It Starts with Variety: Next K-Star (1)
"Gah!"
I jerked awake at the ringtone. The moment my head cleared, panic got there first—I was in trouble. When had I even fallen asleep? What time was it?
Beyond the window it still looked dim, though with the rain that had come through at dawn it might only have been cloud. I scrambled for the clock. Seven on the dot, thankfully. I'd nodded off, but only for about ten minutes.
The tension let go, and a beat later the drowsiness and the fatigue came flooding in. I dragged both hands down my face and picked up.
"Thanks, hyung. I start at eight. I nearly showed up late."
"What time did you get in?"
"After six."
"What? And you're going back in already? You're going to be dead on your feet."
"What else can I do. I still have to go."
Right. What I needed now was a clean read on the situation, and a decision, fast.
A taxi, and I could afford to take my time. The subway, and I had to be on my feet this second. Wait—the roads might be jammed. Take a cab and I could land in the worst of both, bailing out halfway to transfer to the train. Play it safe. Subway.
I got up and stepped into the bathroom, turned the tap on, and kept deliberating until the water ran warm. Wash my hair, or leave it.
"How was yesterday?"
"...Dynamic. Still, they praised me. Said I did a good job."
Second day on the job, and here I was washing my hair. Conditioner could wait. Shampoo only.
"That's a relief. Get off early today, no matter what, and let's grab a drink. I want to hear about the job."
"I'd like that too. Seriously."
"And call Mom. She'll be waiting."
"I will."
I was about to hang up when a racket of voices burst through from the other end.
"Dad! Dad! Is it Uncle? Me too! Let me talk! Me first! (Kids, Dad's on the phone—) I've got something to ask too! Me me me me!"
The phone didn't hold out for long before it passed into the little terrors' hands. I brushed my teeth and waited until the four-way brawl produced a single winner back in possession of it.
"Uncle! Did you see lots of celebrities yesterday? Who'd you see?"
"Everyone performing at the K-pop concert."
"No way, that's insane! Uncle is so freaking cool! I'm so freaking jealous!"
"Freaking coo— Don't talk like that..."
"Can't you take me with you next time?!"
"No. Hang up. Uncle's going to work."
I shook off the one still clinging to the line and hung up without mercy. Let my authority slip among my nephews and it would be a disaster. Show business wasn't the only place where rank mattered. It mattered here, too. Let it crack, and one after another they'd come crawling up over me until I hit the floor.
A horrifying thought.
I washed my hair at full speed. Yesterday, having squeezed myself into a suit, I'd fussed over my hair as well. None of that today. I just scrubbed it dry with a towel, and dressed for comfort with yesterday's failure still fresh—a hoodie, jeans, a coat.
Too sloppy? There's a meeting today.
I agonized for ten seconds, changed into slacks and a knit, and left. The station was an eight-minute walk from the studio apartment. It was early, and the train was less crowded than usual.
I looked around. Office workers on the commute, students on their way to school. The ones in street clothes over there would be college kids.
The feeling was a strange one. I'd thought that once I peeled off the student label and became a working adult, something enormous would change. A bird out of the egg, a frog out of the well—I'd been sure a world unlike everything until now would open up in front of me.
It hadn't, particularly. No wonder my brother had laughed so hard when I said it.
Waiting for the train, I called home.
"Hello?"
"Mom, it's me. I got off late yesterday, so I couldn't call."
"I thought so. I waited, and then I fell asleep. Was it a lot of work, your very first day?"
Worry sat thick in her voice.
The moment I was discharged, my parents had handed the Seoul house over to my brother and gone down to the countryside. The cost of the city was too much, and Dad's health had started to fail—good air, a place to recuperate, a little of everything at once. These days he'd recovered a good deal. The two of them kept a small vegetable plot and had taken in a dog.
My brother, forty now, had long since found his footing and was living well enough on his own, and the quadruplets were in the upper grades of elementary school—leave them be and they shot up just fine among themselves. Maybe that was why my parents had turned, belatedly, to pouring their attention onto me.
"No, the welcome dinner for the new hires ran late. Don't worry. Everything all right at home? Dad's health is okay?"
"We're doing fine. How's the work, though? Was it all right? You wanted it so badly you wouldn't stop going on about it—is it actually fun?"
"It's fun, sure. Everyone I work with is great."
Except for one.
"Yesterday I had dinner with all your aunts, and when I said you were working with actors who come on TV, the kids in every house went wild. They want you to bring back autographs."
"...Yeah? Thing is, it turned out I'm not working with actors. With singers. A girl group."
"A girl group?"
"They're called Neptune. You wouldn't know them, Mom. I'll show you pictures next time I visit."
"All right. If work gets hard, you make sure to tell your brother. Understood?"
Not that I needed the reminder. My brother had already done me a huge favor this morning. I was just about to tell her he'd called to wake me when the train rolled in.
"Got it. The train's here. I'll call again."
I hung up in a hurry and dropped into a seat. Seven-thirty. The office wasn't far from the station, so I wouldn't be late. I forced my eyes wide, determined not to doze past my stop.
Music, maybe? I was fishing for my earphones when the two girls in school uniforms beside me started carrying on.
"Hey, hey, hey—oh my god. Lee Yuram from Lemon Girls just caused a scene. She's number one on real-time search right now."
"What? What kind of scene?"
The two of them stuck their heads together over a phone screen.
"DUI, apparently. God. She was with a non-celebrity boyfriend. Isn't she the one who pushed the never-dated-in-my-life thing in every interview? Her male fans' cookies are all gonna shatter."
"And after all that media play about practicing like crazy for Next K-Star..."
"She dropped out of that, too. They're saying Neptune's going in to fill the spot."
"Complete nobodies. The crew must've been desperate."
I hurried online myself. One look at the portal and the whole mess had seized the top of the real-time searches.
Neptune's name was nowhere in sight.
The entertainment section was crammed with sensational headlines.
Lemon Girls' Lee Yuram Booked Without Detention — Daytime Drunk Date with a Civilian Lover?
Lee Yuram, the Lifelong Single, Had a Secret Boyfriend—and a DUI? "Shock"
Fans "Stunned" as Lee Yuram Is Booked for DUI — She Drops Next K-Star Too
I started with the pieces that had gone up earlier, deeper in the pages, and the way the story moved was almost entertaining.
At first it was nothing but articles announcing that Lemon Girls' Lee Yuram had been booked. The copy was all but identical, as if someone had pasted the same piece over and over.
Early this year, Lemon Girls member Lee Yuram—who had caught the public eye by showing a keen sense for variety on a terrestrial weekend show—threw cold water on a rise that had been gathering real momentum. Yesterday afternoon, Yuram was caught driving under the influence with her non-celebrity partner in the car and booked without detention. Her blood alcohol concentration was 0.107%, a level subject to license revocation...
The story pinned to the main page had cleared a thousand comments, and the most vicious curses and sneers were pulling in staggering piles of likes. Somewhere in the middle of all that, Lee Yuram had already been tried and sentenced: a bitch who'd toyed with the public and deserved to die for it.
The sparks jumped to Next K-Star.
Netizens rounded on the crew. You cast someone like that and then spun the Korean Wave? Figures—now we see the standard cable's working with. Since when does a criminal get to be a Hallyu star? Once that backlash took hold, the reporters who caught the scent of it were visibly hammering out stories at a sprint.
Lemon Girls' Lee Yuram Booked — "Next K-Star" in an Uproar Before It Even Airs
"DUI" Lee Yuram — Will Next K-Star Keep Filming?
Pieces like that papered the feeds for a long while. Then, at some point, the articles about Lemon Girls dropping out began to surface. Those, too, opened on much the same note as everything before them.
From the middle on, the tone broke hard in another direction.
Meanwhile, Knet's new program Next K-Star—the show Lemon Girls has withdrawn from—selects eight rookie groups with star power and potential, then sets them against one another across singing, dance, variety, and a range of other challenges, all to find the single team that will become the next generation of K-pop stars...
They'd been pouring out sensational copy with Lee Yuram as the bait, and then all at once it swerved into a program promo. So Knet's PR team had moved.
Slip free of the Lemon Girls DUI as fast as possible—and since they were already sitting on the real-time searches and the chatter, promote the show properly while they had the chance. The intent was plain as day. Down at the bottom, they'd even run an interview with PD Go Joon-tae.
And there, at last, I found Neptune's name.