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Kang E-yul walked into the practice room.
At that very moment, my feet were rooted to the spot.
I had seen it so vividly. That lifeless hand reaching out on the freezing asphalt. That deathly pale complexion, completely drained of blood.
But right now, the Kang E-yul standing right in front of me was alive and well.
He was breathing, moving, and sweating.
“Thank god…”
The words spilled from my lips involuntarily.
He was alive. He was actually alive.
But the moment I breathed a sigh of relief and lowered my gaze…
‘Huh?’
There was a white cast wrapped tightly around his left arm.
My heart plummeted into my stomach. My overwhelming relief that he was alive didn’t last long; now, I couldn’t tear my eyes away from that arm.
“I got into a minor accident on my way here. I got treated quickly and came straight back.”
Worried murmurs instantly filled the practice room.
“What? An accident?”
“Are you okay?!”
“Is it serious?”
However, none of those voices reached my ears.
‘An accident? What accident?’
Kang E-yul was never the type to get injured easily. He even said with a laugh on a radio show once:
“I’ve never even had a single surgery in my life.”
…And that had been the absolute truth.
‘Something is wrong.’
I couldn’t process a single word of what Song In-hyuk was saying about the survival show.
It was too bizarre to just brush off as a minor injury. This never happened in the past.
My brain went into overdrive.
What was different from the past?
Only one thing.
‘…Danger Level.’
The phrase flashed in my mind.
‘Don’t tell me—’
He’s alive, but he’s still in danger?!
[※ System Information Unblocked!]
[System: “Danger Level” indicates the probability of an accident occurring.]
[System: Unless the Danger Level reaches 0%, an accident can happen at any time.]
As if confirming my horrifying deduction, the status window blinked right in front of my eyes.
Fuck. I let out a curse I hadn’t even uttered while I was dying.
The Danger Level was a game of probability. And as long as it didn’t hit zero, a catastrophe could strike at any second.
And the target of that disaster… was Kang E-yul.
Song In-hyuk, having come from a major agency, often acted like a crow trying to mimic a peacock’s strut.
It was the disastrous result of him trying to create an iconic practice room, blatantly copying the famous “cloud curtains” of another top-tier agency.
‘His artistic taste is seriously…’
I bet anything this was the exact guy who ordered E-yul’s hair to be fried into that hideous fluorescent color.
But right now, even those blindingly ugly stars couldn’t grab my attention. The moment the survival show announcement ended, group dance practice kicked off immediately.
“Alright, let’s take it from the eighth count—”
At the choreographer’s cue, everyone moved in perfect sync.
Except me.
If I raised my hand, my feet got twisted. If I turned my head, I completely lost the beat. My movements were clunkier than a rusting robot trying to dance.
‘I’m going insane.’
Out of everyone reflected in the mirror, I was the only one completely butchering the routine.
‘Okay, this is a bit much.’
Understanding the rhythm in theory was a completely different beast from translating it into physical movement.
“Again.”
I messed up again.
Cold sweat poured down my back.
“Sung-woo, you’re going to crash into someone like that!”
“Sung-woo, look straight ahead!”
“Sung-woo, right foot, not your left!”
My head hung in shame involuntarily.
“I’M SORRY!”
I lost count of how many times my name was barked out.
“Hah, seriously.”
“How is he planning to be an idol with a body that stiff?”
Openly mocking whispers drifted from behind me.
“He’s going to be the laughingstock of the broadcast.”
Honestly, they weren’t wrong.
‘Good lord, if I knew how to dance in the first place, I would have been an idol years ago.’
This was the exact reason I had never even considered becoming an idol, despite getting cast on the streets multiple times before the regression.
“We’re taking it from the top again.”
Right then.
“…Hey.”
I turned my head at the low voice.
It was Kang E-yul. And his expression didn’t look good at all.
“Stop trying to look at every single move.”
His tone was far colder than I expected.
“Y-Yes?”
Kang E-yul motioned with his chin toward the space behind him.
“Just get behind me.”
My mind blanked for a second.
‘Did E-yul always talk like this?’
But right now—
“Practice keeps getting stopped because of you.”
Ah.
“…I’m sorry.”
I bowed to him reflexively.
‘As expected of our E-yul. He only speaks the hard truth.’
…Truth that was currently whipping me alive.
His tone was sharp and biting.
But strangely enough—
‘I loved it.’
…?
‘Wait, hold on.’
I slammed the emergency brakes in my head. ‘Snap out of it, Yoo Sung-woo.’
But it was a tone I had never heard from him on broadcasts or at fan signs.
Low, and incredibly dry. This was his raw, unfiltered voice—an absolute rarity.
“Just focus on my feet from behind.”
“Yes!”
“Ignore your upper body for now, just get the footwork right first.”
The music started again.
This time, I focused solely on his feet, exactly as he told me.
One, two—
“Oh—”
For the very first time, I actually kept up with the beat.
E-yul might have just thrown that advice at me out of sheer frustration, but it was genuinely the perfect solution for Yoo Sung-woo.
‘Because if there’s one thing I’m confident in, it’s my ability to observe Kang E-yul.’
A single movement from E-yul was ten times more effective for me than ten instructions from the choreographer.
“Sung-woo is finally catching on! Alright, let’s move to the next sequence!”
“YES!”
My performance wasn’t flawless, but at least I wasn’t a dead weight dragging them down anymore.
“Keep doing it exactly like that.”
His tone was still incredibly dry, but it was the very first compliment I had ever received from him.
‘I am 100% writing this in my diary tonight.’
“Understood. Thank you!”
“No need for the formalities…”
I nodded vigorously, desperately trying to hide the fanboy emotions threatening to explode out of me.
Kang E-yul chuckled lightly at my overly dramatic reaction. And in that brief moment, this practice room transformed in my mind into the exact place where I had first laid eyes on him.
Before the regression, one random day, I suddenly lost my ability to compose music.
Cruelly, it happened right when my name was beginning to blow up as a producer. Requests were pouring in endlessly, but I couldn’t write a single musical line.
It was an agonizing slump.
I did every cliché thing I could think of, but nothing changed.
Because music was the very first thing in my life I had ever desperately wanted to do, losing it so suddenly was exceptionally cruel.
On that particular day, I was wandering the streets aimlessly, using searching for inspiration as an excuse.
By pure chance, I stumbled upon a performance by Impacter.
There was barely any audience. Nine out of ten people walked right past without even throwing them a glance. It was to be expected, given the pitiful size of the stage.
I was about to do the exact same thing.
‘What is this annoying-ass song?’
My first impression was simple.
A ping-pong ball.
‘Because his bouncing hair was the exact color of a neon ping-pong ball.’
Under the scorching summer sun, on an open-air stage radiating heat from the asphalt… that boy was dancing his heart out with a massive smile on his face.
Sweat was pouring down his face, and his hair was completely drenched, but every single one of his movements was bursting with life.
At that moment.
Click, clack—
Something completely shattered in my brain. Melodies. Fresh, vibrant melodies.
I whipped out my phone and started frantically recording voice memos. My hands were literally shaking from the urgency.
For the first time in half a year, I could finally compose.
I rushed back to the studio that day and finished an entire track. I thought the nightmare of my slump was finally over.
…But I was dead wrong.
And from that day on, I searched for him like a madman.
It wasn’t easy. From tracking down the name of the ping-pong ball boy, to hunting down the schedule of Impacter, a group that was already widely considered a massive flop.
At first, I had zero intention of attending fan sign events.
‘What the hell would I even talk about with another guy?’
I genuinely thought just watching from the crowd would be enough to give me inspiration.
But the cruel irony was that the only schedule that allowed me to see Kang E-yul perform was their endless fan sign events.
I can never forget the sheer mortification I felt when I finally figured out the application process, bought the albums, and walked into a fan sign hall for the very first time.
When I desperately begged a staff member, asking if I could just watch the performance and skip getting the actual signatures, they looked at me like I was a complete psychopath.
The interaction time that felt painfully short to other fans felt like an absolute eternity to me. Most of the time, I would just awkwardly repeat, “Ah, really?” before scrambling off the stage.
But Kang E-yul was exactly the same off-stage as he was on it. He constantly asked how he could improve, what was lacking in today’s performance, and he visibly leveled up with every single stage.
And he was so incredibly kind. On the days I dragged myself there after pulling an all-nighter at the studio, he was the first to point out my bloodshot eyes. If I caught a cold, he immediately noticed the change in my voice.
As those little moments piled up, Kang E-yul stopped being just a muse for my music. He became someone I genuinely wanted to support from the absolute bottom of my heart.
“Sung-woo, next sequence!”
The shout ringing in my eardrums snapped me back to reality.
“…YES!”
Right in front of me wasn’t the past—it was the Kang E-yul of the present.
Looking at him right now, it finally hit me.
‘So this is why.’
The real reason I became your fan.
It wasn’t just because you were incredibly skilled or flashy.
I gritted my teeth.
‘I am going to make Impacter a top-tier group, no matter what it takes.’
I’ll take the place of that f***ing Go Jae-sung, and using the god-tier production skills I’ve honed all these years, I will guarantee that you never become a flop group.
And I’ll make damn sure your hair is never subjected to those cheap-ass dye jobs again—only high-end colors that protect your precious scalp, and only when absolutely necessary!
From the ping-pong ball hair to that horrific final moment I loathe to even remember… this time, it’s my turn to change the trajectory of Kang E-yul’s life.
“Turn off the lights before you leave. I’m heading out first.”
After Han Sang-yoon—the future leader of Impacter—left, the two of us were the only ones remaining in the practice room.
It was day three since the regression. And absolutely nothing had changed.
Kang E-yul was always the last person to leave the practice room. And since he was staying, naturally, there was no way I was leaving either.
Kang E-yul hadn’t moved away from the mirror.
He was repeating the exact same sequence over and over again, obsessed with perfecting a routine that already looked flawless to me.
‘Was he always pushing himself this far…?’
I thought I knew everything about him.
But seeing it with my own two eyes was a completely different story.
Watching him grind his body to dust with his arm in a cast was suffocating me.
An injury that had never existed before the regression—a massive variable that would inevitably put him at a disadvantage.
‘This is all my fault.’
The crushing weight of guilt returned to choke me all over again.
I didn’t know how much time had passed. It was already way past 1:00 AM.
Sleep weighed heavily on my eyelids, and Kang E-yul’s movements were starting to blur together in my vision.
THUD!
But it wasn’t a glitch in my vision.
“…!”
Kang E-yul had slammed hard into the wall. It seemed his legs had just given out.
I snapped completely awake.
I was instantly reminded of the day Kang E-yul collapsed in the past. The stage had been slick from heavy rain, and every time he fell, it took everything in me not to sprint onto the stage and pull him up.
What I had only imagined doing in the past, I could actually do right now.
But I couldn’t move an inch. Because Kang E-yul’s reflection in the mirror showed an expression I had never once seen on his face before.
His face was distorted in raw agony, his hands gripping his hair in pure, suffocating frustration.
“…”
A violent burning sensation flared behind my eyes. I sharply turned my head away.
The music started playing again. And Kang E-yul went right back to dancing, as if absolutely nothing had happened.
“…Hah.”
With that single, shaking exhale, the dam holding back my emotions completely shattered.
Tears poured down my face relentlessly, coming out so fast I couldn’t even wipe them away.
The unbearable reality that I was the one who ultimately killed Kang E-yul ripped through me, and unable to endure it a second longer, I shot up to my feet. I needed to escape this room immediately.
Click.
The exact moment I yanked the door open…
“Oh…?”
Our eyes locked.
A female staff member was recording Kang E-yul on her phone. She had been standing out there without making a sound or opening the door, trying to capture a raw, behind-the-scenes moment.
A suffocating silence stretched between us.
I frantically tried to wipe away my tears, but it was far too late.
