Choose My Prince 99
Choose My Prince 99.
Abbreviated as Chumap 99, it was just another idol survival program.
A show that had arrived right around the time the idol survival format had been wrung dry of every last drop of novelty.
Fronted by a fairy-tale prince concept so cringeworthy that merely hearing about it made your limbs curl up in secondhand embarrassment, the program had been unanimously written off as a guaranteed flop before it even aired.
Yet the moment the theme-song stage was pre-released and the broadcast began, public opinion flipped overnight.
Top-ranked trainees who possessed both visuals and raw skill, a merciless competition structure, and editing so razor-sharp even the devil would break into a sweat watching it—together they delivered an overwhelming success.
That the debuted group rapidly rose to become one of South Korea’s flagship idol acts was only natural.
Of course, from the third reset onward the entire thing had been butchered by Ye-chan’s own hands as he systematically eliminated future rival factors, left to wither without ever seeing the light of day.
7 6 5
Ye-chan’s pupils trembled as he stared at the dwindling numbers.
Instincts honed over long years as a regressor screamed that he had to choose now.
He forced his stiff hand upward and pressed the option that looked the least extreme among them.
“Princesses, please make sure to watch over Ye-chan~.”
A thick silence settled over the set.
The dry voice and flat delivery matched his cold face perfectly—yet the content itself was wildly, painfully out of place.
The index finger he had stretched out to select the choice looked for all the world as if it were pointing straight at the viewers beyond the camera.
Ye-chan, architect of this grotesque mismatch, thought bitterly:
I swear, even in the first reset—when I shoved my face into every nook and cranny like some shameless mongrel just to debut—there was never a moment this humiliating.
At that instant a hologram window burst open in front of him with a sharp pop.
Congratulations! A reward is granted to you for excellently completing the choice.
+1 Point has been added!
Please check your stats and rewards in the Status Window.
……What the hell is this now?
While Ye-chan stood frozen in confusion, the assistant MC recovered first and offered an extremely awkward smile.
“Ah. Ha Ye-chan, good work. Haha, this kid’s got quite the gap between looks and personality. All right, you can head inside.”
Ye-chan shot to his feet and bowed at a perfect ninety degrees.
No matter the situation, always be polite.
It was the most basic of basics if you intended to survive at the top for any length of time.
“Thank you!”
Repeating his thanks, he stepped off the set and swept his bangs back with one hand.
First, get somewhere without people.
Fortunately the studio he was in sat inside the N-net building he had entered and exited countless times before.
Ye-chan hurried toward the sparsely used restroom on the upper floor.
The moment he stepped inside, the mirror above the sink reflected the name tag pinned to his chest.
Ha Ye-chan : Independent Trainee
“Independent trainee?”
At the words “independent trainee” instead of LEE Entertainment, Ye-chan’s eyebrow twisted upward.
He had already known something was wrong, but it was clearly far more wrong than he had expected.
He entered a stall, lowered the toilet lid, and sat heavily.
It said I exceeded the reset count.
Then the words declaring that Player Ha Ye-chan would be discarded had appeared, and the hologram window had shattered.
Ye-chan pressed his thumb hard against his temple.
The shattered hologram window had returned, now blue and accompanied by those bizarre choices.
He had thought he was reasonably used to strange events by now, yet facing a completely new situation made his stomach churn.
Get a grip, Ha Ye-chan.
Forcing down the nausea, he decided to check the Status Window and rewards the hologram had mentioned.
Status Window.
Player — Ha Ye-chan Lv. 2
⚡ Visual:A
🎤 Song:A
💃 Dance:B
🎙 Rap:F
🗣 Speech:D
✨ Sparkle:C
🏷 Title:Player Whose Resets Have Ended
🪙 Points:2
After scanning the Status Window, Ye-chan quietly closed his eyes and called for the reset window.
“Reset.”
……
“Reset.”
……
“Reset……!”
Still nothing happened.
Splashing cold water on his face cleared his head a little.
Ye-chan decided to calmly re-examine his situation.
Until now, every reset had returned him to the day he joined LEE Entertainment.
Yet now that past of joining LEE Entertainment had vanished, and the face in the mirror looked far too mature for seventeen.
More than that—Chumap is a program that airs when I’m twenty.
Before the reset he had watched it as a trainee stuck in the company practice room.
Even after resets he had appeared as a mentor, but never once as a trainee contestant.
Ye-chan pulled out the smartphone in his pocket.
Fortunately the lock opened with his fingerprint. He checked the date first.
It matched the year he remembered Chumap airing.
Steadying his breathing, he also checked the ID card that had been in the same pocket.
The three characters of the name Ha Ye-chan and the date of birth were identical, yet for some reason the address listed a villa he had never seen in his life.
Filing the address away in a corner of his mind, he unlocked the phone again and checked the installed SNS apps.
iTube, Twutter, and Imsta, more or less.
Hoping for some scrap of information, he opened them—only to find empty subscriber accounts that had never posted a single character.
Next he opened the contacts app.
The blank list felt alien.
Ye-chan’s fingers moved quickly, saving numbers he could now recite with his eyes closed.
First the Lee:Spirit members, CEO Lee Pil-seong, Director Kim, HBS PD Lee, CBC PD Yoon, Writer Shin, Hae-sol hyung, Bebe hyung, and……
He would have to start from face recognition and rebuild the friendships, but in an industry where connections were half the battle, knowing the numbers of capable PDs never hurt.
While he was at it he checked the gallery, but it held only a handful of landscape shots.
The single portrait among them showed Ye-chan in a school uniform he had never worn.
Deciding the phone had nothing more to offer, Ye-chan left the studio and flagged a taxi.
Reciting the address he had just memorized, he sank deep into the seat.
Why, instead of resetting to the first day of trainee life as always, had both the past and the timeline itself changed?
He still had no clue, but he was too exhausted; he needed to rest and cool his head first.
Turning toward the window, he watched the scenery rush past.
Street trees, a bridge, buildings, a bus, the members……
The members?
Why the hell are they showing up here?
Confronted by familiar faces, Ye-chan pressed himself against the glass as if he meant to punch through it.
“Uh, s-sir?”
The taxi driver’s bewildered voice never reached his ears.
The moment the billboard vanished from sight, Ye-chan frantically pulled out his phone.
Lee:Spirit.
Typing the four characters into the search bar brought a cascade of group information.
Debut date, agency, debut album, even the latest track.
Familiar names and numbers filled his vision.
Ye-chan rapidly scanned the member list.
Lee Hee-saem, Park Ma-ru, Jung Chan-yang, Choi Seon…… Jung Chan-yang?
A name he had never heard of was wedged among the familiar ones, while his own name was completely missing.
The taxi driver, thoroughly ignored, seemed embarrassed enough to turn up the radio a little.
“A group I really love dropped a new album yesterday. Listeners, you all know them by now, right?”
Ye-chan’s head slowly lifted.
“This title track was even composed by the leader himself, Jung Chan-yang. Shall we give it a listen?”
Through the car speakers, the accompaniment of a song he knew far too well began to play.
Ye-chan personally experienced the saying that when something is too absurd, you start laughing.
“Is this bastard insane?”
“S-sir, should I turn the radio off?”
Once again the taxi driver’s pitifully careful words never reached him.
This is my song!
It wasn’t merely similar.
A track Ye-chan had poured his heart and soul into, note by note, was playing with only one thing changed—the main vocalist’s voice.
“Turn the car around.”
When the song ended, Ye-chan spoke. His voice was ice.
A short while later, standing in front of the agency building he had spent so many years in, Ye-chan had regained a measure of cold composure.
During the ride he had scoured the internet for Lee:Spirit’s entire path from debut until now.
Lee:Spirit was walking, with startling precision, the exact road Ye-chan had taken in his most recent reset.
The best path he had chosen after colliding with reality and shattering himself against it.
Only one thing had changed.
The place that should have been his had been stolen by a bastard named Jung Chan-yang.
Passing the entrance where Lee:Spirit fans waited, Ye-chan hid his body behind a tree beside the parking garage entrance.
Around this time the parking elevator always breaks down.
It was a failure that repeated every single reset, so Ye-chan could wait with certainty that the Lee:Spirit members would come out through the parking lot.
Confirming the familiar van rolling in, Ye-chan pulled off the cap he had been wearing low.
“Should we order chicken later?”
“Are you crazy during comeback season?”
“We can just turn on Star Live while we ea—ugh, holy shit!”
Park Ma-ru, emerging from the garage, nearly jumped out of his skin when Ye-chan strode out from behind the tree.
Whether he did or not, Ye-chan fixed his gaze straight on the one alien figure standing among the familiar members.
“Hey. You know me, right?”
Jung Chan-yang, standing behind Park Ma-ru, tilted his head.
Meeting those eyes set in a perfectly maintained doll-like face sent an inexplicable chill down Ye-chan’s spine.
“……Why are you here?”
Jung Chan-yang stared at Ye-chan as if he genuinely could not understand.
“Does Chan-yang hyung know this guy?”
“Judging by the vibe, he’s not our stalker, right?”
After glancing at the murmuring members, Jung Chan-yang offered a gentle smile.
“He’s a friend of mine. You guys go on ahead?”
“You sure? That guy’s face looks seriously vicious.”
“It’s fine. I said he’s a friend.”
Jung Chan-yang patted Kim Dae-hoon’s shoulder.
Still worried, the members left first, looking back several times.
Ye-chan snorted.
“Ha. A pack of delinquents, so of course you get along great with a thief.”
The skin under Jung Chan-yang’s eyes twitched.
Then, with practiced ease, he smoothed his expression and smiled like a painting.
“Your evaluation of your ‘former’ colleagues is pretty harsh.”
“What are you talking about, you thief.”
A longer silence followed this time.
Jung Chan-yang still did not erase the smile from his face as he spoke.
“A thief? What exactly am I supposed to have stolen?”
“Everything you’ve got right now is mine, you thief.”
At the third “thief,” Jung Chan-yang clenched his fist.
When that sickeningly smiling face twisted just a little, it finally became something worth looking at.
“You know, for a first meeting you’re being awfully rude.”
Ye-chan snorted once more.
“First meeting my ass. Hey. You’re the Reset Window, aren’t you?”
At last every trace of amusement vanished from Jung Chan-yang’s face.
Confirming that his guess was correct, Ye-chan crooked one corner of his mouth upward.
Jung Chan-yang, expressionless in an instant, stared at Ye-chan without even blinking.
A face that held no emotion at all was far too dry to belong to a human.
“Correct. As expected, your instincts are sharp.”
The Reset Window that had watched Ye-chan for long years calmly affirmed it.
Reset Window Jung Chan-yang tilted his head again.
“Then is it my turn to ask questions? I clearly deleted you—how do you still exist?”
Ye-chan shrugged in the most irritating way possible.
“Do I look free enough to sit around answering a thief’s questions?”
“……You don’t seem to want to talk to me, so why did you come here? Don’t tell me you came to throw a tantrum demanding I give you back what’s mine?”
He had apparently decided to drop the friendly act; the deliberate choice of words to scrape at Ye-chan’s nerves was obvious.
Ye-chan stepped closer to Jung Chan-yang as if he had been waiting for exactly that.
“As if. If you were going to give it back, you wouldn’t have stolen it in the first place.”
Even Ye-chan’s voice, cold enough to cut flesh, left Jung Chan-yang completely unfazed.
“Ha Ye-chan, let’s be precise. Calling it theft isn’t accurate. Everything you ever had was obtained through my power to begin with.”
Jung Chan-yang raised both hands in an exaggerated gesture and locked eyes with him.
“A seven-year trainee at a failing company with nothing but age on his side—that was your original place.”
As if determined to carve it into Ye-chan’s mind that without the resets he would have been nothing, Jung Chan-yang continued, enunciating every syllable.
“I stole nothing. What I have now isn’t yours. It’s mine.”
Ye-chan rubbed the stiff nape of his neck.
After a deep sigh, he shoved his face right up to Jung Chan-yang’s in a single motion.
“You little shit, who do you take for a sucker? Hey, you son of a thief. The reset is your power, fine, just like you said. But every word, every action, every choice after the reset—those were mine. So why the hell aren’t they mine? How are the answers I found while grinding myself alone somehow yours?”
The words he spat out, chewing each character, poured over Jung Chan-yang.
The sound of grinding teeth carried a hint of madness.
How desperately that seven-year trainee at a failing company with nothing but age had clawed his way to the top.
With what kind of heart he had held that place at the summit.
The one who had watched it all from right beside him and still dared to call it his own was more repulsive than anything.
“You asked why I came here, right? Yeah. I came because I had something I absolutely had to say to a thief with no business ethics who steals other people’s things.”
Blue sparks flared in those cold eyes.
“I’ll show you the bitter taste of life, you son of a bitch.”