Chapter 167. Take a Pound of Flesh
The audience's amazement never stopped.
They had recreated the studio's structure exactly, calculated every movement of the human body and every path the performer would take, then overlaid Kim Gwang-yeon's model onto it.
That was why it truly looked as if singer Kim Gwang-yeon were walking out from behind the stage.
Of course, it was still obvious that he was a hologram.
After 〈Because of Something Called Love〉 ended, Kim Gwang-yeon sang another artist's song.
I'd specially planned that part to demonstrate the voice-synthesis technology.
If he only sang his own songs, it would sound identical to the existing recordings anyway, which would lessen the impact.
Many audience members shed tears as they watched Kim Gwang-yeon sing someone else's song as though it were his own.
I'd participated in designing the hologram stage several times myself, but seeing it performed for real stirred something inside me.
Maybe the knowledge that what we were seeing wasn't actually real made the sight even sadder.
I could understand a little better why Sam Jason had welcomed the idea of Michael Jason's hologram and yet hadn't been able to agree immediately.
The response after the broadcast was even hotter than it had been in the studio.
[Wow, the voice is seriously incredible. How is that even possible? It really sounds like singer Kim Gwang-yeon is singing.]
[That hologram is insanely realistic. I thought stuff like that only existed in movies?]
[┗ The technology exists, but apparently commercialization is difficult. Still, after this, I bet we'll start seeing it on stages pretty often.]
[Ah, this is so sad ㅜㅜㅜㅜ]
[┗ Then I suppose that wasn't love.]
[I heard Do Jun-hyeok connected the hologram lab with ZJ. Anyway, everyone go invest in WF.]
[┗ Too late. It shot up immediately after the broadcast...]
Whenever Blue Moon appeared on a program, the episode somehow ended up being called legendary.
This time was no different.
And it wasn't only because of the hologram technology.
The appearance of the legendary rock band Yama played a big part too.
There was also a lot of attention on the members who had unexpectedly shown off their singing skills.
Especially Youngchae.
"Youngchae. That growl you did on the high notes was seriously cool. How did you manage to hide that level of skill even from me?"
"I never needed to sing rock vocals, so I didn't. I probably won't have many reasons to do it in the future either."
From the beginning, Blue Moon's greatest strengths had been their visuals and vocals.
There was nothing strange about Youngchae being good.
Still, I hadn't expected her to be good enough to stand alone like a solo singer.
[Wait, wasn't Serin the main vocalist? Youngchae is insane.]
[Every single Blue Moon member can sing, okay!]
[That vocal scratch was crazy. Youngchae is officially my bias starting today.]
[Can you upload cover videos sometimes?]
People were asking her to upload covers.
I showed Youngchae the comments and asked if she was interested.
She promised that whenever she felt like going to karaoke, she'd record something in the studio and upload it instead.
Hong Sang-hyeok had now been buried so thoroughly that his name had practically become synonymous with corrupt producers.
Seeing the response to Kim Gwang-yeon's hologram stage, Michael Jason's hologram performance in America was guaranteed to succeed.
After finishing my conversation with Youngchae in the practice room, I returned to the office.
For some reason, Dae-hun was wearing a suit and adjusting his jacket.
"What's with the suit? Is someone coming to film something again? I didn't hear anything."
"Ah, I only got the call just now too. Hyung, change into something neat first. I'll explain on the way."
Did something happen?
I did as Dae-hun said, changed into a suit, and got into the Volkswagon.
For once, Dae-hun took the wheel and began explaining.
"Remember when the trainees started that SNS movement after 〈Deep-Rooted Girls〉 got canceled? You told me to keep tracking what happened afterward too."
"Yeah."
"Back then, a trainee from a small agency attempted suicide. They survived, but they've been unconscious for several weeks now. Apparently, because the entertainment companies were already unstable from the trainee protests, Hong Sang-hyeok completely buried the incident. It only came out now because of the investigation."
What a terrible thing.
I asked for more details about the trainee.
Dae-hun said the trainee was in their mid-twenties.
They had made that choice immediately after their ten-year trainee contract ended.
The full story had come out through testimony from acquaintances combined with information found on Hong Sang-hyeok's phone.
"Hong Sang-hyeok made that trainee do all sorts of things by promising them a debut. The trainee was desperate to debut, so they kept doing everything he asked without complaint. But the moment the contract ended, he acted like none of it had ever happened. The trainee attempted suicide immediately afterward."
"What did he make them do?"
"I'm not going into that."
After that conversation ended, Dae-hun and I didn't exchange another word during the hour-long drive to Pyeongtaek.
Hong Sang-hyeok had demanded personal favors from the trainee for a long time.
But the idol SNS movement and the termination of that trainee's contract had happened at the same time.
Because of that, even after the incident occurred, it had been thoroughly buried.
Taking advantage of the moment, the trainee's colleagues finally came forward with statements of conscience.
What if the idol protests had happened a little later?
Or never happened at all?
The trainee's health still wouldn't have been intact.
But at least we wouldn't have found out this late.
Hearing the story of that nameless trainee made me realize that I'd become someone capable of affecting the lives of far more trainees than I'd thought.
I felt something close to guilt.
I'd been in this industry for a long time, but I hadn't even known someone like Hong Sang-hyeok existed.
Once you reached a certain position, you could avoid people like that simply by living decently.
Trainees couldn't.
Everywhere you went, there were people looking for ways to exploit a trainee's dream.
And yet the very SNS movement created to protect trainees' rights had ended up helping bury this particular incident.
When we arrived in Pyeongtaek, Dae-hun and I went to the hospital room.
But the trainee was in intensive care, so we couldn't see them.
Their parents were silently eating on a bench outside the room.
We gave them only a quiet bow so we wouldn't disturb them, then left.
"Damn it. What absolute filthy pieces of shit."
Dae-hun finally broke the long silence as we walked out through the hospital park.
"Hey. What do you think would happen if we started paying living expenses for trainees from other agencies too? Would their CEOs hate it?"
"Hyung, how would you feel if another agency started feeding our trainees?"
"I'd be embarrassed."
Dae-hun nodded, saying he felt the same way.
"Then they wouldn't stop us, would they?"
"Probably not. If anything, they'd like it. Why? Are you thinking about doing it?"
"I'm considering it."
Dae-hun clicked his tongue and said that once we started fulfilling other people's responsibilities for them, there would be no end to it.
We didn't even have that kind of money right now.
And even if trainees had enough living expenses, that didn't mean all the reasons they could be pressured into sponsorship arrangements or similar situations would disappear.
"At least no trainee would have to starve. Do you know how much money trainee life costs?"
"The intention is good, but we need to remove the root cause. If we just throw cash at the symptom, then once our company goes under, it'll all happen again."
"So you're against it."
Dae-hun nodded.
All right.
Got it.
I took out my phone and called Kim Jin-hee.
"Yes, CEO-nim."
"Ms. Jin-hee, there's something I'd like your opinion on."
I explained the same support program for trainees from other agencies that I'd just discussed with Dae-hun.
Jin-hee thought for a moment before speaking.
"Set aside separate funds to support trainees from other agencies? Ah... I'm not sure. Wouldn't their agencies just try to take away however much we give them? I don't know how effective it'd be."
"You think so? Dae-hun was against it too."
"He was? Then I'm absolutely in favor. What, only our company's trainees are human beings and everyone else's trainees aren't even alive? That's ridiculous."
As expected.
Jin-hee and I clicked surprisingly well sometimes.
"Perfect. Let's move forward with it immediately. Ah, though I'd rather not do it under Universe's name. I'd like the company identity to stay anonymous. Otherwise people might think we're doing it for publicity. Please look into the process for setting up a separate organization first."
"Understood."
If Moon Hee-jung was creating boring success stories in America, Do Jun-hyeok was creating a martial-arts hero legend in Korea.
The more she watched, the more impressive it became.
Things that other producers might experience once or twice across their entire careers happened to him endlessly, and yet he was still standing.
Blue Moon hadn't reached number one on Billboard yet, but their overall influence had already surpassed Dessault by a considerable margin.
From Nashville to New Orleans, Moon Hee-jung had never encountered a strange producer like Do Jun-hyeok anywhere in America.
Lately, he seemed uneasy about something related to the Super Bowl, so they had been speaking more often.
After Moon Hee-jung told him that most of the other singers were planning collaborative stages and featured guests for their solo performances, Do Jun-hyeok seemed to become even busier.
He asked her to find a singer who could feature with Blue Moon.
Do Jun-hyeok himself had already found one artist as well.
...Michael Jason.
He said he'd recruited Michael Jason.
At first, Moon Hee-jung assumed he meant someone exaggeratedly called the Michael Jason of Latin music or Canada's Michael Jason.
But after seeing the hologram of Kim Gwang-yeon appear alongside Blue Moon on 〈Candyman〉, she finally understood what Do Jun-hyeok had meant.
He intended to take that same technology to the Super Bowl.
In that case, Moon Hee-jung didn't have many choices for the artist she needed to secure either.
Her plan was to obtain permission to recreate Kerins, the only singer who had ever stood as Michael Jason's true rival during the height of Michael's career.
Of course, Kerins was no longer alive either.
He had been somewhat forgotten now, but in his time, Kerins had been Michael's only genuine rival.
Among his songs, 〈People's Rain〉 had even briefly elevated him to a level of popularity beyond Michael.
They had been rivals and hadn't gotten along well while active.
Still, Moon Hee-jung believed Kerins's family would readily agree if they heard that Michael's hologram was being recreated too.
After several attempts, she managed to meet Taylor, Kerins's older brother.
Moon Hee-jung had always respected Kerins, so she'd finished reading his entire autobiography before meeting Taylor.
By discussing Kerins's achievements and sharing their thoughts on American popular music, she quickly built rapport with him.
So when she proposed putting Kerins's hologram onstage together with Michael's, Taylor agreed without much hesitation.
"I think it's a very good idea. Kerins and Mr. Michael eventually reconciled, but many people still don't know that. I don't see any reason not to do it."
Naturally, she made sure to tell him not to reveal it publicly.
When Do Jun-hyeok had asked her to find a featured performer, the one thing he'd especially emphasized was secrecy.
Taylor also viewed that positively.
Both Michael Jason and Kerins had already performed at the Super Bowl before.
Everyone would assume there was no reason they'd ever appear there again.
The fact that neither of them was alive anymore made that assumption even more obvious.
After receiving his permission, Moon Hee-jung gathered every piece of video footage of Kerins she could find, along with even the private photographs Taylor had kept, and sent everything to WF Media.
"With this many people involved in the project, can it really stay secret?"
Taylor asked Moon Hee-jung.
"There's only so much we can do about that. They're the people actually making the hologram. Besides, we've got plenty of other secrets too."
"Ah, right. The project where you're contributing money to help poor aspiring artists. You said that one was secret too, didn't you?"
In Kerins's autobiography, Moon Hee-jung had read that when his family was hungry during his childhood, they would all gather outside McDonald's just to smell the food.
She had wondered whether mentioning the trainee living-expense support project that Do Jun-hyeok had recently started planning might make Taylor evaluate the man behind the hologram project more favorably.
"That's right."
"Something like that should be known by a lot of people. It's a shame."
That was true too.
Anonymous giving was an incredibly noble form of charity.
Honestly, something like that could probably earn enough public support to shake up Korea's entertainment industry.
"...Come to think of it, he only told us to hide the name Universe. He never said to hide the name Do Jun-hyeok."
"Isn't that basically the same thing?"
It was.
But just for this one issue, Moon Hee-jung decided to interpret things very simply.
Do Jun-hyeok had specifically told her to hide only the name Universe.
Then didn't that mean everything other than that name was fair game to reveal?
