Save a Failed Idol’s Life

Chapter 207:

Translator: MarcTempest

Editor: NicoleTempest

Chapter 207 One by One, Back to Their Places (1)

After waking up the members and cooking a hearty porridge for dinner, they all started to melt into the couch, feeling drowsy.

Yi-jun, who was patting his satisfied stomach after overloading on carbs, asked with a sleepy eye.

“Are we on standby all day today?”

The airing date of the observational reality show they had filmed was approaching, but they still hadn’t heard anything from the production team.

The entertainment talk board that I checked overnight had finally moved on from having nine out of ten rankings related to Floss, but still more than half of them were pointing out the questionable points of Floss and My Idol stage at the time of airing.

￣￣￣￣￣

[Body]

A year ago, a My Idol voluntary dropout (NOT eliminated) posted this without verification and I captured it from the archive

(Screen capture)

[Spilling the tea on seeing My Idol in real life

• • I appeared as a My Idol individual trainee. I left before the cover mission started, so you guys probably don’t know my face.

I asked them about the debut members’ reviews when I saw them during the grade evaluation.

1. 1. Lee Jinhyung – He showed other songs besides the one that went on air. The judges seemed to like him a bit, but he didn’t get much praise compared to other trainees from the same agency.

1. 1. Shim Naru – He got a lot of attention relatively because there were many lower grade participants in the front rank. He sings well, but is he worth being pushed that much? I wondered.

….]

I agreed with most of the content.

The evaluation comments of the members who were exposed to have signed a pre-contract mostly concluded with ‘I don’t know if they deserve to be pushed that much.’

The comments were mostly indirect exposures from insiders who mocked, ridiculed, and got angry at us for not knowing that, but there was something that caught my eye.

[- Then what the hell is Kang Yu-geon?]

[ㄴ He’s been getting bashed for being rigged all this time, but not even a single cover of the contract has been revealed yet]

[ㄴ I don’t know if he hasn’t signed it yet or if it hasn’t been revealed yet]

[- Who’s going to inherit the throne of the rigging king now?]

[ㄴ King Naru should take it]

[- I’ve been thinking that Kang Yu-geon was just a viewer’s pick since this was first posted.

Even after he debuted, he was always in the top 3 of the popular members, even though his debut rank didn’t match. If he was going to get attention by rigging, the production team would have pushed him with a positive image like their son born from their heart, like S.N.L.

Kang Yu-geon was dragged like crazy with aggro throughout his appearance, and until the cover stage was announced, he was cursed for having no basis for his confidence while being an F grade.

Maybe he had something that the production team hated, so they stuck him in F grade and sent him out as a ratings aggro, but he survived longer than expected and ended up debuting?]

[ㄴ I want a web novel recommendation with this content.]

[ㄴ This could be an idol web drama]

[ㄴ This is too muchㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ]

[ㄴ Go wash and sleep, don’t do this here]

There was also a comment that surprisingly guessed the closest answer to the truth.

That was because this post also described Yu-geon’s unbelievable F grade behavior impressively.

￣￣￣￣￣

Kang Yu-geon went from F to A and got a lot of talk, but I wasn’t there when he was re-evaluated, so I don’t know how it was, but the reaction was very cold when he got F.

He didn’t have the skills to get F, so I expected him to get B or A at least, but he suddenly said he needed to work on his basics and sent him to F.

Everyone was confused about what was going on and moved on to the next order.

I know he got a lot of hate for being a greedy center in the beginning of the broadcast, but if you saw the evaluation then, you wouldn’t have thought he was greedy.

￣￣￣￣￣

Thanks to that, there was a re-evaluation of Kang Yu-geon all over the board.

But still, there were opinions that his irresponsible attitude and skipping the schedule without notice were unacceptable, and there were speculations about what he had to do to get to A grade and still be the aggro and controversy maker and get cursed to death.

No one had yet revealed who Yu-geon’s father was without any loyalty, and no one seemed to expect that it would be related to his parents’ background.

‘I can turn this around in this atmosphere.’

I had to catch the timing when there was still sympathy for Yu-geon.

Then the problem was how to get Hwijin out… I was looking down the list of Hwijin’s numbers in the call history and found one more unfamiliar number.

[Shim Naru 010-XXXX-XXXX]

‘…’

Right. What do I do with this guy?

I couldn’t find out exactly what happened to Shim Naru because I was kicked out and returned to reality.

As I was briefly recalling the last time I returned to reality, I suddenly had a headache and grabbed my head.

“Ugh.”

Why does it hurt all of a sudden? Seon-woo asked me with a surprised expression as I suddenly grabbed my head while sitting on the one-seater sofa and looking at my phone with a serious face.

“Hyung, are you okay?”

I wanted to say I was fine right away, but a strong pain surged through my head as if I had touched something wrong in my brain. I couldn’t speak easily.

“Ah, wait. I suddenly have a terrible headache…”

As I bowed my head, Kyunghwa looked at me with a worried face.

“Does your head hurt? Do you want me to get you some medicine?”

I frowned at the pain that felt like needles poking my head and shook my head sideways.

“No, it’s just a sudden pain…”

As I waited for the pain to go away, I breathed deeply. That’s when Pposili flew into my arms.

“Ugh.”

I screamed and bent forward at the sudden shock to my body. At that moment, a translucent status window popped up.

[※System damage has been restored.]

What do you mean by restored? I’m not a broken radio or an old TV.

It was ridiculous that they tried to cure my headache with physical shock therapy. I chuckled bitterly.

“Are you feeling better now?”

As I lifted my body with a relaxed expression, Kyunghwa asked cautiously, as if he wanted to make sure of my condition.

“Yeah, I’m fine. I guess I had a little dizziness.”

As I straightened my wobbly body and sat down, Kyunghwa still seemed uneasy.

“You said you were going to Jeju Island last night and you didn’t sleep well all night, right? Go inside and get some sleep.”

I wondered who was worrying about whom and treating them like a child, but I didn’t feel too bad.

But apart from the slight gratitude I felt, I didn’t have time to waste right now.

“I’m okay. I’ll just make a call and come back.”

As I left the members in the living room and called Hwijin, I entered the room and felt a sting in the back of my head.

I knew he was busy with the aftermath of the Floss incident, but I wished he would tell us more details.

But right now, it was time to rely on my own judgment, rather than telling everyone and making things more complicated and conflicting.

‘I’m not going to take them to the climax…’

Of course, that would be the easiest and simplest way.

But I didn’t want to push them as I pleased, as it would cause backlash from the fandoms, not to mention our members wouldn’t be happy about it.

With an anxious mind, I waited for the phone to ring about five times. Then I heard Hwijin’s tired and hoarse voice.

“Ah, yes. How have you been, Hwijin?”

How was he doing? I asked him to check the status of Floss, but there was no answer.

‘Why are you silent? Say something!’

I felt my heart tighten with anxiety and fear.

“Is the phone not connected? Can’t you hear my voice?”

I asked, looking at the seconds clock that was ticking up. But the call was still connected, and there was no reply.

‘What’s going on?’

Should I hang up and call again? I couldn’t rule out the possibility of a bad connection, and I was about to say ‘I’ll hang up and call again.’ when I heard Hwijin’s dying voice.

“Ise…”

Oh, wow. It wasn’t a bad connection after all. I rubbed my startled ears and answered.

“Yeah, yeah. I’m listening. Did you have breakfast? Are you feeling better?”

I asked him in a slightly anxious voice, but there was no answer from Hwijin for a long time.

‘Why doesn’t he answer and make me nervous?’

Just when I felt my blood pressure rising from anxiety, Hwijin uttered something I never expected.

“I think I’m disqualified as a leader.”

What are you talking about? He was the one who pulled up the mediocre members above his own capacity and made them harmonize in both the virtual My Idol stage and the Bobbyam. If you’re disqualified as a leader, who’s going to lead?

I immediately answered with the intention of denying it.

“What are you talking about all of a sudden?”

The corruption problem within Floss was not something that Hwijin could solve by himself.

It must be unfair to be cursed at by everyone… But since Floss was declared completely unrecoverable, it was time to get out of the burning shack and put out the fire on my body.

“I can’t do anything.”

I wondered why he was so deflated when he had acted confident and relaxed until yesterday.

I thought about using the replay service, but I didn’t dare to because of the nightmare of My Idol.

I first answered to comfort Hwijin.

“I don’t know what happened, but this is not your fault, Hwijin. Even if you knew, you couldn’t have stopped it. I hope you don’t feel miserable about something you couldn’t do with your own power and ability…”

As I was softly saying what I thought he needed to hear, Hwijin cut me off and sobbed.

“I appreciate your words, but… Naru was taken away this morning.”

“…?”

I was more concerned about whether I heard him right than the abrupt end of his speech, and my mind couldn’t process it.

“What did you say?”

“Naru was taken away.”

Taken away? The first five letters that came to my mind were obstruction of business.

Did they claim that all the parties who signed the contract were the masterminds of the manipulation and try to make them investigate?

I vaguely remembered hearing that a complaint was filed in the news, but I didn’t expect them to call in the participants so quickly.

I immediately asked to check what stage it was.

“Prosecutors, or police?”

Then Hwijin asked me back as if I was saying something absurd.

“What?”

I tilted my head and asked back.

“Didn’t you go to be investigated?”

Hwijin raised his voice and then lowered it again.

“No! Naru’s parents came and said they couldn’t trust the company anymore and took him away.”

“Oh…”

That’s right. Since it was not December 31st yet, Shim Naru was still a nineteen-year-old minor.

Even if he crossed the year, he didn’t get his diploma, so he was still a student.

If the guardian wanted to take the child away, the agency had no way to stop them in this situation.

Hwijin sighed quietly and opened his mouth cautiously.

“I know it’s a shameless request, but… Can you help me?”