Chapter 211

Chapter 211

The smartphone ad didn’t include both groups. If it had, I’d have known to expect them ahead of time. We were filming a few scenes together, though.

“So… Please come in together on this cue and show us what’s in your hand!”

“Right.”

“Be sure to raise the tablet with one hand, too! Make it seem light!”

“Okay!”

The other group was doing an ad for a tablet PC that was the same brand as the phone. They apparently wanted a short appearance from both groups for a bit of extra oomph. Because we were more popular and senior, Miry-nay had waited around for us to begin filming, coming out on set again so we could film together.

Even so, management didn’t even tell us they were going to be here. That’s taking it too far. I wasn’t sure if the first manager had forgotten to relay the message in the shock of Chungwoo turning against him, or if the agency had kept it from us on purpose. My gut told me it was the latter, though.

Have they gotten a better grasp on things now that we’ve rejected the director’s opinions a few times? Perhaps they were aware that the two groups might request not to be involved with each other. We would have done just that if we’d known they were going to do this.

It’ll just spark controversy. There had already been controversy once over “Magical Boys.” The worst possible scenario was that we could end up getting comments along the lines of:

- They’re doing the bundle thing again. Seriously?

- It’s obvious the ad was meant only for TSuns. The agency wanted the other group in it too, I’ll bet. LOL, they’re so greedy

- It would have been nice if Miry-nay were in the center instead. They appeal to people of all genders and ages. This is just a lack of business acumen.

- You M fans have no clue, do you? You haven’t beat TSuns in digital or offline sales LOL

- We don’t like you, either. You and your group of old men

- This is usually how idols meet and start dating, doing stuff like this. I’ll bet my album that there is at least one pair dating right now haha.

The two groups would be compared, and people would make assumptions and guesses about which members were dating or not. It would cause a lot of unnecessary trouble. The agency seemed to be aware of this, too, thankfully—it turned out that there were almost no shots that suggested anything out of the ordinary was happening between the male and female members. Their focus was solely on advertising their premium line of electronics, Cosmic, with the help of the T1 Stars idols.

“Let your identity shine like a star.”

“The star selection, Cosmic!”

But even so, this was pretty annoying.

It’s not like the company was the one who nurtured either group’s popularity. Why are they making such a fuss over non-existent common ground and shared vision? If I had to guess, I’d say they wanted to start building other groups as well and therefore needed to make a name for themselves beyond being the agency that accepted idols from Idol Inc.

Maybe they were sulking about how uncooperative both groups were because we’d come from a TV show that had already made us popular.

And they probably want to go public with the agency’s shares or something. Whatever they were planning, it had probably come directly from the director. It was at this point in my thought process that I realized I could take advantage of this.

I’m going to collect a bit of information first.

My opportunity came when my turn to film was over.

“Thank you very much!”

After the solo shots had been filmed, we were wrapping up a short session filming with Miry-nay. I went over to one of the girls, who was staring at the monitor after also finishing filming.

She bowed at a ninety-degree angle, extremely polite. “Oh, Moondae! Thank you very much for filming with us today!”

“No, we’re the ones who are grateful,” I said.

It was the same girl who’d finished in second place in the most recent season of Idol Inc.

“How was filming today?” I asked.

“It was great! Uh… You did amazing! No wonder you were selected as first place by the public—”

“I think that’s enough flattery for today.”

“Right.” She grew subdued, perhaps realizing how silly she’d sounded trying to butter me up. “How are things going these days?”

“Huh?”

“With the agency.”

“Well…”

She wasn’t giving the stock standard response of gushing about how grateful she was, which suggested she’d noticed my tone. Wearing a grave expression, she lowered her voice.

“They’re the same as ever!”

That could mean any number of things.

“Has it been decided whether your next album will also be self-produced?”

“Uh… they asked us to do a double title track.”

“Hmm.”

They seemed to have decided it was a sure formula for success since TeSTAR had done the same since their debut.

“But they want one song to be in English.” She had the air of a resigned office worker. “Still… at least one will be our own song. We’ve decided to just be content with that for now…”

Huh. I’d expected it, but they seemed to be having some trouble of their own, too.

“Have they been taking care of you properly?” I asked.

“Oh, uh, yes. Of course. The salons and outfits are great…”

She’d missed my point. I redirected the conversation back to the intended topic.

“A manager that used to work with us went over to your group.”

“Right! I’m very grateful for that. And apologetic, too—”

“No need. I’m just asking if he’s doing his job properly.”

She was obviously wondering if I was trying to bully her because we’d lost our manager, so I quickly disabused her of the notion. “Is the Management Office briefing you properly regarding your schedule? Keeping an eye on the members and making sure they’re healthy and have everything they need? That sort of thing.”

“Oh, um…” She seemed lost in thought for a moment. I wasn’t sure if she was trying to remember, or being careful about her words. Still, when she eventually spoke up, she sounded pretty sincere.

“I can’t be sure. They seem so busy all the time… I think it’s because we have so many members. I feel sort of bad since they seem to be struggling.”

I knew it. Things weren’t being taken care of for the other group, either.

They have nine members, I think. That was two more members than TeSTAR, which meant they needed more managers. The agency was still employing only two, however.

And the production division seems to be going back and forth between listening to the director or to the members. Since the director was trying harder to stay in control of the girl group, the head of the Management Office wasn’t gaining much ground here, it seemed. I think I can make this work.

“I see. It must be difficult for you. Hang in there.”

“Oh, not at all! We’re having fun and doing our best. Thank you for being so considerate.”

“Right,” I said, making it seem as though I’d meant to end the conversation, but suddenly remembered something. “Oh, right. Would you be interested if a new, dedicated team was created just to manage your group?”

This was what I really wanted to talk about. It was the solution I’d been considering since the management fiasco had begun.

“A new team?” She looked dazed for a moment, but quickly pulled herself together and jumped at the opportunity. “A new team that will manage just us?”

“It’s not anything official… I thought I’d request it, though. If you think something similar would work for you, I can mention you need one as well. I won’t be saying you asked for it yourselves… I’ll probably make it seem like I heard from someone I know in the agency. What do you think?”

She gulped, then spoke with gleaming eyes. “We’d be very grateful.”

This was wise of her. She’d already shared the current situation as it stood for them. She was probably aware that if I wanted to deceive her or set some kind of trap for her, I wouldn’t have needed to ask her opinion.

“Hmm. In that case, I’ll mention your group as well.”

“Yes! Thank you!”

I heard someone calling to the girl in the distance. The shoot seemed to have completely come to an end.

“Minha! Get over here quickly! This chocolate is so dang good!”

“Okay! Oh, Moondae, I’ll be on my way!”

“Right. See you.”

She rushed over to her group. The girl who was waving a gigantic box of chocolates, presumably from her fans, was the girl who’d come first place on Idol Inc. She seemed… very cheerful.

Are girls like that popular everywhere? Or is it only in audition shows?

“Hey! Moondae! Check this out! It’s so cool!”

“Yeah. Amazing.”

Cha Eugene popped up out of nowhere, waving around a surfboard—a prop from the shoot. I gave him a bog-standard reaction and nearly fell victim to a bizarre train of thought about the odd state of this industry. There was no time for that now, however. I had to get in touch with someone during work hours while we were in the van.

I’ll have to get the ball rolling regarding a dedicated management team. I’d already discussed everything with the other members, of course. I’d brought it up during the week Chungwoo had recovered his morale.

“An exclusive team…”

“I doubt that the agency will agree to spend that kind of money,” Raebin had said.

“I’m all for it! No doubt Moondae already has a plan,” Big Sejin said.

“I agree as well…” Bae Sejin said.

“Wow!”

“There have been issues with management from the very beginning.”

Interestingly, Bae Sejin agreed with me right away and advocated for the suggestion actively.

“This is going to continue… It’s better that we take charge of the situation while we can.”

“That’s pretty cool of you, Sejin!”

“I-I wasn’t trying to make myself look good. Anyhow! Maybe we should have a vote or something.”

“Cool.”

His eagerness had led to unanimous agreement from the members. We’d also settled on a method together.

“A-are you editing the email?” Ahyeon asked me.

“Yes. Do you have something to add?” I asked.

“N-no! W-we all wrote it together. I hope they g-get the message!”

“Yeah.”

We were going to contact T1 Culture, the immediate parent company of the agency. We already had the head of the Management Office and the director at odds. Nobody in the agency had grounds to try to take control of TeSTAR anymore. It was about time we abandoned our rookie act and just allowed them to have their way with us.

At this point, it’ll serve us better to seem picky and hard to work with than to seem susceptible. It was better for the group to rise up and make clear exactly what we wanted from the agency. Our most recent self-produced single had been a hit as well, which meant they were the ones at a disadvantage. Our global performance wasn’t bad, either, but we’d get back to that later.

I tricked the head of the Management Office into giving me the email address. He was laboring under the stupid impression that I would contribute to the director’s downfall in some way. What I really intended, though, was to tell T1 Culture all about a chronic issue within the agency.

There’s not enough manpower. Nepotism hires were continuously filling out the ranks, and new staff were being brought in just for the sake of filling seats. This all led to some serious issues with the inner workings of the company. The easiest way to summarize the problems was to say that the agency’s risk management was terrible.

The security issues, the problems we’ve been having with being briefed about our schedules… The most recent instance was Chungwoo being attacked by a paparazzo. I linked this incident with the lack of proper briefings and the way I’d been attacked by a stalker during my vacation. By also bringing up the corporate spy incident, which these people probably already knew about, I could claim the following.

We need an exclusive team to care for us! I also wrote that because the agency was a newly founded subsidiary, it didn’t have the decision-making power to create such a team for us. I emphasized that if any of us got hurt or were otherwise kept from engaging in our activities, there would be a huge controversy and significant financial loss.

“Moondae, won’t they think we’re just too full of ourselves?”

“I don’t care if they do. Honestly, it’ll be best if they do, and they start worrying that we’re about to raise hell.”

“Hmm. Right.”

We were top-tier idols now, so we could afford to be a little fussy. We hadn’t been causing any trouble for anyone in the industry so far, so the worst that could happen was a few far-fetched rumors about our attitudes making the rounds among the relevant staff. It would be fine as long as we were polite to the people we were writing to. We might have a problem with our agency, but they wouldn’t care as long as we remained respectful of T1 Culture.

I gave them plenty of time to meet our demands, and there’s nothing out of the ordinary written here. I wasn’t demanding that they do what we wanted, no questions asked—the letter sounded clean and official. I took my hands away from the keyboard.

“There.”

“Wow!”

“Now all we have to do is press send!” Raebin said.

“Send! Send!” Eugene said.

And so our email suggesting the creation of an exclusive artist management team made its way to T1 Culture’s inbox. If the parent company agreed, saying it would be better brand value, the director wouldn’t be able to refuse.

Not that I think any of them are going to be particularly pliable. In fact, I was expecting that they would simply tell us that while they understood our situation, implementing our suggestion was impossible both in principle and regarding cost.

If that happens, we’ll move on to the next step in the plan. My brain was working in overdrive. This was pretty fun. Let it happen, whatever it is.

The call we got that day, however, at around 7:30 in the evening, steered the situation in an unexpected direction.

“You want us to join a… survival show?”

“Yes,” the voice on the phone said neatly. “Did you know that all the production staff from Idol Incorporated have been moved to a subsidiary studio? The show is a new one they’re working on.”

“Hmm.”

“Of course, TeSTAR won’t be contestants this time. You’ll be mentors.”

But we’re only in our third year!

It was a deal I’d never even imagined being offered.