MeTube
The impact of Kang Su-ji's article was nothing short of staggering.
True to her word, she dropped the piece the very next day — and like a seed striking rich soil, it took root and tore across the internet in a single breath.
In the wake of her exposé, articles sprouted like bamboo after rain. The story did not stop at the news sites, either. It ripped through every major online community in the country.
Lee Hae-jin, scrolling on his phone, clicked his tongue.
"This is... Lim Tae-hyun, right?"
Ha Dong-jun, standing beside him, nodded.
"The circumstances line up. Apparently the sponsor rumors had already been circulating inside Stein to some degree. The drugs, they probably didn't know about. There's also talk that CEO Park Young-ho had a hard time keeping Lim Tae-hyun in line because of those sponsors."
"Tsk. An agency head getting pushed around by his own singer. Why did they just sit there and watch it happen?"
"He probably caught on too late. By the time he realized, it was already beyond anything he could stop."
"Stein's finished, then. There's no coming back from this."
There was a note of pity in Lee Hae-jin's voice, and Ha Dong-jun nodded in grim silence.
Drugs and a sponsor. Either one alone was a career-killing scandal for a celebrity. Stein Entertainment was a fairly large company, but this was more than it could possibly weather. Lim Tae-hyun would never be able to hold his head up in public again — and his agency would follow him straight into ruin. That much was certain.
"Who do they have over at Stein? Should we make contact?"
Ha Dong-jun licked his lips, eyes gleaming, and Lee Hae-jin snapped his fingers as if to say that worked for him.
"Not a bad idea. Let's pull a list. Stein's got more than a few kids it would be a shame to just throw away."
"Yeah. We'll have to punch the numbers on the contract penalties and all that."
While this reasonably promising discussion was taking shape, someone knocked on the office door.
"Come in."
At Lee Hae-jin's word, the door opened — and Kim Se-jun walked in.
"Se-jun?"
Lee Hae-jin's voice was thick with surprise. The young man had been running himself ragged with promotions lately. For him to show up out of the blue — given the current climate — felt vaguely ominous.
"I was on my way out and thought I'd stop by for a moment."
Se-jun took one look at Lee Hae-jin's face and let out a quiet laugh. The whole office was on edge because of Lim Tae-hyun. The look on his CEO's face said he was terrified Se-jun had come to confess something of his own.
"Right... you haven't, have you?"
"Of course not. I've got nothing to hide."
The firmness in Se-jun's voice made Ha Dong-jun nod beside him.
"You're doing well. You saw the internet, right? Lim Tae-hyun."
"Yes, I did."
"This is a place that can swallow you whole before you know it. You need to stay careful too."
"I'll keep that in mind."
Ha Dong-jun clapped him on the shoulder in encouragement.
"Good. You're doing great right now. I searched you online and it's nothing but heartwarming stories. That bar the other day — people really loved that."
"Ah, that?"
Se-jun recalled a certain internet post and gave a wry smile.
A few days earlier, he had gone out drinking with just Lee Joo-sung. He had tried to keep a low profile, but that night his identity had gotten out. Fans asking for autographs and photos. Their requests, coming out of nowhere from people well into their cups, might have been enough to sour anyone's mood — but Se-jun showed no such irritation. He signed for every last person and took every photo.
In a matter of moments, the bar had transformed into an impromptu signing event. His and Lee Joo-sung's snacks went cold, but Se-jun was happy. Fans. They were the entire reason he existed.
The story had rocketed to the top of every internet community. Witness accounts from people who had been at the bar that night. The comments were nothing but praise.
It still made him wince. He had been trying so hard to stay under the radar.
Well. Can't be helped.
And thanks to that incident, public sentiment toward him had soared.
"Right. With Lim Tae-hyun crashing like that, you'll pick up some of the bounce from this too. Just be a little more careful about how you carry yourself going forward."
The two of them had been sitting at number one and number two on the music charts. A rivalry had formed as naturally as breathing. Plenty of people had thought it absurd, given Lim Tae-hyun's overwhelming name recognition.
Now Lim Tae-hyun had fallen, and Se-jun's good deeds were spreading far and wide. If he simply conducted himself well from here, claiming an undisputed place among the nation's top male singers was hardly out of the question.
Se-jun nodded at Lee Hae-jin's sincere advice, then brought up why he had come.
"Sir. There was something else I wanted to ask you."
"Hmm? What is it? Go ahead."
"Would it be all right if I opened a MeTube channel?"
"MeTube?"
Lee Hae-jin's eyes went round at the unexpected request. MeTube had already become fairly mainstream, and Ares Music had a company channel of its own — one with over a hundred thousand subscribers, no less.
"We already have a company MeTube, don't we?"
"I... I'd like to try running one personally, not at the company level. Honestly, I wanted to make one as a kind of fan service."
"Fan service?"
Ha Dong-jun, who had been listening in silence, cut in.
Se-jun went on. "That Ruzvia song recently — I Only See You — the one I arranged for gayageum that aired on TV. The response was really great. I figured if I arranged other artists' songs the same way and uploaded them, people might enjoy it."
"Ah, that's right! That did get great feedback. We even got calls asking the company to put it out as an album."
Ha Dong-jun clapped his hands, chiming in from the side.
"Hmm. If that's the purpose, I don't see a problem. But what about the copyright on that?"
Lee Hae-jin stroked his chin as he asked, and Se-jun tilted his head, not entirely certain himself.
"I don't know all the details, but MeTube is pretty sensitive about copyright, so I don't think we'll run into any major problems."
"Is that so? Go ahead and try it, then. Honestly, I'm curious myself."
All those legendary songs already out in the world. What would they sound like, filtered through Kim Se-jun's taste? He was Se-jun's CEO and his senior in the industry — but he was also just a fan. Of course a spark of real anticipation caught in his chest.
After his talk with Lee Hae-jin, Se-jun opened a MeTube channel without wasting a second. Strike while the iron is hot. It was a proverb he had always been fond of.
He had opened the channel, but the only thing on it was a warm, unassuming introduction video — a simple clip explaining that he would be filming cover videos of songs the fans requested. There was nothing remarkable about it, and Se-jun himself was not expecting much. How popular could a single little intro video possibly get? That was what he had thought.
And yet here he was, two weeks after uploading it, staring at his own channel in a daze.
"What is this..."
The stunned gasp slipped from his lips. He blinked at a reality that made no sense at all. Thousands of comments sat beneath the introduction video. He had uploaded that one clip and nothing else — and he already had tens of thousands of subscribers.
He blinked again.
"Why on earth...?"
His video was even sitting on the real-time trending list. A result he had never imagined. He steadied himself and quietly began reading through the comments.
The comment sitting at the very top. It had the most likes and the most replies of anything on the video. And the comments beneath it were not so different. People calling themselves his fans, listing the cover songs they wanted to hear. Idol tracks, ballads, dance numbers. Even hip-hop and overseas pop. Requests of every color and kind.
"There were this many...?"
Having gone through the comments one by one, Se-jun let out a weak little laugh. To think this many people wanted to hear him play. To be precise, they were dying to know what kind of chemistry their favorite songs would have with the gayageum — what kind of synergy might come of it.
"I know exactly how that feels..."
He murmured it under his breath, a quiet smile on his face. He understood their hearts better than anyone. Had he not once arranged his own favorite songs and played them alone in the corner of his room? They were probably in the same place he had been. They had to be going out of their minds wondering how the gayageum would transform the songs they loved most.
"Though I suppose that's not all of it..."
A look of quiet satisfaction settled at the corner of his mouth. Thousands of comments. And no small number of them simply saying they were his fans.
"I've gotten bigger than I thought."
Surrounded by so many extraordinary people, he had never really felt it. But somewhere along the way, he too had begun slowly taking his place in the ranks of household-name top stars that everyone in Korea knew.
The staggering popularity of the MeTube channel. After receiving this much love from the fans, he could not simply sit still. He had to repay them somehow.
"What would be good..."
A deep furrow of thought gathered between Se-jun's brows. His original plan had been to arrange and perform some idol group's song. But the popularity had far exceeded anything he had expected. Sticking to the original plan felt insufficient — like he would not be properly repaying the fans' support.
"Hmm... let me think. What did I love most?"
Decades of being an idol fan. He reached back through all of it, searching for the moments that had impressed him most deeply, the ones that had moved him most. So many moments of crying together and laughing together. And from among those memories, a handful of instants that had meant more than the rest.
"It was then. That was the best of it."
New title tracks, long-awaited comebacks, hitting number one on the charts — all of that was wonderful. But the moments that had moved him most deeply were their performances. That feeling of watching them perform right in front of you. And a concert — that was a thrill beyond words.
"A concert, huh... A concert would be good..."
He murmured it softly, a look of deep satisfaction filling both eyes.
Park Yu-jin stared at her own comment with her heart in her throat.
The comment she had left on Kim Se-jun's MeTube. Blessedly, it had received the most likes of anything on the video. Which meant a great many people had been thinking the same thing she had.
"Please..."
The song she had recommended. What would it sound like, played on a gayageum? Anticipation rose in her unbidden, and a smile spread across her face.
"Hm?"
An alert popped up on her phone. She had even set a notification for Kim Se-jun's MeTube.
"Wait?? No way—"
Eyes bright with hope, she tapped the alert and opened MeTube as fast as her fingers would go.
"...!"
Park Yu-jin clapped both hands over her mouth. On the screen, Kim Se-jun appeared and spoke a few short words.
"Oh my god...."
Even with both hands over her mouth, the gasp escaped on its own. She had figured he would cover one song, at most. What Kim Se-jun had prepared blew every expectation she had clean out of the water.
Three days later.
Kim Se-jun waited for five o'clock in the company practice room, his heart pounding.
"I wonder how many people will actually show up?"
He had given advance notice, but there was no telling how many would actually tune in to a live broadcast.
"Hoo..."
The moment the clock struck five, he let out a long breath and turned the stream on.
"Hello! This is Kim Se-jun!"
He bowed toward the camera. Viewers poured in, greeting him with every kind of message. Nearly eight hundred people had joined the moment he went live. Quite a number, considering it was five in the afternoon.
A warm smile on his face, Se-jun looked at the chat and opened his mouth.
"So many of you loved the introduction video that I decided to put together a little something like this. You all okay with that?"
The chat was instantly wallpapered with applause emojis. Se-jun burst out laughing.
"I'm glad you're all into it. Then let's open this concert with Simcheongga."
With that, he walked over to the gayageum. No backing track. No guide vocal. A raw, live performance — and the only instrument in the room was a single gayageum. Even so, he began to play with a smile of complete confidence.
An empty practice room, with no one in it but him. The gayageum's melody began to fill the space, and Kim Se-jun's voice joined it, weaving through the strings. The self-consciousness of broadcasting all alone lasted only a moment. Then he fell headlong into the song — and every viewer watching him fell with him.
"This is actually insane..."
Park Yu-jin, who had logged on the instant he went live, murmured at the screen, her eyes glazed. His song, performed with nothing but a gayageum. She had already heard Simcheongga dozens of times. No Kang Yu-na. No other session musicians.
So why does it sound even better...?
Just the gayageum and Kim Se-jun's voice. Which meant you could focus entirely on the playing and the singing. The soft, flowing melody of the gayageum. Se-jun's voice, husky and yet it pulled at something deep in the chest. The harmony of those two tones gently stirred the ears of not just Park Yu-jin, but every person watching.
Office workers still at their desks. Students secretly listening during evening self-study. Housewives watching from home. All of them stared, lost in Kim Se-jun's performance.
Four minutes. That was all the time it took.
When the song ended, Se-jun came back to his phone and smiled.
"Did you all enjoy that?"
The chat exploded.
Viewers chanting Kim Se-jun's name. Their passionate response pulled a laugh out of him, unbidden. He could not see them in front of him, but he could feel their emotion even through the phone.
"Well then... shall we try singing the songs you all wanted to hear?"
He said it with a gentle smile. Park Yu-jin covered her mouth as she watched.
This was the moment. Their favorite songs, reborn through the gayageum.