Save a Failed Idol’s Life

Translator: MarcTempest

Editor: NicoleTempest

Chapter 30 The Weight of a Tiny Crown (2)

8:50 a.m.

As I looked at the numbers blinking on the phone screen, I felt a surge of reality.

This was the first time I was going to face the public as Cheon Ise.

“Anyone who needs to go to the bathroom, go now.”

Kyunghwa checked the camera angle again and looked around the members.

“What am I, huh? From today, call me daddy~”

Yi-jun joked around, but Kyunghwa ignored him.

“You’re right. It’s been almost five months since we turned it on, so you should be relieved. Don’t say anything weird and just do as the cue sheet says.”

They did live broadcasts too, huh? It was obvious, but it felt a bit surprising.

I wonder how many viewers came to the usual Climax live broadcasts.

I remembered the results of searching online for things like Mangdol live broadcast, Mangdol live broadcast viewer count.

[Doesn’t the Mangdol live broadcast get about 3,000 viewers?]

I didn’t know what their standard for Mangdol was, but…

Considering that the total number of subscribers for Climax was only about 6,000, there was no way they got 3,000 each.

But maybe 500 or so… Wouldn’t they have come? I couldn’t ask the other members. And I didn’t want to use the replay service for this curiosity.

‘It’s tricky.’

I grumbled to myself and looked over the cue sheet again.

This was all I had to do. I divided the hour and a half into two parts. I originally planned to split the two hours into one hour each, but…

For the first part, I was going to make and eat salad and cold pasta, and then use cookie dough to bake cookies for dessert.

‘Thank goodness this house had a full-option oven.’

It was not easy to do cooking content without an oven.

If there were more burners, we could have done something together…

I glanced at the induction, which had only three units.

The next time I do serious cooking content, I think it would be better to rent a studio.

‘I’ll talk about it when I have another chance.’

There will be.

No, there had to be.

Five minutes passed as I composed myself. I started to check on our kids.

They were all unpredictable guys, so I had to make sure they were okay.

Son Seong-won was expressionless as always. Yi-jun was looking at his phone with no sign of nervousness.

Kyunghwa was breathing in and out, as if he was a little nervous. He was good at real situations, so I didn’t need to worry about him.

‘Now the problem is this guy.’

Seon-woo, who wore the loosest clothes he had to hide his figure, was fiddling with his fingertips in the corner of the kitchen.

As the broadcast approached, he looked worried, and his face was pale.

The reason was obvious.

“Seon-woo.”

I called him in a low voice, and Seon-woo jumped up as if he had committed a crime.

“Huh!? Uh, hyung…”

He cringed, but his face was bright red. I clicked my tongue lightly.

His cheeks, dyed red, were his weapon, but his face was not normal.

“Why are you so nervous?”

I approached him and asked him as if I was interrogating him.

Seon-woo flinched and tried to back away.

I didn’t mean to scare him. But it was too late.

“I-I’m not nervous!”

Yeah, right.

Seon-woo’s voice cracked slightly.

The broadcast was about to start, and there was nothing I could do for him.

All I could do was comfort him with words.

“Is there anything you’re worried about?”

“No? Not really…”

Seon-woo avoided my gaze and trailed off. He was lying. I pinched his soft cheek with a force that wouldn’t leave a mark.

“Ow!”

“Of course it hurts, it’s supposed to hurt. I pinched you because it hurts.”

Seon-woo’s eyes filled with tears in an instant.

“It’s just… It’s the first time I’m in front of the fans since I gained weight…”

“Are you afraid someone will insult you for being fat?”

“…”

Seon-woo didn’t answer and looked away, as if he had hit the mark.

I could understand his concern.

The members had been singing ‘You just need to lose weight’ to him all this time.

He must have been scared to stand in front of the camera when he hadn’t reached his target weight yet.

“You’re careful with your clothes anyway, and your face is a bit chubby, but it doesn’t look that bad. Kyunghwa showed you how you look earlier.”

Maybe it was because I placed Seon-woo far behind the other members.

His fat was a bit… excessive, but he didn’t stand out.

“What if someone in the chat calls me a pig?”

Seon-woo hesitated for a long time and finally answered.

That’s a personal attack.

There was no need to see more of the people who ran around poking others with their fingers.

I wanted to ask the manager to block them, but would he really do that in real time?

‘That’s hard to expect, honestly.’

I couldn’t say anything to Seon-woo that I couldn’t take responsibility for.

“Just don’t read the chat and just cheer along from the side.”

Or maybe… He could make his character a cute gluttonous baby pig.

An idea that could be strategically used popped into my head. But if I told Seon-woo now, it would be like stabbing him in the heart.

‘I’ll talk to him later when he recovers his mental state. If I say it now, it might make him explode.’

Seon-woo nodded slightly at my encouragement.

“You’ve been doing well so far, so let’s try a little harder.”

I patted Seon-woo’s shoulder and his posture seemed to straighten up a bit.

I glanced at the clock and it was 59 minutes. It was time to press the start button.

“Let’s start.”

Kyunghwa looked around to see if everyone was in place and pressed the start button on the laptop connected to the phone.

The waiting mark on the top of the screen spun around and then an eye-shaped icon appeared next to it.

I had never experienced this interface before, but I intuitively felt that it was the number of viewers.

As we had decided our roles beforehand, Kyunghwa calmly started the introduction. He was so nervous until the camera officially turned on.

But as soon as the screen lit up, he became shameless.

‘I wonder if he’s still shaking inside.’

Anyway, I couldn’t hate someone who tried hard.

He was the closest to a model student among the four members, excluding Cheon Ise.

He was like a boy head of the household, if you will.

‘What should I say about him… He seems to think that he has to work hard here!’

It was fine for me, since it was helpful. But if I thought about it from the perspective of a good adult, not like Lim Hyun-seong who dreamed of revenge…

‘He’s only twenty-four, he doesn’t need to feel such a heavy sense of responsibility.’

I didn’t feel like comforting or soothing him.

This relationship was not mine, but someone else’s.

“Hello, Rise fans! This is Climax, greeting you after a long time!”

I wondered where Rise came from.

It was a name derived from the meaning of Crisis, the stage before Climax, in the five-act structure of exposition, rising action, crisis, climax, and resolution.

Why bother… The general public didn’t care and didn’t want to know the philosophy behind it.

‘It means crisis, right…’

Who would want to be called a crisis? It was useless for me to complain, since it was already established.

“You must have been worried because it’s been so long, right? We have a lot of comeback schedules ahead, so please keep your interest and support us. Thank you.”

I glanced at the chat, but there was nothing else besides simple greetings.

I didn’t write any lines for him, but Kyunghwa smoothly led the progress like a veteran.

“Right, we posted a lot of delicious pictures yesterday, and you must have been curious! Yi-jun will briefly introduce what content we will do with Rise fans today!”

As soon as Kyunghwa passed the turn, Yi-jun captivated the viewers with his characteristic bright smile.

The chat started to flood up. I couldn’t see well, but I noticed quite a few chats saying ‘Yi-jun’ and welcoming him.

“Huh? Me? I thought I just had to eat?”

Yi-jun joked naturally, even though he had prepared everything beforehand.

“Just kidding, today we’re going to make salad and cold pasta that you were all curious about yesterday! And we’re going to show you how to bake cookies using this meal kit.”

Among the chats that were pouring up, sentences like [You’re going to eat anyway] and [I’m already excited to eat] quickly came up.

‘Well… This seems like a good response…’

I had high hopes after seeing a comment on the internet that even a flop could get 3,000 views.

I checked the number of viewers.

[View : 910]

‘What…?’

It was far below my expectations.

No, no, no. We gained 300,000 followers yesterday.

Shouldn’t at least 10% of them come and watch?

I forced myself to lift up the corners of my mouth that were about to collapse in shock.

“Then, now, let me introduce today’s chef! Ise hyung! Wow~.”

As soon as he finished his turn, Yi-jun clapped his hands like a seal and turned the spotlight to me.

I couldn’t just sit still.

Even if it didn’t meet my expectations, the eyes that saw were the eyes that saw.

Even a late-night home shopping with few viewers would become a laughingstock if it had a broadcasting accident.

“Thank you for hyping me up so much. Hello, this is Cheon Ise. I’m sorry for making you worry for a long time because of my health problem. I’m recovering well now and preparing to greet you with a better stage!”

Usually, this kind of thing is kept secret as confidential.

Sadly, Climax was not a subject of management that needed to hide their schedule.

I showed the cue sheet to the manager first and he said it would be nice if I could promote it like that.

My head was hardened by disappointment, but my tongue still moved fluently.

‘Pull yourself together, Lim Hyun-seong. You’ve been through worse things in your life.’

I smiled faintly and casually talked to Seon-woo.

“I’ve been into cooking lately, so I’ve been helping Seon-woo with his diet. It seems like his taste and mine match well, so I’m glad it’s helpful. But not only Seon-woo, it seems like I hit the taste of other people too, so I was very surprised.”

Seon-woo nodded his head as if to agree or respond. It was a loveliness that made the fans smile.

“Hyung’s cooking is really delicious. Today, we’re going to share the recipe with Rise fans, so please follow along carefully!”

Seon-woo’s bright smile brought positive chats up. I sneaked a peek at the number of viewers and it barely broke a thousand, but it was still a gloomy number.

‘Popular idols get up to 300,000 concurrent viewers…’

I didn’t expect that much, but… I was quite disappointed by the interest that soared thanks to Kang Yu-geon.

If he was going to promote us, he should have done it at a time like this. I complained inwardly about the guy I had never met face to face and skimmed through the chat again.

Then, I saw a sentence that shouldn’t have caught my eye.