The Broadcast's Misunderstanding
“Gayoung, are you really that nervous?”
“I-I feel like I’m going to die. Should I say I can’t go on stage right now?”
“Don’t be scared. Go out there and beat your rival.”
“I’m only realizing now what a crazy thing I said...”
Mun Gayoung treating OKTOP as her rival had all been part of Cha Seoha’s script.
Even so, that didn’t mean her feelings were fake.
For Mun Gayoung, who dreamed of becoming a singer, it was only natural to think, I have to put on the best stage of the day.
And the best stage of the day, by that logic, was one that beat OKTOP.
So even her comment about having said something outrageous had been sincere.
How am I supposed to beat that?
Of course, OKTOP’s performance at Banyeol Park had been terrifyingly good, but this was on another level entirely...
Just standing on the same stage made the wall in front of her feel real.
Can I even keep calling myself a singer?
Lost in those thoughts, Mun Gayoung stepped onto the stage when the host called her name.
The earlier performances had already warmed up the crowd, and the celebrity halo around her only made the students’ reaction wilder.
Meanwhile, the producer was speaking with the head writer.
“Call TM Entertainment right now.”
“Mun Gayoung’s agency? Why?”
“Writer Jung. Doesn’t something about this feel off? Are those guys really just civilians? Are they really just some random neighborhood punks who know how to play instruments?”
“Honestly... they’re way past that level.”
Both the producer and Writer Jung were seasoned veterans of the entertainment industry.
And to their eyes, the odds that a group capable of putting on a stage that good was truly independent were practically zero.
They had to be beneficiaries of capital somewhere along the line.
Probably trainees from some agency.
Or maybe an idol band on the verge of debut.
If that was the case, then which agency were they under?
“It’s definitely TM. They’re trying to expose them to the public naturally through Mun Gayoung.”
“But didn’t TM hate the idea of Mun Gayoung pursuing singing?”
“They probably did at first. But after monitoring every episode themselves, they must’ve realized it too—oh, this show can only really go in one direction, and that’s toward singing.”
“Ah...! So they stuck their trainees beside Mun Gayoung’s storyline?”
“Exactly. If Mun Gayoung’s side takes a hit, another side has to benefit from it.”
“Then why didn’t they tell us beforehand?”
“If you want to be generous about it, they were leaving the choice to us. If we think they’re worth airing, we air them. If not, we don’t. That way the picture looks natural, too.”
“And if we’re not being generous?”
“Maybe they just didn’t want to pay a fair price for an underhanded tie-in.”
It was common for broadcasters and entertainment companies to exchange gifts under the guise of sponsorships. They probably thought it was too expensive to invest in trainees.
“Send the youngest writer out right now and hold those OKTOP guys in place. I’ll interview them myself. Writer Jung, you call TM and communicate openly.”
“How openly are we talking?”
“Just lay all the cards on the table. We’re going to make those kids stars, so they can at least show some sincerity.”
“The station chief is going to love that.”
“Then he can write a thank-you letter for the cash bonus on the same paper he was going to use for his self-criticism report.”
And so things moved forward according to broadcasting logic.
A little later, the youngest writer succeeded in setting up OKTOP’s interview, and Writer Jung managed to get in touch with an executive at TM Entertainment.
In the meantime, Mun Gayoung, who had already sung two cover songs just like OKTOP, took the stage for her final performance.
It was the song she had mentioned in the interview, Diving.
“Hmm...”
The song was too good.
Anyone who believed Cha Seoha had written it himself would have to be an idiot. There was definitely a professional composer behind it.
They’re probably trying to give her a self-produced image.
While Producer Lee Yoonjeong calculated how far the show could be shaped by sponsorship money, Writer Jung returned from his call with TM Entertainment’s executive.
“So? How much are they willing to pay?”
“Producer.”
“Yeah?”
“They’re asking who OKTOP even is...”
After all the performances ended successfully, we were asked by the station to do an interview with Mun Gayoung.
Honestly, I’m not that fond of interviews.
I’d been burned by them too many times in my past life.
Still, there was a small part of me that looked forward to OKTOP’s first interview.
And then the real interview began.
“All right, first of all, thank you all for your hard work on stage.”
The production staff and we clapped for each other and exchanged words of encouragement.
“First, Gayoung, how do you feel after the performance?”
“Uh, honestly, I was really worried whether I’d be able to do well. But the response was better than I expected, and I think I delivered the live performance as well as I prepared for, so I feel incredibly relieved. On stage...”
Once her long answer came to an end, the producer turned to us.
“From OKTOP, Gayoung’s rival band, how did the stage look?”
At the producer’s question, Mun Gayoung’s face turned bright red as she jumped in quickly.
“A-ah, Producer, about that rival thing, I was just saying that to myself...”
She was good.
Even though I had asked her to treat us as rivals, that was the kind of acting that could have fooled me for a second.
Or maybe she had genuinely wanted to beat us?
As that thought crossed my mind, I looked over at my friends and saw that every one of them was staring at me.
“What are you doing? Aren’t you going to answer?”
“He’s asking what you thought of Gayoung’s stage.”
“L-leader should answer.”
Oh, Heo Junseong stammering?
That was a rare sight.
I held back the urge to tease him and gave my thoughts on Mun Gayoung’s performance.
Honestly, I thought her skills were above average for a civilian, but still below a real singer’s level.
If the song and the stage atmosphere matched well enough, she could absolutely look like a singer—but on average, there was still a little something missing.
Of course, I couldn’t say that out loud, so I dressed it up nicely.
Seeing that I was getting through the interview without any problems, Junseong relaxed and even tossed in a joke about seriously considering a vocal swap.
The interview went on from there.
Naturally, most of the questions that came our way were about Mun Gayoung.
What was our first impression of her?
What was school life like for Mun Gayoung?
How had we ended up writing a song for her?
What did we think when we heard she wanted to become a singer?
That was only to be expected. From the perspective of a star-observation cam, OKTOP wasn’t really made up of people.
We were just props representing keywords like ordinary school life, dreams of becoming a singer, youth, and the festival of young people.
In other words, we were nothing more than supporting characters meant to make Mun Gayoung’s story flow smoothly.
In the original timeline, there hadn’t been any element to tie those keywords together.
So they had to show boring school festival scenery right up until the moment people were about to change the channel.
They dressed up a dull festival stage like it was something extraordinary.
And then they grabbed a few students from Jeongun High to add their impressions of Mun Gayoung’s performance.
But in this life of mine, OKTOP had already given all that structure a reason to exist.
No—more than that.
We had performed really well, and we were visually camera-ready, too.
I was thinking that when the interview started drifting in a strangely different direction.
“Have we spent too much time talking about Mun Gayoung? How was the performance for OKTOP? Keyboardist?”
“Uh, OKTOP has mostly been busking up until now. We were really grateful to get the chance to perform on a stage with such an energetic atmosphere alongside our friends, and we were happy because I think the show ended well.”
“Ah, thank you for that textbook answer. That sounded like a student council president’s acceptance speech.”
“Oh, this kid actually is a student council president.”
“Huh? At Jeongun High?”
“No, he goes to a different school...”
My friends, now relaxed, were talking all over the place without any real order.
But the flow of the interview felt off to me.
The producer, who should have sharply cut in whenever the conversation veered away from our answers, was instead strangely going along with it and steering the interview forward.
Not toward Mun Gayoung, but toward OKTOP.
“You won the national drum competition? And you were the youngest ever?”
“Yes, that’s right. I was the youngest at the time. It’s not really that amazing—I just kept doing what I loved, and I guess good things came out of it.”
Kang Min was clearly restraining his human-otaku manner of speaking, and it was funny, but I couldn’t laugh for long.
I had no idea what the producer was aiming for.
But there’s no reason they’d try to edit us like some kind of villain. So what source are they trying to pull from us?
You needed a role if you wanted to do villain editing.
Besides, this was terrestrial broadcast variety, and there was no reason for them to do something like that in the first place.
Are they planning to assign us a more active “variety image” or something?
But if that was the case, the direction still felt too vague.
It seemed more like they were trying to squeeze every usable interview bit out of us, no matter what.
And then my question was answered almost immediately.
“So you’re all doing this without an agency or anything?”
The producer asking that question wasn’t looking at us.
His eyes were on us, but his attention was fixed on Mun Gayoung and her manager.
And the look in those eyes was deeply suspicious.
Oh, so that’s it.
The producer was wondering whether we were actually under TM at all.
My mistake.
I knew OKTOP was a band designed for television.
So it was only natural that the producer’s thoughts would eventually go there, but I hadn’t considered it at all.
My mind started running at full speed.
Producer Lee Yoonjeong, having misread who we were, had clearly contacted TM and asked for something.
TM must have responded in utter bewilderment.
After all, TM and OKTOP had nothing to do with each other.
But Lee Yoonjeong was still trying to sniff out OKTOP’s affiliation.
Which meant...
He’s suspicious.
I could understand why.
Hadn’t we been a little too good?
It wasn’t the kind of quality a handful of high schoolers could just whip up.
And on top of that, it was an original song.
Of course, if Lee Yoonjeong made proper contact with TM, that suspicion would be cleared up in no time.
And then the result would be exactly what I had originally wanted.
We’d end up on air with just the right amount of screen time—not too much, not too little.
A decent start for a plan to make our names known in the band scene.
But...
Wouldn’t it be better if we went a little further?
Should I pile on a little more?
It wasn’t like we had anything to lose.
So let’s get a little more screen time.
At once, I started acting like a high school boy whose attention had just been stolen from him, cutting in with a setting that could outshine a student council president and a competition champion.
“I used to be a taekwondo athlete.”
Before Kang Min’s DMC story had even finished, I jumped in, and my members all looked at me with question marks on their faces.
That wasn’t really my usual style.
“A taekwondo athlete?”
“Yes. I was right on the verge of the national team, but...”
“Oh, so you were that good?”
“Of course. But that’s not all.”
I kept talking without giving the others a chance to react.
“Like I said, this guy’s the student council president, this guy dropped out and won a drum competition, and this guy is a class president. Then this guy is the troublemaker you always find in every school. But he’s actually nice, so he’s not really a delinquent.”
“Hey! Troublemaker?”
“We’re basically that kind of worldbuilding—no, I mean, that kind of concept. Or rather, students.”
At the words worldbuilding and concept suddenly popping out of nowhere, my members stared at me in disbelief.
They were probably really just shocked, but to Lee Yoonjeong, it would look different.
Wouldn’t it seem like they were startled by me saying something I shouldn’t have?
It was never easy for people to deny the first thought that came into their heads.
Somehow, I had created a pretty entertaining situation.