Chapter 25. A Moonlit Rendezvous
As soon as the performance ended, I took Anna to the hospital.
Apparently, she had only pushed herself too hard lately, causing her blood pressure to drop a little. There was nothing seriously wrong with her health.
Even so, when Kim Yoonja called Blue Moon back onto the stage one more time, Anna must have been struggling.
Yet she gritted her teeth and finished the performance.
I was only thirty myself, but youth really was something else.
There was a saying that above the running man was the flying man, above the flying man was the young man, and above the young man was the child.
Come to think of it, ten years ago, I could stay awake for three days and nights and recover after eating a single bowl of gukbap.
Now I needed at least two bowls.
After finishing up backstage, Kim Yoonja heard what happened from the staff and immediately came to the hospital.
At the time, Anna was in the middle of receiving a two-hour IV.
The moment Kim Yoonja saw her, she made such a fuss that you would think her own niece had just been diagnosed with leukemia.
Naturally, everyone nearby started looking over.
“I knew something felt wrong even before the performance. The stage is important, but you have to take care of your health too! You can’t buy your health back with money.”
“You’re right. I’ll be more careful from now on.”
Anna answered Kim Yoonja’s scolding with a smile.
She had only received some nutrients through the IV, yet the color had already returned to her face.
Until the needle was removed two hours later, Kim Yoonja sat beside the members and chatted with them.
Most of the time, Kim Yoonja, excited by the success of the performance, rambled about one thing after another while the members enthusiastically reacted to everything she said.
As we left the hospital, Kim Yoonja said,
“When Teacher Jang first suggested it, I only thought it was an original idea. I never imagined it would turn into such a wonderful stage. From now on, Blue Moon is my favorite junior group.”
As Kim Yoonja walked out of the hospital surrounded by several pretty girls, people passing nearby kept glancing in our direction.
Some even approached her and asked for autographs.
“We became Kim Yoonja’s favorite juniors…”
While Kim Yoonja was signing autographs, the members whispered excitedly among themselves.
Kim Yoonja was a singer known by practically everyone who listened to trot.
And now Blue Moon had earned her favor.
Not only that, they had helped create one of the most memorable performances of her career.
It was only after watching Kim Yoonja casually sign autographs in her everyday clothes that the reality of what had happened finally hit us.
Right after the performance, both the members and I had been too overwhelmed to fully process it.
Bzzzt—
Kim Yoonja had just finished signing and was exchanging warm words with a fan like they were neighbors when my phone vibrated.
[Web Message]
Would you like to see the future?
Choice 1. Yes
Choice 2. No
(If there is no response for five minutes, Choice 1 will automatically be selected.)
Right.
It was long overdue.
The spam message.
Without hesitation, I pressed 1 and sent it.
A picture arrived immediately.
But this one felt a little different from the previous ones.
Title: 6/10
Date Taken: 2022.11.11. 00:01
The picture showed a webpage filled with a list of unfamiliar songs.
At the top was a logo that read:
MANGO Music Chart
Mango Music Ranking.
It was a domestic music chart compiled by Mango Corporation and was commonly called the Mango Chart.
Entertainment agencies in Korea often used it as one of the standards for measuring the success of digital releases.
Thinking back, every previous image had looked like an actual photograph taken by someone.
This one felt different.
Well, I suppose a screen capture could technically be considered a kind of photograph too.
Either way, this image showed a detailed ranking list, so I could immediately extract much more information from it.
Usually, a music ranking displayed songs starting from number one.
But the spam image didn’t.
The rankings in the picture started from number ninety-five.
Every song listed there had probably been created by someone who had worked hard on it.
But as far as predicting the future went, there wasn’t much useful information.
[95 (↑2) Suddenly (Maybe) - Homigot]
[96 (-) When a Moment Feels Like Forever - Markluv]
……
[101 (↓100) N.Dolphin - 竹田フレンズ]
Still, one thing stood out.
As my eyes moved down the list, I noticed a song at number 101 titled N.Dolphin.
Beside it, in red letters, was:
↓100
The Mango Chart updated its rankings every midnight.
Which meant the song had fallen one hundred places in a single day.
More importantly, before dropping…
It had been number one.
What the hell had happened?
What could possibly make people stop listening overnight to a song they had enjoyed until yesterday?
It wasn’t like the entire country suddenly got tired of N.Dolphin at the same time.
The artist name looked Japanese too.
A Japanese singer ranking on a Korean chart was already unusual.
And now that same artist was the one suffering a catastrophic fall in rankings.
That coincidence was far too strange.
The important clue in this image was probably either the singer or the song itself.
“Manager! What are you looking at?”
Seorin called out while I was staring at the photo and searching for more clues.
When I looked up, the members were gathered near the Starex with Kim Yoonja.
Since it was already late at night, we had let People Entertainment’s road manager go home.
I was going to personally drive Kim Yoonja back.
“Ah, right. We should leave.”
I opened the vehicle door and got into the driver’s seat.
Had the artist been caught manipulating the charts?
That wasn’t something people got caught doing easily.
Or had plagiarism accusations come up?
Even if plagiarism accusations surfaced, people who liked the song would still keep listening.
There was no way it would suddenly fall one hundred places in a single day.
Of course, plagiarism itself would still be wrong.
Before starting the car, I checked the message one last time.
N.Dolphin.
Dropped one hundred places.
Album cover looked normal.
Couldn’t see the comments.
Artist name was…
Some Japanese characters.
The character for bamboo.
And the character for field.
In Korean, all I could read was Jukjeon.
Jukjeon?
“Kim Yoonja, there’s something I’m curious about.”
“What is it?”
Conveniently, Kim Yoonja had lived in Japan for a long time.
I decided to ask her about the one part I could explain easily.
“What does ‘Jukjeon’ mean in Japanese? Bamboo and field. Does that have some special meaning?”
“Bamboo field? It literally means a bamboo field, doesn’t it? What an interesting question.”
Kim Yoonja laughed.
Right.
It wasn’t like there would be some mysterious second meaning.
After dropping her off, I could simply search the exact name online and find out who the artist was anyway.
Then Kim Yoonja asked,
“I feel like you probably saw the characters for bamboo and field. Am I right?”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“Then the reading matters. In Japanese, you wouldn’t read it as ‘Jukjeon.’ You’d probably read it as ‘Takeda.’”
According to Kim Yoonja, the character for bamboo could be read as take in Japanese, while the character for field could be read as da.
Come to think of it, I had heard that Japanese people called Dokdo Takeshima, meaning Bamboo Island.
So that take must be the same character.
Then Kim Yoonja continued.
“But in Japan, when you mean an actual field, you usually don’t write it with just that character. They use hata, written with a different character. It includes the fire radical. In other words, they don’t normally write ‘field’ the same way Koreans do. There’s another word for an actual field.”
“Really? Then the meaning changes completely, doesn’t it?”
Kim Yoonja explained,
“Of course. Besides, who would call something a bamboo field? You’d call it a bamboo forest.”
“That’s true.”
“But the characters 竹田 are used in another way. They’re used as a surname. And that surname is pronounced Takeda.”
So the group name wasn’t Jukjeon Something.
It was Takeda Something.
Takeda.
The moment I heard that name, an old memory suddenly returned.
Back when I worked at Pantheon, we had once sent one of our trainees to a Japanese agency project called the Takeda Project.
The trainee’s name was Sayaka.
……
And at the time, she had been Nam Wonsoo’s girlfriend.
After dropping off the members at the dorm as well, I returned to the office and used an online Japanese translator to compare the name.
The group was called Takeda Friends.
There was no doubt about it.
It was the Japanese girl group Sayaka belonged to.
Takeda Friends had spent most of their career as little more than underground idols after debuting, but recently they had suddenly started becoming popular.
Sayaka was still promoting under the stage name Sayaka.
And lately, she had been gaining a lot of attention after appearing on a show called Jackpot; Japan.
Several GIFs came up in search results.
In one, Sayaka was posing seriously for an ending shot when someone in the audience suddenly shouted something strange, making her burst into laughter.
Apparently, that clip had helped her become even more popular.
Seeing her now, wearing full stage makeup and smiling like a proper celebrity, made me feel slightly relieved.
But she still wasn’t someone who brought back pleasant memories.
Back in her Pantheon trainee days, Sayaka had been one of the older trainees, someone who never smiled.
At one point, I heard rumors saying,
“Sayaka is dating Director Nam!”
So I had sat down with her and tried to have a serious conversation.
But she had barely told me anything.
She only dodged the subject.
Even back then, given the circumstances, I had been certain Nam Wonsoo had manipulated her with his sweet talk and dragged her into an unhealthy relationship.
But it was different from Yeo Eunju’s situation.
Yeo Eunju had simply been deceived without realizing what was happening.
Sayaka, on the other hand, had understood perfectly well what value she had to Nam Wonsoo.
Maybe sending her back to Japan had been her reward?
And the best place he could send her to was some underground-idol agency?
As expected, that bastard Nam Wonsoo had never changed.
Sayaka herself probably hadn’t thought it was a particularly good deal either.
But considering what had happened, she couldn’t exactly complain to anyone.
Where would she proudly tell people about her relationship with Nam Wonsoo?
So in the end…
I possessed one enormous weakness of Sayaka’s.
If people found out that, during her trainee days, she had been in that kind of relationship with an ugly Korean agency director…
Even if she somehow managed to rise to number one on Mango as a Japanese idol—a status people in Korea barely respected to begin with—it wouldn’t be impossible for her to suddenly crash down to number 101.
Wasn’t the Japanese female-idol world the kind of place where someone had to bow and apologize repeatedly even over a tiny romance they had back in middle or high school?
If her ranking had dropped one hundred places in Korea, then in Japan she would probably be treated like the devil himself.
Maybe that future image meant her past with Nam Wonsoo would be exposed, causing her ranking to collapse?
My instincts told me that wasn’t it.
If that were the reason, then just like with the Zeus incident, the spam would probably have sent me something much more obvious.
For the moment, I put Nam Wonsoo out of my mind and searched for Jackpot; Japan.
Jackpot was an idol survival program that had become a huge success in Korea last year.
It was a place where popular groups could gather even more votes and attention, but for unpopular idols, it was also a once-in-a-lifetime chance to hit the jackpot.
How did I know that so well?
Because that was exactly what had happened after the Korean season aired.
[Soul Studio Begins Work on New Song with Japan’s ‘Takeda Production’ and ‘TakeF’]
Even though it was a Korean-owned program format, Korean articles about Jackpot; Japan occasionally showed up in searches.
Most of them were about a collaboration between a Korean composing studio called Soul Studio and the winning team, TakeF.
Soul Studio was one of the composition studios Producer Seo Hoedong had recommended to me before.
A composer from Soul Studio named Im Sori had participated in Jackpot; Japan as one of the producers.
Apparently, one of the producers had to gift a new song to the winner.
It was part of the winner’s reward.
The new song hadn’t been released yet.
But the song Im Sori was going to give them was probably N.Dolphin.
I had said I would call her before.
But I had gotten so busy with the concert that I never did.
And now, somehow, I had been given another reason to call.
I checked the number from Im Sori’s business card saved on my phone.
If the song had reached number one even once, then there probably wasn’t anything wrong with the song itself.
I had no idea how a Japanese idol group had managed to take number one on Mango, but the result shown in the future image was obvious.
The song had reached number one because it was good enough to do so.
Could it have reached number one purely because of outside attention?
It was a reasonable suspicion.
But unlikely.
Jackpot; Japan wasn’t popular enough in Korea to influence the domestic music market on that scale.
And the only TakeF member with even moderate name recognition among Korean fans was Sayaka.
Even she had only barely made an impression.
And most importantly…
No matter how much attention a song received, a bad song simply didn’t reach number one.
I had never seen that happen.
Unless someone outright manipulated the chart.
Keep the thinking short.
Move quickly.
We had successfully renewed the contracts.
Shooting had gone well.
Kim Yoonja’s I Love Party had gone well too.
We couldn’t keep delaying Blue Moon’s new song anymore.
When I considered all those circumstances together, the opportunity this spam message was giving me became obvious.
N.Dolphin will fail if it goes to TakeF.
Use that knowledge to help Im Sori.
Earn her goodwill.
Then use one of Im Sori’s songs to make Blue Moon’s successful comeback a reality.
That had to be it.
I started building the plan step by step.
First, I would visit Soul Studio under the excuse of consulting about Blue Moon’s new song.
Then, among the songs they were working on, I had to somehow find one called N.Dolphin and subtly feed Im Sori the information that TakeF was going to collapse soon.
Wouldn’t that make her hesitate to give N.Dolphin to TakeF?
But that alone wasn’t enough.
I needed to develop it into a strategy that guaranteed success.
Just as I reached that point in my thoughts, I heard a strange noise outside the slightly open window.
Someone was trying to open the company’s front entrance.
Who would come here at this hour?
I stood up and opened the window completely.
There wasn’t a single car parked in front of the rented building where our office was located.
Of course, I hadn’t heard any car drive in.
Still, it was strange that there wasn’t even a person in sight.
I had definitely heard someone rattling the door.
I leaned my head out and carefully searched around the building.
Then, beneath the trees running along the fence on the right side of the building, I spotted the legs of someone moving suspiciously.
A thief?
I quickly turned off the office lights and pressed myself back against the window.
After watching for a while, I finally figured out the identity of the suspicious person.
It was Seorin.
Seorin carefully looked around the company building as if she were conducting some kind of spy operation, slowly shuffling toward the vehicle entrance.
She hadn’t even noticed me standing upright and watching her from the window.
So what exactly was she checking so seriously?
Anyway, Seorin eventually reached the parking lot entrance.
She said something.
Then a young man wearing a black jacket cautiously stepped into view from across the street.
The moment Seorin saw his face, she smiled brightly.
Who was that guy?
At this hour?
And why was Seorin smiling at him like that?
The moment I witnessed that moonlit rendezvous, all the complicated thoughts that had been filling my head disappeared.
Before figuring out how to make N.Dolphin ours…
I first needed to find out who the hell that bastard was.
