Chapter 404 |
Side Story (21)
[“Wow, it’s Lee Chise.”] [“Um, sorry, but could I get just one photo!’] [“Hyung, you’re seriously handsome! I’m a huge fan!”]
It was like watching the Pied Piper, every time Lee Chise took a step, the crowd surged and moved with him. It was clear that even those standing still had their eyes locked firmly on him.
The reaction was different from what I’d expected.
Most of them probably looked down on him as an idol rapper in their hearts, yet since he was a celebrity, they dutifully lined up for photos and autographs. It was kind of funny.
‘They act like idol rappers aren’t even worth dealing with…….’
Since our group rarely turns down requests for photos or autographs, Lee Chise kept agreeing without a single complaint. Maybe word spread among the contestants, because the crowd quickly swelled to an unmanageable level.
[“Chise-hyung! Please, just one more for me! Hey, that guy got a picture, so why am I the only one who didn’t! This is f*cking annoying.”]
Only after four staff members stuck close to Lee Chise and started controlling the crowd did the audition venue gradually calm down. Some people grumbled at the back of his head for not getting an autograph, but it didn’t end up being shown too prominently on the broadcast.
Still, to us, whose eyes and ears were glued to Lee Chise the entire time, it was clearly audible.
“Why’s he getting so pissy and talking sh*t.”
Nam Yihwon, who had his arm draped over Jo Inchan’s shoulder while watching TV, scowled deeply in anger. Lee Chise gave a small, helpless chuckle and lightly tapped the tip of Nam Yihwon’s chin with his knuckle.
“Hey. Watch your language.”
“If something’s dog-sh*t, I’ll call it dog-sh*t. What else am I supposed to call it? Besides, it’s just us here.”
“Still, he’s just a regular person. Don’t be too hard on him.”
“You’re the problem, hyung, you have no backbone. What do you think, Yutae-hyung?”
“Dog-sh*t.”
“See!”
“Hyung … if you say it like that, what does that make me?”
Then, with a sparkly soft-focus effect, slow-motion shots of Lee Chise looking especially good played. After showing the other participants gawking in awe, the show cut straight to their interviews.
[<what was your impression after seeing lee chise in person>]</what>
[“…I really don’t want to say this, but he’s f*cking handsome.”] [“Yeah, a celebrity really is a celebrity.”] [“I’ve never seen someone that good-looking. Jeongjeom-hyung is famous for his looks in the hip-hop scene, right? But wow … standing next to Lee Chise, he suddenly looks … so ordinary? I guess we really were frogs in a well. That guy’s face is insane. He’s the best-looking person I’ve ever seen.]
[“And why is he so tall? It gives me such a serious complex … Please let him be bad at rapping. If he’s good at rapping too, I’m seriously going to sue.”] [“What would it feel like to be that handsome? Life must be really fun, right?”] [“I asked for his number, and he turned me down with a bright smile.”]
[<Kido-nim, you’re handsome enough too.>]
[“…Please don’t comfort me. It just makes me feel miserable.”]
These raw, unfiltered reactions from the non-celebrity contestants painted an even more vivid picture of Lee Chise’s stunning looks.
When the broadcast aired live, ‘Lee Chise’s face‘ even topped the real-time trending keywords.
Just as I started feeling uneasy about how nothing but praise was coming out, sure enough, ominous background music kicked in and criticism of Lee Chise followed.
[“This isn’t some playground for kids, yet everyone’s buzzing around asking for his autograph. If they’re going to act like that, they should stay home and be fanboys instead of auditioning. Some people are putting their lives on the line here, so seeing people treat this like a joke is honestly offensive. If he’s already a top idol, he shouldn’t be stealing opportunities from the rest of us.”] [“Yeah, he’s good-looking. But we’re not here to have a face battle. A rapper should be good at rapping. Being handsome means nothingin this place. But can he even rap? The time he spends staring in the mirror, we pour into rap.”]
Do you know this?
Lee Chise is a studio gremlin.
In front of people, he always acts like he’s just been fooling around and never practicing, but where no one can see, he works himself to the bone alone. So what do they know that gives them the right to judge Lee Chise’s effort?
I don’t want to get angry watching a show that aired years ago, but somehow this part makes my blood pressure spike every time.
[“I can never respect idol rappers. Why? Because they’re just average pretty faces who are f**king terrible at rapping. Am I going to get dogpiled by his fans for saying this? So what. I don’t care.”]
This guy clearly didn’t know his own future.
Within an hour of the broadcast airing, his past school violence got exposed by Seras and he plummeted straight into the abyss.
[“I could totally make a legendary verse too if I had Seo Yutae producing my beats. He’s basically doing all the heavy lifting while the rapper just hitches a ride…….”]
No, I’m telling you, I don’t know anything about rap.
I’m basically just dumping a blank page on him?
Watching clueless people talk nonsense however they liked left a bitter taste in my mouth. But as if unaware of my feelings, the show rolled on without pause, and the first full-fledged round began.
[“Okay, begin.”]
At the judge’s signal, one contestant calmly steadied his breathing.
[“AAAAAAAH!”]
Then he suddenly let out a lion’s roar.
[<Unique Contestants Appear>]
It was, quite literally, a raw scream.
No pitch, no rhythm, he genuinely sounded like someone whose ass had just been bitten by a piranha. The show captured everyone standing there speechless with their mouths agape before immediately cutting to the next contestant’s audition.
[“Yo, yo”]
With a resolute expression, the contestant suddenly pulled down his pants.
“Ha…….”
“Ah, f*ck. My eyes.”
Confronted with another man’s lower half out of nowhere, Cha Woon’s face drained of color as he set the pickled radish he’d been about to eat back onto the plate. Meanwhile, Nam Yihwon scowled as if he’d just seen something cursed and let out a string of profanities.
“Aren’t they arresting that guy? Isn’t that, like, public indecency?”
“The production team should report him, but since it makes for good broadcast material, they’ll probably just let it slide.”
“I mean, just showing his underwear is fine, isn’t it?”
“Stop saying underwear over and over! You’re making me lose my appetite!”
To comply with broadcast standards, a sunflower sticker had been edited over his underwear. Unfortunately, there was no such filter in real life. The judge, forced to witness the bold leopard-print undies in person, shut their eyes tight as if weeping tears of blood.
[“Oh, shit.”]
RIP, judge.
[“…Put your pants on.”] [“No.”] [“Put your pants on! Now!”] [“No!”]
In the end, the contestant stubbornly rapped with his pants still off.
‘Is this … hip-hop?’
Is that what’s considered cool in their world? If so, I don’t think I’ll ever be able to set foot in it.
Or maybe there were just so many contestants that, proportionally, there were bound to be more weirdos too.
‘Why is Lee Chise watching it so seriously?’
At first, his eyes looked like someone amused by something novel, but after checking something about the contestant, a faint trace of pity crept in. What exactly was it that triggered Lee Chise’s sympathy? The mumbled pronunciation? The way the guy got so hyped he kept missing the beat? Legs that couldn’t stay still? His questionable mental state that made him keep trying to take his pants off? Or something … more physical?
I didn’t really want to know.
‘Lee Chise, close your eyes. Stop staring.’
— Oh my god, look at Lee Chise’s expression ㅠㅠ This moment is going to be immortalized online forever since it’s on the broadcast— If that were me, I’d have killed myself
Damn it, was it already too late?
That’s what happens when you stare so blatantly.
‘You could at least smile or look away.’
In the end, the contestant stumbled over the lyrics and finished the judging without even making it through the full rap. It looked freezing out there … I couldn’t help but worry if he at least remembered to put his pants back on before heading out.
And finally, it was Lee Chise’s turn.
When the rapper acting as judge hurriedly bowed toward him, Lee Chise dipped his head just slightly and accepted the greeting with ease. The judge, exhaling a breath so tense his cheeks puffed out, nodded.
‘Anyone watching would think Lee Chise was the judge and that guy was the contestant. He’s the one doing the evaluating, why is he that nervous?’
The moment Lee Chise saw the signal to begin, he opened his mouth without a single second of hesitation.
[“Hello.”]
The instant Lee Chise’s voice rang out loud and clear, the audition hall fell completely silent.
[“Wow.”] [“It was over the moment he uttered the first word.”]
Shots of contestants murmuring in awe flashed by.
A voice delivered with solid projection and precise diction can sometimes feel like it pierces straight through space and stabs your ears. Proving that point, Lee Chise’s voice swallowed up everyone else’s, making it impossible to focus on any other evaluation at the same time.1
In the end, the judges had no choice but to put their own assessments on hold and simply watch Lee Chise’s audition.
A ceiling shot quickly appeared, starkly showing that everyone in the room had their eyes fixed on Lee Chise. Then, the footage rewound to the start of the rap, and Lee Chise leisurely lifted his head.
And looking straight down into the camera, he flashed a crooked grin.
[“Greetings, everyone
I’m the one you’ve all been so curious about The IDOL rapper, Lee Chise”] From the very beginning, Lee Chise wasn’t looking at the judges; he was looking straight into the camera. It was as though judges didn’t even exist to him; Lee Chise was the same even at our first meeting. His eyes seemed to say, ‘You’re not qualified to judge me’. He was someone who could give even the great Seo Yutae that impression, so how much more overwhelming must he have been to those judges? [“I came here because it looked fun It’s been too long since I’ve felt any real sense of danger I needed a new thrill] We, idols, are always standing before the public, being judged on every stage. So even in a competition like this, there was no particular reason for Lee Chise to feel nervous. [Idol Rapper vs. Real Rapper I’m here to give you the showdown you’ve all been waiting for] [<How did you prepare your first rap?>] At the production team’s question, Lee Chise seemed like he hadn’t even been thinking about the first round. He paused a beat, then answered with an awkward smile. [“Ah … just a light greeting, I guess? People keep asking why I came on this program, what my motivation is. I got tired of answering one by one, so I figured I’d answer all at once.”] The first round is meant to identify contestants with potential and star quality, or at least to filter out who had a solid foundation. [“Honestly, you’re not that interested, are you? About my reason for coming here.”] Lee Chise had already been exposed to the public to an excessive degree. He couldn’t really offer anything fresh by selling a tragic backstory or emphasizing how desperate he was. As the competition deepened, he might eventually open up and grow closer to the viewers, but now wasn’t the time. [“Am I good, or am I not? That’s all that matters. And I am good.”] And so this was the choice Lee Chise made. [“Were you expecting some grand sob story? Sorry, but I don’t even care about selling sad tales Tell the other guys to keep working hard at that But you should know this Desperation doesn’t always translate into skill”] It was a choice that the other contestants, who were shaking with nerves as they recited memorized lyrics, could ever make. By deliberately stripping away lyrical content, he pushed his rap technique to the forefront in the most extreme way. [“Alright, let’s just ride the rhythm lightly Nothing to be afraid of At the start, secure your breathing properly That’s how you keep the rhythm without getting thrown off”] Starting as casually as if he were just speaking, Lee Chise began to rap like teacher showing a student how it’s done during a lesson. With every gesture, he perfectly executed the techniques he was describing in his lyrics, making direct eye contact with each of the contestants standing around him. [“Don’t rush it, build it up slow Hit one accent in the middle and you’ll hook the ear That’s not how you do a layback This is”] Now that I looked closely, Lee Chise was perfectly correcting every point where other contestants had slipped or fallen short, the same parts the judges had used to disqualify them. Realizing this, one of the judges scrunched his face like a crushed slice of paprika, started nodding along to the rhythm, and finally burst out in admiration he couldn’t hold back. [If you run the same tempo too long, it gets boring Even if you snap the beat ahead without warning you have to be able to fall back into the original pace at any time And through all of that, your diction can never waver] [“Wooo! That’s insane.”] [“Yeaah!”] It wasn’t just the judges. Even contestants standing far away joined in, and the audition hall filled with waves of cheering noise. [“Even when you rap without a beat Always keep the beat in your head So when it drops in, it fits perfectly”] Every single performance Lee Chise performed gave—from his first appearance on the program to his eventual victory—became famous. This first-round performance in particular spawned viral videos where people added beats over his rap. A clip titled “Lee Chise Teaching a Lesson in Round 1 (Insane)” went viral for the sheer satisfaction of how perfectly the added beat snapped into place with those very lines. Even without seeing those videos, the judges must have known just how absurdly good his rap was. [“They say idol rappers ain’t got the technique So I put my craft on display, heart and soul How’s that, you feeling it?”] This wasn’t just me being biased; it was a fact that Lee Chise completely owned the first round. You can support this translation through Buy Me a Coffee -`♡´- Translator’s Corner: Maybe I should retire from idol genre … translating lyrics really feels adfjfkdjgklfldkj because it jut doesnt hit the same when translated to english Lately I’ve been having difficulty breathing so often it actually makes me overthinking what if it randomly actually stopped …. but it’s kinda fascinating, you know. Usually breathing is done unconsciously right, but since I keep being short on breath (like there’s something pressing down my chest? idk, it just feels hard), I become very aware of each breath that I took …. and it kinda, how do i put it, magical? like, wow, human body do this …. I’m a big believer of God existence exactly because of this kind of thing, like there’s nothing that can explain human other than there’s actually a Being who created it…..