Chapter 4: The Weight of a Second Chance

The reason he had chosen regression in the first place was exactly this, wasn’t it.

Because he had failed as an idol.
Because he wanted to succeed.

If it were a goal he could reasonably achieve, it might have worked as motivation.
But this wasn’t that.
A Grand Prize—Daesang, of all things.

B the 1 wasn’t just some mildly unsuccessful idol group.
Among all the singles B the 1 had released, not a single song had ever entered a meaningful rank on any music streaming site.

To put it bluntly, they had never even made it into the Top 1000.

And now they were supposed to win a Daesang within a year.

It was basically telling him not to even dream.

“……Haa.”

Shim Eunchan let out a deep sigh, steadying his churning insides.

He organized his tangled thoughts quickly.
Honestly, there wasn’t much to organize.
When you’re the one being tested, when you’re already at a disadvantage, you do what you’re told.
What choice did he have?

He had to do it.
He had to succeed.

There was no going back to his previous life.

“……Isn’t it a bit cruel to give something just to take it away again?”

At the very least, couldn’t they give him some other advantage in his current state?
He wanted to protest, but the notification window remained silent.
There was nothing he could do from his side, so in the end, he had no choice but to accept it.

Come to think of it, even acceptance felt unnecessary.
Just being able to regress at all was already more than enough.
This wasn’t some amusement park attraction that was always available.
The mere fact that he’d been given another chance like this was already overwhelmingly generous.

So even if he ended up being sent back, he had to give it everything he had.
As hard as possible.
Until his bones broke.
And only if it still didn’t work out then, he would accept the result.

There was no room left for whining or complaints.

It felt like there was truly nothing left to check.

Ding-dong.

Another cheerful notification sound rang out.

……Was this a joke?

Eunchan frowned, and as if ignoring his irritation, the notification window popped up on its own.

[Regressor Quest — Linked Mission
<Life’s no fun if you’re the only one doing well.>

Targets: Teammates

Upon success: The mission target’s stats increase by 1 rank immediately.

Upon clearing all missions: You may choose one stat to upgrade its rank. (0/5)

Collect points and aim to increase stats.

Failure will trigger a penalty.]

For something tied to a Gold card, it looked good again—but something felt off.
The count didn’t add up.

It seemed like missions were assigned per member, but according to the notice, there were a total of five missions.
That was the strange part.
Excluding Lee Haemin, who had left, and himself, there should only be four members left.
Which meant… the missions weren’t necessarily targeting just the members?

Was this another mistake?

“…….”

He waited silently, but nothing was corrected.

Then who the hell was he supposed to do this for?

Eunchan’s brow furrowed.

Each mission success would raise a teammate’s stats, and clearing all five would allow Eunchan to raise a stat of his own choosing.
For a linked mission, the rewards were exceptionally good.

He didn’t know what exactly the mission would require him to do, but judging by the rewards, it was probably going to be extremely difficult.
Still, he couldn’t afford to miss it.
There was even a penalty for failure.
He had to succeed.

Thinking, There really isn’t anything else, right?, Eunchan stared blankly into the air, then belatedly looked up at the ceiling of his room.
He inhaled deeply, his chest swelling, then let out a long sigh.

The question of why he had regressed to this exact point in time gradually tilted toward acceptance.
If anything, maybe it was fortunate that it was now.

Before Lee Haemin left?
He didn’t know when Haemin had started considering leaving the team.
But forcing a member whose heart had already left to stay would never work.

Early debut days?
Even with knowledge of the future, this wasn’t a world where things would magically work out just because one person tried harder.
There was a high chance he’d just end up repeating that hell all over again.
Just thinking about it made him shudder.

Going back to pre-debut entirely?
Getting into a major agency wasn’t a joke, nor was it easy.
Even becoming a trainee was difficult, and after that, who knew how many years of competition he’d have to endure with that trainee title hanging over his head?

To be honest, he didn’t have the confidence.

Shim Eunchan had spent three years as a trainee at PotenHigh.

Would it be okay like this?
Would I even debut?
When would I debut?
And after debut… would things be okay?
Wouldn’t it be better to quit now?

He had no desire to repeat those trainee days where his mind suffered more than his body.

Especially now, when his boosted stat was mental fortitude, expecting to be competitive against other trainees was unrealistic.

Eunchan assessed his current situation.

At PotenHigh, the agency he belonged to, B the 1 was the only idol group.
There was no “company favoritism” that rookies from big agencies enjoyed.
They had to smash their heads against bare ground and fight their way through the entertainment industry on their own.

In the beginning, they only went to school festivals and obscure local festivals he’d never even heard of before.
That was when he learned just how many festivals existed in the world.
Who said there were no events in this country?
There were more than enough—just none that were famous.
There were at least five peach festivals nationwide alone.

Even so, he was grateful just to have a stage.
It wasn’t like there were no idol groups desperate enough to perform at nameless festivals.

He couldn’t bring himself, from the very start, to say textbook lines like, “I’m grateful and happy for every stage where I can dance.”
Honestly, it was embarrassing.
Dancing to poor sound systems that crackled and cut out mid-performance was humiliating.
The gap between the idol life he’d dreamed of before debut and reality was enormous.

What trainees imagine when they dream of becoming idols is dazzling lights and roaring cheers from fans.
Of course, he had thought—just a little—that things might go well right after debut.
But standing on stage while directly facing those cold, dismissive gazes was far from easy.
Not just difficult—brutal.

After their first truly terrible event stage, all the members rode back in the van in silence, staring out the windows.
It was so miserable that they didn’t even feel angry about being treated that way.
Lee Haemin, the youngest, even sniffled and cried.

After dozens of performances where they slipped and fell on stages that barely qualified as stages, they gained something in return.
The indifferent stares of elderly locals and tourists who looked at them like cows staring at chickens.
They grew stronger against those gazes.
More thick-skinned.
In short, they learned how to slap on a steel face on stage.

They had practiced their debut song, “You? Me!”, for a full year.
A song you’d only ever heard blasted from cheap festival speakers.

A month before the album release, they lived together, sleeping only three hours a day while practicing.
The title was a bit silly, but the knife-like choreography was no joke.
They trained so brutally that no matter which part of the song played, they could instantly form lines and hit the angles perfectly.
That hard-earned skill was what B the 1 took to local festivals across the country.

Then one day, someone must have taken a liking to their earnest performances.
They were invited to perform at a middle school festival.
That was the turning point.

Word spread, and they started getting invited to other school festivals and small stages.

School festivals were better, at least.
They could avoid rain and snow.
There were crude lights, but lights nonetheless, and the students’ reactions weren’t bad.
When they covered famous idol songs, the response was explosive.

There were even days when they spent more time practicing senior groups’ covers than their own songs.

It felt hollow at times.
But telling themselves it was all part of the process, the members comforted one another and endured.

Their first appearance on cable television came with their third single, released in October of their debut year.
Even now, he could vividly remember the smell of the air that day.

It had originally been a day off, but when they were told a sudden schedule had come up, the members rushed to get ready.
Ryu Seoro complained that he hadn’t even eaten breakfast, climbing into the van with toast in his mouth, only for Moon Sebyeol to scold him for dropping crumbs on the seat.
Jung Minyu buckled his seatbelt and asked which festival they were heading to today.

That was when they saw it in the rearview mirror.
Their manager hyung’s cheeks twitching, his lips struggling not to curl upward.

‘We got a casting call from ShowBig. We’re heading there right now……!’

The atmosphere in the van changed instantly.
That taut mix of excitement and tension.

Ryu Seoro even dropped the toast from his mouth.

ShowBig.

Their first real, legitimate music program.

They’d gotten the chance because the originally scheduled group had been hospitalized with food poisoning on the day of the broadcast.
So what if it was a last-minute replacement?
What mattered was that people would finally see B the 1.
They couldn’t let it slip away.

And it wasn’t just luck.
Even this opportunity came because their manager hyung had persistently greeted PDs and handed out CDs from the very beginning.

Dancing and singing on muddy outdoor stages versus under broadcast studio lights was like the difference between heaven and earth.
Standing on a television stage for the first time filled him with a pounding exhilaration he’d never felt before.
It was incomparable to every stage they’d stood on until then.

And judging by how hard everyone worked that day, it wasn’t just him who felt it.

After that broadcast, things began to change.

Little by little, television stations started looking for B the 1.