Chapter 84. Hotel Raid Operation
On the night the third competition ended, I stayed at the company with the Team 2 staff, checking the broadcast response.
The members and trainees, who had been dispatched to the chicken restaurant on an important mission, suddenly barged into the office.
"We met her! We got super close! She looked kind of cold, so I thought she'd be the Youngchae-unnie type, but she's totally the Serin-unnie type!"
The moment the members came in, the smell of chicken filled the office.
Aran immediately started talking without stopping, but Jin-hee cut her off.
"Can you organize what happened and explain it properly? Quickly and accurately."
"Ah... yes!"
Aran immediately quieted down.
Jin-hee's tone was a little cold, so the members tended to listen to her well.
Still, the fact that she could maintain a relationship that was neither too distant nor too close meant Kim Jin-hee was quite skilled at managing people too.
"Right, right. Don't bullshit Manager Jin-hee."
"Will you stop messing with me? Don't you get tired of it? ...And that's not even how you use that expression."
Dae-hun and Jin-hee bickered for a moment.
Serin, who was better at explaining things, told us what they'd learned from talking with Ha Yoo-jin.
Apparently, she was the type who became talkative after drinking, so they'd given her quite a bit of beer.
Ha Yoo-jin was currently staying at a hotel arranged by Riven's CEO.
That was probably right.
The Ha Yoo-jin in the future video had been inside a hotel too.
"She said she's been harassed by obsessive fans a lot ever since her debut. Even when she quit for a while and later returned to Route Entertainment, the stalking started again."
"Sounds like she's had a rough time. And the obsessive fan is still around?"
"Apparently."
Anna, who had been listening, mentioned the lyrics of an old self-composed song Ha Yoo-jin had written.
It had an indie sound, and the line I hope there's no one there repeated over and over.
The melody was upbeat, but the lyrics were strange enough that Anna still remembered them.
"She dated someone for a while after leaving the industry. Even after she returned, they secretly kept dating. But once she went back to the agency, that obsessive fan sent Route Entertainment all the couple photos he'd taken while stalking her."
"What happened after that?"
"The company let it slide. They knew she was already really depressed."
Whether famous or unknown, cheerful or depressed, idols and trainees weren't supposed to date.
Unless they were veterans with enough years behind them.
They knew how depressed she was, so they allowed the relationship?
At Route Entertainment, a company tied to Root?
That smelled suspicious.
"Do you know which hotel she's staying at?"
"Yes. She got completely drunk, so we took her back ourselves."
For now, I got the hotel address and room number from Serin.
I roughly understood Ha Yoo-jin's situation.
Fine, she was naturally fragile.
But what I needed to focus on now was the stalker.
Was it her ex-boyfriend?
Her boyfriend probably wasn't already bald.
If I couldn't figure it out, then I just needed to catch the stalker first.
"Got it. Anyway, did you enjoy the chicken?"
"Yes~!"
"You ate roasted chicken, right? No fried coating?"
When I asked that, Aran's voice trembled as she answered yes.
Meaning they ate fried chicken.
After sending the members and trainees back to the dorm, I asked Jin-hee,
"Ms. Jin-hee, aren't you going home?"
"I was just about to."
I glanced at Kim Jin-hee's solid build.
The stalker in the video hadn't looked particularly strong.
But when dealing with a lunatic, overwhelming force was best.
I still didn't know how I was supposed to catch him.
But with Kim Jin-hee, maybe there was a way.
If Jin-hee used her full social skills, she might even be able to get inside Ha Yoo-jin's room.
And she'd served in the Marine Corps.
Her strength couldn't be ordinary.
We needed to catch the stalker immediately.
With Kim Jin-hee available, there was no reason to wait until the exact timestamp from the future video.
There was also a reason to catch him before Ha Yoo-jin developed even more trauma.
"What Marine Corps class did you say you were?"
"What? ...Reconnaissance Training Class 358."
Jin-hee answered with a slightly confused look.
Class 358...
Let's see.
"Huh? You were in Recon? I was Class 345. Does serving as a professional NCO count?"
"O-Of course it does. Victory! Why didn't you ever tell me?"
"Because I knew you'd react like this. And I didn't know we were from the same unit. Don't salute me or anything. I barely remember any of it now."
Jin-hee awkwardly lowered the hand she'd started raising, but her eyes were shining.
Anyway, if we were both Marines, that worked out well.
I could trust her with the job.
"Then you must've received quite a bit of training."
"Of course. UDT, EOD, mountain warfare, sniper training... I think I tried pretty much everything they let us sample during training weeks."
She'd even received sniper training.
Excellent.
I told Jin-hee that Ha Yoo-jin seemed to be getting stalked and asked her to go watch the hotel.
Like most normal people would, she asked whether I had any actual evidence or circumstances suggesting stalking.
But when I told her it was just a strong feeling, she let it slide for now.
Ha Yoo-jin herself had already said she was actively suffering because of an obsessive fan.
If Jin-hee became friendly with Ha Yoo-jin, she might even be able to wait comfortably inside the room.
"Then should I start at the hotel tomorrow and watch for about three days?"
"Hmm..."
What I wanted was:
Until we caught him.
"Ms. Jin-hee, do you remember Staff Sergeant Jung Young-jun from the unit? He was the company first sergeant."
"Staff Sergeant Jung Young-jun? I don't think so. We had someone else when I was there."
"Right... From your perspective, that would've been way too long ago. He must've transferred out. Anyway, I haven't decided how many days you'll be there. Just deploy first."
"Yes, sir!"
Jin-hee answered sharply.
Then she sat down at the computer and carefully searched the hotel's location and nearby facilities.
Once a Marine, always a Marine.
While she was doing that, Dae-hun walked over and whispered in my ear.
"Hyung, you did public service at a nursing home..."
"Shut your mouth unless you want to see me die."
Immediately after the third competition, while Do Jun-hyeok and the members were celebrating despite their low vote count...
A flood of articles poured out about Blue Moon and Univ's joint performance.
Some simply praised the Universe members and Do Jun-hyeok's ability.
Others raised suspicions that the vote totals had been manipulated.
Shin Hyung-geol had already ordered responses to a few of them.
But combined with the Lee Eun-ji scandal, it was still going to deal a major blow to the ratings of the fourth competition.
"I think this is what always happens whenever someone gets involved with Do Jun-hyeok. Starting with Pantheon, then Turb recently, and now Riven... He drags distrust toward major agencies around like Apollo itself and feeds the public's imagination. That's why people start talking about manipulation."
PD Tak Hyun-mo evaluated the coming ratings crisis that way.
Even Tak Hyun-mo, the executive producer, didn't know the vote totals were actually being manipulated.
〈Rebooting〉 had been designed so that the working-level staff only saw the trees, never the forest.
That was the only way Shin Hyung-geol and the other major agency executives could move the program according to their tastes.
"If people like righteous crusaders who stand against injustice, then we'll have to accept that. Understanding demand is our job."
Shin Hyung-geol muttered while pressing his temple.
"Everyone here has a brain, right? Then let's use them for once. Think back to the anxiety we all felt when Do Jun-hyeok first joined 〈Rebooting〉. Every one of us knew he fit the show's concept far too well. So why did we ignore that anxiety in the end?"
Shin Hyung-geol asked.
When Do Jun-hyeok first entered 〈Rebooting〉, Shin Hyung-geol had been the only one who actually moved to take precautions.
Everyone else had simply celebrated that the huge Turb had left and tiny Universe had entered instead.
None of them had possessed a weapon capable of countering Do Jun-hyeok's myth of reviving failed idols or his image as a righteous figure.
Yet they'd just smiled like fools.
"I think we trusted too much in our own legacy, even though it isn't that old."
The Riven CEO answered.
Shin Hyung-geol immediately glared at him.
He still intended to hold Riven responsible for the Lee Eun-ji situation, so the man remained an easy target.
"What do you mean?"
"We assumed that no matter how good an opportunity appeared, trainees would never reject large agencies like ours. We've benefited from that imbalance when recruiting trainees for years, so none of us questioned it this time either. That's why everyone was so shocked when a trainee already promised to us chose Universe during the first competition."
The Riven CEO continued speaking despite Shin Hyung-geol's sharp stare.
From the perspective of trainees guaranteed debut spots, there wasn't much reason to work especially hard even if the ratings were low.
Riven and Root had already confidently promised that they would debut them.
He's an ugly bastard, but his brain works surprisingly well.
That was what Shin Hyung-geol thought.
"Still, there's one thing that's clear. We still control the debut lineup. Let Universe's trainees keep doing well. We just need to assemble the debut team properly and collect the profits we originally wanted. To do that, all we need to do is properly manage the trainees who remain."
Several agencies had already withdrawn from the agreement because of Do Jun-hyeok's interference.
Meaning the project was already operating at a loss before the real work even began.
But they couldn't throw out Do Jun-hyeok, who was currently the most popular figure in 〈Rebooting〉.
If they debuted the team, ran the planned six months of activities, and secured enough confidential arrangements behind the scenes, each company would effectively gain one popular idol team.
That alone still made it profitable.
Once the six-month debut-group activity period ended, each agency could take back its idol and either build a new group around them or keep the project group structure.
They could use them however they wanted.
"Right. At this point, the better Do Jun-hyeok does, the better it is for us too. We need to make as much as possible during the debut group's activities. Like it or not, we're in the same boat as Do Jun-hyeok now. Everyone understands, right? If you want to walk away with even this much profit, take proper care of your trainees' mental health. If they start leaving the program, we won't even be able to make porridge."
"Understood."
Sharing a boat with the enemy?
Impossible.
I had absolutely no intention of letting the Univ members perform all their tricks just to fill Shin Hyung-geol's stomach.
If I wanted to escape this checkmate, the Ha Yoo-jin stalker case needed to end well.
And it needed to become a knife I could use against Shin Hyung-geol.
While I watched the hotel with fighting spirit burning inside me, Dae-hun complained sarcastically.
"Even so, hyung, it's already been three days. Does it make any sense to make someone stake out a place this recklessly?"
"What, are you defending her because you're technically an ex-boyfriend? Ha Yoo-jin is being stalked. You want me to just leave her alone? And today is the day she's supposed to be away from the dorm the longest. If that obsessive fan is going to sneak in, it'll be today."
The date from the spam video was still some time away.
But there was no way that bastard was a first-time offender.
If he were just an ordinary petty criminal, then yes, it would still be a huge incident for Ha Yoo-jin.
But it wouldn't be enough to grab Shin Hyung-geol by the throat.
"Hyung, you're not some little neighborhood junior detective squad. Every time there's a crisis, you run around exercising your sense of justice. Do you even get anything out of it?"
Of course I do, idiot.
If I catch Shin Hyung-geol by the weakness this creates, Ha Yoo-jin and the entire debut group become ours.
Why are you so full of complaints today?
My current theory was that the obsessive fan wasn't actually an obsessive fan.
He was someone tied to Root Entertainment.
They were pressuring Ha Yoo-jin, their most promising and mentally weakest trainee, to keep her under control.
If that was true, Shin Hyung-geol could potentially be sent to prison for ordering stalking.
I had the aggressive prosecutor Lee Ho-seong on my left and the insane prosecutor Yoon Jin-seo on my right.
More than enough.
"So you're basically certain it'll happen today? Who did you call?"
"Lee Ho-seong and Yoon Jin-seo. Ah, and I heard Attorney Lee Eun-bit passed the special recruitment. I called her too."
"This is a whole festival."
I'd told Kim Jin-hee to get close to Ha Yoo-jin.
If she could enter Ha Yoo-jin's room, it would make things easier for Jin-hee and also allow the fastest possible response.
If that failed, we had another plan to get a spare key card from the lobby.
The idea was to request a card and follow the suspicious man upstairs the moment he entered.
Somehow, Jin-hee had apparently succeeded, since I hadn't received any unusual reports.
I didn't know whether she'd bought Ha Yoo-jin something delicious or threatened her with sheer force of will.
"Huh? Wait. Shh!"
Then it happened.
A man pushed open the hotel's front entrance and walked inside.
His clothes were a little different from what I'd seen in the video, but his body shape matched perfectly.
And judging from the cap on his head, the bald head was probably right too.
I immediately sent messages telling Lee Ho-seong, Lee Eun-bit, and Yoon Jin-ho to stand by.
"Hey. Call Jin-hee and tell her some suspicious guy is coming up, so get ready. If I'm right, he should be arriving soon. Tell her not to kill him. I checked the card statement from two days ago and she spent two hundred thousand won at a hardware store."
"I have no idea why you think it's that guy... but fine."
Dae-hun pulled out his phone and called Jin-hee.
The call connected, and Dae-hun immediately raised his voice.
"Hey! Are you trying to slaughter an ox or something? What did you spend two hundred thousand won on at a hardware store?"
"Keep your voice down. You're going to expose us."
"...What? Got it."
Dae-hun hung up.
"Why'd you hang up already? What did she say? Did the door open?"
I asked.
Dae-hun looked at me with a baffled expression.
"No. She says it's already clear."
