A Broadcast Worth Watching
“He really is a trainee. You heard Cha Seoha talking about concepts and all earlier, didn’t you?”
At producer Lee Yunjung’s confirmation, the head writer nodded.
“Yeah, and it looks like he barely has any real connection to Mun Gayoung either. Only Lee Doyeong seems to have any overlap through school life, and the rest are complete strangers.”
“Right. It’s business.”
“Should we look into it? Find out if he was really a taekwondo athlete? It did sound like a slip of the tongue.”
“No. That doesn’t matter.”
Whether they were a band built around some fabricated backstory or whether they were simply dressing up real people that way didn’t matter.
What mattered was that OKTOP was under TM, and that TM was clearly trying to bundle them with Mun Gayoung.
“Then why are they denying it? Is TM short on cash these days?”
“TM’s always had a shady streak. Don’t you remember when Mun Gayoung debuted?”
“Oh, right. They built her up by giving her this mother-image through Yura, then squeezed every last drop out of it.”
Mun Gayoung, who had once been a child actress, became known to the entire country when she appeared in the film Young Mother, a tearjerker romance about an unwed college student.
The lead had been a fairly popular actress in her twenties at the time. The film was a hit, but her acting career never really recovered.
That was because TM had pushed Mun Gayoung hard, drenching her in endless viral marketing and image-building.
The tactic itself was something every agency did, but TM had pushed it to a degree that even people in the industry found excessive.
“TM might be making something like a band label, then. Debut them as an indie band and recruit them later?”
“What matters right now isn’t why TM is doing this. It’s how we’re going to respond.”
“What are you going to do?”
“We can’t keep OKTOP off the show, can we?”
“We can if we want to. It’s not like they’d get cut just because the show got a little boring, right?”
“What if OKTOP’s in it?”
“Wouldn’t that make it more fun?”
“Then we can’t take them out, can we.”
Lee Yunjung thought for a moment, then spoke again.
“Not now... Contact Cha Seoha again around 11 p.m. Tell him we need additional filming.”
“Just Cha Seoha?”
“Yeah. He seems like he wants attention a little, and he looks like he talks too much. Besides, on paper he’s the composer of Mun Gayoung’s self-written song, right? That’s worth an interview.”
“So what should I do?”
“Set up a solo interview tomorrow and probe him a little. Whether you want to lean on him or soften him up is up to you. You can handle that, right?”
“Of course. I’ve drunk enough of this station’s water by now.”
“I’ll take a look at the rough cut and decide whether I’m taking this to the director.”
“Why the director?”
“Payments aren’t always upfront, are they? There’s back-end money too.”
In other words, they would put OKTOP out front first, then collect money later when OKTOP eventually ended up under TM.
A lowly producer couldn’t pull off a deal like that alone, so she meant to get backing from the variety director.
“Still, it’d be decent to contact TM one more time before doing that, wouldn’t it?”
Just as Lee Yunjung got to her feet, ready to check how far the retrieval of the filming equipment installed at the school had progressed, she noticed something at the front gate.
“Hey, Writer Jeong. Look at that.”
At the gate, OKTOP was climbing into Mun Gayoung’s van.
“How amusing.”
Of course, what had actually happened was that Cha Seoha had asked whether, since the instruments were heavy, they could drop them off at the practice room—but to Lee Yunjung, it looked like something else entirely.
And of course, that had been Cha Seoha’s intention all along.
TM still never learned who OKTOP was.
But Writer Jeong, who came back from getting Cha Seoha’s solo interview, had managed to dig up some very usable information.
“He said he received TM’s business card, but hasn’t actually joined them yet.”
“Not yet? Did he say that exact phrase, not yet?”
“Yes. And after the interview went on for a while, he also said they had to be careful with their words.”
“Who told them to be careful?”
“He just brushed it off and said it was the adults around them. But I’m pretty sure that’s it. The kid didn’t confirm anything outright, but there’s a nuance to these things.”
Lee Yunjung nodded.
“How was the rough cut, then?”
“I went through it. OKTOP is definitely necessary. The funny part is, the more we showcase them, the more the whole program comes alive.”
They didn’t even need to wait until the festival scene to bring OKTOP in.
They could place the scene where Cha Seoha did the directing right up front and introduce him first as the helper behind Mun Gayoung’s singing career.
Then they could build the format around those helpers facing off against her at the school festival.
That was how the story of the characters would come alive, after all.
“That friend of Mun Gayoung’s. The one who kept hanging around with her.”
“Yoo Yeongeun?”
“Yeah. I heard she watched the OKTOP busking performance with Mun Gayoung before. Send Team B to get that.”
“Ah, since the busking is every Saturday, the timing works out too.”
“Good. Then I’ll... go meet the director.”
It had been fifteen days since the school festival ended.
“Grandma. I’m glad we went to the hospital, right?”
“Yes, thanks to my puppy, your grandma didn’t even get sick. I’m happy.”
Grandma had gone in for her health checkup yesterday.
They had removed two large polyps, and the doctor said leaving things like that alone could be dangerous.
One checkup, and it could all be over.
I’d been too foolish to know that in my last life, and I’d lost my precious grandmother because of it.
And I’d lost my youth, too.
She’d had no energy at all on the day of the checkup, but today she looked perfectly fine.
“By the way, what’s this?”
“You love samgyetang, Grandma. I bought some.”
“Stuff like this should be cooked at home. Why go out and buy it? Such a waste of money.”
“It’s okay, Grandma. I’ve got money.”
The song payment I’d received from Mun Gayoung was still almost untouched.
At most, I’d spent some of it on clothes and makeup for the kids at the festival.
I had plenty of things I needed to do with it right away, but first I wanted to spend it on Grandma.
“And I’ve got something to show you.”
“Something to show me?”
The thing she’d loved so much in my last life.
Once she saw it, she’d always send me messages, even when she was sick and missing half the spelling.
I spread the samgyetang out on the table and turned on the TV right away.
Not long after, the boring commercials ended and Star Observation Cam began.
I didn’t even need to watch to know what kind of shape the episode would take.
From everything the filming crew had shown us as they came and went, I could already guess how they’d edit it.
Sure enough, the broadcast opened with Mun Gayoung’s challenge to become a singer.
And then I appeared.
It showed me directing Mun Gayoung’s song Diving.
“Goodness, my grandson. You had a talent like this?”
My screen time was longer than I expected.
If they’d wanted, they could have handled it lightly, but they included scenes of me adjusting the MIDI on the spot, playing guitar, and recording harmonies.
The finishing touch was me directing Mun Gayoung.
The panelists watching the VCR cut burst into broadcast-friendly admiration, and then Mun Gayoung’s interview came on right after.
— How did the two of you first meet?
In terms of real-time chronology, that was obviously much later.
It was an interview from several days after I’d directed Mun Gayoung.
But from a broadcasting perspective, it flowed as though it had followed immediately after.
The next scene showed Yoo Yeongeun and Mun Gayoung watching our busking performance.
— Honestly, I’m the only one who sees them as my rival. Those guys probably haven’t even heard me sing before.
That was followed by the introduction to OKTOP.
It looked like the writers had scraped the internet clean, because even video footage from our vlog busking clips had been attached as reference material.
My interview as the composer of Diving was also neatly woven in.
Then Mun Gayoung’s singing lessons began.
Originally, it had been about Mun Gayoung trying to become a singer and then appearing at the school festival, but in the broadcast it looked as though she were practicing specifically in order to perform there.
The reason for her festival appearance was to beat her rival, OKTOP.
That’s pretty intense.
It was more than I’d expected.
Was Lee Yunjung’s personality a little more explosive than I thought?
Or had Mun Gayoung’s footage just been that boring?
I couldn’t know the exact truth of it, but I didn’t mind.
For one thing, Grandma was happy.
“Those broadcast people sure know what they’re doing!”
“What are you talking about, Grandma? It’s because your grandson is just that brilliant.”
“No, it isn’t, my little pup.”
Lee Yunjung was smart.
She didn’t just keep showing OKTOP nonstop; she also highlighted the students at the practical music academy where Mun Gayoung was learning to sing.
— Honestly, I’m really anxious. I’m not even studying properly, and if I can’t become a singer, what am I supposed to do?
— You’re definitely going to debut and become an amazing singer!
— I’m releasing a single next month. It’s something the academy’s arranging for us, though.
As a result, this episode’s theme became “the youth’s challenge toward their dreams.”
That was how it became a school festival story.
On the broadcast, Mun Gayoung and OKTOP came across as if they had a fairly close relationship.
They’d inserted the chatter we’d exchanged after the interview as though it were conversation before the performance, and there were quite a few scenes of Lee Doyeong and Mun Gayoung talking as well.
In particular, they’d neatly packaged the part where Lee Doyeong, who liked Diving, had been plunking around on his bass by himself because he was bored, making it look as though he were keeping the beat for Mun Gayoung.
Wow. It had been a while since I’d felt it this strongly, but broadcast people really were something else.
To think they could pull off devilish—no, angelic—editing to this degree.
The broadcast kept rolling until it reached OKTOP’s performance scene.
Actually, if you looked at the flow of the episode, the audience probably had a decent chance of developing a twisted mindset.
People admired genius more than anyone else did, but they also resented it.
So when things that weren’t geniuses tried to pretend they were, people couldn’t stand watching.
And if you actually loved that culture, even more so...
But Star Observation Cam had built OKTOP up like they were a phenomenal band.
If OKTOP’s performance had been bad, there would have been no escaping the backlash.
Of course...
— Wooooooaah!
— Aaaah!
We were excellent.
OKTOP’s performance only ran for about four minutes, but the edit was so meticulously crafted that it felt like the highlight reel of a visiting headline act.
In between, there were plenty of reaction shots of Mun Gayoung staring at us in surprise and admiration.
— Gayoung, are you very nervous?
— I-I feel like I’m going to die. Should I tell them I can’t get on stage even now?
— Don’t be scared. Go win against your rival.
— I’m only now realizing what a reckless thing I said...
And then the real centerpiece of the broadcast, Mun Gayoung’s performance, finally began.
At the heart of it was Diving.
The song I had composed.
Sure enough, the viewer board’s reactions were split right down the middle.
Half in response to Mun Gayoung.
Half in response to OKTOP.