The Stolen Stage
I recognized it immediately. No—it would have been stranger if I hadn't.
I'd watched Kang Yiyul's fancam of this stage well over a hundred times. I could replay it with my eyes closed, down to his lines, his movement, the detail in his fingertips.
Which was exactly why it was so absurd.
He really did copy it, note for note.
There wasn't a single variation. But the others' reactions couldn't have been more different—the choreography itself was genuinely good, after all.
"Whoa."
"Wow, how did he even come up with this?"
"Honestly? Respect. That's really good."
Go Jaeseong smiled with easy confidence. "Not bad, right?" Then he turned his gaze toward Song Wooju. "So—where would be a good spot to fit in Wooju's choreography?"
Song Wooju bit his lip for a moment, then shook his head. "……I'll just use it in my solo part."
Wooju was talented, no question. But choreography thrown together in an hour was rarely going to beat something that had been polished to perfection.
"Okay then. Let's start from the first move."
From that moment on, Go Jaeseong became a completely different person.
"No, ease up here."
"Geonhee, you're half a beat early."
He taught each member the choreography one by one—pointing out problems, sprinkling in just enough praise.
"Woonjo, step forward one count."
Suddenly I understood why he'd insisted on taking the choreography role.
Producing only shows the finished product; the process stays invisible. But choreography is different. Teaching it directly, correcting it by hand—every second of that process lands on camera.
Skilled. Composed. Looking after his teammates. The perfect teacher role.
Precisely the image Go Jaeseong had been aiming for.
"Seongwoo, want me to walk you through it separately?"
"Me? Nah, I think I'm good."
I shook my head. "Already memorized all of it."
The air went quiet for a beat.
"……Already?"
Of course. How many times had I spun the Hourglass specifically to avoid learning it from you?
"Want me to show you?"
I couldn't thank Yu Seong-ah enough. The me of the past wouldn't have gotten this far no matter how many times he turned the Hourglass.
"What the—"
"Hyung, you seriously memorized the whole thing?"
As my flawless execution followed, Hwang Geonhee's eyes went wide, and Song Wooju's face filled with disbelief.
"Whoa-ho! Seongwoo, legend!"
Choi Woonjo straight-up gasped in admiration.
It was the natural reaction. To everyone watching, it looked like I'd absorbed the choreography after a single viewing.
"……Your skills really have improved."
"Thanks."
I smiled brightly. "I practiced myself into the ground, that's all."
Go Jaeseong nodded along with an odd expression on his face.
In the original timeline, this was where a fairly long segment would have aired. Slow-to-learn Yuseongwoo, the kind Go Jaeseong patiently teaching him, the heartwarming chemistry blooming between them—it would've been perfect broadcast material.
Not a chance.
I changed the subject right away. "Oh—want to hear the arrangement?"
I played them my arrangement, and little by little, the corners of his mouth began to climb.
"This is really good? I say we take it exactly as is."
"Yeah! Thanks, Jaeseong."
He must have been certain by now. The arrangement was stuffed to the brim with Munho's style.
Several hours later, Go Jaeseong showed them the second-verse choreography as well—and of course, that too was choreography I knew. The only difference was that his own solo part had been swapped out.
Though even that was lifted straight from a challenge dance that had gone massively viral in the pre-regression timeline.
Wow.
He really had scraped together every last morsel.
Even as I watched Go Jaeseong dance, Kang Yiyul's fancam was playing on autopilot in my head.
It suited him so perfectly, though……
That was exactly why it made me so angry. That stage was the one where Kang Yiyul had shone.
It was because of that stage that I'd looked up a choreographer by name for the first time in my life. I'd compared Yiyul's performance against the original creator's video—made side-by-side comparison clips and everything.
And then, out of nowhere, a sentence surfaced in my memory.
"I made this choreography a few years ago. I never imagined it would be used like this."
……Huh?
My eyes blinked wide open. Choreography made years ago?
Years ago. Meaning it hadn't been created for the year-end stage at all.
Which meant—could it be—
……!
I searched WeTube for Chase immediately.
A list of videos scrolled past. The original stage, cover performances, and so on. But the video I was looking for wasn't there.
The choreographer's name was Seori, right?
[Chase choreographer Seori]
My hand trembled faintly as I pressed the search button.
When you're a fan long enough, you learn things. You can pinpoint which waffle shop your bias is eating at from a single photo, or identify a café's location from just a chair caught in the background. Finding a choreographer's name in that vast ocean of information was nothing. And once you tumble down that rabbit hole, you end up reading the choreographer's social media posts too.
Why that memory would resurface at this exact moment, I had no idea. But I had to treat it as a gift from heaven—or rather, from King Yama.
[S: King Yama is indeed benevolent, but He is not the sort to bother Himself with such trivial errands. Do you have any idea how busy He is?!]
Right. No wonder the status window had been so quiet these past few days. But I had no time to banter back.
"……Found it."
I had found the video I was looking for. I pressed play right away, and a hollow laugh burst out of me.
Just as I thought—
I looked up at Go Jaeseong, then back at the screen.
The two dancers' movements matched perfectly.
In that instant, a chill ran up my spine, and I nearly dropped the tablet.
I'd been suffocating all this time. He'd clearly stolen from the future—but I had no way to prove it.
Who would believe me if I said he'd swiped choreography that didn't even exist yet?
But now, for the first time, I had evidence.
And rock-solid evidence at that.
I deleted the video history immediately and scrubbed my search records just as thoroughly. My hands moved with perfect calm—but my heart was anything but.
This is a card that could end Go Jaeseong for good, any time I choose.
And yet, at the same time, one question nagged at me.
Go Jaeseong was a regressor. He'd stood on that stage himself, in person.
How could he not know?
I turned off the tablet screen and thought for a while. And then it dawned on me.
Ah……
For Go Jaeseong, that stage was just another day at work.
That's how year-end stages are. The preparation schedule is so brutally compressed that a single week counts as breathing room. Most performers rehearse together for only a few days—sometimes just a handful of hours on the day itself—before going live.
So a stage that lives forever in the fans' memory can be nothing more than one item on a long list of schedules to the idol who performed it.
A bitter taste settled on my tongue.
That's what a fan is, I suppose—loving a single moment of an idol's life as if it were eternity. The asymmetry of that devotion stung my pride a little.
Still, Yiyul was never like that.
He remembered what my letter said. He asked after me first, unprompted.
So this wasn't a flaw of the idol profession. It was just who Go Jaeseong was as a person.
Thinking of it that way made me feel a little lighter. Honestly, it would've been stranger if I hadn't remembered a choreographer named Seori. She wasn't famous before the regression either.
Go Jaeseong had probably searched for her too. But seeing how the video didn't surface even with the name and title combined, there was no way he'd have found it using keywords like "Chase dance" or "Chase choreography."
This was something only possible because I had been Kang Yiyul's fan.
It felt as though a weapon had been placed in my hand without my asking. If this fact ever came to light, Go Jaeseong's debut would be over. Completely over.
Which meant he had to go up on Round 4 with that choreography untouched. No matter what.
"What do you think?"
Go Jaeseong turned around and asked just then, and I gave him a thumbs-up.
"It's amazing."
It was the brightest expression I'd seen on him since the survival show began.
That's right. Right now, it must feel like the whole world is yours. Laugh all you want.
"Let's kill it on this stage, so the two of us can debut together."
A curse shot up my throat. You son of a—!
But I smiled.
Instead of answering, I clenched the hand hidden behind my back. Nails digging into my palm, fist bunched tight—and still, I smiled all the way through.
"We will now begin the Round 4 mid-term evaluation of Boys Code."
Go Jaeseong's face was already brimming with confidence. No wonder he'd volunteered to go first.
"This team…… chose Chase?"
Song In-hyk said, flipping through his evaluation sheets. "You're the only team with a pop song. Are you singing it entirely in English?"
Go Jaeseong smiled as if he'd been waiting for the question. "No, sir. We rewrote all the lyrics."
"All of them?"
"Yes. We felt Korean lyrics suited our concept better."
The judges narrowed their eyes with interest. "And what exactly is this concept?"
At that moment, Choi Woonjo shot his hand up as if he'd been waiting his whole life for this. "The Grim Reaper!"
Complete with the ERALB pose he still refused to give up on.
"Grim Reaper?"
"Whose idea was that?"
I quietly raised my hand. The judges' expressions split neatly down the middle: figures it'd be you, and seriously, this?
Go Jaeseong picked up the thread without missing a beat. "Which is why Seongwoo took full charge of producing this round!"
The judges' eyebrows rose in unison. "You didn't produce at all, Jaeseong?"
"No, sir! This round, I focused entirely on creating the choreography!"
At Go Jaeseong's ringing declaration, I chimed in right away. "Jaeseong really worked himself to the bone."
Go Jaeseong turned to look at me, startled.
"He built every single thing from start to finish, all by himself."
At the look of utter disbelief on his face, I allowed myself a faint smile.
"He mapped out all the formations, and he even made each of our solo choreographies for us."
I counted them off on my fingers, one by one, for good measure.
"It must have been so much work, teaching the rest of us."
I emphasized it, then emphasized it again: this was Go Jaeseong's work, through and through. At this rate, even if the plagiarism scandal eventually broke, no one could call me an accomplice.
Blissfully unaware of any of this, Go Jaeseong beamed. He looked like he might die of happiness.
……That's right. Be happy. Happy as you like.
"Wow, at this rate Jaeseong really might take Code 1!"
Even my dismissive laugh at Katin's over-the-top praise came out perfectly on camera.
"Then—we'll begin!"
The music began to flow.
Vwoom—
A dreamlike sound, as if echoing from underwater. The judges' lips curled into smiles at the comical opening skit.
And the moment the choreography kicked in, the whole atmosphere shifted.
"Oh—"
Short gasps of admiration burst out one after another.
Go Jaeseong was dancing with twice his usual intensity. It was probably the most passionate he'd been since the show started. In his solo part especially, he even threw in that shameless lip-lick. It was a stage that made anyone watching mutter, he came to win.
"……Haah, haah."
Far too much sincerity for a mere mid-term evaluation.
"Let me evaluate first—"
"No, me first—"
And the judges were no different. They were practically tripping over each other to speak first.
In the end, Song In-hyk opened his mouth. "You really brought your A-game this time."
"Thank you!"
"Honestly, I was worried when I heard it was a Grim Reaper concept, but my expectations were completely blown away."
His gaze shifted toward Go Jaeseong. "But what surprised me most was the choreography."
Go Jaeseong's cheekbones were on the verge of ascending to heaven.
"You didn't just bring in choreography from somewhere, did you?"
"Of course not!"
The answer came without a flicker of hesitation. I smiled quietly from the side.
That's it.
Keep being that confident.
"I'm genuinely impressed."
Song In-hyk shook his head. "I thought producing was your strength, but your choreography is even better?"
With every layer of praise the judges heaped on, the smile on my lips bloomed a little wider.
Katin, the dance trainer, was especially flushed with excitement. "The solo part choreography—that was you too, Jaeseong?"
"Yes! I created it while thinking about what would suit each of my teammates!"
At that level, shamelessness stopped being a flaw and became a talent.
Katin sighed in genuine admiration. "It's beautifully made. Especially your own solo part—the choreography is really good."
That's right.
Climb higher.
Be praised more. Be happier.
So that when you fall, it will be all the more wretched.