Chapter 20

Lemon Entertainment's PR team.

As the release of the collaboration song "Something" with Jang So-won approached, the PR team of Lemon Entertainment was busy at work.

"Will our kids appear in the music video?"

"What, 'Something'? There's no way since it's not the title track."

"That's a shame."

"Even if they did, they probably would have only shown their own kids, right?"

"Yeah, that's true. Seung-hee?"

"…Yes?"

A voice came from the corner of the cubicle. The person who peeked out had dark circles under their eyes, as if they hadn't slept for days.

"Did you call me?"

"Is the video production for the company's YouTube channel going well?"

"Yes."

She replied.

"The video of Jang So-won and Ji-ho working on the song, I've mostly finished editing it. I just need to add the subtitles now."

"Okay. Upload it as soon as it's ready."

The PR team leader turned his gaze.

"Have you created the official Twitter and SNS accounts for the group?"

"Yes, we have."

"For now, just post promotional phrases related to the music. If the reaction is good, we can also upload videos of the kids practicing. It might help to convert people who are curious after listening to the song."

"Got it."

"You have to row when the tide is in."

That was the philosophy the PR team of Lemon Entertainment upheld.

"The sources to be distributed to the media are all prepared."

"Team leader, will it be okay if we distribute them alone?"

"Why not?"

"No, I heard that Hwa Entertainment isn't doing any promotion at all. They say we're more passionate, promoting a non-title track, the third track."

"Why is that?"

"That company is really strange."

"Right. I heard from a colleague at a recent drinking party that—"

"What did they say?"

"Hwa Entertainment is really bad at handling situations. Other companies at least pretend to do something when something happens, but this one just stays quiet. No matter what the journalists expose, they just sit there until the situation gets worse."

"They went bankrupt because of that with Sugarfish, didn't they?"

"Exactly."

The team leader clapped his hands to calm the suddenly chaotic atmosphere.

"Alright, let's stop the chitchat here. First, we need to prepare the press release materials for tomorrow morning—"

"Team leader!"

A PR team member monitoring the internet shouted.

"Team leader, it looks like we won't be able to promote anything tomorrow."

"What?"

"Check the internet."

"Where on the internet?"

"Anywhere."

Anywhere?

Though it sounded like a wild statement, the team leader, seeing the serious expression, immediately turned on his smartphone.

The entertainment news section.

The moment he saw the main news, he frowned.

Now he understood why Hwa Entertainment was so quiet and doing nothing.

No, they couldn't do anything.

- Popular Boy Group 'Sixty Seconds' Shocking Verbal Abuse Recording Leaked

- Recording Reveals Member Ju-wan and 'Girls on Top' Member Ju-hana's Romance, Causing Shock

- KM Entertainment Remains Silent: 'Still Investigating the Situation'

A major incident had erupted.

* * *

- KM Entertainment: 'Investigating the Facts of Sixty Seconds' Verbal Abuse Recording'

[Popular boy group 'Sixty Seconds' is embroiled in an unprecedented controversy.

This is due to a verbal abuse recording that was posted on an internet site this morning. A user with the nickname 'KingNightBread' claimed to be an anonymous insider and posted a recording that was about a minute long.

The recording appears to have been made in a vehicle while Sixty Seconds was on their way to a broadcast recording. It contains members gossiping about fellow celebrities, lewd remarks, and profanity. The recording has rapidly spread through SNS and is currently heating up various online communities.

Netizens are reacting with comments like, 'Wow, Sixty Seconds' personalities are insane,' 'That's not something a person should say,' and 'These kids are underdeveloped.' The bulletin boards of all the shows Sixty Seconds was set to appear on are now flooded with demands for their removal.

KM Entertainment, the agency of Sixty Seconds, stated, 'We are currently investigating the facts and it is not clear whether this recording is truly of Sixty Seconds members. We may take legal action against baseless malicious comments.']

The comment section, with nearly 5,000 comments, was brutal.

- I thought my ears were going to rot from listening to these crazy bastards.

- Investigating the facts? Haha, the members' real names are clearly mentioned. Are they trying to deny it? Haha, are they out of their minds?

- The issue isn't just their removal. These bastards should be expelled from the entertainment industry.

- I've been a fan of Sixty for four years, damn it.

- Only Ju-hana, who was silent, seems to have escaped unscathed. How many people are they going to hurt with this one recording?

The situation was straightforward.

Sixty Seconds.

A top-tier boy group on the rise.

Planned by KM Entertainment, one of the Big Four agencies, Sixty Seconds is a group that maximizes unique musicality and a hip vibe. As a group personally nurtured by producer Heo Gang-min, known as the 'idol maker,' they garnered significant attention from the start and, along with TNT, enjoyed the highest popularity among boy groups.

Until yesterday, that is.

The problem was that their profanity, lewd remarks, and gossip in the vehicle had been leaked.

One might think, 'So what's the big deal?' but the content was shockingly worse than imagined.

We couldn't even bear to listen to the first line and turned it off.

The content was so difficult to describe.

Korea was in an uproar.

Sixty Seconds became the worst sinners in the world, halting their activities, and their fandom completely fell apart.

One member managed to avoid the crisis with relatively mild comments, but online, he is being lumped together with the others, with netizens saying, 'A wolf is a wolf.'

Every time I see the dozens of articles and brutal comments pouring in every minute, I feel scared as a third party.

While reading the news in our dorm, we all had the same thought.

'You haven't experienced it yet. In the entertainment industry, a casual conversation in a car can spread to the entire filming site the next day.'

This was the foresight of Yun Seok-hwan, who had warned us about such a situation.

"The deputy manager was really serious."

"We almost had a major incident. We could have ended up like this too, right?"

"What nonsense."

Ri Hyuk replied.

"No matter how much we curse, would it be this dirty? Just reading the text makes me dizzy."

"True."

I answered.

"We are generally more polite than our peers."

"Bro, no one uses the term 'peers' these days."

Ah.

"Really. If it weren't for us, you would have been in big trouble."

"Right. No one would have played with us if we were old, but these young people are really good at it."

I tried to ignore the teasing from my juniors and read the news on my smartphone.

It's over.

I laughed out of sheer frustration.

Is this another divine prank after the college entrance exam day?

For a major incident to erupt the day before the album release.

The materials the PR team worked hard on are probably being shredded right now.

There's no point in promoting the album in this situation.

Well, there's nothing we can do.

I thought, let's just call it an honorable death.

We're going to fail anyway, so at least we have an excuse.

* * *

On the album release day.

The Sixty Seconds incident still dominated the real-time search trends.

- Sixty Seconds recording

- Ju-wan and Baek Yujin

- Ju-wan and Ju-hana

- Baek Yujin and Ju-hana

It seemed that more attention was being paid to the romance rumors involving Sixty Seconds member Ju-wan and the girl group members than to the content of the recording.

The media and netizens' interest shifted to a strange direction.

- Focus on Ju-hana's Past Statement: 'I Date Fans'

- Baek Yujin's Side: 'Romance with Ju-wan? NO. Legal Action Will Be Taken'

- Red Light for Girls on Top's Comeback?

With Baek Yujin and Ju-hana, who were mentioned by Ju-wan as his girlfriends, in the spotlight, people's attention was drawn to them.

The media began to speculate about the private lives of the girl group members.

Various communities started posting maliciously edited materials, and some were deleting their posts after being threatened with legal action.

Moreover, rumors of even more shocking behind-the-scenes content led to the search term 'Full Version of the Recording' appearing, making the situation a complete mess.

When netizens started saying, 'The person who posted it is also a problem,' the identity of the culprit behind all this chaos was soon revealed.

Rumors circulated that it was a vengeful manager or a stylist, but the culprit was an unexpected figure.

A car repair technician.

The outline of the incident was as follows.

After a schedule, a manager noticed something wrong with the vehicle and took it for repair.

The repair shop employee, who was working on the SUV that looked like a celebrity's car, out of curiosity, took the memory from the dashcam and made a copy.

The employee, shocked by what they heard, shared it with friends, which became the root of the problem.

Someone posted it on an internet community for fun.

This was revealed when the repair shop employee turned themselves in.

"Wow, I can't find any articles related to senior Jang So-won at all."

Seeing the front page to the 12th page covered with articles about Sixty Seconds, we muttered in disgust.

I switched the laptop screen to the music site Mango.

- February 3rd

Jang So-won's album was scheduled to be released at 12:00 PM, just five minutes away.

1 minute before.

After refreshing the page for a long time, we immediately downloaded the song as soon as it appeared.

We downloaded all three tracks from Jang So-won's single album "Wishful Thinking" and clicked on them with nervous anticipation.

"Something."

The first thing that caught our eye was the album art.

The back view of a man and a woman sitting at a bus stop.

They were sharing a pair of earphones.

The background was a warm beige pastel tone.

The man and woman's gazes were fixed on a blue sky drawn with colored pencils.

[Featuring: Jang So-won & NewBlack - Something]

Composed by: Jang So-won, Universe

Lyrics by: Jang So-won

Seeing my name listed as a composer, I couldn't help but smile.

This is really our song.

And the moment the acoustic guitar sound came in, we were amazed.

Thinking that mixing and mastering weren't that important was a huge mistake.

The final version we heard after recording was worlds apart from this.

Just as a small difference in a person's face can completely change their overall impression, "Something" was polished into a perfectly refined song.

It was a moment to appreciate the greatness of the engineers.

I closed my eyes and savored the song.

It was really good.

It's hard to describe, but it tickles your ears and somehow evokes memories of the past.

It's fresh and warm.

That was my impression.

Holding your hand that I can almost but not quite grasp

I will narrow the gap between us

Listening to the chorus with Jang So-won's sweet voice, I smiled.

The song quality is really great.

We were entranced, listening to the song until the end.

Even though it's clearly our voices, it's hard to believe.

It's also touching.

Thinking about all the work we put in, I felt a lump in my throat.

Yes, this is it.

Our song is out in the world.

In the midst of the Sixty Seconds issue, which is swallowing everything like a black hole, we decided to focus on the fact that NewBlack's first song was out.

On the album release day.

The title track "Boy and Girl" barely made it into the 90s on the charts, but the other songs failed to chart.

However, none of us were disappointed.