As expected, he shouldn’t have come. Mistakes born from sentiment always produce unpleasant results.
“Hey, Baek Doha.”
As soon as Doha entered the practice room, he was grabbed by the collar by someone with bright blue hair. The person rushed at him so fiercely that Doha’s t-shirt stretched out. Doha’s body swayed like a buoy pushed by waves.
Doha glanced at the large hand gripping his collar, then slowly met eyes with the man before him.
Ah… so who might this person with paint candy-colored hair be…?
What a seriously wicked concept. To make someone’s hair look like this. It must be the atrocity of an agency crazed by capitalism.
OnX was a group with such a terrible dark history worldview that even fans wanted to forget it. A cosmic-level one at that.
“Did you set out to screw us over? Are you doing this on purpose?”
The man gripping his collar looked very disgruntled. As this chaos erupted, Manager Cheolhwan, who was nearby, hurriedly grabbed his arm.
“Yunbeom-ah. What’s this about? Doha’s a patient.”
Han Yunbeom. A member of OnX from <The Epic Flop Idol Gets Saved by the Maknae>.
“Doha-ya, this is Yunbeom. Don’t you remember?”
“Hyung, you believe this bastard’s words? Memory loss my ass. What kind of bullshit is this again?”
Yunbeom, with his strong-featured face, was straightforward about everything. His eyes were boldly shaped, his nose bridge rose sharply, and his jawline was clean and defined. And he sure grabbed collars boldly too.
‘Yunbeom-gun, your hands and mouth are rough. Hehe.’
Doha carefully removed Yunbeom’s fingers from his collar, wiggling them off starting from the ring finger. But when Yunbeom belatedly noticed Doha’s actions and applied force to his hand again, Doha wheezed and grabbed his arm with both hands.
“What kind of bullshit are you pulling this time? Huh? Clubs, scandals, not practicing properly, and now you’re playing up some melodrama?”
Every point was correct, but it was deeply unfair. That should be taken up with the old Baek Doha.
“Everyone knows you checked out a long time ago, but still, you shouldn’t be a nuisance to the team. Even if you’re just dead weight, you should at least show up!”
The longer Yunbeom spoke, the more forcefully the clothes caught in his grip were yanked. He couldn’t breathe.
“You’re a rich kid, so you figure you can half-ass it and quit whenever, is that it?”
He saw right through him. Too accurate. Chilling.
“Kek, kek.”
Doha smacked Yunbeom’s solid arm with his hand.
“Hey, hey…! You’re gonna kill him!”
Even the manager tried to pry off Yunbeom’s hand, but ultimately, the person who broke his grip was someone else.
“Hyung. Stop it.”
It was Lim Sehyun. Wearing a towel wrapped around his head and roughly dressed in a tank top and training pants, Sehyun firmly grabbed Yunbeom’s arm. Doha was well aware that Sehyun’s grip strength was quite powerful.
“Ha… Fuck.”
Yunbeom’s hand fell away from Doha’s clothes. Only then did Doha catch his breath.
“Doha hyung, are you okay?”
Before he knew it, another member approached Doha. Doha rolled his eyes to examine the new person. Small… and cute.
“Hyung, I’m Haram. Do you… remember?”
The person blinking round eyes beneath platinum bleached hair was named Kang Haram.
A member of the maknae line along with Sehyun and a main character in the novel’s early episodes, so relatively detailed information came to mind. But he couldn’t very well say he remembered. Doha shook his head.
“Your face looks really haggard right now.”
Haram supported Doha. Doha found it fascinating how, despite being fellow maknaes, Lim Sehyun and Kang Haram had such different atmospheres. If Haram was definitely the soft tofu type, Sehyun was the cold handsome guy style.
As he steadied himself with Haram’s support, Sehyun’s back came into view. He’d thought he was just tall, but his broad shoulders and arms bulked up from practice showed quite a wild side.
“First, don’t get angry and let’s talk. Doha hyung didn’t get hurt because he wanted to be hurt.”
A slow, firm tone. A low voice. Was it because he was an idol? His vocalization was exceptional. It wasn’t simply because he was an idol, but Sehyun’s uniquely calm and settled atmosphere combined with it had impact.
At Sehyun’s words, Yunbeom let out a deep sigh and roughly ran his hand through his hair. Through his paint candy-colored hair. It kept bothering him.
Watching Doha roll his eyes dismissively, Yunbeom seemed to realize that getting angrier at someone who lost their memory would only make him look like a fool, so he ruffled his hair roughly and eventually turned away.
“Hyung, are you okay?”
Having put out the urgent fire, Lim Sehyun turned around and grasped Doha’s shoulders with both hands. As he meticulously checked for injuries and took care of him attentively, Doha felt burdened.
‘Was he originally this warm-hearted?’
After regressing, he seemed to have the image of driving the members hard and whipping them into shape for rehabilitation.
“You came to practice even though you’re hurt? If that’s the case, that’s really short-sighted.”
Not at all. Even you don’t think Baek Doha is that kind of person, right?
Doha couldn’t tell whether he should be grateful or offended by Lim Sehyun’s words that exquisitely mixed concern and dissing.
“The manager hyung…”
As soon as he opened his mouth to clear up the misunderstanding, Sehyun’s sharp gaze flew to Cheolhwan.
“Ah, no, if he stays alone at the dorm he’ll just be lonely!”
Cheolhwan hastily made excuses. Then Sehyun turned his gaze back to Doha and straightened his disheveled clothes. At that sight, Haram’s mouth hung open.
“Hyung, sit over there on the chair and rest.”
“Yep.”
It was welcome news, so he readily accepted. Then Cheolhwan quickly prepared a chair. Despite being the maknae, Sehyun was controlling the atmosphere of the practice room.
“Let’s continue practice.”
Sehyun quickly organized the unsettled atmosphere.
As expected of a regressor. A second life really is different.
* * *
The lyrics he’d only seen as text kept flowing out. The cheerful drum sounds struck his eardrums. Was this concept American high school? Practice continued for a long while.
According to the manager’s explanation, OnX was currently in the final stages of promoting a mini album they’d released after finishing their Asia tour. But Doha’s injury made it unavoidable to revise the choreography for a four-person formation. Thanks to that, it was natural for the members’ burden to increase and for them to become sensitive.
However, even while listening to the manager’s detailed explanation, Doha’s mind was sold elsewhere.
‘Damn, he’s handsome.’
His own face reflected in the practice room’s large mirror was astonishing. Though he’d seen it plenty over the past few days, he was amazed every time.
He took pride in having had a face in his previous life that wouldn’t be intimidated anywhere, but certainly ordinary people and celebrities were different.
Baek Doha was a handsome man with clean lines. He matched perfect proportions as if all his features had been measured with a ruler and fitted in.
Hair dyed hazelnut color, eyes full of worry that sparkled brilliantly, jade-white skin, plump lips that made you want to touch them.
Honestly, it was too good a face to remain as a dumpling shop young master.
‘The crisp double eyelid line is clearer than my future.’
Excluding the drawback of living up to his face value, he wanted to dare call it a perfect creation. Lim Sehyun also had an unrealistic face, but Baek Doha’s shell was absolutely not inferior.
Doha stared blankly at his reflection in the mirror to a degree that others might consider narcissism. Someone who found Doha’s state strange spoke to him.
“What are you doing?”
His name was Eden. OnX’s genius composer. A foreign member with dual citizenship in America and Japan.
His deeply set double eyelids and light-colored eyes gave an exotic impression, yet his skin had an Eastern clarity. Wavy blonde hair flowing to his jawline, a tear mole that held one’s gaze, well-curved lip lines below a high nose bridge enchanted people.
Observing Doha sitting in the chair, Eden leisurely gulped down bottled water and wiped away his sweat.
Such composure not to pant like a dog despite sweating so much. Was this the elegance of a swan?
“Did you really lose your memory?”
“Have you ever seen someone fake losing their memory?”
“Mm… You really are acting unfamiliar.”
Eden’s lips curled up. But his eyes weren’t smiling at all.
“It’s going to be really hard going forward.”
“What will be?”
“You have to relearn everything—the songs, the dances.”
You’re stating the obvious. Regarding what Eden mentioned, Doha also felt great pressure. Songs, dances—could he even learn them if he tried?
He blankly stared at Yunbeom, who was in the middle of receiving detailed feedback on choreography. He was correcting his hand direction because of the new formation without Doha. Unconsciously, his eyes followed Yunbeom’s movements.
Floor, front, side, sweeping the body, up, jumping high with a turn… Huh?
“But it doesn’t seem like you have no memory at all.”
Eden caught that Doha’s gaze was anticipating the direction ahead of Yunbeom’s movements.
What’s this? Is it like muscle memory? The songs and dances felt oddly familiar. Just when he reached the point of imagining he might be able to do it, Doha snapped back to his senses.
Are you crazy? Do what? It’s withdrawal no matter what. Contract termination. There are no other options.
