WETRIED TRANSLATIONS

[ Translation - Aren ]

I'm a Reporter, Please let me get off the Stage

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Chapter 27

“……I need that.”

“What?”

“You know, the thing we used for the Lunar New Year greeting video two years ago……”

“The thing we used……?”

“A string.”

“Just what are you talking about?”

Thud.

Baek Gyeom let out a small sigh as he sank to the floor.

Still clueless about what he meant, I crouched down in front of him.

“Like how you need to keep hitting a spinning top to make it spin, I also need someone to hit me with something like that as well.”

“You sure know how to put things in brutal ways.”

“But it’s true? How am I, someone who isn’t a ballet major or a dancer, supposed to do a clean two-and-a-half spins?”

This sharp-tongued rascal……

The way he talks is seriously……

How do I put it, really sincere……

‘That’s exactly what I want to say.’

I felt both stifled and oddly relieved at the same time.

It had been a week since I asked Seo Haedun to choreograph for us.

The members and I were pouring everything we had into practicing the title track.

Especially I, who had never been involved in something like singing or dancing…… needed to put in something far beyond mere effort.

Something one would call, an internal overhaul.

Even if the exterior looked different, what was inside was still the same.

I had to become a completely different person.

[<Smart Sponge> : Allows you to perfectly replicate memorized choreography. - 50 points]

[<Challenge! 108 Times> : Practice the same choreography 108 times over two days to increase its completion level by 30. When used with ‘Smart Sponge’ memory increases by 30. – 30 points]

And so I desperately clung to my only lifeline, the status window.

With emphasis on ‘desperately’.

These weren’t the kind of items one could just buy impulsively and used blindly because they had been recommended to me like I had gotten used to.

A week ago, when I first started practicing, the items the system recommended to me were five fatigue recovery items to my great shock. I actually doubted my eyes.

Honestly, my initial thoughts were something like ‘So the status window’s finally been hacked, huh……’

For a moment I had the faint hope that I might finally be free of that insane game world.

When I realized that the status window’s software was running perfectly fine, my despair doubled, two times as strong as the hope I had managed to scrape together.

It genuinely felt like the system was openly mocking me.

So the first day was a total disaster.

I moved so poorly that even Haedun started to look at me strangely.

I probably didn’t even faintly resemble an idol, huh. Well, of course.

I blamed everything on my poor condition, and couldn’t even sleep properly at night, pleading with the empty void to no avail until dawn.

And then, around 4:30 am……

[Recommended items updated! Check the shop now.]

A cheerful notification popped up, as if it had no clue about my circumstances.

Once the buffs were applied, I had no other choice but make it work somehow.

From exactly 4:42 am to 6:20 am, I did nothing but watch Seo Haedun’s choreography video.

Because without memorizing it, the items were utterly useless.

So now.

From the moment Seo Haedun had given me the guide choreography video, I had been getting less than three hours of sleep a day.

At first I thought “Here we go!” since they were items that let me perform all choreographies I had memorized.

But I couldn’t have been more wrong.

The real challenge lay in the phrase ‘memorized choreography’.

For someone who didn’t know the first thing about dancing, perfectly memorizing these intricate and dazzling idol moves, down to the beat, was by no means easy.

So I had no other choice but to dissect Seo Haedun’s video file frame by frame.

The saying “When your brain is slow, your body pays the price” was exactly right.

Currently, my brain was my primary tool for learning this choreo.

Since I didn’t have a knack for this, I ended up grinding my brain to dust as well.

It took me three nights to learn the movements for my left arm, right arm, left leg, and right leg individually.

And after that, I had to synchronize everything.

I had to memorize which arm and leg moved where on which beat.

I seriously felt like my head was about to explode.

But what other choice did I have? I already used the items……

If it weren’t for them, I would have been completely obliterated.

I was infinitely grateful to the status window that showed up at that fateful night at 4 am.

You hear me, esteemed status window sir?

As long as I kept cramming it into my head, there wasn’t even room for something like a slump.

At the very least, once I memorized the moves, my limbs moved as I had drilled into my memory.

I had escaped the common dilemma of ‘I get it in my head, but my body won’t move as I want’.

By obsessively watching the video over and over, at slow speed, at fast speed, while lying down, and right after I woke up, I finally managed to keep up to some extent.

Even Seo Haedun nodded approvingly, as if to say not bad.

“I don’t get the part right after the second chorus.”

“Erm…… which part do you mean?”

“The move where you straighten your left arm, rotate it counterclockwise while pushing it back, angle your torso 45 degrees, and place the midpoint of your right arm on your solar plexus?”

“……Hyung, did you finally decide to give up your humanity and become a cold machine?”

It was to the point that I started talking like that.

Because of that, Sanho and Baek Gyeom had started calling me Ahn ‘Choreo Maschine’young.

Seo Haedun didn’t seem to care whether I spat out move descriptions like a robot or acted like a punk, as long as I nailed the choreography.

So in a way, he was both the scariest and most straightforward guy in this group.

So then, objectively speaking, how difficult was the choreography, you ask?

I was the type of guy who would struggle with the simplest number song choreo, so I couldn’t say that my judgment was exactly reliable.

But based on the members’ reactions, it seemed like the choreography was definitely difficult. 

Even Tae Oh, who was relatively good at dancing, often tilted his head in confusion.

The tricky parts lay in the details actually.

Like subtly incorporating finger movement, or doing full-body waves that extend from the neck down to the knees.

If we weren’t perfectly in sync, it wouldn’t look good at all.

On top of that, there were some moves performed as pairs, perhaps to maximize the group’s dynamics as a multi-member team.

It wasn’t enough for just me to get it right.

But what if we couldn’t nail it together?

That was when Seo Haedun might really bring out that spinning top string.

As such a grueling week went by, and as time passed, the members started to get a better feel for the choreography.

After we had a late lunch, five hours had passed, and it was now 8 pm.

After tirelessly repeating the same moves nonstop for five hours, the members were utterly exhausted.

Every time the song ended, they would collapse to the floor, their bodies drooping and as lifeless as wilted lettuce.

“Ah, this is so hard.”

The first one to complain was Baek Gyeom.

Wiping away the sweat dripping from his face, he flopped down on the floor.

“Get up.”

As soon as Baek Gyeom sat down, Haedun barked out an order.

“We need to get this choreography polished today. We only have two more weeks left until the stage, and next week we have our first recording for <Ultimate Idol>. There’s no time to practice any more. We absolutely have to fix everything this week.”

Did Headun suddenly become the leader of this group?

He said everything I should have said so naturally that I had no choice but to feel rather dumbfounded.

“I know, I get it already. But look. Other than you, Tae Oh-hyung, and Yuyoung-hyung, no one else can do this turn properly. Haram, Ire, Sanho, and I can only manage two rotations at most. Can’t we just cut it down by half a turn?”

Baek Gyeom started rattling off all the things that were giving him a hard time in the choreography.

I felt my heart skip a beat when I heard the name ‘Yuyoung’ mentioned in the same breath as Haedun and Tae Oh.

Right…… That turn.

It was the part where our progress stagnated for the longest.

Haedun had put most emphasis on ‘continuity’ and ‘storytelling’ in his choreography.

He absolutely hated routines that only relied on flashy, fast movements, and heavy gazes. That was the reason why.

So, every move from begin to end had some sort of meaning.

On the first day of practice, Headun had us all sit in a circle and explained everything to us using a full-blown powerpoint presentation.

This move should hold this kind of emotion. That move needed to have this specific silhouette.

For this step, you had to lock eyes with the member standing opposite you.

For that step, you had to imagine yourself as a butterfly.

And for this move, you had to picture the camera zooming all the way in on your face, so you had to dramatically bend your back, spreading your legs wide……

Honestly, just keeping all of that in mind while dancing was completely overwhelming.

But there was no denying that if we managed to implement all of that, it would result in an absolutely awesome stage performance.

I suddenly remembered Haedun’s expression when I first suggested that he should design the choreography. He was noticeably happy.

He hadn’t smiled widely or anything, nor did his eyebrow even twitch…... but he was clearly happy.

He had probably been thrilled by the idea that he could finally bring his perfect vision to life.

For some reason, he hadn’t been able to show off his ideals before, but now that the leader had stepped forward and fully backed him, he was really excited.

Still…… an ideal as an ideal, and reality was reality.

If everyone could make their bodies move just as they were imagining, no one would despair over the gap between ideals and reality.

(Although, to be honest, I was currently experiencing that convergence between ideal and reality myself every day to the point that I’m seriously amazed at how I could move)

It seems like I was the only one who knew about and could use items in this reality though……

Which meant that other members were reaching their limits and were on the verge of collapsing.

I glanced back and saw Haram standing there with a worried expression on his face.

Sanho was also leaning against the wall, drenched in sweat.

Ire, being the youngest, still looked energetic, with his eyes opened wide and a lively expression on his face.

“No. Cutting half a turn means losing four beats. I can’t add a new move in between, and we can’t just leave it blank.”

“Why not? It’s just four beats, like, da, da, da, da. Four counts. It should be like two seconds, right? The time it takes to make a single step.”

“It’s not that simple. I already told you, the continuity has to be maintained.”

“And you think that’s more important than the fact that over half of our members can’t do it right now?”

Baek Gyeom came out with his trademark way of speaking.

This little punk……

The thing I had worried about the most just happened.

Haedun’s right eyebrow twitched and rose upward.

A single eyebrow movement from Seo Haedun……

Was seriously scary.

“Hyung, everyone knows you're great at dancing. But we’re not. Did you know that even Tae Oh Hyung said ‘This isn’t easy for anyone who’s not a pro’?”

“And are you not a pro?”

“So are you trying to say that my skills suck?”

[Eloquence is decreasing! Intervene to mediate the situation.]

A window I hadn’t seen in a while appeared right before my eyes.

Hello there, Status Window. As Infuriating as ever, I see.

“……The reason you suck is because you don’t practice. Why are you yelling at me?”

Seo Haedun’s voice, low and eerily calm, echoed through the silent practice room.

However, Baek Gyeom still showed no signs of getting up.

He looked up at Haedun standing right in front of him, sitting on the floor with his legs spread wide.

His face clearly showed that he was pissed.

[Eloquence is decreasing! Mediate the conflict.]

Ah, my head hurts.

Can’t we just relax a little please?

I was quite impressed that they still had the energy to fight. Ah, youth.

This old man here didn’t even have the strength to join their bickering let alone mediate……

“Hah. Hey…… Yoon Sanho, Chae Ire, Haram-hyung. He’s saying we’re the problem.”

……What should I do?

Should I just let them fight until one of them passes out?

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