Chapter 100

Chapter 100

The boss was gone when I woke up several mornings later.

Is this a dream? It wasn’t. The director, who’d been squabbling with the fans for the past few days, had disappeared entirely. He hadn’t been fired, of course, he’d simply been moved back to his original post.

As it turned out, his plan had already been to jump ship with this new successful venture under his belt. Based on the rumors the staff told me, he’d only been planning to stay for a year before leaving. What with the recent conflict between him and the fans, he’d seen his chance, spoken to the higher-ups, and bailed out.

Naturally, the collaboration between TeSTAR and the mobile game, which now formed a part of the director’s career portfolio, was still in the works. He’d already arranged all the contracts and everything.

F*ck. It wasn’t like we could ask the fans for more help. They were pleased with this result and had no idea the problem hadn’t actually gone away.

I made my peace with reality and got ready to head out of the dorm. Today was Friday, the day of the meeting.

***

“Hey! I’m a really big fan!”

“Hello!”

“Hi!”

The two people who arrived for the collaboration meeting were a surprisingly chill pair—a woman and a man. I felt a little bad, in fact, since I’d expected them to look like swindlers. Worse still, they seemed to find the idea of a collaboration rather bizarre as well and looked a little dazed by the whole thing.

“Uh... shall we explain our game to you first?”

“Y-yes!”

“Sure thing.”

“All right, then...”

The explanation that followed was... unique and interesting. This was also a surprise to me. Hmm. Not bad.

“...and so, the mysterious material from the meteor brings Seoul to ruin and the protagonist’s exploration of the city is the main storyline. The protagonist meets various factions in Seoul and depending on his choices, he’ll end up with different companions and abilities in this rogue adventure game.”

“That sounds like a lot of fun!” Raebin said, clapping his hands together with excitement.

“Oh. Thank you.”

Hold on... so that means he thinks we can actually make this work. Was it possible that the garbage the director had dumped on us might turn out to be useful after all? Better still, the employees responsible for working with us were pretty friendly. They were displaying more than just surface-level amiability—they had the sort of willingness to work together that could make a project successful.

“To be honest with you... This collaboration was rather sudden for us as well. We didn’t have much time to do our research, but what little we were able to see told us that your song, Magical Boys, was very impressive.”

“Oh. Thank you. We’d love to take a look at the game as well. It sounds really interesting.”

“Oh, in that case... Would you like to try playing it?”

“Huh?”

“We’re still working out the bugs, but it’s playable! You should have no trouble progressing through the story.”

The person on the left produced a large smartphone. He tapped the screen a few times, starting up the game, and handed it to Chungwoo.

“Oh...”

“Me! I play games!”

After taking the phone awkwardly, Chungwoo seemed to consider Eugene’s urgent demands. He seemed to come to the conclusion that whoever enjoyed gaming most and was better at it should get a chance to play, so he handed it over.

“Be careful.”

“Yeah! Okay!”

Eugene quickly took the phone and started to play, eyes shining. The other members crowded around, staring at the screen curiously.

Everyone looks pretty excited by what they’re seeing. Conscious of the pair who were watching us with equal parts excitement and anxiety, I also watched closely.

Given both the versatility and limitations of the mobile platform, it seemed they’d decided it would be too difficult to go all in and animate everything. The game alternated between text, graphics, and illustrations.

It was very smoothly done, however, and had a compelling charm—not to mention it was fun. The way the player was able to clear chapters by gathering companions was pretty engaging.

This... might really work. The level of quality in their work made it obvious why exactly T1 had bothered to buy the studio.

But where are they going to promote an idol group among all this? The thought brought all my frustration rushing back. In any case, Eugene blitzed through the first chapter and shouted excitedly,

“This is so good!”

“Wow!”

“Thank you.”

The pair took the phone back from Eugene, who seemed reluctant to part with it. They grinned at us.

“How’d you like it? Do you have any ideas on how we could incorporate a collaborative element?”

“Hmm...”

“I think we’ll have to think about that a little.”

“We assumed as much. We’ll also give it some thought.”

None of us were disappointed by this since we’d known to expect it. Regardless, it was amazing news that the game actually seemed good.

“Thank you!”

“See you next time!”

The first meeting ended on a sort of ambiguous note, with each side agreeing to think about things some more. Our prospects mustn’t have looked too bad, however, since none of the members seemed to despair.

“I thought we could make a background track and use a version of it as our title track,” Raebin suggested.

“That would count as an ad, right? I don’t think tracks like that are allowed on public network music shows,” replied Lee Sejin.

“Oof!”

Raebin fell silent, deep in thought. As for me, I was a bit relieved.

At least our brand won’t be totally trashed by all this. We might be criticized for pushing the envelope too much and our performance might suffer for having to force the concept to match, but things wouldn’t be so bad that our careers would be permanently damaged.

Now the problem is how exactly we’re going to pull off this collaboration. Discussion about this kicked off as soon as we returned to our dorm.

Chungwoo first filled us in on what the agency staff had suggested. “Their current idea is that we create a few tracks that can be used as background music in the game and incorporate them into our album, so the game will play some of our music.”

“Hmm, that seems safe.”

Since the director wasn’t around to meddle, the agency wanted a shallow collaboration that didn’t involve as much risk. The overworked office staff at the agency want to play things safe, I guess.

But unexpectedly, Big Sejin laughed and shook his head. “Oh, come on. That would put most of the burden on us.”

“Huh?”

“It’s all music-related collaboration! That means we and the A&R Team will be doing most of the work... I think we should gain something from this, too!”

I see. So you think we can seek profit, not just work to avoid a disaster? Undoubtedly, going along with their plan would mean more work for us, while the game studio would benefit from the arrangement with very little work on their end.

The game would enjoy free promotion, but TeSTAR had nothing to gain from joining hands with a game that hadn’t even been released yet. And it’s unlikely any gamers will become our fans just because of a few tracks in the game.

“Do you have a different opinion then?”

“Well, I don’t have anything yet, but we should consider our options. If we’re going to do the work anyway, it will be more motivation for us to do well if we’re going to be rewarded for our efforts, don’t you think?”

“Hmm...”

As we all fell into thought, Lee Sejin groaned and said, “Let’s just leave this for the agency to handle. We’ll be busy enough as it is preparing for our album. It isn’t right that they’re asking us to plan out the collaboration.”

“But that would mean more work for us—”

“That’s for the A&R Team to worry about. We’ll tell them we’re here to record music, and nothing else,” Lee Sejin said curtly. “This situation is ridiculous. We’re rookies. We shouldn’t be having to make decisions about this sort of thing. I mean, the agency’s got plenty of money, right?”

Honestly, he was so on point that I wished I could just agree with him. Lee Sejin stood panting following his rare and lengthy rant. I could tell this had been on his mind for a while.

Eugene interjected cheerfully, “But I want to do something else! Just doing the background music is no fun.”

Lee Sejin screwed his eyes shut.

Uh oh. At least he wasn’t running away, which was a marked improvement in his conflict management.

“Why don’t we have a vote, then? Raise your hand if you want to come up with a new collaboration idea!”

Shockingly, everyone raised their hands except for me and Lee Sejin.

Are you serious, guys? I was certain all of them were in it for the challenge or looking to make something fantastic or whatever, except for Big Sejin, who wanted a more concrete return for our work.

Big Sejin pretended to be taken aback. “No way. Moondae, you don’t want in?”

“I need some time to think. If we can come up with a good idea, we should pursue it. Otherwise, let’s just go down the background track route.”

“Sure. That sounds good for now,” Chungwoo agreed, before directing the conversation to another topic.

“Now then, what do we stand to gain from doing a collab with a game?”

“Uh... We can... appear in the game?” Ahyeon suggested, unsure.

“Money? No... of course not. The contract’s already been finalized.”

“Yes. We won’t get either of those things from this arrangement. It’s about to be released. There’s no way they can add us into the game at this point.”

This was correct. Even if there was enough time to do so, they wouldn’t want to add random idol characters into a universe they’d obviously poured a lot of love into.

Wait a second. Maybe we can think of this the other way around.

“How about this?”

“Huh?”

“Instead of asking them to put us in the game, we take on the roles of the characters.” I pointed at my smartphone. “We can pick out the characters that resemble us most and then use that as the concept for our B-side track. It won’t be the title track on the album, so it won’t matter if we can’t perform it on public television. There are plenty of other channels, as well as WeTube, that we can still appear on.”

In other words, I was suggesting that we incorporate the fairly solid IP from the game into our universe.

***

“Uh... you want a list of the companions in the game?”

“Yes.”

“Uh...”

We were in a meeting with the staff from the game studio again, and they looked surprised by this unexpected request.

They exchanged glances and explained reluctantly, “Uh... We do have a character drawing system, mainly for monetization purposes.”

“Right.”

“But they’re completely random.”

This meant the characters weren’t fleshed-out people, but all randomly generated.

“But you showed us illustrations of them.”

“Well, those are just renderings... In any case, they are also random!”

I hadn’t been expecting this roadblock.

Raebin raised his hand. “Then what about the companions Eugene chose last time? They aren’t fixed characters and their names change for every new file save?”

“Oh, them... Actually, they die at the start of the next chapter. The protagonist is supposed to explore Seoul alone, so... Haha.”

The pair laughed awkwardly, explaining that those characters were the only ones with fixed names.

“I don’t want them to die...” Eugene pouted, visibly put out. He seemed to have grown attached to them already.

Then I realized something.

Huh? That means we can just use them, right? I looked around, and everyone but Eugene seemed to have had the same idea.

There were seven of them, conveniently enough. Because the game involved forming four-person parties, the tutorial included eight characters, including the protagonist.

Chungwoo said cautiously, “Would you mind if we used these characters?

“Huh? What?”

“Well, you see... We thought we could assume their personas and create a song.”

They might not like the idea. If the news of the collaboration had been sudden for them too, they might not want the project to be so involved. Maybe we should just discuss recording the background music with them...

“No way!”

“...?”

“I love that idea!”

“...!”

“We’d love to try that, as long as we have the time and the budget!” exclaimed the woman.

The man balled his fists and shouted with obvious excitement, “Our characters will get to exist in 3D!”

I was relieved that they seemed on board with the idea. Surprisingly, the collaboration seemed to be going well.