So This Is a Music Show (2)
Fans still swarmed the front of the broadcast station. A shriek went up behind the barricades—some popular idol must have arrived.
"Whoever you are, hang in there today! Don't starve—eat something good. We'll be cheering for you...!"
There probably wasn't a job in the world without its light and its shadow, but entertainment wore its light so extravagantly that the dark seemed deeper for it. Well. Those people were those people. We circled the station, looking for a coffee shop.
A cold wind knifed in under my dress shirt. Rubbing both arms did nothing. Damn it. What kind of life did I think I was living, showing up in a suit? If I was going to dream something that passed for prophecy, the least it could have done was tell me not to wear one.
"Ugh... it's freezing. It's only October, and it just turned cold."
"Tell me about it. Time to dig the winter clothes out."
Choi Geon-young hunched his shoulders and stuck himself right against my side. A face that already looked harmless, and a manner to match. We'd met at dawn, and already it felt like we'd known each other for years.
Better to get along than to burn energy keeping each other in check. He didn't seem like the type to make working together miserable, and that was a relief.
"You planning to stick with this?"
He asked it out of nowhere.
"Why?"
"If I can help it, I want to work with you for a long time. Feels like we'd get along. Back when I was a part-time road manager for Blackout, I didn't click with the other managers. Wore me out."
So even a guy who looked this sociable had people he didn't mesh with.
I couldn't answer right away. My head was a tangle. Honestly, I was still dazed. Even so, the members seemed like decent people, and neither my senior, Kim Hyunjo, nor Choi Geon-young looked like a bad person to work beside. I'd have to see more of them to be sure, but that was the first impression.
Friends who'd gotten jobs ahead of me all said the same thing: every company was crawling with psychos, and the work was hell. Set against that, this clearly wasn't a bad place to land.
"I have to keep working. But the truth is, I originally wanted to manage actors."
"Actors?"
"Yeah. I never cared about being an idol manager, and I don't know the first thing about it... If a chance opens up to move to an acting team, I'm taking it on the spot."
"Ah... that's a shame. Then let's do well until then, at least."
"Sure."
"Once you're in it, you might find the idol side more fun."
"Haha. I'm a man of principle."
"Then hurry up and find the coffee shop, principled Auntie Jung."
"Hey! Lay off. That was my nickname in middle school."
We laughed and talked our way into a coffee shop almost at once. Popular place—the outdoor terrace was packed solid. Besides the coffee, they had the sorts of things girls seemed to like, bread and cookies and sandwiches, so I ordered a bit of everything.
While we paid and waited, two men at the next table started murmuring.
"You hear about BYG? Word is they asked for an extra minute so they could stick a performance break in the middle of the title track."
"No way. What? I heard they're getting the first comeback stage at K-Popcon this time, on the condition they also do a special stage with their company's rookie girl group."
"Sugar Cat?"
"Yeah, them. And that still wasn't enough, so they asked for another minute?"
"That's what I'm saying. A rookie team that was already booked got dropped over it. Not enough time."
"Seriously?"
"That team they cut—their manager spent a whole month sending the producer gift cards and begging just to land the slot."
"Wow. Not a scrap of professional ethics. Let's see how well they eat and how well they live."
"Oh, they'll eat well and live well."
What was with today? It had me dead to rights. First day on the job, and I already felt as if I'd learned the whole law of the entertainment jungle. A one-hour music show pulling one, maybe two percent in the ratings, and behind it every kind of mess imaginable. Those rookies who'd been puffed up about going on air today—what were they doing now? If I'd been their manager, I'd be cracking open a bottle of soju.
We split the box of coffee and the snack bags and stopped at a convenience store on the way back. Sausages, salad, pudding, fruit—I didn't even look at the prices, just grabbed anything that seemed like something the girls would like. Did this count as thoughtful...?
When we returned to the waiting room, the Neptune members were all up. A few of them were loosely waving their arms and legs. Choreography? A little while ago they'd been nodding off like sick chickens, and now every one of them was overflowing with energy.
"Coffee and snacks, coming through!"
Lee Songha came over first. She'd been hugging a tub of ice cream by herself that morning; this one liked to eat.
"Smells good. What'd you get?"
"Bagels, sandwiches, and I pretty much cleaned out a convenience store."
She liked it. She liked it. What was this swell of satisfaction? It felt strangely like I was taming them with food.
Lee Taehee and LJ sipped the hot coffee and dug through the snacks as well. Only three of them, though. While those three ate ham-and-cheese sandwiches and slathered cream cheese thick on the bread, Lim Seoyoung just pulled at her coffee in long draughts. Back at the salon she'd eaten nothing but salad while the others had their lunch boxes. Wasn't she hungry?
I deliberately fished out of the bag the things I'd bought for her.
"These are low-fat yogurt and zero-calorie pudding. You can't eat stuff like this either?"
"Zero-calorie?"
Seoyoung perked up. She inspected the calories on the yogurt and the pudding with great care, and then her face lit right up.
"These are fine. Are they new?"
"Said so on the label. New product."
"They look so good. I'll eat well, oppa."
She tore the yogurt open and shoveled it in. Choi Geon-young watched her as if he couldn't make sense of it.
"Doesn't look like you even need to diet..."
"I'm the shortest of the four, and my bust is the biggest."
"Huh?"
His eyes dropped to her chest, and then he jerked his head up, caught. So did mine. The moment she said bust, my gaze went to her chest on its own.
Instinct. A knee-jerk reflex.
Anyway, what she'd said was true enough, up to a point. LJ had a similar sense of volume, but her arms and legs were long and firm—a balanced figure. Seoyoung was petite and slender, with only her chest large, which made it look even bigger. But what was the problem with that? From where I was standing it was her greatest charm. Was it different for the person herself?
"Because I've got a bust, even a little extra weight makes me look heavy on TV, and I gain from drinking water. So I have to diet."
She clenched a small fist as she said it. It didn't sound like she was talking to Choi Geon-young so much as whipping herself.
LJ pressed a hand down on the crown of Seoyoung's head and sneered.
"You being the shortest is fair. You having the biggest chest is not. Slipping a lie through slick as a snake over a wall, are we?"
"Hey! You and I don't even have the same genes—you have to factor that in!"
In no time the two were growling at each other like a cat and a dog. Still, thanks to LJ, Seoyoung seemed to have her spirits back.
"Finish up, and let's make the rounds of the waiting rooms. Everyone should be here by now."
Kim Hyunjo said it while cracking his neck left and right in a stretch. The members, mid-bite, dropped their food and stood at once. I got up with them, sandwich still in hand. It hadn't even reached my stomach yet...
"Hello, we're Neptune!"
The "greetings" really were greetings. The members swept the waiting rooms, folding themselves to ninety degrees at the waist—the same self-introduction idols gave the viewers on variety shows.
If the singer inside was thick-skinned, nosy, and bored, a few warm words went back and forth. More often, they didn't. Usually the whole conversation was one "hang in there," and the members pouring out their thanks and their promises to work hard.
Now and then there was someone with what might as well have been a steel rod in his neck, offering only a perfunctory jerk of the chin, or someone who glanced over once and ignored them outright. Garbage manners. I ought to write that one's name down. I was worked up enough to snap, and the Neptune members didn't so much as twitch an eyebrow. Their nerves were something else.
I wasn't only trailing after them, either. Kim Hyunjo was out front, scattering business cards and greeting people—how was I supposed to just stand there?
Now I understood the neck stretch. Greet the singers, greet the managers, greet the staff, greet the reporters. I'd lost count of how many times I'd said, "Please take good care of our Neptune." My neck was killing me.
The greetings were the easy part. The bigger problem was the awkwardness afterward. Choi Geon-young seemed to carry the conversation along without effort, while I'd been sweating through the back of my shirt for a while now. I genuinely had nothing to say.
So I ended up studying the people I'd just greeted. At first they treated me stiffly. Like Seoyoung had said, the suit probably made me look like someone important. The moment I clarified, belatedly, that I was a new manager, they laughed and loosened up. Among them were people smiling with their mouths while their eyes looked straight down at me.
Even so, one good thing about all of this: I was seeing celebrities to my heart's content. Men and women alike were in full makeup, every one of them glittering. A few looked as if they'd stepped out of a comic. Famous solo singers I actually knew were mixed into the flood of idols, and more than once I lost my head entirely.
Back in the day, whenever I went to karaoke, I sang that guy's songs all the time... I barely held myself back from asking for an autograph.
One minute the industry seemed filthy and petty, and the next a girl went by with her apron skirt fluttering and I caught myself wondering if this place was heaven. Wait. What she had on under that apron—don't tell me it was a school uniform?
Don't look.
"Hey."
Choi Geon-young tapped my foot with his.
"What?"
He jerked his chin without a word. I looked where he indicated. A sexy female singer was walking past in a stage costume that might as well have been a swimsuit.
This place is heaven.
I wandered back and forth like a lost child, then leaned against the corridor wall for a moment. Kim Hyunjo was talking to someone over that way, and Choi Geon-young was either deep in a conversation somewhere or off in the bathroom—I couldn't see him. We'd finished the waiting-room rounds, so a short rest was allowed. My poor back. It was going to give out before I'd even put it to any real use.
I was working the ache out of my neck and lower back when someone tapped my shoulder. I turned, expecting Choi Geon-young, and found Lee Taehee. Startled me. At first she'd seemed completely easygoing, but in stage makeup she was a different person. Maybe because she was the leader, there was a strange force to her, and I still hadn't managed a proper conversation. Leader or not, she was a full five years younger than me, and yet the air around her was like that.
"What? Something wrong?"
"Do you see Seoyoung stuck over there?"
I looked past her shoulder. Lim Seoyoung was in front of a waiting room, hemmed in by three girls.
"I see her."
"Could you go pull her out? I was going to tell Hyunjo oppa, but he's caught by another team leader right now."
Don't tell me this is a bullying scene.
I looked harder, startled, and it didn't seem so. The girls were all smiling bright, and the mood was warm. Then what was it?
"They're Sugar Cat. Seoyoung's old classmates from her trainee days."
Sugar Cat? BYG's junior group, the ones doing a special stage with them today?
"Their names keep rising, and Seoyoung's been treading water for two years, so they look down on her. If you could pretend you don't know and just bring her back, I'd appreciate it."
"If we go over, it'll hurt her pride."
LJ backed her up from the side.
"Got it. I'll bring her."
I studied them more carefully as I approached. Seoyoung and the three girls around her were laughing away, and all I could see was old friends glad to run into each other.
Are my eyes dead fish? Why can't I tell? There has to be something only women can see.
"Um... Seoyoung?"
I called, awkward, and she spun around.