Rest (9)
By the time we’d emptied the bottle.
Jin Se-yeon had fallen asleep face-down on the table.
She wasn’t the type to drink herself senseless like this. She must have been exhausted from the flight.
How was I supposed to get her back to her hotel?
“……”
Come to think of it, which hotel was she even staying at?
Just then, my phone rang.
Seeing the caller ID, I realized it was Jiyu.
I answered for Se-yeon.
“Hello?”
“Who is this?”
“Huh?”
“Who are you to answer my sister’s phone? Where is she right now?”
“Jiyu? It’s Miru.”
Jiyu sounded startled.
“Ah! Han Mi-ru sunbae!”
“Yeah. I was drinking with Se-yeon.”
“Oh, okay. What about my sister?”
“She got tired, so she fell asleep while we were drinking.”
It was absolutely not because I’d made her drink too much.
Jiyu’s voice filled with concern.
“Really? What do we do? I’ll come get her right away.”
“No, it’s fine. I’ll take her back. Which hotel is she at?”
I immediately asked the front desk to have a car ready, then shook Jin Se-yeon awake.
“Think you can walk?”
“Mm-hm. I was just a little sleepy.”
“Let’s go. I’ll take you back.”
Fortunately, she didn’t seem very drunk. She opened her eyes and walked without much trouble.
We got in the car and headed for the hotel.
With so many performers and staff around, the organizers had apparently rented out an entire cluster of hotels near the concert venue.
It was late, but with fans and reporters still all over the place, we slipped past the main entrance and went straight into the underground parking lot.
Jiyu was waiting there with her female manager.
She was wearing sweatpants and a hoodie. Looking at her like that, she seemed less like a celebrity and more like any other girl her age.
Then again, could anyone really call her ordinary when she was that pretty?
When Jiyu saw me, she bowed politely.
“Hello, sunbae.”
“Long time no see. You’ve been well?”
“Yes. How about you, sunbae?”
“Same as always, I guess. You’re here for the show, right?”
“Yes. Oh! Are you coming to watch the performance too, sunbae?”
I answered without really thinking.
“Uh… probably.”
“Really?”
Jin Se-yeon spread her arms and pulled her cousin into a hug.
“Jiyu. Bathroom.”
“Okay. Let’s head up, unni.”
Jiyu bowed once more.
“We should get going. Please get home safely, sunbae.”
I waved back.
“Do well out there. I’ll be rooting for you.”
At that, Jiyu smiled brightly.
“Yes. I’ll do my best.”
With the singers busy rehearsing ahead of the K-pop Festival, I met with Senior Dongho and a guest.
“Hello. I’m Park Jin-woong from Top Tier Entertainment.”
He looked to be in his late thirties.
He had a solid build and wore glasses.
Top Tier Entertainment was the largest entertainment company in Korea, home to Mukids. He was one of the men who had built Top Tier Entertainment alongside CEO Yoo Hyun-mu.
At present, he was serving as president of Aniverse Company, a subsidiary of Top Tier Entertainment.
“Good to meet you, President Park. This is Team Leader Han Mi-ru.”
I held out my hand.
“Likewise.”
Senior Dongho had met him before, but it was my first time.
There was no need to book a separate meeting room, so we met in the Presidential Room instead. It had its own conference space anyway.
We ordered drinks through room service.
He looked around the room with admiration.
“So this is the JR Blackwood Presidential Room. I’d heard the rumors, but it’s even bigger than I expected.”
This suite cost three hundred thousand dollars a night.
Senior Dongho spoke as if he’d been staying here for years.
“It’s nothing. Since our company has ties with Blackwood, we use it from time to time when we’re traveling for business.”
“……”
Wasn’t this the first time he’d ever stayed here?
Anyone listening would think he was a regular.
He was older than us and had more experience too, but he still looked a little stiff. Even if Top Tier was big, it couldn’t compare to Continue Capital.
Just the fact that we were using a suite that cost three hundred thousand dollars a night was proof enough that we moved on a different level.
Age, experience, money—money was still king.
President Park handed us the materials he’d brought with him.
“The reason I asked to meet you today is the matter I mentioned earlier. We currently operate an app called Aniverse. Could you take a look at the materials?”
I went through the documents with Senior Dongho.
Aniverse had originally started as a shopping mall where Top Tier Entertainment sold goods for Mukids and the other idols under its label.
But as it grew, it was spun off as a separate subsidiary.
“We want to turn Aniverse into a comprehensive platform where artists and fans can actually interact, not just a simple fan club.”
So they wanted to expand beyond being an entertainment agency and move into platform business.
This was also one form of digital transformation.
Senior Dongho nodded.
“As I said before, the idea looks good. Regular office workers don’t exactly have an easy time getting information about idol concerts and events. And if you’re not already familiar with the scene, joining a fan club or a fan café can feel a little awkward.”
That came from personal experience.
Unless you were a die-hard fan, it was hard to find out where to get the relevant information. It was even harder for overseas fans.
It was like wanting to stan someone but not knowing how to stan properly.
“And a platform business also helps reduce the risk concentrated in any single idol, so you can secure a steadier stream of revenue.”
As someone who had once been an analyst covering entertainment and games, that was an accurate observation.
What was the greatest risk in the entertainment business?
Human risk.
Even if you invested the same amount and raised an idol group, the returns could differ wildly depending on whether they became hits or flops. And even if they succeeded, that was only where the problems began.
Like the old saying goes, a tree with too many branches never knows a day of peace. If just one member of a group caused trouble, the whole thing could blow up.
I thought back to my first life.
Back then too, Senior Dongho, who’d been a hardcore girl-group fan, had noticed a girl group launched by a small agency.
He’d been convinced they would break out, so he wrote a strong buy recommendation report.
And in fact, that girl group rose all the way up to being a contender for first place, an unusual feat for a small-agency act, and the company’s stock more than doubled.
But then…
At the worst possible moment, one of the members got drunk, crashed into the car in front of her, and caused a rollover accident.
Activities ended in an instant. Every commercial they’d filmed was pulled. Instead of advertising fees, the company was forced to pay a massive penalty, and the stock collapsed.
Then, at the next entertainment company he’d recommended, a school-violence scandal broke.
One of the members had apparently been the ringleader of bullying in middle school, and she’d even been disciplined by the school for violence and extortion.
The girl group that had been pushed as cute and pure was instantly dragged to hell as a “school-violence idol” and a delinquent idol, and the stock tanked again.
After getting bombarded with complaint calls all day and being chewed out by his department head, Senior Dongho had grumbled in frustration:
‘How am I supposed to know whether that sweet-looking girl bullied people in school or not?’
In the past, school-violence scandals might have been brushed off, but the atmosphere these days was different.
With smartphones and social media making it easy to leave evidence and even easier to expose it, those scandals had started exploding all over the entertainment industry.
Just last year alone, I could easily name ten entertainers who’d had to leave their shows over school-violence accusations.
Some people said it was unfair to drag someone over a mistake they made in their school days, but… if the fans hated it, what could you do?
They should have been ready to stake their whole future on that choice in the first place.
And in Korea, male idols also had military service to worry about.
Even if they kept soaring without a single scandal, contract expiration was still waiting for them. If the members whose contracts ended first chose not to renew, the team would naturally head toward disbandment.
CEO Yoo Hyun-mu, who had founded Top Tier Entertainment, had been in the entertainment industry for a long time, so he understood this human-risk problem better than anyone.
That was why he’d planned the platform business.
Because a platform business could spread the risk that was concentrated on one idol and still generate continuous, stable profit.
Most entertainment companies hadn’t started with massive capital. More often than not, they began as small startups.
As a result, unless they were one of the major agencies, fan management and merchandise sales were often handled in a pretty slapdash way.
That wasn’t much of an issue if you were only targeting the domestic market, but if you wanted the global market, you needed economies of scale and a properly organized system.
If everything could be managed under one roof, both the agency and the fans would be better off.
“We’re also strengthening the community and commerce functions, and we’re planning live streaming and online concerts as well.”
Offline concerts were limited by time and space, but online concerts could take as many viewers as you wanted, with none of those restrictions.
On top of that, like the SkyPicks concert I’d seen at Nightlight, online performances could pull off stage production that would be impossible in person.
Right now, people were just watching through their phones or monitors, but once VR technology matured, the online concert market would explode.
Hearing that much, I could tell what kind of direction they were aiming for.
K-pop had originally been limited to the domestic market because of the language barrier.
But the reason it had been able to spread globally the way it had now was thanks to social media, A-Tube, and TokTik.
So what they were really saying was that they wanted to build an app integrating social media, commerce, media, and community functions.
I wasn’t especially interested in entertainment, so I’d never really used it myself, but if I remembered correctly, it had ended up being quite successful.
“For the platform to succeed, you’d need to bring in as many idols as possible and implement features that actually match their needs.”
“Exactly.”
And the best partner for that was Continue Capital.
Continue Capital was already invested in most of the entertainment companies, so it would be easy to win over the cooperation of the others.
And then…
“I’d like to commission Snow Crash to handle the app development.”
“Are you looking for something like the Black Forest app?”
The most famous company to succeed in digital transformation by partnering with Snow Crash was Blackwood International.
The world’s largest hotel group, Blackwood, had joined forces with Snow Crash to launch the Black Forest app for high-end lodging and travel-sharing, and it had surged to market leadership in no time.
“Blackwood was impressive, sure, but I was even more surprised by Legend Games.”
Legend Games Store had boldly challenged Stream, the king of the PC digital distribution market.
But at launch, it didn’t even have a shopping cart function, which shocked gamers in a completely different way.
And now that same Legend Games Store had been completely transformed, to the point where you could buy games, stream, broadcast, chat, and even use remote play all in one place.
“Legend Games Store has become a sort of playground for gamers. I’d like Aniverse to become that kind of space too.”
Seeing my expression, President Park asked cautiously, “Is something wrong?”
I shook my head.
“No. The idea is good. The business potential is solid, and the growth prospects are big.”
If they could make good on everything they’d just said, it would become an essential app for K-pop fans.
At my words, his face brightened.
“Really?”
“But Snow Crash might be a little small for this.”
“Ah…”
Top Tier Entertainment was, true to its name, the largest entertainment company in Korea right now. In terms of company size alone, it was bigger than most major conglomerates.
But if I were being coldly objective, no matter how much the entertainment industry grew, it still couldn’t compare to the game industry.
Even if you added together the market caps of all Korean entertainment companies, they still wouldn’t come close to Legend Games or Purple Games alone.
“Still, if you think about how it connects with the rest of your business, it isn’t a bad fit.”
After all, the entertainment and fashion industries were inseparable.
And…
“Like the Nightlight SkyPicks concert, there could also be all kinds of collaborations with games.”
President Park nodded quickly.
“Ah! I saw that concert too. It was incredible. I never imagined a performance could be built around game graphics.”
We’d already tried something like that with Legend Games Store, so at this point the staff could probably handle it on their own without Syd having to step in personally.
“Then let’s talk terms.”
“What sort of terms are you looking for?”
I said it bluntly.
“How about a 70 percent stake in Aniverse?”
At that, he looked taken aback.
“What? Seventy percent?”
“We’d cover the entire development cost for Aniverse and help secure cooperation from the other agencies as well. You could keep operating it on the Top Tier side, just as you do now.”
President Park looked troubled.
“Honestly, I was thinking more along the lines of forty-nine percent…”
As he spoke, he glanced subtly at Senior Dongho.
It seemed he wanted to talk directly to the branch president rather than some lowly employee.
Then Senior Dongho pointed at me.
“If you want to discuss the terms, talk to Team Leader Han here. My position is whatever Team Leader Han says it is.”
“Ah, yes.”
I cut straight to the point.
“I don’t think seventy percent is an unreasonable demand.”
After all, they were the ones who needed the help.
I didn’t exactly have anything to lose here.