episode_0125
by admin
#125
“Yes. Sigh……. Yes. Understood. ……No, it’s not your fault either. There’s nothing we can do. Yes……. I hope you’ll consider calling us again next time. Yes. Goodbye……”
Once the call ended, the girls’ eyes turned toward me again.
“…So, what happened?”
“Sigh……. The Busan festival got canceled too. They decided not to hold the festival at all.”
“Ah…….”
“What do we do…?”
“It was our first performance at a beach… I was really looking forward to it.”
The girls all bowed their heads with disappointed expressions.
I felt just as frustrated.
“Sigh……. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have gotten your hopes up.”
“It’s not your fault, Manager-nim. You didn’t do anything wrong.”
“If it weren’t for COVID……”
Just as released their second album, Eun-chae’s hidden camera scandal overlapped, drawing far more attention to us than we expected.
Of course, it wasn’t like we reached the level of top-tier idols landing major variety show appearances or solo concerts, but as our name spread, we started receiving offers for local festivals, university events, and corporate gigs.
Sure, traveling across provinces daily and performing outdoors for random crowds brought its own set of inconveniences, but…
For us, it was an invaluable opportunity to grow our name, and I finally started making enough profit to walk around the company with my head held high.
Our first album flopped… but we weren’t the only group that tanked their debut.
A second album performing this well? That counted as success in our book. We were finally on track. We reached the level of third-tier idols—at least enough to hear comments like, *”They’ve climbed up a bit now.”*
A small but dedicated fan club formed… Even birthday ads for the girls popped up in minor subway stations.
It was tough, but we were moving forward.
…Until COVID hit.
After social distancing measures were enforced, all performance offers and events vanished. Scheduled festivals and stages were canceled one after another.
The Busan summer festival the girls had been anticipating the most… was abruptly canceled, too, when the beach shut down.
The schedule board, once packed with 2–3 bookings a day, now sat blank.
The album’s popularity had also faded… It had long fallen off the charts.
It was time to wrap up promotions for the second album.
“I really thought things would finally work out this time……”
Ha-rin slumped her head with a deeply disappointed expression.
“It’s not just us struggling right now… Other idols can’t perform at events either.”
“It’d be nice if we could at least appear on broadcasts… But that’s probably impossible, right?”
“Sigh……. I looked into it too… It’s not easy. Broadcast slots, I mean.”
“Like music shows?”
“Yeah. I heard YBC’s music center got a new PD, so I went to introduce myself… Turns out I wasn’t the only one with that idea. Even greeting them meant waiting in line, and one side of the PD department was stacked sky-high with gifts. Any food we brought would’ve just been tossed.”
“Ah, so that’s why you were at YBC until evening……”
“Yeah. Waited for four hours just to greet them for five minutes. And even that was with other agency managers.”
“ probably wouldn’t even leave an impression.”
“Would anything even register in that situation?”
“Manager-nim. Shouldn’t it be *your* job as a manager to get our name out there and secure us appearances no matter what?”
“…Eun-chae.”
“Lee Eun-chae! How could you say that to Manager-nim?”
“Unnie, am I wrong? We just released our second album, but we couldn’t even get *one* debut performance!”
“But Manager-nim already explained—another group pushed ahead of us…!”
“That ‘pushing ahead’ was someone else’s screw-up! After my hidden camera footage leaked, broadcast stations actually called *us*! Honestly, didn’t all our minor breakthroughs happen after that?”
“Eun-chae. That’s—”
“Be honest, Manager-nim. You knew about the hidden camera, didn’t you? You let it spread on purpose, right? To push us into the spotlight?”
“That’s not— Eun-chae…!”
*SLAP!*
The sound cut through everything for a split second.
Eun-chae crumpled to the floor, clutching her stinging cheek.
In front of her stood Ha-rin, breathing heavily.
——Ha-rin had slapped Eun-chae.
It happened too fast for me to stop.
“Unnie…!”
“What did you do…?”
Sa-rang and Se-ah rushed to Eun-chae, but Ha-rin kept yelling at her, even as she lay on the ground.
“Don’t… Don’t ever say that to Manager-nim again. Manager-nim would *never* do something like that…!”
“Ha-rin…”
“I’m sorry. And… I’m sorry, Manager-nim.”
They made up later, but Ha-rin’s words lingered in a corner of my heart.
Ha-rin trusted me completely.
Even if I was an incompetent, unskilled manager.
Even if I had hardly done anything to help succeed.
Ha-rin followed every decision and choice I enforced without a single word of protest.
Looking back now, Ha-rin had been like that from the very beginning.
“If Manager-nim says so…… I’ll do it.”
No matter what I asked, she always answered like that.
Maybe, just maybe, I had started thinking of Ha-rin as a card I could play however I wanted since back then.
*
“Oppa Puppet, did you see this? The news?”
“You mean ?”
Sa-rang extended her phone, showing a tabloid article.
The news covered losing a member.
But the article also mentioned rumors swirling that the member left due to pregnancy.
“Is this for real? An idol *pregnant*? can’t be much older than us.”
“Doubt it. What kind of idiot would get knocked up while active?”
“Right…? Even if something happened, pregnancy is going too far. What kind of an idol is that reckless?”
“Either she really was careless…… or something shady happened behind the scenes.”
“Eh. If something shady happened, it wouldn’t make the news. You know how tightly labels clamp down on rumors. The PR team spends all day begging reporters to run or take down articles.”
“Wow, Sa-rang’s finally grown up. You even know about stuff like that.”
“Well, *I’m* an idol who thinks before acting.”
“Yeah. Please *keep* thinking.”
“………That’s why I turned it down.”
Sa-rang muttered something under her breath.
“Huh? What was that?”
“N—Nothing. Never mind. Yeah.”
“You’re hiding something. I can tell.”
“Women are supposed to have secrets, Oppa.”
“You told *me* I wasn’t allowed to keep secrets from *you*.”
“Hmm~. That’s just how things *sound*! Some things are better left unsaid, you know?”
“Keep that up, and you’ll end up like that girl—with a scandal exploding in your face.”
“You think the pregnancy rumor’s real? Did you hear anything, Oppa?”
“Not really. Even ’s manager seemed totally blindsided. All I heard was that the withdrawal was decided suddenly.”
“That *does* sound suspicious…”
“When has showbiz *not* been suspicious?”
As Sa-rang said, some things were genuinely better left unsaid—especially when it came to entertainment industry gossip.
“Let’s check other articles. Maybe they’ll… Huh?”
“What’s wrong?”
“It’s gone. The article.”
[This article has been deleted by the publisher.]
No matter how many times I refreshed, the article didn’t return.
The member’s withdrawal and pregnancy rumors, which had skyrocketed to the top of news rankings, vanished as though they’d never existed.
“So it was fake news after all? Just baseless rumors.”
“………Probably.”
I thought the opposite.
Someone powerful enough to instantly suppress pregnancy rumors across multiple outlets—
That kind of person was probably involved.
One thing I’d learned as a manager:
The entertainment industry crawled with truly vile, sinister creatures.
Behind the glamorous performances lay relentless schmoozing, bribes, backroom deals, and manipulation…
Where pretty young faces and money gathered, predators lurked.
Trying to survive here with naivety was practically gambling.
And yet—
“Oppa Puppet.”
“Yeah?”
“Should we… do that too? The schmoozing thing?”
“Where’d *that* come from?”
“Just… uh… I heard stuff, you know? That some people do that kind of thing……”
…Of course, Sa-rang would’ve heard industry rumors by now.
“Like going to hotels together… and getting broadcasting gigs in return…… Lately, things have been so bad for us. Maybe we should try that too……”
“We don’t need to.”
“…Huh?”
“I said we *don’t need to*. We’ll earn our appearances and popularity through skill.”
“Really……?”
“Yeah. And what’s the point of snagging spots like *that*? You’d just flash your face once and be done. If you’re not skilled, appearing means nothing. You know that.”
“That’s… true. Yeah.”
“This doesn’t concern us, so don’t dwell on it. Times are tough now… But once our next album drops, we’ll prove ourselves.”
“Okay. I’ll work hard.”
“Then stop messing around on your phone all day.”
“No way~! I’m communicating with fans! Going live! We can’t even meet them because of COVID!”
“But you do it *all day*—that’s the problem. Next thing you know, you’ll accidentally spoil something.”
“I’ll tone it down. Just a little. Okay?”
Sa-rang kept talking, but her grip on her phone never loosened.
I didn’t know exactly what Sa-rang had heard or from where.
But I made up my mind then—to protect her from the industry’s dark underbelly. To help her survive it *without* losing herself inside it.
Back then, I was still naive enough to believe that was possible.
I only realized how impossible it was to succeed without opportunities—no matter how much talent you had—after our carefully crafted third album bombed spectacularly.
Under the company’s watchful eyes, with desperation tightening like a noose,
I threw myself into preparing ’s fourth album—this time, convinced it would be our last.
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