Chapter 17
Making the First Song
10 minutes later.
We arrived at the Hwai Entertainment building.
It was in the same Gangnam district as Lemon Entertainment, but quite far from it.
A street full of similar-looking buildings.
Unlike our company, which looked like a normal villa, Hwai Entertainment’s building stood out at first glance.
“Wow.”
The youngest exclaimed, and Ri Hyuk nodded.
“I told you, right? It looks decent from the outside.”
It reminded me of a Hollywood movie where a cutting-edge IT company had a branch in Korea.
A neat white building.
But our admiration from outside turned into horror as soon as we entered the building.
What is this, this gloomy atmosphere?
I remembered an old building I saw in Gunsan downtown when I was in elementary school.
It had a creepy vibe.
They must have made a lot of money with Sugarfish and Girls on Top, but where did that money go?
“Do you want to come with me to the office?”
We all declined Mr. Yoon Seok-hwan’s question.
It was already awkward to be in someone else’s company, let alone where the employees were.
He smiled and said.
“Okay. Go ahead and wait in the studio on the third floor. Jang So-won said she would be a bit late.”
“How late is she?”
“I don’t know. She had a schedule at dawn and she’s on her way now.”
We nodded and headed for the stairs.
Mr. Yoon Seok-hwan, who was in the elevator, tilted his head at us.
“You’re not taking the elevator?”
“Ah, it feels like we should do this.”
“Whatever. Do as you please. I’ll contact you when it’s over. I’ll come and get you.”
It’s not that we couldn’t take the elevator.
But it felt like we should do this.
It wasn’t just me, the others felt the same.
It was the kind of sense that trainees shared.
It was like a new recruit being careful about using the facilities in the base.
The five timid ones climbed up to the third floor by stairs.
A quiet hallway.
We peeked our heads over there and exchanged conversations like a strategy meeting.
In a low voice.
“Hey, where did he say to wait?”
“The studio.”
“There’s more than one studio, right?”
About seven rooms.
And they all had no windows, so it was hard to tell if there was anyone inside.
“Should we ask the manager, hyung?”
“Yeah.”
As I nodded at Bi-ju’s answer, I saw the members looking at me and doing nothing.
“What? You want me to ask?”
Nod nod.
They must have remembered the scolding.
“Hyung is close with the manager. You know, birds of a feather.”
“Yeah.”
“Fine. You guys.”
I shook my head and sent a message to Seok-hwan hyung.
While waiting for his reply, we just waited quietly near the elevator.
He must have been in a meeting with the person in charge, because there was no reply.
Then, the most nice-looking door in the hallway opened.
Click-
Our first reaction was admiration.
Girls who looked like dolls with delicate features.
They were wearing different clothes with their own personalities.
We didn’t need to explain who they were.
Girls on Top.
Seeing the faces we saw on TV in real life, it felt strange and also ‘they look exactly like on TV’.
There was no aura or anything.
It was just a very curious feeling.
“Ugh, I’m so tired.”
“The manager said the schedule is delayed and told us to hurry down.”
“Why are they so pushy?”
The ones who were chatting among themselves with pale faces from the exhausting recording session stopped talking.
They had spotted us.
Our eyes met and we both felt awkward.
“…”
We heard them whispering to each other, ‘Who are they?’, ‘What are they doing here?’
They seemed wary of the strangers.
We were also flustered, missing the timing to greet the senior singers.
One of them came out.
“Hey.”
She was a member with fair skin and a pure manga protagonist-like appearance.
Joo Hana.
She was the visual member who made my seniors and juniors scream whenever she appeared on TV when I was in the army.
Her voice tone was a bit high when I heard it in person.
“Who are you? I’ve never seen you before.”
“Ah, hello.”
I bowed politely and the others followed suit.
We would have to face them anyway once we debuted.
I thought it would be better to make a good first impression and smiled.
“We came here to work on a song with Jang Sowon sunbaenim.”
We heard them say ‘hello’ awkwardly from their side.
“Oh, you’re singers. You look like rookies, did you debut?”
“We haven’t debuted yet.”
“…Excuse me?”
“We’re still trainees-”
“Ah. What?”
Joo Hana looked incredulous.
“You’re trainees?”
At that moment, the cautious atmosphere from the other side disappeared.
We saw their faces change as if they were thinking, ‘We wasted our greetings on them.’
I felt sorry for my siblings who were trying to keep their expressions in check.
As for me, I didn’t care much.
But I felt a bit bitter as I got a glimpse of the true face of the entertainment industry, where attitudes change depending on the rank.
Joo Hana brushed her hair back and nodded.
“Ah, well… good luck then.”
With that, she walked past us as if she had nothing more to say.
The others followed her.
They looked like a pack of lions following their leader. But one of them stayed behind.
What was her name?
I didn’t know.
She didn’t seem to care about us at all. Her eyes were fixed on Wang Ji-ho.
But something was wrong.
Her eyes were burning with hostility.
“Hey. Wang Ji-ho.”
“Huh?”
“Don’t you greet your seniors when you see them?”
“Seniors?”
Ji-ho tilted his head.
“Why are you my seniors? We’re in the same grade.”
“I’m your senior in this field, you know?”
The member who had a prickly reaction glanced at us. Then she opened her mouth with a sharp tone.
No.
To be precise, she was about to say something.
From far away, we heard the other Girls On Top members calling her.
“Gil Chaekyung! Aren’t you coming?”
“Unnie, I-”
“Hey, the manager is freaking out and telling us to hurry!”
Gil Chaekyung sighed and glared at Jiho. Then she walked away with a look that said ‘I’ll see you later.’
She hit Jiiho’s shoulder that was blocking her way.
After she got in, the elevator door closed in the distance.
It went down from the third floor to the first floor.
We couldn’t get on that elevator. While it was going down, we got a message from Director Yoon Seok-hwan.
-The last room in the hallway.
What a great timing, Mr. Yoon Seok-hwan.
As I saw him, I recalled what had just happened. Then I looked around at my brothers, who had unhappy expressions on their faces.
They all looked at me.
I struggled to find the right words for a while, and finally said:
“Let’s not do this again.”
They all nodded silently.
***
The last room in the hallway.
It was a space that served as a recording studio and a workshop, but it looked more like a storage room.
There was equipment piled up on the wall.
When we squeezed into the narrow sofa, Bi-ju opened his lips.
“Are we supposed to wait here? Or are we supposed to work here?”
“We’re probably waiting.”
Jung-hyun said, munching on a snack.
“They wouldn’t make us work here.”
“Jung-hyun hyung, how can you have an appetite in this situation?”
“What’s there to stress about? It’s just one of those things that happen.”
Jung-hyun, who always spoke calmly, offered a snack to Ri-hyuk.
“Here, have one.”
Normally, he would have refused because he had a small mouth, but he quickly took it and munched on it.
He must be feeling stressed.
Meanwhile, I looked at the youngest, who was playing a mobile game without saying anything.
“Ji-ho.”
“Hm?”
“About Gil Chae-kyung.”
Suddenly, his finger slipped and the game character fell off the ladder.
GAME OVER.
He pressed the restart button and said, without looking away from the screen.
“What about her?”
“She was pretty harsh to you. What’s going on between you two?”
“She’s a kid from my school.”
“She didn’t seem like a simple schoolmate.”
“…”
Another GAME OVER popped up, and Ji-ho opened his mouth.
“This is kind of embarrassing…”
“It’s okay.”
“Why is it okay for you, hyung? I’m not okay.”
He sounded more annoyed than usual, so I said.
“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.”
“She confessed to me before.”
Suddenly, the mood changed to confession.
The memories of sadness and injustice seemed to disappear for a moment, and the brothers’ faces showed interest.
Ji-ho turned off the game and said.
“We were in the same class in elementary school. We lived nearby, so we hung out a lot. But when we were in fifth grade, I think. She confessed to me on the way home from karaoke.”
“And then?”
“I rejected her.”
“…”
“She started picking fights with me every time she saw me. She would come up to me and start a fight when no one was looking at school. It was really…”
So that’s what happened.
But to become enemies after being rejected once.
She must have a weird personality.
I thought to myself.
Wait.
I feel like I’m missing something.
“Wait, how did you reject her?”
The youngest looked embarrassed.
“Well, that… I mean…”
“What exactly did you say?”
“I was young and immature back then.”
“You didn’t say anything mean, did you?”
“…I told her she was ugly.”
Bi-ju’s sigh, and Ri-hyuk’s tongue-clicking next to me, Jung-hyun stopped eating his snack and sighed.
“I thought she was harsh, but I admit it, that’s really bad.”
“I would go and apologize to her right now, even if I had to bow my head.”
The youngest waved his hands at the brothers’ criticism.
“No, I actually hated her personality, okay? You’ll know if you spend five minutes with her. She would always text me and ask me what I was doing, and annoy me. And when she gave me food, she would say things like ‘You don’t eat this kind of stuff at your house, do you?’ and stuff like that.”
“That’s exactly you.”
“Right. What do you call this, Woojoo hyung?”
“Self-hatred.”
The members chuckled at my answer, and the youngest made a wronged expression.
I said softly.
“But you were a bit harsh.”
“No…”
“Apologize when you see her later.”
“I don’t know. I kept trying to say sorry, but she just left, and suddenly she went on a diet and became a girl group. It’s funny to say sorry now.”
“Still, say it. Got it?”
“…Okay. When I get a chance.”
I smiled as I looked at the youngest who was nodding his head reluctantly.
Anyway.
He still seems immature now, but I wonder what he was like when he was in elementary school.
But it’s amazing.
I don’t think I had any romance when I was in elementary school.
These days, kids are already doing that, what do you call it?
The thing between boys and girls, where they’re ticklish and shy, not dating but something like that.
I don’t know, or I’ll remember.
We were waiting and chatting for a while, when the protagonist finally showed up after 40 minutes.
A person who came in with his hair flying.
A charming smile greeted us under her sharp eyes.
“Hi!”
We all got up.
“Hello, senior.”
“What are you getting up for?”
Jang Sowon gestured with a cool smile.
“Sit down, sit down.”
“Yes.”
“Sorry, you guys must have waited a long time. Did you have breakfast?”
“Yes, what about you, senior?”
“I just finished my schedule. I don’t usually eat breakfast anyway.”
She took off her wine-colored coat and looked around us.
“I’m going to have coffee, what do you guys want?”
The younger ones’ heads turned to me at the same time.
They looked like they were asking if it was okay to eat since he was buying.
I nodded OK with my eyes, and Jang Sowon laughed as if she found it amusing.
“Wow, the leader has you guys on a tight leash?”
“That’s not it.”
He scolded them for being clueless this morning.
Jang Sowon made a phone call.
“Hello, yes. It’s me, Kyuhyun. Are you still at the company? Sorry, but I need some coffee.”
She looked at us as if to tell us to order.
One cocoa and two americanos.
And one large iced caramel macchiato with whipped cream.
“Why, hyung?”
“…No.”
A few minutes later, a man in a hooded tee who looked like a manager came in and handed over a box of coffee.
The mood relaxed as we drank coffee.
Jang Sowon took out a laptop from his bag and started to connect it to the devices in the studio.
“Are we working here?”
“Yes.”
He answered as if it was obvious.
“Isn’t it too small?”
“No.”
“The good rooms are all taken by other people. Well…”
He trailed off, but the intention was clear.
The treatment of unpopular celebrities at the company.
If Girls On Top were to work, the company would probably even take out the recording studio that had an owner.
“Let’s listen to this first.”
He clicked on a folder on the desktop and then clicked on a file labeled [Main Theme Ver.1] inside.
“This is the melody I’ve been working on for a few days, and I wanted to let you guys hear it before we start working.”
There are two types of melodies.
The main theme that we commonly know as the accompaniment, and the top line that lists the lyrics.
What she made was the main theme.
A fresh and light melody.
It might have sounded like a simple sequence of notes, but the moment I heard the beginning, I felt something strange.
A chill ran up from my toes.
I felt the hairs on my ears stand up.
The others looked calm or focused, but they didn’t react like me.
Oh my god.
I rubbed my arms, covered in goosebumps, and opened my mouth.
This is amazing, right?
I felt like a miner who had found gold in the dark.