Prince From Another Dimension Becomes An Idol [EN]: Chapter 64

#64.

The living room light was the only one on, casting the kitchen area into shadow, which amplified Louis’s surprise.

“What the…….”

Startled, Louis glanced around, his eyes widening further.

The object that had bounced off his head, slippery yet firm, was a balloon.

Colorful balloons were scattered across the floor.

Slowly, he raised his gaze to the ceiling, where more balloons were still attached.

Then he noticed the thin fishing line connected to the refrigerator door.

It seemed they’d rigged it so that opening the refrigerator would pull the line and release the balloons.

“…No way.”

The word ‘surprise’ flashed in his mind.

At that moment.

The door burst open, and the other members flooded in, creating a noisy commotion.

“Kim Louis!”

Louis turned sharply at Woochul’s call.

He saw Woochul holding a cake with lit candles.

The surrounding members began to sing to Louis, led by Heungmin.

“Happy graduation to you~ Happy graduation to…….”

But the song was cut short.

As they approached Louis, the candles on the cake flickered and died.

“Ah! The fire’s all gone!”

“That’s why I said we should light it while sitting down.”

“No, we should have sung later!”

Amidst the chaos, Kijun cleared his throat, silencing Woochul and Heungmin’s bickering.

The two, realizing their mistake, laughed awkwardly and tried to smooth things over.

“Anyway, happy graduation, Kim Louis, twenty years old! What is this? Sounds like a curse.”

“Let’s sit down, relight the candles, and sing again.”

Kijun, Dojae, and Gyuseong also congratulated Louis.

He himself had been too preoccupied to remember, but tomorrow was indeed his graduation.

Because he hadn’t been able to attend school regularly due to their activities, Louis didn’t attach much importance to the graduation ceremony.

But for the older members, it was quite significant that Louis, the youngest and only one who had been a minor, was graduating and becoming an adult.

Last year, they had all gone to Woochul’s graduation to celebrate, but this time, their recording schedule made it difficult for them all to attend together.

So they wanted to celebrate in this way, even if it was just a small gesture.

Dojae had suggested preparing a gift, and Woochul and Heungmin had proposed a small surprise party.

“Louis, were you really surprised?”

Gyuseong asked, watching Louis receive the congratulations with a blank expression.

Louis blinked rapidly instead of answering.

“Kim Louisss, you’re so toucheddd!”

Woochul playfully poked Louis in the side.

“Then… you didn’t actually go out for dinner……?”

“Of course not,” Kijun quickly replied to Louis’s dazed question.

They had expected him to be incredibly excited and make a fuss, but Louis’s reaction was a little different from what they had imagined.

Dojae placed a hand on Louis’s shoulder and asked, “Are you okay?”

Honestly, he had thought that when the balloons fell from the ceiling, Louis would be more surprised than scared.

But Louis had almost screamed, so he wondered if he was simply in shock.

When Dojae asked, Louis shook his head and frowned.

“Uh oh? Louis, you…….”

Woochul pointed at Louis’s face.

“What is it? What is it?”

Heungmin, who had been about to put the cake on the table and quickly relight the candles, was surprised and turned off the lights again.

Before he could even ask, ‘You’re not crying, are you?’, Louis made a choked sound and hugged the members.

“Hyung, thank you, hyungs. I thought you went out for dinner without me, and I was so sad…. I didn’t even know you’d celebrate like this!”

Louis exclaimed, hugging the members tightly.

Louis couldn’t hug all five of them at once, so Dojae, Gyuseong, and Woochul, who were closest to him, were trapped in the embrace, while Kijun and Heungmin only had their fingertips touching.

“I love you so much, hyungs. You’re the only ones I have!”

His voice was quite choked up, though he wasn’t actually crying.

Woochul, stuck in an uncomfortable position, burst out laughing.

“I knew he’d be this touched!”

Watching Louis, who was overcome with emotion, and Woochul, who was proud that his plan had succeeded, the remaining members chuckled.

“If he gets a present, is he going to faint?”

At Heungmin’s words, Louis released his arms and asked,

“Wow. There’s a present too?!”

Dojae responded by retrieving the gift he had been holding.

The gift that the members had pooled their money to buy was the Bluetooth earphones that Louis had been wanting.

“This! How did you get it?! I couldn’t even buy it because it was out of stock.”

“Dojae hyung [older brother/male friend]. He’s good at online ordering too.”

At Woochul’s explanation, Louis gave a thumbs up and thanked the members once again.

“Thank you, hyungs. Really! Thanks a lot!”

“Maknae [youngest member]. Happy graduation. And keep being bright like you are now…. Although, don’t be as bright as Woochul…….”

Woochul protested at Kijun’s words.

“Wow. That’s too much.”

“I’m just kidding. Keep getting along well with Woochul.”

Louis chuckled and nodded.

***

Soon, the jokbal [pig’s trotters], pizza, and chicken that had been ordered arrived on time.

They were on a diet, but they had gotten permission from their trainer for one day.

The star of the day, who was allowed to eat two of his favorite chicken drumsticks, was excited and mumbled as he tore into the chicken.

“I fell asleep and didn’t know anything.”

The reason it took over an hour to get from the practice room to the dorm wasn’t because of traffic.

It was because the members had asked Jung Gilju in advance to take a roundabout route.

“You fell asleep? Was practice that hard?”

Heungmin asked, placing three layers of jokbal on top of a lettuce leaf.

“Not really…….”

“Did something happen?”

Dojae asked rather sharply.

He sensed that Louis was subtly different from usual.

Of course, it was so subtle that even Dojae wasn’t sure.

Louis hesitated for a moment before shaking his head.

He was thinking about how the youngest member of D.Origin had made remarks that seemed to disregard the company and the team, which had annoyed him.

If he told his hyungs, they would get angry and understand the unfairness Louis had felt more than anyone else.

But he didn’t want to upset the hyungs who had taken time out of their busy schedules to buy him gifts and prepare a surprise party.

‘I didn’t plan to tell them from the beginning anyway.’

He had just thought that if he saw Dojae or the members, the bad feelings would dissipate, and it was just as he had expected.

No, he felt even better than he had anticipated.

Louis took a big bite of the remaining chicken drumstick and replied that nothing had happened.

“I was just a little bit tired.”

“It must be stressful to dance with people you don’t know,” Kijun said, as if understanding Louis’s words.

Then Woochul asked, “Are you acquainted with the youngest member of D.Origin?”

“Yes. We practiced together in New for a short time.”

“Is he okay?”

Heungmin asked cautiously.

Everyone knew that Chaehyun was not among the trainees who had harassed Dojae.

Heungmin was concerned that the young maknae and newly joined member might be being bullied in place of Dojae.

“Umm…….”

Louis couldn’t answer easily.

He definitely didn’t seem to be getting bullied.

Instead…….

“He’s not that nice.”

Louis chose his words carefully, and Heungmin replied, “Really?”

Louis had tried to soften his words, but the members already thought that anyone Louis, who generally liked people, spoke negatively about was a lost cause.

“What is it? Seriously. Birds of a feather.”

Heungmin clicked his tongue, and Dojae muttered quietly.

“It might be the site that’s the problem.”

“The site? What’s the site?”

When Louis asked, Dojae explained what ‘site’ meant.

“In terms of feng shui [traditional Chinese practice linking space to energy flow]…. You could say the energy of the land is bad. The land itself is fine, but it might not match the energy of certain people. Something like that.”

“Wow. I didn’t know there was such a thing. As expected of Dojae hyung. Then what about us? What’s the site like for the company and the dorm?”

“Ours is good. Geographically, it suits me well…. It should be good for all the other members too.”

Heungmin, who was listening, let out a hollow laugh.

“No way. Dojae, you even know about things like feng shui?”

“I know a little. It’s a long-standing record, so it’s often quite accurate…….”

“Is he really from the Joseon Dynasty [Korean kingdom from 1392-1897]?”

At Heungmin’s words, Dojae looked into the distance.

Not the Joseon Dynasty, but the Korean Empire’s imperial family.

“Exactly. We’re going to keep doing well. In the long term too. Right?”

Even at Louis’s somewhat out-of-the-blue words, Woochul nodded his head emphatically.

“Of course!”

Louis smiled brightly at Woochul’s clear answer.

***

The next day.

Originally, only Louis was planning to go to the graduation ceremony for a short time, but the members were not satisfied with this and were bustling around from the morning.

“Kijun hyung! Wake up quickly!”

Kijun, who had been working on a song until dawn, was jolted awake by Woochul’s loud voice.

It was impossible for all the members to attend the graduation ceremony due to the recording schedule, but it was possible to go to the front of the school gate before the ceremony started.

So the six of them stood on either side of Louis, who was wearing a yellow school uniform, and took pictures.

It was a group photo of the six members that would be placed on the living room display case along with the trophies and next to the photo taken at Woochul’s graduation ceremony.

***

After finishing the part-by-part recording of the B-side tracks, the members headed to the dance practice room with Louis, who had returned from the graduation ceremony.

Yangmal, the dance trainer and in charge of MOST’s choreography, and his dance team were already in the practice room.

“Come on in, come on in!”

Yangmal was in a much higher state of excitement than usual.

Today was the first day of practice since the title song choreography had been released.

Despite his initial worries, the choreography turned out even better than he had expected.

The members had mentioned that the difficulty was much higher than their previous songs and expressed their concerns, but Yangmal was looking forward to seeing how they would handle it.

Unlike before their debut, their expressiveness had definitely improved as they gained stage experience.

“Wow! It’s a real piano?!”

Woochul exclaimed in surprise, spotting the piano in the middle of the practice room.

When the planning team was solidifying the concept of this album, they had pondered how to express the frustrations of youth in a concise yet beautiful way.

That’s when the image of ‘a boy whose dream of becoming a pianist was thwarted’ was born.

Kijun had also drawn inspiration for the song from Dojae’s emotionally charged arrangement of , as well as from Dojae himself playing the piano.

Accordingly, the piano was scheduled to appear in the music video and on stage for the title song.

“You’ve all seen the choreography video, right? I’ll show it to you once in person now, and if you have any opinions before we start practicing, let me know.”

At Yangmal’s words, the members answered in unison, “Yes.”

Soon, the song began to play, and the dance team demonstrated the choreography.

“…….”

“…….”

In the practice room, the sound of the song and the rhythmic thud of footsteps echoed powerfully.

Even when they had seen it in the video, they had wondered, ‘What are we going to do with this choreography?’, and now, as expected, they were faced with many difficult moves.

Some of the choreography involved performing stunts around the piano.

Even though the tempo of the song was slow, the movements were continuous and relentless, as if trying to fill every gap.

Sweat soon beaded on the faces of the skilled dancers.

‘It goes well with the song…. Overall, it feels beautiful. It has artistry.’

Dojae thought as he watched the dancers’ performance.

He felt that the essence of the song was becoming clearer.

‘But…….’

He didn’t think it would work as it was.

It was an impression he had had since he first saw the video.