| Episode 18. Meeting with the CEO (2)
Had it been about five minutes since I arrived at the CEO’s office with the manager?
Once Min Jugyeong, who had clearly rushed over from work, arrived as well, all the attendees for this monumental first meeting had gathered.
“No need to be nervous. The idea is that if you’re an artist under UA, we should see each other’s faces and say hello at least once a month.”
The CEO opened the conversation. Sure enough, neither the manager nor Min Jugyeong looked stiff.
‘Was UA’s Job Planet rating around 3.2 stars?’
For a small agency in the notoriously harsh entertainment industry, that was a high rating. Probably twice as high as Hanpyeong Industries.
“I skipped last month because I figured you’d be in the middle of adjusting, but you’re all settled in now, right? You must be busy practicing, so just think of this as a short break and relax.”
For an idol who trained his body, those were words to be grateful for, but I felt like the veins on my fists were bulging.
Usually, if someone says they’re not in good condition, you tell them to take it easy. You don’t call them to the CEO’s office.
After even receiving buckwheat tea that the CEO had brewed himself, the conversation began in earnest.
Most of the topics were like a new employee interview—how was I doing, was there anything uncomfortable, and so on.
“Chanyeong always praises you, saying that even though you started late, you don’t get discouraged and stay behind to practice until late every day.”
When I looked at the manager, he winked at me. Thank you very much for packaging my remedial studies like that.
The CEO and Min Jugyeong laughed brightly and did not hold back their questions for me.
“I heard you’re using Jeho and Cheonghyeon’s room at the dorm. Are you getting along well with the kids now?”
“What do you usually do during self-practice time?”
“Do you think preparations for the next evaluation are going well? Do you have a rough idea of what you’ll do?”
For a rookie trainee in his early twenties who had just stepped into this industry, they were questions that couldn’t have been more considerate.
However, as someone who had learned HR management in the mud, I had already put on my heavily tinted glasses.
To me, their questions sounded like this.
→ Are you communicating with your team members without issue?
→ What do you usually do to develop your work capabilities?
→ Have you started drafting your work plan for the second half of the year? We’ll conduct a surprise inspection, so start in advance.
If that wasn’t their true intent, then I was sorry, but I answered with the most wholesome attitude I could muster.
“My roommates are all kind, so I’m living comfortably.”
……And so on.
What that meant was, “Choe Jeho has an excellent personality, and Lee Cheonghyeon uses his laptop until dawn, but he doesn’t grind me down, so we maintain peace and are living well.”
After we exchanged this kind of conversation a few times, Min Jugyeong burst into laughter.
“CEO, doesn’t Iwol really talk so earnestly?”
“Exactly. When I only heard it from you, Jugyeong, I thought, all our kids are earnest, so is that really unusual?”
I noticed that the earnestness the CEO and Min Jugyeong were talking about was the “Yes! I’ll work hard!” type, but I didn’t bother saying it out loud.
Because this way of speaking was something I picked up while working under Department Head Nam.
Or maybe the attendance management effect from my résumé was even applying in places like this.
Sure enough, in the corner of my vision, the words “Your excellent attendance management has been recognized, earning you high evaluation” were glowing faintly.
While the atmosphere was still full of goodwill, the manager said something unexpected.
“Iwol has a very sharp side to him. The kids got close to Iwol quickly, too.”
They did?
I don’t think so.
What great charm could there be in someone they’d known for less than a month, who was only one or two years older?
Especially when the other party was an awkward blockhead like me.
However, the manager seemed to want to push me as someone with a fairly sociable image.
“He adjusts quickly and is friendly. When everyone’s together, Iwol subtly loosens up the atmosphere.”
Because I bring looseness to the tense practice room. Thanks to that, I eat two bowls of walking on eggshells every day, so I never get hungry.
The CEO, who had been listening to the manager’s well-packaged story, said,
“People like that are truly rare. Not just in groups, but in organizations, too.”
“……Pardon?”
I was flustered.
It was the kind of thing I had never once heard in all the meetings I’d had at companies until now.
The CEO even encouraged me, saying, “Let’s keep doing just as you have been.”
In an atmosphere filled with nothing but praise, to the point that I doubted whether it was sincere, I didn’t know what to do and only smiled mechanically. It was an unfamiliar feeling.
* * *
After even receiving experience points as a reward for finishing the meeting, I returned to the practice room, where only Lee Cheonghyeon was present.
“Why are you alone?”
At my question, Lee Cheonghyeon answered cheerfully.
“Jeho hyung went to the convenience store, and Juu hyung is in the vocal practice room!”
“Seongbin and Giyeon…… does school end late for them today?”
“It’s ID photo day, so they said they’ll come after that’s done. We don’t have after-school classes today, so we finished early!”
“Ah, photos are important.”
Those photos would probably wander the internet world for the rest of their lives.
Hearing Lee Cheonghyeon’s words reminded me of when I used to attend after-school classes and then night self-study.
And of my older sister grabbing the back of her neck while talking like an old-timer, saying that back in our day, night self-study was mandatory.
Every time things I thought I had forgotten popped up, I felt a renewed sense of emotion.
“What are you doing today?”
“I need to finish the rap lyrics I was writing, but I’ll do that at night…… Someone told me last time to try writing a song, so I was thinking of doing that, but there are a lot of parts I’m conflicted about. I think I’ll just focus on dance today before I go.”
UA, whose CEO himself was a former singer-songwriter, was the best environment for learning composition.
Lee Cheonghyeon, who had majored in classical music when he was young, had also started learning popular music composition in earnest only after joining UA.
As befitted a member of Spark, a group gathered with outstanding raw gems, Lee Cheonghyeon’s growth rate increased greatly after debut.
In just a few years, he grew from a rookie composer who had one b-side on the debut album into someone capable of making every song on an album.
There was only one thing Lee Cheonghyeon regretted.
‘This is a question from 1103! Cheonghyeon, if you could change the past just once, what would you want to change?’
‘I’m a little torn on this…… but if I had to pick one, it’d be that I started composing late.’
‘Didn’t you make this title track too, Cheonghyeon? Even then, you still have regrets?’
‘I didn’t start composing early. I keep thinking that if I had learned more diligently, I might have been better.’
If only he had started composing a little earlier.
At the time, he hadn’t known he had talent for making popular music, so he must have focused on rap, which was his strength. But once he actually tried his hand at composing, it seemed he’d grown ambitious.
‘There were also a lot of kids around him who had started dancing or singing really early.’
I went over the songs Lee Cheonghyeon had made one by one in my head.
The songs that, the more years passed, fit more and more into Spark’s group color.
Creation wasn’t something you could suddenly become capable of just by moving the date forward like with a debut schedule, but……
If he was going to regret starting late, then this time, we had to walk a different path. Even more so considering Lee Cheonghyeon’s potential.
‘If we’re going to debut stably even after moving the timing up by a whole year, it’s advantageous for the songs to come out early.’
They said challenges and job postings were best uploaded as early as possible.
The problem was whether composition was something you could immediately get attached to just because someone told you to start early.
‘I don’t know anything about the realm of creation.’
I was someone who had received twelve years of cramming-style education, then learned only business administration in university.
The only chance I had to display creativity at Hanpyeong Industries was when I postponed a company dinner Department Head Nam tried to schedule for Friday evening to lunch on the following Monday.
“What are you thinking so hard about?”
“I was thinking about how to raise you into a composing genius.”
“Me?”
Lee Cheonghyeon asked back.
I continued speaking carefully so that the system wouldn’t judge my words as mentioning the future or anything like that.
“Yeah. I’m going to raise you well and hire you as the team’s composing machine.”
“Your wish is way too specific and grand, hyung!”
“Is it bad to have expectations for a young and smart talent? Ah, if you hate it because it feels like pressure, tell me. I’ll restrain myself.”
However, I already knew. That guy Lee Cheonghyeon was not the type to feel pressured by words at this level.
Sure enough, Lee Cheonghyeon looked at me strangely, but he did not seem burdened.
“It would be nice if young and smart Cheonghyeon became a composing machine. Maybe it’s because school started, but I have no motivation, hyung.”
“What does motivation matter when it comes to work? What matters is deadlines and pressure.”
“Pardon?”
“I believe that as long as there’s compulsion, people can do anything.”
I placed both hands on Lee Cheonghyeon’s shoulders.
“Cheonghyeon.”
“……Yes.”
“Let’s put a lot of thought into it and start by making a beat.”
I understood that creation wasn’t something that happened through coercion.
But you could at least build the basics so that when inspiration came, you could grab it by the neck and keep it there.
I couldn’t share the pain of creation with him, but I personally made Lee Cheonghyeon a deadline imbued with encouragement and gifted it to him.
For about a week after that, Lee Cheonghyeon really did share his progress with me every single day.
Even today, Lee Cheonghyeon was wrestling with the composition program until it was nearly midnight, without fail.
After staring at the monitor by himself for a long while, Lee Cheonghyeon asked me in a hoarse voice,
“Hyung. But you tell Ganggyeon to sleep if it’s late, so why don’t you tell me to sleep?”
“Because you have the physiognomy of someone who’ll grow tall even if you sleep a little less.”
“You’re seriously mean.”
“You don’t have to do it if you don’t want to.”
“That hurts my pride too much, so I don’t want that either.”
Of course, I did not commit the shameless act of keeping a kid from sleeping until late while lying in bed by myself.
Instead, during the time Lee Cheonghyeon worked on his song, I predicted the tasks the system would assign me in the future and planned the next day’s schedule.
Because if I just waited for the system to appear randomly, it felt like it would take ten years to fill up my experience points.
It was what you might call sweeping the yard before someone told you to pick up a broom.
Like when I predicted vocal feedback, I tried a few things based on the tasks that had appeared so far, and they matched at a fairly high probability.
Thanks to that, my current accumulated experience had reached 90.
‘If only exactly 10 would fall from the sky.’
While I was drawing lines all over the innocent algorithm, an alarm rang from Lee Cheonghyeon’s phone. It was a notification that 25 minutes were up.
It was the effect of introducing the Pomodoro study method, with the meaning that, with what little time we had, he should focus intensely only when focusing, then rest.
Lee Cheonghyeon was also getting used to this current method of doing things when it was time to do them and resting when it was time to rest, rather than endlessly staring into space whenever he got stuck.
“Good work. Is it time to sleep now?”
“I should……. What about you, hyung?”
“I’ll stay up a little longer.”
“Is this hyung a person or an elephant? How do you sleep so little?”
I’m more surprised that you know elephants are animals that sleep very little.
That was when it happened. A phrase appeared, so familiar that it even felt welcome.
+
[SYSTEM] “Hidden Task” has been completed.
▷ Details: Have a member acknowledge your grit
▷ Reward: Experience Points (10)
▷ Accumulated Experience: 100
▷ Accumulated Points: 1
+
“Cheonghyeon.”
“What?”
“You’re truly a commendable guy.”
“What are you talking about? Just go to sleep!”
Whether Lee Cheonghyeon was appalled or not, I quickly exchanged the newly gained welfare point for proficiency.
+
Performance Evaluation (100)
― Vocal Proficiency: 6(▲)/20
― Dance Proficiency: 5(▲)/20
― Self-PR: 12/20
― Attendance Management: 18/20
― Adaptability Within Organization: 10/20
Accumulated Experience: 0
+
Meanwhile, vocal proficiency had gone up on its own again this time.
I didn’t know why the vocal next door did just fine by itself, while our dance at home required so much attention.
But since it had shown astonishing growth from 1 to 5, I decided to let it slide just this once.
By raising dance proficiency to 5, the task to increase dance proficiency before the end-of-March monthly evaluation was also processed as completed.
+
[SYSTEM] “Task” has been completed.
▷ Reward: Trial Voucher for Viewing Other Members’ Résumés, Three-Piece Set of Standard Planning Proposal Templates for Debut Album Planning
+
At last, I was able to view the members’ résumés, not my own shabby one.