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Trials that come crashing down on a person when they are alone can leave him heartsick and exhausted, but when hardship befalls many at once, it can bind them together all the more tightly.
If you wanted to wear Neoul down, it would be far more efficient to turn the members of Jjokbit against one another than to send an enemy from outside.
But Won Hasin did not want to go that far.
“And... the Sea Witch’s way of doing things is contradictory.”
“....”
“She helped Gal Neoul get into Idol Travel. If she hadn’t, the outcome might have been different.”
She could have kept him from ever knowing the thrill of standing on stage, the fervent cheers and love people poured out for him.
“You already knew all of that, didn’t you?”
“Knew what?”
“That many people would come to love Gal Neoul. You didn’t not know.”
“....”
“And that once he received that kind of love, he’d grow to want to stay by their side longer and longer.”
There was no way the Sea Witch did not know what was plain to Won Hasin as well. Yet she said nothing, keeping her lips pressed together in silence.
“So... the right thing to do is to tell the truth now and persuade him. If Gal Neoul values his own life, he’ll just find the Rabbit’s Liver and return to Dragon Palace.”
“What if something becomes more precious than his life?”
“Pardon?”
“What if, for Neoul, the time he spends on land becomes more precious than his own life?”
The Sea Witch bit her lip hard.
If he said he would rather live to be no more than thirty on land—living freely and happily, however recklessly, instead of growing bored in the sea until he turned two hundred—then what was she supposed to do?
“I’m just trying to balance the scales.”
The Sea Witch held out both hands, lowering the left and raising the right. Then she clenched the lower hand into a fist.
“If the heavier side turns out not to be the prince’s life, but the time he spends on land...”
Her hands tilted like the weights of a scale.
“Then all I have to do is make his time on land a little less enjoyable, and the weight will come off.”
As her gesture gradually stilled, her hands leveled out.
“It was fun, sure, but there were plenty of hard things too. Humans can be kind, yes, but they can also be awful, or just plain strange. Is staying on land really... worth staking your life on?”
The Sea Witch curled the hand she had been holding open into a tight fist.
“So that when the time comes for him to decide... he’ll stop and think twice, at least once more.”
She lowered both hands and gently stroked Won Hasin’s hair.
“That one moment of hesitation will save the prince’s life.”
In other words, she meant that she would not yield her position. Even if it meant hurting Gal Neoul’s heart—and clawing wounds into her own.
* * *
November 20.
The day WA’s music video was released early on Jjokbit’s official MTube channel, something big changed for Jjokbit.
It began with Manager Kwak Yuk-pal’s visit first thing in the morning.
“Everyone... shall we go?”
“....?”
Manager Kwak, who was usually so full of energy, looked oddly troubled, as if his mind were heavy with something.
“Manager Kwak, are you feeling sick?”
“Huh? Oh, no! Nothing’s wrong! Um, let’s get in the car first!”
He laughed awkwardly and waited for the members to get in. After handing out breakfast lunchboxes to everyone, he climbed into the driver’s seat, but even while driving, he still seemed lost in thought.
Neoul and the others ate their beef salads and waited for him to speak. Lee Gal-chae muttered that meat this early in the morning was too much and passed half of his own portion to Neoul. Even Yeo Do-bin, who did not have much of an appetite, quietly pushed a few pieces of meat his way.
“You’ve got a lot of activity ahead of you. You have to eat well.”
From the passenger seat, Baek Yuri turned around and scolded them.
Over time, there had been a number of small changes among the members, and one of them was that Baek Yuri had started speaking informally to them.
— Yuri hyung, you can talk to us casually now~
— Yeah...!
— ...I’d like it if you’d speak casually with me too. We’re on the same team now.
When Ha On-ha, Yeo Do-bin, and Lee Gal-chae all said so in chorus, Baek Yuri gradually loosened up.
“Neoul, stop swallowing without chewing so much.”
But with Neoul alone, he still could not quite bring himself to do it.
He was from another race, and though they were teammates, he was still a prince of Dragon Palace. It was awkward to speak too casually to him.
Neoul tried to just chew once or twice before swallowing the meat, but then flinched and moved his jaw a few more times.
“Yuri hyung, I think your nagging is getting worse!”
Woo Cheong snickered. Baek Gi-yeom said,
“He worries about everything. But if you listen to Yuri, good things might just fall out of the sky while you’re asleep.”
“What kind of good things?”
“I like honey rice cakes and sweet rice balls. The colorful, sweet ones are the best.”
“Um... what about nutritious white rice cakes packed with beans, red beans, and mugwort?”
“Ugh. What even is that? I hate beans.”
“What’s good for you always tastes bitter. Do-bin, have you ever had rice cakes?”
Yeo Do-bin counted on his fingers one by one before answering.
“Tteokbokki and tteokguk and... oh! I’ve had songpyeon too...! At Chuseok!”
“You absolutely have to put sugar and sesame seeds in songpyeon! Anyone who puts beans in them will officially be considered an enemy of this Woo Cheong from now on!”
“What about chestnuts?”
“Chestnuts are fine!”
Baek Yuri blinked at the conversation, which jumped from topic to topic with no regard for logic.
“What on earth are you talking about?”
Still, he had gotten something out of it.
“It’d be fun to do a content piece where we make songpyeon for next year’s Chuseok.”
“Ooh, should we make dumplings for Lunar New Year too?”
“I think that’d be nice. Let’s ask about it later.”
Getting content ideas for the holidays was good, but it was equally encouraging that the members were talking openly about what they actually wanted to do. Baek Yuri turned back to the front and asked,
“Uh, Manager. Weren’t we supposed to be going to the company? This is the wrong direction.”
At Yuri’s question, Manager Kwak swallowed hard, looking like the moment he had been dreading had finally arrived.
Just then, the light turned red. Manager Kwak stopped the car and turned to face everyone.
“Everyone. I have good news and bad news... which would you like to hear first?”
“The good news!”
At Woo Cheong’s answer, Manager Kwak pursed his lips, then said,
“No, no. I think it’d be better to tell you the bad news first.”
“....? Why did you even ask?”
Woo Cheong shot back in disbelief, but Manager Kwak seemed not to hear him and went on with his explanation.
“The thing is... from now on, we’ll be commuting to the old office building.”
“What?”
At the words old office building, Ha On-ha choked on his salad.
“Whaaaat?! Why? Why? Are we being kicked out? What is this, a demotion or something? Are we being exiled? Is it because we didn’t listen to the CEO and just did whatever we wanted?”
“No, it’s not... entirely because of that.”
“Wow...”
Ha On-ha leaned back against the seat as he remembered the old office building they had visited before. The beef salad that had been delicious just moments ago suddenly felt dry and tasteless.
As the appetite-stricken Ha On-ha was about to snap his lunchbox lid shut, Neoul casually stole the beef for himself.
“What is the good news?”
Baek Yuri asked.
“That is... we’ll be there soon, so I think you can confirm the good news for yourselves.”
The dorm and the old office building were very close, so they arrived quickly. The old office building, which had seemed dilapidated and gloomy from the entrance the first time they saw it, somehow looked cleaner than before.
When they went inside, a scruffy man in horn-rimmed glasses greeted the members. Unlike the tidier building, the man looked as though he had been through a great deal and was even thinner and more haggard than before.
“How have you all been?”
“Mr. Ikhoo!”
“Gasp...! Jake?”
The good news was that CEO Jake had returned. Several employees who had been dismissed, along with a few others who had worked with Jjokbit at the new office building, were also moving back into the old office building and sorting through the luggage.
“What happened?”
CEO Jake first led the members into an empty conference room.
“We came to a final decision after some negotiations.”
He then told them everything that had happened.
During the process of preparing for the declaratory lawsuit with the lawyers, CEO Jake had contacted some of the shareholders and tried to persuade them.
He had warned them that if it escalated into a legal battle, the problem would only grow bigger and noisier, and the shareholders had also stepped back, allowing him to present a compromise after several rounds of adjustment.
“In the end... I was able to establish a new label under Flux and support all of you.”
“A new label?”
So it wasn’t that CEO Kim Woohwan was leaving and CEO Jake was coming back? Not even a co-CEO situation or anything like that? A new label, all of a sudden?
It was a chain of surprises no one had expected. Baek Yuri asked,
“Then what happens to Flux? We were Flux’s first group, so if we move to a new label... is that really okay? Then Flux won’t have any artists left.”
“Well...”
CEO Jake scratched his cheek, looking a little baffled himself.
“Actually, I hear FLu is going to start recruiting participants again soon. A female version this time.”
“Huh?”
“...What?”
“Already? We haven’t even debuted yet.”
“It’s not even been a month since the broadcast ended...”
It would not be strange for a successful program to continue on in seasonal form. But the timing was far too fast.
If they started recruiting now and preparing immediately, the earliest they could launch would be around the middle of next year, so FLu would probably argue that it wasn’t really that fast. Even so, it still felt wrong to leave Jjokbit to gather dust and start preparing a new season already...
Complaints broke out from all around them. Neoul rolled his eyes, then copied the others and put on an expression of disbelief.
CEO Jake said,
“If anything, this may be a good thing. Flux will be busy preparing to welcome a new girl group, so they won’t be able to interfere with us.”
It was a relief that no one would be meddling with them or picking fights over every little thing.
Because of the promise he had made with Gal Neoul, CEO Kim Woohwan couldn’t simply order the Jjokbit members and staff around.
But he would still burst in unannounced, watch the production process and finished work as if supervising them, and occasionally leave with a few dissatisfied remarks.
Even if they had not said it out loud because they were too busy to keep up with the work, the members and staff had slowly been feeling the strain.
As Ha On-ha looked around the narrow but clean interior of the office building, he said,
“This is a lot different from the last time we came here.”
“We hired a cleaning service to take care of it.”
“Ohhh~”
Just not having that eerie, ghost-ridden atmosphere, the stale dust, and the giant spiders strung up all over the place made Ha On-ha look noticeably brighter.
“Have you decided on a label name?”
“Yes. Our label name is Outdo. It means ‘to surpass.’”
Ooh.
“That’s an ambitious name.”
Neoul agreed with Ha On-ha. It sounded like a name filled with the strong resolve to rise above the competition. He did briefly wonder why their group name had been written in Korean while the company name was in English.
But then CEO Jake said something unexpected.
“It doesn’t mean we want you to outdo the other competitors.”
“Huh? Then...”
“It’s a name that holds the hope that our company will surpass the others.”
...Wasn’t that the same thing?
An artist had to succeed for the company to make money and grow alongside them. If the company wanted to outdo other companies, then the artist had to come first, make a name for themselves, and show outstanding results.
But the members’ questions vanished as soon as the explanation that followed came out.
“We’ll be taking a different path from companies that pursue only money. Though we’re still humble for now... we want to build a good company that truly supports and cares for artists, and that also understands fans’ needs and provides products and services. A company that always does its best and shows the best it has to offer.”
“....”
“This is only my own resolve, so don’t feel pressured. I want all of you to pursue your dreams by doing everything you’ve wanted to do, with joy.”
CEO Jake promised that as long as the members were bound by their contracts, he would support them with everything he had.
* * *