I’m Debuting With The Bias I Killed Chapter 14

Chapter 14

 

The practice room was in complete chaos. Someone was belting out high notes next to someone else rapping up a storm. The sounds of off-beat rhythms overlapped all around the room.

My fingers slid across the tablet screen.

‘So this is why surprises are so difficult.’

I suddenly understood. Why idols on the verge of a comeback were always so desperate to spoil things.

Hiding a secret weapon was no easy task. Especially whenever I spotted Kang I-yul occasionally glancing over at me with a suspicious look, I wanted to plug in my earphones and play it for him right away.

The work progressed faster than I expected.

‘I made my living doing this.’

The beat and melody I had produced with the basic app were flowing into my ears.

“Done.”

A clean chord progression, a pleasant melody. The highly addictive hook was already stuck in my head.

I pressed the play button again.

Intro, development, buildup, and highlight, all the way to the chorus. It was an impeccably clean arrangement.

My head slowly nodded.

“Nice.”

Maybe because I wasn’t using the program I had worked with before, the rough sound actually suited where I was now.

It would be awkward to show professional-level skills right from the start. Even if I wanted to promote producing as my strength, I couldn’t neglect the narrative of my growth on this side either.

But one question came to mind.

‘Whose song is this? No, who is this song for?’

My hand stopped. So this was the source of the sense of incongruity I had been feeling all along.

This wasn’t a song for ‘me.’

A commercially appealing chord progression, an unremarkable development, and a safe structure. It was the method I had used countless times before.

I pulled out my earphones.

“……Ha.”

A short breath escaped me.

There was a spotlight, but there was no protagonist.

‘If I went onstage with this song?’

The reactions would be obvious.

 

-This song is good, though?

-This guy can produce?

-Oh, he’s good.

 

But that would be the end of it.

“…Ah.”

At that moment, the words I had seen on the screen came to mind.

 

[Who Are You?]

 

Right.

This mission was a stage that answered the question, ‘Who are you?’

It was the only individual stage in the survival show where you could decide everything yourself. That made it an opportunity to show people who you were.

In the end, what I needed wasn’t skill, but proof.

Yet I, who had spent my entire life writing other people’s stories for them, couldn’t write even a single line of my own story.

“…This is driving me crazy.”

In the end, I had to start over from the beginning.

I tore out the entire densely filled page of my notebook.

Then I opened a new page. After rolling the tip of my pen around for a long time, I wrote a single word.

 

[Me]

 

I had made so many songs. There had been people who debuted with my songs, and people who took first place or won awards.

But I, of all people, had never once sung my own song.

“……Huh.”

A small hollow laugh escaped me. I had never had a client like this before.

First, I needed to learn a little more about the client.

I drew a circle around ‘me.’ Then, like branching out from it, I wrote down words as they came to mind.

 

[Music]

[Producer]

 

I paused for a moment.

And then.

 

[Kang I-yul]

 

“…I should erase this.”

I was about to draw a line through I-yul’s name, but in the end, I carefully erased it with an eraser.

‘Crossing out someone’s name feels a little wrong.’

I used some ridiculous superstition as an excuse.

“This is driving me crazy.”

It had been a long time since I had felt lost while working on a song.

But it was a pleasant kind of frustration.

The practice room was still noisy. And in the middle of all that noise, I began writing about me for the first time.

 

***

 

The midterm evaluation, two days before the Round 1 stage.

The atmosphere in the practice room was heavy even before it began. Once the judges took their seats one after another, followed finally by MC Kang Se-jun, the trainees’ backs simultaneously bent forward.

“Hello!”

“Yeah, everyone practiced a lot, right?”

“Yes!”

Everyone answered Representative Song In-hyuk’s question at the top of their lungs, but their voices were filled with tension.

From here on, the real competition was beginning.

After a brief camera check, filming began.

“Then, we’ll begin the Round 1 midterm evaluation.”

This time, MC Kang Se-jun also sat alongside the judges and watched the performances. With senior artist Kang Se-jun himself added to the panel, the trainees had no choice but to be even more nervous.

One by one, they went out in the called order and presented their stages.

“Do you really think dancing is your strength, which is why you prepared this?”

“If this is the level of the vocal ability you say you’re best at, how much of a disaster is everything else?”

“You’re an idol, but is your strength wordplay?”

“This is seriously bad, guys. What are you planning to do?”

The judges’ scathing evaluations continued. The harsh criticism during the signal song mission had been nothing compared to this.

‘Wow, what aired on TV was only the tip of the iceberg.’

Hearing it directly was on another level.

The pressure you felt on-site was like the air itself was pressing down on you.

Most of the problems were similar. Instead of expressing themselves, they were copying someone else. The stages were nothing more than imitation, and naturally, they couldn’t surpass the original.

The prime example was right in front of me.

“A lot of trainees sang songs by Se-jun’s group. How do you feel about that?”

At that question, Kang Se-jun, who was always smiling, stopped smiling.

“Are our songs… kind of easy to tackle?”

‘Wow, so this was that scene.’

A suffocating silence.

“Ah, no!”

‘Hearing it in person is really scary…’

It had been a huge talking point even on the broadcast before my regression. It was also one of the moments that generated buzz early in the show.

It had even become a meme among overseas fans.

“It was a song by a senior I really admire because you’re so cool and…”

The unlucky trainee frantically waved his hands.

“I’m really grateful, but that isn’t an answer to the question of who you are.”

At those words, the trainee’s expression crumbled.

The evaluation wasn’t even halfway over, yet every remaining trainee swallowed nervously.

“Next… Code 6 trainee. Please introduce your keyword.”

When Go Jae-seong confidently raised his hand and walked out, the trainees’ gazes turned toward him. Their eyes were filled with trust, as though he might somehow change this frozen atmosphere. The judges also straightened their slouched postures.

They were the ones most exhausted by the subpar stages, after all.

“Hello, I’m Code 6 trainee.”

Go Jae-seong greeted them calmly.

“My keyword is ‘producing.’”

“Oh… So Code 6 trainee can produce?”

“I haven’t been doing it for very long.”

Go Jae-seong gave an awkward smile at Kang Se-jun’s question.

“But the more I did it, the more fun it became. I want to show you that I’m someone who isn’t afraid of challenges!”

The judges nodded at the satisfying answer.

Go Jae-seong had rearranged ‘Fantasy,’ a hit song by the famous idol group ‘CHASE.’

Whereas the original song focused on performance, he added a hip-hop sound and performed self-written rap lyrics as well.

 

♪ Close your eyes

♪ Show me your fantasy

♪ Time waits for no one

 

‘…He is pretty good.’

His skills were stable even while rapping and dancing simultaneously.

It felt completely different from watching it on the broadcast.

‘I think he was much worse back then.’

That thought suddenly occurred to me.

‘Wow, I really did hate this bastard like fucking hell!’

Throughout the entire survival show, I had never once thought he was good.

After belatedly binge-watching the survival show, I absolutely refused to believe that Go Jae-seong had been one of the skilled members.

I even thought it was all an illusion created through editing.

‘Back then, I really thought he was a complete dead weight.’

Even at a moment like this, I was objectively judging the skills of my sworn enemy without prejudice.

……Was I an angel? Or a Bodhisattva?

Of course, the disappointing stages of the trainees before him also helped make his stage stand out even more.

“Wow, I should’ve learned producing too.”

“Would you be able to do it as well as Jae-seong just because you learned?”

“True.”

Leaving behind the voices of the trainees filled with envy, the evaluation continued in the first genuinely friendly atmosphere since the midterm began.

“How long did you say you’ve been learning producing?”

“One year.”

“If you can do this after only a year…”

“You definitely have talent.”

Jack P, a producer affiliated with Nix Entertainment, continued the evaluation.

“Self-produced idols are really popular these days. In that sense, Code 6 trainee could become a member the team absolutely needs.”

At those words, the expressions of the surrounding trainees changed.

Envy, admiration, and the certainty of ‘Ah, he’s going to debut.’

Go Jae-seong was doing his best to smile humbly, but he couldn’t hide the corners of his mouth lifting upward.

The moment he returned to his seat looking triumphant, the trainees crowded around him.

“That was insane. You absolutely killed it.”

“God, Jae-seong…”

“You’re definitely going to debut.”

Go Jae-seong waved his hands dismissively.

“No, I just prepared really hard.”

‘What a show-off.’

The midterm evaluation proceeded in reverse order of code numbers.

The next one was Choi Un-jo.

Choi Un-jo performed a stage with self-written rap over a famous hip-hop beat.

‘Oh…….’

I had already seen the stage several times on the broadcast, but hearing it in person felt different.

“His tone is insane.”

“Maybe because he’s from overseas? Even his pronunciation is different…”

“Code 5 really isn’t nervous at all.”

Naturally, the positive evaluations continued.

“Next, Code 4. Prepare.”

‘Here it comes.’

The moment I stood up, murmurs came from all around.

“Wow… after Jae-seong and Un-jo?”

“He’s doing rap after Choi Un-jo of all people…”

Their tones were unmistakably laced with ridicule.

‘Of course.’

It seemed Go Jae-seong had already spread the word.

I hadn’t even told I-yul that I was doing rap.

Since I had expected this, I wasn’t surprised.

I casually picked up a guitar and walked forward.

“He’s doing rap while playing guitar?”

“This is going to be a complete disaster.”

“Rap and guitar don’t go together at all.”

It was funny how everyone blindly believed whatever Go Jae-seong said.

Hey, would anyone with common sense bring a guitar and then do rap?

“Are you feeling okay?”

Kang Se-jun asked first with a smile.

“Yes. I’m perfectly fine! Thank you for worrying about me.”

Kang Se-jun nodded.

“I like your spirit. Please introduce the stage and keyword you prepared today.”

“Yes. The keyword for the stage I prepared today is ‘original song.’”

Thud.

It was as if someone had pressed the pause button on a video.

Every sound stopped.

The trainees who had been murmuring, the writer who had been taking notes, even Kang Se-jun, who had been flipping through his cue cards.

Every face visible through the mirror had frozen.

I-yul’s eyes were wide with shock, Han Sang-yoon looked stunned, and Go Jae-seong’s previously relaxed expression had been completely wiped away.

Even the judges exchanged startled looks.

“Wait.”

Jack P spoke first.

“You really… prepared an original song?”

“Yes.”

“A song you made yourself?”

“Yes.”

“You didn’t forget the mission topic, did you?”

The suspicion was natural.

A participant in a survival show whose name hadn’t even been revealed yet, a trainee hastily brought in just to fill the numbers, had suddenly walked out with an original song.

Murmurs erupted again from the back.

“You’re kidding, right?”

“What? There was no mention of that.”

“He’s really going all-out for attention.”

I had anticipated every one of those reactions, so I raised my head and met the eyes of every judge.

And answered confidently.

“Yes.”

The corners of my mouth slowly rose.

“Because this is what I’m best at.”