Chapter 335

Chapter 335

Everyone agreed that since we were making an original soundtrack for a movie this time, we needed a slightly different approach than the one we’d taken making songs for our albums in the past.

“It’s not a collab song, like it was with the game, so we have to make it fit the movie.”

“But it should also show our unique TeSTAR color!”

The focus had to be on the movie, while retaining enough uniqueness to show that the song was ours. There was a problem, however.

“Hmm… I-i-it would be nice if we could incorporate a main theme song… like the ones used in games.”

“They’re not giving us anything else, are they?”

The film company hadn’t given us much to work with. Citing security concerns, they had handed us a few keywords and a summary of the scenario that was a lot more lackluster than expected. I started by looking at the keywords.

[Space, Cyberpunk, Superhuman, Battle, Focus]

The plot was a rather bland one, and commonplace for science fiction superhero movies. They’d given us almost no explanation about the universe, either.

I mean, come on. This is a bit ridiculous, isn’t it? I frowned. They could have made us sign a nondisclosure agreement if necessary. They probably told actors who auditioned for roles more than they’d told us.

“First of all, since we need to keep within the parameters of a movie soundtrack, I will keep in mind that this will be background music. I’ll try to compose something with that…”

While Kim Raebin might have said this with grim resolve and started work, the other members had precious little to do.

We don’t know the parameters of movie soundtracks. What are we supposed to do when we have to create something completely from scratch? We had four days, so it would be difficult for any of us to learn what we needed to in that time.

Looks like we’ll just have to fiddle with the melody, at best… There was nothing to brainstorm, either. As it stood, we were unnecessary manpower and would just have to content ourselves with giving feedback on whatever Kim Raebin made.

We started this retreat to avoid this exact situation. We were being forced to continue our past way of doing things, and that left a slightly bitter taste in my mouth. I stretched my neck and stood.

“Where are you going, Moondae?”

“I need some water.”

“Me too!”

Cha Eugene walked beside me. It felt like he always followed me whenever I went into the kitchen, and I was pretty sure I wasn’t mistaken.

“Can I eat this?” he asked.

“Sure.”

The cost will be split anyway, so half of what you eat, you’ll be paying for. But I saw no need to tell him that. He had plenty of money.

Eugene, who’d discovered a bag of snacks in the hotel refrigerator and emptied it into his mouth, suddenly said in English, “You look worried.”

“What?” I replied.

“These are good! Have some!” he said, reverting to Korean.

I don’t need that stuff. I took a few of the nuts that he handed me, as he chewed and muttered under his breath.

“Are you worried about something?” he asked.

Isn’t it obvious?

“It’s harder than I thought to come up with a soundtrack in only four days. And the company has given us too little to work with.”

He wasn’t the sort to be easily shaken by the cold hard truth, so I supposed it was all right to say this much, at least.

Eugene seemed unaffected, as I’d expected, just shrugging and responding with something that shocked me. “The company is doing this on purpose!” He crumpled up the empty bag and tossed it into the trash bin.

“On purpose?” I repeated.

“Yes. It’s obvious, isn’t it? Hmm. I’d say they’re not too keen on the idea of giving us work,” he said in English.

Go on. I leaned against the wall, and he did the same.

“They’re not happy that we barged in like this. Maybe there’s a bit of prejudice involved as well.”

Oh. So this is discrimination? Maybe racial? He’d lived in America, so he probably knew a lot more about it than me.

“Are you saying this from experience?” I asked.

“You could say that! But I don’t really mind.”

His Korean was getting stronger, I noted. His language skills aside, based on how dismissive he was being, it seemed nothing serious had happened to him in this regard.

“That’s why there’s something else that I know. If we do a great job, they won’t be able to complain.”

Wow.

“And we don’t even have to do this. We’re amazing even without a movie soundtrack!”

“You wanted to go to the US.”

“Well, there are always other options!”

Eugene hadn’t changed a bit. He was saying that we had nothing to lose from simply refusing to work on this project.

It’s been a while since he’s shown how smart he is. His perspective was pretty interesting.

I decided to encourage him. “What if we don’t want to give up, but we want to spite them for this?”

“Well, then, we simply demand that we want a proper job request. Make ourselves heard. That’s what stars do,” he began in English. “And… That’s exactly what I want to do! Let’s send an email through our agency.”

Hmm… It would be a direct way of expressing ourselves, that was for sure, but we’d used T1 to push our way in this time. There was no need to give the other party room to argue. I grinned.

“And what if there’s a quieter and even more satisfying way?”

“Tell me!”

Good.

“Hmm… So first of all, they’re pretending to work with us, but setting unfair conditions.” This was a good thing, actually. I smiled and opened a water bottle. “Notice that they’re not being obvious about it. That’s something to note.”

“Is that important?”

“Yes.” I drank my water. “It means they’re unable to refuse us outright.”

That’s why they were requesting us to do something that was too difficult, without actually acting like they were.

“Oh…” Eugene nodded, unimpressed. “So why is that a good thing?”

“It means our agency has some clout in this situation.”

“Is our agency stronger than Limestone?”

Not even T1 is stronger than that huge IP holder of a company.

“No, but it’s because there’s a close relationship here. It’s T1 Entertainment that does all the distribution for Limestone movies in Korea.”

“Oh.”

There was a reason the film company hadn’t been able to refuse. Whatever it might be, T1 had offered a deal they couldn’t refuse. T1 had probably seen our request as something of an attempt to get along.

Maybe they think we’re bending to them of our own accord, just when they were about to get upset over the independent label matter. That was a complete misunderstanding, but we could use it. In any case, T1 would also want us to grow their daesang-winning artist’s reach overseas, and they’d probably been excited and offered the film company some kind of big deal.

The company had agreed for now, considering their relationship with T1, but the actual working-level people had been irritated that a K-pop group, of all people, had barged in—a group who were not even Americans. I rubbed my chin.

So someone in the middle is pulling strings. Maybe they’d expected to encounter no problems, since they were allowing some foreign group to do a single track.

“Someone high-ranked among the ground staff at Limestone doesn’t like us,” I said.

“I get it! So when are you going to tell me how we’re going to do this?”

“Now.”

Impatient, are we? I grinned.

“So what I’ve explained so far…”

“Tell me!”

He’s so straightforward.

“First of all, it means that they’ll have to accept whatever we give them if we manage to match their stupid requirements.”

“Hmm?”

“The higher-ups involved in this have already reached an agreement. They can’t refuse us if we have them on our side—though I suppose they could request revisions.” It meant we could forge ahead with making the music. “So what we need to do… is first of all, make a good song, and send it.”

“Boo! That’s losing.”

No, that’s not it.

“We’re not simply going to do a good job. We’re going to go above and beyond the keywords we were given. We’ll add in some keywords from existing superhero movies from this company, as well as keywords from the game company’s universe, to build something elaborate on top of that.”

“But why?”

“We need to shame them.”

“Hmm?”

I crumpled the bottle, which was now empty. “We’ll tack on a frank note that says they sent us so little, we had to collect our own data.”

“Ooh!”

“And what we say next will be important.”

“What might that be?”

I laughed. “We’ll inform them kindly, noting that the person who sent us the request didn’t seem to be aware, that it’s customary to send along more information and give a looser deadline when requesting a demo for a movie soundtrack.”

“…!”

I shrugged.

“We’ll also be generous enough to point out what they prepare before a meeting, like they’re toddlers. That’s it.”

Even if it was just one soundtrack, they would have to report to their superiors about what went down in relation to working with us, an external group. Whoever it was that was responsible for this tomfoolery, they would have no room to escape. They would have to explain to both corporate entities what exactly had happened.

“Wow,” Eugene said, seemingly convinced now.

“That’s totally badass!”

“You like that?”

“Yeah!”

That’s good. He requested a high five, then ran to the living room, blurting out the details without being asked.

“Let’s make a great soundtrack and make them ashamed of themselves!”

“What?”

I’d expected this. I filled in the necessary details to complete the narrative. The members looked taken aback, but quickly grew grave.

“That’s a pretty dignified way of doing things.”

“Not bad! Even if things go south, we’ll have done our best,” Big Sejin said.

Even if the deal didn’t go through, the public would have our back. Yeah, I took that into account as well.

“How about a vote?” I said.

“Sure.”

Eugene whistled the moment everyone raised their hand. “Everyone in our group is so cool!”

Raebin was growing excited again. “Looks like we’ll have to get to work quickly.”

“Yeah. We’ll get the movie and game references together! Good luck, Raebin!”

“Right!”

And so the rest of us now had something to contribute as well.

“Hmm. Should we tell the agency about the memo we’re going to send?”

“I think it’ll be more effective if we wrote it ourselves.”

Given the tight timeframe, I doubted they would have an interpreter on hand who could deliver all the nuances of our message. It was better for us, the senders, to put in the extra effort.

I know the perfect person, as it happens.

“Want me to write it?” Eugene asked.

“No. You collect references. You know a lot about American culture.”

“Ok!”

Eugene wasn’t the person I was thinking of. He was eager, but I doubted he could word an official document very well. I turned around.

“Ahyeon.”

“Huh…?”

“Do you think you could write the memo we’re attaching to the music? In English?”

Ahyeon brightened. “Y-yeah!”

He’d studied at a prestigious private university overseas and had a very advanced vocabulary. He was probably the better choice. We could have an expert review the results before we sent it in. What was more, Ahyeon wasn’t very good at music production, and he seemed happy that he had something he could do.

“I-I’ll do my best!”

“All right.”

This would help him feel a little more at ease.

Big Sejin grinned. “Looks like we’re all set. Why don’t we get started?”

“Yeah!”

We were rejuvenated.

Raebin seemed to realize something and muttered, “So, the memo and the translation that will have to be done on it means… We have half a day less to work on the music.”

We fell silent. He gave us a thumbs up.

“We only planned for three days for the camp, anyway. It should be perfect!”

Well, if you’re all right with it, then so are the rest of us.

***

“Ugh… I’m so tired right now.”

The employee on night duty at T1 Entertainment’s Foreign Cooperation Department sighed. Since overseas messages could arrive late at night Korean time, it was necessary to work emergency standby hours one night every week. He got to nap and also watch NetFlux, but that didn’t make it any less boring.

And most of the stuff I get this late, I won’t even have sufficient rights to open. The only thing required of him was to quickly pass around messages if something urgent came from a few designated clients. The employee sighed and operated the Enterprise Resource Planning software.

Then he saw a document.

[Regarding the TeSTAR movie cooperation]

TeSTAR was such a popular idol group that he’d heard some rumors circulating in the department.

They sent Limestone word that they wanted to cooperate. From what he’d heard, TeSTAR had actually sent a demo two days ago. The most he’d done was listen over the shoulder of someone who had access, since he didn’t, but he could tell that a lot of effort had gone into it, including the explanatory memo that had been attached. It bothered him a little.

They’re going this far? Frankly, it seemed a little servile to him.

It seemed pretty obvious that Limestone was snubbing them. They’re an idol group that has won a daesang in our country! Perhaps the company had put them up to this. Feeling like his pride was injured for the group’s sake for some reason, the employee cursed his own company. He had a great excuse for doing so.

Based on his experiences, he knew what would happen next. When Limestone makes a generous show of accepting, this damned company will just make press releases about it…

That was when a new email arrived.

[Fw: In response to your request…]

He immediately took notice of the sender.

Limestone! He wished he could click on it, but he didn’t have access. Disappointed, he tried to find out what he could. Then he noticed something—the size of the attachment.

Huh? The attachment was a bundle of files that were just as big as the one that TeSTAR had sent.

What in the world did they send back? If it was a simple message to go ahead with the track, there would be no need for such files. The same went for something contract-related.

Damn it! He was about to lose his mind with frustration. He sighed.

The next day, however, he finally learnt what the email had been—a very roundabout gesture of apology and voluntary disclosure.

Oh my god! It felt so satisfying to hear that.

What in the world did they say, anyway? And more importantly, just how good was TeSTAR’s music that it elicited such a response?

***

“We now have a proper job request.”

“Wow.”

It had worked. We had no way of knowing what they would say, of course, if we actually had a meeting with them.

Actually, at this rate, we might not need a meeting at all. Emails might suffice. I didn’t say anything to discourage the members from smiling and giving each other high-fives. A win is a win.

Chungwoo laughed and continued the briefing. “They wanted to revise almost nothing, but they did have a few arrangement requests about the structure of the song.”

“That shouldn’t be difficult!”

Raebin seemed like he was about to grow wings and fly away. It was hard to imagine that he was so eager after working for three entire days, powered by only caffeinated drinks.

He must find it fun. Then I noticed how puzzled Chungwoo seemed.

“And… They also want to add something about a cameo into the contract.”

“…?”

“What? Really? A cameo? As in, an appearance in the movie?”

“Yes.”

I marveled.

These bastards… Now that things had come to this, they were trying to squeeze everything they could out of our popularity here.

“You’re talking about the current movie, right?”

“Yes. It’ll be a passing appearance in the background.”

“Well, that seems…”

“Okay, I guess.”

We all turned to look at the same person.

“Wh-what?” Bae Sejin said.

“We’re counting on you.”

“…?!”

Bae Sejin was the genius former child actor, after all. It was time to try for Hollywood.

“No, don’t!” he cried.