Assistant Manager Kim Hates Idols Chapter 496 - Neighbors (2)

“Where are you headed?”

 

Mr. Yur spoke to us as we greeted him energetically.

 

“We’re going to check our new audio tracks!” 

 

Jeong Seongbin answered politely.

 

“Did you just arrive at the company, sunbaenim?” 

 

I asked.

 

“Yes, to see the CEO and the staff.”

 

Mr. Yur smiled as he answered my question. Since we were the ones getting off first, he stood there waving until the elevator doors closed.

 

Now, as for why Mr. Yur was at UA…

 

‘Hellas is joining UA?’

 

…It was because Hellas had made a monumental decision. I never would have imagined it, even in my dreams.

 

Mr. Yur and his teammates had made an unprecedented choice. Normally, when an idol group’s contract expired, the members signed with different agencies depending on who contacted them. If they wanted to maintain a group contract, they sometimes established a separate company of their own, but that required considerable time, effort, and money.

 

Usually, an idol’s second chapter began through one of those two paths. Hellas, however, took a completely different path.

 

‘To think they’d make a counteroffer to UA.’

 

Hellas approached UA directly with a proposal. They would invest in UA, UA would expand its idol division, and in return, Hellas would receive management rights proportional to its shareholding.

 

In a normal situation, the probability of such a deal happening was slim. It wasn’t unheard of for idols to acquire shares and become board members, but at most, they were usually granted voting rights. Companies didn’t normally establish an entire division just because someone requested it.

 

But UA had us. No matter how busy we were, it was unprecedented for an idol group with Spark’s seniority, impact, and fandom size to have never gone on an overseas tour.

 

UA needed the network Hellas had built and the experienced personnel Hellas could bring over from MYTH. Coincidentally, UA had also begun running into limitations managing its idol business on a team-by-team basis. Hellas, meanwhile, needed an environment that would respect its members’ wishes while minimizing the long hiatus they had already endured.

 

Furthermore, rumors circulated quietly that Hellas had brought an amount of money that was simply too large to refuse. Spark certainly hadn’t earned so little that it couldn’t afford an overseas tour, but the amount of capital available could drastically change what a company was capable of doing… From a corporate perspective, it was a deal they had no reason to turn down.

 

After navigating these circumstances, Hellas had completed most of the procedures and was currently waiting to fully enter UA. The articles had already been released, and I heard they were currently fine-tuning the details.

 

Since the news went public, we often ran into the Hellas sunbaenims at UA. Perhaps because we greeted each other so often, even the Spark members seemed to have started viewing them as ‘our seniors’ rather than the distant celebrities they had been during the IDC days.

 

This was beneficial for Spark in many ways. A division solely handling the idol business was established, separating it from the existing business, and the scale of the dedicated team grew significantly. It was the company’s first time opening an overseas tour for an idol, yet they could set the scope to the entire world rather than just Asia—it was largely thanks to the help of the newly recruited experienced professionals.

 

Of course, I wasn’t without worries. Any fan would naturally look unfavorably on the money their artist worked hard to earn being spent on other projects or teams.

 

Strictly speaking, Spark benefited from Hellas’s arrival mainly in terms of personnel, not funding, since our own activities were self-financed, but it was hard for outsiders to see into every nook and cranny of internal affairs.

 

Fortunately, Hellas’s fandom wasn’t particularly resentful about Hellas entering our thatched-roof cottage.

 

≫ This is better than renewing with MYTH again.

Who would go to an agency that renews a contract and then only gives them one comeback?

└ If they’re only gonna promote on music shows for a week, why even sell an album? Just play it on the radio and be done with it.

 

≫ 1. All members signed as a full group.

2. The leader got a director position through equity investment.

Those two points alone make moving to UA a decent choice. People used to respect group activities even when members split across agencies, but these days coordination between companies isn’t easy…. It’s much better for everyone to be in the same boat.

 

≫ Guys, use your common sense.

Who’s going to squeeze more money out of them, Parthe or Spark?

It’s better to go to a damn small company and work your ass off than to keep watching a junior group (honestly, I don’t even want to call them juniors) who blew up their own career by running their mouth and are now running a deficit on overseas tours because they can’t be laundered.

└ Spark earns ad revenue and promotion profits steadily. How long are those Parthe bastards gonna keep showing up as uninvited guests at other people’s concerts?

└ After that broadcasting-station collusion scandal, it was annoying seeing everyone lumped together as a corrupt agency. Honestly, this is probably for the best.

 

≫ I would’ve felt uncomfortable if the boys had to bow down and enter a place with a giant or a legendary senior.

But that’s not what’s happening; they’re moving at a weight class where they have enough seniority to say whatever they want, so I’m planning to just watch for now.

And since Spark is nice… if Chaejun likes them, that’s enough for me.

 

≫ Was I… the only one who liked the idea of them going to UA?

A giant corporation’s resources help when you’re rookies and need a push, but for longevity, nothing beats an agency that takes good care of its artists and consistently produces good content. 

Most of the artists there renew their contracts, and their self-produced content is solid too., so I thought it would be fine.

└ You’re right. Now it’s a battle of promotions, so who promotes better is what matters ㅇㅇ Looking at Spark, UA always seemed to do a decent job.

 

Normally, I wouldn’t look so deeply into the reactions of another group’s fandom. But this was an exception. If conflicts broke out between fandoms, Spark’s supporters would inevitably be stressed by it. We also had a history of clashing with Parthe’s fandom, since both groups belonged to the same agency. I had to monitor the situation.

 

Fortunately, the Sparklers didn’t seem to be taking this reorganization too seriously either.

 

≫ I’ve prayed for agency staff to resign before, but this is the first time I’ve begged them not to resign. Now that the scale is growing, I feel relieved.

But Team Spark, don’t resign… Yoon Hyunjoo, raise Team Spark’s salary…

└ It would be one thing if the company was failing to take care of itself and talking about ‘nurturing junior groups’, but bringing in sunbaenims? Well… as long as it doesn’t interfere with the boys using the practice rooms, it’s fine.

 

≫ Are we finally graduating from our tiny mom-and-pop agency phase?

└ ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ

└ No wonder the mom-and-pop agency suddenly announced an overseas tour ㅋㅋ

└ Maybe it’s because Sparklers are mostly working adults, but everyone’s like, ‘If you’re going to be a servant, at least serve in a rich household’. They’re happy the company has money nowㅋㅋ

 

≫ They really have been stuck in Korea for too long.

Fans naturally don’t like artists spending all their time overseas, but realistically you can’t ignore how much influence international fandoms have.

Right now, they won’t go into a deficit by doing a world tour.

Of course, if they do nothing but world tours, I’m grabbing a spear immediately.

└ Overseas tour… I’m not happy about it at all, but I know it’s inevitable, so I accept it ㅠ.

 

≫ They said they’ll do a domestic tour too, so I’ll wait and see for now.

But do the boys have the stamina for this?

└ That’s my biggest worry too… ㅠㅠ I am keeping an eye on them.

 

In an industry where fans often reacted negatively to overseas tours, this outcome was about as good as anyone could have hoped for. I couldn’t even express how nervous everyone at UA, including Spark, had been.

 

I strongly argued how miraculous this atmosphere was and emphasized that we must never neglect domestic promotions. The digital single was also meant to fill the content void created by the tour. Since all these schedules were set a long time ago, at this point, we just had to follow the pre-determined plan.

 

The restructuring had now moved beyond the stage where my opinion mattered and entered its final phase. What Spark needed to focus on was not letting our form drop during this period of company transition.

 

If the upcoming digital single, world tour, and domestic tour failed, this favorable atmosphere would crumble in an instant. Spark’s responsibility was heavy if we wanted to prevent UA from being pelted with stones.

 

‘Was releasing acoustic music at this point too much of a gamble?’

 

There was always a demand from Sparklers for new genres. Accordingly, Spark had challenged various genres to meet those needs.

 

However, this was only possible as long as the season and market trends supported it. It was easy for an idol group that needed to dance to look boring if they just sat still and sang ballads or acoustics, so we kept postponing it until the plan for a digital single was set, reaching the conclusion that it was now or never.

 

So, for the title, we chose a pop-style acoustic song perfect for spring. At one point, Lee Cheonghyeon complained that he needed emotional acoustic guitar melodies to write the song, which led to Kang Kiyeon borrowing a guitar and awkwardly strumming away on it.

 

Lee Cheonghyeon had been making the song since last summer during our hiatus, waiting specifically for the cherry blossoms to bloom. The result turned out wonderfully. Up to this point, there were no problems.

 

‘It’s too late to… back out now, isn’t it?’

 

I swallowed a sigh inwardly. I watched helplessly as the A&R staff member prepared to play the audio.

 

I, Kim Iwol, was shamelessly releasing my ‘First Steps Mastered’ plodding self-composed track as a B-side on this digital single. The more I thought about it, the more absurd that sentence felt. I was putting my song on Spark’s album.

 

I had countless worries before making this decision. I even had dreams where the whole world swung the hammer of justice, saying, ‘Spark has lost their touch’, or ‘In the end, Kim Iwol couldn’t hide his bloated ego and left an irreversible stain on the group’s career’. If I were being honest, I wanted to erase the whole thing and pretend it never happened.

 

But it was too late to turn back. I figured it would be more productive to count how long it would take to kick a hole in my blanket from embarrassment every night starting today.

 

Fortunately, the interim review ended without issue. I glanced sideways to see if everyone was just out of it because they had come from tour practice, but it didn’t seem that way. It meant everyone had given the ‘OK’ while in their right minds. I felt like I had aged 40 years in 4 minutes.

 

Drained of all energy, I was trudging toward the parking lot when someone following behind approached my side. It was Jeong Seongbin.

 

“Hyung, you don’t have any schedules tomorrow other than mixing and practice, right?”

 

Jeong Seongbin was right. Though if you added up the time spent on those things, the whole day would be gone.

 

“Could you spare a bit of time when you’re free, hyung?”

 

Jeong Seongbin asked politely. It felt strangely familiar, so I asked back if I should bring Choi Jeho along, but I received the answer that only I needed to come. I was so, so scared.