A New Manager Has Arrived
The moment the break started, Rembrary pulled Jungseo off into a corner and asked, "Well? How was it?"
His questioning eyes practically sparkled with sound effects.
Jungseo avoided that expectant gaze. Telling him he'd sounded incredibly abrasive felt wrong — this was his benefactor, after all, and the thought left a bitter taste. But lying outright would only drag Rembrary's reputation down even further. He was thoroughly stuck.
"Hm? How was it? Did I seem gentle enough?"
Rembrary asked again, staring at him with uncomfortable intensity. Jungseo hesitated for a long moment before finally choosing his words as diplomatically as he could.
"The words themselves weren't bad."
"The words themselves?"
"But to the person hearing them... they're easy to misunderstand."
"Misunderstand?"
Rembrary's eyes went wide, as if he hadn't the faintest idea what that meant. Jungseo fidgeted with his chin, at a loss.
"The nuance was a little... off."
"Off how?"
"It kind of sounded like sarcasm."
Rembrary froze. What Jungseo meant — in other words, was that the acting coach had taken his words as mockery? No matter how honestly he spoke, what if the other side chose to hear it as an insult? This was not a problem Rembrary could fix by being careful.
Jungseo spoke with difficulty, watching Rembrary's face. "Honestly, I think it's best you just do what you've always done."
"But Sunwoo Sil said my image is terrible. Even though Oh Jung-shin picked the fight and we fought, somehow I'm the one who loses out."
Jungseo gave a wry smile. "That's kind of a special case. Even Ju Il-hee, the nation's angel, would get torn apart if she fought with Oh Jung-shin."
"Heh."
Rembrary let out a breath, genuinely astounded. "So you're telling me image management won't solve it either? And there's no way to vent this frustration of mine?"
"In this industry, there's only one answer."
"Which is?"
"Get big."
"!"
"Then you'll have more fans, and they'll shield you from the attacks from Oh Jung-shin's."
Rembrary accepted Jungseo's advice, and from then on kept quiet and did exactly as he was told during acting practice. The acting coach, still fuming about the humiliation Rembrary had dealt him earlier, kept picking at him — but when Rembrary simply shrugged off every jab with an unbothered air, the man eventually wore himself out and gave up. Not that he stopped nursing a grudge, silently vowing to catch Rembrary the next time he screwed up. But Rembrary, for his part, did nothing out of the ordinary until two in the afternoon, when Jong-woo came by.
"Jungseo. Yeon-woo. Album meeting. Let's go."
More people crowded into the meeting than before. Is there really that much left to discuss? Rembrary wondered — but the agenda had changed considerably.
Whether to swap the title track for the newly submitted song, how long the promotional period would run, whether the lyrics were safe given reports that the review board was cracking down, choreography, a designer and photographer for the album jacket, promotional strategy, the music video director, the stylists... new items kept springing up without end.
But most of the meeting's conclusions amounted to "reach out and see," and only a handful of things were actually decided.
"So the title track stays as originally planned, and the new song becomes a B-side — and this time we'll keep promoting through the B-side. Yeon-woo, you focus on the title track first, then run the B-side promotions and your solo track at the same time."
"Won't the schedule get too tight? Yeon-woo's still a long way from being eliminated on Sing Survival, and Dear God should be going into filming around then too."
"You row the boat when the water comes in. Better to grind hard now than take it easy this time around and stay obscure for life."
"Understood."
"Recording... let's see. The fifth round of the competition is the Monday after next, right?"
"Yes."
"There's a week of downtime between the fifth round and the results announcement, isn't there? We'll record all three songs then. Book the studio."
"Yes."
CEO Im addressed the members one last time. "This concept leans hard into a mature image, so hit the gym and get your bodies in shape."
The next day, Jong-woo pulled Rembrary aside and gave him the address of a cafe set up for the staff and cast of Dear God to join.
"They post the practice scripts there, so you can just print them out and read them. Wait — do we have a printer at the dorm?"
"What is it that you ask?"
"Guess not. Fine, I'll print copies every time we head out. You know how to join a cafe?"
"First explain to me where this cafe is located."
"Okay, so he doesn't. Jungseo, teach him how cafe sign-ups work, would you?"
Jong-woo studied Rembrary's bewildered face, then hammered his point home one more time. "Script reading starts Tuesday of next week, so be asleep by nine sharp every night — keep your skin in good condition. They might film the table read and release it."
"Then how am I to practice my lines?"
"You barely have any lines."
"!"
"Still, study everyone else's parts in advance. You're a supporting role, but a heavy one — you might end up seated in the first row."
Up until yesterday, Rembrary's schedule had been fairly monotonous. A competition theme would drop, a week of practice, the round itself, a week of rest, then the results and the next theme — he'd done choreography and vocal training, practiced the new songs, even taken acting lessons, but it had all happened inside the agency office, so it never felt like much of a schedule.
Now, suddenly, there was far too much to do, and Rembrary grew flustered. The other members, by contrast, looked positively thrilled.
That very evening, an exhaustingly packed routine began.
The members who used to scatter to their own corners the moment they got home now gathered the instant they walked in to practice the new songs, and the next day they trained with a vocal coach at the agency. Every few hours, Jong-woo brought in strange, foul-tasting beverages that were supposedly good for the throat.
"This time, we really have to make it."
"If we can't blow up even with everything going our way, the antis will be right — we're a nuclear submarine."
"Yeah. People will say we didn't fail from bad luck — we just never had star quality to begin with."
Even Taein and Cathy, who hated seeing Rembrary shine through song, pitched in to help when he practiced the title track. The shared tension — we have to pool everything we've got and make this album a success — seemed to press their resentment of Rembrary flat beneath it.
Then Sunday came around.
As they had for the past several days, the members sat together practicing, and Rembrary was semi-forcibly roped into it. Partway through, Jong-woo called Jungseo's phone.
"Hello?"
Jungseo stopped mid-verse to pick up. They were all packed shoulder to shoulder, so Jong-woo's voice rang out loud and clear over the line.
"Hey, Jungseo. It's me. Any chance I can swing by the dorm right now?"
"When did you say you were coming, hyung? Just come. What's up?"
"Well... it's just that I'm not coming alone this time."
"Who's with you?"
At Jong-woo's words, the members who had been idly half-paying attention all turned to stare at Jungseo. Bringing someone over? Not once had Jong-woo ever brought a guest to the dorm on a holiday.
"Uh — the new manager! Your new road manager!"
Everyone jolted at the completely unexpected announcement.
"That's fine, right?"
When Jungseo didn't answer right away, Jong-woo pressed the question. But it was really just a formality — the call was closer to a notice: I'm coming now, so get ready. Which was, in fact, exactly why he'd called.
"Yeah. Sure."
"We'll be there in... about thirty minutes."
"Got it, hyung."
The moment Jungseo hung up, the room exploded.
"A new manager? If it's a road manager, they'll be traveling with us from now on!"
"Woman or man, you think?"
"She's a woman, isn't she? That's why he called ahead — so we'd put some clothes on?"
"Nah, it's a guy. I heard the CEO talking before — he said the assigned road manager would be the same sex as us no matter what. So fans don't get any ideas."
The mood turned rowdy in an instant, and Rembrary found his own spirits lifting along with it. A manager would presumably be someone like Jong-woo. Honestly, he couldn't have cared less who showed up — but with the members building up this much anticipation, a little of it rubbed off on him.
Besides, when he thought about it, the new road manager would presumably be spending the most time with Rembrary. On every Sing Survival competition day, Jong-woo had struggled to manage things alone, since Cathy and Rembrary used separate waiting rooms and performed in completely different order slots.
"Let's clean."
After a good stretch of wild speculation, Jungseo was the first to come to his senses, rising to his feet and thumping the shoulders of the giddily chattering members.
What followed was an impromptu deep-cleaning session. They picked up the trash in plain sight, and the cluttered sprawl of daily belongings found their way back to their proper places. Since Rembrary didn't know where anything belonged, he was assigned vacuum duty, dragging the strange machine that went whiiiirrr all around the house the entire time.
And just as the cleaning was wrapping up — as if someone had timed it perfectly — the doorbell rang.
"Ah, I should've changed my clothes!" Hye-gyeol lamented too late — there was no time for that now. Everyone just hastily smoothed themselves into some semblance of presentability, and Jungseo went to open the door personally. Jong-woo had a key of his own, but the fact that he'd bothered to ring the bell clearly meant he wanted them to open it themselves.
"Sorry to keep you waiting."
"No, it's fine."
Jungseo opened the door and quickly stepped back, and Jong-woo came in first, looking remarkably pleased with himself — evidently quite taken with the new manager.
Then the moment an unfamiliar face followed him through the open door, the room went dead silent. Not a single person said a word. Into that stillness, Jong-woo let out a hearty laugh.
"Handsome, right?"
The members stood there dazed, then snapped out of it as if waking from hypnosis.
"Whoa."
The exclamation came out of all of them at once — because the man who had just walked in as their new road manager was far better looking than most actual celebrities.
Jungseo thought he understood why Jong-woo was grinning. Looks weren't exactly a job requirement for management work. But a strikingly handsome manager was far from a liability. In the manager world, connections were everything — and an exceptional face naturally made expanding your network that much easier.
In fact, the CEO of a certain entertainment company, famous for being better looking than the actors on his own roster, had reportedly collected twenty-two business cards from directors, PDs, writers, reporters, and rival agencies' managers during the single elevator ride from the basement to the third floor of a broadcasting station — back when he was still working as a manager.
But Rembrary wasn't stunned by the new manager's face.
That man...?
It was because the man's face was familiar.
The funeral?
At the funeral hall, there had been a man and a woman standing there in black suits. This was the man of the two.
A coincidence?
Probably. They'd only brushed past each other, their eyes meeting for an instant — they'd never exchanged a single word. Besides, Rembrary had been wearing sunglasses and a mask at the time.
Still, running into someone he'd crossed paths with at a funeral — and then running into him again here — left an uneasy feeling in his gut.