The Conditions for Becoming a Kind Idol Leader - Chapter 21
Go Young-in took the iced tea he’d ordered and sat down, deciding that calming the fire in his stomach came before saying a single word.
There was no question why he was here. Cheon Sa-yoon had called him to a café near the agency.
And the moment he arrived, he’d seen Cheon Sa-yoon in a furtive conversation with a stranger.
For a second, he’d nearly had a heart attack. Could that absurd post actually be true? No way.
As all of Cheon Sa-yoon’s many misdeeds before his death flashed through his mind in a brutal, overlapping blur, Young-in found himself thinking every impossible thing imaginable.
...His girlfriend?
No one in their right mind would meet like that in a public place while wearing the title of idol. Still, if it was Sa-yoon, maybe he could... no, that was wrong. Cheon Sa-yoon at least wouldn’t do something like that so openly... of course, he had in the past, but...
Just remembering what he’d seen made Young-in feel like he was about to develop a stress ulcer all over again. That lunatic. If he was going to manage his image so obsessively, he could at least show the same concern for this sort of thing.
Clause 41 | A perfect idol must also pay attention to image management.
He’d been about to absentmindedly chew the straw when the status window finally reprimanded him, so he set the iced tea down. Fine, fine. What a petty status window.
Fortunately—or perhaps disappointingly—the person with Cheon Sa-yoon wasn’t a lover after all.
After introductions, Young-in learned that it was the agency staff member Sa-yoon kept chatting with whenever he had the chance.
Apparently, she was a youngest staffer named Bae So-jin, and she’d only been there for a short while.
What came next was even stranger.
Less than ten minutes after Young-in arrived, another staff member showed up—Ju Dong-yun, who must have found them somehow—and tried to take the bewildered youngest staffer away.
In the middle of it all, Cheon Sa-yoon had calmly tossed out something ridiculous like, “Since we’re all here, why don’t we take a picture together before we go?” and somehow managed to get a four-person photo out of the whole mess.
And right after the photo was taken, Ju Dong-yun had hurriedly apologized and disappeared with the youngest staffer in tow.
"So what was that just now?"
Please tell me this isn’t some full-blown melodramatic love-triangle disaster.
"Who knows."
If you weren’t going to tell me, why did you call me here, you bastard?
Cheon Sa-yoon was still smiling brightly.
Come to think of it, he was the type whose expression was weirdly hard to read. What was the point of smiling like that? How was anyone supposed to know whether it was the smile of someone about to ruin a person or an actual smile?
"So Bae So-jin is Ju Dong-yun’s direct subordinate, apparently."
"Why, did you figure out why Ju Dong-yun was doing that?"
"The other way around. She said she’d been caught by a weakness, so I comforted her a bit. She apologized and told me to stay as far away from it as possible."
Shit. What kind of nonsense was that? What the hell kind of weakness could she possibly have?
No, wait. The way he’d brought it up so abruptly—being “caught by a weakness” and all—meant the youngest staffer must have something to hide, or have done something she shouldn’t have.
"Did she tell you what weakness it was?"
"She said she wasn’t ready to talk about it yet. I thought I’d understand if I kept meeting her a little longer, but what a shame."
"Ha ha...."
Jesus, was Cheon Sa-yoon insane? Meeting? What meeting? You future scandal machine. Was the photo he said he’d taken with someone else also with that staffer? It sure sounded like it.
"By any chance, did you two meet alone last time?"
At Young-in’s careful question, Cheon Sa-yoon smiled sweetly. His face looked like he was viewing something pathetic.
"You keep saying such dim-witted things."
It seemed petty, snide remarks were his special talent. Cheon Sa-yoon continued slowly, as if he were explaining something to someone who had failed to understand him.
"If that were the plan, I wouldn’t have chosen a café near the agency in the first place. Someone else was with us then, too. Today, you’re standing in for the staff member."
That bastard. So the reason he’d gotten the message in the first place was that someone had contacted him before he had a chance to call just anyone. Young-in had simply been a lucky accident.
If there were one celebrity and several people who looked like staff standing together, anyone would assume they were there for a private schedule or some similar matter. And it was near the agency, so industry people probably came and went all the time.
Shit. Should he be relieved that they hadn’t been meeting alone, or angry that he’d been used as a prop? He couldn’t even decide.
Calm down first... Nothing that I was afraid of actually happened.
"So when you said to stay away, you meant Ju Dong-yun."
"Probably. You saw him, didn’t you? The guy who doesn’t know his place and clings on like a leech, making himself a nuisance."
"Well, yes...."
He really was annoying. Though, honestly, Sa-yoon had been the one to provoke him in the first place. Still, was that enough to warrant being careful?
Clause 18 | A perfect idol does not speak or act carelessly anywhere.
"Mm."
"Looking at what he does, he’s not even worth the trouble of warning, but caution isn’t only about physical or bodily harm, is it?"
That includes mental damage too, you know— Cheon Sa-yoon stretched out the end of the sentence on purpose, his face as calm as ever. So that was how easily those words came out of him.
"The only reason I bothered sharing this with you at all was as payment for what happened last time. Of course, I didn’t ask you to do it, and even if you hadn’t, I would’ve handled it myself."
Payment? What payment... Ah, wait.
The only thing Cheon Sa-yoon could have been “paying” for recently was the alibi Young-in had made for him after the second anniversary live, when Sa-yoon had come home late without a word.
Payment, my ass. It hadn’t even been for Sa-yoon in the first place. It had just been to prevent a scandal.
He’d thought Sa-yoon didn’t know because he’d never mentioned it, but apparently he’d known after all. So that was why, ever since then, Sa-yoon had been unusually careful and told him to watch himself.
But that last part was completely unnecessary, wasn’t it? If Young-in thought about the future version of him, it certainly hadn’t looked like the kind of thing that would be cleaned up neatly.
"Now we’re even, so from here on out, let’s just keep our distance on our own. All right?"
"I never thought of it as a debt, but... fine."
Do whatever you want. At this point, even if he heard it, he couldn’t pin down what to do with it.
He had a bad feeling he’d forget all of this again anyway. Surely it wouldn’t blow up only after he’d forgotten it, would it?
"Hmmm."
Cheon Sa-yoon lightly stroked his chin, as if weighing something. What kind of bullshit was he about to say now to flip Young-in’s mood upside down?
"Why...?"
"...."
Even at Young-in’s question, Cheon Sa-yoon stayed quiet, caught in thought instead. Anyone, seriously anyone, should come tear open that head of his and see what was inside. What the hell did that bastard think about all day?
"Just because."
At last, the usually quiet Cheon Sa-yoon opened his mouth. He was staring straight at Young-in.
"I was curious how long you’d keep doing that."
It was a bafflingly abrupt thing to say. Before Young-in could even ask what he meant, Cheon Sa-yoon wore a smile full of hidden intent, picked up his own cup, and stood.
Hey, damn it. I haven’t finished mine yet, you punk.
Young-in got up after him in a daze, collecting his things first. While he was still scrambling, Cheon Sa-yoon was already tapping at his phone and walking toward the counter.
Watching him politely thank the café staff and tell them the drink was delicious, Young-in had to admit the bastard really was something else.
With a soft jingle of the bell, Cheon Sa-yoon stepped outside. ...Huh? Wait, seriously? He was leaving by himself? Young-in quickly returned the empty tray and hurried after him.
We’ll end up with rumors that the members are fighting if we go out separately!
As he followed after him, Young-in’s phone vibrated with a notification. He was too rattled to check it properly at first, but the preview already showed that Cheon Sa-yoon had uploaded the photo they’d just taken to social media.
Later, when Young-in checked social media, he shuddered. So he’d even calculated for people to complain that he was out relaxing when he was clearly busy. With a guy like this, how had he managed to drag the group into every scandal in the previous timeline? Was this bastard doing all of it on purpose?
By then, there was no way to ask the person involved and get a trustworthy answer, so the truth remained buried.
The teaser had appeared before anyone realized it, and the fans rushed into NewTube the moment the official account uploaded it, clicking the video open at once.
ZER01 (Zero One) – BLUE WAVE Official Teaser
─Swoooosh
Rather than running away
Just keep waving
Sunlight from above, the camera sweeping down to the earth, and a background that evoked an American high school. In between, the members flickered past, each in a different space and doing something different.
Young-in, wearing steel-rimmed glasses, let out a sigh and opened a long locker door. At the same time, a gust of wind rushed through, and the scenery inside the school shifted back into the ocean. The glasses on Young-in’s face had already become tinted sunglasses, and even his outfit had changed.
Don’t hesitate
Let’s ride the wind together
Do a wave
Don’t be afraid
Let’s ride the current together
Do a wave
The screen brightened again little by little. The members, dressed in the outfits from the group concept photos, danced together beneath the warm sunlight over the ocean and the brilliant blue sky. It was a choreography that matched the chorus—light on its feet, full of crisp rhythmic accents, with sharp breaks in the beat.
When the chorus ended and the hook arrived, the music and the sound of the waves suddenly cut off, and the background shifted from the sea back to the school.
[...]
Starting with the glasses that had fallen to the floor, the camera slowly rose upward and closed in on Young-in’s face as he blinked in surprise, drenched by seawater.
Then white text appeared over the image, and the video ended.
SUMMER BLUE
202X. 07. 05.
The blue, refreshing mood of the teaser was enough to make his ears ring. The instant the official account posted it, the fans’ reactions exploded all over the place.
"Holy shit, our boys’ teaser, holy shit, holy shit—Double D finally came to its senses. This album is definitely, absolutely refreshing, damn!!!!! I love it so much, T_T"
At this point, he wondered if the real problem was him, for still praying for refreshing concepts even at his age. He couldn’t give them up.
"Why are you calling me out?"
"That mass provocation is insane, lol."
The reaction wasn’t bad. There were all kinds of opinions, but in the end, a large portion of the fandom was welcoming Zero One’s new concept.
They were welcoming it, yes—but if the quality dipped even a little below the last album, it would be over.
Before he’d died, Young-in had experienced this sort of thing every time the group came under fire. The first sign was always the same: the once-busy fan timeline would suddenly fill with a thick, suffocating stillness.
And when it failed, they would be condemned twice as harshly as anyone else.
Should’ve just kept doing what they were doing. At least then they’d have made it halfway.
Zero One’s musical range isn’t that broad after all. So they weren’t good at everything.
There wasn’t some special reason they stuck to the same genre all this time.
The criticism was already forming vividly in his mind.
Shit... practice was the only way to survive. He had to make sure this first step landed well, no matter what. New things always came with that much risk, after all.