The lobby of the public hall.
Extras dressed as music show staff hurried back and forth, each busy with whatever they’d been assigned. Some dragged in equipment and supplies (everything but the cameras) and pretended to sort through it all.
In front of them, Manager Gong (played by Sung-hyun Park) glared at Hyun-ah (played by Hee-yeon) and raised his voice.
It was the first scene where Sung-hyun Park and Hee-yeon went at each other head-on.
“What is wrong with you! You’re the one who took Min-ah, aren’t you. Do you have any idea how important today is for her!”
Beside Manager Gong, Min-ah stood with her head down, tears dropping off her chin. The other members watched her and cried too, resentment written across their faces.
Hyun-ah shrugged and gave an easy smile.
“Manager, was it? I’m Min-ah’s friend, and I know how important today is. That’s why I came all the way out here. Look at me, dragging myself here to help the little witch who stole my important day. I really am a world-class pushover. Why not wait a bit? Something good’s about to happen, promise.”
Manager Gong’s eyes bulged and he opened his mouth to fire back.
That was when a crowd came in through the front doors.
The cast and production team of the film’s fictional hit variety show.
“Huh?! The idols are still here?”
“What did I tell you! I said they’d still be here!”
“Wow, hyung, you’re so lucky. I was sure I had that one.”
“Come on! Kwahahaha!”
This film’s genre was comic drama, and the reason the word “comic” was in there showed up everywhere. Everything traced back to luck. When bad luck hit, the world found absurd, humiliating ways to ruin your day. When good luck landed, impossible chances came popping out of nowhere.
‘Never happens in real life, though.’
Which is exactly why it was a movie.
I huffed a laugh and watched them shoot.
A rookie group, out of nowhere, ends up on a variety show the whole country loves most. Makeup scrubs the tear tracks off in a hurry, and a few minutes of airtime send them straight up. Under normal circumstances, they should have been banned from music shows too, but the luck kicks in, the show’s chief producer starts dating their agency’s team leader, and the whole problem unknots itself.
“Cut! That’s a wrap!”
Early on, Mi-yeon Chu had blown take after take, but once Sung-hyun Park, Hee-yeon and Sung-ah took the center of the scene, the shoot wrapped without trouble.
“Thank you for your hard work!”
Hee-yeon bent at the waist to the crew, bobbing her head at each of them.
I waved over the fans, who had been staring at Hee-yeon and me with the most pleading expressions I’d seen all day.
“Hi, Hee-yeon’s fans. If you could please wait one moment.”
Joy spread across every one of their faces.
They paid for a coffee truck today and stood out there through all of it. No way I was sending them home like that.
The least we could do was a mini fan meet.
We already did something close to it a few times between takes. Still, it was the ending that mattered.
Hee-yeon and I left the crew to break down the set and headed out the front doors with the fans, back to the spot where they had waited earlier, sweating through their shirts.
They looked worn to the bone, and they were beaming anyway.
“It’s actually cool out now.”
“I had no idea a shoot ran this long.”
“Honestly, this was fast. I wouldn’t have minded if it went longer.”
“Same. The waiting was the hard part. Watching Hee-yeon act up close wasn’t hard at all. She’s really good!”
“Right? Right?”
I gathered them into one group and handed the baton to Hee-yeon.
The fans sat down on the ground and looked up at her, their eyes burning hotter than they had when they first arrived.
‘Looks like they’ve made up their minds about their impression of her.’
Once they waited out front, caught snippets of the crew talking about her reputation, and watching the shoot with their own eyes, they only fell for her harder.
Hee-yeon bowed a deep ninety-degrees to the fans.
“Thank you for helping me, everyone. You worked so hard today.”
Every trace of exhaustion left their faces as they listened.
“I was able to work harder because of you. You gave me a lot of strength.”
The expression, the eyes, the tone. She was sincere through and through.
The fans looked like they had been shot clean through the heart.
See, this is what she was like. Shy about the smallest things one minute, then dropping a line that mortifying without so much as blinking.
The fans drifted off chewing on the afterglow, like they had just walked out of a concert.
Hee-yeon and I crossed back through the lobby toward the car parked at the rear entrance.
I had my hand on the door when just then–
“Oppa.” I heard Sung-ah’s soft voice.
Hee-yeon’s head turned, and so did mine.
Sung-ah’s eyes rested on Hee-yeon for a beat before moving to me.
“Can we talk for a second?”
“About what?”
“You’re hurting me here. I just have something to say to you. Alone.”
Nothing about her face said hurt feelings. If anything, she was wearing a faint smile.
I turned to Hee-yeon.
“Can you wait in the car?”
“…Okay.”
Once Hee-yeon climbed in, Sung-ah turned and walked off.
‘What is this about.’
I followed her, and she opened the back door of the van she had come in and got inside. One glance was enough to see the whole thing was empty.
My eyebrows crinkled deeply.
A girl who has never once cared what anyone thinks, clearing out an entire van to say something in private. What could it possibly be. I just hoped it wasn’t serious.
“Get in already. Why are you standing there.”
“Let me brace myself. You’re making this scarier than it needs to be.”
I let out a small sigh, climbed in and shut the door.
“So what is it.”
“I came to warn you.”
“Warn me?”
Sung-ah’s eyes settled on mine. Her eyes and the corners of her mouth were curved into small arcs, which did not match a word like “warn” at all.
“I’m genuinely getting nervous here. Out with it.”
“It’s nothing huge. It’s Hee-yeon. I think she’s showing signs of getting obsessed with you. And I don’t think you’ve noticed.”
My eyes went round.
The curve of Sung-ah’s eyes deepened.
“So you really didn’t know.”
Hee-yeon, obsessed with me?
I went back through my memory carefully.
‘Obsession, huh…’
No matter how many times I turned it over, I still didn’t see it. In what way, exactly, was she supposed to be obsessing?
“Uh…? Oppa.”
“Hm?”
“Why are you… smiling?”
Was I?
I turned my attention to my own face, and sure enough, I really was smiling. Probably after thinking over the things Hee-yeon did. I caught myself and let out a short laugh.
Sung-ah looked at me like something was wrong with me.
Fair enough. She tells me someone’s obsessed with me and I sit here grinning.
I knew it was strange. I wasn’t arguing.
“If you came all this way to say it, you must be fairly sure.”
“Obviously. So why did you laugh?”
I didn’t laugh because it was funny. It was a genuine smile.
“Because it’s cute. She’s blunt and cold on the outside and nothing like that underneath. You saw her with the fans just now, right? That’s her. She’ll drop something painfully heartfelt out of nowhere and leave you standing there.”
Seeing me gushing like a doting father bragging about his daughter, Sung-ah huffed out a helpless laugh.
“What are you talking about? What kind of thought process lets you take obsession that lightly?”
I kept the smile and looked her straight in the eye.
“Is there a reason it has to be serious? It isn’t exactly unusual.”
I tipped my chin toward her and kept going.
“You did it. Kid did it. Plenty of the others got obsessed with me too. Why act sensitive about it now? That’s just what happens. When you start with nothing and grow step by step, side by side, a bond builds without either of you noticing, and obsession comes with it. Unless you two clash as people, that’s how it goes.”
Sung-ah’s eyes narrowed for an instant and then relaxed. As though nothing happened at all.
“With me it was strictly business…”
“It doesn’t take the same shape in everyone. People spend their time differently, and personalities differ.”
Even if she was obsessed, it didn’t worry me. What I have with the girls wasn’t quite the standard manager-and-artist arrangement. They were with me from the day the company opened, and the way we built that bond was never confined to business.
“The girls and I spent a lot of our days together, and I was at the dorm constantly. I’m a manager and a boss they’re close to, sure. But I’m also just someone they’re close to.”
She looked so exasperated that I added one more thing.
“Besides, is Hee-yeon the type to cause trouble the way you did? Worst case, she creases a script.”
“…I wonder. Is she?”
Phew, I got tense for nothing. Over something this small.
“Is this why you were hanging around?”
The corner of her mouth curled up slightly.
“Not really, the timing just worked out. My manager asked me to. Said he had something to discuss with the staff and could I go wait in the car. He’s probably just putting the moves on that producer.”
“…And you sat there and took that?”
It was unthinkable back when she was with me. She would have been at my elbow asking what on earth was left to talk about, let’s go, let’s go.
“I wanted to talk to you anyway. And I told you, this kind of relationship suits me. There’s nobody at that company I want to get close with.”
“You’ve changed a little.”
“I’ve always been like this. It’s my environment that’s changed.”
Sung-ah’s head turned forward. I followed her line of sight and saw the manager coming toward us with a face like he’d bitten into something rotten.
Looked like the thing with the producer hadn’t worked out. Or maybe he really had been talking business.
The odds on that seemed very low.
“I’ll be off.”
I got out of Sung-ah’s van and climbed into ours. I buckled in and started the engine.
I could feel a stare boring into the side of my head. I swallowed the laugh and turned to meet those steady eyes.
“What?”
“What did you and sunbae talk about?”
I couldn’t stop the corner of my mouth from lifting.
“Nothing much.”
“…Okay.”
Hee-yeon’s eyes left me and went to the window.
See? Not the type to cause trouble.
**
I repeated it back into the phone.
“Sorry, you said K-Concert?”
K-Concert. An annual event backed by a long list of corporate sponsors and broadcast on cable. They sold cosmetics and merchandise and ran all sorts of side attractions, but the heart of it was always the concert. It was held in a different country every year, and this year they had settled on Tokyo.
Speaking of Japan, we were right on schedule. Our luck was holding. Jin-ah’s name had been creeping upward over there lately and I’d been watching for the right window to move.
-We’d like Blue Sherbet to perform at the event.
They were testing the waters. I figured they’d go for the whole group.
K-Concert was tangled up with the parent company of a broadcasting company that carried serious weight in this industry, and it was a genuine chance at overseas exposure. For those reasons, a rookie group should generally take it unless there’s a real scheduling conflict.
Generally.
Blue Sherbet wasn’t generally.
Nice try, getting them for free.
“I’m sorry. Blue Sherbet won’t be possible.”
-Mr. Kang, please reconsider…
The writer’s voice came through the receiver like a plea.
But now was not the time for Blue Sherbet to come back together. What would they even do out there, ‘ICE’ or a cover?
When my girls stood on a stage together again, it would be for a proper comeback with a new song.
If we showed people the four of them together ahead of that, the impact of the real thing would just drop.
I cut off the writer’s proposal, which wasn’t worth a second’s thought.
“There is no chance I’m sending them as a group.”
-Sir, isn’t there any way at all?
Persistent.
Rather than drag out a pointless back and forth, I laid the final answer out clean.
“Hee-yeon has to focus on her film shoot, and Yumi has no time because of the album. Jin-ah is the only one I can send.”
-What?! Just Jin-ah? I understand that Yoon-jung doesn’t have a song, but Hee-yeon and Yumi both do!
The voice went up an octave in alarm.
They’d never really believed they were getting Blue Sherbet. From the reaction, though, they had been counting on at least two.
Not a chance.
Jin-ah only.
Yoon-jung had no song, so she was out of the conversation. Hee-yeon just started filming and needed to focus on acting. And Yumi’s music was too quiet to sit well at K-Concert, so we would be handing them all the buzz and attention and eating the loss ourselves.
I said it flatly.
“Jin-ah is all we can do. Her name is starting to become popular in Japan, so sending her alone should still get a good response. I assume you’re aware of that?”
-Haaa…. Yes.
They put on the pitiful voice, but that writer was obviously swapping faces depending on who was on the other end of the line. With one person they would apply quiet pressure. With another, they would say flatly that there were no slots left. With someone else they might throw their weight around and say they could have exactly two minutes, so what’ll it be. None of which works on someone who’s been dragged through this industry as long as I have.
-Two songs is fine though, right? Only doing one would be a shame for Jin-ah too. Wouldn’t it?
“Can she do a cover?”
Jin-ah only had the one released track.
-We’d love the one she did with Hyun-hee Lee at the audition. Would that be possible?
A grin spread across my face.
“Of course.”
Who did they think got Jin-ah’s name circulating in Japan in the first place?
Of course it was possible.
**
We called a meeting the moment Jin-ah’s appearance was confirmed. The item on the table was Jin-ah’s move into Japan.
“Let’s see if we can open up some schedules over there. Make room around K-Concert.”
As long as we were doing it, I would have liked to sweep the whole country clean the way a proper Asia’s Star would. With one released song, that was probably too much to ask.
“Boss, can Jin-ah speak any Japanese at all?”
Ah, yes. What an important question.
What was Jin-ah’s Japanese like again?
I picked up my phone and called her.
-Yes, you’ve reached the beautiful Jin-ah.
Ignoring that.
“How much Japanese can you speak?”
-Sushi. Sashimi. Tempura.
I hung up.
“Let’s focus on bookings that don’t require talking.”
—