Chapter 42. No One Can Resist Aegyo
The PD realized that Team Leader Do Jun-hyeok had subtly tried to steer him toward the word upgrade earlier.
And now Director Kwon had conveniently appeared and recommended upgrade as a clue.
Unless he was an idiot, there was no way he wouldn't suspect they'd planned it together.
The PD's inner voice immediately started yelling.
Upgrade?
Why upgrade?
There's downgrade, green grape, George Craig, Frostwind Draven... Why does it have to be upgrade?
But he couldn't openly accuse them.
Suspicion was only suspicion.
If they denied planning it, everyone would only end up embarrassed.
What a troublesome situation.
Fortunately, the PD liked troublesome situations.
Finding a way out of them was always fun.
"Writer. Besides the 'upgrade' clue Director Kwon just suggested, what was the other one?"
The PD asked after Kwon left.
"Uh... Looks like we ended up with beer and upgrade. Beer."
The writer checked her notes.
Ridiculous.
All anyone had to do was pretend to drink something, make a satisfied face, and say Khh!.
Everyone would guess beer immediately.
"Change it to Erguotou."
"Erguotou?"
Erguotou.
A cheap Chinese liquor distilled twice in a pot.
Depending on the brand, it was usually more than fifty percent alcohol.
For young girls who only knew beer, soju, and whiskey, it would be poison as a quiz word.
If upgrade was the problem, then all he had to do was make sure they never reached that clue.
The game resumed.
The MC remembered exactly how much time had remained when the fourth clue first appeared, then reset the timer.
Four minutes remained.
If Do Jun-hyeok and the Blue Moon members got two answers right within four minutes, they'd get full promotion for their new song and take home the Korean beef.
If they failed Erguotou, it wouldn't matter whether they later got upgrade right or not.
The four minutes would end.
They would finish with only four correct answers.
Failure.
"All right, headphones on! Here comes the next clue!"
The Blue Moon members and Do Jun-hyeok obediently put on the headphones.
Heavy metal blasted through them so loudly that they couldn't hear anything outside.
Then Kim Serin received the clue:
Erguotou.
The PD still considered himself kind.
He'd written the Chinese characters too.
Serin tilted her head for a moment.
Then she noticed the final character, 酒, meaning alcohol.
She tapped Youngchae's shoulder.
Unfortunately, the only thing she could clearly communicate was that it was alcohol.
Serin pretended to drink something, squeezed her eyes shut, and shouted,
"Erguotou!"
"What?"
"Erguotou!"
Youngchae tilted her head.
"It's cold this winter?"
"Er! Guo! Tou!"
"...Dentist milk?"
There was no more time to waste.
Youngchae gave an okay gesture and tapped Anna's shoulder.
The same drinking gesture traveled from Anna to Song Aran.
But the mouth shape of the actual word disappeared completely.
The hand gesture of holding a narrow glass could vaguely suggest Erguotou.
But most people would naturally think of soju.
And they only had one chance.
If Aran communicated soju and Do Jun-hyeok wrote that, the question would be lost.
Do Jun-hyeok watched Aran happily pretend to down a shot of soju.
He thought for a moment.
Then he wrote:
So...
The PD smiled.
"Got him. Got him. Wrong answer."
The writer nodded happily.
Then Do Jun-hyeok crossed out the word soju.
And wrote:
Erguotou.
"What?! How did you get that?! You guessed! You guessed, didn't you?!"
The MC jumped to his feet.
The PD felt exactly the same.
How could anyone see that gesture and guess Erguotou?
"Give us the next question quickly!"
Do Jun-hyeok urged them.
The PD had no choice but to approve the next clue.
Upgrade.
Blue Moon had about one minute and thirty seconds left.
Serin pointed upward and shouted,
"Upgrade!"
It was an English word, but it was used commonly enough.
And the image was clear.
Serin.
Youngchae.
Anna.
Song Aran.
All of them clearly shouted,
"Upgrade!"
The broadcast was doomed.
There was no way to fix this with editing.
The PD was just about to accept his crushing defeat when...
"Ah! What do you mean Top Blade?! You were doing so well!"
The MC screamed.
The PD couldn't believe it.
Do Jun-hyeok hadn't written upgrade.
He'd written:
Top Blade.
What the hell was Top Blade?
And just like that, time ran out.
Do Jun-hyeok took off his headphones and asked,
"Wasn't it Top Blade?"
"What Top Blade?! Anyone can see it was upgrade!"
"Ah..."
Relief spread across the PD's face.
The Blue Moon members looked extremely disappointed.
But there was nothing they could do.
"I was so proud after getting Erguotou right that I thought, 'Ah, they're twisting the questions now,' so I overthought this one too. This was my mistake. Sorry, girls."
"It's okay! You were amazing before that!"
The members laughed and encouraged him.
It had been an excellent opportunity.
Of course they'd be disappointed.
Yet strangely, Do Jun-hyeok looked satisfied.
Almost like he'd accomplished something even more important.
Come to think of it, dramatically failing at the end was better television than simply getting every answer right.
The PD already knew Do Jun-hyeok was capable.
Could he possibly have planned even that?
All the way from when he'd hovered around the PD and writer earlier, pretending to guide them toward upgrade?
Impossible to know.
Only Do Jun-hyeok knew the answer.
I had almost failed the mission.
The message had specifically said:
[Within ten minutes, hear someone say the word "upgrade."]
Making someone say upgrade was important.
But ultimately, I had to actually hear it.
Unfortunately, all I could hear through my headphones was the screaming of legendary heavy-metal band Black Sherbet.
A missile could've hit Seoul and I wouldn't have known.
With Erguotou, I'd been suspicious because the only thing that reached me was the drinking gesture.
The mouth shape for soju wasn't difficult to communicate.
So I guessed that it had to be some alcohol with a more complicated pronunciation.
The PD's face was bright red.
He looked exactly like the type who enjoyed strong Chinese liquor in restaurants.
That narrowed it down to Yantai Kaoliang or Erguotou.
I could've been wrong.
But who cared?
I got it right.
The real problem came when the members were obviously shouting upgrade, yet I still didn't receive a mission-success message.
That was when the real battle began.
Why isn't the success notice coming?
Wasn't there supposed to be one?
Didn't the message say I'd receive information after succeeding?
Then I remembered the wording.
Hear someone say "upgrade."
The members outside the headphones were clearly screaming the word.
But I couldn't hear them.
And unfortunately, the legendary brothers of Black Sherbet didn't happen to scream the word upgrade in the song either.
So I decided to intentionally fail the question.
If I gave an absurd answer, then once I took off the headphones, everyone would inevitably tell me the correct answer.
Upgrade.
The chance to promote the choreography was valuable.
But playing the music video after the show was already guaranteed.
That reward was practically as guaranteed as the meaningless reward points military instructors handed out during training camp.
The Korean beef was a little disappointing.
But I could buy the members some myself.
I'd just survive on instant noodles for lunch for a week.
"You're really not going to play our song?"
Aran, who'd been disappointed for a while, suddenly began acting cute toward the MC.
"Nope. Go home."
"Really? Even after we tried this hard?"
Aran began doing an elaborate bunny dance in front of him.
"N-No means no!"
"Really? Even though I have all this excitement I can't contain?"
No one can resist aegyo forever.
In the end, the MC surrendered to the bunny dance.
He couldn't give them every victory reward.
But he allowed them to immediately perform the point choreography and guaranteed the music video would play after the broadcast.
There was still no Korean beef.
So my lunches would still be instant noodles.
I slipped away from the set during the chaos.
I'd already felt my phone vibrate when the MC had scolded me for missing upgrade.
[Congratulations! Receive capacity increased!]
[Starting with the next notice, you will be able to receive GIF files.]
So that was what "larger capacity" meant.
At first, I'd wondered whether the image quality would simply become ridiculously high.
If the only upgrade had been better picture quality, I would've been a little disappointed.
But GIFs?
That was a pretty generous upgrade.
〈Idol of the Week〉 aired the very next Saturday.
We'd requested that the song be released on digital music sites the moment the broadcast ended.
Until recently, we'd all crowded around Dae-hun's computer just to watch the music video.
Now it was going to air in full on national television.
Just thinking about it made me happy.
Aran's aegyo at the end even became the highlight of the episode.
It taught viewers a valuable lesson.
Losing the match didn't matter if you won the real battle.
Part of me felt strangely bittersweet about watching an idol group that once felt like my private discovery make their national-television debut.
Sure, they'd already appeared on 〈Live Singing Contest〉 and the Chuseok special of 〈Music Bang Bang〉.
But none of those had been proper promotions with their own new song.
And variety shows could show off the members' human charm too.
Serin was adorable because she took everything too seriously.
Aran had shameless aegyo.
Anna constantly looked lost.
Youngchae had far more gaps in her cool image than expected.
This episode of 〈Idol of the Week〉 would surely become a turning point remembered forever in Apollo history.
"Hup!"
The broadcast began.
The background was entirely white.
Blue Moon sat in a row beside the MC.
Emotion filled my throat.
At the filming set, I'd felt happy as a planner.
Now I was moved as a fan.
I hurriedly pulled out my phone and opened the fandom chatroom.
·
Everyone watching? Our Blue Moon... Blue Moon finally... sob.
·
·
Wait. My eyess are so wet I cant typee proplerly.
·
·
Do hyung. We did it... Do hyung did it!
·
·
Turning off chat notifications for a moment. I'm watching through mobile streaming.
·
·
Ah, respect, respect.
·
The veteran Apollo members had long since become stone Buddhas.
But right now, they were burning like sacks of dried beans tossed into a winter fire.
How many failures, humiliations, and obstacles had they endured to reach this point?
Some fans had been lost forever along the way.
Some had moved on to other groups permanently.
Yet these people had remained in Apollo while countless companions left.
And now, at last, they were receiving the reward.
I opened the Mango website on the office computer and prepared the "New Releases" category in advance.
After our beautiful members' segment ended, the music video finally began playing in full.
At the same time, I refreshed the page.
Pop.
〈N.Dolphin〉 appeared in the newly released song list.
·
OOOOOH! WHAT IS THIS SONG?! Do hyung! Did you discover Soul Studio's weakness or something?!
·
·
This... is Blue Moon's new song...? Hawaah.
·
·
Ah, damn it. This was all a dream.
·
·
Haaa... haa... f-fansign. Fansign! Goods! Give me goods! Take all my money...!
·
The chatroom had gone completely silent during the music video.
The moment it ended, the room exploded again.
Fans of actors sometimes waited half a year and then got a two-hour movie or a twenty-four-episode drama.
Idol fans complained that when a new song came out, all they got was a five-minute music video.
I'd thought the same thing many times during my own fan days.
Some people might say idols appeared on variety shows and music shows more often, so it balanced out.
Nonsense.
Eating a big lunch doesn't mean you can skip dinner.
Someone else's hunger lasting longer doesn't make my stomach less empty.
Why didn't idol music videos get serialized?
Why didn't composers work harder?
Fans were selfish creatures who wanted to see new content from their idols every single day.
There was hardly anything more painful than living your entire life with an unsatisfied desire.
In that sense, fans were almost cursed.
It wasn't a life where seeing more made you happy.
It was a life where not seeing enough made you suffer.
So fans crawled through every related Nutube video like zombies.
They exported their idols' GIFs to other fandoms, watched people's reactions, and felt proud.
Even if their idol didn't actually appear on a program, if another celebrity merely mentioned them, fans would buy that episode just to watch it.
That was daily life.
Our responsibility was to scrape together every possible activity, major or minor, and maximize Blue Moon's exposure.
Unless a small schedule directly overlapped with something else, we accepted it.
Sometimes we even took schedules that seemed physically impossible.
My driving skills made a few of them barely achievable.
Whenever that happened, I worried we might be overworking the members.
But they said they'd already been through worse during their first album.
Now, they were simply happy.
"All right, Apollo, who always send us such passionate support. Unfortunately, singing and dancing inside tour buses is now illegal."
"Rest! Rest!"
The hardcore fans were somehow even more excited than the members.
They chartered an entire bus and followed Team 2's Starex between schedules.
At first, we ignored it.
But after constantly confirming each other's presence on the road, even the members seemed to develop a bond with them.
The members wanted to ride the fan bus.
Sometimes, we actually sent whichever member was least tired to ride with them between schedules.
"I made a mistake earlier. Was it obvious?"
"A mistake?! Every movement Youngchae makes is art!"
That was when Youngchae rode the bus.
She smiled brightly at the fans' ridiculous praise.
There was no medicine better for melting away the sickness in your heart than one of Youngchae's rare smiles.
And while we shared those busy but happy days with the fans, the 〈Music Bang Bang〉 filming schedule approached.
We had appeared on 〈Music Bang Bang〉 once before.
But that had only been a taste.
We hadn't performed our own song.
No matter how well we performed back then, any attention we received was temporary.
The results were like grains of sand that couldn't even be exchanged for a single coin.
Now we had a new song.
Blue Moon was finally about to experience the true power of 〈Music Bang Bang〉.
