Crisis Into Opportunity
Director Choi Jeong-eun couldn’t hide her excitement and shouted, “No... Why is this good? Why the hell is it good? It’s just a drum-and-bass vocal track, isn’t it? So why... why is it sticking to my ears like this?”
The Choi Jeong-eun I knew wasn’t the type to fake things.
Which meant that the way she was now flailing around like she’d been struck by lightning...
...was proof that she really liked it.
Youth Travel, the song Ga-eul had written and composed, and To.Any had sung.
At that moment, the corners of my mouth lifted.
“Seems like the song wasn’t bad after all, Director.”
Choi Jeong-eun, still making a scene, snapped her head toward me.
“...Sil-jjang-nim.”
“Yes?”
“Be honest with me. You’ve heard To.Any perform Youth Travel before, haven’t you?”
I hadn’t.
This was the first time I’d heard it too.
But Choi Jeong-eun didn’t look like she had any intention of believing me.
“I knew it! It was weird! You suddenly came looking for some no-name B-side instead of the title track, and I was wondering what the hell was going on! You were subtly dropping bait for me with Youth Travel, weren’t you? Right?”
She spilled it all out in one breath, then reached her conclusion just as fast.
It felt less like a conversation and more like watching a one-woman play.
I shrugged and answered, “Think whatever you like.”
“Ugh, you’re annoyingly slippery, seriously! So...”
Choi Jeong-eun cut herself off for a beat, and her eyes narrowed.
“What exactly are you trying to get out of me with all this carefully laid bait?”
Something I wanted to get out of her.
There was something, all right.
But was this the right moment to haul in the line?
I looked at Director Choi in silence for a moment.
Timing, huh?
Judging by that desperate expression, the fish had taken the bait cleanly.
I yanked up on the rod with everything I had.
“A double title track.”
“?”
“If not that, then I want to push Youth Travel as a sub-title track. What do you think, Director?”
Choi Jeong-eun’s mouth fell open.
“...Are you out of your mind? You want to change the album structure for a group that’s two months away from debut?”
“Yes.”
“Hey. Why are you doing this to me, Sil-jjang-nim?”
“Because the song is good.”
“That’s not the problem! If we change the album structure now, we’d have to change the entire concept too. How are we supposed to pull that off in two months?”
Her words said no, but Director Choi’s face was shaking like an earthquake had struck.
She was already fish in the net, and I knew it, so I put a little more strength into the line.
“Shouldn’t we try anyway?”
“No, because under the circumstances, that’s...”
“To.Any’s situation is pretty bad right now, isn’t it?”
“!”
“You saw the articles calling them a sponsor girl group because of Director Kim Jang-hun, right?”
I lowered my voice.
I didn’t want the To.Any girls in the recording room to hear.
“An idol group lives and dies by its image, and those kinds of articles are already circulating. Can a girl group like that really succeed?”
Director Choi chewed on her lip, hesitating.
“If we make Youth Travel a double title track, does that at least raise the odds of success?”
“Wouldn’t it be insurance?”
“...”
“We’re already cornered, so we should do everything we can. And Youth Travel is too good a song to leave alone.”
I dipped my head slightly.
When our eyes met, Director Choi’s gaze flickered wildly.
“If there’s a way for us to go through the pain now and still come out with a better result later... shouldn’t we do it?”
Choi Jeong-eun squeezed her eyes shut.
In that instant, I knew it.
“Haa... damn it.”
We’d crossed the ninety-mile mark.
“Looks like I’m pulling another all-nighter... It’s already been a month since I last got home.”
The summit was starting to come into view.
The summit called number one on the music charts.
***
Director Choi let out a long, heavy sigh.
“Fine. Let’s say we go with a double title track. But, Head Director, Representative approval still hasn’t come through, has it?”
“No.”
“...What?”
“We’re going to get it now.”
Choi Jeong-eun scowled.
“Then how am I supposed to move forward on my own when even the higher-ups haven’t signed off yet?”
“Your reaction mattered more.”
“Why does my reaction matter more?”
“Because you’re the one actually on the ground.”
Choi Jeong-eun pressed her lips into a straight line.
She blinked in that expression, and for some reason she looked like a tadpole that had just hatched from an egg.
Before I knew it, I let out a snort of laughter.
“If the director’s saying the song is good, then now I have to go make the case upstairs.”
Choi Jeong-eun glanced away and muttered, “I see now. You’re not just annoying. You’re a fox...”
It wasn’t an insult, so I let it go.
Meanwhile, the To.Any girls inside the recording booth slowly poked their heads out.
“...Can we go out now?”
I waved them over.
The girls still didn’t seem to understand what had happened, and they looked at me with anxious faces.
I dragged out my words a little.
“Well...”
The girls’ shoulders bounced nervously.
...That reaction was kind of fun.
Holding back the grin trying to rise to my face, I said, “Thanks for singing it so well...”
“...”
“Youth Travel. If it goes well, I think we can push it as a double title track.”
“!”
The To.Any girls stared at me, mouths agape in shock.
The one most stunned, as expected, was Ga-eul, who had written the song.
Ga-eul blinked at me blankly, her mouth still hanging open like something had broken inside her.
Nova, standing beside her, asked the question in her place.
“W-What... what does that mean, Sil-jjang-nim?”
“Exactly what I said. The song Youth Travel is good enough that I want to push it as a double title track.”
“...”
“Director Choi’s reaction after hearing it live was positive too... The higher-ups still need to approve it, but if you keep showing that kind of live performance, I think we can push it through without much trouble.”
By the time I finished explaining, the frozen Ga-eul had come back to life.
“Ah...”
She couldn’t find words, only a soft, stunned sound, but her face was filled with a storm of emotion.
I gave Ye-ji a subtle look.
Click!
The sound of a camera shutter brought Ga-eul back to her senses, and she hurriedly bowed her head to me.
“T-Thank you, Sil-jjang-nim.”
“Don’t mention it. It’s because you sang the song so well, Ga-eul.”
“...”
“It’s lunch break, so all of you should eat well, and Ye-ji, keep the girls in line and get through today’s schedule.”
Ye-ji clicked the camera shutter again and again as she said, “Huh? You’re not eating with us, Sil-jjang-nim?”
“I need to go back to headquarters.”
“Ah, yes! Understood!”
I turned and left the recording room.
Through the half-open door, the To.Any girls’ voices spilled out after me.
“Whataaaaat, Kim Ga-eul!”
“Holy crap, Kim Ga-eul, that’s insane! What is this?”
“Ga, Ga-eul unnie, congrats!”
“...Unnie, so that means you become a songwriter the moment you debut?”
“Our Ga-eul!!! What did I tell you? I said trust Sil-jjang-nim!”
Without thinking, I muttered, The one who keeps ending her sentences with that little sing-song sound is Rei, the Japanese girl.
Was the one freaking out Nova?
The blunt voice sounded like Seol Chae-i.
The voice telling them to trust me sounded like Ye-ji.
“...What is this, am I dreaming?”
That voice was Ga-eul’s.
Before I knew it, I’d gotten to the point where I could tell the members apart just from the voices drifting through the crack in the door.
And in that moment, I realized something.
Ah. I want to raise them.
At this point, I had to admit it.
As a manager, I wanted to raise those girls.
I’m all over the place, aren’t I? ...I really am something else.
But what was I supposed to do when my heart had already tipped one way?
I wanted to take those promising girls and properly build them up with my own hands.
And then my imagination started to run wild.
How far could the To.Any I raised go?
Number one on the charts?
That was already half done.
A Japan dome tour?
Or an Asia concert?
Or maybe Billboard?
...Billboard might be a bit much.
Right.
Let’s be objective.
If we all really gave everything we had...
If they stayed focused and kept their eyes on the road ahead without veering off...
I was confident I could take those girls all the way to a Japan dome tour.
That’s how much potential they had.
At that moment, my brain flooded with an enormous surge of dopamine.
As a manager, the rush of seeing an artist I’d raised from the ground reach the top...
Even imagining it was thrilling.
Yeah. This is why I couldn’t leave this business.
Just as the corners of my mouth rose without me realizing it, the smartphone in my pocket rang.
Ka-tok!
I naturally slipped a hand inside and turned it on.
[Road Manager Jeon Hyeong-u: Sil-jjang-nim. We have a big problem!]
?
A question mark floated up in my head.
Road Manager Jeon Hyeong-u?
He was the Team 5 manager assigned to Lee Ha-eun.
But what the hell could have happened all of a sudden?
After a brief moment of thought, my eyes widened.
Lee Ha-eun?
I hurriedly opened the chat.
There was a link from Jeon Hyeong-u.
[Road Manager Jeon Hyeong-u: Really... I’m sorry. It happened so suddenly there was no time to stop her.]
My heart started pounding hard.
A completely different kind of excitement from moments ago raced up my spine.
Not bothering to hide the tension surging through me, I clicked the link.
In that instant, the face of the actress I had almost completely forgotten for a while took over the screen.
A low groan escaped me before I could stop it.
“Out of all the works you could have chosen, why did you pick Queen of Joseon?”
That crazy woman had done something.
But the scale of it was...
“There wasn’t much to it. My former manager, Kwon Chan, picked this project. That’s all.”
It was weaker than I expected.
Wait, was this even an incident?
***
Queen of Joseon.
The most talked-about drama of the second quarter, and the Wednesday-Thursday series on terrestrial network SBC.
It was written by Kim Go-eun, one of the so-called top three writers in the industry, and its production budget alone exceeded 30 billion won.
It was, quite literally, a mega-project that gathered only the very best in the business, from the crew to the cast.
And Lee Ha-eun was the lead actress.
In a market now being shaken to its core by Netflix, the kind of actress who could land the lead in a drama with a budget over 30 billion won was, in plain terms, top class only.
Yeah.
I didn’t want to admit it, but... Lee Ha-eun was a top-star actress.
Acting skill.
Looks.
Even the strange aura she carried as an actress.
If there was a human being born to be an actress, it was probably Lee Ha-eun.
The fact that the famously proud Kim Go-eun personally called me and begged over the casting issue was proof enough that I couldn’t deny it.
Of course, she wasn’t a perfect human being.
Lee Ha-eun had one serious flaw.
A crazy woman with no humanity.
It wasn’t surprising for a top actress to have problems with her personality, but Lee Ha-eun took it too far.
It wasn’t for nothing that people at Baekhak Entertainment called their flagship star a crazy woman.
Right... just the fact that she’d try to sweep the whole thing that happened between us that night under the rug like it was nothing.
Lee Ha-eun was not sane.
Which was also why it had ended.
The one and only thread connecting us had been that accident on that night, and once that was gone, she and I were little different from strangers.
Proof of that was how I had completely forgotten even the drama’s production press conference.
But it looked like that had just been my mistake.
“Out of all the works you could have chosen, why did you pick Queen of Joseon?”
Lee Ha-eun mentioned me in an interview.
“There wasn’t much to it. My former manager, Kwon Chan, picked this project. That’s all.”
But I couldn’t understand the intent behind it.
“What is this?”
When Hyeong-u said Lee Ha-eun had caused an incident, I thought she’d blown up the press conference or something.
But the incident she’d caused was... only mentioning my full name in an interview.
“Well, I guess if that’s an incident, it is an incident.”
An incident I couldn’t make sense of.
What possible motive would she have had for doing this interview?
Was she trying to screw me over by bringing up my name?
If Queen of Joseon flopped... then sure.
She could pin the blame on me through this interview.
Say I was the manager who handed top-star Lee Ha-eun a garbage script.
But I’d said it again and again: Queen of Joseon wasn’t the kind of drama that would flop.
A 30-billion-won drama.
Money alone doesn’t guarantee success, but once the budget reached that level, failure would have been strange.
So the idea that Lee Ha-eun had done this interview just to screw me over...
I couldn’t buy it.
Anyone can see this is going to be a hit, right?
Was I mistaken?
No.
My prediction had been right on the money.
-[Exclusive] SBC’s biggest second-quarter sensation, Queen of Joseon. It captivated viewers from the very first episode...!
Average viewership rating: 9.5 percent.
The peak rating was an incredible 11.4 percent.
Queen of Joseon recorded the highest first-episode ratings of any drama in nearly four years.
And then.
-[HOT PICK] Lead actress Lee Ha-eun of Queen of Joseon: “The decisive reason I chose Queen of Joseon was my former manager Kwon Chan’s opinion...”
Top-star actress Lee Ha-eun.
Unexpected attention had turned to her former manager, Kwon Chan.