Damn Idol Chapter 119
I entertained that thought for a moment, then calmed my excitement.
It couldn’t be helped.
So instead of a CD player, I packed various items into the merch.
Things like membership cards, stickers, keyrings, and card holders.
Of course, what we put the most effort into was the photo book and photo cards.
After a meeting with the members, two proposals were adopted for the photo concept.
The first was maintaining the universe.
We would keep the time travel concept.
So the year is written in the upper left corner of each photo card.
That was where the second proposal came in: not completely eliminating the random element.
It would be nice to be able to receive the photo card of the member you wanted, but in exchange, we’d add a random element to the card’s year.
Randomness was definitely one kind of content that could be enjoyed, too.
For starters, the photo book itself, packed full of group shots and individual shots, was a standard item.
But for the three photo cards, you could choose which member’s cards you wanted, and the random element came in there. A 90% chance for 2017. A 9% chance for 2007. A 1% chance for 1997.
And a 0.1% chance for a special shot.
For the special shots, we picked one another’s outfits.
For the record, I picked Ion-hyung’s outfit, and I got cursed out after making him go shirtless so he could feel that all his hard work exercising had paid off.
At first, I’d forced him to work out, but these days he was doing it on his own.
Didn’t he want to show it off?
Ah, if he was embarrassed because he still didn’t have enough muscle, I’d acknowledge that.
Anyway, because of that, we have to do another photo shoot tomorrow.
Since we shot all of the 2017 version today, tomorrow it’s time to shoot the 2007 and 1997 versions.
I was thinking that while exchanging opinions with the photographer about tomorrow’s shoot, when Choe Jaeseong suddenly came hurrying over in a fluster.
“Hyung……!”
“Yeah?”
“I think you need to see this.”
“What is it?”
I looked at the article on the phone Choe Jaeseong held out and gave a small laugh.
[Sedalbaegil, ‘tampering’ allegations sent to the Fair Trade Commission.]
Oh, Choe Daeho.
So this is how you’re going to play it?
“According to the article, Ryan Entertainment reported us to the Fair Trade Commission.”
“Yeah, I can tell just from the headline.”
“Doesn’t that make no sense? They said once Coming Up Next ended, we were free to decide where to go…… Tampering means making contact before the contract ends.”
“To be precise, Ryan Entertainment probably had the right of first negotiation.”
“Then what happens?”
Based on the clauses in the appearance contract, we had nothing to be intimidated by.
There were parts that could be interpreted in different ways, but those were just sections that could be used to threaten the participants.
They probably made the contract clean because they produced Coming Up Next together with M Show.
From M Show’s perspective, they wouldn’t want to get dragged into any potentially messy situation.
And Choe Daeho probably thought lightly of it, too.
Judging that it wouldn’t be hard to cajole twenty-year-old participants into signing with Ryan Entertainment.
Well, if I hadn’t been around, that probably would have happened in reality.
“No need to worry about it.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. I’ll explain when we get back to the dorm.”
I could do it here too, but there were too many eyes watching.
Still, it really wasn’t something to worry about.
Choe Daeho’s thinking was obvious.
He probably calculated two things before casting his line.
The first was who was behind us.
He must have heard that we were recruiting for a fan club and producing merch.
This industry was a small world, after all.
That must have thrown him off.
Appearing on Downfall Detector, producing our own content, registering our music—those were things we could do on our own.
But recruiting a fan club and producing merch were a bit strange.
So he was suspicious that there might be some kind of capital behind us, and he was casting a line to test it.
After all, it wasn’t an accusation of tampering, but a report of tampering.
The second was that this could be a jab.
If you’re trying to ruin someone’s image, it’s amateurish to drop something big right from the start.
You throw little jabs, make the public look at them with sharpened eyes, and then drop the big one.
Then people say, “Of course.”
That’s a truly cruel phrase.
Because it subconsciously assumes they were that kind of people to begin with.
But this is kind of amusing.
Why does Choe Daeho think he’s the only one who can do something like this?
I immediately picked up my phone and sent Choe Daeho a message.
[CEO, wouldn’t it be better to stop here? There’s no need for us to hurt each other, is there?]
A reply came right away.
[You? If you can do it, go ahead.]
Thanks for the cool permission.
Of course, I didn’t send that message because I wanted Choe Daeho’s permission.
I sent it so he would know whose hand started what was about to happen.
That way, he’d be afraid of me, and of Sedalbaegil.
Originally, it was something I’d planned to do when we released the EP album……
But it looks like it’ll start now.
* * *
-Tampering means prior contact, right? So does that mean Sedalbaegil contacted another company before Coming Up Next ended?
-Yeah, seems like it.
-No, but isn’t that fucking ambiguous? They said once the show ended, the participants could go wherever they wanted.
-I heard Ryan had the right of first negotiation. Looks like they just ran for it?
-Then Sedalbaegil are the stupid ones. They should’ve communicated with the party holding the right of first negotiation until the end, then signed with another company.
-You seem stupider lol. You think that would’ve really just been a negotiation? They’d threaten them with a knife.
-Yeah, 100% the “who forced you at knifepoint” negotiation method.
-You guys are so damn slow. Sedalbaegil has been No. 1 on the weekly chart for two weeks, and there hasn’t been a single article about it. Doesn’t that tell you something? Ryan is pressuring them.
-Yeah, there are surprisingly a lot of people who don’t know something this obvious.
-So what company is Sedalbaegil with?
-The place that got them their dorm, obviously.
-No, fuck, is that supposed to be an answer?
The idol scene began to go up in flames over talk related to Sedalbaegil.
Whether it was tampering, whether the word tampering could even be used, whether Sedalbaegil had really done something wrong, and so on.
The focus was fixed on Sedalbaegil.
But at some point, the issue slowly began shifting toward Coming Up Next.
-No, but wasn’t it bullshit that Take Scene won Coming Up Next?
-Yeah, anyone could see Sedalbaegil was set up to win.
-Just looking at the chart results, Sedalbaegil got No. 1 with every mission song.
-Han Sion even released one song that hit No. 1 on the monthly chart as a soloist, plus two songs that hit No. 1 on the weekly chart.
-The judges said Take Scene was better as a team.
-Does that make any sense lol? Honestly, even if I were Sedalbaegil, I’d have complaints.
-Everyone seems to be forgetting, but we still don’t know why Coming Up Next was produced. Choe Daeho just brushed past it.
-Yeah, that’s right.
-It was a program made to push Take Scene before debut, but Sedalbaegil hit too big, so it turned into this mess.
-That sounds plausible, but isn’t it just headcanon? There’s no evidence.
-Where would there be evidence for stuff like this?
-If there’s no evidence, put it in neutral. Take Scene are the only ones who end up pitiful for no reason.
Around the time that back-and-forth, enough to fluster Choe Daeho, was going on.
A post went up on the community where idol-scene residents gathered the most.
[Isn’t this proof Take Scene’s win was rigged?]
Just from the title, it was ordinary bait.
In fact, quite a lot of bait posts like this were going up.
Posts with titles like “Proof Sedalbaegil won,” only to have nothing but a photo of Yi Ion attached.
But community users were also the kind of people who got hooked by bait like that.
Quite a few people clicked on the post.
And then their faces turned serious.
-Wow, what is this?
-Is this real?
The first team mission on Coming Up Next was a self-production mission.
There, Sedalbaegil arranged Uptown Funk into “Seoul Town Funk.”
Take Scene arranged and sang Maroon 5’s .
It was common for idol trainees to interpret famous pop songs in their own style.
In reality, Take Scene was trying again with a song they had already touched once during a monthly evaluation.
It wasn’t rigging.
They hadn’t deceived anyone with an already completed song; they had merely reflected feedback they’d received once before.
But it wasn’t something viewers would benefit from knowing, so that detail hadn’t been included in the broadcast.
Nor was it something Sedalbaegil, their competing contestants, could have known.
But what they didn’t know was that Han Sion had noticed this on-site.
-If you look at Blue’s YouTube channel, there’s a video from two years ago. It’s about them visiting Ryan Entertainment on Christmas and giving gifts to their junior trainees, right?
If you look here……
-It wasn’t a special video.
It was just extremely common content, with Blue giving Christmas gifts to trainees as an act of goodwill and listening to their concerns.
So there were scenes where they monitored the trainees’ dancing and singing and gave advice.
And there was the point the poster mentioned.
As the scene of Blue watching the trainees’ stage was edited with quick cuts……
A line from Maroon 5’s played.
-They’re focusing on Blue’s faces, so you can’t see who’s singing, but do you see the mirror here?
At the time, Take Scene was a six-member trainee lineup……
-It wasn’t highly credible evidence.
The only “evidence” was that while a Maroon 5 song played, people who looked like Take Scene were being evaluated.
It was evidence that could be mocked as forced hate, and there could even be a “so what?” reaction.
Because they could have simply sung a song they’d performed at a monthly evaluation.
But every post, by nature, needs a beginning, development, turn, and conclusion.
This was the beginning—
—and development.
The turn—
—and conclusion lay in Coming Up Next’s final stage, the “Free Song Mission.”
What Han Sion had said to the members while preparing for it.
“Should I tell you the meaning of the free song, too?”
“There’s meaning there too?”
“Take Scene, the group Ryan Entertainment ambitiously raised. They may have decided their debut song would be ‘Scene Stealer,’ but do you think they only collected that one song?”
Absolutely not.
They would have received dozens of songs, narrowed them down to two or three candidates, and agonized over it until the very last moment.
“There’s a high probability they’ll sing one of those songs. Maybe it won’t be a candidate song, but a follow-up track that was supposed to come after ‘Scene Stealer.’”
“In other words, no matter what we do, the final stage will be broadcast as Take Scene’s victory. Even if they have to create scenes that don’t exist.”
Han Sion had accurately predicted what would happen from the moment he chose Sedalbaegil instead of Take Scene.
And he was a returner.
One who liked controlling every situation.
There was no way he would sit still.
-This is the demo track of the song Take Scene sang in the free song mission.
See when it was produced?
Ten months ago lol;
I’m attaching part of the version Take Scene recorded as a guide too.
I don’t have the choreography video, but as far as I know, the choreography was already completely made.
Don’t ask how I got it. Honestly, I’m scared shitless right now.
For reference, Take Scene’s debut song is called “Scene Stealer,” and this is the song that competed with it until the final round.
-It was a fairly meaningful story.
The self-production mission, which was the first mission, and the free song mission, which was the final mission.
What if Take Scene had prepared those two stages in advance?
Wouldn’t the stages in between be obvious, too?
That was the story it was throwing out.
On top of that, if Take Scene’s debut song was released and the title really was “Scene Stealer,” it would add credibility to the story.
But this post was a cleverly written attempt to muddy the waters.
It redirected Choe Daeho’s attack of “tampering” into “the planning intention of Coming Up Next,” and then distorted it into “Coming Up Next was rigged.”
And the ones who carried all of this out were numerous small-scale PR agencies hired by Han Sion.
So small in scale that they wouldn’t even get caught in Choe Daeho’s radar.
The story spread in an instant.