Management Division Team 3: Rookie Manager (3)
No. I couldn't let that happen. Not after how hard I'd prepared for today.
"My brother's thirteen years older than I am."
Kim Hyunjo sighed.
"So you're a serious late-in-life baby, then. Youngest, and born late on top of it — they must have spoiled you rotten. This job's going to be rough on you..."
The same old prejudice, every time.
Raised like something precious. Everybody must have doted on him. Looks exactly like a young master. No grit in him, then.
That sort of thing. I'd heard it until my ears rang, even in the army.
But I felt wronged.
"My brother got married when I was in middle school."
"What?"
"The next year my sister-in-law got pregnant. They went to the obstetrician and came back saying there were quadruplets in there."
"Seriously?"
I remembered the day the house turned upside down. My brother, always quiet, dry as a piece of stockfish, had said it with a face you couldn't tell was laughing or crying.
Dad, Mom — it's quadruplets. Hahaha... ha...
Kim Hyunjo and Choi Geon-young stared at me, eyes huge.
"The plan was for my sister-in-law to quit and devote herself to childcare once the baby came, but with four of them she couldn't. On two incomes they were barely going to cover formula."
"Y-yeah, that tracks. Four kids — formula and diapers alone would cost a fortune."
"In the end my mother took on all four, but she couldn't handle them by herself either."
"Ah..."
"So I ended up pitching in. Middle school was changing dirty diapers and soothing crying babies, and through high school and college I was basically a babysitter. I reeked of baby formula — for a while my nickname was Jung-jumma. Auntie Jung. Haha."
"Uh..."
"So yes, I'm the youngest and a late child, but I never got a scrap of special treatment."
"Wow... you must've had it rough. If you raised four kids changing dirty diapers, looking after girl-group kids would be nothing."
Just as planned.
With that, I'd dodged being written off at first sight the way I had in the dream. Thinking about it, it was an enormous relief. If I hadn't dreamed it, the only thought in my head right now would have been a girl group, I'm screwed, I'm screwed, I'm screwed, what do I do.
And I really would have been screwed.
Being assigned to a girl group was still a shock, still unreal. But I couldn't just walk out because I didn't like it.
Of every company I'd looked into, W&U had the best terms.
The pay was decent compared with other places, and it was a company that kept pushing into overseas markets even after failure upon failure, so there would be plenty to learn.
More than anything, the path up from road manager into a management role was systematic and stable. That was the biggest advantage. I'd heard that at slapdash companies they sometimes had you doing nothing but driving for years.
I had no confidence I could find a better job if I walked away now, and since things had turned out this way, getting a taste of the music circuit and the variety circuit first might not be so bad. Actors guest on variety shows more often than not, anyway. If I built a track record looking after a girl group, a chance to move toward actors would come along soon enough.
It would come... damn it.
I picked up Neptune's profile.
Girl group. The words felt strange rolling over my tongue. The only girl groups whose names I actually knew were a handful of truly famous ones, the ones I'd absorbed without trying during my military service, and the ones who'd shown up in dramas or movies.
Neptune was not among them.
Neptune.
The second idol act W&U had poured its heart into producing, after shooting the boy group Blackout straight to stardom. A four-member girl group. Second year since debut.
Their strength was looks so striking that every member could have been called the visual line.
The profile photos confirmed it: beauties, each with a different kind of charm. I stared for a long time, searching for even a face I might have glimpsed in passing, but all I got was sore eyes. I went carefully through to the last page, then slipped the profile into my bag.
The dream surfaced again.
Even granting it was a precognitive dream, could it really be this accurate? It wasn't as if the spirits had descended on me. The girl-group part lining up was one thing, but the years since debut and the group name too — that was uncannily dead-on.
Wait. Was it that?
When I'd searched for articles on W&U, I might have glanced past the name Neptune, the debut year, things like that.
I didn't remember it, but maybe it had stayed in my unconscious and come out in the dream. At least that was more plausible than a precognitive dream.
Still, picturing the successful version of myself, a precognitive dream didn't seem so bad either...
"Sunwoo. Finished with the profile?"
"Yes, I've read it."
Thanks to my having sold him the quadruplets, Kim Hyunjo's voice had softened from before.
"Management Team 3 is the toughest team at W&U. Physically, mentally, emotionally — all of it. Work somebody here even a little and you get a read on them. That one will last. That one will quit before long."
The air had shifted. I sat up straighter.
"Everybody who comes into this business walks in dreaming big about becoming the CEO of a major company, but CEO, my ass — seven or eight out of ten don't even last a year before they walk. Upstairs it's always kids these days don't have the basics, back in my day it was harder... but honestly, it makes sense. These days they come in after studying all the way through college. Did I study for over a decade just to chauffeur little girls and run around fetching kimbap? Of course that thought hits you."
"..."
"And the pay's garbage, you can't look after eating or sleeping so your body falls apart, the people throwing their weight around are endless, and we spend all day bowing and scraping — yes, PD, yes, writer, yes, director. Dozens of times a day you think about quitting."
Choi Geon-young and I just listened, mute.
Was he saying the business was miserable and success nearly impossible, so we should just quit?
I'd jumped in because I truly wanted the work, but I hadn't chased a fantasy with my eyes shut, either. Who didn't know a manager's job was extreme? I'd heard plenty about how dirty and petty the entertainment world was.
"Why do you think I'm telling two people on their first day something like this?"
We glanced at each other, then answered, each of us.
"Because you're our senior, so... advice for us..."
"First you have to know reality before you run into—"
"If you're going to quit, quit fast."
"...Pardon?"
"I teach you the whole job and then you quit — what does that make me? We hire another rookie and I do the same thing all over again. So if you don't think you can hack it, quit as soon as you can and find another road. Don't drag it out half-assed for two weeks, a month, and wear everybody out."
Wow. This was a first day for the ages.
Not every new hire in the world got a speech like that.
"If you're going to do it, do it well. Okay?"
"Understood."
"Yes."
Work hadn't even started, and I was already drained. My chest felt stuffed, as if a heavy stone had settled there. We drove another five minutes without a word.
"We're here. That villa."
The van pulled up in front of it. I'd expected an idol dorm to have something special about it, but from the outside it was nothing much.
Choi Geon-young got out and asked, "It's really different from the Blackout dorm."
"You can't compare them to those guys. They've got sasaengs. Let them live somewhere with security this lax and it'd be chaos."
"True... sasaeng fans are terrifying these days."
"Gives you chills. Somebody told me the other day — finished the schedule, went home, and a sasaeng was hiding in the closet. Lots of psychos out there."
I glanced around and put in a question of my own. "Neptune doesn't have fans like that?"
"Nope. They don't even have regular fans — where would sasaengs come from? And even after a girl group blows up, they don't get worn down by sasaengs the way boy groups do. Once in a while at a fansign or an event some lunatic charges in trying to cop a feel. Perverted bastards."
Grimacing, Kim Hyunjo headed into the villa. Choi Geon-young and I trailed after him.
I looked sideways and our eyes met. Awkwardness, and with it the faintest sense of being in this together. We smiled at the same time. A deep dimple sank into Choi Geon-young's cheek. Same as my first impression — a face with nice guy written all over it. How did mine come across? I just hoped I didn't look like a jerk.
I held out my hand first.
"I'm twenty-seven."
"Huh? Me too. I started college in '08. Same age — want to drop the formal speech?"
"Let's."
I'd have to see more, but so far he seemed all right.
We took the elevator up to the fifth floor. Kim Hyunjo didn't ring the bell. He went straight to the door lock and punched in the code.
The bolt clacked.
The living room was still pitch-dark. I fumbled my shoes off and stepped inside. Maybe because it was a dorm where only the girl-group members lived, it felt like trespassing into an unfamiliar world.
Honestly, I was a little nervous. It wasn't just me — Choi Geon-young, coming in behind, was obviously tense too.
Kim Hyunjo flipped the light on, and the living room brightened.
The place wasn't large. Far better than my studio, but it felt like it would be a squeeze with four people living in it. A cute, round little sofa. Character cushions and plush dolls lined up across it. A cream-colored rug. You knew at once this was a girls' space.
"Kids! Up and get ready! We have to be at the salon by five!"
Bang! Bang!
Kim Hyunjo knocked twice on each bedroom door.
The first to open was the door to the left of the balcony.
"Oppa, you're early."
Whoa.
Whoa...
Watch a movie or a drama long enough and sometimes the color of the frame suddenly blooms, and the heroine looks so beautiful it stops you. A shot where the director, determined to go all out, mounts a secret-weapon filter or slams the correction on hard...
That exact frame was right in front of my eyes.