After the pre-recording for Dear Doll's theme song "Look" ended, the individual fan could only stare blankly at the empty stage, overwhelmed by an immense sense of exhaustion.
'…What did I just watch?'
On both sides, the Idol Makers—who had just erupted into cheers when the trainees appeared—wore the same stunned expressions.
As people began sharing their impressions of finally seeing the trainees in person, along with excited chatter about the unexpectedly moving "Look" performance they'd witnessed live, the words that pierced into the individual fan's ears were—
"Hey… what? Is Won Yuha out of his mind or something?"
"Was he always that handsome?"
All anyone was talking about was Won Yuha—the very person she had been watching moments ago.
"He looked like he was flying.... He was right next to Kang Hyunjin and Do Jihyuk but he didn't lose out to them at all...."
In today's "Look" stage, Won Yuha stood at the very front, right after Kang Hyunjin and Do Jihyuk. The individual fan hadn't thought much of it, but apparently that placement felt deeply meaningful to Yuha's fans.
"When I first saw him he was at the very end of the wing formation.... This lunatic… this absolute lunatic...."
In the language of fans, "lunatic" simply means "I love you so much I'm losing my mind," so as a fellow K-pop fan, she had no trouble realizing how strongly they had been moved.
Just as the individual fan suspected, Idol Makers—especially the streaming squad within Won Yuha's fandom—were caught in a whirlpool of shock and emotion.
Fans who had watched him since the first episode of Dear Doll, or even earlier, were instantly reminded of how far Yuha had come the moment they saw this performance.
Won Yuha's very first public appearance had been during the "Look" flash mob.
Back then, he had barely scraped into A-class and was placed at the very back of the wing formation made entirely of A-class trainees. Skill-wise, he had received little attention.
And so, once the broadcast began, people mocked him as a "fraud listing" from KRM Entertainment. Even after he rocketed from D-class to A-class, and the rumors slowly faded, many still insisted that he had only reached A-class because of his agency's power.
Later, as Won Yuha showed steady improvement in every performance, Idol Makers stopped nitpicking his skills—but even now, there were still those who believed "Won Yuha" ranked where he did only because of KRM's influence.
"No wait, Yuha… was he always that good? No, no, I know he's good but… was he always like that? Am I seeing him in person for the first time and getting blinded?"
But after today's stage, no one would be able to say such things again. Anyone could tell at a glance that Won Yuha had the skill and star quality to earn far more than just an A-grade.
So no—it wasn't that she was blinded. The individual fan swallowed the words she couldn't bring herself to say out loud and recalled the Yuha she had just seen.
—See me, the me that's yours.
See the new me.
See the me that you'll make!
Under the white, pouring lights, Won Yuha's face as he danced looked both the same and different from the pictures and videos she had seen.
She couldn't explain it. Only that his face held a type of beauty she had never once seen before—something that lingered in her vision like an afterimage.
And that wasn't all.
"…His vibe is insane...."
Some call it "aura"—that extra presence a person has. Separate from looks, yet essential for an entertainer. An overwhelming atmosphere that made it impossible to look away.
Yuha had it.
With a charming smile on his lips and dancing with confidence to the notoriously difficult choreography of "Look," Won Yuha naturally drew every gaze toward him.
So even Idol Makers whose "one pick" was a different trainee, and even the Asters who had come only to see Baek Ihyeon, couldn't help but look at Won Yuha at least once.
As for the individual fan… she simply couldn't look away at all.
"…Ha."
What terrified her the most was the suspicion that what they had just witnessed was not Yuha's limit for today.
The actual live stage hadn't even started yet.
Letting out a helpless laugh, the individual fan looked down at the slogan she held. Yuha's face was printed on it—its corners wrinkled from how hard she'd been clutching it. Smoothing them out, she thought:
'Birds of a feather really do flock together....'
After all, Baek Ihyeon was also an exceptionally rare beauty even among celebrities—someone with a strange, magnetic atmosphere and overwhelming performance ability that had drawn countless fans. The two of them matched each other in face, aura, and talent.
The fan imagined Baek Ihyeon and Won Yuha overlapping on stage… then tilted her head.
'…But no, they are different.'
The two didn't look as similar as she had thought.
Won Yuha's smiling face on stage was both like and unlike Baek Ihyeon's. If Ihyeon always looked relaxed, Yuha looked desperate—like he felt thirst every moment, like he was giving everything he had.
But that desperation wasn't pitiful.
It was the kind that pulled people in—not the kind that made someone look away out of pity, but the kind that made you want to watch just a little more.
'He looks like he'll die on stage.'
A trainee who seemed like his life and death would both end on the stage. The image she had of Won Yuha changed into that.
'Anyway, he's good. He'll become something no matter what.... But what time is it?'
Feeling as if her soul had been sucked out, the individual fan snapped back to reality at the rising commotion. Taking out her phone, she found that the live broadcast time was fast approaching.
She quickly scanned the surroundings again. She had one goal.
"…!"
There!
And finally, she found the person she had been looking for.
In the area seemingly reserved for the trainees' families sat Baek Ihyeon—perfectly put together as always.
***
"Hyung, be honest with me. KRM totally has some secret training program, don't they?"
"…Did you eat something weird today?"
"Or did you finally eat it? The wild ginseng I gave you last time!"
"That's still at home. If you're bringing it up, take it back later. Thank you, but it's too much."
After the monitoring for the pre-recorded "Look" opening—scheduled to air live—ended, I responded to Cheon Serim's barrage of questions while hurriedly taking off my jacket. The PD had given us an OK, so we needed to change quickly and move to the next location.
We were all in a rush, needing to fix the makeup that sweat had ruined during rehearsal for the main stage, but even then Serim wouldn't stop asking questions.
"No seriously, if it's neither, then what happened? Hyung, every time you come back from a break you're like a different person."
"It's all in your head."
"Unless I only feel like breaking through the heavens when I'm looking at you, that makes no sense. Also, hyung—when did you even practice 'Look'? You're completely different from the first shoot."
Well… that was because my dance stat had gone way up since then.
I couldn't bring myself to answer, so I silently slipped into the stage outfit that had been prepared. As I was doing so, Zixuan—already fully changed—suddenly spoke up.
"Hyung, you look insanely cool today! So handsome!"
"Yeah, Yuha looks really handsome today."
Do Jihyuk, who had been quietly watching Cheon Serim bombard me with questions, added that with a lazy grin hanging off his lips. Then, after staring at me with mock seriousness, he added playfully:
"Could it just be that your makeup turned out well today? No… your whole vibe is different. Yuha… you've been hiding your face this whole time, haven't you?"
Since when were faces something you could fold up and store away?
This kind of conversation had been going on since morning, so I was long past tired of it and didn't bother responding. Serim nudged my shoulder with a knowing look, snickering with clear amusement.
"What's this? You're not denying it? So you do have a secret method? Like spending all the EXP you earned from DearDoll on your stats and visuals?"
"Haha, like a game character? That's a fun thought. Well, we did all rack up some experience while filming DearDoll. If that were converted into stat points, I guess we would've grown quite a bit."
…And with absurdly sharp accuracy, too.
'These guys have supernatural instincts....'
They were joking, but the joke hit way too close to the truth, so I avoided them both and shifted the topic.
"Let's send out whoever's ready first. If there's time left, we said we'd run the choreography together again."
"Oh, right. Sounds good. Anyone done changing, let's go!"
I fastened my belt, and then joined my teammates—who had eagerly moved on to discussing the final run-through of our choreography—as we headed toward the waiting room.
Walking down the hallway with my teammates, who were still buzzing with excitement after finishing one stage, I quietly checked their reactions.
'Doesn't look like anyone thinks anything is… too strange.'
More specifically, their reactions to my current changed state.
—Yuha, you're kind of… hm, glowing today? Did you sleep well? You look great!
—Hyung! This is not the time to praise the competition, okay? We still have practice left, so come here! I mean—well—Eiden-hyung isn't wrong, but still… you really do look in good condition today. You must've gotten good sleep, right?
Since early dawn, when we gathered for the final, I'd been hearing comments like that from the trainees—my teammates first, then even Aiden Lee and Yoo Chanhui during "Look" rehearsal.
Everyone seemed to be sensing the same change.
Still, their words leaned more toward compliments than suspicion. Even Serim and Jihyuk weren't seriously doubting anything—they were just teasing.
Everyone could feel something was different, yet no one interpreted it as strange or unnatural. And that was because there was a specific reason.
"The system's intervention."
Just like with Kim Mingi's incident. Or with Cheon Serim before that.
Whenever things shifted too conveniently in my favor—so conveniently that the situation should have felt uncanny—the system erased that sense of wrongness entirely.
And thinking back on everything so far, that itself was strange.
'Everything is going too well for me.'
Things were flowing too conveniently, too smoothly.
The system had always given me "luck" through quests and rewards—but never for free.
'Whenever I gained something, I had to earn the achievement for it.'
I believed this was to maintain narrative coherence.
Any improvement I gained through the system—whether a rise in skill or chance to grow in fame—had always occurred within reasonable "plot logic."
I would practice visibly, grow tangibly, or encounter events that built toward a believable outcome. The system guided me through developments that caused no sense of "wait, that doesn't make sense."
But a few incidents broke that rule. Sometimes, for reasons unknown, the system ignored logic entirely and gave me overwhelming support.
And those moments always shared one condition.
"Whenever something I originally should have had appears before me, the system grows generous."
This time was the same.
My dramatic stat increase—without any buildup or reason—and the fact that no one found it strange…
That allowed me to realize, vaguely, the standard by which the system was helping me.
'The stats I gained today are the ones I originally had before the debuff.'
In other words, they weren't artificially inflated—they were the values the system had originally assigned me before regression. The talent I was "supposed to have."
It was the same with Kim Mingi. And with Serim.
The system had said then that I had reclaimed the "fate that originally belonged to me," meaning that my appearance on DearDoll itself might have been part of the original flow.
And for whatever reason, the past incident Serim suffered was likely something that should never have happened originally.
Seeing it that way, today's support made sense.
I had reached the final destination of the quest the system had set. I was being given support appropriate for reclaiming what had been taken.
And the purpose of that support was—
"The system is trying to correct what it considers 'twisted'—with me as the medium."
By giving me quests and guiding me through actions, it was adjusting my "fate"—which had been snatched away, distorted—back into the direction it believed was originally correct.
Now that I had reached the final performance of DearDoll, the system's purpose had finally become clear.
It wanted to restore the fate I had lost.
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