Thread of Fate
Before wrapping up the meeting, Neoul rose from his seat. There was something he wanted to know.
“I’ll be back in a moment. I’m going to the restroom.”
He flicked a look at Baek Namu to come along, then headed for the bathroom for a moment. Fortunately, no one was inside, so they could talk in peace.
“Grim Reaper Baek Namu. May I ask a favor?”
[A favor?]
“Please look into how many teams are overlapping with ours in song choice, and what the other teams’ concepts are.”
Since Baek Namu was invisible to everyone else, Neoul was asking him to spy for them.
Winning by skill was one thing, and staying true to the basics was another, but still, wasn’t it only natural to be curious? There happened to be exactly the right person here, so there was no reason not to ask for help.
[What, you little punk? You don’t know how scary a Grim Reaper is, and now you want to use one as a spy?]
“Is that not allowed?”
[And what do I get?]
“Is there something you want?”
[Something I want? Sure. But can you actually give it to me?]
Baek Namu snorted in contempt. His look said Neoul was no god, just a mermaid on the verge of extinction, so what exactly did he think he could do?
But Neoul answered as though the question itself were foolish.
“Naturally, you should ask only within the range of what I can provide.”
[Huh...?]
“Otherwise it would hardly be a transaction, would it? If not, then it is no matter.”
Besides, Yuri Baek was on Neoul’s team now.
Helping Neoul was essentially the same as helping Yuri Baek, so there was no reason for Baek Namu to refuse.
[Fine. I’ll sweep the place in five minutes flat. But in return!]
Baek Namu raised both hands in surrender.
[On the anniversary of my death, when Yuri Baek and Gi-yeom Baek go to the columbarium, go with them.]
“...!”
[I’ll probably be busy that day, so I won’t be there. And on the way back, buy them each a steaming bowl of soup.]
“....”
Neoul blinked, dazed for a moment by the unexpected request. Then, before the impatient Baek Namu could bark at him to answer already, he hurriedly said, “Don’t worry. I’ll make sure they each have two bowls.”
[Nice.]
Baek Namu grinned and vanished in a flash before Neoul’s eyes.
Neoul looked at the place where he had disappeared.
He remembered that he still had not told him about the Sea Witch’s return, or about the rabbit from fourteen hundred years ago being reborn, or about the rabbit alliance he had formed with Yuri Baek.
If I tell him... he might kill me...?
The situation was that some mermaid from the sea might cut out his precious twin brother’s liver. Baek Namu, who had thus far been an invaluable ally, might suddenly turn into an asura.
More than that, Baek Namu was a Grim Reaper.
For all Neoul knew, he might wrap him up in a binding rope and drag him straight to the underworld to protect his brother’s liver health.
At least until it’s proven whether Teacher Yuri Baek is really the rabbit or not, I’d better keep my mouth shut.
Somehow, a chill ran down his spine.
Neoul did not return to the practice room right away. Instead, he deliberately washed his hands slowly and waited for Baek Namu in the restroom.
[Two teams ended up with the same song. What, were you expecting eight teams to all be unique?]
Baek Namu, who had truly returned in no time at all, relayed the information.
[One team’s doing a traffic-light concept, all bright and colorful, and another seems to be going with a back-to-childhood concept. They’re dancing in colorful suspenders and holding balloons. It was a riot of color, I’m telling you. The rest of the songs are mostly strong concepts.]
“Could you tell me the names of the members of the teams that ended up with the same song....”
[Hey, you crazy mermaid prince! I’m a Grim Reaper! If I go around saying names carelessly, something bad could happen! You trying to get somebody killed or what? Huh?]
Neoul had been about to ask which teams the overlapping songs belonged to by name, but Baek Namu went rigid, so he let the question drop. Yet as he turned away, something felt off.
And yet he’s already said Yuri Baek’s name several times.
His twin brother Yuri Baek was very much alive.
Or maybe he just doesn’t know the participants’ names...
When Neoul looked at him with suspicion, Baek Namu arched a brow.
[What’s with that disrespectful look? You don’t trust your teacher’s words? Wow, that hurts. How much have I helped you up to now!]
“I said nothing.”
[You said it with your eyes, idiot!]
Neoul sheepishly rubbed at the corner of his eye.
Do my thoughts really show that clearly in my gaze?
Won Hasin had complained before about being glared at with the eyes, too. It seemed he simply had no talent for hiding what was on his mind.
In truth, he had no real intention of hiding it from Won Hasin or Baek Namu anyway, nor any particular reason to.
Baek Namu let out a long sigh.
[Mermaid prince. Do you not know why I’ve never called you by name even once?]
“Then what about Yuri Baek...?”
[Ah. Him? He’s family!]
Baek Namu realized why Neoul had been suspicious and explained.
[Long ago, those senior Grim Reapers were always casually calling the names of family members and friends, and they nearly killed off several perfectly innocent people. Sometimes they even did it on purpose to take revenge on their enemies. After that, King Yeomra sealed it so that if two people are bound by the Thread of Fate in life, speaking their name would have no effect.]
He swept his hand through the air, and a dozen or so threads tangled between his ringed fingers appeared.
[See? Humans have these. You sea folks don’t have anything like this, do you?]
Blue, red, yellow, white, black.
Baek Namu clenched his fist and tugged, and the five-colored threads stretched long and followed after him.
“What are they?”
[The Threads of Fate connecting one person to another. Family, lovers, friends, benefactors, enemies. The deeper and more important the bond, the stronger the thread and the darker its color. Anyone tied here won’t die no matter how many times I call their name. Whether it’s someone you love or an enemy you want to kill.]
Neoul stared at the threads in wonder.
[If the thread doesn’t break and can hold firm, then even if people part ways, they’ll meet again someday, whether alive or dead, no matter how far apart they end up.]
Baek Namu waved his hand once more, and the threads vanished without a trace. They had not truly disappeared; they were simply invisible to the eye.
Neoul tried waving his own hands the way Baek Namu had done, but nothing appeared.
He clenched and opened his empty hands.
“Do all humans have threads?”
[Of course. There’s no one in this world who lives entirely alone their whole life. At the very least, everyone brushes against a single thread of fate.]
“Then why do I have none?”
[Because, well, you’re not human, are you?]
Baek Namu shouted a rallying cry, then said he had to go. He left.
Left alone, Neoul waved his hands a few more times before lowering them with disappointment.
Still, he had gotten the information he wanted.
Who would have thought two other teams were overlapping with ours as well?
Worse, the concepts were exactly what Yuri Baek had predicted.
If their team had not given up on the colorful concept, then on the day of the second round, the audience would have heard the same song three times over, each time with a similar concept. It would have felt almost like listening to a round song being passed around.
Neoul returned to the practice room before time could slip away any further.
* * *
Producer Seok O-young gulped down a vitamin drink and wiped his mouth. Dark circles hung beneath his eyes, but his mood was excellent.
The average viewership for episode five had surpassed 11 percent, and the peak had broken 13 percent. It was climbing steeply and smoothly. He had also received reports that subscriptions to the OTT service Fluing were rising sharply day after day.
Fluing’s viewing share had also broken 55 percent, and it had even taken first place on a certain illegal streaming site.
Nice.
At the moment, he was monitoring all eight teams in real time while running rough-edit simulations in his head.
Perhaps because they had already experienced the backlash that came from broadcasting the various conflicts of the first round exactly as they happened, most participants were being careful with their words and keeping themselves in check during preparations for the second round.
Even when opinions didn’t match, they avoided letting it become conflict and instead kept repeating “That’s good” and “That should work,” trying to project a warm, harmonious atmosphere.
But Producer Seok O-young did not care.
Conflict gets boring too if the same pattern keeps repeating.
Whether it was something provocative or anything else, you had to use it in moderation if you didn’t want to wear the audience out. This time, instead, he had scattered the teams apart and cut them off from one another’s information, creating a new kind of tension.
“Producer-nim. Is this really okay?”
“What is?”
“The competition songs. You made them overlap on purpose.”
And not even in neat pairs, either. One song had three teams doing it, while another had no overlap at all.
“There’s still a fairness issue....”
It was a perfectly valid concern, but Seok O-young waved it away.
“You’re bringing that up again? It’s fine. The contestants made the choices.”
Every one of the eight teams had received the same sheet of paper. The same sheet, with the same four competition songs listed on it. Once they got the candidate list, the sharper contestants immediately realized that the songs could overlap.
No one could know what the other teams would choose. The contestants worried, hesitating as they carefully picked their songs.
— What should we do... This song seems like it’ll be the most popular, doesn’t it?
— Hssst. Maybe everyone thought that, so they deliberately went with something else...
Especially the more mid-ranking members there were on a team, the more they fretted over the possibility of overlapping with a team that had high-ranking contestants.
There were plenty who now regretted not just picking a top-ranking team and sticking with them, even if it meant their own presence would be less noticeable.
On the other hand, there were contestants like On-ha Ha, whose skill gave them no reason to overthink.
— Ohhh~ How about this song? Anyway, even if you worry about it, you still can’t figure out what the other teams are doing, right? Wouldn’t it be better to just do what we want?
The members on his team were infected by On-ha Ha’s easygoing mood and thought, Well, if it’s good, it’s good, right? and let themselves relax.
Because of that, the contrast between the teams’ atmospheres was highly entertaining.
I didn’t originally plan for it to go this far, but...
The format he had first put together had been a little softer, fitting the name of a healing survival show.
Wasn’t that why they had done barbecue parties and wandered around places like Jeju’s Olle Trail and the folk village, encouraging the contestants to grow closer?
But watching the sharply rising curve in the ratings, greed began to stir in him as a producer.
Just how far will this climb?
It didn’t seem impossible to hit a career high with this program.
“Pass this along to the contestants.”
Seok O-young handed a memo sheet to the assistant director.
It said that in the second round, all eight teams would be ranked, and the bottom three would be eliminated entirely. The voting method would be revealed on the day of the competition.
After the assistant director left, Seok O-young stared at the ratings goldmine on the screen.
Especially Gal-Neoul.
Whether the concept or the song overlapped or not, he was even delivering a famous line about how they could simply improve their skill and do better by staying true to the basics.
“Wait, but blue nudibranch? Bare-naked? And now a snail? What kind of snail eats jellyfish?”
How does he even know that stuff?
Scratching his head, Seok O-young abruptly had to search the name of some snail on his smartphone.
* * *