Chapter 73. No Red Sun
Tak Hyun-mo must have decided the murmuring had gotten too loud, because he clapped his hands.
"All right. This seems like a good point for an ad break. Everyone worked hard. Let's take a short rest."
The moment filming stopped, Kwon Dae-hun, who had been watching from below the stage, hurried up.
"Hyung, you're seriously insane. Come outside for a second."
"Who are you to order the CEO around?"
Dae-hun ignored me and grabbed my arm.
He dragged me down to the waiting room beneath the stage.
"No, seriously. I saw the score sheet too. There were tons of trainees with high scores. Some of them could debut right now without any problem. But not only did you throw all of them away, you only picked three? Does that make any sense?"
"Hey. If you force yourself to swallow too much, you'll get indigestion. Since when were those kids ours?"
Dae-hun looked me up and down suspiciously.
"Do Jun-hyeok isn't the type to crawl just because someone tells him to. What exactly are you planning? You're not going to stage some one-man protest like those union guys, are you?"
"I've thought this through. And I'm the kind of person who comes when Kwon Dae-hun tells me to come and goes when he tells me to go. Aren't I? I'm a person like that. If CEO Shin Hyung-geol tells me to jump, I should jump a hundred times. ...Am I wrong?"
"No. You're right. I'm just shocked because this is the first time I've ever heard you say something sensible."
Dae-hun's point was simple.
He understood that some trainees had already been preselected.
He understood that we weren't supposed to touch them.
But Universe had ended up taking first place in the voting anyway.
If trainees who weren't even part of those arrangements had chosen Universe, then surely we were allowed to take at least a few of them.
"You didn't seriously choose only those three because you were reading the room, right...?"
Dae-hun was right about one thing.
The trainees I'd picked from the beginning were different from the ones the major agencies had already decided to develop.
As if he'd somehow heard us talking about tigers, Shin Hyung-geol passed by the waiting room at the perfect moment.
The Riven producer was stuck close beside him.
Dae-hun, who had been talking excitedly until then, instantly went silent the moment he saw them.
Shin Hyung-geol approached us.
"Seems like your younger colleague is saying something reasonable. Sometimes you should listen to the younger ones too, don't you think?"
"Ah. You heard us?"
How much had he heard?
I replayed my words in my head.
I think the worst thing I'd said was that I'd backed off because Shin Hyung-geol told me to.
"I understand what you're trying to do, CEO Do. But if you're too obvious about it, that won't do either. Anything unnatural catches the eye even when you don't want to see it. Don't you think there's a reason we never told the trainees directly?"
They had already decided among themselves which trainees they intended to debut.
But they hadn't directly signed contracts or left anything in writing.
That was why the trainees' hearts had still been free to shift toward Universe.
"Then what exactly am I supposed to do from now on?"
"Hmm. Acting doesn't seem to be your strong suit, so just do what you're capable of."
Shin Hyung-geol answered.
Honestly, once the trainee assignments were complete, the other agencies had already accomplished their first objective.
Of course, none of them would willingly give up the chance to build the final debut group and share the enormous spotlight.
"Do what I'm capable of?"
"That's right. Do what you're capable of. Watching you work during the strike was entertaining. If you have time, come visit and humor this old man again."
With that, Shin Hyung-geol continued past the waiting room.
What did he mean?
He was the one who had warned me not to carelessly put my spoon onto a table someone else had prepared.
And looking at the trainees' actual abilities, that table hadn't even been prepared properly in the first place.
"See, hyung? If we tell PD Tak what Chairman Shin just said, they can shoot the selection again. Wouldn't it be better to add a few more members? You know how television works. We should play the broadcasting game too."
"You really think taking them changes anything? Song Eun-bin, Kim Sol, Choi Sarang. Those three are enough."
I had confidence in that even without the spam.
The day after the broadcast ended, all three trainees came to Universe.
Since the program had to film trainees assigned to all nine agencies, they must have needed a ridiculous number of cameras.
I'd even lent them some Prime Film crew.
With the strike on top of everything, I found myself worrying about rich people's money.
"Hello! We're here for today's practice shoot!"
Song Eun-bin, Choi Sarang, and Kim Sol got out of the broadcasting station's vehicle and entered the practice room.
The Blue Moon members and the trainees stood facing each other and exchanged greetings.
"I thought I might get rejected again, but thankfully, you picked me this time."
Once I entered the practice room too, Song Eun-bin joked with me.
"You finally applied for the right position this time. Of course I had to pick you."
When I played along, the other trainees laughed too.
Apparently, the three of them had already talked quite a bit on the way here.
We began with brief introductions.
"I already told CEO Do Jun-hyeok this before, but I'm Song Eun-bin, former leader of Angel Eleven. The group doesn't exist anymore, though."
"Right. She's your senior. They debuted wearing angel wings and went downhill immediately, didn't they?"
Song Eun-bin smiled bitterly and nodded.
Aran clapped and laughed.
"We wore silver foil over our eyes and danced like RoboCop. Yours was better than ours."
"That seems true."
"That's so mean!"
Thankfully, they already seemed to be getting along.
The second trainee was Choi Sarang.
"I'm Choi Sarang, formerly of Lotus. My thighs were more famous than my face!"
"She's an amazing dancer. Youngchae, you'd better stay alert."
"Ah... yes."
Youngchae answered with interest.
Lotus had debuted with a bland image and wandered around without much attention before suddenly switching to a sexy concept and performing almost exclusively at regional festivals.
Their outfits gradually became more revealing until the group burned through its image and eventually disbanded.
Strangely enough, they'd been very popular at military bases.
I'd looked up their performances, and Choi Sarang had real skill.
Whether there were a hundred people in the crowd or a thousand, she knew how to control the entire audience so no section ever felt ignored.
Her face was round and cute.
But there was a strange sense of confidence and spirit in her expression whose origin was hard to pinpoint.
Maybe it was her slightly upturned lips and reddish eyelids.
The more you looked at her, the stronger the contrast in her charm became.
There was probably no one who could look at Choi Sarang and deny that she had an almost bewitching charm.
"Ah, Song Eun-bin sunbae doesn't currently have an agency. Choi Sarang sunbae was recently released by Wide Media."
I summarized the situation.
The members nodded.
Then came the third trainee.
"I'm Kim Sol, formerly of All That Girl under Upright Entertainment..."
The members quietly admired her as they nodded.
I hadn't deliberately planned it this way, but all three were former idols.
Kim Sol in particular had extraordinary visuals.
Even without makeup, her face alone was enough to make people feel intimidated.
She looked like someone who could carry an entire movie with nothing but her face and still cross the break-even point.
Song Eun-bin was the oldest.
Their average age was twenty-five.
That wasn't an age anyone would call old.
"From now on, you need to prepare properly. Your performance is already next week. Pick the song you're covering, and you'll have to make the choreography yourselves too. No Yang Seung-tae advantage, no Hong Young-hye advantage. You three are doing everything yourselves."
"Understood!"
"Before that, we probably need to decide on a group name."
At my words, Song Eun-bin raised her hand.
"We actually talked about that on the way here. What about 'Red Sun'?"
Red Sun.
The opposite of Blue Moon.
The Blue Moon members burst out laughing.
It was funny.
But absolutely not.
What I wanted to create was a second Blue Moon.
Not a cheap imitation of Blue Moon.
Even if we could change the name later when Universe officially debuted them after the program, the name Red Sun would follow those girls around for years.
Once I explained that, everyone seemed to understand and nodded.
"Ah, and we came up with a song concept yesterday too."
"...Did none of you sleep last night?"
The group had been confirmed at around three in the morning.
