Overcame It All with Fan Devotion
A kiss? On the mouth?
Rembrary stared at the door.
Sunwoo Sil's manager, startled on her way out, was still standing frozen in place. Through the half-open door, he could see Jong-woo tearing at his own hair.
"Say that again. Uh. Uh... so. Uh... Hey! Hey! Hey! It wasn't Yeon-woo who was the problem, it was YOU! You were the X-Man all along!"
Rembrary's eyes went round as saucers.
Sunwoo Sil, twisting the cap off his water bottle, chuckled knowingly. "Kid's in trouble. Looks like your member got caught dating."
He sounded thoroughly entertained.
"This is gonna blow up, isn't it? Your member's partner — isn't it Yuli?"
"You know her?"
"She's been topping the girl-group charts for two years now. Of course I know her."
The emperor penguin?
Rembrary thought back to Yuli, the partner Cathy had been so awkwardly shuffling his limbs alongside.
Sunwoo Sil took a sip of water and spoke casually, as if it were nothing. "Girl groups that got looked down on because of long-distance schedules are going to be scrambling to climb up now."
"Long-distance?"
"Yuli's group. Long Distance. Everyone just calls them LongDi."
Rembrary already knew that LongDi was short for Yuli O's group, Long Distance — he'd seen the roster Jong-woo had handed him before Sing Survival. He nodded.
"Ah, I see."
Then he recalled what Sunwoo Sil had said earlier and asked, "But why would there be such an uproar over getting caught dating? Isn't dating a good thing?"
Dating was a good thing, was it not?
Dating only became bad when it turned into an affair, cheating, or two-timing. An ordinary, honest relationship shouldn't warrant this kind of chaos.
"Are you asking me that in earnest?"
Sunwoo Sil only looked flabbergasted by the question. Then he clicked his tongue and warned, "If you're one of those people who believes idol dating is no big deal, then you debuted way too early."
"?"
"You're the type who hears 'idols are people too, what's wrong with dating?' and actually buys it. Don't. The ones saying that are all outsiders."
"Outsiders?"
"Sure, idols are people, so they can date. They can date — but the moment a relationship gets exposed, you can see the revenue dropping from a mile away."
"Ah."
"Public opinion on idol dating is shifting, sure. But the difference in earnings between dating and not dating is still huge. And you can't exactly grab fans who walk away because they hate the dating by the collar and force them to keep stanning, can you?"
"Ah... I see."
So that's why Jong-woo freaked out and snapped at me when I approached that actress at Sunwoo Sil's agency.
At the time, Rembrary had wondered why a simple handshake caused such an uproar. Now he understood.
Sunwoo Sil gave a wry smile and added a warning. "But seriously, be careful. LongDi's fans might tear into not just Cathy but your whole group."
Just then, Jong-woo finished his phone call, came back in, and bowed his head to Sunwoo Sil. "I'm so sorry to ask this, Sunwoo Sil, but... could you possibly take our Yeon-woo back to the dorm after practice ends today?"
When Sunwoo Sil readily agreed, Jong-woo thanked him over and over, then hurried out of the practice room.
Jong-woo drove straight to the building that housed Long Distance's agency.
Long Distance's manager, standing at the entrance fuming, took one look at Jong-woo and exploded. "Is THIS how you manage your kids?!"
The sheer audacity of starting with a shout carried an unspoken assumption: that all of this was entirely Jong-woo's fault.
Jong-woo bristled at being yelled at the moment he stepped out of the car. The two of them had dated because they liked each other — that was on them.
In situations like this, wasn't the side who'd been supervising the kids the one responsible? His own kids had caused the incident while under his watch, and this manager was coming out swinging before anything else?
But that was only what he thought.
Jong-woo bowed and scraped without condition. "I'm so sorry. I'm sure there were... circumstances."
"Circumstances? Circumstances?! They got caught kissing in broad daylight!"
"!"
"It's not even a photo, it's video! VIDEO! And it was filmed by a broadcast station camera, no less!"
After apologizing repeatedly to Yuli O's shrieking manager, Jong-woo finally managed to get up to the third floor, where Cathy was.
Cathy had been crouching miserably on a long bench, but he sprang up the moment Jong-woo appeared.
"Hyung!"
Jong-woo suppressed the urge to smack the back of Cathy's head and asked, "What happened? Tell me again, in detail."
He'd heard it once over the phone, but Cathy had been sobbing so hard through the call that nothing had come through properly.
Cathy sniffled his way through the story. "We've been practicing together, and me and Yuli kind of started... having a thing..."
"You had a thing going and your mouths met first?!"
"No — we were maybe-dating, sort-of-dating, it got to that point!"
"And you call that a thing?"
"...We barely kissed. Just barely. And it got caught on camera."
"Whose camera? Yours?"
"No. Yuli's."
Jong-woo pounded his own chest with his fists.
Yeon-woo was already being tortured by Oh Jung-shin's fans over one errand he'd run. He could not let Cathy be torn apart by Yuli O's fans on top of that.
"What do I do, hyung?"
Cathy asked with a face drained of all color. He was ambitious about his career in the industry, and this situation clearly terrified him.
And yet he still went and caused this mess? Jong-woo shoved the words back down his throat.
Now was not the time to grill the kid.
"Stay here. And no texting Yuli either — none!"
Having said his piece firmly, Jong-woo went to find Yuli O's camera operator.
That wasn't hard — Yuli O's manager and Long Distance's team leader were already out there, working him over.
"Just think it over once more, will you, Yeon-gang?"
"What exactly do you gain from airing that footage, Yeon-gang? Hmm?"
"Yeon-gang, you said you're a fan of the other Long Distance members, right? If this blows up, it won't just hurt Yuli — every single member takes damage."
"Wild Animal is finally taking off too. Because of one person — you, Yeon-gang — they could all crash back down."
The appeals were mostly emotional ones.
Jong-woo hastily joined the pile and pleaded with the cameraman to delete just that one clip. "You can keep the flirting — just please, please cut that one part. I'm begging you."
Watching this, Yuli O's team leader finally played her last card. "If you delete only the kiss scene, we will compensate you accordingly."
She was offering money.
But the cameraman had a professional ethic that chose the worst possible moments to surface. "I understand your situation. But this is my job. My livelihood. I'm just doing my work — I can't kneecap my own career out of sympathy."
In the end, the cameraman refused them all — Jong-woo's pleas and Yuli O's team leader's offer alike.
By the time CEO Im heard the news, he was so furious the veins stood out on his neck. "Are you in your right mind?!"
Jong-woo bowed his head deep. "I'm sorry."
"Sorry doesn't fix this! How do you manage these kids that they're flirting on camera — okay, fine, they're not rookies anymore, whatever — but how does a kid start canoodling in front of a camera under your watch?!"
"Cathy says it wasn't out in the open, it was on a stairwell..."
"Is that a defense? Meeting on a stairwell makes it a secret tryst, so it's not dating?"
CEO Im roared. Jong-woo bowed his head even deeper. He felt just as wronged as before, but he couldn't let it show — after all, when he'd first heard Cathy's explanation, he'd been mad enough to scream himself.
CEO Im grumbled and fumed, then, unable to beat back the anger, went hunting for his sealed pack of cigarettes. "Five members. FIVE. And two of them keep taking turns causing disasters!"
Cigarette between his lips, he grumbled on — but mercifully, before lighting it, he calmed himself and let out a long breath. "Then again... it's not like any of this happened because of you. What could you have done? It's not your fault."
Reason returning, CEO Im slipped the cigarette back into the pack and peeled a fresh seal sticker over the top. "For now... we need one more manager. Sing Survival will run at least a few months even on the short end, and Yeon-woo and Cathy are both walking liabilities. I can't just leave the other three kids to fend for themselves either."
"Yes, sir."
That evening, Jong-woo gathered the members, explained the whole affair, and urged them all to be far more careful with their behavior going forward.
"Jungseo. You keep the kids in line for me, alright?"
"Of course."
"Jungseo — honestly, having you here is the only reason I can breathe."
Jong-woo sighed as he looked at Jungseo, sitting there composed as ever. Then he told Cathy and Rembrary to sleep early since tomorrow was the competition day, and headed home.
But even after Jong-woo left, the air inside the dorm stayed ice-cold.
Cathy had his thumb nail between his teeth, glued to his phone the entire time.
"You absolute idiot. You're STILL mooning over her at a time like this?"
Taein, unable to watch any longer, snatched the phone away with a curse — and immediately the two of them flew at each other, fists flying.
"Why would Yuli date THAT guy, of all people?"
Hye-gyeol, a Yuli fan caught in the middle of all this, was twice as heartbroken and stomped around grumbling, while Jungseo watched the brawl between Cathy and Taein and issued one cold instruction. "Both of you — do NOT touch the face."
The competition day arrived with the Cathy incident nowhere near resolved.
Unlike the last competition, every single member wore a sulky scowl, still raw from yesterday's fallout.
But on Jong-woo's orders, Taein, Jungseo, and Hye-gyeol had no choice but to make cheer cards and lunchboxes for Rembrary and Cathy, for the sake of filming a cheering segment.
The setup was this: the three of them would later show up for a 'surprise' visit carrying all of it, and Cathy and Rembrary would receive it with delight. That was the script.
"Alright, come on, chop chop."
Herding Cathy and Rembrary along, Jong-woo gave the remaining three his instructions. "The CEO himself is looking after you guys today, so mind your manners. Got it?"
"Hyung, is there really nobody else? Anyone but the CEO? That's so much pressure."
"No one. But there'll be one more person soon."
"A new manager?"
"Who is it?"
"I don't know yet."
Leaving the barrage of questions behind him, Rembrary followed Jong-woo into the car.
At the studio where the competition would be held, everything followed the familiar routine — the only difference being that this time, he'd be sharing the waiting room with Sunwoo Sil, just the two of them.
Jong-woo, insisting that Cathy and Yuli O could not be left alone together under any circumstances, had gone off to that waiting room instead.
Rembrary ate the lunchbox Sunwoo Sil's manager had bought for him, chatted with Sunwoo Sil, and got some practice in.
"Good. At this rate, first place is ours again."
Sunwoo Sil looked pleased.
But Rembrary was a little worried about Cathy.
Is he not going to be sick again this time?
The evening the kiss footage was taken, Cathy had brawled with Taein, fists flying.
But afterward, he had spent hours pacing the living room, then repeatedly throwing up in the bathroom.
They said his mind was thin as paper. Just imagining what was to come seemed to be more than he could bear.
Would it be better to use Divine Power to steady his mind again this time?
Rembrary glanced at the door several times, agonizing over it, before finally stepping out of the waiting room under the pretext of a bathroom trip.
"Remember — once you're on that stage, everyone is your enemy and your rival. Nothing else."
Sunwoo Sil murmured this as if he knew full well Rembrary wasn't headed to any bathroom, but didn't bother stopping him.
However, it was Jong-woo who turned Rembrary away when he arrived.
"Better to just head back for now. The mood in there is murderous."
In the end, Rembrary returned to his room without managing to see Cathy at all.
Contrary to his fears, though, Cathy got through the live stage without a single mistake.
"You two look like an actual couple."
That was how far the MC went with it.
Rembrary breathed a sigh of relief — but watching the stage on the waiting room TV, Sunwoo Sil scoffed. "Dropping bait while smiling, that one."
"Bait?"
"The MC."
"?"
"When this airs, viewers are going to watch the flirting footage and the competition stage back to back, back-to-back. What that MC just said was kindling — thrown on the fire so viewers burn hotter when that time comes."
Rembrary clicked his tongue inwardly.
It was remarkable, the MC tossing out such calculated words with such a kindly face — and equally remarkable how instantly Sunwoo Sil saw through it.
Meanwhile, their turn came around.
"Please head out and stand by."
After a staff member announced their turn and left, Rembrary and Sunwoo Sil walked toward the back of the stage. As they approached, the booming hum of an enormous microphone grew deafeningly loud.
While another staff member came over to check the mic, Rembrary ran through one last quiet rehearsal with Sunwoo Sil.
Unlike before, Jong-woo still hadn't shown up.
Is he still keeping watch over Cathy?
Right before they went on stage, Rembrary glanced back over his shoulder — pointlessly, really.
Jong-woo was still nowhere to be seen.
Around that time, Jong-woo was reading a text message from CEO Im.
The question came attached with a link to an interview article.
The headline read: 'He Overcame Illness with Fan Devotion.'
When Jong-woo opened the article, this was what was written beneath the title: