In the 97th life of Lee Kang-joon, he had allowed himself a momentary lapse in data management.
He had allowed the "Group Harmony" metric to lull him into a sense of security.
And as the Top 18 stood in the "Blue Room" of Starline Entertainment three days later, the warmth of the East Sea had been replaced by the cold, sterile smell of floor wax and impending loss.
The atmosphere was suffocating. The staff were no longer smiling. The PDs moved with a frantic, sharp energy. The "Consortium" might have retreated from the acquisition, but they had left behind a directive that was far more lethal: The group must be pruned. Only the absolute elite may survive the transition to the independent label.
PD Na Ye-eun stood at the podium, her eyes shadowed. She didn't look like the woman who had laughed at Kang-joon's "Vampire Physics" a week ago.
"The next mission," she began, her voice echoing off the padded walls, "is the Identity Evaluation. You will be split into two teams of nine. One team will represent 'The Future'—a concept of high-tech, electronic perfection. The other will represent 'The Past'—a concept of raw, unplugged emotional storytelling."
She paused, and the screen behind her flickered.
"At the end of this evaluation, we will perform the First Final Cut. The bottom five ranks will be eliminated immediately. No saves. No wildcards."
A collective shiver ran through the line of eighteen boys. Five. Nearly a third of the room was about to be erased.
Kang-joon's internal processor immediately began sorting the names. He didn't need to see the rosters; he could feel the narrative being woven.
Min-soo, Gun-woo, and Jae-hyun—the "Commercial Powerhouses"—were placed in Team Future. They were the shiny, profitable assets.
Kang-joon looked at his own roster for Team Past. It was a graveyard of "unmarketable" stories. He had Yoon-ho, the 24-year-old seven-year trainee. He had Ji-won, the "Anchor" whose age was considered a liability. He had Do-yoon, whose health was still a concern for the producers.
Kang-joon was the de facto leader of the "Leftovers."
[System Warning: Host's 'Empathy' Metric is dangerously low. Group Stability is deteriorating. The 'Humanity' variable is reaching critical levels.]
Kang-joon ignored the blue window. He felt the cold pressure of the 97 lives pressing against his skull. He knew what happened to trainees like Yoon-ho. In Loop #14, Yoon-ho had become a delivery driver after being cut, eventually fading into obscurity. In Loop #52, he had stayed in the industry as a low-level manager, bitter and broken.
The rehearsal room for Team Past was a pressure cooker. The song was an acoustic, vocal-heavy ballad that required absolute, soul-baring synchronization.
"Again," Kang-joon said.
It was 3:42 AM. The fluorescent lights hummed, vibrating in time with the headache blooming behind Kang-joon's eyes.
"Yoon-ho-ssi, your pitch on the second bar of the bridge is flat by exactly 3.4 hertz. You are sliding into the note from below rather than hitting the center of the frequency."
Yoon-ho, whose eyes were so bloodshot they looked bruised, leaned over his knees. His chest was heaving. "Kang-joon-ah... we've done this section forty-two times."
"And you've missed the center thirty-eight times," Kang-joon replied, his voice devoid of warmth. He wasn't being mean—in his mind, he was being a surgeon. You don't comfort a patient while you're removing a tumor; you focus on the incision. "If you miss that note during the live broadcast, the judges will mark it as a technical failure. Your 'Past' narrative will be viewed as 'Dated' rather than 'Classic.' You will be in the bottom five."
"I know that!" Yoon-ho suddenly snapped, standing up. His voice cracked, not from the song, but from raw, jagged emotion. "Do you think I don't know that? My parents are losing their shop, Kang-joon. This is the last month of their lease. If I don't debut, I have to go back and help them declare bankruptcy. I haven't slept more than ten hours this week because every time I close my eyes, I see the 'Eliminated' screen."
The other trainees—Ji-won, Do-yoon, Hyun-woo—all froze. They looked at the floor, the walls, anywhere but at the two men in the center of the room.
Kang-joon didn't blink. He looked at Yoon-ho and saw a set of failing metrics.
"Emotional outbursts consume 15% more oxygen and strain the vocal folds," Kang-joon said. "If you are worried about your parents, the most logical action is to hit the 440Hz 'A' note. Tears do not pay leases. Perfection does."
The silence that followed was heavy, wet, and suffocating.
Yoon-ho looked at Kang-joon with a mixture of horror and pity. "You're not a person, are you? You're just a machine that happened to learn how to dance."
"I am the reason this team won the 'Ethereal' challenge," Kang-joon said. "I am the reason the Consortium left. I am the variable that ensures your survival. Now, from the bridge. One more time."
Yoon-ho didn't pick up his microphone.
"Treat me like a human..."
He turned and walked out of the room, the door slamming with a bang that echoed like a gunshot.
[System Penalty Initiated: 'The Cold Strategist' debuff applied.]
[Reason: Severe alienation of core team assets. Failure to maintain 'Leader's Charisma'.]
[Penalty: 20% Reduction in Cognitive Processing Speed. Physical Synchronization Error activated.]
The Descent
Kang-joon felt it immediately.
It started as a dull fog in the back of his mind. Usually, he could visualize the entire three-dimensional map of the choreography—every limb, every degree of rotation. Now, the map was flickering.
"Hyung?" Jae-hyun's voice came from the doorway. He had been watching from the hall. He walked in, his face etched with a worry that Kang-joon hadn't seen since the very first loop. "You... you were a bit harsh, don't you think?"
"Harsh is a subjective term," Kang-joon said, but his tongue felt heavy. He tried to stand up to find Yoon-ho, but his equilibrium shifted.
The floor, which should have been a flat plane of known friction, suddenly felt like the deck of a ship. Kang-joon took a step, his brain sending the signal for a standard pivot.
His foot didn't follow.
He stumbled, his knee hitting the hardwood with a dull thud.
"Kang-joon-ah!" Jae-hyun rushed forward, catching him by the shoulder.
Kang-joon stared at his own hand. It was shaking. Why is it shaking? I've mastered my nervous system. I've lived ninety-seven times. I don't shake.
"I'm fine," Kang-joon whispered, but the words felt like they were being spoken by someone else. "Just a temporary glucose deficit. Jae-hyun-ssi, find Yoon-ho. Tell him that if he doesn't return in ten minutes, the rehearsal schedule will collapse."
Jae-hyun didn't move. He looked at Kang-joon, and for the first time, the "Puppy" looked like he was seeing a stranger. "He's crying in the bathroom, Hyung. He's not coming back for a 'schedule.' He needs a friend. But I don't think you know how to be one anymore."
Jae-hyun turned and left.
Kang-joon was alone in the Blue Room. He looked at the mirror. The "Professor" was gone. In the reflection, he saw a pale, trembling young man whose eyes were wide with a growing, irrational terror.
He tried to hum the melody of the ballad.
He couldn't remember the first line.
He, the man who had memorized entire symphonies in a single sitting, could not remember the opening lyrics of a song he had rehearsed for six hours.
[System Notification: Host's Rank is currently being audited by the 'Global Interest' algorithm.]
[Projected Rank: #12.]
The Audit
The interim evaluation was a disaster.
PD Na and the vocal coaches sat behind a long table, their expressions unreadable. Team Past stood in a line, minus Yoon-ho, who had returned but refused to look at Kang-joon.
"Begin," PD Na said.
The piano started. It was a simple, haunting melody.
Kang-joon stepped forward for his solo. This was his moment to stabilize the team. He opened his mouth to deliver the perfect, resonant note that would anchor the performance.
Instead, a thin, wavering sound came out.
He missed the key. He didn't just miss it; he was a semitone off—the "amateur's mistake."
The judges' eyebrows shot up. The other trainees glanced at him in shock. Kang-joon felt a cold sweat break out across his back. He tried to recover, but the "Cognitive Overload" debuff was like a physical weight on his tongue.
When the dance break began—a slow, contemporary piece—Kang-joon was half a beat behind. He, the metronome of the group, was dragging the tempo. He collided with Ji-won during a cross-over, nearly sending both of them to the floor.
The music stopped. PD Na didn't say anything for a long time.
"Kang-joon-ssi," she finally said, her voice quiet. "Are you ill?"
"No, PD-nim," Kang-joon said, his voice trembling. "I... I made an error in calculation."
"This isn't an error," the vocal coach snapped. "This is a collapse. You were the one we were worried about being 'too perfect.' Now, you're just... messy. If you perform like this on the live stage, you won't just be in the bottom five. You'll be the reason your entire team is eliminated."
Kang-joon looked at Yoon-ho. The seven-year trainee was looking at him, but there was no triumph in his eyes. There was only heartbreak. Yoon-ho had looked up to Kang-joon as a god who could save them. Now, he was watching his god bleed.
That night, Kang-joon didn't sleep. He sat in the darkened practice room, staring at his hands.
The System had played a cruel trick. By giving him the tools of perfection, it had stripped away the one thing that made an idol worth watching: the struggle. And now that he was struggling, he didn't know how to do it "artistically." He was just a man failing.
He realized he had treated Yoon-ho's trauma like a data point. He had seen the bankruptcy of a family as a "motivation factor" rather than a tragedy.
He reached into his pocket and pulled out the small origami crane he had kept from the beach trip. It was crushed, its wings bent.
...I am treating people like assets.
[System Notification: Humanity Metric is at 4%. Host is approaching 'Total Emotional Desensitization'.]
[Warning: If Humanity reaches 0%, the 97th Loop will be terminated as 'Failed Narrative'.]
Kang-joon stood up, his legs still shaky. He didn't go to the computer. He didn't check the charts. He walked out of the practice room and toward the dorms.
He stopped at Yoon-ho's door. He hovered his hand over the wood, hesitating for the first time in centuries.
He didn't have a plan or even a script. He didn't have a calculation for how to fix a broken heart.
He knocked.
"Yoon-ho-ssi?" he whispered.
There was no answer. Only the sound of muffled, exhausted breathing from the other side.
Kang-joon sat down against the door, sliding to the floor.
"I don't know the first line of the song anymore," he said to the wood. "I've lived... I've seen so many things. But I forgot how to remember a song about love."
Inside the room, the breathing stopped.
"I thought if I was perfect, I could save you," Kang-joon continued, his voice cracking. "But I think I just made you lonely. I'm sorry.
I'm so, so sorry..."