From the Beginning
Ever since that day, it felt like all I'd done was practice like my life depended on it. Practice and effort were the only things I had left. Without the System, of course, I couldn't improve as fast as I used to.
I holed up in the practice room and poured hours upon hours into nothing but practice. The result?
Nothing.
The me in the mirror was still flailing around like a complete idiot.
A memory surfaced unbidden — myself, back in school, looking at kids whose grades lagged behind mine. I'd never understood them. Why even bother, if you were stupid and lazy?
Was this how they'd felt?
Trying everything you could with a body and a brain that had zero talent to speak of, only to be met with a report card that never changed and the stares that came with it. Maybe they'd been killing themselves somewhere I couldn't see. Maybe hitting that wall over and over again was what made them give up in the end.
My skills weren't improving at all. The only thing growing was my capacity for empathy.
Was I supposed to be happy about that? I didn't know. But right now, effort was the only option I had.
"I can do this."
I muttered it to myself and got back on my feet. Keep going until it works. Repeat it enough times and something has to give.
Goddammit...
I swallowed the curse along with the tears. So this was the grief of being born without talent. One by one, the forgotten faces of all the people I'd dismissed as born stupid rose to the surface.
Han I-jae is going to chew me out again.
I'd thought that once we debuted, there'd be no one left to rip into me the way Rayz used to. Now I was getting ripped into by Han I-jae instead. At this point, I was starting to feel sorry for myself. What the hell had I even done to deserve this?
If Rayz ever saw me dance after debut, what kind of face would he make?
"Haa..."
These were the days when my thoughts ran too deep.
As time passed, the group's debut drew closer, and the quality of our team's performances climbed higher by the day.
Everyone's except mine, of course.
"Hmm..."
The choreography instructor looked at me like he had no idea what to say. I wasn't a survival-show trainee anymore, so he was clearly trying to be as kind as possible. But in the flicker of his gaze, I could see a genuine suspicion that I might actually be sick.
"Hmm. Your dancing wasn't this bad when you were on Dream Stage. Why has it gotten worse?"
I had nothing to say. Dance wasn't like singing. You couldn't just slap on a correction and call it a day.
"I think something's wrong with my bones."
The only thing I could offer was that pathetic excuse.
"Should we get you an X-ray?"
"...I don't know."
"I'm kidding. Don't look at me like that. I still believe in you, Won-woo."
Anyone with eyes could tell I was dancing like a complete idiot. People at the agency were baffled by the sudden collapse of my dancing. Someone even said:
"Shouldn't we just hold an exorcism at this point?"
The agency director went as far as to suggest that someone might have cursed me. That's how bizarre the degeneration of my dancing had become.
Debut was closing in, and my dancing still wasn't improving. Eventually, the director called me in.
"Won-woo."
"Yes."
"So... I'm not sure how this is going to sound."
I waited, watching him. He patted my shoulder.
"There's a teacher I've known for a long time. He's incredibly skilled. I thought he might be able to help, so I went ahead and made an appointment. Would you be willing to see him?"
A teacher?
Was he talking about a doctor?
"...Excuse me?"
It didn't take long to find out who that "teacher" was. The second I did, reality hit me like a truck.
"I just got back from an exorcism."
I'd just experienced my first shamanic ritual, and I walked back into the dorm with my sanity thoroughly wrung out.
"What?"
"You did a gut?"
The members were shocked at first. Then it quickly turned into teasing.
"I can't believe the company actually held a shaman ritual."
Han I-jae muttered it under his breath, chin propped on his hand as he watched TV from the sofa.
"The company's lost its mind. A person's dancing suddenly degenerating for no reason isn't scientifically explainable, sure — but holding an actual exorcism? Trying to fight an abnormal phenomenon with an unscientific method."
Meanwhile, Na Jae-hyun looked like he was dying of pure curiosity.
"How was it? Was it fun? Did they, like, get possessed right in front of you?"
"...No."
I'd always considered shamanism a load of unscientific nonsense. All I could do was sigh. On top of that, I already knew why my dancing had tanked. The whole thing had been a complete waste of time.
"Ugh..."
I was brushing salt out of my hair when Na Jae-hyun spoke up.
"Hyung, do you feel any better, though?"
Better, my ass.
I couldn't help but laugh.
"Whoa, I haven't seen you smile in forever. It looks good on you, though."
He really ought to know this wasn't that kind of laugh...
"What's so funny."
Han I-jae, who'd been sitting quietly on the sofa with his phone, spoke up.
"If he debuts like that, he's just going to get mocked. The company's a joke, too. An exorcism? Seriously? They should've told him to practice instead of wasting time on that."
Na Jae-hyun glanced back and forth between me and Han I-jae, reading the room.
"Ah, hyung. Won-woo hyung's already upset. You don't have to put it like that..."
"No."
"...Huh?"
"I-jae hyung's right. Forget the exorcism. I just need to practice more."
It was so obviously true that there was no reason to take it personally. Han I-jae looked briefly thrown by my reaction. He'd probably expected me to get hurt.
"Are you actually okay?"
He stood up from the sofa.
"I genuinely don't understand why your dancing suddenly turned into that. At first I thought you'd lost your drive, but then I saw you practicing for hours every day, so that's not it either. Are you okay?"
Beside me, Na Jae-hyun timidly picked the remaining salt out of my hair.
"I'm fine."
"How can you be fine?"
Yeah. I don't know how I'm holding on either.
Kwon Hak-jin came out of his room, having overheard us, and chimed in.
"Well, the company must've been pretty desperate to go as far as an exorcism. There's no explanation for it. A kid who used to dance just fine suddenly changed overnight, like he'd been struck by lightning."
I turned to them with the most positive smile I could manage.
"It was my first time doing a gut. It was... a fresh and interesting experience."
The members stared at me, speechless, like I'd already achieved enlightenment. This had to be hard on them too. A member who'd placed second in the survival show, suddenly reduced to this.
"I'm going to go practice."
The only thing I could do right now was hold my mind together and practice.
From the beginning. Again.
I repeated the words over and over as I danced in front of the mirror. I told myself I wouldn't break. The world was suffering anyway. A life without pain was a life without meaning. So this, too, was just another color in the palette of my life...
"Ha."
I looked in the mirror, and the scene from earlier flashed through my mind. The shaman, flinging salt at me, shouting, "Begone, evil spirit!"
"Hahaha."
Something surged up in my chest all at once. It was the first time. The first time tears had come from something this pure — raw fury and sheer disgust.
"This is actually too much, isn't it?"
I said it to the me in the mirror.
"Do you have any idea how I feel right now? It's like I bled and sweated my way into Seoul National University, and then my brain suddenly dropped to an elementary school level. Like I'm memorizing the multiplication tables from scratch."
Tears welled up all at once.
"Do any of you have a clue what this feels like? This insane fucking world..."
I clawed at my hair, crying like an idiot, when I heard footsteps behind me. I turned around. Hyeon Si-woo was standing in the doorway, his face grave.
"Hey. Do Won-woo. Are you crying?"
Oh, for fuck's sake.
Please tell me he hadn't watched the entire pathetic display.
"Hyung. How long have you been standing there?"
I hurriedly wiped at my face. Hyeon Si-woo said nothing, just opened his arms and walked toward me.
"W-what are you doing."
"Hey. Do I look like some kind of pervert to you? That reaction's a little much, don't you think?"
"I'm sorry."
After an awkward hug, Hyeon Si-woo pulled a tissue from his pocket and held it out.
"I know how you feel."
"......"
"I don't know why your dancing suddenly turned into that, but I get it."
I wiped my eyes with the tissue and listened in silence.
"I cried a lot too. After the car accident, when I couldn't dance. Even after rehab, when it still wasn't the same as before."
Hearing that, the tears that had been falling simply stopped.
"I was devastated. That despair of thinking I'd never get back to where I was. That feeling of everything I'd built, brick by brick, collapsing like a sandcastle."
The memory seemed to catch up with him too. He looked like he was trying to hide the sadness behind a forced smile.
"But I made it, didn't I? By working my ass off all over again. Won-woo. You can do it too."
Honestly, from Hyeon Si-woo's perspective, none of this would make sense. I hadn't been hit by a car. There was no reason for my body to have turned into this clumsy wreck. Debut was right around the corner. The members had every right to be worried — even to resent me...
He's comforting me.
Someone like him had endured all of that and made it this far. And here I was, sniveling like a pathetic wreck...
"I'm sorry. And thank you, hyung."
I decided to start over. Because his words had given me comfort.
"Listening to you, I found the courage to believe I can do this too. Maybe just having you here is a comfort in itself."
The conversation ended there, in an atmosphere that had grown quietly tender.
"I'll get going, then."
"Where are you going?"
"I came to help you practice, but now it feels kind of awkward to stick around. I'll come back later."
He wasn't wrong. We'd both ended up crying, and the air between us had gotten complicated. Trying to practice while looking each other in the face after that would have been pretty awkward.
"Okay. See you later. Thank you."
"Yeah. See you."
I watched Hyeon Si-woo leave the practice room and steeled myself once more. I hadn't been hit by a car. I wasn't even injured. What was I doing, acting like I was dying? Hyeon Si-woo had made it through. I had no right to play the invalid.
Alright. Let's do this.
I made up my mind and was about to start practicing again when—
"......?"
A System window appeared right in front of my eyes.
A quest?
A new quest has arrived.
A quest had arrived, out of nowhere.