Holy Idol [EN]: Chapter 1

1. Causing a Broadcasting Accident

The second most horrifying broadcasting accident in South Korean history had just occurred.

People buzzed with conversation, staring at the stage.

The PD [Production Director, the head of the show] gnashed his teeth, waving his hands frantically, eventually losing his temper and making a cutting motion across his throat.

It was a signal to get it right immediately or face being fired.

The manager clutched his hair with both hands, letting out a silent scream.

The idol on stage should have been dancing energetically, squeezing out every last drop of sweat to show their effort.

The idol who had to force out cringeworthy aegyo [acting cute] like, “Did you have a weird dream today?” to make a living!

The idol who had to tear into chicken with a happy smile, even if they hated it!

Was just standing there blankly on the live broadcast stage.

Not even managing a broadcast-ready smile.

Not pretending to have a leg ache, nor feigning a languid sway.

Just standing there, literally.

Broadcasting staff, fans, colleagues, and viewers alike were astonished.

There were idols who felt jaded with their broadcasting life and half-assed their performances.

But at least they still moved sluggishly.

But this idol was just standing blankly on stage, so they couldn’t help but be horrified.

Even though he was the very cause of this panic, the idol’s expression was endlessly serene.

As if he couldn’t even hear the ear-splitting music.

If you were to photoshop just his figure out, he might even look like a saint at first glance.

And in reality, this idol was a saint, or more precisely, a high priest.

A high priest who had suddenly become an idol.

* * *

Nine hours before the incident.

The person who would detonate a massive bomb in Korean broadcasting history was screaming while looking in the mirror.

“Who, who is this! What is this!”

He was in a cramped 12-pyeong [approximately 400 square feet] dorm, and the other members were using their feet to peel off their tracksuits while quickly brushing their teeth.

One might expect people to be surprised by someone screaming strangely.

The members glanced at him and just spat out harsh words like:

“He’s at it again.”

“Ugh, not funny.”

“Stop looking in the mirror, you crazy bastard.”

They were an idol group that hadn’t managed to rise to fame for so long that their nickname was ‘Submarine,’ and their relationship had become very brittle after a long period of obscurity and ridicule.

They had to show results somehow before their contract period ended, but he was looking in the mirror and doing weird things, so it was understandable that they were annoyed.

Besides, ‘he’ who was screaming often did strange things.

Because of that, even while riding in the car to the salon, getting his hair done and makeup applied at the salon, and arriving at the broadcasting station’s waiting room, everyone paid no attention to ‘him.’

It was the same even when ‘he’ repeatedly asked, ‘Who are you people?’ ‘Where is this place?’ ‘What on earth is going on?’

But if they had paid a little more attention to ‘him,’ they would have noticed that his complexion was very pale and his hands were trembling.

That he was genuinely very surprised, and that he was constantly looking around.

“What’s wrong?”

The first person to think he was strange was the stylist who came in to check the costumes 40 minutes before the rehearsal.

“Is he sick or something?”

The stylist asked hesitantly, seeing that ‘his’ complexion was bad.

However, most of the members were not there, busy greeting people here and there in the waiting room hallway.

The only member in the waiting room with him was on bad terms with ‘him.’

“Leave him alone. He’s always like that.”

He scoffed at ‘him’ who was shaking his knees, and turned his head.

“Are you okay? Did you get indigestion?”

When the stylist asked again, ‘he’ looked up at the stylist with trembling pupils and asked the same question he had asked dozens of times.

“Where is this place?”

The stylist chuckled and replied,

“Where else would it be? It’s the waiting room.”

“Who am I?”

‘He’ asked repeatedly, and the stylist replied hesitantly.

“You’re Woo Yeon-woo. An idol.”

The member next to him added cynically,

“A nuclear submarine idol.”

But ‘he’ didn’t understand the member’s talk about submarines or the word ‘idol.’

‘He,’ whom the stylist called ‘Woo Yeon-woo,’ clenched his fist and stared at the wall with trembling pupils.

He had no choice but to do so.

‘He’ was not Woo Yeon-woo.

‘He’ was not a member of the unknown idol group ‘Wild Animal,’ ridiculed as a submarine, nor was he a carefree young man who always did strange things.

‘He’ was Rembrary, the high priest who was considered to have the greatest divine power in history.

* * *

‘How on earth did this happen?’

Rembrary clasped his hands tightly, thinking blankly.

Rembrary, who was called a living miracle and performed all sorts of miracles, found it hard to accept this situation.

In the blink of an eye, he had become a completely different person.

A young man whose age seemed roughly similar to his, but otherwise, his hair color, eye color, and even his features were completely different.

The surroundings were completely different from the world he lived in, and the people’s clothes were also different.

People acted like they knew him and called him ‘Woo Yeon-woo Idol.’

Even when he said he wasn’t that person, they wouldn’t listen and dragged him into a strangely shaped building.

It was hard to understand what on earth was going on.

‘Did I enter someone else’s body?’

Rembrary accepted part of the current situation in a room full of mirrors.

He also re-examined the divine power he had repeatedly checked hundreds of times in the strangely shaped carriage.

Fortunately, his divine power was still full.

After making a wound on his hand and healing it with divine power, the slightly depleted divine power quickly filled up again.

Unlike the change in the shell of his body, his abilities remained the same.

But why this situation happened…

He recalled the last thing he had experienced.

Someone had succeeded in summoning the Demon King, and a black shadow covered the sky.

A hemispherical transparent barrier appeared over the city, and the black shadow covered that barrier.

The sun was obscured, and the city darkened.

People screamed, and bizarre monsters began to spring up from the darkened earth.

Rembrary was the only one who could handle this situation.

He chanted a spell to resolve the situation, even if it cost him his life…

Yes. He seemed to have heard a chilling laugh at the end.

“I can’t let you do that.”

He seemed to have heard these words too.

And then he blinked, and he was in this situation.

‘Was I tricked?’

Rembrary clenched his fist, thinking with a dark expression.

Or perhaps someone who summoned the Demon King had sent him somewhere else.

To the farthest place possible, wherever that might be.

‘Damn it.’

Rembrary gritted his teeth and clenched his fist.

He became anxious, guessing how the situation might have changed after he left.

However, Rembrary couldn’t indulge in sorrow to his heart’s content.

“Wild Animal! Wild Animal! Come out!”

Someone shouted with an annoyed voice, banging on the door, and the young man sitting on the sofa in front, fiddling with a strange black object, jumped up and grabbed Rembrary’s collar.

“Let’s go. It’s our turn.”

“Wait a moment-”

“Quickly.”

Rembrary waved his hands, but the young man just dragged him, whether Rembrary lost his balance or not.

When he went out into the hallway, he saw the other young men who had been trapped in the narrow carriage together jumping around.

“Hurry, hurry!”

“Come on!”

“He’s dragging his feet!”

There was a brief commotion.

When he came to his senses, Rembrary was standing on a strangely shaped, huge stage.

The young men who had pushed him onto the stage stood in formation, and then an incredibly loud song rang out.

‘What is this?’

Rembrary stood there blankly, watching the young men suddenly dancing.

As he watched the young men busily dancing here and there, a person wearing strange, pitch-black glasses that covered his eyes pointed at Rembrary and shouted.

“What are you doing?! Can’t you do it right?!”

Then the young men on stage began to pull the blankly standing Rembrary this way and that.

And when the music ended, the young men took Rembrary back to the waiting room again.

When Rembrary came to the waiting room, the bespectacled young man who had brought the young men in the carriage, but had not gone up on stage with them, got angry.

“Woo Yeon-woo, can’t you do it right? You haven’t even made it yet, and you’re already acting like a star? I told you that rehearsals are as important as the main stage! I told you to run around until your feet catch fire to find even one more pretty angle, didn’t I?!”

Among the bespectacled young man’s words, Rembrary could only understand the sentences excluding the vocabulary.

“Star disease… Have I caught a disease?”

“Look at this bastard, doing another weird concept.”

The bespectacled young man tapped Rembrary’s shoulder lightly, looking annoyed.

“Don’t, don’t! Why is the visual member [the most attractive member] doing weird things?! Just stand still and smile! That’s the best thing for you!”

“Visual member?”

Rembrary asked in confusion, but no one explained anything about it.

Then, when Rembrary just stood there blankly, the bespectacled young man frowned and asked.

“What’s wrong? Are you really sick somewhere?”

Rembrary nodded, and a young man with yellow hair chimed in.

“Come to think of it, he fell in the bathroom this morning and hit his head.”

“Really?”

The bespectacled young man asked in surprise.

Although there was nothing wrong with him, Rembrary nodded for now.

The bespectacled young man made a sound of

“Aigo [an expression of frustration].”

and covered his head with both hands.

“In the midst of all this, really…”

Then he looked at Rembrary annoyedly, and suddenly went out the door.

He didn’t come back right away.

Even after a person with a whistle appeared later and said,

“Wild Animal! Stand by!”

he didn’t come.

When he left the waiting room and went to a dark place while waiting, the bespectacled young man finally came back in a hurry and warned Rembrary in a stern tone.

“I asked them to put a chair on the stage. When you go up, just greet them and sit there. Just move your lips while sitting. Got it? Don’t just stand there blankly saying you’re sick.”

“I understand.”

“That way of speaking is strange, I tell you?”

The bespectacled young man got annoyed, then gathered the young men who had come in the same carriage and made them put their arms around each other’s shoulders, and urged them.

“Listen carefully. This might really be your last album. Got it? You have to achieve something this time to have a next album. We can’t just keep hearing the submarine sound forever, can we? We’ve made a place with difficulty, so make sure to make a definite impression on the public.”

As soon as they released their shoulders, a person with a long string around his neck came and

“This way.”

he urged.

Someone put something strange in Rembrary’s ear and stuck something sticky on his cheek.

Rembrary waved his hands, saying that he was very sick, that his head hurt, that he had something he had to say now, that he looked like Woo Yeon-woo but wasn’t Woo Yeon-woo, but he was grabbed by the other young men and chased onto the stage again.

The stage was empty, wide, and quiet.

There were many people in front of the stage, but they somehow looked awkward.

Rembrary blankly looked around.

‘A chair!’

Remembering that he was told to sit in a chair, he quickly looked around, but the chair that the bespectacled young man had told him about was not here.

“Just dance roughly!”

The young man standing right next to him, sticking uncomfortably close, whispered softly.

“I don’t know how to dance!”

The moment Rembrary shouted, the same music as before came out, and the young men on stage simultaneously stretched out their hands and took strange poses.