Chapter 346

Chapter 346

“Well, it’s… a massive success?”

“You’re right.”

We watched silently as the comments and social media posts poured in about the music video, which had just been released. The reception it was receiving was far better than we’d expected. The first day of a comeback usually meant soul-crushing criticism and even cursing, and we’d been intending to avoid looking online if possible.

But it looks like that won’t be necessary.

- TeSTAR are gods. The music video is the stuff of heaven

- TeSTAR! TeSTAR!! TeSTAR! TeSTAR, TeSTAR! TeSTAR! TeSTAR!

- Oh man. TeSTAR is so serious about their love for Korea. Did you see these haetae heroes? Amazing stuff!

It had reached the point that Korean comments, which should not have been easy to spot amidst all the English ones, were scattered all throughout the comments section like freshly sprouting grass.

They were not the usual encouraging comments from fans that we were used to, but comments from the general public on the internet that made it seem as though our music video was some kind of high-profile game of sports.

“Uh… We must have created something pretty incredible, huh?”

“You’re right.”

Chungwoo hadn’t been able to say anything more than “You’re right” for some time now.

“This hasn’t happened before, has it? They all seem to like it!”

“You’re right.”

This time, it was me. I’d decided to speak up to save Chungwoo from repeating himself again. As for Bae Sejin, he refused to look up from his phone. I swiped at my phone screen as well. I checked tentatively, and even the places that were usually the most unkind and cruel were giving us surprisingly good reviews.

- Holy crap, this is good. I lost sleep because I was afraid the daesangs would go to their heads and mess up their music. Too bad I missed all that sleep

- TSuns still have the bodies of teenagers. Look at how they perform. You can’t do that sort of thing with old joints

└ LMAO

- They’re making such good use of the attention they got from that movie haha. This is why you guys can’t forget them. Let’s keep up that insane work ethic, TeSTAR!

I stared. This particular community was made up of essentially haters, so I hadn’t expected such blatant praise. In any case, people preferred performances that were easily identified by a single trait—how much physical hard work had gone into it. Because we’d gotten a daesang with our previous title track, which had aimed at being palatable to the masses, they’d been ready to criticize us as soon as our next album dropped.

Though I have no idea why they’re wasting their energy like that. As it turned out, however, our new release had a performance just as intense as that of “Drill,” and there were even throwbacks to “Present,” which had been this particular community’s favorite of our releases. This seemed to please them greatly. All of this meant there was no reason for any unnecessary conflict within the fandom.

“Hmm,” I said.

“Whoa, Moondae, you told us you specifically wouldn’t look there! But here you are again, peeking at weird websites…” Big Sejin said.

“Yeah. I’m closing it now.”

He’d looked up groups of these sorts of malicious fans early on in his career himself, and nearly lost every last drop of morale for it.

Listen to you. In any case, we weren’t on Idol Inc. anymore. I closed the page for the sake of protecting my sanity. I still felt a little dazed, however.

Frankly, I expected at least some people to really not like it. Even if we’d incorporated neat computer graphics and the editing had been superb, this was an idol music video with elements of sci-fi, modern ballrooms, haetae, and even the plague. I’d thought that the majority of the general public wouldn’t be able to wrap their heads around it, but we’d decided to go through with it, anyway.

But as the saying went, quality ranked above preference, and reputation above quality.

[TeSTAR’s haetae take down America’s plague! The globe is taken by storm!]

[Nothing like TeSTAR to come through with that good old Korean flavor! The shocking identity of the new TeSTAR release “Savior!”]

The WeTube channels who had been eagerly covering us since our cameo appearance were releasing some very excited videos. I understood why.

The concept and the quality of the music video has made people proud to be Korean. This sort of marketing angle was very effective, as long as it wasn’t taken too far. It sure as hell was worth the investment.

Good thing I suggested it, even if it was toward the end.

“If the elements are too strictly American, the Korean fans might be upset and think we’re catering too much to American audiences.”

“The reactions to ‘Spring Out’ were great, even overseas. Let’s sprinkle in some of our steampunk Joseon universe.”

The more often we reused this idea, the more absurdly difficult it became to ensure that it would not become tired the next time it showed up. But elaborate references and structure was what made it possible.

Seon Ahyeon pulled at least triple his own weight. It wasn’t surprising that he had been watching the reactions to the music video far more than was his habit. He was feeling proud of what we’d accomplished, too.

This is probably not a good time to say anything to him. It almost seemed like he was about to be sucked into the video.

All of the members were excited, of course.

“The views are rising to shocking numbers. It was such a wise decision for us to appear in that movie!” Raebin said.

“You’re right… Um, and Sejin and Ahyeon, you did great by thinking of Edgar Allan Poe. Moondae’s haetae concept was an amazing addition as well,” Chungwoo said. He seemed to have pulled himself together somewhat.

“Yeah!” Eugene agreed enthusiastically.

Bae Sejin spoke quite calmly. “All I did was make a suggestion! It was Ahyeon who did the rest.”

Ahyeon still hadn’t looked up, lost in the comments on our music video.

That says it all.

Unfortunately, Bae Sejin went red and tried again.

“Uh… Ahyeon did the—”

“Hey, forget about trying to get reactions from other people. Let’s just pretend nothing happened and move on.” Big Sejin said.

“Hey!” Bae Sejin said.

“What about me? My acting was great!” Eugene said.

“Oh yeah. Eugene, you sure showed off your big charisma!” Big Sejin said.

“Ahem. Yeah, it’s true. It was good. You’re good at using your facial muscles to express depth of feeling,” Bae Sejin said.

“Hehe,” Eugene replied.

It was like they were drunk, with the way they were tossing praise about. I would not have been surprised if someone had produced some alcohol and proposed a toast.

Next came compliments for Raebin, who had created a new arrangement in only three days, and the main dancers who had come up with the rough draft for the choreography. I knew it would soon be my turn.

Hmm. Maybe I should bring them a bit more down to earth.

“Oh, and Moondae! It was Moondae’s idea to have the retreat in the first place! If anyone deserves credit, he does!” Big Sejin said.

“Yeah. Moondae was actually our leader at the retreat, not me. Good work,” Chungwoo said.

“You were amazing, Moondae! I’ll acknowledge it!” Eugene said.

“Th-that’s right!” Ahyeon said.

So you finally snapped out of it, huh? I grinned.

“Thank you. But the thing with public opinion is that it can change easily. People might start saying strange things very quickly. Not that we have to worry. That will all fade soon enough.”

They grinned at me.

Uh, guys?

“Moondae, you’re feeling shy, aren’t you?” Big Sejin asked.

“No,” I replied.

“Okay, okay. Let’s say you aren’t, then!”

I felt the urge to sock him in the head, but he tactfully changed the subject.

Crafty son of a b*tch.

“That’s true, what you said about public opinion. I don’t know if it’s all the work we put into this, but I’m eager to get started performing this on stage!” he said.

“I heard we’re doing a pre-recording the day after tomorrow. It’s so exciting!” Raebin said.

They’d suffered through practicing and preparing to perform this on stage, so now they were full of confidence. I supposed that we had worked really hard.

“Hey! The formation’s off right there. Let’s go again! Try not to be so out of breath!”

“Could we take a five-minute—”

“That just means ending ten minutes later!”

We’d squeezed out every last bit of energy we had left. I stopped myself, realizing that thinking any more about it would probably affect my current mood. I quickly extricated myself from my thoughts and started thinking about our future schedule instead.

We’ll do one music show in Korea, then head for the US. It would be a bad idea to make it seem as though we were intentionally going all-in on the US. Who knew what the future would bring? That move was too risky. The plan was to do a few things in Korea, then show up on a few American talk shows.

That evening, however, our plans changed abruptly.

“They want us on their show?”

“The agency says so,” Chungwoo said.

A variety show on prime time, hosted by a major American channel, had contacted us.

“If we agree…” I said. “The performance will be live… and it’ll be next Tuesday.”

Everyone realized what was happening.

“We’re filling in for someone else.”

“Y-yeah,” Ahyeon said.

If they’d wanted us to be on the show from the start, they wouldn’t have given us so little time. It seemed somebody who’d originally been supposed to be on the show had dropped out at the last minute.

Big Sejin shrugged. “Hmm. Well, an appearance is an appearance.”

He was right, though it wasn’t a talk segment and all we’d be doing was perform. It was clear that most of the talk shows we’d arranged to be on were major shows with high viewer ratings.

“America is a huge place. I’m sure they had a load of artists who could be on the show, too. The fact that they contacted us right away means that we were next on their list,” Chungwoo said.

Even if the attention we got from the cameo would probably be short-lived, it was still a meaningful appearance.

“Should we do it, then?”

“I don’t think we have a reason to refuse—given we’re able to make time for it.”

Chungwoo’s words won the silent approval of the rest of the group. As it turned out, we did have time in our schedule for it. As soon as we told the agency that we were interested, they quickly rearranged our schedule to accommodate the appearance.

“Okay. It’s been arranged.”

“Wow!”

This result was not surprising, truthfully.

Good thing our first comeback stage in Korea was set to be on Tnet. It was supposed to be our first live performance after our album dropped, but we would just pre-record the performance instead. Tnet had agreed to it, however, probably because the agency was affiliated with T1 as well.

Tnet got their exclusive comeback show for the same reason to begin with, so it makes sense that they’re accommodating. Being part of T1 was a massive boon. Otherwise, we would have lost out on the offer entirely.

“Hmm.”

This was not a bad situation for us. We would immediately return to Korea after doing only one performance, so not too many fans would be upset.

There was too big a gap between the music video drop and the first performance, anyway. We’d released the album on a Friday because we were aiming to rank on the SongBoard charts, and this meant the first music show in Korea wasn’t until the following Thursday.

That’s almost a week of downtime. It was too long a time period for maintaining the hype. Anyone remotely interested in the industry would recognize that.

They’ll be aware of this and try to work against us. As expected, it took two days for the excitement over TeSTAR meeting such high expectations to die down, and for negative comments to begin appearing on the internet.

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

[My personal take on the new TeSTAR song]

The song is nice, but I think it’s a bit excessive. Listening to the song makes me wonder how they’re going to translate it to a live performance at all… Same goes for the music video performance. And they’re going to do both at once? Hmm…

I assume they’re going to pre-record this stuff. And I’m a little bummed out about that. Live performances are TeSTAR’s biggest strength, and it’s like they kicked that down the drain of their own accord. I get that they want to aim for audiences in the US, but I hope they don’t lose touch with their original audience, either. It makes me feel a little bitter inside

PS I am not a hater or a fan. I’m just a passing listener. Here’s some evidence (screen capture of music streaming site play history)

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

- So I’m not the only one who thought this! The general mood seemed almost to forbid—if that’s the right word—criticism. It’s not like being worried about the live performance is the same as hating…

- TeSTAR’s so good at live performances. I can see the point. If they mess it up, they’ll be mocked all the more for it.

- Well, I suppose they’ll water down the choreography as necessary. What need is there to worry about any of this LOL

These were the top three comments.

“Hmm.”

I’d been expecting some kind of negativity, but they were only worried about our live performances, it seemed.

This is perfect. Do they have so little to nitpick about the release? It seemed the negative commenters had wanted to stress us out more by not simply saying it was too noisy or that it wasn’t palatable, but I liked this angle very much.

English-speaking commenters who had a bit of K-pop experience were going wild, to boot.

- They really did those high notes while doing that dance? *Insanity*

└ To be completely honest, most groups use pre-recorded audio and dance along to that :( Don’t get your hopes up too much

└ Get lost you K-pop hater! They’ve sung live for most of their performances. You’ll soon see something amazing, just you wait!

What a ruckus. People who’d been drawn in by Cosmic Gunner, existing fans, and people who liked Cosmic Gunner but not K-pop were all mingling and mixing to create chaos.

The common thread underlying all their comments was, the music video was amazing, but can they really pull this off live?

I liked that this was the question being asked, too.

This is good buzz. This sort of dialogue would morph into a great talking point after only a single performance.

Assuming that we do well, of course. I thought I already knew whether we were going to do well or not, just based on the reactions of the other members when we’d talked about the performances. I grinned and cracked my neck.

Time for a look at more objective indicators. Status window!

I opened the hologram for the first time in a while. In fact, it had been so long that I hadn’t checked my stats properly for almost half a year.

It’s not like I can level up or anything. I end up reaching for it less often. I hadn’t been living a lazy life, however, so my existing stats should not have deteriorated or anything.

They’ll be the same. Thinking of the moments I’d benefited by raising them appropriately, I checked the window.

Let’s have a—

I was shocked by what I saw.

[Name: Park Moondae (Ryu Geonwu)]

Level: (-)

Title: The Successful (Idol)]

Singing: S

Dancing: B+

Physical attractiveness: A

Charm: S-

Trait: Infinite Potential, Time for Yearning (S), Missions Are My Thing (S), Catch-All Ears (A)

Points Remaining: 1

Why are there two S’s? I hadn’t raised those stats using points. I had no idea how they’d grown like that.

And why is charm of all things at S? I hadn’t done anything to warrant such a stat. Was it my experience on stage that had raised my level? My physical attractiveness had gone up by one level as well. I wasn’t at A-, which meant I barely qualified as an A, but actually A.

Is this the power of exercise and hair dye? My natural gains have been pretty amazing. I shoved a hand through my white hair and crossed my arms. It seemed that I’d been living far more assiduously than I’d thought I had.

“Hmm.”

It made me feel pretty good about myself.

I doubt I could fail a performance with these stats, but… how about a little something to shake things up? I used my final point without hesitation.

“Let’s give it a go,” I said, grinning to myself.

I looked at the internet after a few days and…

[Wow… Your stats are really those of a professional idol…]

“…!”

I nearly fell to the floor. Next to the status window was a small, crude pop-up window. I tried to swipe it away, but another one appeared right in front of me.

[No way! This actually works? Amazing! Sorry. I must have scared you. I didn’t think it would actually work!]

Wait, this sounds a lot like…

“Park Moondae…?” I asked.

[Yes! It’s me, Big Moon!]

What the hell?

[Have you eaten? I ate some fried mackerel and rice!]

I gaped at the message, a stupid look on my face.