The Most Important Thing in This Business: Choice (2)
It felt like a hammer had come down on my skull.
I clenched the wheel. My chest, seized up in shock, started heaving, and Lee Songha's words spun through my head like an echo. Taehee unnie's song is good too. Taehee unnie's song...
Right. That's it. Lee Taehee writes music.
How had I not thought of it? The first time I pitched Neptune to PD Go Joon-tae, I had said it with my own mouth—that Lee Taehee was good at composing, and at writing lyrics too.
Don't tell me.
Was Lee Taehee's original the song that had been the title track in the original future?
"What kind of song is it?"
My lips felt bone-dry, and my voice came out a little hoarse. She didn't seem to notice anything strange. Lee Songha rested her chin lightly on the back of the front seat, and when I glanced over, her eyes met mine in the dim light—hazy with stacked exhaustion a moment ago, now softening, turning gentle and damp.
"I really liked it."
"Yeah?"
"It's fast and exciting. For some reason, when I heard it, I kept thinking it felt exactly like our song."
Our song?
"It made me think of the unnies. It made me think of how lost and upset we were when the album kept failing no matter how hard we worked. The day we got cast on Next K-Star, when you called at dawn and everyone lost it. How none of us slept that night because we were terrified the casting would get overturned. And... how I kept running away because you wouldn't stop telling me to try acting."
She had been speaking quietly, carefully, and now she looked at me and smiled, faint.
"Maybe that's why. I feel like I could really sing that song well."
All the way to the set, I turned her words over.
The suspicion only hardened. A song that called up Neptune's past. If that was what it was, it lined up with what Director Park had said—that it was a track that suited Neptune.
But why hadn't she brought it out during this song-collection window?
Had the timing felt too important to risk showing an original? That didn't seem likely. A digital single, maybe. What they were preparing now was a mini album. Even if it wasn't the title track, there was plenty of room for it as a B-side.
Why didn't she say anything?
I thrashed in the swamp of my own thoughts, then shook my head. Fretting alone wasn't going to give me an answer. I would just have to see Lee Taehee and check for myself.
By the time we wrapped the night shoot and reached the Neptune dorm, it was nearly ten.
I woke Lee Songha, bundled in something so puffy I couldn't tell whether it was a padded coat or a sleeping bag. We went in together, and she had been shuffling along when she seemed to come back to herself and tilted her head.
"You're coming up with me?"
"Yeah. I want to hear the song Taehee made. You said it was good, right?"
Her eyes went round. A grin slipped out past her lips, and she must have been pleased, because the long sleeves of the coat—hanging like a scarecrow's arms—swung back and forth.
I punched in the code and stepped inside. Lim Seoyoung, sprawled on the living-room rug, rolled up to her feet. She must have been monitoring a rerun of Next K-Star; three judges filled the screen. My eyes paused for a moment on Simon Lee's face, and she came scurrying over.
"You worked so hard! It's freezing out there—Songha, you must be frozen solid. Go shower in some nice hot water, hurry. You've earned the right to run that hot water like there's no tomorrow."
The chatter must have reached them. Lee Taehee and LJ each opened their doors and came out. Lee Taehee strolled over and combed Lee Songha's hair down with her fingers, settling the mess she had made dozing in the car.
Lim Seoyoung asked.
"But how come you came up together? Are you practicing the script at this hour?"
"No. I came to see Taehee about something."
Lee Taehee tilted her head.
"Me?"
"Songha said a song you made was good, so I got curious."
"...A song?"
I gave them the short version of what we had talked about in the car. When I passed along Lee Songha's impressions, Lee Taehee looked at her with a warm gaze—then promptly mussed the hair she had just smoothed, ruffling it back into a mess. She hesitated a little, but in the end she led me to her room.
I had glimpsed it through the open door before, but this was the first time I had actually gone in. Neat, overall. No—barren.
And something yanked hard at my attention.
A desk as big as the bed. On it sat a laptop and a mini keyboard. Beside them, empty beer cans: one, two, three. She had clearly been pouring them down like soda. This couldn't be good for her. She caught my stare and calmly swept the cans into the trash.
"This is it."
She dropped into the chair and pointed at the laptop screen. It was packed with tools that looked complicated just to look at. I stood right behind the chair, and Lee Songha, Lim Seoyoung, and even LJ crowded in tight beside me. They had all heard the song before, so they didn't look half as desperately curious as I felt, but the anticipation on their faces was plain.
I braced myself and waited. Even if it wasn't the song I was thinking of, I couldn't let the disappointment show.
Lee Taehee moved the mouse a few times. Sound spilled from the speakers.
Into a track that still had no lyrics, her sweet humming poured itself. The other members hummed along, nodding their heads. The music flowing clear into my ears overlapped, in memory, with the music I had heard in the future, and a chill shot straight up my spine.
This is it. No question.
The song I had heard in the future. Neptune's first hit. The song that had taken first place on the music shows. The very song people said came to mind first when they thought of Neptune.
The moment it ended, my head started turning fast.
Now what.
We already had a song composed by Simon Lee. I couldn't suggest making Lee Taehee's original the title track instead without a solid reason. It was an excellent song the traitor had spent a long time and a great deal of effort to secure. Put myself in his place—if a colleague trashed a song I had fought to get, for no reason at all, nothing would come out of me but a string of curses. He would be the biggest bastard under heaven, plain and simple. And things with Simon Lee, who had given us the track, would obviously turn awkward.
What if we pushed Simon Lee's song and Lee Taehee's original as a Double Title Track?
These days, if the songs were good enough, people sometimes bet the release on a double title, even a triple. Shoot the music videos the same way, run the promotions at the same level, and push both. Done wrong, the public's attention could split and leave you with a half-baked result. Done right, both songs could land. There were real cases where it had worked and several tracks from a single release cracked the upper charts.
That way, this original still had a strong chance of taking first on the music shows as planned, and if Simon Lee's song got a decent response too, it would be nothing but a gift. When the tide comes in you have to row hard—this would just mean one more oar.
I was sunk in the thought when Lim Seoyoung, coming out of the song's afterglow, blurted it out.
"It's even better than the last time I heard it. Why don't we put this on the album?"
"Right. Besides the title track, about four more B-sides are going on anyway."
LJ backed her up. I voiced the question that still wouldn't leave me alone.
"Yeah, even I can tell it's good. Why didn't you play it for us during the collection period? Didn't you make it to put on this album?"
"That was the plan, but..."
Lee Taehee suddenly scratched hard at the back of her head. Her face went gloomy. I could almost see a miniature storm cloud floating over her hair. I had never seen her like this, and it threw me. Standing there as if the cloud were dumping rain on her, she answered.
"I don't like it."
"What?"
"There's still something about it I don't like, and I can't tell what it is."
I hadn't expected that.
I burned the night down to white ash and dragged myself into the office still shedding it.
Only yesterday morning I had felt like I could fly on the drama's success. Today it was as if I were walking around with a bowling ball where my head should be. Damn heavy.
I had found the song I was looking for, only to learn it still wasn't finished. I had told her to hurry as much as she could, but whether Lee Taehee could complete the original before it was too late was anyone's guess. It was a piece of creative work. No one else could do it for her.
I had spent a long time trying to figure out how it differed from the song I had heard in the future, and I still couldn't tell. This miserable memory of mine. If I could hear it just one more time, I would know exactly which part was bothering her.
Where did the gears slip?
Probably one of two things. Either changing the present had pushed Neptune's album release earlier than it was meant to be, or the members' collective strain over the Lee Songha controversy had left a mark. In the original future Neptune had appeared on Next K-Star too, and if I guessed they had rushed a new album out before the recognition built on the show collapsed like a sandcastle, the latter was more likely.
I was going to lose my mind.
Too many people were already hanging on this and preparing it. I couldn't shove the album schedule back on a whim. What if I played them the unfinished song anyway and tried to persuade Kim Hyunjo and Team Leader 3? If the two of them liked what they heard, maybe we could wait a little longer for the song to be finished and go out with a double title...
I was still dragging the worry along when a spoon waved back and forth in front of my eyes. I looked up. The traitor.
"Food's here."
"Oh."
I had no idea when it had arrived. A bowl of oyster rice soup sat on the table, fat oysters and chives heaped generously on top, breathing out a milky steam. The moment I saw it, my starving insides did a little dance. For once our lunch schedules were clear, and the two of us had come out to a restaurant in front of the company. I snapped back to myself and picked up my spoon.
A few bites in, the traitor spoke up, easy and unhurried.
"Your face looks completely dead. You're about to put the chief manager to shame."
"You weren't much better until recently."
"Was I?"
"Chain-smoking out of nowhere. Walking around looking like a corpse."
I looked at his face and went on.
"So that was all to get a song out of Simon Lee. You must have really suffered. That's impressive. You."
This much, at least, was sincere. It was something I couldn't help but admire. Maybe it was the star-composer label, but the man carried a stiff neck and a spine full of pride. And if it was a song he had meant for a top-tier girl group on par with Seraphic, Neptune wouldn't even have registered. How hard must he have worked to talk him around? Could I have persuaded him, if it had been me?
The traitor smiled, then looked at me steadily.
"Well. I asked. I persuaded. I tried everything under the sun to get my hands on that song. Lucky it paid off. Honestly, if this hadn't worked out... I'd even been thinking about transferring teams, or quitting the company."
My spoon stopped halfway up. He kept going.
"I haven't lost to many people, so I was pretty confident about office life too, but things here didn't go the way I thought. You succeed at everything you touch like you're possessed, and that messed with my head a bit... But in the end that's why I landed this, so I should probably be thanking you."
All at once the traitor's face—Choi Geon-young's face—came into focus.
I had started looking at him through a lens of prejudice because of the future I had seen with my foresight on my first day of work. The knowledge that Choi Geon-young had lied to me and stolen an opportunity, and Reporter Song's question: had he been like that even back then? Because of that, I had decided he was someone who might stab me in the back at any moment. I had started calling him the traitor so my guard would never drop.
But Choi Geon-young had not shown so much as a hint of going for the back of my head, and he had never revealed any dark intent either. He had even secured Simon Lee's song on his own. While I had been trapped in prejudice, locking him inside the word traitor, he had been working and striving no less than I had.
Choi Geon-young smiled faintly.
"Let's keep doing well together."
Not long ago, I had thought something like this. Maybe people could change. The Choi Geon-young who had stabbed me in the back, and the Choi Geon-young sitting in front of me now, might already not be the same person. I could admit the possibility and still believe I would never truly trust him.
But maybe. Maybe...
I opened my mouth to answer him.
And suddenly everything in front of my eyes went black.