So This Is a Music Show (1)
The moment the van pulled up to the broadcast building, Choi Geon-young leaned out from the back seat. The seating had flipped from earlier. I was in the passenger seat now, and he was behind me, and beside him sat LJ in full makeup, legs crossed, one foot tapping.
It felt a little unfair.
"Ah... most of them are here for BYG. They're making their comeback today."
"The live show isn't until evening. They're waiting from now?"
"BYG will be in early for rehearsal too. They're camping out so they can catch them arriving and get photos."
In front of the station, fans with camcorders and bulky cameras had packed in shoulder to shoulder. I'd assumed that sort of thing was for kids, but most of them were adults. One woman even looked like she was on her way to the office, suit and heels and all.
"Those photos that go around on Twitter, the ones labeled so-and-so's commute preview? All posted by photo fans like them."
"Photo fans?"
Commute previews. Photo fans. What was any of that.
"Fans who take pictures. The good ones shoot better than the press. Some just share what they take. Others make photobooks and sell them to other fans."
We parked the van and started walking, and the cameras found us too. I'd braced for people hopping the fence to demand autographs or handshakes, but the reaction was so flat it was almost embarrassing.
They looked. Nobody recognized us, and nobody called a name. If anything, it was the Neptune members greeting other groups' fans, bright as anything.
"Hello, we're Neptune!"
"It's Neptune!"
The four of them smiled and waved, and more cameras came up. A few people even returned the greeting.
"What are you standing there for. Smile, both of you."
Kim Hyunjo jabbed me and Choi Geon-young in the ribs. He was already grinning wide.
"If one of them tweets that they saw a girl group called Neptune today and they weren't bad, that's worth more than most of our PR articles."
I bowed and greeted with everything I had, with no idea who I was greeting.
"Oh, right. And..."
The second we stepped into the lobby, Kim Hyunjo laid down the law.
"Don't swear in front of the fans who came for the broadcast."
"Sorry?"
"People still think celebrity managers are thugs or gangsters, so watch yourself. Don't give them anything to talk about. Don't even brush against them. If a post goes around saying, 'Some nobody manager from Neptune or whatever shoved me today, what a jerk,' the girls' image takes the hit."
"Ah... yes."
"And keep greeting people."
"Yes."
"Do you know who you're supposed to greet?"
I had nothing. How was I supposed to know that.
"You don't, do you."
"No. I don't."
"Then greet everyone you run into. Especially anyone wearing a staff badge. The second you spot a station employee, don't drop a single syllable. Say this. 'Hello, I'm so-and-so from W&U. I'm currently managing a girl group called Neptune, and we'd be grateful for your support.' Easy, right? Memorize it."
Choi Geon-young was already muttering it under his breath. I kept at it the whole way to the waiting room. Hello, I'm with W&U... Hello, I'm with W&U...
Lim Seoyoung, trailing behind us, found it funny.
"You're Jung Sunwoo, right, oppa?"
Jung Sunwoo oppa? Who was that. Oh. Me.
"Yeah."
"In a suit like that, if you go around greeting people, they'll all think you're at least a team leader. You look higher up than Hyunjo oppa."
"Ah... you think so? Really?"
"You should have worn a tie."
"I've got one in my bag."
Lim Seoyoung laughed harder. It tickled my ears. I'd only ever heard her nagging the members, and hearing her talk while she laughed was a different color entirely. That cotton-candy voice, those eyes folding into crescents — genuinely cute.
I wanted to scoop her up and slip her into my pocket... Ahem.
The K-Popcorn waiting rooms were in the basement. We took the elevator down, and people were already everywhere. I couldn't tell by looking who was a manager and who was crew, or who was an idol and who was a dancer.
One thing was certain. Nowhere I looked was there a girl prettier than the Neptune members, Lee Songha especially. And I wasn't saying that just because we were on the same team. It was true.
"Where's our dressing room?"
"There. Second from the end."
Doors were packed tight along both sides of a narrow hall. Neptune's waiting room was the second from the end of the right-hand corridor. A slip of paper was stuck to the door.
I'd opened it wondering what a broadcast waiting room looked like.
A chicken coop. Smaller than my studio.
Hold on. Four Neptune members, three managers counting me, and later the stylists and the artists touching up makeup were coming too. By then there wouldn't be room to squeeze in a chair.
If we were this cramped, what did groups with a dozen-odd members do? Or groups with backup dancers?
"Better a cramped room to ourselves than awkwardly sharing with another team. And once regional shoots and events start coming in, you'll eat and sleep in the van plenty. When that day comes, you'll miss even this waiting room."
At Kim Hyunjo's words, Lim Seoyoung pouted.
"I don't even care about eating or sleeping. I just wish we'd land a regional shoot, or an event. Anything."
"Hang on a little longer. Good days are coming. You guys are going to make it."
"For real?"
"For real. You're tired. Close your eyes for a bit."
"We should greet the seniors once they're all here."
"I'll wake you then. Sleep."
The Neptune members pulled coats and blankets over themselves, leaned on one another's shoulders and heads, and shut their eyes. In full makeup they were unmistakably idols, but asleep they looked like kids. Well, they were kids. The oldest of them here was twenty-two.
"You two, don't just stand there. Find a spot and rest. We're stuck here from now until the live show ends."
Kim Hyunjo claimed a chair and closed his eyes.
I checked the time. A little past eight. K-Popcorn went live at seven in the evening. Ten hours left. What were we supposed to do with all that time in a windowless chicken coop? Should I try to sleep too? No. If I closed my eyes, I wasn't getting back up. The phone was all I had. If I'd known, I'd have brought a charger, or at least a power bank.
The broadcast was at seven. Why call us in this early in the first place?
"Do you know what we actually do until the live show?"
Choi Geon-young scratched his chin as he answered.
"Hmm... I've never actually been to a music show, so I don't know for sure."
"Blackout didn't do music shows?"
"When I was interning, they were done promoting. It was only events and fan signs. From what I've heard, it's a dry rehearsal, then you wait. A camera rehearsal, then you wait. You wait while the other teams pre-record. You go up for the live stage, then you wait until they announce first place... something like that?"
What was that. Not even an idle game. Just being left on the shelf.
Choi Geon-young glanced around and lowered his voice.
"The big names squeeze other schedules into the gaps, but we won't be able to. We'll probably have to eat in the waiting room too."
My breath caught. Live broadcast or not, we were supposed to sit around for ten hours for a one-hour show? Wasn't this absurdly inefficient?
"If we do all that, how much do we get paid?"
"No idea."
I'd asked quietly, but Kim Hyunjo must have heard. He lifted his head.
"A hundred dollars."
"What?"
"A hundred dollars."
"...So four hundred altogether?"
It wasn't even network television, just a major cable channel, and it was stingier than I'd thought. A salon visit would cost more.
"A hundred dollars total. Split it and that's twenty-five a person."
"..."
At first I thought I'd misheard. That money would barely cover three meals. Up at four in the morning, done at eight at night, a whole day carved clean out of the schedule, and the take was twenty-five dollars each?
"Isn't that a little inhuman?"
"Who around here is looking for anything human. And nobody does music shows for the money. You swallow the loss and do it for the exposure. We've got the company name behind us, and Blackout as something to lean on, so a PD was generous enough to squeeze us in. There are kids everywhere who can't get on a music show even once after a comeback."
"Ah..."
Worn thin with exhaustion, Kim Hyunjo filled in a few more things. Appearance fees differed a little by station, but even at the generous end you were looking at around five hundred dollars. Whether you had a handful of members or a crowd of backup dancers, the pay was the same.
Hair and makeup on top of that, and every station demanding a different stage outfit, so just showing up could burn through thousands of dollars. Even so, rookies had no choice but to line up for a slot, because a broadcast was how you let people hear the song and see your faces.
"Get some rest now. The day hasn't even started."
Having dropped that on me and Choi Geon-young, Kim Hyunjo pulled his cap down over his face.
Soon Choi Geon-young closed his eyes too. Apparently I was the only one in shock.
I searched a few articles online. Reality was, if anything, worse than what Kim Hyunjo had said.
There were top-tier idols pulling in six figures a day from events alone, and major entertainment companies with revenue in the tens of millions. On the other side, there were girl groups so broke they'd sewn their own stage clothes for music shows, and presidents of tiny companies who'd gone to loan sharks just to debut a group.
One long, miserable interview about how if this album flopped too, it was the Han River for him. Looked like that president had gone under in the end. I wondered what he was doing now.
As someone who dreamed of running a management company someday, it left me uneasy. Whatever else I did, I was never touching loan sharks.
I closed the article and searched Neptune again. I scrolled past everything I'd already seen and combed through the entertainment pieces and web reactions I hadn't.
The articles were obviously promotional pieces the company had seeded. I checked every comment section. Nothing. No hate comments either. Strip out the PR, and Neptune's name only turned up on music-show lineups and the occasional cable-variety cast list, rare as beans in a drought.
After about thirty minutes of digging, I finally found one. On the free board of a car community, a post titled with the members' photos attached, and comments underneath.
Unretouched, and he'd give it to them? Give it to them, my ass. They looked far better in person than in the photos.
Reading something like that stung. Fine — a hit big enough to shake the whole country took heaven's own luck. But they ought to have at least some name recognition.
Suppose I were Neptune's producer. How would I make them blow up?
The songs and the concept weren't all that bad even now. More than anything, they all seemed to have personality. Then again, unless they got on variety shows, there was no way to show that off. So that was why everyone was so desperate to get on air.
"What's got you thinking so hard?"
Choi Geon-young, who'd been opening and closing his eyes for a while, sat up, rumpled.
"Trying to figure out how Neptune gets big."
"Haha. If you've got a method, I'd like to hear it too. Whether a celebrity takes off comes down to timing and luck more than anything. Show business is the cloud you never know will rain. Look at BYG. Who knew they'd get this big."
"I still don't get why they're popular. I can't keep up with what kids like."
We were whispering so we wouldn't wake the members when Choi Geon-young poked me in the side. I turned. Kim Hyunjo was staring straight at us again.
"Look at the critics. If you're not tired, don't chatter in here. Go buy coffee."
"Yes? Yes. Coffee?"
"Snacks too. Use some sense."
We took the card and were all but chased out of the waiting room. A few more teams must have arrived while we were inside. The hallway was a marketplace. We were shoving through the crowd when a woman with a laptop bag stepped squarely into our path.
"Oh? Chief!"
Chief?
"You're Blackout's chief, right? I'm Kim Soo-young, a reporter with Entertainment Bridge. We said hello briefly at the fan sign last time. You don't remember, do you."
The reporter latched onto Choi Geon-young like they were old friends.
So he was friendly with reporters too. All at once, his three months of experience felt enormous.
"Hello. Of course I remember."
"Oh my."
"But I'm not a chief. Just a manager."
"A manager, then. What brings you here? Does Blackout have something on Knet today? Radio? Could we step aside for a quick interview? It really would only take a moment."
"I'm with Neptune right now. A girl group under W&U."
Shouldn't have opened my mouth.
It was written plain across the reporter's face. Shit. I really shouldn't have said anything.
"I see. Then I'll see you next time."
"Yes. Take care."
Choi Geon-young stayed perfectly polite, but the reporter turned her back without a second's regret. A moment later she had another man by the sleeve.
"...Let's just go buy the coffee."
"Yeah."
So this was the sorrow of managing a group nobody knew.