Heaven and Earth

In name and in fact, a top-tier idol of present-day South Korea versus an ordinary contestant on an audition program.

He had returned after boldly declaring war, yet in reality the positions of Jung Chan-yang and Ha Ye-chan were as far apart as heaven and earth.

Using the card key stuck to the back of his smartphone, Ye-chan stepped inside and perched on the edge of the narrow bed.

He had no idea how such a thing was possible, but the Ye-chan of this world had never become a trainee at Lee Entertainment.

A graduation ceremony invitation lay on the desk.

It seemed the Ha Ye-chan of this world had attended high school like any ordinary student before catching a late-blooming interest and applying to an idol survival program.

Naturally he could never have received systematic training. But does that mean the stats get cut this badly?

Ye-chan stared at his hopeless status window before turning his eyes to the mirror fixed on the wall.

"Ha…"

Among everything, the most hopeless item was Visual.

Objectively speaking, he was still at a level that would earn him the title of visual member in any group.

Yet to Ye-chan it was absurdly insufficient.

He swore that even in his first life, the one without any resets, he had never looked this rough. At seventeen age is a cheat code—just breathing made you shine—and if you spend three years of puberty with zero management, is this what happens? Hard to believe…

In a hollow mood he tapped the Visual letters, and a point-usage window appeared. Maybe…?

Ye-chan invested the points he had received as a level-up reward into Visual.

In that short span another point had been added. I'll put this one into Visual too.

Ye-chan alternated his gaze between the slightly altered stats and the mirror, then shook his head.

Visual: A (3/100)

"……There's no change at all."

He had expected the rank to rise the moment he poured points in, but it seemed he needed to fill all one hundred points before climbing a single step.

Vocals and dance would come back quickly enough, yet the face that had simply drifted away with the years left him completely at a loss.

Still, he could not live without what had originally been his. I need to figure out how to earn points. Is there no quest window?

……So there was a quest window after all.

A hollow laugh escaped him. Better than nothing, but it could have told him sooner.

After checking the most eye-catching main quest, Ye-chan's face twisted.

— Debut in 1st place on Choose My Prince 99. (Time remaining: 99 days)

With this pathetic civilian body he was supposed to crush every high-flying trainee and take the win?

It spoke so casually, as if the matter had nothing to do with it.

While Ye-chan was irritably scanning the quest window, the hologram displayed a new message.

"Failure?"

That two-syllable word scraped hard against Ye-chan's pride.

He let out a hollow laugh. Looking down on me just because I sounded a little weak?

Every reset had returned Ye-chan to the body of a brand-new trainee.

The first two times after a reset he had floundered a little, but after that he had always debuted within exactly nine months.

And debut alone? After that he had held the summit for years on the battlefield of stars who soared and flew.

Even if that Ye-chan now wore a pathetic civilian body, he was supposed to fail competing against fledgling trainees?

There were limits to how much one could look down on a person.

Hoo. Ye-chan took one deep breath and decided to think positively.

Even without the mission he had already planned to debut through Chumaf.

In Ye-chan's dictionary there was no second place, so of course he intended to take first.

Whatever this quest window was, he only needed to stay unshaken and do what he had originally meant to do. This time I might actually get to face that bastard properly.

Until now Ye-chan had used repeated resets to forge Lee:Spirit into the greatest idol group.

Company, investors, production staff, fans, antis, members—every kind of problem had blocked him each time.

Yet if someone asked what the hardest wall of all had been, he would answer without hesitation: one particular trainee who had participated in Choose My Prince 99.

Beom Se-hyuk.

He had actually met the boy only a handful of times across six resets, yet Ye-chan remembered his name, face, and even his voice with perfect clarity.

The boy who suited the word "idol" better than anyone Ye-chan had ever seen had debuted in first place in every single round of Chumaf.

Even after Ye-chan had completely wrecked Chumaf through successive resets, the result stayed the same.

The moment attention slipped, he clung on like stubborn weeds and climbed the tower Ye-chan had built with vicious tenacity—an incarnation of terrifying talent.

At least until Ye-chan turned twenty-three, no other shining weed like that had appeared. When he belonged to someone else he was a real pain, but if he's mine, nothing could be more reliable. I'll debut with Beom Se-hyuk and sit at the top.

Ye-chan's eyes sharpened.

Once the direction was set, all that remained was to move.

His current home was a shabby one-room with terrible soundproofing, so completing the quests would require ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠another location.

Recalling the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠karaoke place he had glimpsed from the taxi, Ye-chan picked up his wallet and stepped outside.

One week after the individual pre-interviews, the official first filming day of Choose My Prince 99 dawned.

When Ye-chan entered the set, the trainees clustered together behind the bustling production staff caught his eye.

A quick scan of their faces revealed quite a few familiar ones.

At that moment a hologram window burst open right in ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠front of him.

How could text make a person this angry?

Reminding himself that many eyes were watching, Ye-chan put on a calm face and leaned against the wall. Quest.

Main Quest [Open]

Linked Quest [Open] New!

Sub Quest [Open]

In the meantime a Linked Quest had appeared between the Main and Sub Quests.

Pretending to stretch, he casually moved his hand and pressed Open, and the contents appeared. This crazy status-window bastard…?

Unlike the inner voice that nearly cursed out loud, Ye-chan regarded the quest window with a composed expression.

Anyone missing from Ye-chan's memory was the sort who would drop like peanuts at the first ranking announcement—what use was there in memorizing those names?

Spending that time on one more round of vocal practice would have been far more efficient.

As if it had heard Ye-chan's inner monologue, the hologram window helpfully announced the unasked-for penalty and flopped open.

Now he had no choice but to pull it off somehow.

Ye-chan stopped cursing the status window and focused on the set in front of him.

More trainees must have arrived in the meantime; the surroundings grew noisier.

"What, no waiting room even?"

"This really must be a failed program."

They were whispering, yet the density of people was so high that the short distance made every word audible.

‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠

Glancing toward the voices, he saw two unfamiliar faces he could not even remember muttering together.

See one and you know ten—watching them fail to keep their mouths shut made the outcome obvious.

Thinking he might as well memorize the names, he scanned the name tags on their chests.

The agencies listed after the names belonged to a company that had debuted a boy group half a year earlier. Dropped from the debut team and too awkward to fit into the next one, I suppose.

Just as the trainees said, Choose My Prince 99 had already been called a doomed program before it even began.

Setting aside the face-burning concept of "the princess's prince," there were plenty of other problems.

First, survival programs targeting idol trainees, active idols, rappers, and dancers had already poured out in waves, so the format itself felt stale.

On top of that, the fact that debuting trainees had to sign seven-year long-term contracts made sizable agencies cautious and refuse to participate.

As a result the contestants were roughly one-third independent trainees, one-third trainees who had left their agencies, and one-third from mediocre companies.

Everyone had every reason to expect a talent pool far poorer than other trainee survivals. But there's a guy like Beom Se-hyuk, you see.

Having already watched how—and how massively—this program succeeded, Ye-chan leaned his head back against the wall with an indifferent face.

It was not only Beom Se-hyuk.

Where on earth had they been hiding while filtering through all those audition programs? In the rounds before Ye-chan buried it, Choose My Prince 99 boasted the greatest talent pool in survival-program history.

Most of the trainees who debuted possessed talent and charm that would easily have claimed victory on any other show.

"Filming begins!"

At the staff member's call, Ye-chan pushed off the wall.

The thought of participating in the program he had always researched how to destroy made his chest flutter strangely.

It was not a bad feeling.

If half of Chumaf's success came from the outstanding trainees led by Beom Se-hyuk, the other half was the work of the production staff who went completely off the rails.

For one thing, they edited well.

The exquisite arrangement of incidents, the clever subtitles, even the pacing were so perfect that once you started watching you could not stop.

But they poured that talent into devilish editing.

When malicious editing was layered onto an already brutal program structure, the result was spicy beyond belief.

Even idol fans who had grown numb to ordinary stimulation could not escape this dark program.

They mainly used that power to turn elimination-bound trainees into national punching bags; the debut-rank trainees, once they debuted through Chumaf, would become N-net's precious assets for seven years, so the staff seemed to hold back with them.

Ye-chan sat on a hard chair and looked at the set that would open the curtain on that wretched program. The order is the same.

Perform the prepared piece on the center stage and immediately receive a grade.

A standard grade test befitting the first round.

Ye-chan first cast his gaze toward the excessively ornate chairs prepared beside the judges' seats. Those were the S-grade seats.

Next to them sat chairs that looked plush.

After that came hard chairs, then plastic chairs in a row, and finally nothing but bare floor.

Those were the seats for A-grade, B-grade, C-grade, and D-grade respectively.

The gap between grades was a little harsher than other programs, yet overall it could still be called ordinary.

"What grade do you think you are?"

"Uh, B… B-grade, maybe?"

"Is that so? We thought A, but you're being hard on yourself. Since that's what you want, go to B."

The face of the trainee who had tried to secure a humble image only to end up on a hard chair twisted.

The camera did not miss a single moment of that expression.

The same question was put to the next trainee.

"What grade do you think you are?"

"I believe I am S-grade!"

Taking the previous trainee as a cautionary tale, the contestant answered at full volume.

"Shameless. Have you ever heard of self-objectification?"

Once again the result was far from good.

Right after the broadcast the judges would set the viewer boards on fire with the question of what answer they had even wanted—this was the beginning of the first grade test.

Once the prepared performance ended they asked for the self-assessed grade; if you answered high they tore into you for excess confidence, if low they tore into you for low self-esteem.

If your evaluation matched the judges', you passed smoothly?

That was not the case either.

"Why did you think that?"

"Uh, I guessed after watching the trainee who received A earlier."

"So that means you consider yourself on the same level as trainee Kim Su-young?"

"What? Uh, th-that's not what I meant…"

This self-evaluation was a dilemma no matter what answer a trainee gave.

Answer low and you were pretentious.

Answer high and you did not know your place.

Answer correctly and you got tangled up with a previously evaluated trainee, making it easy to drop your image all the way to the Earth's core.

During the actual broadcast, viewers who had clicked their tongues at the judges' nitpicking later, once episodes piled up and favorite trainees appeared, endlessly dragged out these self-evaluation lines as a tool to tear other trainees down.

"Next, trainee Ha Ye-chan."

So how was one supposed to survive this evaluation?

"Please take care of me."

The answer was obvious.

If you were going to act humble, you simply had to perform so ridiculously well that it became annoying.

Listening to the accompaniment that began to flow, Ye-chan smiled at the corner of his mouth.

Wait, this bastard again?