I’m Debuting With The Bias I Killed Chapter 13

Chapter 13

 

When I came to, the first thing I checked was my braces.

“Haaah……!”

I hurriedly shoved my fingers into my mouth.

Hard metal, that familiar foreign sensation,

‘They’re there!’

Only then did the breath that had been caught in my throat finally burst out.

I was afraid that perhaps all of this had been a dream. That when I woke up, I might be back on that day when I killed Kang I-yul.

“Ha…”

No.

I hadn’t gone back.

Not to that hellish moment.

After spending a long while simply catching my breath like that, my surroundings finally came into view. A pure white ceiling, the faint beeping of machines, an IV needle stuck into my arm.

“……A hospital?”

My head still felt like it was splitting apart, but even that pain was reassuring.

Because it was pain I could feel, because I was alive.

The doctor in charge said it was exhaustion from overwork. He even added that I needed to take absolute rest for several days.

‘Isn’t there some kind of item that increases stamina……?’

Lying in bed and staring into empty space, I muttered.

“Item Creation.”

The familiar window appeared.

“A clock that restores stamina.”

A message immediately appeared.

 

[※Creation Failed – Conditions Not Met]

[S: An item that nullifies the cost of using an item cannot be created.]

 

“Wow, you’re seriously stingy.”

The reply came immediately.

[S: If there is no cost, there is no effect.]

Put nicely, the balance patch was well designed. To be honest, though, it was unbelievably cheap.

“No, I look like I’m about to die right now??”

[S: No.]

“Wow, you’re really decisive.”

Apparently, these items really could only be used within strict limits for the sole purpose of succeeding as an idol.

In the end, there was only one answer.

“Ha…”

I closed my eyes.

‘I have no choice but to endure with my body.’

Fortunately, the recovery ability of a nineteen-year-old was beyond my imagination.

On the day I was discharged, Han Sang-yoon came running the moment I opened the door to the dorm.

“Seong-woo!”

His face had become noticeably gaunt.

“…What happened to you?”

“I’ve really just been waiting for you to come back.”

The moment I entered the room, I understood why.

“Wow…”

I was speechless.

The two guys’ filth had not been easily fixed, even by Han Sang-yoon’s stern discipline.

“Hyung. You must’ve had a hard time by yourself.”

“Yeah. A little.”

‘A little, my ass.’

I burst out laughing.

“How’s your body? Feeling a little better?”

“Yes. I was just lying around, so I was getting stiff.”

The moment I unconsciously tried to imitate the signal song choreography…

“Don’t overdo it.”

Han Sang-yoon immediately grabbed my wrist.

“We’ve only just started.”

He was right.

But…

‘I don’t have time.’

I had to do as much as I could.

[S: Recommended if you would like to experience death once again.]

‘How can you say something that terrifying so casually…’

If the side effects had been explained in the first place, I would have used it in moderation.

[S: There’s no such thing as a free lunch, you know?]

……Seriously, it never loses an argument.

 

***

 

The next day, the trainees gathered in the practice room again.

Perhaps because of the new code numbers assigned after the signal song evaluation, the atmosphere was strangely subdued. The lower-ranked trainees crossed their arms so that the numbers attached to their chests couldn’t be seen, or pointlessly pulled their outerwear closed.

In a survival show, rankings aren’t simply numbers.

Attention, screen time, pride. Everything is converted into numbers. It was a place where those numbers felt like they were your very worth.

That was a survival show.

“How was the signal song shoot, everyone?”

Kang Se-jun appeared today as dazzling as ever. The fact that he had come alone as the MC, without the judges, meant only one thing.

‘The announcement of the first mission.’

“It was fun!”

“I was nervous!”

Kang Se-jun smiled gently, then casually dropped a bombshell.

“For your information, your attitude on the filming site was also part of the evaluation.”

The practice room instantly fell silent.

“Unfortunately, it seems some trainees didn’t notice.”

“…….”

Gazes wavered here and there. Everyone was probably replaying their own behavior in their heads.

“On the other hand, there were trainees who gave their best until the very end.”

His gaze landed precisely on me.

“Code 4 trainee, are you feeling okay?”

“Yes……!”

I had been worried that it might get edited out, but fortunately, it didn’t. Whether positively or negatively, I had secured some screen time.

“The reason I’ve come to see you today is to reveal the first mission.”

‘As expected…’

The screen lit up.

 

[CODE MISSION 1: Who Are You?]

-The boys who have reached their first gateway.

There is only one way to solve the code: prove who ‘you’ are.

 

As soon as the words appeared, the practice room stirred.

“What…”

“Is this like a self-introduction?”

“But it says it’s a stage.”

The reactions were confused.

“Anything is fine. Prepare a stage that can best explain who you are.”

That was the end of the explanation.

But the meaning of this mission was not that simple. An idol couldn’t survive simply by being good at dancing and singing. The truly important thing was something else.

‘Self-objectivity.’

Knowing what you were good at and what you weren’t. What side of yourself you should show so people would like you, and what you absolutely had to hide even if it killed you.

The person who could figure that out quickly was the one who survived.

In that sense, this mission was designed to distinguish between ‘a trainee and an idol.’

That was also why Nix had placed this mission first. They wanted members who could cook for themselves instead of merely consuming whatever the company served them according to its own recipe.

Perhaps because of that, before my regression, the biggest beneficiary of this mission had been Go Jae-seong.

‘The only trainee capable of producing.’

That was the position Go Jae-seong had taken at the time.

He made rap lyrics over a beat he had personally modified and even received high praise from Jack P, the producer among the judges.

That was when it started.

‘When Go Jae-seong became a permanent fixture in the debut group.’

Of course, by my standards as an actual producer, it was nowhere near enough.

But a survival show was not an absolute evaluation. It was relative evaluation. The person with a weapon that others didn’t have won.

‘But this time is different.’

Because I’m here.

“The preparation period is only one week.”

Kang Se-jun flipped through his cue cards.

“One word that best expresses yourself.”

“A word…?”

“And prepare a stage that proves that word.”

With those words, he left the practice room.

“Isn’t this too vague from the start?”

“What the hell are we supposed to do…”

It was a mission equivalent to being handed a blank sheet of paper and told to draw whatever you wanted. It was understandable that people would find it difficult. But unfortunately, the very fact that you thought this question was difficult was grounds for elimination.

“Jae-seong, what are you going to do?”

“I’ll produce something and show them.”

His relaxed reaction was the attitude of someone who already had his answer decided.

“Must be nice. You don’t even have to worry about it.”

Go Jae-seong smiled modestly.

‘I absolutely have to crush him in this round.’

The way to prevent IMPACTOR… or, more accurately, Kang I-yul, from becoming a flop idol was for me to become an IMPACTOR member in his place.

I-yul would get through this mission without much trouble anyway.

‘It’s not time for me to interfere and change something yet.’

I glanced at I-yul. To my delight, he was dancing in the spot with the hidden camera, the same place where we had practiced together.

‘Yeah. For now, I just need to do well.’

I took a seat in the corner of the practice room.

Actually, the song was already prepared.

The first thing I had prepared immediately after regressing was an original song for this mission. Since I knew all the missions for each round, there was no reason not to prepare in advance.

According to my original plan, all I had to do was polish that song a little. I could save time and use whatever remained to practice dancing.

But the hand holding my notebook refused to move.

‘……No.’

Over the past few weeks, I had experienced too much. I had obtained the hourglass, practiced until I nearly died, and even collapsed onstage.

All those experiences were floating around inside my head, becoming inspiration.

‘Let’s make it again.’

One week would be enough.

I was confident I could make an even better song.

Without hesitation, I erased the existing song from my mind.

Then I wrote a single word in my composition notebook.

[Spotlight]

For a while, I simply stared at that word.

The music I had made until now had always been songs for someone else.

Songs that made the singer shine, that made the stage shine.

I had always been the person creating that light from outside the spotlight.

But this time, I would stand right in the middle of that light.

Just thinking about it made my heart pound.

On the first day, I used the composition app on my tablet to create the melody first. The sound quality was crude, but it didn’t matter. A good song didn’t depend on the instrument playing it anyway.

The melody came out quickly, but the problem was the lyrics.

I wrote a few lines, then erased them.

Wrote again, then erased them again.

Trying to write about the emotions of a trainee made my breath catch in my throat with every sentence I wrote.

Debut.

Anxiety.

Competition.

Impatience.

Even just writing down the words felt suffocating.

‘Is it too heavy?’

The tip of my pen stopped.

At that moment, Kang I-yul came to mind.

How had he endured a time like this all those years?

It had taken only a few weeks for me to collapse.

And yet I-yul had endured it for years.

‘I expected it, but I didn’t realize it would be this hard.’

That emotion became the lyrics exactly as it was.

Once I had roughly put together the first draft, a considerable amount of time had already passed.

I felt something prickling.

When I raised my head, every trainee was looking this way.

‘What?’

But I quickly realized.

I was the only person sitting down in this place.

Everyone else was drenched in sweat, while I was the only one still fresh and dry.

I-yul, who had turned around belatedly, tilted his head as well.

‘…Should I at least make some simple choreography?’

I coughed awkwardly out of embarrassment.

But I picked up my pen again.

The key to this mission was choosing and focusing.

So I decided to abandon dancing for this stage.

My dancing skills were still only good enough to faithfully follow predetermined choreography. There was no need to drag that into an original-song stage as well.

Just showing what I was good at would be more than enough.

The moment I was organizing keywords in my notebook…

Tap.

A shadow fell across the paper.

‘Is it I-yul?’

I wondered if this was finally the historic moment when he would speak to me first, but…

“First mission got you feeling overwhelmed?”

…It was Go Jae-seong.

He spoke to me with a pleasant smile.

“Want me to help?”

I laughed inwardly.

His intentions were way too obvious.

‘This bastard wants to play the teacher role, huh?’

The time-honored tradition of idol survival shows: a trainee who takes the teacher role always debuts.

Not only did it create chemistry with the trainee playing the student, but it was also the perfect way to look like a kind-hearted trainee.

If the student did well, it was because ‘the teacher role trainee taught them well.’

If they did poorly, it became, ‘I helped them that much, and yet…….’

‘But was this bastard originally the type to help others?’

I carefully recalled the survival show from before my regression. But he had never been the ‘teacher role’ who helped or taught someone.

‘It seems like it changed because I came in.’

Come to think of it, there hadn’t been an ordinary trainee like me before.

A trainee with no fundamentals who had stubbornly fought his way into the A group.

Just having me beside him was enough to create a good picture.

Sorry, but that role already belonged to our I-yul.

“I saw you writing something really diligently.”

“Ah…… I’m working on rap lyrics.”

I answered casually.

“Really? So you were a rap position trainee. I didn’t know.”

“Yeah.”

Then I deliberately hesitated a little.

“But…… can you keep it a secret?”

“Why?”

I smiled awkwardly, pretending to be embarrassed.

“…I want to surprise everyone by revealing it during this mission.”

Go Jae-seong smiled along with me.

“Ah, of course.”

He had an expression that clearly said he absolutely wouldn’t keep it a secret.

Well, it didn’t matter.

‘If anything, it’s better.’

It would be more fun if he believed I was a rapper and then found out that we were in the same position.

I picked up my pen again.