Chapter 339

Chapter 339

It was mid-April and the TeSTAR tour only had a few stops in the US remaining.

“Let’s go to the movies again!” Eugene said.

“We don’t have time.”

“Then let’s make time!”

He’s stubborn today. I stared at Eugene, who wanted to go to the movies even though we were in the midst of our composing retreat. He was the reason that we’d gone to see Cosmic Gunner under the cover of night in every city we’d visited so far.

People have posted quite a few times about seeing us in the cinema. We were so regular about it that people were starting to predict where we’d go next and were showing up in advance to wait for our arrival. That was why we had stopped, but now he was acting like he was experiencing withdrawal symptoms or something.

“Cha Eugene, it’s just not reasonable to keep the other members awake just because you want to re-watch a cameo that’s only a few seconds long—” Raebin began.

“My voice plays longer than that! And we looked amazing!” Eugene said.

“Haha. You’re right. It was interesting to hear our song playing during the ending credits.”

We’d had no idea that our song would end up being chosen as the main theme song. The producer had come out to see us in person when we’d had our meeting, which probably meant they’d liked the song much more than they’d expected.

Though those bastards refused to pay us any more than the agreed amount. I’d decided to consider the attention we were getting as part of our payment. The composer in our group was very excited at the moment.

“Yes! I found it to be a novel experience as well!” Raebin said.

“Right.”

“I wasn’t surprised at all. Raebin, your song was amazing!” Big Sejin said.

Compliments came pouring out for the person almost single-handedly responsible for this feat. Even Eugene nodded along.

“Kim Raebin, your song was really amazing.”

Raebin nodded solemnly. “It wasn’t as complete as I would have liked it to be, given the time constraints, but we made up for that with feedback after shooting. I think it was passable in the end.”

“Good!”

It was rare that they ever agreed about something like that.

“P-p-people seem to like it a lot. There are a lot of articles coming out about it… even in the US,” Ahyeon said.

“Wow! Really?”

Ahyeon seemed to have even looked into the news surrounding our cameo, which was rare for him. It seemed doing something we didn’t usually do had made for some unexpected results. I explained the article Ahyeon held out for me to read in Korean.

“A K-pop boy band was responsible for composing the main theme song of the recent Limestone movie… The public has been surprised to learn the identity of the people in the impressive cameo.”

“Wow!” Big Sejin said.

It was too early to celebrate the articles, since they could say anything, really. But I’d looked up a few anonymous American internet communities and actually seen that there were some posts about us being uploaded here and there.

It helps that the movie itself was such a hit. We’d been lucky, since that wasn’t a factor we could control. In any case, we’d appeared in that successful movie, and people were talking about us—including sharing low-quality recordings of our cameo in the movie.

The interesting thing was that a lot of people didn’t even seem aware it was a cameo, with a lot of the comments saying that they thought we were side characters and were confused when we didn’t appear again.

- I thought that awesome band would appear again in the movie. That was disappointing :( The song during the credits was by them though, right?

└ That was a cameo. They’re a K-pop group

└ Are you serious?

These comments were soon followed by actual write-ups about who we were. I recalled the comments left on a popular post titled, “The mad lads behind the band in Cosmic Gunner.”

- *This* is K-pop?

- Are my preconceived notions the problem, or are they sort of an exception to the rule?

└ Both (face with tears of joy emoji)

- TeSTAR is one of the most talented K-pop groups I’ve ever seen. I’m not surprised.

└ That’s right! I’m pretty sure this song was written by one of their members—Raebin, I think. He’s the one with the sea-urchin-red keyboard in the cameo :)

└ The K-pop fans have shown up guys LOL

Scrolling further down revealed that people were even recommending the variety show where we’d sold hotteok in the US. In other words, the reaction to us overseas was better than expected.

“It seems like the reactions to us are excellent overall.”

“You’re right.”

And there was one person who was listening to all of this carefully, though he was pretending otherwise. It was the other person who was mostly responsible for the incredible public response. I turned around.

“Your acting really was great,” I said.

“Ahem…”

It was Bae Sejin. He’d heard this enough times that he was now only a little embarrassed and nothing more. At first, his reaction had been quite something.

Eugene cheered. “That’s right! It really was perfect!”

“Honestly, it wasn’t perfect. I delivered my lines to best fit the outfit and situation, but my pronunciation wasn’t great… In any case, thanks! Uh, you helped me a lot with the pronunciation.”

“I know!” Eugene said.

Bae Sejin had just learned to accept the praise from that point on. He finally seemed aware that if he kept trying to refuse at this point, the mood would become awkward. Seeing so much admiration for his acting on the internet had probably helped. I thought back to the many compliments that had come his way as soon as the movie had released.

- I thought he was an actor?

- My god, he was amazing

- What’s with Bae Sejin? He gripped the audience in all of three seconds. This is what I call Hollywood-level acting

Even I’d been surprised to see it.

He did ask a lot of questions on set. Bae Sejin had asked Eugene to be his interpreter as he tried his best to figure out as much as he could about the script and the situation.

And the improvised line he threw in at the end was also approved after his first attempt. The lines we’d been given for the cameo consisted only of humorous cursing and arguing. But he’d worked with the team on set, discussing how he could make it more fun by adding another line toward the end, and the result had been his improvised performance.

“Come listen to us again sometime.”

It was a joke that he’d made because he knew that our song would play again at the fight scene later in the movie—though we hadn’t known that the complete version of the song, vocals and all, would play over the credits.

In any case, he was such a good actor that everyone who saw the movie had nothing but praise for him. Some people, however, saw this as a chance to play us against each other.

- Why is he an idol at all? Isn’t it better for everyone for him to be in acting instead? TeSTAR’s performances will be higher quality, and Bae Sejin gets to do what he’s actually good at

└ Listen to this sh*t LOL. Nope

└ Sejin is a goddamned professional, and the cutest hamster to ever live. Get lost

It was hardly surprising that the TeSTAR fans immediately blocked those responsible for these comments. However, the problem was that the general audience, as well as most movie buffs, seemed to be reacting the same way more often than not.

- It’s such a waste that he’s only doing cameos. Please build up your acting career portfolio already

- We have such a lack of male actors in their twenties right now. Child actors may be our last hope

People were predicting—and hoping—that Bae Sejin would eventually turn to acting after he’d worked a few years as an idol.

It’s true that being an actor is still considered the better job. This probably had to do with longevity, among other things. I shrugged and moved on after a bit of thought.

For now, I’ll just let him enjoy it. TeSTAR had seriously leveled up recently, what with winning so many daesangs, which meant that public opinion toward us remained balanced. Bae Sejin had only been in the movie because TeSTAR had taken part in making a soundtrack. This meant no one was expecting him to quit the group and start acting right away.

Even so, if we’re to keep on doing group activities while also doing other solo activities, we do need to pay attention to this sort of thing. I wasn’t sure what they would prioritize when the time came for it… but it would be best for the group to create an environment that would allow the members to choose.

It’s good to gather accomplishments in a variety of activities as a group. There’s something about this movie collaboration that people don’t know, which might help with that. This very topic came up in conversation among the members.

“Hmm. Have we heard anything about when the complete soundtrack will be made available?” Big Sejin asked.

The song that we’d made for the soundtrack was titled Black Hole. Though no official digital version had been released, illegal tracks extracted from the trailer were already making the rounds. A search on any major search engine revealed that the title of the song was autocompleting after our name already. We didn’t have the full rights to this music, however.

“I don’t know… We haven’t been told a specific date. I think it’s up to the film company,” Chungwoo said.

I nodded. “Yes. It’s going to be included in their soundtrack album, not ours.”

T1 couldn’t do anything about it, since that was how the contract had been arranged. This was actually what I’d wanted in the contract.

If T1 had the rights, they would have released the song the same day the movie premiered, unable to wait even a little. In situations like this, it was best to release when the interest was at its peak. T1 didn’t have that kind of patience—I was sure of it. There was another reason, too—the most important one.

“Limestone will handle it.”

This was the Limestone brand we were talking about, known for many major superhero films in the US.

It’s a huge boon for us to be included in their soundtrack album. The moment our music had the Limestone label on it, instead of being a strange, foreign K-pop band, we would be welcomed with open arms. There would be no bias or preconceived notions to deal with. This was arguably the greatest gift of all.

That makes this whole thing worth doing. There was also some content that would only increase the net effect.

Hmm.

“An American album? That’s so cool,” Kim Raebin said.

“Y-y-yeah. It was our first movie song, too… Good work, Raebin!”

“Ahyeon, you also did great with supporting communication and overseeing our performances!”

I watched as the members chatted about how the experience had been rewarding in its own right. I assiduously calculated the investment rewards that had come from our recent venture.

A few days later, the soundtrack album was released, Limestone label affixed and all, under the pretext of thanking the fans for all their support. A short video was also released as well.

- What’s this?

- Oh my f*kcing god

It was a live performance filmed of us on the pub set. The bastards at Limestone had decided to use it for promotion, instead of including it in a VOD or a director’s cut edition.

***

The day that the soundtrack and the performance video was released, we were on our way back to Korea for a short period of time. Using the plane’s onboard Wi-Fi, we watched the video in question on a tablet.

“Wow.”

“The editing is really high quality.”

The camera work was different from how our performances were usually filmed, since the clip was meant to feel like part of the movie. It was unfamiliar, but also pretty incredible.

[Black… hole!]

Hands and feet manipulating instruments, chins, back profiles—all these images edited together made for an artistic scene shot under neon lights. The interesting backdrop and costumes, the rebellious performance, the rich vocals—it was a performance that did Cosmic Gunner justice, and it was really a sight to see.

The strange space-themed instruments were being played by people who had actual experience with similar instruments, making the performance seem more natural.

[Hit it like a comet!]

I nodded along to the beat as I watched the shot Eugene filmed from below as he stood at the center, tossing his microphone from hand to hand.

They put quite a bit of work into this. It felt decidedly American, but also unique because we had created such an interesting visual in the movie. There was a definite charm to it, and not just because I’d been part of it.

[22,938,704]

It hadn’t been more than a few hours since the reveal, but the view count had already exceeded twenty million.

Eugene whistled. “The video is ranked #2 in the US!”

“Wow!” Big Sejin said.

“You mean the trending videos tab?”

“Yeah!”

And that told me where the majority of the views were coming from—our target market.

We nailed it. Regardless of whether this was thanks to the movie or otherwise, we had nothing to complain about if a high-quality video of our performance was getting so many views. It would probably take some doing to explain that we were not actually a band—but we could probably handle that by going on some talk show.

This is really great for us as far as popularity is concerned. I was thinking hard about how to maximize this opportunity when Big Sejin, who was next to me and had been monitoring reactions online, suddenly thumped me on the shoulder.

What do you want?

“Park Moondae.”

“What?”

“Take a look.”

He held out his phone.

[TeSTAR soundtrack is plagiarized? Hear for yourself]

“…!”

A ripoff? I quickly looked at Raebin, who was seated in front of me, but Big Sejin shook his head and redirected my gaze.

“Keep reading.”

I did as he suggested for now.

========================

Bridge of TeSTAR’s Cosmic Gunner soundtrack, “Black Hole” (1:30~)

Arrangement WeTuber All-Star Kind of Music’s “Time Running” (127 Section) arrangement (2:56~)

Listen for yourselves peeps.

P.S. All-Star Music is a student, but not an amateur. They already participated in the production of an official game theme song

========================

“…?”

What in the world? I hadn’t expected to see our arrangement account appearing here of all places. I called Raebin over right away and showed it to him.

“…?”

The same stupid look that I’d worn less than two minutes ago appeared on my face. I waited patiently for him to react more, and he eventually settled on shouting,

“I see! I think there must have been a slight overlap in the samples that I premade. I was in a hurry, you see…”

“Oh.”

“Sorry. It’s in the same universe, and I wasn’t even thinking about this, what with the time constraints…”

He continued to explain that he’d picked out some beats and samples that he’d already made in the past for the soundtrack, since he had no time to make them from scratch. Because the setting was the same, there had been an unfortunate overlap. He apologized profusely, saying he would come up with a solution immediately.

“No, wait,” I said, hoping to calm him down.

He fell silent.

“Moondae?” Big Sejin said.

I gestured to Big Sejin to give me a moment and accessed the All-Star Music account first. The video in question was already exploding with views, and the majority of the comments went something like the following.

- Sue! You need to sue!

- Cheer up, we’re rooting for you

- I’ve never heard your music before, but it’s so great. The plagiarism can’t hold a candle to this. Hang in there!

“Wow.”

They sure seemed excited.

I rubbed my chin. Hmm… Maybe we could use this.