"Today's stage was really good."

"Xie xie. It was all thanks to your outstanding camera work, Director."

"I did do well, didn't I?"

"Our choreography was complicated, so it couldn't have been easy. But I guess that's exactly what I'd expect from you, Director. The kind of camera movement our content team lead ought to watch and learn from."

"I knew it. Sion really has a good eye."

After the prerecording ended, before heading back to the waiting room, I spent a little time drinking coffee and chatting with the camera director.

'He's someone I'm grateful for.'

Since he was the one handling our camera every time we performed, I'd just assumed he was one of the regular music-show directors. So when I later found out he was actually a veteran camera director who only worked occasionally, I was shocked.

He was famous enough that unless it was a top-tier idol act, he rarely came out to work on site.

-Don't worry! I'll handle your stage myself.

Still, thanks to the connection from the old Idol Ground 100 days, he personally took charge of our stages.

"This stage came out really well."

"Can we get a little more airtime? It'd be a waste to cut the intro."

"I'll talk to the PD. A few seconds should be adjustable."

As I talked with the camera director, I could hear the staff chatting nearby.

Everywhere, people were talking about the stage the members and I had put on today. 𝒇𝓻𝓮𝓮𝙬𝙚𝒃𝒏𝓸𝙫𝒆𝙡.𝓬𝓸𝒎

[Iam sweeps year-end charts! A terrifying surge]

["Black Pearl," girl group Iam's third mini album, is showing terrifying momentum as it conquers the digital charts and becomes a hot topic.

Not only on the music charts, but album sales have already passed 400,000 in just the second week, putting the group right in front of the supposedly impossible 500,000 mark for girl groups.

Some say they're just taking advantage of the empty year-end field left by the absence of major idol releases···."]

↳ Iam's song is seriously insanely popular this time

↳ They swept both digital and album sales, it's been a while since I saw a girl group do this

↳ It's just empty-house looting since they released at year-end when both boy groups and girl groups avoid it

↳ If you can break an all-time girl-group record just by looting an empty house, then every other group would've done it too, dumbass

↳ This song really did feel different, though. It didn't feel like a girl group stage, it felt like a boy group stage

↳ They came out with knives sharpened, seriously the choreography and vocals were insane

↳ Shame, if this had come out at the start of the year, couldn't it have actually contended for a grand prize?

↳ Even if it had come out at the start of the year, WTX would've made it hard. Those guys sold over a million copies from a single album alone

I could tell something about this album wasn't normal.

Well, of course I could. Even before our first stage, the company had been in an uproar over the album orders and chart rankings.

It was bad enough that even though this wasn't our first comeback, the members had all been trembling before going on stage because of the reactions around us.

-Is this some kind of hidden-camera prank? How can an album sell 300,000 copies···.

-This is strange. Our song isn't coming down from number one on the charts!

-Don't be nervous··· I need to stay calm if nothing else. So first, before the stage, let's go over everything one more time···.

Lee Gahyeon was absolutely convinced it had to be a hidden-camera prank and was digging all over the waiting room looking for cameras that weren't there.

Shinyu kept staring at the streaming platform charts on the phone in her hand, apparently unable to believe that her song was at number one.

Even Seo Ryujin, who had to hold the center as leader, kept saying she needed to stay calm and started checking the choreography again even though nobody told her to, only to get her feet tangled and fall over, which gave me a huge laugh.

Still, if I said I hadn't been worried that we might not be able to do the stage properly, even if this was a prerecording and we'd have chances, that would have been a lie.

But then—

Crown on my head now

No one can stop me

At the edge of the world

Black flag queen—It's me

-Waaaah!!!!

Once we got up on stage, not a single member made a mistake, and everyone performed the song perfectly.

'Their bodies really do remember.'

Judging by how tense the members had been, I was sure we'd rack up several mistakes today, to the point that I'd even bribed the camera director in advance and apologized to the staff beforehand, but all of that felt pointless after the perfectly flawless stage we put on.

Only then did I understand why Raon had pushed the members so hard they had actually started considering escape.

-Sometimes when you see songs like that and wonder how anyone can possibly do that on stage, the answer is just that they drilled it into their bodies until it worked.

Raon had said that absurdly simple solution with enough confidence to make me suspect Raon had also been military in a past life.

At the time I thought Raon had lost it, but the results were outstanding.

[Iam stage cross-edit video]

["(A cross-edited video of Iam's first-week music-show stages)"]

↳ Wow... that's insanely satisfying, what is this? It looks like the motions are stitched together from the same stage

↳ I thought the stuff about spending over a hundred million won on choreography production was media play, but this really is choreography you don't see in Korea

↳ The outfits are insane too, why are the girls this sexy? The makeup too, it all fits the stage perfectly

↳ I want to show this to everyone who says our girls have no skills

↳ The song is really unusual too, the shift in mood in the middle is insane

↳ The song is the song, but I keep rewatching because of the choreography

↳ Sion in center at the end is driving me crazy... Sion, if you use your face like a real idol like that, you're going to kill me, unni

The moment our first week of music-show promotions ended, videos of our stages started popping up all over YouTube like mushrooms after rain.

Not just the broadcasters' official accounts, but fan accounts constantly posting edited videos too.

The shocking part was that videos uploaded to fan accounts rather than the official ones usually topped out at maybe 100,000 views, but now the bigger ones were already passing a million.

At first I wondered if someone was manipulating the view counts,

-Our overseas fans have increased a lot.

but then one of the content team employees who managed our YouTube found the reason.

There had suddenly been a huge increase in foreign-language comments on videos related to us.

Everything from English to Japanese to languages from countries I couldn't even identify.

Only afterward did we find out that part of our album sales—which were already beyond what the word astonishing could describe—had come from overseas sales.

And on top of that, every single time we went on stage, articles came out about everything from our outfits to our makeup, so just like Lee Gahyeon said, it really did feel like the world was pulling a hidden-camera prank on us.

"Sion, so you were here?"

"What's the matter?"

"'What's the matter' is informal, you brat. Come on, let's go to the waiting room. Something came up."

"Such is the fate of a superstar···. See you next time, Director."

"Yeah, get going, superstar. See you next time."

So while I was talking with the camera director and thinking about the results of this album, I followed Manager Yunsik back toward the waiting room.

"But what is it? Other than dropping by that radio show in between after our prerecording today, we didn't have any other schedules, did we?"

What felt a little odd was that as far as I knew, we didn't really have anything else on the schedule today, which was why I'd been wandering around the station like this in the first place.

To begin with, on music-show days, the rule was that we had to stay there until the broadcast ended, so aside from a short schedule like a radio appearance in the middle, we normally didn't book anything else.

"Well··· the CEO suddenly said there's going to be about an hour-long meeting today."

"The CEO?"

"Yeah. Anyway, let's hurry to the waiting room."

Yunsik didn't seem to know the details either, so we headed back to the waiting room again.

***

"Raon-san, what in the world is this···."

"Ah, it's nothing. Just members bonding! Close friends do this in Japan too, don't they?"

Haruto stared at Raon in disbelief.

Raon was rambling as if everyone did this, trying hard to draw Haruto's attention away from the Iam members, but it was useless.

Haruto had already seen it clearly.

-Kyaaah!! Help me! This is migrant worker torture!

-Quiet! You're plotting something with Lee Sion again, aren't you!

-This time, honto, I'm not!

-I can't trust you! Pull farther, Yunkyung, Shinyu!

-Yes!

Kurosawa Yuri had been pinned to the waiting-room sofa, with a long stick between her legs while the others subjected her to some incomprehensible act.

At first it looked like a joke, but hearing Kurosawa Yuri's clear screams ringing through the waiting room and seeing the Iam members seriously tearing her legs apart, Haruto understood that it was not a simple joke.

-Hey! What are you all doing!

Raon, who had arrived at Iam's waiting room with Haruto a bit later, stepped in, and the members instantly acted like nothing had happened and tried to look normal, but it was already too late.

Kurosawa Yuri, who had still been in the middle of being subjected to whatever that was, was rolling around on the sofa, apparently not yet recovered from the damage.

'Ijime?'

For a moment, one word famous in Japan came to Haruto's mind.

Ijime—group bullying.

'Well, I suppose that could happen. She is the only Japanese member in a girl group made up of Koreans.'

Haruto was someone connected to one of Japan's major entertainment agencies.

So he knew perfectly well that idol-group or band members were not always all as close as the public imagined.

Ijime? Among groups active in Japan, few probably avoided problems like that.

So even if there really was unexpected ostracism inside Iam, it didn't concern him all that much.

As long as the fans and the general public didn't know about it, it didn't matter how much they fought and beat each other up internally.

'I should probably talk to them in advance so no rumors come out.'

Thinking there really were things you could only know by seeing the site in person, Haruto silently added another item to his mental checklist.

The reason he had come all the way to Korea today to visit Iam was not for some simple courtesy call.

-Would it be possible for me to personally watch Iam's stage today and speak with them afterward?

-Personally?

-Yes. Of course the contract will be handled with KJ Entertainment, but communication with the artists themselves is important as well.

-I see. I'd like to guide you myself, but I have an important meeting today, so I'll ask our producer to show you around instead.

-Thank you.

A collaboration between Unibex and KJ Entertainment.

It was because of that important project—something Haruto had spent the last few months carefully building—that he had taken the time to visit in person.

At the moment, K-pop's popularity in Japan had reached a level that could no longer be called ordinary.

The Korean singers' invasion of Japan that had started with Raon, who was now guiding him.

At the time, everyone had expected it to flash brightly for a moment and disappear, but astonishingly, now that ten years had passed, it had grown larger by the day and at some point had become a mainstream presence that even Japan could no longer easily ignore.

Well, calling it mainstream might be an exaggeration, but given the nature of idol fandoms, it had carved out quite a solid position.

Because of that, if a Korean idol became popular in Korea, promoting in Japan had by now become almost a formula.

And Unibex, which it would not be an exaggeration to say had helped trigger that Korean Wave boom in Japan, was now facing a crisis.

[TSP joins hands with Japanese conglomerate Sona to target the Japanese market!]

[SY to part ways with Unisex after years of partnership and pursue independent activities]

[Kira joins hands with Anyversal Japan for Japanese activities!]

For the last several years, Unibex had all but monopolized Japanese promotions for Korean idols.

Which made sense. If you were naming the most influential entertainment agency in Japan, Johnny's would of course be the first name mentioned. But since Johnny's was busy promoting large numbers of its own idols, it had no reason to help Korean idols promote in Japan.

Even if those acts did well, it would only erode Johnny's own influence. It would be cutting into its own flesh.

By contrast, Unibex had comparatively less weight in idols but was still the second most influential entertainment company in Japan after Johnny's, so Korean idols were basically a honey pot.

Since Unibex was centered more on bands and solo artists, Korean idols let them steal a piece of Johnny's pie while also making solid profits and extending influence even into the Korean market.

But this was capitalism. Anything that looked that delicious was never going to be left alone.

Once Unibex started getting good results by handling Korean idols' activities, other agencies rushed to imitate it.

As a result, Unibex not only began losing Korean idols it had once held in an almost exclusive grip to rival agencies, but even wound up splitting from SY, with whom it had originally maintained a good partnership, after trouble emerged.

-I heard rumors that Director Haruto might get pushed aside this time.

-Not surprising. He got promoted all the way to division head because of K-pop in the first place.

Because of that, Haruto's standing inside Unibex had been growing more unstable by the day.

Unless he produced some major result, executive promotion would be out of reach, and he was on the verge of being pushed off into a sidelined position.

In that desperate crisis, Haruto had staked his future on Iam.

Of course, it wasn't some reckless gamble where he'd just leave it to fate.

'Iam has a high chance of succeeding.'

After all, Iam was already generating enough buzz in Japan to form an organic fandom there even without any special promotion.

Having a Japanese member was another plus.

The fact that one of the members of the hottest girl group in Korea right now was Japanese was a strong sales point, and the fact that she was not merely there for visuals but held the main vocalist position on sheer ability made it even better.

And when he looked at Iam's member composition overall, he liked how they each had different kinds of appeal that Japanese K-pop fans would enjoy.

On top of that, they were strong not only in music but also on broadcasts like variety shows, so once full-scale Japanese promotions began, they would be able to do proper publicity rather than just stand there as decorative backdrops.

That was the excitement Haruto had brought with him into this collaboration with KJ Entertainment.

"Hahaha, the members of Iam are lively in person too."

"Right? Our girls are a little rowdy, but they're nice."

"That's part of being an artist too, isn't it?"

Although things had gone a little differently from what he expected right from the start, Haruto was perfectly capable of closing his eyes and pretending not to notice.

"By the way, I only see six members in the waiting room. Does Lee Sion have another schedule?"

"No. Sion's probably running around somewhere right now, but we'll catch Sion and bring Sion in soon."

"Excuse me?"

As he chatted warmly with Raon while hiding his true thoughts, Haruto wondered if he'd misheard.

'Surely··· no matter how fluent her Japanese is, even a mistake like this could happen.'

Raon spoke Japanese almost at a native level, but this time Haruto was sure Raon had misspoken.

'Running away' and 'bring her in'?

No matter how he thought about it, those were not words that suited an idol.

"Then perhaps I can speak with the members for a moment···"

Even if Lee Sion was missing, they couldn't wait forever, so Haruto was just about to begin discussing Japanese activities when—

Bang!

"Hear ye! I have returned!"

The door flew open—no, it was almost kicked open with a crash—and Lee Sion strode in.