Save a Failed Idol’s Life

Translator: MarcTempest

Editor: NicoleTempest

Chapter 252 Spark (2)

‘I can’t leave Cheon Ise like this… I have to see him again.’

But what could I do if he was adamant about not meeting me or if he was in a situation where he couldn’t even meet me?

I sighed involuntarily.

That’s when the group that dragged me out caught my attention again.

“What are you doing? Let’s go inside. It’s cold.”

It was still too early for spring weather, and the temperature dropped below zero at night.

I went into the shelter aimlessly and lay down on the bed. I had a lot on my mind. The message I received from Jinwoo today was that the customers of Jo Young Food’s flagship family restaurant were complaining because they changed the supplier of their ingredients, and there were similar claims.

‘So, where is the person who caused all this mess?’

When I asked sarcastically, I got an even more absurd answer.

‘He probably went to Vietnam on a business trip excuse and is playing golf.’

I was furious. How could he go play golf after ruining the company? Was the president joking? I frowned and Jinwoo told me that he would return from his trip in two days.

At the board meeting that would be held in two days, he planned to propose a resolution to transfer his shares to an investment company and appoint the current president as an honorary president with similar authority to the actual president.

I had to find evidence of his murder and report it to a media outlet that couldn’t be blocked by money.

‘I can’t waste time like this.’

I sneaked out of the shelter with my laptop bag in my arms when everyone was asleep.

I was glad that I didn’t lack money for living expenses and hailed a taxi.

“Where are you going at this hour, young man?”

I answered firmly to the driver’s nosy question.

“Please take me to the terminal.”

Every second was precious. I had to find some evidence. For the sake of two days later.

While Hyun-seong was moving to the terminal, the members of Climax, as well as the members of Swift and the staff of Composition, were all praying for him to regain his senses. The person in question was curled up on the bed, blankly.

Even if I covered myself with a blanket and plugged my ears with earplugs, I still heard tinnitus. I was shaking and losing strength in my body, even though I thought I was acting normally.

Why? Even though I had been existing as a data without a body, it was still my original body. I succeeded in driving out Hyun-seong, who was not the original owner, and the system couldn’t expel me either.

So I just restored everything to ‘the way it was’, but why.

It felt like my body was dying, as if it was rejecting me.

“Why…? Sob, ugh…”

I tore at my hair and banged my forehead against the wall, but nothing changed.

I clenched my fist tightly, but soon my palm was limp.

I had always been like this since I was born as the second son of Cheon Soo Group. I ruined everything. I had no friends at school and my relationships with my classmates were a mess. I was always treated like a nobody at the agency I barely entered.

They all felt a wall rather than gratitude for the fact that Cheon Ise’s presence made the debut team more solid.

They drew a line in advance, as if he could never be in the same position as us.

“I did, work hard, too, not… ugh, not like that…”

There was no trainee who spent as much time in the practice room as I did, including the members who dropped out of the debut team.

The reason why I could get along with Yi-jun and Seong-won without much friction was purely because I ‘worked hard’.

I didn’t slack off or rely on my family’s connections. I worked hard too.

Why does everything I do always turn out like this? My consciousness kept breaking and reconnecting, and tears flowed. I grabbed the sheet and lifted my body to get out of bed, but then my body tilted again.

I was wrong. I shouldn’t move. I kept seeing the past through my closed eyes.

‘Did you eat?’

The first person who showed interest in Ise, who was adjusting the strength of his movements until his sneakers wore out in the practice room, was Kyunghwa.

‘Don’t push yourself too hard. You’re doing well enough as a main dancer, so be careful not to get hurt.’

He acted like a brother to me, even though he was the same age as me, and helped me with this and that and prevented me from being left out by the other members. I thought he was either kind or liked me.

Until I overheard the phone call between the manager and my mom.

Unlike the other members who were indifferent, the reason why he took care of me separately was because he received living expenses from my mom. I felt like my blood was boiling when I found out.

I didn’t ask the manager or the president to take care of me more. It was humiliating that he paid money to another member to look after me.

I couldn’t treat Kyunghwa the same way as before. Would he put up with me even if I acted like this? He had no choice.

He followed me obediently, even though he couldn’t hide his discomfort at my twisted tantrums.

The manager was the same. He openly treated Cheon Ise as a spoiled brat, but in the end he followed Ise’s words in the crucial part.

Most of the things were like that. Eventually, some members who couldn’t stand the long slump left, and the remaining members also knew that something had to change, but they didn’t have the courage to leave the company and stayed.

This can’t go on. It has to change. But I don’t know how. Why do they hate themselves so much? Why do I always ruin everything? The resentment that I had suppressed burst out when Ye was in a car accident.

It was an absurd accident that was practically 100% the other party’s fault, considering it happened on the road and they were 90% at fault.

I couldn’t even get proper compensation because the perpetrator was drunk driving.

I felt like going crazy when I saw their lifeless expression, as if they had no regrets about going to jail with their ruined life. It wasn’t about the money.

I had ruined my lifelong dream. I wasn’t even dead, and the aftereffects of the injury weren’t that serious by normal standards, so I wouldn’t get much punishment. I felt my blood run dry every day.

Maybe it would be better to die.

‘I’m so ashamed to have someone like you as a sibling.’

‘Didn’t you say you wanted to do something different? Shouldn’t you at least be famous?’

My older siblings came to visit me in the hospital and nagged at me, and I snapped. I had been holding on to my sanity until then.

‘At least you’ll be less of a disgrace now. You couldn’t even make a dent in the charts every time you released an album. I wish you would have quit already.’

I didn’t want to do anything anymore after hearing their taunts, deliberately tearing my heart to pieces.

Maybe my sister and brother were right. Maybe I was hopeless no matter what I did. I felt like I couldn’t escape from this life of constant failure.

‘I want to quit everything.’

I closed my eyes, hoping to sleep forever. And when I regained consciousness, I felt nothing.

I realized I was in a state of pure consciousness, without a body or pain. My memory was blurry, and I couldn’t remember who I was, what I wanted to do, or what I felt when I closed my eyes.

I passed a pitiful flower bed that barely filled a handful and saw an empty space. For some reason, I felt like I had to go there to finish everything.

As I approached the place where the bright light shattered and sparkled like a prism, I heard an unfamiliar sound from the broken debris.

‘Congratulations on your debut!’

‘You’re a celebrity now? Awesome.’

‘Do your best, since you’ve come this far.’

‘Dad may say this, but he’s rooting for you a lot.’

‘I loved your performance today! Please come back with a better song next time.’

I felt a ticklish sensation, as if I had forgotten something important, and snapped out of it.

Everything would end if I went any further. I didn’t want to end it here. It was my choice to end my life.

But I had too many regrets to disappear like this. I had never shone properly.

I was wrong. I made a mistake. Please let me go back.

I turned around and ran away from the direction I was going.

How far had I gone? I saw a dark space where the gravity was messed up and the garbage and numbers were tangled up.

Beyond the chaotic darkness, I saw myself.

Or rather, someone else wearing my appearance.

Seong-won and Yi-jun, who always growled at me, cooperated willingly with the ‘someone’ who looked like me.

I couldn’t believe it was real when I saw them hit the real-time first place for the first time.

Why not me? Why didn’t I? Why me?

We’re the same person anyway. Why didn’t I get that luck? Why me?

At first, I thought it was just a brief stroke of luck. But the ‘someone’ who had my face didn’t stop there and kept moving forward.

They won the survival program, and kept making things happen to attract more people around them.

Everyone praised the changed Cheon Ise. They didn’t know Cheon Ise was like that. They did such a good job. They were so considerate.

The fans also grew in an instant. The follower number that was barely 10,000 became millions in a moment.

Why? They didn’t love me when I had the same face.

I tried to sabotage them several times, but every time I saw the ‘someone’ who acted like nothing happened, I felt like I was going crazy.

It should have been me in that place. Not some fake who came out of nowhere.

Why can’t they tell? Who do they think helped them debut?

I knew them longer, how could they be closer to a fake who hadn’t been with them for even a year.

That was supposed to be my life.

The ‘someone’ raised the climax, the composition, the offbeat to a higher level, and it felt like they were denying my existence.

‘I have to turn it back to the way it was.’

It was just getting back what was originally mine. After absorbing the scraps of memory and data and learning the functions, I finally succeeded in getting my body back by digging into the system’s vulnerabilities.

“You, you’re weird. Why are you acting like that all of a sudden?”

“Hyung, are you feeling okay? Do you want to rest?”

“Ise hyung… did I make too much noise at night?”

“What’s wrong? Why are you like that?”

They all said I had changed. And they hoped I would go back to the ‘real’ Cheon Ise they knew.

I barely escaped from extinction, but the place I came back to was already replaced by someone else.

“Oh, Ise-ssi~! Long time no see. How are you? You look busy. But do you have time to appear as a guest?”

“Should I call you CEO Cheon now? Offbeat did really well this time, congratulations.”

People I didn’t even remember seeing kept acting like they knew me. I was scared. It was as if I never existed in the first place.

They all looked for the ‘someone’. Not the real me.

The real one is me. But I had become a fake before I knew it.