Chapter 246

Chapter 246

Creating the variety show went much better than planned. We’d just intended to install a few cameras here and there so we could make episodes to release on WeTube, but the agency got wind of it and contacted us with a suggestion.

“They have a free slot right now at CVN. How do you feel about releasing it there instead?”

After asking around, I was able to find out that the drama that was meant to air had been delayed because of a problem involving someone in the cast. They were offering us the slot instead. Naturally, this was not normal behavior on their part.

“They’re being more submissive than I expected,” I said.

“Hmm.”

“Yeah, you’re right! I guess they’re being extra careful!”

The others seemed to regard the situation similarly. They were obviously choosing to be compliant in an attempt to repair their relationship with us. Bae Sejin, however, didn’t seem too happy about it. He seemed to think they were trying to lure us in.

“They’re telling us to take this and shut up. This isn’t a chance for us to perform as artists. It’s just a slot for a variety show!”

While this might be true, he wasn’t able to prove that this was the case either.

“Though I suppose it doesn’t matter if we take it… since we’re not suing,” he said.

We'd come to the conclusion together that we wouldn’t sue after all.

“Oh, by the way,” I said to him.

“Huh?”

“I was hoping to gather the material we each collected for use in the lawsuit and organize all of it. Do you mind?”

“Uh… oh! I don’t mind… but why?”

“There’s something I want to check.”

Bae Sejin looked surprised but handed over the material without question.

I was a little surprised by what I found.

He looked up all the relevant judicial precedents. Bae Sejin had written down the situation regarding the former manager in detail and acquired legal advice. It was a much more practical and meticulous attempt at data collection than I’d expected. If we added my call recording and texts, I had to admit that we would have a solid case on our hands.

This is impressive. If Bae Sejin had been given the chance to try, he might have really won the lawsuit—though the problem would have been that given the way things worked in the industry, no agency or mainstream show would take us in after we won, which would take at least a year.

As Bae Sejin had said though, as more and more cases like this were won, this practice of icing out idols who had escaped their contracts was eventually bound to change.

“Wh-what do you think?” he asked.

I gave him an honest answer. He deserved that much after putting in so much effort.

“Actually, I’ve been thinking we could perhaps accomplish the same outcome as we would from a lawsuit without actually suing.”

“Is that possible?”

“I’m not entirely sure just yet… but the material you prepared is really incredible. I’d like your advice later once I have my thoughts sorted… If that’s okay.”

“Of course!” he said. He seemed a little embarrassed at the moment, but hearing his work praised seemed to improve his mood somewhat.

I’ll have to give this a little more thought… I stored everything away on my phone for now. That was the end of the talk regarding the lawsuit for the time being, and we accepted T1’s suggestion to air our variety show on TV without question—appearing on TV was a good opportunity. What I wasn’t so sure about was whether it was a good thing that the scale of the show had gotten so quickly out of hand as professional variety show staff were recruited.

A shocking suggestion was brought to us at the very first meeting, which felt very rushed.

“We rented an island!”

“I’m sorry?”

“Oh, come on. You know there are TeSTAR fans all over the country! The more eager ones might even follow us.” The staff member grinned, pulling up some information on the screen. “So there’s this island that another variety show has been filming on. We rented the whole thing, lock, stock, and barrel.”

We were informed that the island was owned by some rich person and had a pretty nice vacation home on it. An escape-the-island-themed variety show had been filmed there early this year, which meant that it was already fitted out with all the setup needed to film. It would save a lot of time, which was a precious commodity for us.

“Perfect, isn’t it? It’s a good match for your relaxation in nature concept.”

The staff seemed proud of themselves for pulling off something like this within the constraints of the budget, but the members were taken aback.

Are we even going to be able to rest? I wondered. Things had gotten way out of hand, and I got the feeling we’d have to work the whole time instead of getting any rest. The production team was adamant, however.

“No! Rest! We want you to relax!”

“Uh… Are you sure?”

“Of course. That’s the entire theme of the show. The story, the footage… everything will be handled by the editors!” The production team sure seemed very self-directed. “Tell us everything you’d like to try! Yachts? Massages? Yoga?”

“Let’s eat snow crabs!” Eugene said.

“That sounds great!”

Eugene was the first to fall. The other members caved one by one as well, each stating what they wanted from our vacation. They listed off things like campfires, swimming, meditation, and hiking. Then it was my turn.

“What about you, Moondae?”

“Well… I’m not sure. I think I might like to try cooking.”

Doing so would be palatable to the public, and it would be worth watching because I wasn’t actually bad at it. The production team, however, seemed to have every intention of including cooking from the start.

“Well, there will be plenty of opportunities for that. Is there anything special you’d like to try while resting?”

Eugene butted in. “Moondae’s great at taking photos! He’s the best!”

“Wow! Then you could go around the island together, taking photos!”

We sure have a growing list of activities, don’t we? I said goodbye to my original plan to stay indoors as much as possible. We were definitely going to be working, not resting.

After many twists and turns, the first day of shooting finally arrived.

“This is really it?”

The production team let us loose in a nice vacation home, with unmanned cameras set up everywhere. There were no staff members visible, and we were given no instructions or hints.

“Uh… So… No games or anything?”

“I-I thought they’d give us a mission, at least…”

There was nothing. It was just the seven of us in a large, three-story house on a beautiful island with beaches, a mountain, and paths crowded with wildflowers. We all stared at each other in silence. After sitting quietly in the living room for a long time, we slowly began to understand the situation we found ourselves in.

“So they really want us to just do whatever we want.”

“Wow. We’ve never done anything like this before.”

Soon, the members began roaming around the house excitedly, as was the intention of our vacation.

“Hey! This room is nice!”

“It looks like there will be two people in each room… Oh! This one looks like it’s for three!” Raebin said.

“This is so big!” Eugene said.

“Moondae, what are you doing…?”

“Checking the water pressure,” I said.

The house itself was nice. I had no idea why the owner had built something like this on a remote island and why they bothered to maintain it, but it had natural gas and plumbing.

Is there a water tank on the roof or something? In any case, the island really was the perfect environment to rest and recuperate, other than the fact that we were filming for a show—which meant no one got to have an entire room to themselves.

“Welcome food for TeSTAR :)”

There was even a basket of snacks in the kitchen, accompanied by a flower necklace and a card. We opened the fridge and found that it was loaded with ingredients.

Impressive. Frankly speaking, I didn’t think the resulting footage would be at all entertaining. I quietly closed the fridge, which contained a large, black Silkie chicken for making chicken soup.

“I want to eat that black chicken!” Eugene said. “Let’s cook it together!”

“Sure.”

“Yeeeees!”

Eugene seemed to be the most excited among us.

In any case, after looking through the house, the members seemed curious about what lay outside. They peered out the many wide windows.

“Hey… is that a chicken coop?”

“I think it is.”

“Moondae, look!” Big Sejin said. “That must be part of the set for the escape show they filmed before!”

“Cool.”

There was a container with the show’s logo still intact. Maybe it hadn’t been taken away yet, or the owner of the island had wanted to keep it. Perhaps we could go inside and check it out if we ran out of things to do on the third day or something. The show had been filmed by the same channel, so they’d probably appreciate the extra exposure.

To be honest, I’d consider it lucky if we lasted three days at all. What else is there to do here beyond eating three meals a day? We’d run out of things to do after exploring the island for a couple of days.

“Hey, what are those?” I asked.

“Oh, I thought this place would be great for hiking.”

I’ll have to dodge that with the excuse that I’m cooking. Trying to think of arguments against going hiking, such as Remote mountains like the one here are dangerous, I tore my eyes from the seven pairs of hiking shoes that Chungwoo had brought with him.

“Th-there are chicks in the chicken coop!” Ahyeon cried

“Whoa! They’re so adorable!”

We spent some more time just generally looking around. The chicken coop next to the house was full of chickens and chicks. It looked recently built. The members who were screaming about how adorable the chicks were aside, I could make a guess at the building’s purpose.

It’s probably here so we can steal some eggs from it. This sort of thing was a staple for variety shows like this.

We took a look at the beach, walked along the nearby paths which were lined with blossoming wildflowers, then ate a simple meal. Our chosen menu was the most basic one of them all—kimchi stew.

“They already made rice for us. And there was canned ham, too.”

“The stew’s really yummy.”

“Hmm. Why don’t we fetch some eggs from the chicken coop?”

I was starting to get into this vacation thing.

This is really no different from taking a sabbatical in the countryside. Honestly, I’d almost forgotten about the cameras entirely. Even when we’d gone out for a walk, it had been a drone that followed us, not a cameraman. I wondered how natural they were trying to make the show seem, if they were willing to go this far, but I was still firmly convinced that the resulting content would be lackluster.

We were starting to feel sleepy after lunch when the doorbell suddenly rang.

“Wow!”

“Finally! A mission?”

It wasn’t a mission.

“Hello! Are you the ones who applied for a meditation class today?”

“Whoa.”

“Y-yes…”

The random requests that the members had made at the meeting had begun to materialize, from the meditation class to the aromatherapy massage. Professionals, fitted out with a variety of equipment, kept showing up at the door.

“Please lie down on the sunbeds!”

“Right!”

“Oof!”

The pained groans Bae Sejin let out during his massage would probably make for funny footage. Regardless, the show was really letting us do everything we wanted. I wondered if viewers would actually be interested in seeing us living it up on vacation—surely they’d seen plenty of things like this on TV already—but it was somewhat reassuring that they would probably get some vicarious pleasure out of it, at least.

And what was more, the production team didn’t seem to have taken it too far, since we were left to handle the housework ourselves. This wasn’t surprising. It wouldn’t make for good TV if all we did was rest and play before just leaving. Because there were seven of us, the housework was always finished quickly and was never much of a bother. Even the ones who were less skilled at domestic labor tried their best, so I doubted they would come out looking bad.

“I’m good at cooking!” Eugene said.

“No, you’re not. You’re better at moving luggage. You should handle the laundry—” Raebin said.

“Raebin is bad at cooking.”

“Not true! My skills have been proven in multiple cooking videos…” Raebin said.

I wasn’t sure if this footage would be usable, but even if it was, nobody would accuse us of having dissent in our ranks, since they were always quarreling this way.

Three sweet days flew past in this manner.

“Phew.”

“In your heart… ba-ba-babaam!”

The members were starting to relax, sleeping in every day and running around and singing like they’d completely forgotten about the cameras. That was when the production team got in touch with us. Apparently, for the sake of the show, they texted instead of calling.

“Huh? Is that the director?”

“Yes.”

The text had arrived on Chungwoo’s phone.

[Weather conditions are getting worse. Please stay safe, and keep indoors if possible!]

Big Sejin read the text out loud, then shrugged.

“Well, I suppose that makes sense. It’s been sunny the last three days.”

“You’re right. Why don’t we reinforce the walls of the chicken coop?”

We looked up the weather, which said a rainstorm with strong winds was incoming. We spent the morning doing what we could to strengthen the coop. That night, we were greeted by loud thunder.

“Whoa, damn!”

“That’s so loud.”

The members were shocked by the storm when it actually arrived, accompanied by thunder and lightning. We stayed quietly indoors, playing board games.

The next day, however, the storm still hadn’t let up.

“So… it’s still raining.”

The rain and wind were still going strong—in fact, they’d gotten even worse.

“Moondae, check that out,” Big Sejin said.

I glanced out the window and saw some violent waves crashing against the beach. If the house had been built a little closer to the shore, we’d be in danger of flooding.

[Hey guys, the situation won’t allow us to get a boat on the water or walk on the island. Please be patient. We’ll find a way soon.]

The director’s texts were no longer at all playful.

“Uh…”

“The weather was supposed to be fair today. I guess the weather forecast was wrong. My goodness.”

The message came with a corrected weather forecast attached, which indicated that things would continue this way until at least the day after tomorrow.

We’re done for. I could already picture the future of this show. It would get boring very fast as the show tried to capitalize as much as possible on the footage taken during the sunny weather. Of course, we had other concerns that had nothing to do with the show as well.

“W-we need to feed the chickens…” Ahyeon said.

Eugene asked, “What about our food?”

“One second.”

I took a moment to calculate. We were supposed to receive fresh ingredients today. That meant we were starting to run out.

“We have instant rice and canned food. We won’t starve, at least,” I said.

“Oh…” Eugene said, his shoulders slumping.

Food isn’t the only problem. The cameras needed their memory cards replaced, and the staff who had come by occasionally for this purpose hadn’t been around for a while. That meant the whole production had essentially ground to a halt. I came to my conclusion.

“I think we’ll be on our own for two days, at least,” I said.

“Oh…”

The members were silent.

Raebin swallowed nervously. “Doesn’t that mean we’re basically stranded on an uninhabited island?”

Now this was the content nobody had been expecting.