Damn Idol Episode 118
Album 1
1. Noise
I finally managed to track down ANB Engine, the development company I’d used all the time back when I was in the States.
They had such a good reputation that I thought they’d be easy to find, but I’d gotten the timing a little wrong.
At this point in time, ANB Engine was barely breathing while drowning in the red. It seemed they’d ride an upward current after succeeding with some project within the next two or three years, but right now, they were pretty much nothing.
So I thought it over for a while.
In the future, they’d become a top-tier company armed with countless developers and connections, but right now, they were a small development firm that had only just barely escaped being a startup.
In the end, though, I decided to commission them.
“If that’s the case, wouldn’t it be better to put in only the necessary functions first and do a soft opening?”
“Would that be possible? I don’t know much about development, but aren’t all the functions interconnected?”
“For the parts you mentioned, we can structure the logic around independent execution.”
I had a meeting with the CEO, and I liked how he grasped exactly what I wanted and even suggested more than that.
I also liked the clause saying they’d make revisions until I was satisfied, and I liked their determination to make it within four weeks even if they had to mobilize their entire pool of outsourced workers.
Well, of course, that was thanks to the enormous amount of money I’d wagered.
When I first went to the meeting, the CEO recognized me and opened his eyes incredibly wide.
So wide it didn’t seem like they could get any wider.
But when he heard the amount I proposed as the total project budget, his eyes got even bigger.
I thought he was an alien.
“Then I’ll leave it in your hands.”
“We’ll proceed as quickly as possible and contact you frequently. Um, but…”
“Yes?”
“Could I get an autograph…? My wife is a huge fan of yours, Han Sion.”
“Ah. Still, please keep the development details confidential until the opening.”
“Of course. I’ll get the autograph after the development is done, then.”
“When the development is finished, I’ll give you concert tickets, so please come with your wife.”
“Thanks to you, I think I can avoid getting nagged even if I don’t go home for about a month.”
I gave him an autograph along with some well-wishes and left the development company.
This wasn’t the end.
I had a lot of meetings today. Seriously.
The next place I headed to was BVB Entertainment.
It wasn’t to meet NOP.
The person I wanted to meet was Team Leader Seo Seunghyeon.
“Please resign.”
“Pardon?”
“I’d like to bring you over to Sedalbaegil Entertainment.”
Sedalbaegil Entertainment was said as a joke, but the scouting offer was sincere.
Team Leader Seo Seunghyeon was someone I’d never met in my previous life, but in this life, I’d witnessed him display more than enough ability.
He fully accepted my requests and carried them out.
Of course, I’d never made any unreasonable demands.
I’d presented appropriate goals in line with the rules of the show business industry.
But I liked the way he achieved those goals.
When he gave advice for my sake, he gave advice cleanly and nothing more; when he benefited from something, he let me know.
There weren’t that many people who worked like this.
On top of that, Team Leader Seo Seunghyeon had never once asked about the relationship between Lion Entertainment and Sedalbaegil.
It would have been understandable for him to ask out of curiosity, but he maintained the line appropriate to his role.
I’d thought this last time too, but he was a pretty decent person.
Decent enough to bring into a regressor’s network.
“Out of the blue?”
“You roughly know the situation, don’t you? The back-and-forth with Lion Entertainment.”
“I don’t think I’d be of much help.”
“I’m not asking for help. I’m asking for support.”
Help and support are different.
If help feels like reaching out a hand and pulling someone up, support feels like pushing them forward from behind.
We needed a manager, and we also needed someone to manage the fan club.
It wasn’t as if I could keep driving forever, and it would be ridiculous for the members to manage the fan club among ourselves.
But I didn’t want to hire just anyone.
Choe Daeho’s mole could come in, or someone who wasn’t a mole at first could become one later.
In that sense, Team Leader Seo Seunghyeon would be quite useful.
I wasn’t expecting him to cover 100%, but he could at least filter out the moles who were too obvious.
“If possible, I think it’d be good to hire other staff from BVB too.”
“I haven’t said I’m doing it yet.”
“One point five times your salary.”
“Honestly, I don’t know what will happen to Sedalbaegil going forward, and considering my years at BVB…”
“Double your salary.”
“I’ll do my best.”
I said with a slight laugh.
“Please set up the staff too.”
“I’ll try, but I know your ability, Han Sion, so the decision is easy for me. Other employees…”
“I’ll allocate 3% of company revenue as team incentives. Revenue, not net profit.”
“…
How many should I bring?”
“As many as you think are necessary, Team Leader.”
“We should grow the scale gradually. For now, I’ll gather about five people, excluding myself. But I won’t bring all of them from BVB.”
“Because BVB might hate us?”
“Yes. We should only be fighting Lion Entertainment. By the way, are you going to keep the team name Sedalbaegil?”
“Yes.”
It’s good, isn’t it? Sedalbaegil?
“Then use initials for the company name. How does SDBI sound?”
“It sounds like some kind of intercontinental ballistic missile.”
“That’s ICBM.”
“Either way. But why?”
“Honestly, it’s a bit…”
A bit?
“Embarrassing, isn’t it?”
I should lower Team Leader Seo Seunghyeon’s raise to 1.99 times his salary.
After that, I told Team Leader Seo Seunghyeon about matters related to Sedalbaegil.
It wasn’t as if Team Leader Seo was working part-time at some café; he couldn’t resign from BVB immediately.
He’d need to hand things over, and it would probably take some time to gather staff as well.
Still, he needed to know what plan we had.
Team Leader Seo was startled when I mentioned the Color Show, then asked this and that.
And when I told him we were preparing a portfolio, his expression turned ambiguous.
“It’s true that Colors is a pretty open company, but will you be selected with a portfolio?”
We will.
I know exactly what pushes those people’s buttons.
But since I couldn’t explain that, I just shrugged.
“One more strange thing is that Choe Daeho has been far too quiet until now.”
“I agree. He probably hadn’t completely given up his lingering attachment to Sedalbaegil.”
Even though we’d taken first place on the weekly chart, the name Sedalbaegil still wasn’t appearing in entertainment articles.
There should have been a flood of articles with descriptions like “the underdog’s rebellion” or “the miracle of a small-agency idol group,” and even that wouldn’t have been enough.
This meant Choe Daeho was still controlling the situation, but at the same time, it also meant he hadn’t assumed an offensive stance.
Team Leader Seo Seunghyeon said,
“That man is tenacious. His name isn’t Daeho for nothing.”
“That’s probably why he built a major agency.”
“I’ll try to keep some channels open too, but I think you should prepare yourself mentally.”
“Ah, right. Could you find out Take Scene’s debut schedule in detail?”
“That’s easy enough. The companies in the middle are all the same anyway.”
“Then please find out their teaser schedule and music video schedule too.”
“Why?”
Seo Seunghyeon had said Choe Daeho was tenacious, but I didn’t see it that way.
Because I was the more tenacious bastard.
“I’ll explain next time. Oh, and you need to find us a road manager as quickly as possible.”
“We haven’t even signed the salary contract yet.”
“I sent it by email before I came.”
“Huh?”
* * *
Click.
“This time, slightly at an angle!”
At the photographer’s request, Lee Ion struck various poses.
Maybe because everyone had done a pictorial shoot on Coming Up Next, they were all skilled.
“Wow, Han Sion, have you ever worked as a model somewhere?”
Of course, I was the most skilled.
On Saemiro was still bad at it.
Just like the meaning of his name, he seemed to maintain an unchanging state very well.
“How do you do it like that?”
After I finished shooting my individual cuts first and came down, On Saemiro threw out a question.
It was a pleasing sight.
The very fact that he could ask about what he lacked meant he had some room in his heart.
“Don’t imagine the result.”
“Huh?”
“I’m saying don’t imagine what kind of photo this will turn into while you’re posing.”
“Then what should I imagine?”
“Imagine the reactions people will show when they see your photo. I’m saying imagine the result of the result.”
I heard that when I was learning acting.
You imagine the result of the result to make the emotional line more intense.
It wasn’t as if this was the only acting methodology, but On Saemiro was pathetic, so this suited him.
After hearing me, On Saemiro moved his facial muscles a few times, then asked in a subtle voice,
“But last time, you hit Fade.”
“Yeah.”
It was a pleasant memory.
“Nothing happened after that?”
Unfortunately, nothing did.
If Fade wanted, I was willing to call in an international referee and fight him under whatever rules he wanted.
“Why is he staying quiet?”
When On Saemiro tilted his head, I answered with a slight laugh.
“You’re staying quiet too.”
“Huh?”
“Wasn’t Fade insulting you?”
“You paid him back for me.”
“You didn’t pay him back yourself, though.”
“So what? The team paid him back.”
At that moment, On Saemiro’s turn came.
“On Saemiro!”
“Yes, coming.”
Watching On Saemiro talk to the photographer, I shrugged.
I hadn’t fully paid him back yet.
After quite a long time passed like that, our shoot ended.
What we shot today were photo cards to be given to the first generation of Sedalbaegil’s fan club.
Normally, when you join a fan club, you receive a kit, and inside are various goods, including photo cards.
It was a culture I didn’t know well, so I looked into it a bit, and I was surprised because the quality was much better than I’d expected.
Of course, that didn’t mean there were no groups that got mocked for the quality of their goods, but teams like that were rare.
Most of them were items that provided better value than the membership fee, which ranged from twenty-five thousand to forty thousand won.
Of course, there was no way this was because they found the fans truly adorable.
The members of idol groups might be able to think that way, but companies operated on capitalism did not.
Joining a fan club was a kind of gate.
Originally, every purchasing hurdle was hard to cross once, but from the second time onward, it was easy.
So they made the bundled items for fan club membership abundant, getting fans to cross that hurdle.
Those who entered the fangirling gate like that would then buy goods more easily from then on.
But we didn’t have a company, and the members were immature.
They were anxious to somehow give the fans the best goods possible.
Of course, I okayed it too.
Because fans were the only beings who could save me.
I could do anything for them.
And so we were producing goods one by one, containing the members’ wishes.
Choe Jaeseong chose a figurine, Lee Ion chose a tumbler and cup set, Gu Taehwan chose a humidifier, and On Saemiro chose a blanket and a portable battery.
Gu Taehwan seemed to have a tendency to obsess over humidifiers.
For reference, I tried to give out a CD player, but the members rejected it.
They said people might end up joining the fan club just to receive the CD player.
Fine, I admit it.
It was a piece of merch reflecting my personal desire.
Among popular musicians, there are those who surpassed two hundred million physical album sales through the devil’s calculation method.
The Beatles, Elvis Presley, Michael Jackson, Madonna, Elton John, and so on…
But all of them were musicians who lived in the era of physical records.
A generation for whom it was natural to listen to music through physical devices like CDs or LP records.
But now, listening to music on a CD was unusual.
No, to begin with, there were more people who didn’t even have a device at home that could play CDs.
It had been a long time since CD-ROM drives disappeared from computers too.
This was seriously too much.
What the hell is a devil’s contractor like me supposed to live on?
Selling a billion digital singles seems much easier.