The Gates Opened on the First Day of Debut Chapter 9

“Cho, Chowol… uh…”

 

The dance trainer, who watched my subsequent dance, couldn’t continue her words. 

 

Well, it’s an expected reaction.

 

I was confident.

 

Not confident that I would tear up the stage with an outstanding performance and dance skills, but— 

 

‘I was confident that I would do poorly.’ 

 

I had memorized all the choreography.

 

To the extent that if someone woke me up while sleeping and told me to dance, I could dance right away. 

 

However, memorizing the choreography and perfectly executing it are problems on different dimensions. 

 

‘Hmm…’

 

Dancing to HUNT THE STAGE, I couldn’t hold it back and squeezed my eyes shut. 

 

Because my image reflected in the mirror was too dreadful. 

 

Even though I knew in my head that it was inevitable considering my stats, it was hard to endure.

 

The song that felt like it would never end concluded, and the dance trainer, who was plunged into shock, barely opened her mouth. 

 

“T-that…! Still, you memorized all the choreography!”

 

“Yes.”

 

“Y-you did well! Amazing! You memorize the choreography fast. Since you memorized it all, you just need to practice. Right?” 

 

“Yes.”

 

“Yeah, good work. Uh… do you want to go sit over there? You can practice separately if you want.”

 

“Yes, thank you.”

 

I purposely put on a sullen expression and bowed my head.

 

I could feel the other trainees looking at me and whispering.

 

Yeah, say whatever you want.

 

“Hmm… next, who has a C+ dance stat? Oh, okay. Do you want to come to the front?”

 

Up until the previous regression, the trainers would evaluate practice starting from the highest rank, but perhaps my skills were so shocking that the trainer began evaluating trainees in order of their dance stats.

 

‘Well, I knew this would happen.’

 

I had only received 20th place because I got high appearance and charm stats. 

 

My dance stat received on the stat evaluation stage was D, and the stat confirmed through the status window was D-, which was particularly low even among the intermediate class made up of C and D stats.

 

After checking the trainees with a C+ dance stat one by one, the trainer looked around the practice room and said.

 

“Are there no more C+s? Then we’ll move on to C…”

 

“W-wait a minute!” 

 

It was a pronunciation closer to ‘waid a minud’ rather than ‘wait a minute.’ 

 

A trainee with fluffy brown hair had one hand raised high.

 

A Dance C+ sticker was attached to his chest.

 

“I, I’m also… C+.”

 

“Oh, I see. I’m sorry. I almost skipped you by mistake! So your name is…”

 

“O-Okada Hiro.” 

 

“Ah, you’re a Japanese friend! You speak Korean well!”

 

His pronunciation was a bit clumsy, but fortunately, communication was possible.

 

As the trainer breathed a sigh of relief and praised Okada Hiro, he blushed as if a little embarrassed.

 

“Thank you…”

 

“Good, do you want to come to the front?”

 

“Yes…!”

 

When Okada Hiro stood in front of the mirror, the trainer played the song just as she had been doing.

 

[Boom, boom, boom…]

 

The intro to HUNT THE STAGE, which had repeated more than ten times just today, flowed out.

 

When the intro ended, the hybrid orchestral sound using electronic elements exploded like a burst, and the actual performance began.

 

Okada Hiro moved his hands covering his eyes as if prying open a door.

 

The trainer let out a small exclamation of admiration at his crisp movements perfectly matching the beat.

 

“Oh…”

 

Okada Hiro was glaring fiercely at his reflection in the mirror as if he wanted to tear it apart, and that gaze and expression suited the mood of the song well.

 

The trainees practicing in the back also began to watch Okada Hiro one by one.

 

[“In the pitch-black darkness. A single ray of light illuminating my path.”] 

 

The choreography requiring a 360-degree spin followed by moving the upper body like a wave.

 

It was a tricky choreography that even trainees with a Dance C+ stat hesitated at, but Okada Hiro easily did a quick spin as naturally as breathing and then moved his upper body to the beat.

 

[“Break the stage, win the stage!”]

 

The ensuing dazzling dance break, jumping while spinning 180 degrees, followed by another dance break with high-difficulty breaking steps.

 

There was a part in the middle where he stumbled a bit, but considering the difficulty of the song and the practice time, it was very excellent.

 

[Thud, bang!]

 

The song concluded with an intense gunshot sound at the end, and Okada Hiro gasped for breath.

 

Before they knew it, everyone in the practice room was looking at Okada Hiro.

 

“Uh… so, Okada?”

 

“Yes!”

 

“Why are you here?”

 

Okada widened his already large eyes even more and looked at the trainer.

 

The trainer belatedly realized her mistake and added.

 

“Ah, sorry. You’re a foreign friend… Did I speak too difficultly? So the meaning of my words is… why are you in the intermediate class? Your skills are good enough to go to the advanced class. On the stat evaluation stage, definitely…”

 

The trainer’s expression darkened as she recalled Okada’s stat evaluation stage. 

 

Because I knew about Okada’s performance, I understood the dance trainer’s reaction.

 

Okada had ruined the stat evaluation stage.

 

He had prepared a K-POP idol song, but because his pronunciation was very poor, the lyrics kept getting slurred.

 

Because he was paying attention to the lyrics, he couldn’t properly dance his specialty, and though he managed to finish somehow without any major mistakes… 

 

‘It wasn’t an excellent performance in terms of both singing and dancing.’

 

The trainer patted the shoulder of Okada, who wore a serious expression, and said.

 

“No. You just need to do well from now on. Good job, Okada. Good, good!”

 

“Yes, thank you.”

 

“But your steps got a little tangled when you started the dance break. This part. You see?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“And also in the step part….” 

 

The trainer showed Okada a simple demonstration and pointed out the parts he needed to fix.

 

Okada stood next to the trainer, answering “Yes, yes” and nodding his head.

 

“Hmm. This should be enough. If you fix the parts I pointed out, your dancing will be fine. You can do it well, right?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“Riiight, fighting, and if there’s anything difficult or that you don’t know, come find me! Ah, since I can’t sing, even if you come find me, I can’t teach you!” 

 

As the trainer said with a haha laugh, Okada also subtly pulled up the corners of his mouth. 

 

“Now, next friend…”

 

After bowing deeply to the trainer, Okada sat down leaning against the practice room wall. 

 

Even though he received praise, his expression wasn’t good.

 

Okada let out a deep sigh and buried his head between his knees.

 

‘Okada Hiro…’

 

I quietly watched that Okada and fell into thought.

 

*    *    *

 

Okada Hiro turned eighteen this year.

 

Nineteen in Korean age.

 

He was still of an age where he should be attending high school, but he dropped out last year.

 

Okada, who had buried his face in his knees, lifted his head slightly and looked around the practice room.

 

The trainer was checking the trainees one by one, and the other trainees were working hard to learn the choreography.

 

Okada swallowed the sigh that was about to burst out and buried his face in his knees again.

 

‘Korean is too difficult…’

 

In reality, Okada understood only about 20% of what the trainer said.

 

He could only roughly grasp the nuance of whether it was positive or negative; he didn’t know exactly what she was talking about.

 

‘I want to go home…’

 

When he was young, Okada watched K-POP idols performing on the Kōhaku Uta Gassen and became interested in K-POP idols.

 

K-POP had a different charm from J-POP, and the dance performances, which were particularly hard to see in Japan, were very impressive.

 

Okada, who originally liked dancing, fell deeply for the glamorous and high-level performances of K-POP idols and dreamed of becoming one.

 

He pestered his parents to let him learn dancing, auditioned for an agency, and finally passed, beginning his trainee life in Korea during his first year of high school.

 

However, the Korean trainee life he had dreamed of went differently than his expectations.

 

‘H-hello. I’m Okada Hiro from Japan.’

 

Okada, who started attending a Korean high school in the second semester of his first year, introduced himself in front of his classmates.

 

It was an introduction he had prepared diligently, but because he wasn’t used to Korean, his pronunciation was all slurred.

 

The classmates, who had been looking at Okada with curious eyes, glanced at each other and burst into snickers.

 

‘What, what did he just say?’

 

‘Was that an introduction? His pronunciation is so weird I can’t understand a thing.’

 

‘Hey, let’s make him do a tongue twister. It’d be freaking hilarious.’

 

Becoming a laughingstock, Okada’s face turned red.

 

At Okada’s transparent reaction, the students’ laughter grew louder.

 

The reactions of the trainees at the agency he joined were worse than his classmates, not less.

 

‘He can’t even speak Korean properly, yet he wants to be a K-POP idol…’

 

‘Because of b*stards like this, K-POP is regressing. Do you think people will like a foreigner who can’t even speak Korean?’

 

‘Don’t steal our opportunities and just go back to Japan. You can be an idol in Japan too, can’t you?’

 

Okada became isolated both at school and at his agency, and eventually, unable to keep up with his vocal skills, he was dropped from the debut lineup.

 

‘Hiro-chan. Stop now and come back home.’

 

‘Mom…’

 

Okada fell into a dilemma.

 

It seemed like no one in Korea wanted him.

 

But the words to readily go back wouldn’t come out.

 

‘I’ll try just a little bit more.’

 

‘Hiro-chan…’

 

‘I’m sorry, Mom.’

 

Okada squeezed his eyes shut and hung up the phone.

 

He gave up everything and came to Korea because he wanted to be a K-POP idol.

 

Even if he was dropped from the debut lineup, as long as there was an opportunity left, he wanted to try as far as he could.

 

Thinking it was his last chance, Okada decided to appear on EX-Class K-POP Idol.

 

However, regret started wriggling in a corner of his chest from the first day of filming.

 

He had ruined the first stage, which was the stat evaluation stage; he couldn’t understand a single word of what the MC and judges were saying; and even though he tried to listen to the lessons hard, he couldn’t understand the trainer’s words at all, so his motivation was broken. 

 

‘Should I drop out?’

 

It had been 3 years since Okada came to Korea.

 

If he had just one friend he could open his heart to and talk with, it wouldn’t have been this hard.

 

Okada grew increasingly exhausted, and the accumulated fatigue and stress reached their limit.

 

In this state, it didn’t seem like he could debut, and he felt he would only become a laughingstock to the people watching the broadcast.

 

“Haa…”

 

A trainee approached Okada, who was dropping his head with a sigh.

 

‘That guy is…’

 

It was Kim Chowol, who received the highest ranking among the intermediate dance trainees.

 

Because of his high ranking, the intermediate dance trainees didn’t look favorably upon Kim Chowol.

 

Okada felt a strange sense of kinship with Kim Chowol, who was being kept in check, but because he wasn’t in a position to care about others, he couldn’t readily step forward.

 

Unable to guess why Kim Chowol was approaching him at all, Okada stared blankly at Kim Chowol.

 

Striding toward Okada, Kim Chowol stopped in front of him and said.

 

“ねえ。さっき全然分からなかったよね？ (Hey. You didn’t understand anything earlier, did you?)”

 

In an unfamiliar foreign land, the language of the homeland he missed so much reached his ears.