-4-
However, being selected for the debut group didn’t exempt him from competition. The training teacher said to look outside rather than inside, that their enemies were other idol groups debuting around the same time.
Following along day by day was overwhelming, but Bunhong still worked hard. Even if bone-crushing and ligament-tearing pain came, even if his voice became hoarse and dizziness struck, he never gave up leaving the practice room for even a single day. It was the same after debut.
He worked harder than anyone with tenacious effort…
That’s what he did, but Hanbit was different. So that’s what natural talent is like. It made Bunhong realize. Not only that, but he even had a similar vocal range to his own, and his visuals were also excellent.
The more he tried to break him down, the more frustrated he became. It was painful and miserable. He didn’t want to know this kind of sensation. He also wanted to be recognized and loved by people like Hanbit.
But gradually, he felt that he was disappearing. That his own color was fading away because of Hanbit, who was similar to him yet always superior.
Test papers always had answers. He believed life was the same. Results never betrayed him. If the path he had walked was wrong, all he had to do was fix the answer.
However, even when he tried to find a method, he couldn’t find one. Because that would mean completely denying Kim Bunhong’s life itself.
Problems always had multiple choices. He thought life was about choosing the best answer among those choices. So he never learned how to solve problems without choices.
Gaining popularity as a celebrity, and obtaining someone’s interest and love as an idol, required one’s own unique color.
Even though it wasn’t Hanbit’s fault that he wasn’t popular, he felt that way at the time. He thought people wouldn’t look at him because he couldn’t break that guy down. He smiled brightly while sharpening knives inside.
.
.
.
‘Even until the last moment…’
It was truly disgusting hatred.
So what he gained was,
‘That blade eventually turned toward myself.’
Nothing, really nothing at all, and he was on the verge of tears from that emptiness.
‘Heavy.’
…
‘My vision is getting blurry.’
Is this what dying is like? The fact that no one was by his side, that it was such a piercingly lonely thing—he thought he had become numb to it because it had always been that way, but perhaps that wasn’t really the case.
At the moment when death was imminent, Bunhong, who was honest about his emotions for the first time in his life, muttered:
“If I could be given another chance…”
He had to admit it. Even though he thought he had lost everything, there was still something called lingering attachment left in him.
“Then…”
However, contrary to his will, his eyes gradually closed. As strength gradually drained from his body, all the things he couldn’t let go of or grasp during this time gradually moved away from his grasp.
Only after death was imminent could he escape. From the disgusting fragments of emotion that had tormented him for so long. He became at peace.
.
.
.
…That’s what he thought.
‘What on earth is going on?’
At the rough breath escaping from his lips with each exhale, Bunhong opened his eyes wide.
The cold wind struck his body like a whip. That coldness, the sensation felt from hands that ached as if they would freeze, was telling him:
You’re still alive.
His body shivered. The moment the shape of his hands, a span smaller than when he was alive, came into view, he quickly scanned his outfit.
‘God,’
…
‘Is playing a prank.’
The first thing that caught his eye was white sleeves, and then a jacket. Wondering if he might be dreaming, he slowly closed and opened his eyes once, but despite this, the situation remained unchanged. He was still wearing a school uniform.
Even the place where he was standing now was familiar. It was in front of the school where he had taken the college entrance exam in the past. Gradually, the puzzle began to fit together in his dizzy head.
Just in case, he pinched a part of his body, and from the stinging pain that rose up, though utterly unbelievable, he decided to accept reality.
“It seems I’ve returned to the past.”
Ahem, ahem. The voice he produced after clearing his throat was also still from before his voice changed.
‘The reason you debuted? I was street-cast. It was the day of the college entrance exam, and I came out of school later than others because I was doing preliminary grading of the test papers. My grades weren’t as good as usual, so I was thinking, ah, what should I do now. Should I repeat the year? While I was worrying in front of the school gate, some man approached me and gave me his business card.’
This was Kim Bunhong’s casting story that any BLACK fan would know. If he had really returned to the past, the scene that would follow soon should be the same.
“Hey, student.”
Though he wasn’t pointing to anyone specific, since it was a situation he had already experienced once and was a familiar voice, he could tell it was calling him.
“Kim, Bunhong?”
Ah. This is really strange. Thinking this, Bunhong turned his head to look at the man who had been staring at his name tag.
Like someone who had been waiting for eye contact, he immediately approached Bunhong quickly and handed him his business card.
“Don’t have weird misunderstandings or anything. I’m not a scammer, I’m this kind of person. You know AT Entertainment, right? I work there as a casting manager.”
The man’s attitude became much more relaxed after successfully revealing his identity. It was confidence that could come from the premise that the other party couldn’t not know, but it wasn’t baseless confidence.
‘AT Entertainment’ was BLACK’s agency before regression and belonged to the major companies that were quite well-known.
Moreover, around this time, AT Entertainment had never once failed in launching a boy group. Even if they hit at least a moderate success, they had never completely flopped.
Since the company’s establishment, all three groups they had debuted had good results, and decisively, among them, a group called ‘OORA’ had strong fandoms and was popular with the general public, establishing itself as the agency’s representative artist.
This gave investors strong confidence that they could at least recover their principal, and AT Entertainment decided to ride this momentum to birth another new star.
They selected several casting managers and sent them down to various parts of the country, and auditions were held not only domestically but also in three countries: the United States, China, and Japan.
The person trying to cast him now was also one of them, and since Bunhong had already experienced that he wasn’t a scammer, he knew.
Even before regression, by accepting this proposal, the 5-member boy group ‘BLACK’ was born, including Jeong Ido with lyric/composition skills capable of self-producing, rapper Duho who was recognized for his skills in the underground scene even before debut, Han Chayeon from a famous dance crew leader background, mixed-race Lucy who proudly won 1st place in an audition held in LA and was recruited to secure a global fanbase—a total of 4 skilled members—and Kim Bunhong himself, who joined last solely to fulfill visual requirements.
They debuted with the grand slogan of competing with their own individuality and musicality like black, which has the unique characteristic of not mixing with any other colors, but BLACK was quickly buried in that year’s idol flood, which could be called a red ocean.
It was a time when everyone was debuting, and despite putting forward the concept of “powerful younger men contrasting with addictive choruses featuring bouncy popular melodies” led by Duho’s charisma, unbelievably, there were five groups with concepts overlapping with BLACK that summer alone.
Afterwards, they tried to promote BLACK using senior artist OORA’s recognition and aimed for synergy effects through SNS exposure, but their first full album didn’t even make it into the music site rankings. It was a disastrous performance.
Officials expected to absorb existing fandoms or receive senior-junior love since they were from the same agency, but OORA was still a rising artist, so fans who felt threatened by the appearance of new rookies instead banded together.
With the single determination to protect their own artist, OORA’s fandom began viciously tormenting BLACK.
Moreover, while rap and dance themselves were not lacking, the one thing BLACK didn’t have was distinctive vocals.
Until then, the main vocal was Lucy, but since his main specialty was originally dance, he couldn’t have had enough skill to satisfy people’s ears, and Kim Bunhong’s capability as sub-vocal was needless to say.
So AT Entertainment’s ambitious solution was to recruit a new member.
Not long after, AT Entertainment added rookie Lee Hanbit, who had reached 15th place in that year’s most talked-about audition program, to BLACK.
Lee Hanbit.
His original recognition and vocal skills didn’t take long to create the neologism “Hanbit-isiyo” (meaning a single ray of light that settled in BLACK during their dark period) and bring amazing synergy to the team. Because geniuses always have their moment when the light of talent shines.
The decisive moment was when they decided to do a reality program just before the mini-album featuring Lee Hanbit’s joining was released.
Actually, before Lee Hanbit joined, BLACK was awkward. It was difficult for those who could be called the strongest in their respective areas to gather and work as a unified team.
Black absorbed all colors. Being a group meant killing individual greed and forcing sacrifices even when unwanted. They didn’t have the affection to want to work as a team even while enduring all of that.
Author: Hyacinthus B
Hyacinthus
