Chapter 42
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Translated by Sylph
Read it only at Novelbyu.com & Utoon.net
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Lee Sejin let out a bitter smile.
“My agency… it’s Happy Friend.”
“Ah.”
At that moment, the idol aspirants roughly grasped the atmosphere.
And I, who used to be a data seller in the past, also realized.
‘That place… is famous for not being able to handle initial responses to controversies.’
Come to think of it, even though this disaster was happening, there was no contact from the agency.
It had already been over an hour since the post was uploaded, and all sorts of SNS were in an uproar now. If it were an agency with some size and quick feet, they would have already tactfully contacted Lee Sejin.
“Well… I entered because I heard it’s a place that releases albums well. Haha.”
Lee Sejin laughed several times perfunctorily, then raised his body from the bed.
“T-Then how about a-asking a friend to post it? You have m-many friends.”
“Hmm… Since official internet activities are prohibited during filming according to our regulations, should I try asking the kids I know? If I send the photo and ask them to post it, I know some kids who would do it excitedly.”
“…….”
‘Should I just leave it alone?’
I was on the verge of regretting it, thinking that I had meddled too excessively even now. However, thinking that since I already opened my mouth I should see it through to the end, I eventually gave advice.
“If you recruit them directly, that will also leave a record. Rather, tell the production team and say you’ll post it directly.”
I indirectly paraphrased the words, ‘Be careful because it seems like the culprit is among your acquaintances right now.’ Lee Sejin nodded his head as if he caught on immediately.
“That would be better. Let’s see……”
Lee Sejin turned on a notepad app on his smartphone, then smiled at the rest of the teammates who were still huddled together.
“Everyone must be tired, so thank you for your concern. I’ll try writing it quietly alone. You guys go to sleep now.”
“Hey, it’s a bit much for us to just go to sleep and leave you in this situation.”
Lee Sejin answered Gold 1’s worry seriously.
“If we all can’t sleep, won’t we really see hell tomorrow……”
“…….”
There was indeed a terrifyingly large amount of work to do tomorrow too.
They were very persuasive words.
Eventually, the rest of the teammates all returned to their own beds with haggard faces.
I also lay on the bed and fell asleep.
However, unfortunately, I woke up again at dawn. It was because I was thirsty.
‘I talked too much before going to sleep.’
As I quietly got up and headed toward the sink, Lee Sejin, who was sitting at a table looking into his smartphone, reacted.
“Oh. Moondae, you’re not sleeping?”
“Because I’m thirsty.”
“I see.”
Seeing that he still couldn’t sleep, it seemed Lee Sejin hadn’t finished working on the refutation statement yet. Or he was still sifting through internet public opinion.
Neither was a very good sign.
“Did you write it all?”
“Hmm… I did write it, but.”
Lee Sejin looked down at his smartphone with a conflicted expression, then continued after a while.
“I thought that if I post it directly, other things might be said because of that.”
“What kind of things?”
“Well, first, it will be said that communicating directly through SNS during filming is a privilege… And if my refutation is firm, the reaction might be ‘I didn’t know his personality was like that,’ or on the contrary, if it’s compassionate, they’ll say ‘He’s doing that because he feels guilty,’ something like that.”
It was a plausible scenario.
“So I was going to try writing it while pretending to be an anonymous acquaintance, do you want to take a look?”
Lee Sejin handed over the smartphone.
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[I am Lee Sejin’s friend.]
: The photo in the accusation post uploaded today is a composite. Among the photos I had, there was the original photo.
(Original photo) (Composite photo)
The second photo was made by cutting the first photo.
========================
….
“…….”
“How is it?”
What should I do with this.
If this were a normal school life, it would be a fine explanation. Everything that needs to be said is in it and it’s in a top-down format so it’s easy to see.
The problem was that it wasn’t a post suitable for an anonymous internet site.
I inadvertently looked behind. The bed was waiting for me.
But if I told him to post this, there was a very high probability that everything I did at midnight would be in vain.
‘Ha…….’
Sleep… let’s do it tomorrow.
“…This is not it.”
“What?”
“I’m saying it’s not it.”
Eventually, I brought my smartphone as if I were forced to eat mustard.
In the end, I’m the one doing it, fuuuuck.
* * *
3:30 AM.
It was a time when most people would have gone to bed. It was a time when only hardcore internet users would be staying up all night and talking about trivial stories.
It was also the timing when the controversy over Lee Sejin’s school violence had swept through once and was only coming up as intermittent small talk.
At that moment, a post was uploaded to an anonymous site related to idols.
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[Eh, I think I found Lee Sejin’s photo.]
: (Composite photo) Isn’t the original of this this? (Original photo)
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Attached to the post was a group photo of Lee Sejin and other students whose faces were roughly erased in black.
It was a light post written with a common telecom IP, but comments from dawn users who checked the content grew in an instant.
– Heol
– What is it
– Where did you get it?
– Hey, this looks real;;;
– Is this a pilgrimage site?
– Did they use that photo by cutting it
– How did you know lol
└ There was Lee Sejin’s past photo on a friend’s private account, so I found it while digging
└ Isn’t this guy a stalker;;
└ Why, you guys would do it if you had it too
└ lol hitting with facts
└ Wow, this guy covered all the faces of the normal people. Is he scared of lawsuits lol
In response to the author’s feedback, the comment atmosphere flared up even more, and soon someone who checked the post even made an accurate comparison shot.
– I cropped it, it’s the same (Photo)
└ Heek
└ dddd
└ Crazy
– lol was it really a composite? So funny. What kind of loser is he to go this far with a fabrication?
– Wow, I thought Lee Sejin was delisted, but he was a target of market manipulators
└ Crazy lol
└ All-in buy now go go
Comments grew faster and faster.
Even not long after, someone found that the time the original photo was taken was during Lee Sejin’s student council election campaign.
– I dug through the Cheongsol High School website and found a similar promotional photo. Seems to be from the election campaign? (Link)
└ Wow, it really was an inferiority complex
└ I felt something fishy from when the fabrication post mentioned election and stuff lol
└ Wow, the person who fabricated it really wrote it with grit
└ They’re probably gritting their teeth so hard right now they won’t have any teeth left lol
Coming to this point, captures of this post began to circulate on SNS and communities.
[Mysterious realization of justice.jpg (feat. Lee Sejin not school violence)]
[Lee Sejin school violence photo manipulation appeared.]
[Someone found Lee Sejin’s original photo]
Just like when the first post was uploaded, comments increased in an instant.
Thanks to the added nuance of having found it by chance, this post looked even more truthful. Public opinion soon tilted toward mocking the school violence accusation post.
Lee Sejin’s fans, who had been unable to sleep, quickly joined in uploading the captures.
They posted comments combatively, chasing away those who were stirring up trouble by saying ‘The photo is manipulated but the content could be true,’ telling them not to talk nonsense.
In that way, the information that the accusation post was fabricated occupied the internet public opinion in no time.
It was something that happened before the commuting time on that day was even over.
* * *
“They deleted it.”
Lee Sejin muttered.
Once the fact that the photo was manipulated was exposed and public opinion completely tilted, the one who wrote the accusation post deleted it without a word and disappeared.
It could have been hard if they had clung more dirtily, but apparently, they gave up because the public opinion was too flipped.
“…What a relief, really.”
Lee Sejin let out a deep sigh of relief and slammed his head onto the table. Once the tension loosened, he seemed to be crushed by fatigue.
“Thank you. I really… have no face to show.”
He had reason to be thankful. Because if he had posted the draft as it was, it wouldn’t have turned out like this.
‘Data seller 1 win…….’
I never dreamed that I would use the experience of snooping around here and there to see the price flow like this again. Let’s consider this suffering… as paying off that karma.
“In the first place… if I hadn’t even touched cigarettes, this mess wouldn’t have happened.”
Lee Sejin muttered with a voice tinged with self-loathing. He seemed to know it was a stupid thing to do himself.
“Why did you smoke?”
“……Ah, at that time…. I was pushed out of the debut group. I even recorded the demo… but they put in someone else except me and debuted well, and even sold albums well.”
“……At ‘Happy Friend’?”
Haven’t they not picked a boy idol with decent results for nearly five years?
“No, another place. ……But they said they didn’t intend to put out another team for a while, so they connected me to here now.”
“I see.”
At this point, there were only one or two boy idol teams that debuted three or four years ago and did well from their first album.
And both are large agencies.
‘…Wouldn’t it have been better to just persist even if it was a bit late?’
Even if five years passed from the age of 17, it’s 22. It’s a decent age to debut as the oldest in a team. It would have been rational to stay in the large agency first rather than going to Happy Friend.
“…At that time, they made such a grand promise that they would put out a rookie within this year that I signed… but it’s already the 4th year without putting one out. Haha.”
“…….”
So that was it.
Originally, you shouldn’t believe verbal contracts, but since his first-year mental state was crushed, he must have had no energy left to take care of such things.
“As you can see, none of the Happy Friend trainees here are at a level to debut right away. So I really have to debut in this program……”
“…….”
“So speaking of which, thank you once again for preventing me from dropping out. Park Moondae.”
It’s the first time this guy has revealed his inner thoughts while critiquing someone so overtly.
‘Is it his own way of showing sincerity?’
“Sure. Be very thankful.”
“…What? Haha!”
Lee Sejin laughed, then slammed his head back onto the table. He wanted to laugh but seemed to find it hard because he was soaked in fatigue.
I pondered uncomfortably.
‘…Have we become too informal.’
Since he was a drug user at-risk group, I intended to keep some distance, but from some point, it seems to have fizzled out and we’ve become excessively close.
‘Anyway, looking at his actions so far, the probability seems low.’
Lee Sejin likely wouldn’t have been able to debut if he withdrew when the school violence broke out.
Even if he didn’t withdraw, it wouldn’t have been easy to flip the public opinion like now, so debut would have been hard.
‘Hmm, but even the child actor Lee Sejin side doesn’t have much of a debut angle caught right now.’
Still, since Lee Sejin’s screen time and image could have been influenced by the variable called ‘Park Moondae’, this side rather had a possibility.
‘Anyway, this is not a matter that is immediately important.’
Let’s just put Schrödinger’s drug user in a box for now. What was urgent was the team match stage in two days.
Pa-pa-bam-pa-bam-ppam-ppam!
“Heuaaaa!!”
“Uuuu……”
Just in time, with the morning wake-up alarm, the teammates wriggled and woke up from their beds.
‘Another day without rest has begun…….’
As I stood with hollow eyes, Lee Sejin spoke to me again. It seemed to be a continuation of the previous conversation.
“No, really…, I’ll buy you a meal at least once when this is over. What do you want to eat?”
“Beef.”
“……It doesn’t have to be domestic, right?”
“If it’s delicious.”
It was exactly 50 hours before the team match rehearsal.
* * *
The 3rd team match stage was conducted on a large stage, one of the sets of Tnet’s flagship music program ‘MusicBomb’.
It was meant to mean showing a cool stage by standing on the stage where actual senior idols stood, but it seemed to be because it was good for extracting reaction cuts.
“On this stage just three days ago! VTIC conducted a pre-recording!”
“Wuaaaa!!!”
The participants cheered at the MC’s words.
In fact, since the stage sets were completely different, there was not much in common besides occupying the same space.
However, the participants seemed excited just by the fact that they used the same space as top-class idols.
I didn’t feel bad either.
‘VTIC… they were decent guys.’
Since the unit price was expensive, it was worth the while to film them.
“Just like the senior idols did, please display your skills to your heart’s content!”
After finishing the lines of the script and leaving, the rehearsal preparation began in earnest.
“Everyone! The order goes exactly the same as the live broadcast!”
“Yes!”
In an instant, the stage site became noisy with instructions and the sound of music.
According to the order, the participants still had some leisure. So the team first gathered in a corner.
“Shall we do a fighting shout once? We’ve really worked hard all this time, so let’s show a cool stage as much as we’ve suffered.”
“Ah, good.”
“L-Let’s do that.”
The teammates nodded their heads repeatedly with nervous faces. However, it was clearly visible that that tension came from anticipation, not anxiety.
” team,”
The teammates gathered their hands together in a heap.
“Fighting!!”
The shout was almost combative.
‘My goodness.’
Even though there was no camera following closely nearby, it was strange that I readily participated in this act.
Still, it wasn’t a bad feeling.
“Then let’s go!”
Really, the stage was right in front of us.