Chapter 28
In the heart of Gangnam, the corridor of Cheongungak, an upscale Korean set-menu restaurant operated strictly by reservation, was silent.
Every step was swallowed by the plush carpet, while the faint scent of agarwood spoke to the refinement of the place.
Lee Ha-jun, the CEO of Blue Sky Entertainment, took a deep breath as he adjusted his crisply ironed shirt collar.
He prided himself on having weathered every storm in the industry and built his agency into a respectable enterprise, but the person he was meeting today was on an entirely different level.
Yoo Sang-hoon.
He was the CEO of Yoo-sung Semiconductor, a tycoon who had recently acquired all of Blue Sky Entertainment's shares—and the man who would soon become Ha-jun's boss and investor.
This wasn't their first meeting, but it was the first time they were meeting in an unofficial setting.
‘Whew. Get a grip.’
After a string of failures, Blue Sky Entertainment's situation had plunged to rock bottom over the past few years. Its worsening finances had forced it to lay off a large number of employees, and it had even been evicted from the company building it had rented.
A major investor, arriving in the middle of such a crisis.
It was no exaggeration to say that the fate of the company rested on his willingness to invest.
“Yoo Seol-ha...”
By now, word had spread throughout the industry that Yoo Seol-ha was the daughter of Yoo-sung Semiconductor's chairman. Everyone also knew that the parents of Blooming's other band members were all important figures in their own right.
Rumors of this sort couldn't be kept secret just by trying to hide them.
That made the purpose of this investment fairly obvious, too.
‘He wants to raise his daughter.’
It might look like an excessive investment, but from Yoo-sung Semiconductor's perspective, the declining Blue Sky Entertainment must have been dirt cheap.
But that didn't mean he could agree to invest resources only in Blooming. Blue Sky Entertainment also had a girl group that had just been selected for its debut lineup and was scheduled to debut.
That was why his goal today was to secure a promise of balanced investment to the greatest extent possible.
“You've arrived.”
“Hello!”
“Haha... It's nice to meet you. There's no need to be so formal. Please, sit down.”
For a while after that, they exchanged empty small talk about this and that.
As time slipped away, Lee Ha-jun couldn't bring himself to say a word about running the agency, and before long, the dishes began arriving one after another.
‘Wow, fuck, this is insane. Seriously.’
He spent a brief moment marveling at food that was pointlessly, insanely delicious.
Then Lee Ha-jun quickly pulled himself together.
“Um, Mr. Yoo...”
“Ah. Would you mind turning on the TV for a moment?”
Lee Ha-jun's words were interrupted by Yoo Sang-hoon's question.
The screen flickered on with a beep. Soon, a lavishly decorated stage appeared on it.
“Ah. Singerstar...”
“It's airing tonight, isn't it? No matter how important the meeting is, what could be more important than my daughter's stage?”
“Ha. Haha... That's true.”
Having poured his youth into working as a manager and founding a company, Lee Ha-jun had never married even as he grew older, so all he could do was laugh.
-Next up is Seo Si-yeon's stage! I believe you're all ready to enjoy her elegant performance.
‘Seo Si-yeon.’
When it came to the biggest topic of conversation among industry insiders lately, it was undoubtedly Seo Si-yeon, an elementary schooler who kept churning out self-composed songs without end.
Some people called it staged or a scam, but by this point, almost everyone knew.
Seo Si-yeon was the real deal.
She wasn't one of the countless fake geniuses scattered throughout the industry; she was a genuine genius.
If there had been a composer capable of producing that many songs of such quality, rumors would inevitably have spread throughout the industry, so those songs had to be Seo Si-yeon's originals.
That alone would have been enough to make her a genius worthy of a place in history, but the fact that her singing skills were also improving so rapidly made her seem like a monster and then some.
“What do you think?”
“Seo Si-yeon... You mean? Naturally, I think she's an absurd, off-the-charts genius.”
“Is that so? Everyone seems to say much the same thing.”
It was only natural. No one in the industry could watch that and feel anything but awe.
Lee Ha-jun watched the stage blankly. The melody was familiar, as if he'd heard it somewhere before, yet unfamiliar at the same time.
“I heard she's doing a cover song this round.”
“A... cover song?”
The moment he heard that, Lee Ha-jun couldn't help recalling the original song in his mind.
It was a song in which everything except the melody line had been torn apart and filled with new components. It was no wonder he hadn't been able to remember where he'd heard it the first time.
“Huh. It's become an entirely different song, hasn't it?”
As he muttered, the chorus ended and a softly played guitar came in.
“Hmm?”
But the electric guitar sounded somewhat out of place.
Lee Ha-jun set down his chopsticks and leaned toward the screen.
As the orchestra's grand tidal wave briefly receded, Seo Si-yeon stood alone at center stage and plucked the guitar strings.
But the sound was bizarre.
It was a sound no ordinary electric guitar could ever produce, as if space itself were physically rippling.
“What... on earth is that sound?”
The guitar tone flowing through the speakers was muffled, as though it were being played underwater, yet it also trembled faintly, like fan blades slicing through the air.
A vibration that was regular, yet not artificial.
The eerie resonance, seeming to circle in place and pile up layer by layer instead of moving forward, matched the theme of the song's title, Mystery, with chilling perfection.
“Is that... a fan?”
Yoo Sang-hoon murmured with interest. The bizarre object Jo Na-eun had made was screaming onstage in Seo Si-yeon's hands.
Beyond merely warping the sound, the irregular currents generated by the spinning blades finely chopped up the guitar's overtones and scattered them.
Lee Ha-jun shuddered.
“This is insane... She actually uses something like that?”
An ordinary producer would have polished the instrumental arrangement to bring out the beauty of the vocals.
But Seo Si-yeon had chosen the exact opposite path.
She had carefully placed an unidentified, incongruous noise amid the rough, surging orchestral-rock sound.
Seo Si-yeon's stage ended after overwhelming the audience and viewers alike.
At some point, Yoo Sang-hoon, who had been putting neatly grilled meat into his mouth, looked Lee Ha-jun straight in the eye and asked,
“If I put Blooming and Seo Si-yeon in your hand, Mr. Lee, how far can you go?”
Lee Ha-jun could only swallow hard under that cold gaze.
* * *
“Good work!”
Though we'd only had a short time together, I bowed to the orchestra members who had performed with me and thanked them.
Now that I'd made it to the upper rounds, the amount of capital that could be invested in the stage had increased enormously.
They could even bring in musicians to fill out the orchestral sound, even if only for part of the song.
I'd also perfectly reproduced the strange scratching sound in the high notes, just as K-Sep had taught me, so it had been a flawless stage with nothing to criticize.
‘That fan really was the kicker.’
The bizarre-looking instrument had an equally unique sound, and it had been fun to put it to use. I'd heard that Jo Na-eun liked making strange things like that and that there were similar weird instruments in the practice room, so I decided I'd definitely visit sometime and listen to them.
But now that we'd advanced to the upper rounds and become enemies, Blooming's help hadn't come for free.
‘They want me to give them a song suited to them if they make it to the next round...’
Honestly, asking for that in exchange for lending me one instrument felt a little shameless, but it wasn't as if Blooming putting on a great stage would get me eliminated, so I simply accepted.
There were a few decent band songs on my hard drive, so I could just pick an appropriate one from among them and give it to them.
“Everyone, please come up onstage!”
At the junior writer's shout, everyone scattered around the waiting room gathered together.
All ten stages had been completed. That meant it was time to announce the eliminated contestants.
Two contestants would be eliminated in this round.
With the eliminations determined by 75 percent viewer votes and 25 percent judges' scores, they were difficult to predict under Singerstar's format.
That was because Singerstar only showed the three contestants with the highest votes during the live broadcast. In other words, it didn't show the votes of those in the lower ranks.
The top three were Seo Si-yeon, Joo Jin-woo, and Blooming.
Those three were effectively guaranteed to avoid elimination.
‘The ones in danger are probably...’
My gaze shifted from the two young men staring straight ahead with slightly wavering eyes to a woman sitting with her eyes quietly closed.
They were Boyfriend and Lee Hye-na, respectively.
Neither of the two was particularly close to me, and they had put on fairly unimpressive stages.
They had been harshly criticized by the judges as well. Lee Hye-na at least had the fandom she'd built since her Produce days, so she had a chance of turning things around with votes, but Boyfriend looked more or less doomed.
I considered going over to talk to them, but decided against it.
‘After what happened with Im Ji-hye, if I went and pulled that shit again, I wouldn't be human.’
Considering what had happened with Im Ji-hye, it was better to keep my mouth shut than offer some half-assed consolation.
‘Still, I'm glad Im Ji-hye managed to get through it.’
The criticism aimed at Im Ji-hye lasted barely a week, because even bigger issues began exploding one after another.
From what I heard, Im Ji-hye had recovered her composure and was thinking about her life going forward.
‘May your future be filled with nothing but good luck.’
Even if we hadn't shared a good relationship, it wasn't difficult to pray in my heart for her future happiness.
Before long, the final results were announced.
The host performed every kind of ridiculous stunt to drag out the time, successfully playing the 60-second advertisements a full five times, so I had to stand bolt upright and wait for the announcement despite my aching legs.
“The final contestants eliminated are Boyfriend and Alford Choi. Thank you for your hard work.”
‘I survived this.’
When I turned my gaze toward Lee Hye-na, she was, as expected, letting out a deep sigh of relief.