Chapter 66

Chapter 66

I’d had a bad feeling from the moment we’d met with the agency’s director. He used to work in the Planning and Marketing Team of a T1 affiliate company and had been promoted to director of this new agency. In other words, he was in charge of running the agency but had no prior experience in the entertainment industry.

F*ck…

The agency’s Content Creation Team, thankfully, seemed to comprise of actually experienced personnel, but this guy had some strange ideas.

“A universe?”

“Most idol groups who want to grow a global fandom develop branding based around their own universe. You know what I’m talking about, right? The younger generation, they like that sort of thing.”

He was full of sh*t. Our own universe? That was great and all, but we were supposed to be bringing out a new song within a month. Even if it was only a single, we needed to be talking about the song right now, nothing else. TeSTAR didn’t need to formulate its own background universe immediately, either.

We all have our own characters and stories from the audition show. Why do we need a f*cking universe? As far as I knew, such things existed to give fans something to get excited over and to generate more content—for us, Idol Inc. was already performing that role.

The members had gained a huge amount of publicity just by virtue of how they’d debuted and secured themselves a strong position on the idol scene. All the agency needed to do was give us a catchy song, sophisticated choreography, and some good outfits. We could work on our own universe slowly, working out only the rough details for now and slowly developing it as we prepared for our next album.

Which online lecture did he watch and become an expert from? Agencies had been working on emphasizing what exactly their unique appeal was to the public recently in an attempt to keep their stocks up. According to them, creating an original universe was the perfect long-term plan. This guy seemed to have bought into the hype.

He just wants something that will look good on his resume. What really drove me nuts was that though he certainly wasn’t lacking in passion, he didn’t have the first clue what he was talking about.

“Us?” I asked.

“Yes! You did a great job on the show.” He claimed to have binge-watched Idol Inc. and made a point of lathering us with praise before dropping the bombshell. “So, let me explain. You’re going to do two songs, but the agency is going to provide only one of them. As for the other song... the talented TeSTAR members can handle that, right?”

Of course, he insisted that the final product would be looked over and confirmed by him. “It would be great if we could plan for everything in such a way that it fits into our little universe, don’t you think? You’ll be self-produced artists!”

He chattered on about how self-producing idols were the norm these days. In other words, he wanted to hit as many trends as he could at once. Maybe he wanted the agency to be considered a free and hip up-and-coming company that allowed its artists to make their own music. The members were all stunned by this new development, of course, but they’d maneuvered safety through Idol Inc., which had been nothing but artifice. Their confusion didn’t show on their faces.

“Oh, uh, we’re very grateful, but... I don’t think we have the necessary talent to pull that off on our own.”

“Mhm. The staff will help you, of course! You have creative freedom! Unleash your, uh, creativity, get inspired, that sort of thing.”

“Right...”

This man was at least twenty years older than we were and thus Chungwoo smiled wryly, giving up on any further attempt to steer the conversation in a more reasonable direction. Raebin seemed dazed.

He’s stunned speechless. He’d no doubt been trying to brainstorm ideas, but the huge amount of work ahead of us, which needed to be done in such a small time frame, had clearly overwhelmed him.

“Now then, we’ve got no time to waste, have we?” the man said.

“Yes.”

The director left without ever letting any of us speak. He seemed proud of himself for making time to meet us in person.

Even the CEO is supposedly the owner of T1’s nephew. Our future wasn’t looking bright.

Things will get really hard for us if we don’t capitalize on our current popularity and get to the top of the charts that way. In hindsight, I realized I should have seen this coming from the moment T1 had decided to create a new agency to manage the show’s debuting group themselves.

They basically snatched us away, which means we won’t be able to benefit from any of the preparations the original agency was putting together for the debut album. Meaning we’d have to produce a debut album completely from scratch. Worse still, those in charge had no idea how things worked in this industry—they were already making absurd requests and giving us deadlines that were far too short.

Ugh. I wish I could just quit. Once again, I reminded myself not to expect much from this company.

The situation didn’t improve much during our next meetings with the Content Creation Team or the Artists and Repertoire Team under the Production Division. None of them had anything prepared, either. This wasn’t surprising, really, since the agency had only existed for less than two weeks.

“Uh... First of all, our universe will be based around symbols and imagery associated with school.”

“Oh... All right.”

“Please keep that in mind. Uh...”

They didn’t have much to say besides that.

“Of course, you’re not being asked to make the song completely by yourselves. We’ll send you a sample you can use after we’ve confirmed a few things, so please check them over once we send them.”

“Yes!”

“How long will that take?”

“Uh... You should get it in a couple of days.”

One positive was that the staff seemed to be generally favorably disposed toward the members of TeSTAR.

Another benefit of debuting from an audition show that was so popular across the country. Because we were a group guaranteed a certain amount of popularity, in addition to the staff’s personal admiration, we were treated with great respect—it was so noticeable and completely different from that norm that Big Sejin even called it out.

“They’ve been asking us for our input a lot,” he said after we were done with the meetings.

“I-is that n-not how it usually is?”

“Nope!”

“Not at all!”

Surprisingly, Eugene and Raebin had very strong feelings on the subject. Ahyeon looked shocked.

“Usually they don’t listen to us at all!”

“They don’t even let us talk. They just expect us to do as we’re told!”

“R-r-right...”

Eugene and Raebin had gotten as far as recording their debut song at their previous agency only to have it turned down. They seemed to have a lot of feelings to vent because of it.

That agency was doing really well at one point. If I remember correctly... their biggest talent sued them for an unfair contract and they went out of business. The two of them had left the agency to join the audition show right in the middle of all that.

“I’m a little worried about some of this, but it’s a great environment for us to show what we can do. Let’s give it our best shot.”

“Okay!”

“All right!”

Chungwoo smiled as he checked that all of us were present and accounted for before we got into the van. Though we hadn’t really discussed the topic yet, it seemed all but certain that he was going to be the leader.

Lee Sejin, who was the oldest person on the team along with Chungwoo, didn’t have the makings of a leader. Agencies generally preferred that the oldest member take the position. Though we’d probably go through the charade of discussing the matter, the way I saw it, it was all but decided. I had no complaints.

“This is really such a nice apartment— Whoa!”

“What is it?”

“A claw machine!” Eugene, who was the first to enter the living room, rushed over to the claw machine as soon as he saw it.

Because the company director had summoned us early in the morning, forcing us to leave the dorm before we were even fully awake, we’d completely forgotten about it.

Makes our reactions seem more believable, at least. I went over and looked it over as well. There were cameras on the inside and the outside of the machine. The robot vacuum reappeared to give us a card that basically said we were supposed to catch the toys inside to get our next mission.

“Hmm. It says, ‘Each toy has an anonymous mission that was suggested by a different TeSTAR member.’ Wow, I’m curious.”

“Let’s do it!”

Most of the members gathered around the machine excitedly. Eugene was the first to take a turn.

“Hiya!” He failed spectacularly. “The machine... something’s wrong with it.”

“Leave it to me!” Big Sejin took the joystick from a disconcerted Eugene and moved the claw around gleefully. He failed as well, of course. “You were right, Eugene. There’s definitely something wrong with the machine.”

An embarrassing amount of failures followed. Lame excuses were made, the members unable to accept that they’d lost fair and square, and I politely declined to take a turn.

I can’t be bothered. If they kept trying, someone was bound to succeed eventually.

Lee Sejin took the joystick next. “Which one did you want to get?”

“The rabbit!”

“T-the puppy...”

Lee Sejin caught the toy in a single attempt. Everyone cheered as soon as the fluffy brown rabbit plush dropped into the prize chute.

“No way!”

“You’re incredible at this!”

“It’s actually possible to win in only one attempt?”

“Can we grab some more?”

But the machine had stopped working. It seemed that it was programmed to stop working as soon as a single toy was successfully grabbed. Raebin muttered to himself that he was going to win one tomorrow no matter what and everyone circled up around the toy.

When it was flipped over, they found a card stuck to its belly.

“Now, let’s see what they wrote—”

[Watch a horror movie together :)]

We stared at it quietly.

“It was you, wasn’t it?”

“No way, dude,” Big Sejin cried, waving his hands in denial. He sounded confident like he was certain his suggestion had been something far more interesting.

Chungwoo said gently, “Oh, that was me.”

“Wow... It sounds fun, actually! A horror movie!”

“I-I’m looking forward to it!”

None of them were all that comfortable around the older member just yet, so they scrambled to sound approving. In the end, we spent our evening watching a horror movie. I focused on the popcorn instead of the images playing onscreen and screams reverberated in my skull as the movie played. It was a waste of time, but at least it wasn’t physically taxing.

Early the next day, we got the demos for our debut title track.

Now it was time to be physically taxed.

***

“My ears hurt,” Eugene said after we’d listened to every demo track about twenty times each with the volume on max.

Almost everyone, with the exception of Raebin, nodded—but only barely. The members had started out listening enthusiastically, anticipating that one of the songs would become their own. Several hours of intense focus had drained them of all energy though.

“I don’t think listening more will change anything. Let’s do a first round of voting.”

“Sounds good!”

“Let’s start with number one.”

We voted on all eleven of the tracks, which, by the end, gave me a good idea of the other members’ preferences. They were similar to what I’d already observed during Idol Inc.

Ahyeon and Chungwoo preferred a medium-tempo beat, and Ahyeon in particular liked lyrical songs. As for Raebin and Eugene, they liked rhythmic songs with powerful bass, and Big Sejin always gravitated to the genre that was most trendy at the time. He only seemed to raise his hand for songs with catchy melodies.

Lee Sejin had only voted for one song, so I couldn’t glean much about what he liked. That left me... and I chose whatever sounded good. I could afford to do so since the Successful Performance pop-up that appeared during the final episode of Idol Inc. had given me the following trait.

[Trait: Catch-All Ears (A)]

- This song sounds promising!

: +200% to the ability to appreciate excellent music

It was even ranked A. The slot machine had stopped on a platinum-colored symbol, which only had a ten percent likelihood of appearing.

I had to keep it, even without taking the rank into consideration. For someone looking to make it in the music industry, this trait was indispensable.

I’d been forced to get rid of my I Want to be Center trait, which elevated my charm by a single rank, but it had been worth it. It had been a choice between abandoning that or the Words of Persuasion trait, but the latter had seemed more likely to be useful to me later on.

And I made up for the charm stat loss by practicing during the finals and leveling up. My status window looked like the following.

[Name: Park Moondae (Ryu Geonwu)]

Level: 13

Title: None

Singing: A

Dancing: C+

Physical attractiveness: B+

Charm: B-

Traits: Infinite potential, Words of Persuasion (C), Energy Drink (B), Catch-All Ears (A)

Status abnormality: Get First Place or Die

Points Remaining: 1

If I had to find fault, it was that my new trait increased my ability to discern by a fixed percentage, rather than an absolute amount.

I won’t see much improvement if I don’t have an ear for music in the first place. Though I didn’t know if this was the case, since I hadn’t ever given the topic much thought, three hundred percent of my ability was bound to be useful regardless.

“So, Moondae, you’re only voting for song number seven?”

“Yes.”

Song number seven was the only one I’d chosen. There was a dreamy quality to the track, and it had a trendy beat and a palatable melody. Altogether, it made for a unique listening experience.

The rest weren’t as good. They either developed too slowly or got repetitive really quickly. Not that any of my thoughts on the matter were based on any real music theory. I was simply going by ear. Even so, my choice seemed to have impressed Raebin.

“I think you have a good ear, Moondae. Number seven is definitely the most polished.”

“Hey, Raebin, that’s not fair! Are you saying I lack taste?” Big Sejin joked.

“N-no, that’s not what I meant...” Raebin stammered, sweating.

Chungwoo smiled and summarized the votes.

“So that means tracks two and seven are tied for the most votes. Let’s focus on these two, then.”

“All right!”

Number two was an R&B-style song that was easy on the ear.

I didn’t vote for it because it got old, fast. No one was opposed to this decision, however, probably too tired to suggest differently. I’ll have to push for track seven when I get the chance.

Our morning ended that way, after which we were summoned to another meeting, this time with the Content Creation Team. We were informed that the agency’s title track had been decided on.

Don’t idols usually discuss songs with the A&R Team, though? I had a bad feeling about this, too, but regardless we had to attend.

“Well? It sounds pretty good, doesn’t it?”

“Yes...”

It was good. The problem was, it was a disco song and the concept was baseball.

I’m going to go nuts.