Chapter 2

“I really don’t want to die!”

“I don’t want to die! I don’t want to die!”

“Hyung!”

“Dying…”

“Hyung!!”

Dansol opened his eyes to the musty semi-basement lodging of the old DinoSoul.

It was a cramped space that fit four bunk beds, leaving no room to walk.

“Hyung! Are you sick?”

Minjae, the youngest, wiped the sweat off Dansol’s forehead.

“Why am I here…? Did you die too, Minjae? Is this hell…?”

“What are you talking about? Did you have a dream? Who said anyone died?”

“No… I was definitely in a car accident…”

Dansol jumped up and looked around, and Minjae spoke.

“You were so nervous yesterday you even took sleeping pills. Hyung, you shouldn’t take those anymore. They make you act weird.”

As Minjae said, there was still a slight haziness lingering.

Is this a dream?

No, the memories of the past few years are too vivid for that.

Then maybe this is some kind of unconscious state.

Certain it was a dream, Dansol banged his head against the wall.

“Ow! Ow!”

“Hyung! Are you crazy? Woohyun hyung! Hyung, come here!”

While Dansol was banging his head against the wall, Woohyun entered through the front door, and Minjae urgently called him.

“Ah!”

Seeing Woohyun, Dansol reacted as if he’d seen a ghost.

“Hyung? What’s wrong…?”

“Ah! Let go of me! Is this not a dream…? That can’t be…”

Suddenly, Dansol looked at Woohyun as if he were a bug.

As Woohyun awkwardly reached out to him, Dansol cowered in the corner, mumbling to himself.

“Hyung…?”

Tears welled up in Dansol’s eyes.

There was no way it was a dream.

Dansol was sure of it because he still couldn’t hear well out of his damaged ear.

But his forehead throbbed where he’d hit the wall.

If this isn’t a dream, then have I… possibly… come back?

Dansol lifted his head from his knees and looked at the bag Woohyun was holding with a puzzled expression.

The day before they went on air, Woohyun had given Dansol a gift.

Before that incident, Woohyun had been the member who got along with Dansol the best.

“Did you… by any chance, bring me clothes in that bag?”

“Huh…? How did you know, hyung?”

“Wow… I really came back.”

“Come back where? But hyung, how did you know I brought clothes for you?”

He couldn’t possibly have forgotten.

There was a participant in Omega wearing the same clothes as Dansol.

From the first meeting, the editing framed them as rivals, maintaining this narrative until the show ended.

“I just found out somehow. I appreciate the thought, but… I don’t need it.”

Woohyun’s mood quickly soured at Dansol’s oddly cold response.

“What! I bought it especially for you…”

“No thanks, it’s too flashy… It doesn’t suit me. But… do I really have to appear on that show…?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Are you crazy?”

“What’s wrong with you, hyung?”

Even Yoonsung, who had been in another room, rushed in to respond in unison to Dansol’s random remark.

The members’ eyes were shining intensely.

Even though he knew it was a ridiculous thing to say, Dansol had sworn countless times that if he could go back, he’d grab the company president by the collar and never appear on such a show again.

He had never wanted to participate in a show that categorized people like that in the first place, but he had foolishly listened to the scammer of a president.

But before he could even get to the president, his members had already stopped him.

Because they had so little recognition, even Dansol’s individual schedule had everyone excited.

Jealousy and rivalry among members required a certain level of recognition.

After all, Dansol was the only one who booked schedules outside of music shows for DinoSoul.

When Dansol came out after washing his face to clear his head, the members took turns guarding his room.

“Hey… I’m not going to run away. You don’t have to guard me…!”

Trying to find the right moment to escape, Dansol shouted in embarrassment as if he had been caught.

“Hyung, you don’t usually wash up on your days off. This is very suspicious.”

“Hyung, you know Zeus, right? Their center ran away too because it was so hard. It’s common for the member who supports the group to have such moments. But if you run away, can you at least do it after you appear on the RO Match Survival in Island?”

“Ha… Yoonsung… Zeus was shooting dramas, movies, and variety shows while doing music broadcasts. I have no schedule and live in peace. Look, the calendar is empty. I even slept 13 hours yesterday.”

On the living room whiteboard, proudly labeled ‘DinoSoul Schedule,’ there were fewer scheduled days than the number of red-marked holidays.

“That’s true… But I heard you turned down the gift Woohyun gave you! Someone as materialistic as you would never do that! Something’s fishy.”

Did I really used to be like that?

Dansol reflected on himself at Yoonsung’s words.

He did like flashy clothes and accessories.

But he had gotten used to dressing inconspicuously during his years in hiding and had forgotten.

“That… that’s because my style has changed…”

“Are you suffering from actor syndrome?”

At Yoonsung’s words, Minjae ran over with rubber gloves still on.

“Hyung, you can’t be like this already! Even if you’ve won over housewives aged 40 to 50 overnight, you’ll be old news once the next drama comes out.”

“Our youngest has been studying the market diligently…”

“I had nothing else to do since I was always at home…”

Thinking it was a compliment, Minjae blushed and twisted his body.

Meanwhile, Yoonsung grabbed Dansol’s hand.

“Hyung! Please do well, okay? I really want to be on that crazy idol show…”

“Me too, me too! I want to be the ending fairy! I even prepared a pose. Wanna see?”

As Minjae panted heavily, playing hard to get, Yoonsung clung to him persistently.

“That thing you do for 10 seconds? Hey, even cold water has an order! I want to go first!”

“Hey, keep it down. I have to leave early tomorrow, and if you guys keep making so much noise, my skin will suffer.”

After a while of discussing their desires wildly, Yoonsung and Minjae finally stepped back at Woohyun’s nagging.

Naturally, unlike Woohyun, who treated Dansol indifferently, Dansol flinched in surprise every time he saw Woohyun.

What made it even more uncomfortable was the fact that Woohyun and Dansol had shared the same room since their trainee days.

After Minjae and Yoonsung left, a heavy silence filled the small room.

“The others?”

“Hyunwoo, Jiwoong, and Yeongyu are doing short-term part-time jobs. Jacob is taking an English tutoring session.”

“Oh… I see.”

Due to their impoverished lives, quite a few members secretly took on part-time jobs without the agency’s knowledge.

Minjae and Yoonsung were minors, and Woohyun came from a well-off family, so he didn’t need to work part-time.

Dansol, too, used to do short-term part-time jobs like the other members before filming a daily drama.

“Um… Hyung, I’m sorry.”

“Huh? What for?”

“About the clothes… I know you have your own taste, but I bought them without thinking. I didn’t know your preferences had changed.”

Dansol was taken aback by the unexpected words.

Over the past few years, the only image of Woohyun that remained in Dansol’s mind was that final moment.

Hadn’t he sneered at Woohyun for making donations right before dying?

Perhaps I turned this originally kind boy into such a cruel person, Dansol wondered.

“Oh, it’s okay… Even though your family helps, you probably don’t have much money, so I feel bad.”

Just because he had some leeway, it didn’t mean he had to help out.

“I feel bad too… since you’re the only one struggling, Hyung. So, please accept this. It’s not new; I bought it for myself but couldn’t wear it because it’s too small.”

What Woohyun handed over was an ordinary black tracksuit.

Dansol then realized how much he had come to hate Woohyun, just as much as the agency president.

He felt a strange, uneasy sensation.

When Dansol couldn’t say anything due to a lump in his throat, Woohyun shyly placed the clothes in Dansol’s hands.

“When you go there, you’ll have missions too… The stylist-noona said not to wear the sponsored clothes carelessly. Your tracksuits are full of holes and your knees are sticking out. If you wear those, you’ll get looked down on.”

Dansol couldn’t bring himself to tell Woohyun that no matter what he wore, he was already looked down upon.

He might seem impressive to the members, but in a place full of top actors and popular idols, Dansol was just a toy to be torn apart.

The younger members didn’t know this and supported Dansol excessively.

‘What should I do… Why did it have to be the day before the broadcast? Why couldn’t I have gone back to before I became a trainee?’

Using the excuse of needing to leave early, Dansol went to bed but couldn’t fall asleep easily.

He couldn’t bring himself to run away, leaving behind the members who had such high hopes.

‘Yeah, let’s just go on the show… They might be disappointed if I get edited out completely, but they’ll understand. It’s better than being criticized and disbanding, right?’

As a child, Dansol, who had craved love due to his parents’ absence, wanted to become an idol because he liked the attention.

But after experiencing something close to a curse, with malicious comments and piercing stares, he only wished for one thing.

For the world to forget about him.

When he realized he had returned to the past, he thought maybe a god who pitied him had given him a gift.

He felt sorry for the members, but Dansol had no intention of barely surviving the survival show like before.

The next morning, the manager woke Dansol, who had been tossing and turning all night.

They had to leave early to stop by the salon for makeup and hair.

After rubbing his sleepy eyes and getting fully ready, they left the shop at 7 AM.

Before the regression, Dansol had been 30 minutes late to the first shoot because the manager took a wrong turn.

Maybe it was from then on that he fell out of the producers’ favor.

‘Let’s just get there 5 minutes early, no more, no less.’

Dansol’s eyes widened at the spot where the manager had previously gone astray.

“Hyung, it’s not straight ahead, you have to turn right here. And could you please update the navigation system?”

“Oh… really? Haha, I’ve been so busy that I couldn’t update it.”

While Gilsung was a good person, he was a terrible manager.

Dansol had kept in touch with him until the end because of his easygoing personality, but there was a frustrating side to him.

“I got confused because it’s my first time here. Sorry. But Dansol, have you been here before? There’s nothing here but a deserted island…”

“I… I came here before. As a pre-visit… or something.”

“Haha, pretending not to care but you came for a pre-visit? The President would be pleased.”

“Ah! Please don’t tell the President!”

Dansol avoided Gilsung’s gaze in the rearview mirror.

When the agency president was mentioned, Dansol’s expression hardened, but Gilsung just thought it was out of embarrassment.

Dansol looked out the window and saw the island that would be the background for ‘RO Match Survival in Island’. (It is called RO Match because its meaning is Romance match but taken only the RO from romance to make it RO Match.)

At the entrance of the island, connected to the mainland by a bridge, was a sign in English, proving it had once been a famous tourist spot.

Chunmong Island, located at the end of the West Sea, was a picturesque island with a clear sea, tidal flats, and mudflats.

It used to be a tourist spot and had residents, but for various reasons, they left, and it became a deserted island visited only by occasional fishermen.

Though it became famous again after the broadcast, Dansol never wanted to set foot on it again.

‘Damn, what bad luck. I get a second chance at life, only to end up on this wretched island twice.’

Dansol lightly banged his head on the car window.

The spot where he had hit the wall last night throbbed, reminding him this wasn’t a dream.