A Call for Backup
Busker Everyday will continue next week.
A program with absolutely no spicy edge to it should have been forgettable, but somehow that lack of sting turned out to be exactly what the public wanted. Compared to shows built around celebrities flaunting their wealth, this kind of quiet, everyday content left viewers feeling calmer, and the result was a surprisingly strong response.
To the public, the casting looked like a stroke of genius. After all, the program’s main keyword was healing, and the singers who appeared on it all had that modest, ordinary air to them. Of course, none of it would have happened if I hadn’t suggested the healing angle to Park Yunchan PD in the first place.
But a broadcasting station wasn’t a place where only good things happened.
“Uh... PD?”
An employee approached Park Yunchan PD, who had been savoring the pleasant momentum of the day in the station’s smoking area.
“Huh?”
“Th-the... uh...”
At the employee’s hesitant sigh, a bad feeling began to crawl up Park Yunchan PD’s back.
“What is it?”
“It... passed.”
“What? What did you say? It really passed?”
“Yes. Apparently it did...”
Park Yunchan PD barely had time to enjoy his good mood before another problem slammed into him, and he had to clutch his throbbing head.
“All right. Go on.”
“Yes, sir.”
On his way home from work, Park Yunchan PD’s mind kept circling around the news he had heard that afternoon.
The broadcasting station union’s full strike had been approved.
There had been plenty of chatter about whether it would clear the majority vote this time, too. It had been such a chaotic beginning to the year that I, like everyone else, had assumed it would fall through as usual.
Busker Everyday wasn’t much affected, since most of its staff came from outside the station anyway. But the music show I was directing was a different story. Because the live broadcast had to be handled by internal staff every week, a strike from the employees would hit it hard.
The strike period was supposed to run for a month starting next month. The higher-ups said the music show wouldn’t be cancelled, because if a broadcast was preempted they would have to pay penalty fees on the advertising contracts tied to it.
Of course, that wasn’t the only reason they were forcing it through. A rookie idol comeback from one of the big agencies had already been scheduled for that week.
If it had been a smaller company, maybe there’d be room to maneuver, but between a major agency and a broadcasting station, there were too many tangled interests involved. Cancel the comeback after booking an expensive set, then pay the ad penalties on top of it? Or scramble a few employees together and push the broadcast through anyway?
You could ask the dumbest person on the block, and even they’d choose the second option.
And one of those few employees in charge would be me.
Hell. Damn it all.
My hands tightened on the steering wheel.
Honestly, forcing the broadcast through wasn’t all that difficult; it was just a pain. I could always beg upstairs for a budget increase, ask them to approve outside staffing fees, and somehow make it work. It would be rough around the edges, but the show would probably go on.
The biggest problem was the lineup.
My guess was that at least four teams would refuse to appear. They had poured time and money into staging performances at small companies, so of course they wouldn’t want some untested outside team handling it instead. The sound would be different, the lighting would be different, everything would be different. And then there were the companies that would refuse to appear in the name of respecting workers’ rights.
“What does workers’ rights have to do with anything? Can’t they just do it? Damn it.”
My head was already pounding from Busker Everyday’s filming, and now it felt like it might split open.
“Where am I supposed to find people...”
I thought of the teams whose applications for the music show had been rejected. Most of them were no good, and some of them would need their schedules adjusted too.
My head hurt.
Forget it. I’d go home first and think about it tomorrow.
— This is a school zone. Please slow down.
“Ah, slow... the car...”
...
“The car... slow?”
...!?
“Ah! Cha Seoha!!!”
All at once, I remembered someone I’d almost forgotten about.
“If the broadcasting station union goes on a full strike and the music show lineup ends up with a hole in it, please call me as a backup.”
Could something like that even happen?
I knew he must have said it as a joke, but the fact that things were now unfolding exactly as he’d said made a chill run down my spine.
As expected, five of the teams originally scheduled to appear had refused.
Three of those slots would be filled by other idol teams.
Of the remaining two, one was apparently being considered for Cha Seoha and his band.
The last slot still needed more searching.
Park Yunchan PD picked up his phone, a flutter of excitement rising in his chest.
As time passed, interest in OKTOP gradually began to cool. There was no way around it; when we weren’t showing anything to the outside world, people naturally moved on.
During that quiet stretch, OKTOP kept steadily working on new songs. And then, one day...
With a soft click, the rehearsal room door opened and Cha Seoha stepped inside.
“Hey, why are you so late?”
“What, are you acting all high and mighty because you’re the leader?”
“Seoha, being late is bad.”
“You’re slow as always, kisama!”
As usual, the moment they saw his face, they didn’t stop attacking him.
I looked at those idiots and gave them a smug smile.
“What’s with that face?”
“All right, everyone, gather around. We need to prepare our next move.”
“Next move?”
I showed them the text message I’d gotten from Park Yunchan PD.
“I told you, didn’t I?”
“Told us what?”
Hello, Seoha. This is Park Yunchan PD, whom I met the other day. I’m sending this because we’d like for you to appear on the music show next month. Please call me when you have time.
“That we might get to go on a music show.”
“Whoa, holy crap.”
“Huh? Is this for real?”
“Wait, Seoha, you’re telling us this actually happened?”
“No way, that’s insane. They’re really booking us?”
The guys read the message over and over again.
“Told you it was real.”
“Yeah, you said that, but I didn’t think it would actually happen.”
“Right. That kind of show is usually for idols from established agencies.”
“Exactly. I figured the production team was just being polite.”
“This guy might actually be more impressive than we thought...”
It wasn’t as if a music show was the perfect fit for our kind of music to begin with. But the fact that we were being invited onto one now meant a great deal.
They wanted to find a place where we could be hated by even more people.
“If we go on there, we’re really going to get roasted, huh?”
“Yeah. We’ll get hate, stir up attention, and become famous. Perfect setup.”
“I wonder how much backlash we’ll get this time. It’s kind of scary, honestly.”
“Don’t worry about it too much. It’ll probably mostly be aimed at me anyway.”
Kang Min tried to volunteer as the scapegoat and calm Lee Doyeong down at the same time.
“Yeah, that does sound about right. That makes me feel a little better.”
Lee Doyeong thanked Kang Min with a gentle, good-natured smile.
Why was that somehow more frightening?
“Anyway, clear your schedules for this weekend. We’ve got a meeting.”
A few days later, the weekend arrived, and we found ourselves sitting down with Park Yunchan PD.
It was a small conference room inside K-Net’s broadcasting station.
Inside were the members of OKTOP, Park Yunchan PD, and one assistant director.
“Hello. I’m Park Yunchan, the PD in charge of K-Countdown. Thanks for coming.”
“Yes, hello, PD.”
“Hello. I’m kind of nervous.”
“Thank you for inviting us.”
“Hello.”
My guys greeted them politely.
How had I ended up with only good kids like this?
Even thinking about it again, I still found it amazing and a little touching.
Most of the time they looked like a bunch of idiots who had each lost a screw somewhere.
But when it really mattered, they knew how to behave.
That was all because they were kind at heart.
“You don’t need to be too nervous. I know your situation with OKTOP, so our side will help out as much as we can.”
We didn’t have an agency.
No manager to handle schedules, no stylist or makeup team, no legal department to step in when problems came up.
What Park Yunchan PD was saying was that they’d help us with those things.
Of course, it would be only the bare minimum, but still.
That was all stuff I could handle myself, but if I could get help, I intended to take as much as possible.
“Wow, by the way, all of you have such great visuals.”
“Thank you.”
“You really don’t have an agency? It’s not easy to get a group like this together.”
“No, we don’t. We’re just having fun and making music on our own.”
“I see...”
Park Yunchan PD looked at us as if he were wondering how a group like this had ever come together at all.
After that light bit of ice-breaking, the assistant director began explaining how we’d been cast.
OKTOP had been moving in a really good direction lately.
And having a fresh face like us on a music show seemed like it would add something nice to the lineup.
“But as you know, the union is going on strike soon, so on the day of filming, everything will be run with substitute staff.”
The assistant director explained the station’s situation, but my guys all seemed to be missing the point.
They understood the words, but not how serious the situation really was.
“The song will be Rendezvous, I’m assuming?”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“Then we’ll need to get Rendezvous through review first, so we’ll put in an urgent screening request...”
“It’s already passed review.”
“Oh, you already took care of that?”
“Yes. I handled it in advance, just in case, when we were preparing for release.”
“Oh, very thorough.”
“Not at all. What would the schedule look like on the day itself? I understand it depends on the substitute staff being in place, but I’d like the rough outline first.”
When it was time to move into the real discussion, I cut straight to the point.
The assistant director answered in the PD’s place.
“Yes. Normally you’d come in by 9 a.m., but that day you’ll need to arrive two hours early. If you get here by 7, we’ll start the first rehearsal at 9. Then the second rehearsal begins at 12, and there’s a final rehearsal at 3. The live broadcast starts at 6 p.m. We’ll send out the detailed schedule for each team later.”
“Would it be all right if we came a little earlier than that?”
“Earlier? Well, I suppose it wouldn’t be a problem, but why would you want to?”
The assistant director and Park Yunchan PD both looked at me with puzzled expressions.
“Because we want to do it live.”