Chapter 52
What would happen if a person forgot how to speak?
That's happening right before my eyes now.
“Wow….”
I was crouched in the middle of the practice room with everyone, watching the choreography video Julia had sent us on the TV.
At first, everyone could only marvel at the clean, beautiful, sophisticated choreography that began with our song.
“Wow….”
That was literally all there was to it.
-♬♪♬♪
And as Julia's choreography went on, Lee Da-young and Seong Se-ri's expressions grew strange.
Eun Hee-ju remained expressionless, sitting between my legs and repeatedly bumping her head against my chest.
Min-seo looked like she was about to die of excitement.
“Wow. Ha….”
“Woooow!”
“Wooooooooow………………….”
Wouldn't it feel like everyone had united around a single word—‘Wow’?
[The video has ended.]
When the video ended like that.
“Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!”
“Hwah. You scared me.”
Lee Da-young, who could be said to be the one responsible for making it possible for us to get such amazing choreography, let out a truly tremendous scream.
Beside her, Seong Se-ri held both ears and let out a small sigh as she looked at me.
“Wow. Haa.”
Min-seo sneaked a smile of anticipation while watching her two older sisters.
“Wow. Ha. Seriously. Haha. Wow! Seriously. This is... ha. I...”
“This is insane. Seriously.”
Lee Da-young was a perfect example of what happened when someone's mental state collapsed.
“Do you think this makes any sense, Team Leader? And look at this. Just look.”
Lee Da-young showed me the words written at the end of the email.
[This is the first completed version.]
[It is not the final version.]
[But the difficulty will not get any easier. It may get harder, though.]
“Is this something a bitch who sent us choreography like this should be saying? That fucking bitch. Shouldn't we fire her right now? I heard she's officially joining our team this time. I can't work with someone like her. Is she hell-bent on killing people?”
Lee Da-young was exploding in earnest for the first time in a while.
“Hee-ju. Step out for a moment.”
“…Yes.”
I sent Eun Hee-ju out for a moment.
Then I sat Lee Da-young between my legs and stroked her head, soothing her like a puppy.
“Da-young. I understand why you're angry.”
First, step one.
Empathy.
“But think about it. Honestly, setting the difficulty aside, the choreography that lines up perfectly with your song was pretty good, wasn't it? For now, forget about how difficult and exhausting it is. Okay? Answer honestly. How was it?”
Step two.
Persuade her with positive words.
“It was good. I know it was good. The moment I saw it, I thought it was amazing.”
Is that enough?
That's what I thought, but...
“But I clearly told you I can't danceeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!”
Ah.
This wasn't the kind of thing that would calm down easily.
“Ahem! Okay, girls. Practice hard with the choreography that arrived today, and if you have any trouble, call me anytime. I'll come running right away, got it? Oh, right. Julia will come in three times a week starting tomorrow to teach you. Good luck!”
The final step, step three.
Tactical retreat.
I knew they weren't the sort to actually give up just because they were angry or gloomy.
So I somehow dumped it all on them and made my exit.
Behind me,
“I told youuuuuuuuuuu!!!! How many times did I tell youuuuuuu!!!! Fuuuuuuuck!!!!”
Fortunately, I got a text saying Seong Se-ri had somehow calmed Lee Da-young down as their leader and oldest member, and gotten them back to practice.
Meanwhile.
This time, I was running away from Lee Da-young instead of Park Joo-yong.
“Oh, Team Leader Kim.”
“It'd feel strange if we didn't run into each other by now.”
I shrugged as Yoon Won-seok approached me as if it were only natural.
Right.
What information did he have for me today?
Though, in fact...
There wasn't any information that would have much impact on things at the moment.
“Oasis and your group are both at the stage where you've received songs and are preparing to debut, so I don't have anything major to tell you. I heard Oasis recently got about a minute of their song in advance, too.”
“Was it any good?”
“It sounds like they think so. From the way Team Leader Park Joo-yong was grinning after listening to it, the song must've turned out pretty well.”
“Hmm. Well, Nampo-dong Nuclear Fist probably didn't earn his reputation for nothing.”
Sure enough, Yoon Won-seok didn't seem to have much to tell me either.
So we just chatted a bit while sipping vending-machine coffee.
“How are things going on your end, Team Leader? Since you're running things alone, hardly anyone knows what you're up to. I'm probably the only one who knows anything, right?”
“We've almost finished one song, and we've even wrapped up the first recording. Today, the girls got the choreography for it and are practicing.”
“Whoa. That's really fast. It doesn't feel like that much time has passed since the monthly evaluation.”
“What's the point of being fast? In the end, quality matters. Results. The numbers matter. Even if you shoot a 1-billion-won music video, it's all for nothing if it's worse than a 100-million-won one.”
“I suppose so.”
As I watched Yoon Won-seok quietly sip his coffee, I gave him a light smack on the shoulder.
“Hey.”
“Yes?”
“Want to take a look? At the song and choreography.”
“Well, I'd love to.”
What was life's little pleasure, after all?
Watching the reaction of a subordinate with a lower rank than me.
“Let's start with the song.”
[Always-Radiance]
“Oh. The title has a nice feel to it. It really sounds like the kind of song a big-company girl group would debut with. And you've picked a group name, too. Always? That's nice.”
“You little punk. Quit overdoing it and just listen.”
Even as I said that, the corners of my mouth were gently curling upward.
“Wow.”
I flinched for a moment at the ‘Wow’ that came out here, too, but...
“This is amazing. I thought it was just a one-minute song. And you know how big-company girl groups have lyrics like ‘Expect twist after twist’? It's kind of like that. I don't know much about writer STB, but I heard they work in the underground scene. This song doesn't feel like that at all. But it's not just some blindly cheerful song, either. If I had to describe it, it's exactly like a sacred light?”
This guy really was a person from the management industry.
He'd pinpointed exactly what I'd felt.
“Wow. But first, how long did recording take? No, how much time has it been since the monthly evaluation? How did you get a song of this quality already? This is the title track, right? At first, I thought you'd just finished a simple B-side.”
“We finished recording the same day we went in. It took about fifteen hours.”
“Fifteen hours?! The girls held out through that? Girl groups these days have great stamina, sure, but fifteen hours sounds rough. The song isn't easy, either. Their throats must've been sore.”
Ha. This was it. This.
This was what I lived for.
“They worked hard, man. I was just standing outside the studio, you know, outside the recording booth, where you press buttons on the equipment.”
“Yeah.”
“I was barely doing anything, just watching, and I was sweating. I almost felt like crying. Our girls were suffering so much, and there was nothing their team leader could do for them!”
[If someone saw you, they'd think you were talking after having a drink or two.]
“Still, our girls came through. I can't help being grateful to them.”
“You're the one who brought those girls in, Team Leader!”
Yoon Won-seok.
You little punk! So you know how to survive in the workplace, too?
“Right? I brought them in. Our girls have to be exceptionally talented, you know. I just happened to run into them by chance, but they were already shining. Shining!”
I got excited and talked for a while, then remembered I hadn't shown him the choreography, so I showed him the video as well.
“I'm looking forward to the choreography, too. Considering your eye for talent, Team Leader, I cautiously predict this won't be ordinary, either.”
“Ah, well, I don't think it turned out badly.”
As Yoon Won-seok watched Julia's choreography video beside me, his expression gradually grew bizarre.
[The video has ended.]
When we'd watched it all the way through, Yoon Won-seok spoke to me in a serious voice.
“Team Leader. Are you perhaps a demon?”
“……”
“I'm serious. I think even male idols would be groaning if they had to dance to this.”
That was when it happened.
From the practice room on the second floor, a small shriek and a thud sounded beneath my feet.
For the record, I was in the employee lounge on the third floor.
“Ahem. I should get going.”
“You're a demon! A demon!”
I quietly turned around.
* * *
“Fuuuuuck! Choreography! This shitty fucking choreography!”
“……”
“……is what Da-young unnie's been repeating at least a hundred times all day today.”
That night.
Hee-ju, who'd come in wearing only pajamas, saying it was her turn tonight, was sitting naked between my legs and telling me what had happened.
“Hmm.”
Why was it?
Even though I was hearing it in Hee-ju's voice,
it felt like Da-young's yelling was playing in real time right by my ear.
“It was... hard, wasn't it?”
“No, I'm fine. But I think I'm the only one who's fine.”
“I-is that so?”
“Yes. Min-seo unnie seems really happy with this choreography, but it's so difficult she can't practice for long. I feel like my heart's going to give out.”
“Tell Min-seo not to push herself too hard.”
“Yes. She knows that better than anyone. Min-seo unnie used to barely participate in hands-on practice, even back then. She'd always sit crouched in a corner of the practice room and learn by watching.”
“I know.”
Just because her body had recovered a lot thanks to the Blessing of Sex...
didn't mean all her illnesses had disappeared,
or that she'd instantly become 100 percent healthy.
The divine power was simply suppressing a lot of things.
Min-seo was still a terminally ill patient.
A patient who might collapse at any moment if she didn't have sex with me right away.
“You don't have to worry too much, Team Leader.”
“Huh? I'm not worried.”
Nod, nod—.
Hee-ju nodded, tucked her hair behind her ear, changed positions, and continued talking while licking my cock.
“Lick. Suck. Even though she kept cursing and saying it was hard, if you had to pick the person who practiced the most today, it wasn't me. It was Da-young unnie.”
“Really?”
“Yes. Slurp. Suck. She was the living embodiment of an unbreakable spirit.”
“Pfft.”
Right.
Lee Da-young had been like that from the first time I'd met her.
She had a foul mouth.
A strong personality.
She couldn't let anything half-assed slide.
She was incredibly strict,
and she held herself to the same standards.
“She said she'll debut quickly and then switch straight over to acting.”
“Haha. I'll make that happen as soon as I can. What about Se-ri?”
I asked as I stroked Eun Hee-ju's head while she sucked my cock.
“Se-ri unnie grumbles that it wasn't even this bad when she was a trainee, but she just quietly does what she has to. Every now and then, she'd add luxury items to her shopping cart on her phone, saying she'd buy everything once she started making money. She said that's what kept her going. She also said she'd make sure Team Leader bought her one of them as a present someday.”
“Ah. I should buy it for her. Our girls are working this hard, so I should buy each of them something luxurious.”
“Uh.”
Eun Hee-ju, who'd been sucking my cock, flinched and looked up at me with just her eyes.
“……It was 25.8 million won.”
“We'll think about that when the time comes.”
“Yes. Slurp. Suck.”
How much more time passed like that?
“Here we go. Okay, then let's go.”
The final evaluation of Radiance, held as a sort of evaluation just for Always.
-♬♪♬♪
Even after nearly three minutes of choreography, from beginning to end, there hadn't been a single moment that wasn't grueling for every one of them...
“……”
The girls deliberately held back even their breathing as much as possible, striking their poses and showing loving smiles and gazes to the audience in their imagination.
“……”
In the tense atmosphere,
everyone was watching the lips of Julia, who was in charge of the choreography.
And then.
“Good! Perfect. You were perfect, girls!”
At that moment, I ran straight out,
and hugged everyone, including Always, as we bounced around in a circle.
“You worked so hard, girls. You really worked so hard.”
And then, I saw it.
“Fuck. We did it. Hwaaaaah! Sob!”
Above Lee Da-young's head as she cried with genuine joy,
[Lee Da-young, SS]
a message had appeared, showing that her grade had increased.