A Brief Respite
The ticket scalper shouted in surprise.
“Hey, wait! Who the hell are you?”
The young Asian man, Lee Dong-ho, answered with a smile.
“Selling scalped tickets is illegal. Don’t worry—the canceled tickets will go back on sale right over there at the venue.”
“What?”
Before long, a staff member had come up and taken the tickets away.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing? What business is it of yours how much I sell my ticket for?”
“The terms clearly state that if scalping is discovered, the reservation will be canceled immediately. Your money will be refunded to the account that made the purchase.”
At first the scalper had been loud and brazen, but by the end he was practically begging.
“Please, I’m just trying to make a living. If I don’t sell these, I can’t even buy formula for my kids.”
He poured out his pitiful story in full, but of course not a word of it worked.
Dong-ho clicked his tongue as he watched the man being dragged away, then said to Jackson, “No matter how badly you want to see a performance, don’t buy scalped tickets. They can get canceled like this.”
“Ah, got it.”
Then Kobe sniffled and asked, “So we can’t watch the concert after all?”
Michelle soothed her younger brother.
“Next time, big sis will make sure you get to see them.”
Dong-ho glanced at the placard Kobe was holding and asked, “Are you a LUNATINES fan?”
Rather than answer with the teary little boy, Michelle replied for him.
“Yes. My brother and I are both LUNATINES fans. It’s his birthday today, so we came to see them, but…”
“Hmm, I see.”
Dong-ho grinned and said to Kobe, “I’m a LUNATINES fan too. If you promise to keep cheering them on, I’ll give you a present.”
“Really? I promise!”
He handed Kobe an envelope.
“Here. Happy birthday.”
“Th-thank you.”
Kobe opened the envelope and looked inside.
Then he cried out in shock.
“Dad! Look at this! It’s concert tickets!”
Inside were three concert tickets. Not just any tickets, either, but VVIP seats—the kind that were now worth whatever the market would bear.
Jackson stared at them, stunned.
“Th-that can’t be…”
He looked around, wanting to thank the young Asian man on behalf of the children, but the man was already gone.
* * *
“They’re expensive tickets. Are you really just giving them away like that?”
“They said they were LUNATINES fans. It came to me for free anyway, so wouldn’t it be better if real fans went and cheered?”
Dong-ho senior had led me to Sophia Stadium.
The area around the venue was packed with fans. There were more women than men, and the crowd was strikingly diverse. Seeing people pour in like clouds made the popularity of K-pop feel real.
“Honestly, I wish scalpers would just die. Because of people like that, innocent fans get hurt. They should make ticketing real-name only from the start, the way they do with plane tickets, and check IDs at the entrance.”
Scalpers even wrote programs and used macros to buy up tickets.
Just as a securities firm’s program trading could run faster than individual investors placing orders one by one, scalpers would grab huge blocks of tickets while ordinary fans were left unable to buy any at all.
That was why, later on, real-name ticketing was eventually introduced.
The scalpers foamed at the mouth in protest, but ordinary fans cheered with both hands in the air.
Before going in, we bought kimchi tacos from a food truck and ate them.
“This is good.”
“It is.”
I looked around.
Because they wanted to strike while the iron was hot, the broadcasters had put together programming about the popularity of K-pop, and announcer Jin Se-yeon was roaming around with a cameraman, interviewing fans on the spot.
The singers would be getting ready in the dressing rooms for the performance.
“Come to think of it, you said you came on the same plane as LUNATINES. Did you talk to them?”
“Talk? They were all out cold before we even took off. Jena was snoring away too.”
“That’s disappointing.”
“No, no. Watching them go without proper sleep while still pushing through their schedule made me feel sorry for them.”
“……”
Maybe instead of worrying about celebrities, he could worry a little about the junior who was running around earning money without even getting enough sleep himself.
“Ah! Time’s up. Let’s go.”
* * *
Sophia Stadium held a staggering seventy thousand people.
The stage was set up in the center, and the 360-degree LED screens mounted overhead displayed the performance in real time.
When the concert began, the roar of seventy thousand voices filled the venue.
The first act to appear on stage was a nine-member boy group called J-Tension.
Experiencing the live venue in person had been even more intense than I expected. It was completely different from watching it on TV.
From the farthest seats, you probably couldn’t even make out their faces properly.
And yet everyone was screaming and losing their minds, singing along in Korean to the lyrics and choruses as if they were part of some giant chant.
When the first vinyl records came out, a lot of people thought concerts were finished. When movies appeared, many believed plays and musicals would disappear.
But reality didn’t work that way.
You could watch as much video and see as many photos as you wanted, and you could listen to music in pristine sound quality. But none of that could replace people meeting one another in person.
When LUNATINES appeared, Dong-ho senior cheered, “See? LUNATINES is the best. They’re the number one girl group, hands down.”
And just as he said, LUNATINES would go on to rise to the very top among female idols.
Unlike his track record with stocks—where every pick he made seemed to blow up in his face—his eye for girl groups was clearly impeccable.
“How is it seeing them live?”
I gave my honest impression.
“They’re amazing. Really impressive.”
Most idols were in their teens or twenties.
I couldn’t even imagine how hard they’d worked to stand on that stage. They’d given up school, friends, leisure—everything their peers took for granted—and spent their days practicing dance and song. At that age, I think I’d just been running around having fun.
“Oh! Jiyu’s coming out.”
Jiyu appeared in a mini dress with frills, holding a microphone as she sang.
Unlike a group of idols, she filled the stage all on her own.
Back in the first timeline, because of the C-Lab incident, she had only released a digital track and never managed any real activities. That meant she probably never would have made it to this K-pop festival at all.
But this time, things were different.
“Wow! She sings well. That’s my junior for you!”
Onstage, Jiyu was shining with startling brilliance.
As if that place had always belonged to her.
* * *
(abridged)
The K-pop Festival held at Sophia Stadium in LA drew the largest crowd in history. Every seat sold out almost instantly, and fans who couldn’t get tickets cheered for their favorite singers from outside the venue all the same.
K-pop artists heated up the stage with dance and song, and the fans’ screams reached their peak when Mukids appeared.
(omitted)
This concert is expected to become a milestone in raising K-pop’s profile in the United States.
Mukids have announced a world tour beginning in Las Vegas, while LUNATINES, regarded as the next-generation girl group, said, “Our songs are a way to carry the voices of teenagers to the world. We want to keep making music longer and meet more fans.”
While reading the article, I got a phone call.
Hi, Miru. What are you up to?
“I was reading a WST article.”
The editor wanted me to tell you thanks for helping with the coverage.
“It was nothing.”
WST and I had a deep enough relationship that I was happy to make things easier for them during the reporting process.
It wasn’t anything grand—I’d simply asked the agencies to include WST when they sent materials to major media outlets.
Too bad. I wish I could’ve gone out to report on it myself.
“You like K-pop?”
Of course.
“Who do you like?”
Hmm, Mukids. Xenon is really handsome.
“……”
Was that my future brother-in-law?
Of course, he had no idea of that.
There was a good reason she hadn’t been able to come cover the event herself.
“How’s the reporting going?”
I’ve visited Emily a few times, and I’ve nearly finished interviewing the people involved. The more I dig, the more interesting it gets.
I thought of the blonde woman I’d met at the year-end party.
The self-proclaimed French heiress, Emily Chloe.
In the original timeline, her fraud didn’t come to light until much later. Once the scam was exposed, she disappeared for a while on the run.
But because of me, she’d been caught right there at the party.
I’d told Trish it was a scoop, and even now she was still diligently investigating it.
But everyone was fooled, so how did you know she was a fraud the moment you saw her?
“Like I said, I just happen to have an allergy to scammers.”
Of course that wasn’t true. I just knew the future.
After a bit of small talk with Trish, I hung up and kept reading articles.
K-pop still couldn’t exactly be called mainstream culture in the United States, but it was the first time artists from outside the English-speaking world had become this popular.
Because of that, it was being covered briefly even in the news, and all sorts of articles were coming out analyzing why K-pop had become so popular.
For some reason, it made my chest swell with a strange pride.
Out of boredom, I even checked the reactions on A-Tube.
“……”
Let’s stop looking.
Even just the thumbnails were enough to make my head spin.
There wasn’t just one or two of these videos—there were dozens. Was there some factory somewhere churning out national-pride content?
I wondered who in the world was even watching this kind of stuff, so I checked the views.
They were all in the million range at a minimum.
Was everybody insane?
Still, if there was demand, then there had to be supply.
At this point, maybe A-Tube really was ruining the world.
* * *
After the two-day K-pop Festival finally came to an end, Dong-ho senior went off to meet with the people involved as an investor, and while I was resting alone in the hotel, my phone rang.
I checked the name and answered.
“Hello?”
Hello, senior.
“Oh, hi.”
Are you free right now?
“Yeah, I am.”
If you haven’t eaten yet, do you want to have lunch with me? I’ll pay.
“Can you get out?”
Yes, yes. I can get out.
“Where should we meet?”
I headed into a Starbucks in downtown LA.
Then a woman waved at me.
“Over here, senior.”
She was wearing skinny jeans, sneakers, and a short padded jacket. Her long hair was tied back in one bundle, and she had on glasses.
She looked nothing like she had on stage.
I pointed at the glasses and asked, “Are those for disguise?”
Jiyu flustered at my question and waved both hands.
“Ah, no. My eyesight’s bad, so I usually wear glasses. I was going to put in contacts today too, but my eyes were hurting a little.”
That made sense; she must have worn contacts all the time for the performances.
“Glasses suit you too.”
“R-really?”
“But you got out pretty easily. Don’t they usually keep you from going out?”
Jiyu smiled and said, “I told them I was going to meet relatives. And I’m familiar with LA anyway. My uncle lives here, so I used to come a lot during school breaks.”
Well, LA was the place with the largest Korean-American population, after all.
I glanced around and said, “No one’s going to recognize you and ask for an autograph?”
“No way.”
Honestly, unless they were all gathered together like a group of especially pretty or handsome idols, they wouldn’t be easy to recognize.
According to Jiyu, the idol groups with schedules afterward had already left, while the ones without any more obligations were given a day off.
“I heard a few teams are going to Disneyland tomorrow.”
So it was Disneyland, huh?
I supposed in America they could relax and have fun without worrying quite so much about what other people thought.
“What do you want for lunch?”
“There’s something I really wanted to try since coming here. I think you’ll like it too, senior.”
“Where is it?”
“Follow me and you’ll see.”
Jiyu walked ahead with confident strides.
When we got there, the restaurant already had a long line stretching out from it.
It was a place I’d been to not long ago.
“It’s O’Connor Burger.”
“Yes. I like burgers, so…”
It was the LA branch of O’Connor Burger, of course.
Jiyu looked at the long line and her face fell.
“At this rate, we’ll be waiting more than an hour. I really wanted to try it…”
That was the popularity of O’Connor Burger.
I told Jiyu, “Hold on a second.”