Chapter 166. Showered With Every Kind of Love
As soon as the police investigation began, KBC dismissed Hong Sang-hyeok through disciplinary action.
It was the exact same kind of rushed review he had once forced onto Choi Gyu-sik.
Of course, this one wasn't actually rushed.
There was simply such clear cause for discipline that there was nothing to deliberate.
Every workplace-harassment complaint that had previously been rejected at Production Division 1 suddenly came pouring out all at once.
A bastard drunk on power, running around flexing his influence everywhere, obviously wouldn't have spared the employees under him.
Hong Sang-hyeok returned his employee ID without raising a single objection to KBC's decision.
He was easier than any opponent I'd ever fought.
With that many skeletons in his closet, what exactly had given him the confidence to strut around like that?
"CEO-nim~!"
I stopped by the waiting room to see the members while they were preparing for the concert.
As usual, Aran dramatically threw herself into my arms.
"We had no idea you were suffering that much..."
Serin spoke after reading all the news.
What was that saying?
If you wanted to fool someone, fool the people closest to you first.
I felt a little guilty that the members were upset.
But I couldn't suddenly tell them the complete truth either.
So I decided to be half honest.
"I think I just got emotional because you girls were winning an award. I'm really fine."
"Don't lie. I know you've been having a hard time."
Youngchae spoke.
No, really.
It hadn't been that hard.
"I'm serious."
But Youngchae firmly shook her head.
"Unless you're an actor, tears don't suddenly come out like that. And from everything I've seen, CEO Do Jun-hyeok looked like he was having a hard time too. Are you really sure you weren't?"
Had I looked like I was struggling?
I did what Youngchae said and actually thought about it.
I'd fallen to rock bottom because of Pantheon.
I'd experienced the pain of obscurity together with the members.
Even after succeeding, I'd constantly had to fight people who wanted what we'd built.
We already had a successful Nutube channel and a broadcasting station ZJ had promised to establish for us, so we weren't completely shut out.
Still, I'd already experienced every broadcaster suddenly stopping their casting messages all at once.
I was certain it wasn't a big deal for me.
But had it really been nothing for the members and Dae-hun?
I had worried about that.
Come to think of it, that counted as emotional suffering too.
Worrying about other people was still stress.
I kept thinking about Youngchae's words as I headed toward the audience seats with the ticket I'd secured in advance.
Normally, I should've been monitoring from somewhere else.
But just for today, I was one of Apollo.
I had even brought a heavy camera to photograph the members.
Holding the camera filled my body with strength, along with the thrill that security might catch me.
I had to admit Youngchae was right.
I'd been under a lot of stress.
Today, I was just going to sit still and enjoy Blue Moon's performance like an idiot.
Four tiny grain-sized Blue Moons began dancing and singing onstage.
The final concert opened with a medley of 2024 K-pop hits.
Naturally, to show off the members' cover skills, we excluded Blue Moon's own songs from the hit-song medley.
"Kim Serin! Jin Youngchae! Anna! Song Aran!"
The fans shouted the cheering chant.
I'd helped when the members created the fan chants, so I remembered all of them.
The sound system was excellent.
But the members looked so tiny from here that I suddenly felt miserable.
Good thing I'd brought binoculars just in case.
I raised them and enjoyed the members' faces in HD quality.
Ah.
Humans have two eyes.
Yet we can only focus them on one place at a time.
And Blue Moon has four members.
What am I supposed to do about this cursed physical limitation?
While I look at Serin, I can't look at Youngchae, Anna, or Aran.
The same goes for every other member.
Ca-Camera.
Do I need to pick up the camera?
Surely some talented person is recording good fancams, right?
Growing anxious, I called Kim Hye-jin.
The call connected before I could even hear the ringtone.
All I heard through the phone was a scream powerful enough to blow away my soul.
"KYAAAAAAH! YOUNGCHAE UNNI!!!"
It was Kim Hye-jin.
Damn it.
This was practically hell on earth.
"Ms. Kim Hye-jin. Ms. Kim Hye-jin! How many photographers are down there right now? Ms. Kim Hye-jin!"
No answer.
There was no way she could hear me.
This wouldn't do.
I needed to go closer to the stage.
I gathered my camera again and stood up to move toward the front.
The final song in the medley ended, and a gentle outro began to play.
Then the audience suddenly erupted into thunderous applause.
What?
As far as I knew, after the medley there was nothing scheduled except the opening greeting.
I raised my head toward the stage.
My face was being displayed across the giant screen.
"CEO-nim~! Why are you sitting all the way in the back row? The camera director said he had a hard time finding you."
Serin spoke into her microphone from far away.
At once, the entire audience turned their heads toward me.
My flustered face was still being shown on the screen behind the members.
I hurriedly hid my cannon-sized camera.
Damn it!
Is that live footage?
It has to be.
Where the hell is the camera?
The camera feed showing me disappeared.
Then photos the members had taken of me began appearing one after another in a slideshow.
Most of them showed me sleeping.
In the driver's seat of the Starex.
On a bench in a waiting-room hallway.
Places like that.
I didn't remember any of these photos being taken.
Naturally.
They'd all been taken while I was asleep.
Then the screen split into two.
My photos continued on the right.
On the left, a cheering video from the members appeared, seemingly filmed in a hurry backstage.
Serin spoke first.
"CEO-nim. There's an app I downloaded, and it says we traveled more than 150,000 kilometers over the past year. But I never even realized how hard it was. Because of you."
Starting with Serin, our members began sending me messages of support.
"Jun-hyeok hyung. Thank you so much for turning me into a successful producer. Let's keep working hard from now on."
"Say more, idiot."
"Ah, should I? Honestly, when I first saw hyung, he looked kind of smug, so I didn't really like him. But the more I got to know him, the cooler he became, and he's someone I can really trust Blue Moon with..."
There was even a video of Dae-hun and Jin-hee bickering while filming.
After that came Moon Hee-jung.
Park Gwang-cheol.
Even Oh Soo.
Once all the messages were over, the screen switched to a live shot of the entire audience.
I didn't know where they'd hidden them, but everyone suddenly pulled out large panels and created a single giant card section.
Across it were the words:
DO JUN-HYEOK, FIGHTING!
Sniff.
Right now, I was suffering from every kind of love imaginable.
Don't cry.
Don't cry!
I grabbed the bridge of my nose.
The cheering only grew louder.
"CEO-nim, do you have anything you'd like to say?"
Aran asked.
Anything you'd like to say.
Aran had truly become Korean.
Something cold suddenly touched the hand I wasn't using to hold my face.
A microphone.
I brought it to my mouth.
I couldn't see very well.
But I could feel everyone's attention on me.
I took a deep breath.
Then I said,
"The next song is 〈I Love Party〉...!"
Because I'm a Blue Moon fan.
I wanted to see the beginning of the legend again at their concert.
The members could scream into their microphones all they wanted.
Loud music filled the concert hall.
A week passed after the concert ended.
I came to the filming studio with the members for an appearance on 〈Candyman〉, the program Lee Jae-gwan had mentioned.
Sam Jason had finally given his permission.
That meant WF and ZJ had now started working on recreating Michael Jason.
For immediate profit, we'd decided to recreate singer Kim Gwang-yeon using the current versions of the hologram and voice-synthesis technology.
It was basically a prototype.
But even that would be enough to make the audience lose their minds.
"Blue Moon, everyone~! I watched all the fancams. I was really disappointed that I couldn't get concert tickets. The video with Mr. Do Jun-hyeok was incredibly touching too."
Yoo Jun-seok, whom I hadn't seen in a while, greeted us and caught us up on things.
"Ahem! Well, our members like events. They pulled something like that without even asking me first, so you can imagine how flustered I was."
"Liar. You were so moved that you cried."
The members overheard my conversation with Yoo Jun-seok and immediately interrupted while giggling.
When did I cry?
"Anyway, our production team was thrilled when they heard we'd secured hologram support, but when I heard Blue Moon would also be participating, I was shocked."
"Ah, yes. ZJ somehow ended up joining the hologram research. I'm benefiting from a lot of people."
"Hang in there, Mr. Do Jun-hyeok. That person will probably be retiring from broadcasting soon too. Whenever you want, I'm always ready to invite Universe."
After the concert, we'd spent some time resting.
This appearance on 〈Candyman〉 was our first schedule afterward.
The identity of the original artist wasn't revealed beforehand.
But the junior singers who appeared as panelists and performed remakes usually had articles released about them in advance.
〈Candyman〉 was also an extremely popular music program, so a lot of people were looking forward to Blue Moon's performance.
To explain the format of 〈Candyman〉 in a little more detail, famous singer-songwriter Yoo Hee-gwang and national MC Yoo Jun-seok each invited a legendary singer from the past and competed through their songs.
Of course, the original singers themselves weren't competing.
Their songs were remade by junior artists, and those junior performances were what competed.
The biggest difference from 〈Legendary Songs〉 was probably the screen time.
About seventy percent focused on the original singer.
The junior artist performing the remake received the remaining thirty percent.
When the intro to the original singer's representative song began, one hundred audience members turned on the bulbs in front of them.
Only if they recognized the song.
Once all the lights were on, the original singer appeared and performed it personally.
Then they'd talk about how they'd been living.
Do some interviews.
And if necessary, sing a few more songs.
After all of that, the junior singer, Blue Moon in our case, came out and performed a remake.
Today's original artists were Yoo Hee-gwang's legendary rock band Yama and Yoo Jun-seok's romantic singer of an era, Kim Gwang-yeon.
Kim Gwang-yeon would perform second.
His hologram, that is.
Naturally, it was going to be a surprise.
After checking the members' microphone volumes, we finished setting up the studio, and filming began.
I sat in the section for people in their thirties.
The members sat in the panel seats.
Singer-songwriter Yoo Hee-gwang came out and gave a vague introduction to his Candyman, the original artist.
Soon, the instrumental began.
The bulbs in the thirties and forties sections lit up explosively.
It was Yama's 〈Love Already Worn Out〉.
Since I already knew the answer, I watched the others first and turned on my bulb a little later.
It wasn't strange.
I knew the song anyway.
This was the exact song Lee Woong-jae had performed during Serin's second Mask King defense on 〈Mask Singer〉.
Singer Yama appeared and began to sing.
I found myself applauding along with everyone else.
As expected.
He was incredible.
Those clear, explosive high notes opened up my chest and washed away stress I hadn't even known I was carrying.
Honestly, I'd thought Lee Woong-jae sang it well too.
But he still couldn't match Yama.
"Hello. It's been a long time. We're the rock band Yama."
Then Yama's recent-life interview began.
Everyone looked stunned because nobody had expected Yama to appear.
But once they started talking, the audience quietly listened.
"All right, then. It's time to hear the junior artist's cover. Which members will be singing for us?"
"Us."
Youngchae and Anna raised their hands at Yoo Hee-gwang's question.
Our Youngchae and Anna would also be performing 〈Love Already Worn Out〉.
Yama was excellent.
But our members would obviously do well too.
Even though I'd spent the entire week going back and forth to the police station over the Hong Sang-hyeok situation and hadn't seen them rehearse.
Anna handled the opening.
She usually only rapped.
Because of that, most people had no idea how good her vocals were.
But Anna was still a singer.
Her voice was solid and full.
Her pitch was incredibly stable.
"Back then it hurt so much.
Now I can't even say it.
I only grew tired from crying..."
Youngchae took over the latter part of the opening and the climax.
The highest part of the song came late in the climax.
But the moment Youngchae received her section, she raised the key significantly.
It was already so high that singing any higher looked almost impossible.
The audience began murmuring.
It looked like Youngchae had made a mistake.
Youngchae was a good singer.
But even I had never seen her raise a song to this kind of pitch.
And I'd been her fan for years before eventually becoming her manager.
Everyone else must have felt the same.
But overturning all of the audience's concerns, Youngchae nailed the climax's high notes perfectly.
It was an incredible performance.
If Lee Woong-jae had sung it like this, Serin would've lost her second title defense no matter how much controversy had surrounded him.
I hadn't realized Youngchae was this good.
This wasn't simply someone who could hit high notes.
There was genuine rock spirit in her voice.
Countless applause filled the studio as Yoo Hee-gwang's Candyman segment ended.
Next came Yoo Jun-seok.
The stage where Lee Jae-gwan's Kim Gwang-yeon hologram would finally appear.
"We've prepared a song from someone who can awaken memories in every one of you. For those in their teens, twenties, perhaps even thirties, this song may have been released before you were born... But for now, let's listen."
Yoo Jun-seok finished his short introduction and stepped away.
Then the famous intro to Kim Gwang-yeon's 〈Because of Something Called Love〉 began to play.
A slightly lonely yet sweet piano melody.
Every audience member who recognized it immediately turned on their bulb.
Every single light was on within one second of the intro starting.
Only after turning them on did the audience members seem to realize something strange.
Kim Gwang-yeon had died a long time ago.
There couldn't possibly be another original singer either.
"Because of something called love,
I spent countless nights awake..."
But the moment the lyrics began...
The original singer walked out from behind the stage.
Singer Kim Gwang-yeon himself.
Recreated as a hologram.
