It Seems There Are At Least Two Geniuses in Two Bear
It seemed Two Bear Entertainment had at least two geniuses. All the stages had ended. The six judges had been forced to watch thirty-seven performances put together by a total of one hundred trainees. There had been countless talents and personalities on display. Among them were a few who possessed skills and raw ability that could be considered top-tier even among active professionals. Yet the one who remained most vividly burned into Lee Eunji’s mind was Han Gyeowool from Two Bear Entertainment—the girl who had performed third.
“I still can’t get that third performer out of my head. …She was truly incredible.”
Seo Ubaek nodded in complete agreement.
“You mean the girl who did ‘Dress Up,’ right? Even I was blown away. It’s hard to believe she only trained for about a year.”
“Exactly. I mean, ‘Dress Up’ by Triple X is a legendary track that swept awards and became a monument in K-pop history. But it’s such an experimental song that opinions on it are extremely divided, aren’t they? And yet that girl…”
“Was perfect,” Canola cut in. The second-generation idol had been about to stand up but paused to join the conversation. “I’m not saying this just because it’s from my era, but ‘Dress Up’ is genuinely an astonishing piece. It’s like a musical that crams high-teen pop, punk, R&B, electronic dance—every style and track into a single song. I never imagined a newer-generation idol could pull it off so flawlessly.”
Canola’s face softened with nostalgia, as if remembering her own days as an idol rather than the accomplished solo vocalist she was now.
“After all, today’s K-pop doesn’t demand the kind of performances that chew up trainees’ lives the way they did back then.”
“True. The track combination is so insanely difficult, yet she brought every part of it to life beautifully.”
“You’re both right. Especially when the R&B rhythm ended and the third variation kicked in—I couldn’t stay a judge. I was just a spectator with my mouth hanging open.”
Eunji, who had been waiting for the right moment to speak, seized her chance.
“That stage by the girl named Han Gyeowool was amazing. …But I also got this strange feeling from it.”
“A strange feeling?” Seo Ubaek’s eyebrows twitched. “What exactly do you mean?”
Every pair of eyes on the judging panel turned toward her. In the center of all that attention, Eunji rested her chin on her hand, tilted her head, and murmured, “I didn’t notice it while it was happening, but now that I look back… it felt almost too explosive. Like the entire stage was detonating and my ears went numb. …Ah, that sounds too harsh.”
She groaned, wrestling with her own words, then finally organized her thoughts.
“Even I admit that’s vague. It must just be because her talent is so overwhelming that it left that impression.”
That was when James Oh, who had been quietly organizing data on his tablet as if the conversation bored him, finally spoke up.
“That was intentional.”
Eunji blinked in surprise. “Intentional?”
“More precisely, it was the arranger’s intention.”
“Arrangement? That was an arranged version?”
While Eunji tilted her head again, Lee Eunji nodded as realization dawned.
“Of course. That explains why it felt different.”
She kept marveling for a moment, then suddenly turned to James Oh with wide eyes.
“Wait a second. Now that I think about it, that arranger must be insane.”
James Oh’s satisfied smile suggested he was delighted by her reaction.
“Why do you say that?”
“Because it’s not some random song—it’s ‘Dress Up,’ the masterpiece SS Entertainment created. Who in their right mind arranges a song like that?”
Seo Ubaek asked, puzzled, “Well, couldn’t someone arrange it? It’s not like the song caused any social controversy.”
“On the contrary, it’s socially acclaimed. The problem is that the praise is so extremely polarized.”
“What do you—”
“As you all know, the key phrases for ‘Dress Up’ are ‘mixing four or more genres’ and ‘musical-like structure.’ It’s a monster track that uses four separate elements most songs would only use one or two of. People who criticize it say things like ‘they built a tree out of rags.’”
Having spent her career as a top vocal trainer, Lee Eunji possessed considerable knowledge of composition and arrangement. To her, this was simply incomprehensible.
“That multinational team, Revolution, was the one who forced those rags together. They had so many people working on it that there was a dedicated person for every divided part, track, sector, and genre. It was an unprecedented scale of collaboration even at the time.”
James Oh nodded. “It was impressive. Even today, collaborations on that scale in composition are extremely rare.”
“Exactly. That many experts poured everything they had into connecting each genre. And yet the song still earned the label ‘rag.’ What producer would dare rearrange something like that? One wrong touch and the whole forcibly assembled structure would collapse.”
At Lee Eunji’s sigh, James Oh gave a crooked grin.
“Any producer worth the name would know that, so whoever tried it must be a madman. My god—taking genres that were already stitched together by force and making them stand out even more? That’s not arrangement done by a sane person. …And since he actually succeeded, he’s twice the lunatic.”
The panel’s eyes all snapped to James Oh at the unusually fierce language. He simply shrugged, slipped his tablet into his bag, and stood up as if their stares meant nothing.
“And among the people I know, there isn’t a single madman reckless enough to attempt that kind of gamble. There are more than enough attractive original songs without needing to perform acrobatics of that difficulty. It’s definitely not the work of a veteran.”
Canola couldn’t hide her confusion. “…Then who on earth arranged it?”
“Since it’s not a veteran, it must be some fearless rookie from Han Gyeowool’s agency—someone even I, with my wide network across the industry, haven’t heard of.”
James Oh looked at the dumbfounded judges, offered a small smile, and decided to give them one more hint. It felt too good to keep this amusing truth to himself.
“Han Gyeowool’s agency is Two Bear Entertainment, correct?”
“Yes, they definitely said Two Bear.”
He felt a faint, deep shiver of creative hunger he hadn’t experienced in a long time and said softly, “It seems that Two Bear Entertainment has at least two geniuses.”
The broadcast was fucked. That was not an exaggeration.
In the first episode, which was supposed to showcase a competition among talented trainees and select eleven of them, thirty-one girls had been rated F-class while only three received A-class. The catastrophe left PD Kim Seonye screaming.
“I told them to only put in eleven! Did they completely ignore me? Aaaagh! How the hell am I supposed to handle the aftermath of this!”
“P-PD Kim, please calm down!”
This was nowhere near the picture Kim Seonye had envisioned. The format was meant to be about discovering girls with outstanding talent, charm, and beauty who had been buried because the timing wasn’t right, because they lacked promotion, or because they simply hadn’t debuted yet. That was the beautiful story she had drawn up for Girl 100.
But the current disastrous results threatened to shatter that vision from the very beginning. Viewers watching these brutally high standards would likely agree with the cold judges and see most of the Girl 100 trainees as kids who deserved to fail. Instead of picking the finest gem among jewels, it would look like digging through defective goods for anything salvageable.
It was completely different from the original plan—where one entertainment-focused character would provide laughs with an embarrassing performance while the rest of the trainees were saved. Now there were thirty-one entertainment characters. Two of them were girls she had already mentally reserved for debut.
It was a disaster. A truly tragic one.
Surprisingly, if Kim Seonye had known that in the previous recording—before Han Gyeowool appeared—exactly eleven trainees had received A-class during the first impression test, she would have grabbed the girl by the collar. But the only person who knew that truth was Seon Taeyang.
For Taeyang, that was extremely fortunate.
Even so, Kim Seonye’s thoughts turned to him. She couldn’t blame the high-authority judges, after all.
“That kid was supposed to be our entertainment character, wasn’t she? Why the hell did she show that kind of performance?”
The fundamental problem was the judges ignoring the broadcast guidelines and applying excessively harsh standards. But the spark that lit the fire had been Han Gyeowool’s unexpectedly overwhelming display of skill. After that stage, Kim Seonye had felt the judges’ entire perspective shift.
“…Right? During the preliminary meeting we cast her precisely because we were worried the competition would feel too serious. When I saw the video, I thought we could at least get one hilarious scene out of her. …Well, in a different sense, we did get a scene that made everything explode. Just not the trainee’s performance—our mentality.”
“Aaaagh! Is this the time for wordplay? Do you have any idea what I did to boost this broadcast’s ratings? Do you know what kind of insane shit I pulled with agency presidents just to get investment and support? And now because of that bitch, our precious ratings are about to go up in flames!”
At her outburst, AD Jeon Dongbaek thought to himself, If we actually air Han Gyeowool’s performance, the instant ratings might shoot up instead, but he wisely lowered his head in front of her blazing fury. This was clearly not the moment to talk back.
“Then… what should we do?”
“What should we do? What the hell can we do?”
Kim Seonye gnawed on her artificial nails and growled.
“Call Han Gyeowool’s manager.”