I’m Debuting With The Bias I Killed Chapter 53

Chapter 53

 

“I honestly never imagined that I would end up dancing in my life.”

“What?”

A few reactions burst out simultaneously, making me chuckle.

“Why? You all saw me dancing during our first class.”

“Wow, I can never forget that-”

“Hyung… it feels like a past life.”

Everyone nodded while laughing.

Everyone except Kang I-yul.

Whatever he had remembered, his expression even stiffened for a moment.

“Before I joined the company, I really hated dancing.”

“Why?”

“Because of my noona, obviously.”

‘Ah… everyone looked like they understood immediately.’

“My noona was good at dancing from a young age. She was just naturally gifted.”

I stared blankly at the lyric sheets.

“But I wasn’t.”

The atmosphere had grown quiet before I knew it.

“But my noona kept dragging me onto the stage.”

I imitated the moment with a hand gesture.

“‘Hey, you get up here, too-’ Like that.”

Of course, this was a heavily sanitized version.

The actual Yoo Seong-ah would clench her fist first and say she would kill me if I didn’t get up there.

Song Woo-joo burst out laughing.

“One time, I really bawled my eyes out onstage.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. My noona still teases me about it.”

“Hyung, wait. Are you in that video, too?”

‘A video?’

I hadn’t simply regressed; my age had been adjusted anew. Therefore, unlike before my regression, the event of my standing onstage with Yoo Seong-ah at a talent show could no longer occur.

But there was a video of Yoo Seong-ah and me dancing together?

“What video?”

“Yuze-nim’s local festival video.”

Thinking it couldn’t possibly be true, I searched for “Yuze local festival” on WeTube.

And my vision went dizzy.

Perhaps because the seven-year age gap had been reflected, Yoo Seong-ah was wearing a school uniform. Beside her, I was dancing mechanically, covered in tears, no different from the video before my regression.

‘I’m going to suffer forever……’

The team members focused on the video with fascination. I scratched my head awkwardly out of embarrassment.

“The thing I heard the most back then was, ‘Your sister is so good at it, so why are you like that?’”

The atmosphere shifted slightly. Everyone seemed to be recalling memories of their own memories.

“You know those kinds of comments. The ones that make you feel small for no reason.”

One by one, they nodded.

It was probably a feeling anyone with siblings had experienced at least once.

Kwon Gi-hyeon, who had been quiet, spoke first.

“…My older brother is really good at studying, you know?”

The result was predictable just from hearing that first sentence.

“So I was compared to him all the time.”

A bitter smile spread across his face.

“My brother always came home in first place, while I was just practicing all the time…”

His voice trailed off.

“Ah, I know what that’s like.”

“Yeah.”

Once one person began speaking, the words they had been holding back poured out.

“Chuseok and Seollal are the worst.”

“It’s seriously stressful when all the relatives get together.”

“They ask when you’re going to appear on TV-”

“They asked me when I was finally going to come to my senses.”

I didn’t deliberately interrupt.

“Wow- That’s harsh.”

I only chimed in occasionally.

After the conversation continued for quite some time, Kang I-yul, who had been quietly listening in the corner, opened his mouth.

“I’m actually kind of the opposite of Seong-woo hyung…”

Everyone’s gazes naturally turned toward him. I-yul moved his lips for a moment before continuing.

“I was scared of receiving too many expectations.”

“……”

“‘Of course, you’ll debut this time, right?’”

His fingernails slowly scratched the knuckles of his fingers. It was a familiar habit.

“This time, you’ll definitely make it.”

A bitter smile flashed across his face.

“But every time I fell right in front of everyone’s eyes…”

The practice room fell silent.

He couldn’t continue for a while, but no one urged him on.

“It felt like I just wanted to disappear somewhere. Anywhere?”

It was a story I was hearing for the first time, too.

Before my regression, Kang I-yul had been called the “icon of misfortune.” The nickname I hated most for I-yul was Byul… a derogatory term formed by combining the bul from bul-un (misfortune) with the yul from Kang I-yul’s name.

I still remember all those malicious comments.

 

↳ Honestly, isn’t this comeback ruined because Byul was the center?

 ↳↳ I’m from Nix Entertainment, and this is true.

↳ Did you know? Every agency Byul was in either went out of business or went bankrupt.

 ↳↳ What are you talking about? Only the first place he was at completely fell apart because the CEO was involved in a gambling scandal. Stop presenting fake information as fact;;

↳ Byul stans, shut up already. Your voices are the only thing getting louder, and you’re bringing bad luck;;

↳ No matter how much you deny it, Impactor, which had Byul, failed, while every group that cut ties with Byul succeeded.ㅇㅇ

 

He was so famously unlucky that people even went as far as saying Impactor had failed because Kang I-yul had been selected.

In reality, both groups from which Kang I-yul had been eliminated before debut had gone on to become famous idols.

‘It was ridiculous.’

But when you kept hearing things like that, they began to feel like the truth.

Kang I-yul spoke again.

“So I think this really is my last chance.”

A brief silence passed.

No one could brush his words off lightly.

‘What could anyone say to this eighteen-year-old child who was talking about his last chance?’

“I’m sorry.”

Kang I-yul gave an awkward smile.

“I think I just made the atmosphere heavy because of me-”

I shook my head.

“That’s it.”

“What is?”

“What you just said.”

Kang I-yul looked at me.

“That’s really your story.”

I handed out another sheet of paper to each of them.

“Let’s try writing again. Anything is fine, so just comfortably write your own story.”

“Can we really write absolutely anything?”

“Anything except something like, ‘What should we eat for dinner tonight?’”

“Ah, hyung! We’re not that bad, you know?”

Laughter spread through the room. Before long, I-yul was laughing along, too.

I erased all the lyrics I had written up to that point and looked at the blank sheet again.

‘What kind of story should I write?’

I rolled my pen around for a moment.

My noona had been different since she was young.

She knew what she liked and what she was good at faster than anyone else, and she never hesitated.

I wasn’t like that.

People would say, ‘Seong-ah is good at dancing, so you should try it, too, Seong-woo.’

‘Since Seong-ah likes being in front of people, you probably like it, too, right?’

My noona was always the standard.

So I clung to my studies even more. Because that was, at the very least, the only thing I could do better than her.

But it was only after I became a university student that I realized.

What I truly liked, and what I was truly good at.

It wasn’t about imitating someone else or being compared to someone.

It was entirely my own.

This was a kind of trainee life, too.

I adjusted my grip on the pen and began writing my story.

 

***

 

While the team members each filled their blank sheets, Kang I-yul was mulling over what had happened a moment ago.

He had been swept up in the atmosphere and shared his story, far more than he usually did.

He normally wasn’t good at talking about himself.

He didn’t have a particularly happy past, and above all, he hated being pitied.

Everyone who heard his story said similar things without exception.

‘How hard must it have been for you? You went through so much at such a young age.’

He understood that they were trying to comfort him.

But whenever he heard those words, it felt as if all the time he had endured was being reduced to nothing more than a pitiful past.

So he didn’t talk about it.

He pretended that nothing was wrong and smiled first, before anyone could ask.

But strangely, today, the words had come out naturally.

Because Yoo Seong-woo hadn’t looked at him that way.

‘That’s really my story.’

That one sentence kept circling in his mind.

He hadn’t called him pitiful or amazing.

He had simply said it was his story.

For some reason, that fact stayed with him.

“I-yul, how’s it going? Have you managed to write anything?”

Kang I-yul instinctively covered his paper with his arm. He felt embarrassed by the sheet, which was still completely blank.

“…It’s still difficult.”

“It can’t be helped. It’s your first time writing lyrics.”

“Yes.”

Yoo Seong-woo gazed into the air for a moment as if thinking, then spoke.

“How about writing down every word that comes to mind?”

Kang I-yul smiled bitterly inwardly. That was a method he had already thought of himself. Just as he was about to nod indifferently at the advice that hadn’t provided a solution…

“Is that difficult for you?”

“What?”

A brief silence passed.

Misunderstanding Kang I-yul’s reaction, Yoo Seong-woo hurriedly waved his hand.

“No, wait. That came out wrong.”

He busily waved even his bandaged arm around.

“I’m not asking if you can’t even do something like that. I’m genuinely curious.”

He was so flustered that he fumbled like a broken robot. Instead, Kang I-yul had to calm him down.

“I didn’t misunderstand you. And you’re right. That really is difficult for me.”

Only then did Yoo Seong-woo’s eyes, which had been darting around aimlessly, come to a stop.

“Maybe it’s because they’re words you don’t want to convey lightly.”

“What?”

“You keep refining them because you don’t want to be misunderstood, right?”

“……”

He was exactly right.

Countless sentences had already come to mind. But if he chose one, it seemed too pathetic. If he chose another, it seemed excessively desperate.

To look a little less pitiful, to sound a little more composed.

As he revised and erased everything, he ultimately couldn’t write a single thing.

“But in my experience, the more you refine something like that, the more fake it becomes.”

“……”

“At first, you definitely had something you wanted to say. But if you keep making it prettier, all that remains are words other people would like to hear.”

At that moment, Kang I-yul heard something crack in his ears.

A tiny fracture had formed in the wall he had built up over such a long time.

“……”

“In the end, you’ll look for the words you thought of at first. But once time passes, you won’t remember them anymore, right?”

Kang I-yul found himself nodding without realizing it.

“Then you’ll definitely regret it.”

Those words struck his heart with strange intensity.

Whenever his debut fell through, he spent the entire night thinking about how to bring it up to his parents.

‘It didn’t work out this time, either. Please wait just a little longer.’

How could he say it so they would be less disappointed? How could he convey his true feelings to them…

But no matter how much he refined his words, the result was always the same.

‘I’m sorry.’

Suddenly, a thought occurred to him.

Wouldn’t it have been enough to simply say, I don’t want to give up yet?

“Of course, there are also things you need to refine several times.”

Yoo Seong-woo added,

“But make sure you write down the very first thought that comes to mind.”

He smiled.

“Because it’ll definitely help you later.”

It was the first time.

The first time someone had seen so clearly through him.

Kang I-yul slowly picked up his pen.

Among the many sentences drifting through his mind, there was one with the darkest underline.

At last, he began writing the first line on the blank sheet.

 

[Anyone is fine]

[Just tell me]

[That I can shine]

 

Once he had written one line, the next sentence came to mind.

Just as he was about to move the tip of his pen again, he suddenly realized that the gaze touching the back of his head had disappeared.

“Seong-woo hyung?”

Song Woo-joo answered without raising his head.

“He went out a little while ago.”

“Why?”

“He said something got in his eye.”

It was obviously a lie. He had deliberately stepped away so I-yul could write comfortably.

Along with his gratitude, Kang I-yul couldn’t shake the feeling that he had become indebted to him yet again.

‘How many times is this now, seriously……’

A little while later, the practice room door opened.

“Whew, I think we need to clean the practice room.”

Yoo Seong-woo entered while noisily rubbing around his eye.

“I thought my eye was going to fall out because of all the dust!”

The area around his eye was red and irritated.

Kang I-yul looked at him for a moment before standing up.

“Hyung.”

“Hmm?”

“Thanks to you, I think I kind of know what I should write now…”

“I told you.”

Yoo Seong-woo grinned as if he had been waiting for those words.

“If you team up with me, we’re definitely going to place first-”

When I-yul bowed again, Yoo Seong-woo panicked and waved his hands.

“Wh-Why do you keep bowing at every opportunity?”

“It’s a way of thanking you…?”

“It makes me feel like there’s too much distance between us.”

Yoo Seong-woo lowered his voice as much as possible and awkwardly imitated Kang I-yul.

“From now on, when you thank me, just say something like, ‘Hyung, thank you.’ That’s enough.”

“……”

“Try it.”

“Right now?”

“Yeah!”

Kang I-yul hesitated for a moment. But Yoo Seong-woo was looking at him with expectant eyes.

In the end, he spoke in a small voice.

“Hyung, thank you.”

“That’s it!”

The corners of Yoo Seong-woo’s mouth rose in satisfaction.

The corners of Kang I-yul’s mouth moved slightly as well.

Once the path had been opened, his pen barely stopped.

The words he had kept pressed down inside him began to emerge one by one onto the blank sheet.

Half a day passed, and the four of them stood before Yoo Seong-woo again.

Each of them was clutching their lyric sheets tightly.

“Why do you all look so solemn?”

“Hyung, you don’t understand.”

Kwon Gi-hyeon hugged his paper to his chest.

“These are lyrics I ground my soul into.”

“If you grind your entire soul away in half a day, what are you going to live on from now on?”

“Ah, seriously!”

Laughter spread through the room.

Yoo Seong-woo accepted the papers from the four of them and unfolded them one by one.

As he examined the lyrics, he compared the sheets here and there, as though putting together a puzzle.

Scratch, scratch.

The only sound echoing through the practice room was the scratching of pen tips against paper.

‘How much time had passed?’

Yoo Seong-woo made one final correction to a sentence.

Shraaak

He spread the completed lyric sheets out like a fan.

“Done.”

The four people’s gazes fixed on the papers.

Yoo Seong-woo smiled brightly.

“Then, shall we move on to the next step?”