Chapter 537
Chapter 537
Lee Se-jin’s heart pounded, his breath coming in short gasps.
All complex calculations had vanished from his mind.
[Now, come to me
Forget the tears
Leave the pain behind]
He split the beat, then suddenly slowed down, pouring strength into his movements. His body utilized every inch of space, his motions popping out three-dimensionally along with his voice.
It felt more perfectly aligned than any practice session.
The things he had repeated until they were ingrained in his flesh, the things he had trained for and mastered, were now exploding through his entire body and limbs exactly as he desired.
The experience transcended the vision.
[The world is yours
I want to give you everything]
Even his hair and jacket swayed along his body as if they were part of the choreography. His movements shone brightly under the stage lights.
The climax.
His body felt hot enough to burn, yet simultaneously light.
‘Ah.’
How magnificent was the view from the stage?
That sensation of finally reaching the desired state after giving it his absolute all—how thrilling was it?
With beads of sweat clinging to his skin, Lee Se-jin’s grinning face appeared on the giant electronic display.
[This must be love]
That alone was enough.
“AAAAAAHHHHH!!”
The screams rang in his ears.
The Twin Fansite Master suddenly realized she had been clutching her camera in front of her face, her grip so tight it was almost unconscious.
In a state of extreme excitement, one tended to grab onto whatever was in their hands.
‘…Ah.’
Looking up at the stage while catching her breath, she saw the idols’ performance boiling over at its peak.
The smiles.
The heat.
How magnificent was the view from the stage?
How thrilling was it to witness a performance that felt as if they had poured their very souls into it?
[Oh love!]
TeSTAR’s performance ended right there, at the height of that feverish intensity.
*
That night.
I swiped down on my smartphone screen.
The real-time reactions pouring out from the audience members who had just finished watching the competition flashed before my eyes.
‘No explanations needed.’
It was just a flood of raw emotion. There was nothing but the unadulterated truth.
In a little while, the trolls who had grasped the situation would mix in and turn it into a mess, but for now, these were the reactions of the actual audience.
Pure admiration.
As reactions exploding with adrenaline-fueled madness flooded in, even the people waiting for detailed reviews began to get excited.
And finally, the people who had been in the audience began to drop spoilers, focusing on keywords.
‘Blonde,’ ‘Arrangement,’ ‘Dance Break,’ and so on…
‘No mention of the gestures yet.’
But it seemed like only a matter of time. Of course, once it mixed with the trolls, it would become a chaotic mess.
‘I’ve already braced myself for that.’
…Ever since that guy first brought it up.
I turned my head.
The person who had suggested overturning the entire stage three days ago, Lee Se-jin, was sprawled out on the waiting room sofa as if he had fainted, looking completely drained.
It was understandable.
‘He really poured everything out.’
The skill he displayed when he took the center position for the dance break in the latter half of the stage was definitely beyond what I had seen during practice.
A terrifyingly desperate immersion.
Even though I was performing beside him rather than watching from the front, I could sense it.
It was so intense that even the excited audience reviews kept mentioning it.
And as soon as the stage ended, I had confirmed that Keun Se-jin had acquired this trait.
[Be Quiet (EX)]
- Momentum +180%
- While active, does not feel stat limits.
I almost rubbed my eyes.
‘I thought I saw it wrong.’
It was the first time I’d seen a crazy situation where a trait jumped from B to EX.
And the additional effect attached to it… was a shock that felt like a blow to the head.
‘Does not feel stat limits.’
“…….”
This was one of the questions I’d had about the system’s notation until now.
—Are stat limits truly impossible to break?
And I felt like I had received a vague answer to that.
Even if it was limited to the stage and only while the trait was active.
‘It means you can do it.’
The limit was broken.
The system’s analysis wasn’t infallible. There were clearly exceptions and loopholes.
Yes. Seon A-hyun’s trait, ‘Perseverance,’ which ignored ‘Status Effects,’ was another example.
‘Maybe the system is filling its own errors with individual “Traits.”’
I made a clear-headed deduction.
Considering that, it wasn’t so strange.
Lee Se-jin.
His trait had likely been suppressed.
Over the past few years, TeSTAR had faced so many controversies and incidents where they had to make rational judgments rather than just acting on momentum.
‘So he held back, unable to do what he wanted.’
That had finally exploded, triggered by the ‘Iter Provocation’ incident.
The trait that ignored stat limits was the same.
If there was only one person in this team who would have such a trait… the fact that it was Keun Se-jin…
It didn’t feel awkward at all.
‘…Anyway.’
I’ll analyze the rest of the system-related deductions later.
For now, it didn’t seem bad to just enjoy the results of this competition.
I let out a small smirk and turned off my phone screen.
The internet’s verdict hadn’t come out yet, but the result was already clear from the atmosphere on-site.
That roar.
We won.
TeSTAR’s all-in gamble… was a success.
‘This is it.’
I tossed my smartphone aside with a sense of relief and leaned my head back against the sofa.
A pleasant exhaustion washed over me.
“Wow… is everyone still awake?”
Lee Se-jin spoke with a voice that sounded either refreshed or delirious from exhaustion.
From here and there, I heard responses that were clearly drained of energy but filled with good spirits.
‘Good grief.’
It was a funny thing.
The guys who had decided to flip everything they were going to do three days ago and take a crazy gamble were now all sprawled out in a state of peace after the stage was over.
Even Ryu Cheong-woo let out a small laugh.
“Hmm. I don’t know how this sounds, but I guess people really should live doing what they want to do.”
“…Yeah.”
Bae Se-jin, who had been more pleased than anyone by Keun Se-jin’s change of heart and had gritted his teeth through the three days of insane forced marches, answered with what was almost a mumble.
“Yep, I liked it too.”
“It was productive and satisfying….”
The guy who had welcomed it with excitement, and the guy who had actually preferred it when the second arrangement was chosen.
And finally, Seon A-hyun’s words.
“Thank you for… suggesting we do it this way, Se-jin. It was great….”
It was a sincere thank you.
I joined in and gave a slight nod.
“……. Hey now,”
Keun Se-jin seemed like he was going to answer in a low voice, but he was silent for a moment as if his throat had tightened.
Then, he suddenly shouted in a lively voice.
“Um, should we do a ‘fighting’ cheer?”
“Uh….”
“Sounds good….”
Out-of-sync cheers popped up from here and there, the significance lying in the fact that they were doing it at all. Staff members passed by, chuckling to themselves.
‘The atmosphere is good….’
I closed my eyes.
Just then, the guy sprawled out across from me called my name.
“Moondae-Moondae.”
What.
“I think I’m really glad we did this.”
Keun Se-jin muttered while lying down.
His voice was full of satisfaction, as if he were drunk on a dream.
“I’m just… happy?”
“…….”
Sure.
I gave him a light kick with my foot.
“Do it for the rest of your life, then.”
“…! Of course~ Ah, don’t you know TeSTAR Forever?”
He grinned while lying down and raised a fist.
“Ah~ TeSTAR showed them something again today!”
“Ohhhh!”
A satisfying performance.
Before they knew it, Iter, who had been such a hot topic, had been pushed to the back of their minds.
And the moment this competition was aired on the main broadcast.
The same phenomenon occurred on the internet.
*
Iter’s waiting room.
This was the filming site where they had gathered for the ranking announcement after the main broadcast of the competition.
The structure was almost identical to TeSTAR’s waiting room, but the atmosphere was completely different.
A strange sense of anxiety and bewilderment pressed down gloomily on the air.
There was even a low murmur.
“This was intentional again, right?”
“Seriously, how could they…”
They couldn’t speak openly because of the previous leak incident, but everyone knew who the staff were talking about.
TeSTAR!
The team that had overturned their stage after seeing the mid-term evaluation had indeed faced whispers from insiders during the competition, saying they were clearly checking Iter.
They had said, ‘I didn’t think they’d go that far.’
But the problem was…
They were too good.
And it was visible to the eye how desperately they had scrambled to be even better.
To the point where, during the broadcast, there was hardly any talk comparing them to Iter on the internet.
Even though a controversy was already circulating that ‘they changed it because they were conscious of Iter’ due to audience spoilers.
People were just exploding with praise for how well TeSTAR did in real-time, and when the topic of ‘they changed the stage to check Iter’ finally came up…
It turned out like this.
No one felt uncomfortable about it. When the result is overwhelming, the process tends to be beautified, and this story even played a part in the quality of the result.
A desperate attitude that was still vividly alive even after selling over a million albums!
An obsession with stage quality and desperate effort!
Instead, as the stage preparation process was revealed, it became a selling point.
It wasn’t that Wonder Hall didn’t try to turn public opinion.
Since it was clear that Iter had been targeted, they diligently encouraged the words of troll accounts that were gritting their teeth at TeSTAR.
Of course, an explanation post saying ‘TeSTAR used those first anyway’ would come out, but usually, if you just start the instigation, you’re lucky if half the explanation is accepted.
It was more important to at least spark a controversy and get Iter onto the board of trending topics.
However.
The public tended to be momentarily generous toward something they had grown to like at first sight.
Comparison posts were ignored by people telling them not to ruin the mood while they were enjoying the stage, and some even liked it, saying this kind of story made it more interesting.
The attempt to drive public opinion too hastily had backfired.
It was a complete defeat.
Because of this, the expressions of the staff who had heard all about the situation within the company were not bright.
Of course, the members of Iter themselves, who were practically banned from monitoring the internet under the guise of ‘voluntary restraint,’ didn’t know this news.
But they could already feel it through the atmosphere of the staff.
That they had lost.
“No, you guys did well. Who would’ve thought they’d do that? Seriously…”
“They probably even chose to go after us on purpose…”
Shh.
Under the watchful eyes of other staff, a manager who was about to spout speculative vitriol shut his mouth.
But the leader of Iter had already taken all those words in.
‘…….’
He sat quietly on the sofa, but his clenched hands were trembling.
‘What is this?’
It felt unfair.
This was supposed to be their time to rise.
This was supposed to be the opportunity for the members and staff of this group to gain strength by showing them overcoming adversity and finally producing results, encouraging each other.
“Ha….”
“Hey, it’s okay, it’s okay.”
The members comforting each other had resignation written on their faces as if they had already seen the results.
‘…This isn’t how it was supposed to be.’
His insides were boiling. He felt like he was going to cry.
It was even more so when he recalled the image of TeSTAR leaving the filming site, greeting everyone casually as if they felt refreshed.
How could they create a stage as if specifically targeting them and not even change their expression?
He felt like he had been suffering from mental aftereffects since then.
“…Excuse me for a moment.”
The leader stood up.
He couldn’t splash water on his face, so he wanted to at least go cool down his feelings in the chilly emergency staircase.
And it was just as he stepped out of the waiting room door.
He saw a tall figure getting a drink from the vending machine right next to him.
A man in slacks, straightening his posture.
“…Ah.”
It was TeSTAR’s Seon A-hyun.
And only after a few seconds did the Iter leader realize he was staring blankly at the other man’s face without even a greeting.
“Ah, I.”
“…I’m so sorry! I was lost in thought…. Senior, I’ll, I’ll be going now.”
The Iter leader spoke loudly through gritted teeth, then turned around to walk away.
He was firmly determined not to show a dejected appearance.
However, a gentle hand soon tapped him on the back.
“Um, excuse me.”
“…….”
Since he was a senior after all, the Iter leader eventually turned his head to maintain etiquette.
And he saw it.
“…!!”
In one of Seon A-hyun’s hands was the drink he had just gotten from the vending machine.
But in his other hand was… a small notebook.
He could see the word written on the navy blue cover.
<Practice>
…It was his own handwriting.
The very things he had written while watching TeSTAR’s music videos and notebooks—his impressions, analyses, and ideas on how to apply them.
It was his notebook.
“…….”
When did he drop it?
“This… an Iter member left this at the filming site last time… right?”
The Iter leader suddenly froze, as if his heart had dropped out of his chest.