Legends Never Die

"Legends Never Die." Given the theme, the participants' tension and anxiety had climbed higher than usual under the sheer weight of the pressure — but I never imagined it would detonate quite like this.

Just before, roughly forty percent of the contestants had been swept out in a single cut, leaving some of the remaining trainees so raw-nerved that they snapped over every little thing. Still, that ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠had only been the story of people with elimination staring them in the face.

I never expected the second- and third-ranked contestants to end up fighting like this.

"You can do better than that."

"I'm matching the condition I'm in."

At Kwon Do-ha's claim that his recent form had been off, Lee Jae-jin's face twisted with frustration.

"You never planned to go all-out from the start, did you? You just keep holding back."

"I don't know what you're basing that on."

Dodging the point with a vague answer, Kwon Do-ha went on.

"I've still done my share, haven't I?"

Apparently the seed of all this had been Do-ha not giving everything during team practice. Being dissatisfied that a rival on a survival show wasn't showing his full skill felt almost too honest, if anything.

Jae-jin's expression contorted at the "I've done enough, so what's the problem" tone. Someone as sensitive to other people's passion and drive as Jae-jin would have noticed Do-ha's withered motivation right away.

"If the stage looks that trivial to you, why are you even wasting time here?"

At the force of Jae-jin's words, something like a spark flared in Do-ha's eyes for an instant.

"It looked trivial to you?"

"Didn't it?"

The rigid stiffness of their speech made it hard to believe they were the same age.

"…And you think you can keep up?"

At the genuinely incredulous look on Do-ha's face, a few of the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠watching teammates averted their eyes. The gap in level on stage was genuinely brutal for the others — especially those in similar positions.

"What good is all that pretty talk?"

Jae-jin only snorted.

"You know perfectly well how much work from how many people goes into a single stage. And you stand there saying you've done enough? It's pathetic."

The moment those words landed, Kwon Do-ha's expression froze over, cold as a sheet of ice.

"If you don't want to do it, then don't. Nobody's pushing you."

At what followed, a twisted smile curved Do-ha's mouth. The tension spiked so sharply that everyone watching flinched.

"…"

"…"

I didn't say anything particular — I just stepped between them, and the stares from front and back burned. Even Cha Ji-heon and the Violet team members, who had seemed content to watch quietly, pinned their eyes to the side of my head.

"I need a word with Do-ha hyung. Sorry, but excuse us."

I had thought the two of them were a bit awkward and mismatched, but I never imagined it ran this deep. I pulled Kwon Do-ha out of his seat and headed somewhere with fewer people. He followed behind me in total silence, as quiet as a dead mouse.

"I'm sorry."

Once we were inside a storage room with no cameras and no people, I bowed at the waist. After a long silence, Do-ha finally spoke.

"Why are you apologizing?"

"…"

I carefully straightened up. His quiet eyes pressed for an answer.

"I think it's because of me."

"What is?"

I lined up everything I had figured out so far and drew a single conclusion.

In the original timeline — the one I knew before I died — Kwon Do-ha had never returned to the entertainment industry. He knew about the system's existence, and he knew the precautions around my trait that even I didn't know.

As if he had been watching from right beside me for a long time.

And then there were the strangely well-timed pieces of advice, the sense that he was controlling variables while already assuming the outcome.

If I added it all up, it seemed Kwon Do-ha was living the same stretch of time over and over. Whatever was forcing that loop was probably the system attached to me. And most likely, his own will had nothing to do with it.

So Jae-jin's line about nobody pushing him would have grated on Do-ha badly. If my guess was right, he had been shoved forward for longer than I could measure.

"A loop, I guess you'd call it. Anyway… I wondered if you'd gotten dragged into an unwanted time trip because of me. So. Yes. I'm sorry."

The moment I laid out the trail of that reasoning, every expression vanished from Kwon Do-ha's face. His pupils looked blown wide. I clenched my hands, cold sweat already soaking them.

"…"

"…"

I kept my face composed, but out of habit I hid my fingertips. The phrase "the air grew heavy" suddenly felt real.

"Watching you, Lee Han-hee, makes me think memory is a very convenient thing."

"Pardon?"

"Like a ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠rabbit's liver — put it in, take it out… No. You won't remember anyway."

And in the span of a breath, Kwon Do-ha's usual smiling expression returned. He continued, perfectly calm.

"It's fine. Getting angry at someone who doesn't know anything would just be venting."

Beyond the neat wrapping-up of his expression, I thought I caught a fragment of emotion that held a heavy hatred — but I turned my eyes away and pretended not to see. It felt like I had glimpsed something I shouldn't have.

"Today's fight…"

"It was necessary."

Just as I had thought he wasn't the type to fight over pure emotion, the conversation turned to "necessity."

"Necessary in exactly what sense…?"

Do-ha usually economized on words, but this time he answered without resistance.

"I needed to funnel votes toward you."

Not an answer I particularly liked. Did it really have to be this method? The two of them fighting?

"And there's no need for things to be good between Jae-jin and me."

"What?"

As if he couldn't even see the confusion on my face, Do-ha reached his own conclusion and kept talking.

"If aggro is going to be drawn, this is the best direction for it. He's not someone I wanted to get close to in the first place, either…"

"Uh, right?"

"Never mind."

Kwon Do-ha said nothing more after that.

…Was it emotional after all, somehow?

I considered digging further, then let it go. Looking at those strangely sunken eyes, I didn't want to poke around carelessly. Well. He had already told me a lot today.

Even this much was already a huge leap forward.

I swallowed a sigh. Fine for my side — but there were still plenty of live explosives left to deal with.

"Could I ask just one more thing?"

"If it's about Kim Seong-min, you don't need to worry about the stage."

The answer came out before I had even asked.

"Is he really going to be all right? The atmosphere seems pretty bad."

"He'll get what he built up to."

Dismissing it as karma, Kwon Do-ha left first. Alone in the leftover quiet, I perched on the empty table and sank into thought.

I turned over the look on Do-ha's face when he said getting angry at someone who couldn't remember was only venting.

"So he alone remembers a stretch of time no one else does."

Suddenly the plot of Garden of Memories that Jo Min-jun had told me about floated up. Some people lived their whole lives on a single month of memory.

Carrying an overflowing weight of recollection, repeating endlessly alone — that life had to be brutal.

In the empty room, I found myself shaking my head. It wasn't something I had any right to guess at.

On the long-awaited mid-evaluation day, Team Sunflower stood face-to-face with Yuri, the original singer of the track. Her hands, with their cute glittering nails, clapped together in big, bright applause.

"Oh my! Everyone said you were famous, and you really do live up to it!"

Hearing the word "famous" from a celebrity who could line up every b-side on the charts the moment she comebacked felt extremely strange, but the senior's over-the-top praise left the whole team's faces melting into silly grins.

"How is everyone this good at singing? No, wait — why didn't I think of this idea? I'm completely moved! Really!"

Yuri left the evaluation that she was truly, truly looking forward to the final stage, then beamed. Song A-seong, who had come up with the concept first, already wore a thoroughly proud expression.

The original leaned so heavily into the vocals that when we had watched her concert versions, Yuri hadn't danced all that much. We, on the other hand, had locked in sharp synchronized choreography, so the feeling would be quite different. With seven people filling out the stage, we had also worked hard to layer our voices one by one into a rich, full sound.

Receiving the praise that the production of expanding the sound for a more grand feeling had been excellent, we finished the mid-evaluation successfully, and the tension finally eased. One major hurdle cleared.

"A-seong-ah, good work."

"Yeees…"

The moment we got back to the practice room, Song A-seong — who had suffered more than anyone — collapsed flat onto the floor. He wasn't usually the type to show how hard things were, but he must have had a lot on his mind. A-seong was originally a rapper, but since we had decided to keep the original track (which had no rap) intact, he had gone in as a vocalist — and he sang so well it actually surprised me.

His high notes shot up cleanly, so I had been able to hand out parts without hesitation.

"What do they call this again… total knockout?"

Han Min-hyeok, sprawled on the floor muttering, wriggled over and plopped his head onto A-seong's stomach. He had been through a lot himself in various ways. I looked with quiet sympathy at the dark circles that had sunk quite far under Min-hyeok's eyes.

At the start he had practically glowed, not a shadow under his eyes — when had it gotten this bad…

Remembering the early days, when Kim Seong-min would smile brightly while pointing out every little mistake Min-hyeok made, a chill ran through me all over again. Min-hyeok's learning speed still wasn't that fast, so the early stumbling had been unavoidable — and that had made him perfect prey.

He's quiet for now, at least.

I glanced at Kim Seong-min, who was leaning against the wall and resting blankly — a complete change from the high-tension energy he used to maintain during practice. He must have had a rough time emotionally.

The school-violence rumor around Seong-min hadn't lasted as long as expected. It had wrapped up early once the original poster uploaded an apology.

The post had targeted Seong-min, but it had also labeled every classmate from that time as bullying perpetrators, so those friends had written their own clarifying posts out of sheer injustice. They hadn't been close with the writer, but that was all — they hadn't actually harassed anyone.

In the end an apology was published admitting the original post had contained exaggeration and some outright falsehoods, and the incident was more or less closed.

Of course, once the controversy blew up, all the damp backbiting and rumors had also risen to the surface, so the fans' reactions weren't what they used to be and Seong-min's spirit had taken a real hit — but at least we had avoided the worst outcome of him leaving the show entirely.

Which also meant we had avoided the nightmare of having to redistribute Seong-min's parts. In that sense, it was a relief no matter how you looked at it.

"By the way, didn't they say we were filming reaction stuff this time?"

Yoo Min-seong, who had stuck himself to the practice-room floor right after A-seong and Min-hyeok and was rolling around the same way, suddenly spoke up.

"Yep~ That vlog we filmed on our day off. They said we'd check the edited version."

"Ah, that…"

Everyone reacted like they had completely forgotten it existed. To be fair, I had buried it under practice and everything else myself. Right — I had filmed that with Sang-jin hyung.

"We'll shoot tomorrow afternoon at the studio."

"Mm, sleeping through that time is probably not an option…"

Min-hyeok's voice dragged, eyes half-closed from lack of sleep. He was a heavy morning sleeper, so he tended to show up late to practice and stay the latest at night instead.

"If the cameras catch you dozing off, you'll get scolded, won't you?"

Jo Min-jun, who had somehow also spread out on the floor, muttered. I took in the state of the practice room. Aside from me and Seong-min leaning against the wall, everyone else was rolling around on the floor. They must have been completely drained.

"The Sunshines need to know this too. How ridiculously little prep time this program gives us…"

Min-hyeok's hollow voice echoed as he muttered that they hadn't released the Sunlight choreography video two weeks before the audition for nothing. The comment brought old memories flooding back. Back then it had felt so hopeless.

And somehow we had made it this far. With less than a month left until the finale, time really did fly.

"If everyone's rested enough, shall we get up again?"

I pushed strength into my legs and stood; the faces looking up from the floor were pitiful. Still, practice had to happen. Time was money.

"Let's finish early today, eat dinner, and rest."

At the news that the schedule after dinner would be free, everyone scrambled up at once. Sometimes you needed a day like this.

Watching them snap into focus in an instant, I put on the song that had already grown familiar. The sound of steps rolling across the floor locked perfectly into ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠place.

And the next day, every kind of recording soaked the giant studio screen.

The hand filming the surrounding scenery with the self-cam swung around, and at the edge of the frame Han Sang-jin appeared in workout clothes.

Even in plain athletic wear he looked perfectly fitted and stylish — clearly the result of an excellent clothes hanger of a body.

My own muttering about not knowing how to film a vlog, and Sang-jin's voice saying we should just try something, carried us to the end of the clip — and then the screen shook violently up and down.

The cam footage, left completely unedited so that every dizzying camera swing was captured whole, and the distant chorus of clueless voices, made me smack my own forehead without thinking. A real-life Dumb and Dumber had appeared.