Holy Idol [EN]: Chapter 585

◈ 585. Interview

[Woo Yeon-woo: I’d rethink it if I were you]

[Shin Myung-chi: I’ll help, but. Do you really have to?]

The night I announced I would do the interview, I received texts from Woo Yeon-woo and Shin Jo-woon simultaneously.

Rembrary, like the cool high priest, sent a cheerful reply: ‘ㅅ>ㅅ’.

He noticed the typo afterward, but Rembrary, being the cool high priest, didn’t correct it as if it were intentional.

[Woo Yeon-woo: Why did your emoticon suddenly get a high nose?]

Woo Yeon-woo, uncool as ever, immediately started a fight, but Rembrary didn’t get involved.

He elegantly sipped his coffee, only thinking about how the interview would proceed.

‘Is it live? Recorded? It’s a talk show, so there won’t be a rehearsal, right? Will they give me a script? Can I bring someone with me?’

* * *

I was told the broadcast would be recorded and edited before airing. They didn’t send a script, but they did send a list of questions in advance.

They said if I wrote answers to the questions and marked the ones I was uncomfortable answering with an ‘X’, they would use that to write the script.

Rembrary sat at his desk, opened a notebook, and began writing answers to the questions.

There were three questions I was uncomfortable answering, but overall, they were fairly innocuous.

Most of them were related to dungeons, so as Rembrary, I just had to tell them what I had experienced.

“High Priest. Is it going well?”

“Ah, Moolu. I’m writing down the answers now.”

“Is there anything I can help you with?”

“No. It’s generally fine. There’s just one thing that bothers me….”

“What is it?”

“They’ll give the audience a chance to ask questions, but it says they’re not pre-selected, so we don’t know what questions will come out.”

“Will it be alright?”

“They said I don’t have to answer if the questions are too strange, and they’ll edit that part out, but I don’t know.”

Rembrary stared at the questionnaire again and suggested,

“Moolu, let’s go see Daeju.”

* * *

It was the day of the interview recording.

Rembrary received a very light makeup application from the makeup artist Shin Jo-woon sent, and Ardor was so moved that he filmed the scene.

Moolu and Nin-ling, curious as well, were also filming with cameras, which was unusual for them.

Having finished preparing, Rembrary got into the car Shin Jo-woon had sent to go to the broadcasting station.

The car was driven by one of Shin Jo-woon’s secretaries, whom I had met a few times.

“The president told me not to cry because he couldn’t come himself, Mr. Rembrary.”

“Tell him I’m sobbing.”

“Really?”

“No. Tell him I’m sobbing elegantly.”

“How do you sob like that?”

“Like this. Like this.”

Rembrary put one hand on his forehead, tilted his face at a 45-degree angle, and sighed. The secretary seemed to think a reaction was needed, so she applauded.

“That’s really elegant!”

Then, when we arrived at the entrance of the broadcasting station, PD [Production Director] Kim Won-bi, whom I had met during the preliminary meeting, was pacing around.

Rembrary didn’t think Kim Won-bi was waiting for him, but as soon as Kim Won-bi saw Rembrary, he shouted with a relieved expression.

“Here!”

‘Why is he so relieved?’ I wondered, and as I looked at him, Kim Won-bi smiled awkwardly and explained.

“I thought you might not come. President Shin told me that Mr. Rembrary’s schedule is so busy that it could change at any time.”

“Squid, I mean, Jo-woon did?”

“Yes. He said you might have to go to the dungeon right away if something urgent came up? Is that not the case?”

While they were talking, the two passed through a long corridor and entered a pre-prepared set.

Audience members were already entering the set’s seating area, and the staff were running around, checking things here and there and giving instructions to each other.

Kim Won-bi put a large mascot head on Rembrary, showed him the set once, and then personally guided Rembrary to the waiting room.

“I’m sorry. Was it stuffy? It’s a principle to keep the identity of the guest a secret. That way, the audience’s reactions are more realistic.”

Rembrary was more surprised that Kim Won-bi was guiding him to the waiting room than by the mascot head.

The main PD personally guiding me.

It was treatment I had never experienced when I was an idol in Woo Yeon-woo’s body.

But Kim Won-bi seemed very busy and left immediately afterward, and Rembrary had to be alone in the waiting room for a while.

How long had it been? Just as I was starting to get bored, the set screen began to appear on the small television screen in the waiting room.

It seemed they were starting the recording.

Rembrary was bored, so he focused on the screen.

At first, the host and three regular guests exchanged greetings and had small talk, and the audience members clapped at the staff’s signals or spontaneously.

After sitting blankly and watching that for about 30 minutes.

Just as I was getting sleepy from watching the screen, a staff member came to pick up Rembrary.

The staff member took Rembrary to the side of the stage, out of sight of the audience, and told him.

“Mr. Rembrary. Stand here, and when the MC [Master of Ceremonies] shouts, ‘We have a surprise guest!’ walk over and sit in the empty chair.”

“Over there?”

“Yes. As you know, the audience doesn’t know who the guest is right now, right? They might scream loudly when they see Mr. Rembrary, so don’t be too surprised.”

“It’s alright. I like that kind of thing.”

“Yes?”

Before Rembrary could tell them about his career, the main host clapped his hands and shouted on his own.

“Then today’s surprise guest! Mr. Rembrary, please come out!”

As soon as those words were finished, before Rembrary could even go out, there was a murmuring sound, and soon an enormous roar was heard.

Rembrary had only been going to dungeons and hadn’t done any broadcasting activities, so he hadn’t realized the words he had heard in passing, ‘He’s often on the news.’

When traveling outside, he mainly traveled by car, so he didn’t have many opportunities to meet people.

Even when he went to the mart before, there were people who recognized him, but they weren’t all that surprised.

But now, people were shouting and cheering as if their throats would burst.

It was clear that the story of Rembrary destroying the pillar had become widely known among the people.

“Waaaaa!”

As Rembrary walked onto the stage, the cheers grew even louder, surprisingly.

The audience members covered their mouths with both hands, patted each other on the shoulders, and shouted, ‘It’s Rembrary,’ ‘It’s really Rembrary.’

Rembrary sat in the chair the staff had told him to and skillfully waved to the people.

At the same time, he diligently gave the people a warm smile, and Guest 1 laughed and said,

“Wow. Something. It looks familiar.”

Guest 2 imitated Rembrary’s wave, and the FD [Floor Director] subtly shook his head, telling him not to.

Rembrary didn’t care and smiled, shining his sun-like smile here and there at the people.

He wanted to turn on his halo, but he didn’t because he was worried that his face wouldn’t be visible on camera because the lighting was already strong.

It wouldn’t look good if only his clothes appeared and his face disappeared.

Almost five minutes passed before the explosive cheers stopped.

After that, there were sporadic murmurs, but the atmosphere calmed down enough to continue recording.

When the people calmed down a bit, the host laughed and said to Rembrary.

“I thought people would be surprised when Mr. Rembrary came out, but I didn’t know it would be this much.”

Guest 3 put one hand near his collarbone and lamented.

“Ah, actually, I was really surprised to see you. I’m a huge fan of Mr. Rembrary. Really. I’m a real fan.”

When the host asked, “Really?” Guest 3 nodded quickly.

“Yes! I go to Mr. Rembrary’s SNS [Social Networking Service] at least ten times a day to check the photos he’s uploaded.”

Jong-woo would have cried if he had seen this. Rembrary thought to himself.

Of course, Jong-woo will never be able to see this scene….

‘Ah. Was he alive?’

While I was lost in old memories. The host then asked Rembrary a few light questions.

Why did he come here when he doesn’t appear on TV often, does he still go to dungeons often these days, why did his activities suddenly become less frequent when he used to appear on TV a bit, and so on.

Then the topic naturally shifted to the incident a few months ago when Rembrary disappeared.

“You’re famous for being close to Shin Jo-woon, but the two of you suddenly disappeared completely. Shin Jo-woon didn’t come to the company, and Rembrary didn’t come to the Redrin gathering… prayer… or anything.”

“That’s right.”

“There was talk that the two of you went on a trip together?”

“That’s right. It wasn’t just the two of us. I went on a trip with my friends.”

“Where did you go?”

At the host’s question, Guest 1 exclaimed excitedly as if telling a strange story.

“Mr. Rembrary was famous back then, too. Shin Jo-woon was famous from the start. But no one said they saw you!”

“Just. I went to a place where people live.”

“But why didn’t anyone see you? Did you go abroad?”

“Abroad was abroad.”

‘If you consider a country in another world as a foreign country, then it’s right.’

In that way, based on the prepared questions, the atmosphere flowed naturally as Rembrary answered the added questions and the guests reacted or asked more questions.

Shin Jo-woon, who had asked the staff to show him the screen in real-time in case of an emergency, was relieved only when Rembrary answered at a reasonably common-sense level.

After the light questions, questions about dungeons and pillars came up.

“Mr. Rembrary is the one who has entered the Devil’s Domain the most, actually. What’s the atmosphere like there?”

“I was fine. But others wouldn’t be.”

“Some people are settling in the Devil’s Domain and broadcasting, is the content of those broadcasts true?”

“I don’t know because I haven’t seen them.”

“Were there any difficulties or hardships when you destroyed the pillar?”

“I was fine. But others would have had a hard time.”

“Is it very difficult for non-awakened people to enter the Devil’s Domain?”

“There are dungeons that non-awakened people can pass if they use their heads well or act well.”

“Wow, really?”

“Only the dungeons I destroyed were like that.”

“Oh, then…?”

“It’s better not to go into the others because it’s hard for non-awakened people to pass.”

Most of them were quite serious questions, so Rembrary also answered seriously to the best of his ability.

All of this took quite a long time.

Perhaps because they intended to cut it out during editing, the host asked quite a few questions, and there were also many impromptu questions from the guests in between.

Eventually, the recording resumed after a break, and from then on, they received questions from some audience members as announced in advance.

The audience’s questions were also diverse, but they were not beyond what Rembrary could answer.

After a long time.

“Then I’ll take the last question now.”

The host asked with a slightly tired but bright smile.

As soon as the words were finished, several audience members raised their hands.

Although several people had already asked questions, people still seemed to have many questions they wanted to ask.

The host looked around at the people, saying, “Um….”

But after about 10 seconds. The host unexpectedly said to Rembrary.

“This time, would you like to choose, Mr. Rembrary? It’s the last question?”

At those words, Rembrary pointed to the person who had been quietly raising his hand in the very back row.

He hadn’t waited ostentatiously for his turn, but he was the person who had been raising his hand to ask a question from the beginning to the end.