Chapter 104. Gangwon Vacation
"Uh...? Where are we?"
"Gangchon. We're on the way to Hongcheon."
"Huhhh?"
She'd fallen asleep almost immediately, but apparently the alcohol had worn off.
I told Anna the partly fabricated truth that after filming, she'd said she wanted to go for a drive in Gangwon Province.
Anna let out a sigh.
"I talk so much nonsense when I'm drunk. Ahh, I don't think I'm completely sober yet."
"Let's open the window a little."
I lowered the window.
Snow immediately blew inside.
I closed it again.
The road looked perfectly clear thanks to the heating system, so I'd thought it would be fine.
Apparently not.
Not long after Anna woke up, we arrived at Jeongseon Casino Land.
There had been one car whose route kept overlapping with ours for quite a while.
It belonged to Kaiser.
Kaiser opened her trunk, leaned more than half her upper body inside, struggled with something for several minutes, then pulled out a bag.
"Did I really ask you to come here?"
"No. We just happened to pass by, and the building looked nice, so I stopped."
"Huh? Wait. Isn't that Kaiser?"
Anna pointed at Kaiser.
Kaiser was entering the casino building through a familiar route, like someone returning to her hometown.
Anna and I quickly got out and approached her.
I also brought the receipt and transaction papers the Masan agency president had written up for me.
"Ms. No Ji-hye! Wait!"
When I called out, No Ji-hye stopped right in front of the entrance.
She didn't recognize me at first.
Then she noticed Anna walking beside me and looked slightly flustered.
"You were drinking a lot during filming earlier. Did you drive drunk?"
"I called a chauffeur."
No Ji-hye pointed toward the road far down the hill.
A man there was hailing a taxi.
Fair enough.
Calling a chauffeur all the way from Seoul to Hongcheon wasn't exactly cheap.
But she'd just sold songs worth hundreds of millions of won.
"What brings you here?"
"Well..."
No Ji-hye's eyes shifted slightly before she answered.
"Sometimes I come here as a hobby. That's not illegal, is it?"
"As a hobby? I don't think so. Weren't you banned from entering this place three years ago?"
A slap was probably the most effective way to knock some sense into a gambling addict.
But I couldn't actually hit her.
So I decided to pressure her instead.
"Until three years ago, you practically lived in this casino. Then you went bankrupt and got yourself banned. You ran out of things to sell, so you even sold your soul. After that, you probably spent three years gambling illegally. And the second your ban period ended, you came running straight back here. Isn't that right?"
No Ji-hye's pride must have been hurt.
She glared at me fiercely.
"Illegal gambling? Do you have proof? And what do you mean, I sold my soul?"
"You said during filming that you'd sold your soul. And that masterpiece of yours I happen to like, 〈Killing Life〉? I found it rotting away in some private agency in Masan."
Judging from the songs she'd sold in Masan alone, there had been more than ten.
Even if each one had only been worth a hundred million won, that was already around four hundred million.
What was so entertaining about gambling that she'd burned through four hundred million won?
"Enough. What does it matter to you how I live my life? My life is already ruined. I'm going to keep living like this. Whether I make four hundred million today or forty trillion, I'll keep pulling that lever until every last won is gone. Then I'll crawl back out, sell another song, and come right back!"
She was completely insane.
I pulled the receipt and transaction agreement from inside my coat.
"Perfect. I was wondering what Anna should perform in the final. This will do. This song belongs to Anna now."
No Ji-hye froze.
Then she snatched the papers from my hand.
Her body began trembling.
Maybe from humiliation.
Maybe from the cold.
Judging from the tears starting to form in her eyes, probably both.
"What the hell are you doing with my song?!"
"'My song'? Ah, you mean 'my pension'? Come on. If having someone else own it is humiliating enough to make you this furious, that's exactly why people call it selling your soul. You were bragging at a drinking table about selling your soul when you didn't even understand what soul you'd sold? You should've been prepared to hide your tears even if the idol girl you never wanted to see again stood onstage singing your song and pretending it was hers."
"Ugh!"
No Ji-hye burst into tears and started walking back toward the casino.
I'd deliberately provoked her because I needed a strong emotional conversation.
But now what?
Then a message arrived.
[Title: 2/10]
[Recorded: 2024.02.29. 12:30]
[Free Opt-Out: 010-xxxx-xxxx]
The thumbnail showed the name Sea Girls.
At a glance, it looked like a list of songs near the top of the Mango Chart.
The highest-ranked song visible was number four.
Its title was 〈Walking〉.
The exact song I'd seen in Masan.
"Aaaaaagh!"
"What? Why are you screaming?"
As if expressing my emotions for me, No Ji-hye suddenly screamed near the casino entrance.
When I looked over, she was rolling around in the snow with the bag of money she'd brought.
I made Anna and No Ji-hye wait inside my beloved Volkswagon while I checked the video first.
There wasn't any cinematic directing this time.
But the free opt-out number was still there.
The video still showed the Mango Chart, listing only ranks four through ten.
The main subject was clearly Sea Girls' 〈Walking〉.
It was the highest-ranked song visible at number four.
The song information was too long to fit at once, so the text rotated like an electronic sign.
Only after about five seconds did I get the full information.
[Sea Girls_〈Walking (Friday and Saturday Are for Singers Project)〉]
〈Friday and Saturday Are for Singers〉.
Or 〈Fri-Sat Singer〉 for short.
Come to think of it, I'd heard at that Korean Broadcasting Association gathering that someone was planning a program with this title.
Was the PD's name Yoo Jong-hak?
He'd said he wanted to make a program fitting the retro trend.
If this show was riding a retro craze, there should've been plenty of other old songs too.
But judging from how it was dominating the chart, it was more accurate to say the show itself had created the craze.
Anyway, the highest-ranked song visible was 〈Walking〉 at number four.
Nobody knew better than me that it was a great song.
But Sea Girls had another representative song from around the same era.
〈I Love You So Much〉.
Was it in the top three?
I had no idea.
For now, investigating every artist on the list one by one was impossible.
My body temperature had limits.
First, I needed to deal with No Ji-hye's situation.
I put my phone in my pocket and got back into the car.
"All right. Shall we begin?"
No Ji-hye sat there looking like she'd been arrested by the police.
Anna, meanwhile, was inspecting the bag of cash beside her.
"Ms. No Ji-hye. How do you feel right now?"
"The same as yesterday. The same as the day before. I want to go back to before I sold those songs. What's so special about that?"
"So if someone returned every song you sold in Masan, you'd quit gambling?"
No Ji-hye fell silent.
Apparently, she'd gotten her hopes up.
Did she think I was going to recover all of them for her?
I hadn't meant to imply that much...
But after thinking about it, I could see how she'd heard it that way.
"Unfortunately, that's impossible."
"Then what the hell are you trying to say?"
"Still, there are only a few songs that actually make you real money, right? The three I bought were your biggest ones. I paid a huge amount for them, so I obviously can't just hand them back. But for now, I can give you free usage rights. Go back into the casino and renew your entry ban. Then show me you've changed. If you keep it up, I'll gradually sell the rights back to you."
And if I gave her usage rights and caught her gambling again, I'd immediately leak everything to the media.
"Just poking around a casino probably won't get you much criticism, but if someone investigates, I have a feeling illegal gambling will turn up. Did you gamble illegally or not? Actually, never mind. I don't really want to know. I'd rather believe you didn't. Let's just leave it at this: if you're caught gambling again, I'll report you immediately. I know a few prosecutors who will definitely investigate if I ask. Then we'll find out whether you did illegal gambling or not."
After remaining silent for a while, No Ji-hye finally asked,
"Why are you doing this for me?"
"Would knowing why change anything? Isn't this the kind of deal where you say yes without asking questions? If you don't want it, fine. I'll give these songs to Anna as New Year's money next year."
"Thank you."
Anna, who roughly understood my plan, joined in to provoke her.
No Ji-hye squeezed her eyes shut, visibly boiling inside.
It was still too early to sign an actual contract.
If I rushed into one and No Ji-hye fell back into gambling, Universe's image could take a serious hit.
"Let's do it that way. Use this chance to become rich for once. If you really get desperate to gamble, call me. I'll lend you my online Go-Stop account. It's got three hundred trillion won."
I called a chauffeur to take her back to Seoul, then returned myself.
Anna hurried back to the dorm for a belated Christmas party.
I still had work to do.
I needed to figure out why Sea Girls' 〈I Love You So Much〉 wasn't among the 〈Fri-Sat Singer〉 project songs shown in the future video.
Leaving 〈I Love You So Much〉 out when selecting Sea Girls songs from the early nineties was like listing the legendary band Cherry Punk's signature songs without including 〈Youth Cat〉.
If it had been included in 〈Friday and Saturday Are for Singers〉, there was no way its chart ranking would've been low.
Of course, it might simply have been somewhere in the top three, which the video didn't show.
But if that was the case, then the video gave me nothing useful.
For now, the best assumption was that Yoo Jong-hak had failed to secure the song for some reason.
Had it been sold off somewhere like 〈Killing Life〉?
I checked the song list from the Masan agency again.
〈I Love You So Much〉 wasn't there.
Just in case, I called again and asked.
They said they didn't have it.
Something had definitely happened to 〈I Love You So Much〉.
There had to be a reason they'd managed to secure 〈Walking〉 but not that song.
Could I get 〈I Love You So Much〉 myself?
Then if I quickly bought both 〈Walking〉 and 〈I Love You So Much〉, I could rake in copyright royalties...
No.
If the timing worked, it would be better to release one of them as a new song for our members.
Blue Moon was already popular with the middle-aged generation too.
If we repaid them with 〈I Love You So Much〉, we could sell it across generations.
Of course, I probably couldn't afford both songs.
I'd spent so much buying Kaiser's songs that I only had enough money left to purchase one more.
If I found the copyright to 〈I Love You So Much〉 buried somewhere, there would be no reason to choose anything else.
Let's find it.
But how?
I had no idea what to do.
Which meant it was probably time to finally touch the menu item I'd been saving to enjoy later.
The free opt-out number from the second spam message.
The next morning, after waiting a day, I called it immediately.
"Yes~ This is Cheon Yong-gu."
Cheon Yong-gu?
No idea who that was.
Let's dig.
"President Cheon! This is Do Jun-hyeok. My number changed, so I'm calling from a new one."
"Huh? Do Jun-hyeok?"
"Yes, sir."
The man sounded over sixty.
He clearly had no idea who I was.
Naturally.
You don't know me.
"Please save my number first. Something good happened recently, so I wanted to come visit you. But I can't remember your address."
"Do Jun-hyeok...? Sorry, young man, but I really don't remember you. Did you buy a song from me before?"
I pretended to sound hurt and thought about what he'd said.
Did you buy a song from me?
Apparently, he dealt in songs like the Masan president.
Then maybe he had 〈I Love You So Much〉.
"Ah... I know it's been a while, but there's no way you don't remember me. It's Do Jun-hyeok. Do Jun-hyeok!"
"I'm sorry. But since you said you're coming, come by anyway. Maybe I'll remember when I see you... I'll send you the address."
He was really sending his address that easily?
Then maybe he wasn't doing the same kind of business as the Masan president.
Well, the Masan president had insisted his business wasn't illegal either, so sharing an address wasn't necessarily strange.
"Thank you. I'll come today. By the way, 〈I Love You So Much〉...?"
I threw it out casually, just in case.
Cheon Yong-gu sounded confused.
"What? 〈I Love You So Much〉? You want to buy that song? How did you know I own it?"
"Haha. I heard through the grapevine."
I brushed it off.
"Well... I suppose it can't be helped. All right. Come by first."
He sounded strangely bitter.
I ended the call and checked the home address Cheon Yong-gu had sent me.
Damn it.
Gangwon Province again.
