Chanhwi was a versatile entertainer who had won awards across a wide range of fields, from the grand prize at a hip-hop competition to BMA's Artist of the Year and even the Rookie Actor Award, but when the goal he had always pursued disappeared, a slump naturally followed.
“I'm sorry. I think we'll have to postpone my comeback a little longer.”
“Chanhwi, are you really going to keep doing this?”
His comeback was delayed for one year, then two.
For the first time, Team Leader Gong, who had always supported him, looked disappointed.
All he could do was bow his head and apologize again and again.
-What's Chanhwi doing these days? You never see him anymore.
His activities became so infrequent that even his fans wondered whether he was still alive.
He drank, hoping alcohol might make him feel even slightly better.
But it only made him more depressed.
Only after he went further and turned to drugs did he finally feel better, but even they could not cure his slump.
That day was another spent lost in alcohol and drugs in his studio apartment, as usual.
As he struggled in a swamp he could not escape, he closed his eyes and recalled the brightest moment of his life.
***
----♬
I forced my eyes open at the blaring alarm.
The maddening headache must have come from drinking too much the day before.
These days, it was hard to survive each day without alcohol, so I started to climb out of bed and head for the refrigerator as usual when...
I noticed that my body felt strangely light.
‘What?’
When I opened my eyes and sat up, the scene before me was not my studio apartment.
“This is......”
The first thing I noticed was the ‘Justin Bieber’ poster on the wall.
It was one of Chanhwi's prized possessions, but it was not something that should have been in his studio apartment.
“This is...... No way.”
The place Chanhwi was in now was not the studio apartment where he had lived since his debut, but...
He hurriedly opened the door and met the eyes of a woman in the kitchen directly across from his room.
“Son, are you finally awake?”
“Mom......”
***
I turned on my smartphone's screen.
I checked that it read 10:53 a.m. on February 16, 2023, then turned it off.
I turned the smartphone's screen on again.
The date still read February 16, 2023, and the time had already reached 10:00 p.m.
I did not even know how the time had passed.
I had been lost in thought all day over this sudden absurdity, thinking and thinking until the day was almost over, only to clutch my head over questions even more tangled than before.
I had no idea what exactly had happened to me. Was returning to the past even possible?
One of the things I had learned during my ten years as a singer was to set aside what I could not do and at least do properly what I could.
I had already given up on discovering the reason or principles behind my current situation.
There was only one thing I needed to confirm.
That this was absolutely not a dream.
Pinching my forearm and everything else I tried suggested that this was not a dream.
I struggled to calm my nerves and lay down on the bed.
I thought that if I woke up and was still 20 years old, I could believe this was not a dream.
Perhaps because I so badly wanted this not to be a dream, I tossed and turned for a long time, unable to fall asleep easily.
Even so, I eventually managed to sleep, and I once again recalled the events of that day, which I had thought I had forgotten.
-Do you enjoy this industry?
-Goodbye.
-That he had fallen into a rut. That he was tormented by malicious comments. And that he had become an alcoholic.
-I don't believe Yujin's efforts were in vain.
Starting with Yujin's voice, the voices of Team Leader Gong and the others echoed through my head all at once.
“......Gasp!”
I woke and expelled the breath I had been holding.
My back was drenched, telling me that I had broken out in a cold sweat.
Fortunately, I was still 20 years old, and the date read February 17.
As I listened to Mother wake me and tell me to eat, I made a decision.
“Wait for me. I'll come find you soon.”
***
“Mom, I'm going to become an idol.”
“What are you making a fuss about now?”
Huh?
It was a fairly important decision to me, but my family reacted with indifference.
I had spent ten years as a singer, endured every hardship imaginable, and grown sick of the industry, yet I had just made the momentous decision to step into it again.
When I thought about it, this was when I had started barging into audition after audition at every agency I could find, insisting that I would become a singer, so it probably was not especially surprising to my family.
“Then can you get me Red Fox's autographs?”
The only person interested in my decision was Father.
Despite his stern, sturdy appearance, Father was an idol fanatic to his very bones and the only member of the family who had supported me becoming a singer.
On the other hand...
“Do you think just anyone can become an idol? They say people train for six or seven years before they barely manage to become one. What do you expect to accomplish by starting now?”
My blood-related housemate was stuffing her face beside me. Ha Eun-hee, my one and only younger sister, was pessimistic about me becoming a singer.
“What if I debut within a year?”
“What?”
My younger sister looked as if I had just said something preposterous.
She had just said it took five or six years, and now I was claiming one?
“Ha. If you debut within a year, I'll grant you one wish.”
“That's awfully stingy.”
“Listen to you.”
Muttering that this was ridiculous, Eun-hee put her dishes in the sink and strode back to her room.
“Eun-hee has a point. Do you think you can succeed if you only start preparing now?”
Mother also loved idols.
Had she not said she met Father at a concert for the first-generation idol group ‘Beat’ because they happened to sit beside each other and hit it off?
But precisely because she loved them, she was realistic and knew how grueling life was for the idols she liked.
What parent would be happy when their son made a fuss about becoming an idol instead of attending university?
Before the regression, I had stubbornly insisted that I would somehow make it work.
But I was too old for that now.
“Mother. Please give me just one year.”
When I went as far as using the respectful form ‘Mother’ and asked in a gentle voice, her eyes widened, and she sniffed the soup she had been drinking.
“It hasn't gone bad.”
Apparently, that did not work.
“Mom.”
Only after her son resorted to acting cute in a way he never had before did Mom raise the white flag.
“Exactly one year. If you can't debut within a year, you're going to university.”
“Of course.”
Thankfully, she readily gave me permission.
“More importantly, Mom, when was your last health screening?”
“I'm already busy with work. What health screening? I'm still fit as a fiddle.”
“Don't say that. You should get one every year. Should we go tomorrow? I wonder if we can book one?”
“What has gotten into you?”
‘Because I'm sorry.’
There were many things I had failed to do for her before the regression.
Mother, or rather Mrs. Jo Hyeon-jeong, died of liver cancer three years later.
My younger sister had told me then that the doctor said she might have lived if she had received a health screening just a little earlier.
But the entire family had been so busy that no one had time to pay attention, and that neglect ultimately drove Mother to her death.
I, in particular, had been touring overseas and became an unfilial son who could not even show his face at her funeral.
That incident had completely ruined my relationship with the family as well.
‘Now that I've returned to the past.’
Should I not repair my relationship with my family too?
And so, Chanhwi resolved to treat his family as well as he had failed to before.
“Here, Mom. Have more of this seasoned seaweed too. They say seaweed is really good for you.”
“Seriously, what is wrong with you today?”
“You too, Father.”
Avoiding Mom's suspicious gaze, I placed a few side dishes in front of Father as well. Then he asked me a question.
“Are you short on allowance?”
Apparently, I had not been a very devoted son.
After breakfast, Chanhwi left the house.
He headed to a studio in a busy commercial district.
You could rent a practice room there for a fee, which made it a good place to practice alone.
“Shall I see what I can do?”
He connected his smartphone to the amplifier and played some music.
His choice was PTS's Explosive, his favorite song at the time.
Its dynamic choreography demanded considerable stamina.
“Gasp. Pant. This is crazy.”
And that made Chanhwi keenly aware of how different his body ten years earlier was from his body ten years later.
Fortunately, the experience he had accumulated over ten years made following the choreography easy.
But he had not trained this body's flexibility or stamina, so it was lacking in those areas.
Chanhwi picked up the smartphone he had placed on the amplifier and checked the calendar.
The audition was on February 24, about one week away.
There was a reason Chanhwi absolutely had to pass that audition.
‘I'll make it work somehow.’
For the next week or so, Chanhwi regularly visited the practice room.
It cost him tens of thousands of won each day, so he faithfully worked a part-time job at night while practicing, and as a result...
“Whew, this should be enough to get by somehow, even if it's rough.”
Despite the dull ache in his thighs, Chanhwi left the practice room with a satisfied smile.
The next day, my family's faces filled with surprise when they saw me.
“Whoa, your face— No. Oppa, what happened to your face?”
“Are you wearing makeup? How?”
Chanhwi smiled at his family's reactions.
The skill of a ten-year idol veteran was not to be underestimated.
Makeup artists usually helped him, but Chanhwi could handle basic foundation makeup easily enough on his own.
After checking his neat, lightweight outfit and belongings, he said goodbye to his family.
“Then I'll be off.”
All right, time to go.
Now that he had returned to the past, that bastard would surely appear there too.