Before the Deal
At first glance, he had thought the boy was a prodigy—something beyond ordinary high school standards.
And yet, just a little more than a month had passed since that day, and the kid had grown frighteningly fast.
No, the more plausible explanation was that he had never shown his full hand back then.
What he was looking at now was beyond professional.
So why was someone like that gathering high school kids in his studio and making a band out of them?
There was no avoiding the sense of cognitive dissonance.
Jo Hyeonseop had never seen a high school student like Cha Seoha before.
He wrote songs incredibly well.
On top of that, when he directed the other members during recording, he was no less capable than a producer from a major agency.
Even when recording his own vocals, he performed like a seasoned professional singer.
He also seemed to know exactly how to balance mass appeal with artistry.
And on top of all that, he was absurdly handsome.
As if that still weren’t enough, his body looked as though he trained seriously too.
And it wasn’t as if Cha Seoha was the only standout.
The drummer who had come with them a few days ago was already a pro.
From what he’d heard from Deokcheol, he’d been the youngest winner of a famous championship.
The guitarist had star quality, and the bassist was delicate and precise.
As for the keyboardist, at first Jo Hyeonseop couldn’t even tell whether he was actually playing.
It had been so exact he’d almost thought the part had been sequenced in MIDI.
Then, after talking something over with Cha Seoha, the boy had suddenly delivered a performance full of live energy and texture.
Every member was either already outstanding or promising enough to keep an eye on.
How in the world had kids like that all ended up in one place?
"What on earth is all that, seriously..."
"Boss, shouldn’t we do whatever it takes to hold onto those kids? There’s no way they’re not going to go into entertainment."
"Hold onto them? Those kids?"
"Yeah."
At first, Jo Hyeonseop had definitely thought it would be good to raise that boy, Cha Seoha, as an idol.
His singing and his looks were both exceptional.
But now that he’d seen the whole group together, they didn’t seem like kids meant for idol life.
"Now I get why they want to do a band."
They knew how good they were.
Of course, they could still succeed in a career as idols.
But when capable people knew exactly how good they were and had a conviction of their own, it was only natural that they’d throw themselves at the path they believed in.
"Wait, are you saying you’re giving up?"
Park Minji felt as if the world were collapsing.
If those kids didn’t debut, that would be a huge loss to the idol scene.
No—this was a national loss.
No, a global loss, really.
If even an ordinary civilian like Park Minji thought that, then what would Jo Hyeonseop think?
"No. I’m not giving up."
That didn’t mean he wanted to make money off the band.
After retiring from the entertainment industry, Jo Hyeonseop had mostly let go of his greed for wealth.
He’d already made more than enough money.
He simply wanted his name to be etched, however small, into the history page of a band called OKTOP.
Whenever that might be.
Those kids were absolutely going to enter the entertainment world.
Probably in the shape of the band they themselves wanted to be.
And then what?
What on earth were they thinking, running a band like that and writing songs that way?
What future were they trying to bring about?
Jo Hyeonseop decided he would wait calmly for that future to become real.
He didn’t think it would take that long.
He wanted to see OKTOP move.
He wanted to find out what Cha Seoha had planned.
Fortunately, there was enough time to record the vocals too.
After a quick round of touch-ups, the song was finished.
"Guys, seriously, you all worked hard."
"No, you worked the hardest, Seoha."
"Yeah, man, you were doing it like some kind of pro."
"When did you learn to mix?"
He almost never showed his full skill in front of the others, worried that constantly making excuses would become a pain.
But today, because their rental time was short, he had thrown caution aside and plunged headfirst into the corrections.
"I mean, I just do it roughly by ear, I guess."
By now, he didn’t even know what excuse he was using anymore.
Maybe he’d strained his ears too long, or maybe he’d talked too much, but he felt completely drained.
Before leaving the studio, he came to say goodbye to the owner.
"Boss, thank you for letting us use it."
"Thank you!"
His friends also bowed their heads and thanked him.
"Yes. Did the recording go well?"
"Yes, thanks to you."
"Good. If you need it again next time, let me know. As long as it’s a day without reservations, I’ll lend it to you again."
For some reason, Jo Hyeonseop said he’d keep lending him the studio for free from now on.
Of course, that only applied when there were no customers booked.
Why was he going this far?
The hearts of seasoned veterans really were impossible to read.
Did veterans really like rookies that much?
Still, it was to my advantage, so I decided to accept it gratefully.
Even after that day, I kept making full use of ST Studio for all kinds of songwriting work.
The production of Your Time, which would be released together with Rendezvous.
Those two songs were both precious tracks we had made in our previous lives.
My memories had faded too much for me to recreate them exactly.
But even if I couldn’t reproduce the instruments and chords exactly, it was enough to capture the emotions from back then.
I hoped the guys would like them.
And then I finished one more song, a track that was far better in quality than the three before it.
It was something I’d been building at the same time I sketched out Rendezvous during that solo visit last time.
The title was Diving.
This song wasn’t for us.
It was a song to give someone else—no, to trade.
Because the time I’d thought about so many times was drawing near.
Any band could write songs and release them.
And while it was a little harder, plenty of bands were already releasing songs of genuinely high quality.
Did that mean all those bands succeeded?
Not at all.
You couldn’t succeed by blindly walking the same road everyone else took.
We had to find a smarter, more unusual way and win with that.
Diving was the song I’d use for that method.
But before I could carry out the plan that existed only in my head, there was one thing I needed to check.
That was my friends’ attitude toward commercial success.
And what they hoped to achieve through music.
"You got a business card?"
"Yeah. I got it from the studio owner before. It looks like he wants us to try an agency audition. What do you think?"
"I’m in favor. But he’s not going to try to make us idols, right? If he tells us to dance, that’s a problem."
Heo Junseong’s approval came with conditions.
"Same here. If OKTOP stays intact and our autonomy is guaranteed, I don’t see a problem. Nothing gets done without money, after all. Of course, the music has to stay under our control."
Kim Jihoo said the same thing.
Yes, that was exactly the right way to think about it.
"I... don’t know."
Lee Doyeong’s tone suggested he wasn’t comfortable with the idea.
"Really? Why not?"
"I don’t know. It just feels a little scary, somehow..."
Lee Doyeong brushed it off vaguely.
For a moment, some hidden pain of his flashed through my mind, and I didn’t ask any further.
"Alright, so Doyeong just doesn’t feel like it. That’s fine. Kang Min, what about you?"
"I’m completely against it."
Kang Min answered in a rare serious tone.
"Really? Why?"
"I don’t know about later, but right now I think building our foundation is the priority."
The four of us listened closely as Kang Min went on.
"I’ve seen a lot of people get cast by agencies while they were in bands. They were all full of dreams about being able to keep doing band music, but every single one of them ended up as an idol."
Some idiot from my past life came to mind.
It felt uncomfortably like someone was pinching my heart.
"Of course, there’s nothing wrong with being an idol. It’s flashy and cool. But that’s not our dream, is it? Right now I want us to get strong enough that we can speak with our own voices. A contract would be better after that."
For once, Kang Min was saying all the right things.
As expected of someone who had been around the scene for so long, he had excellent judgment when it came to decisions like this.
"So what you’re saying is that we only approach capital after we’ve grown big enough to make firm demands of our own?"
"Oh... that’s very adult language."
"Sometimes Cha Seoha feels like a kid and an adult at the same time."
Wasn’t that something high school students could say too?
I could just phrase it in a slightly more polished show-business language.
OKTOP would put capital through an evaluation.
We weren’t saying we’d just bulk up and barge into an agency no matter what.
We’d build ourselves up first, and if a good deal came along, we’d consider it.
"Okay, fair. I get it right away."
"Yeah, that makes sense."
Heo Junseong and Kim Jihoo agreed.
Lee Doyeong just nodded quietly from the side.
And for some reason, his expression seemed brighter too.
Maybe Doyeong still wasn’t interested in things like broadcasting or the entertainment world.
"Good. Then it’s settled. Let’s build ourselves up first."
I tucked the business card away again and smiled with quiet satisfaction.
Yes, this was exactly the feeling I loved about being in a band.
Hadn’t I said it before?
Even while I was succeeding as an idol, living in an alternate world where I was together with OKTOP had become one of my hobbies.
Of course, that alternate world kept changing.
The variation in my imagination changed depending on what kind of music OKTOP made and what kind of personalities the members had.
But no matter how I thought about it, nothing suited our first step better than this.
It wasn’t too much, and it wasn’t too little either.
Of course, I already had more aggressive plans for after that first step, but those were things I couldn’t decide without hearing the members’ opinions.
And so, a few days after the work on Rendezvous had been completed, I sat down beside Lee Doyeong while the others rolled around in the practice room.
"Hey, Doyeong."
"Hm?"
"Are you close with the student council kids?"
"Yeah, we’re pretty close, I guess."
"The... the girl who’s vice president of the student council."
"Young-eun?"
"Yeah, her."
"Why Young-eun?"
"Could you tell her to come watch our show sometime?"
"I mean, that’s not hard, but why?"
"Just because. She seems pretty popular, and if the popular kids come see us perform, the audience gets bigger, which is nice. We should manage our reputation at school too."
"Our reputation?"
Lee Doyeong seemed to think my words were a little odd, but he didn’t press the issue.
What a good kid.
"Alright. I’ll tell her."
"Thanks."