, Daylight’s center. In other words……, the final first-place finisher of the Dream Girls Project. She has that kind of face that genuinely seems to fit everyone’s standards of beauty.
So, why would a senior at Daylight’s level come looking for us?
She’s a rising star doing quite well, even earning the title of V-IBE’s daughter—such a remarkable person, but why?
She didn’t just come looking for Ko Hyun-seo alone; she came to greet our whole group? That doesn’t make sense. Why?
“I told you to text me on KakaoTalk?! Why didn’t you?”
“Surprise~ Hehe.”
“…You’re laughing? You’re our senior by far, and even we’re taken aback.”
“But we’re close, so just let me have this one.”
“We’re close, but your members are strangers to me.”
…The more I listen, the more it seems Ko Hyun-seo doesn’t know the reason either, which makes it even more suspicious.
Ko Hyun-seo had separately introduced her yesterday as “honestly, I don’t even know what she’s thinking, she’s pretty unpredictable,” but…….
“Wow, seriously…… I told you not to run ahead, and you went in first anyway. We agreed to go together later with Eun-jae!”
“It’s because you’re slow. And Eun-jae told me to just go ahead.”
“We agreed to go together, so even if…… never mind, seriously…… Oh, hello. I’m Eom Yu-bin. We met yesterday, right?”
It seemed she wasn’t alone; soon another member and Daylight’s manager came in.
The person coming in and immediately scolding Han Jeong-yeon is Eom Yu-bin from Daylight. She was one of the people who received the best evaluations in the Dance position during the Dream Girls Project alongside Ko Hyun-seo.
And the Eun-jae that Eom Yu-bin mentioned, Yeo Eun-jae, is that team’s leader. Probably she was supposed to come together with them?
After naturally finishing her member banter, Eom Yu-bin greeted us with a composure that suggested she’d been through this more than once or twice.
From the fact that she came with a gift prepared, she must’ve planned to visit our Waiting Room from the moment she clocked in for work. But what was she thinking…….
The Waiting Room quickly became lively. After finishing the dry rehearsal, the members who’d been relaxed and lounging around got caught up by the presence of the two visitors (especially Han Jeong-yeon) and began exchanging all sorts of conversation.
Well, they don’t seem to dislike it, so I’ll just let it be…….
Especially Ko Hyun-seo, who has quite a bit of history with these older members and is seeing them for the first time in a while—her expression is bright. I didn’t deliberately kill the mood; instead, I naturally smiled and spoke up as I looked for an excuse to step away.
“Let me go grab some coffee. What would you like, Senior Yu-bin and Senior Jeong-yeon? What did you guys drink yesterday?”
“Oh, thank you. We’ll take Iced Americanos, please.”
“Um, would one of them be an Iced Vanilla Latte, perhaps…….”
“Just keep it uniform. You just barge into someone else’s Waiting Room without any notice—what more do you want…….”
We’d barely been together for five minutes, but Eom Yu-bin’s member-handling skill is genuinely masterful. Han Jeong-yeon, who’d been nervously asking for something different, pouted her lips when she saw Eom Yu-bin, but her momentum completely deflated. She really is something…….
“It’s fine, they even gave us gifts. Coffee is the least we should buy. Just talk comfortably with everyone. Everyone’s getting what they drank yesterday, right?”
“I’m getting iced chocolate!”
“Yeah, noted—elementary school taste buds, Kang Su-a.”
“…Hey!”
Leaving Kang Su-a, who was thoroughly offended by the “elementary school taste buds” remark, I headed down to the Cafe on the first floor of the Broadcasting Station.
I needed some time alone to think.
There was a reason I’d declined to let my manager come with me.
To cut to the conclusion: I’d decided to give up searching for Daylight’s Regressor.
It was a conclusion I’d reached quickly after racking my brain about it until I fell asleep yesterday evening!
Unless the System tells me to find another Regressor, there’s no reason to go investigating people from a group I barely know and ask something ridiculous like “Senior, are you possibly from the future?” without any real evidence.
If I’m not careful, I’ll end up looking crazy, and even if I somehow found them, it’s more likely they wouldn’t know anything anyway.
But if that person actually does know something, that creates a problem. After reading a few web novels, I know another Regressor who has knowledge is scarier than one who doesn’t!
If they’re not at least half-insane, that’s lucky. If they’re not, they’re even more likely to be obsessed with securing their own gains rather than acting with normal rationality…….
Let me organize my thoughts.
I don’t know how the Variable called Daylight might affect me, but finding the cause of the Variable won’t improve my situation either, and if I’m not careful, searching for that Variable could be the perfect way to get labeled a lunatic.
To begin with, I don’t know if that Variable is actually a “Regressor” or not. It just seems likely, but I might fumble around looking for a Regressor and accomplish nothing.
Even assuming I did find a Regressor.
Does it help? Not particularly.
To solve my absurd, impossible situation, the only entity likely to have any power is probably this System thing, aside from any person.
At least, that’s what my experience so far tells me…….
Plus, I can’t rule out the possibility that person would be a lunatic.
In short, searching for a Regressor, searching for Daylight’s Variable—the efficiency is terrible.
There’s no reason to search for them, and even if I found them, there’s nothing to gain.
Last night, I’d reached roughly this conclusion and quickly abandoned the thought. I didn’t have enough mental bandwidth to spare on something like this when my mind was already in chaos…….
But.
‘Han Jeong-yeon, Eom Yu-bin, and Yeo Eun-jae……. Those three.’
As I deliberately took the stairs instead of the elevator to get to the first floor, I kept thinking without pause.
Even though I’d decided to lose interest, I hadn’t forgotten the thinking I’d done to reach that conclusion. Before I’d finalized my conclusion, my compressed list of Daylight Regressor candidates came down to three people.
Han Jeong-yeon, Eom Yu-bin, Yeo Eun-jae. The exact people who visited our Waiting Room today, or tried to.
I’ll explain the reasoning behind my conclusion later, but the fact that these three specific people showed up is really bugging me…….
From a senior’s perspective, think about it.
There’s a newly debuted small-scale rookie girl group. Even if they’re a trainee you went through survival with, there’s no real reason to buy a luxury bakery gift set and visit their Waiting Room.
Especially if you already exchanged light greetings with them at the music broadcast yesterday, there’s even less reason.
‘Kindness without a price……, there’s always some ulterior motive, right?’
I might be someone with an overthinking and suspicion problem, but there’s a saying: always be wary of people who treat you too well. That’s why this hidden intention behind the kindness keeps nagging at me.
The fact that exactly the three people I’d spent a lot of time suspecting yesterday appeared—or were supposedly planning to appear—makes my head hurt even more.
As the headache started getting worse, I pressed my temples firmly. The Cafe on the first floor of the Broadcasting Station happened to have few people today, and…….
“Hello, Senior.”
I bowed deeply to the person in front of me. I spent about 0.5 seconds debating whether to ignore them, but it seemed the other person had already recognized me, so…….
“Oh, hello! Wow, I keep running into you everywhere. Ji-on? Um, Junior Ji-on? Haha.”
The person greeting me with a warm smile at the Cafe—
—was Yeo Eun-jae from Daylight, someone I really didn’t want to see right now…….
If I’d met her at any other time, I probably wouldn’t have thought much of it, but right now, being the main culprit giving me a headache, I really didn’t want to see her.
“What would be comfortable to call you? Well, I’ll call you Junior for now. Did you come to get coffee? Oh right, our kids are in the Evergreen Waiting Room right now, aren’t they?”
“Yes, they gave us the bread as a gift, so I came down to get coffee. How about you, Senior……?”
“Good timing—I was just about to get coffee and head back up there anyway. What drinks would Junior Ji-on and the other members like to order? For the drinks we already ordered, we can give those to our staff.”
She’s like a ray of sunshine, probably…….
The problem is her intent isn’t clicking for me, which is why my head hurts!
As I held back the sudden wave of exhaustion and conveyed Kang Su-a’s elementary school taste buds and the “something sparkly” that Han Jeong-yeon had mentioned, Yeo Eun-jae said she’d wait and headed to the Cafe counter.
Wow, seriously, please stop.
Why are you being so nice to us?
This is seriously f***ing suspicious and I’m starting to doubt everything—I’m going to lose my mind!
Didn’t I say I was giving up on searching for a Regressor?
Plan revision.
Beyond not searching, I need to hide myself thoroughly.
From the other Regressor’s perspective, Evergreen is a Variable.
Not just a Variable—a major Variable.
While I’d concluded to leave the Daylight Variable alone, it seems the other Regressor doesn’t want to leave us alone. From how openly they’re probing, they probably want to find that Variable, which is to say—me…….
And I don’t want to get caught in that Variable search. The moment I do, my life is going to get even more exhaustingly f***ed…….
Alright, from now on, I’m just someone who suddenly wanted to be an idol, so I became one.
Someone with zero connection to Regression, System, survival, or any of that garbage—just a pure, aspiring idol!
I know it’s absurdly unconvincing.
But that’s what it is. Or at least, I have to make it look that way…….
Rewriting Top Girl Group Scenario with My Own Hands
Author
: Nam Seo-rang
Production Date
: January 5, 2026
Publisher
: (주)A.C.E.S Media
Editor
: A.C.E.S Media Editorial Team
Address
: 4F, Urban Bench Building, 325 Teheran-ro, Gangnam-gu, Seoul
Email
: [email protected]
※ This work is published by A.C.E.S Media in accordance with the copyright holder’s contract,
and may not be reproduced or used in any form or manner without permission from the company and the author.
This e-book is protected under copyright law, and unauthorized reproduction or copying may result in legal liability.
UCI
: G720:N+A129-20260102083.0029

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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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