NOVEL NEXT Chapter 22:
Chapter 22
We watched as Gil Chaekyung sat next to Ji-ho.
What was she up to?
The atmosphere that had been revolving around Ji-ho changed in an instant.
The girl who was smiling brightly received friendly responses from everywhere whenever she said something.
I couldn’t see Ji-ho’s expression since he had his back to me.
We were tense and attentive when it happened.
Gil Chaekyung said something and a murmur started to spread.
It was like throwing a stone into a pond and the waves spreading out in all directions.
And the eyes that turned to us.
“Why are they staring?”
“Wow. What’s going on?”
Unlike the confused kids, I stroked my chin.
Gil Chaekyung looked slightly flustered.
The only thing I could guess was that she failed to diss Ji-ho.
The only way she could use to diss us or Ji-ho was the difference in popularity.
She failed.
Then the reason why the students were looking at us was probably because they knew who we were.
When I completed that inference, I called out to Ri-hyuk.
“Ri-hyuk.”
“Yes?”
“Search our names on the search engine.”
“Do you not have hands?”
Ri-hyuk took out his smartphone and moved his fingers quickly.
“…Hm?”
He searched for New Black on the search engine and frowned as he skimmed through the articles.
His eyes widened.
Bi-ju and Jung-hyun, who were watching, also turned their heads to him.
Unlike me, who had a hunch, they seemed nervous by his unusual reaction.
“Ri-hyuk, what’s wrong?”
“Did something happen to us?”
Ri-hyuk didn’t answer and moved his fingers.
The familiar yellow color and the screen of the music site Mango appeared.
“…Huh?”
He was so surprised that he dropped his phone.
My eyes caught that scene as I was yawning.
The smartphone slipped out of his loosened fingers and fell.
My body moved automatically and lifted my heel.
Thud.
The smartphone bounced up as it hit my heel like a hacky sack.
I caught it and handed it to Ri-hyuk.
“Wow.”
Jung-hyun, who was next to me, widened his eyes and sent me an admiring look.
I had been practicing acrobatic moves whenever I had a chance using my action imitation ability, so it was a natural move for me.
I came back to reality and called out to Ri-hyuk, who was still in shock.
“Ri-hyuk.”
“…….”
“Seo Ri-hyuk.”
“Yes?”
“Take your phone.”
“Guys.”
Ri-hyuk met my eyes and muttered with a half-frozen face.
“We hit the jackpot.”
“Jackpot? What do you mean?”
“Look.”
Ri-hyuk held up his smartphone and showed it to us.
[Mango Chart Real-Time Ranking]
- Jang So-wonXNew Black – Something
- TNT – Blink
- TNT – Don’t Smile
- TNT – Pretender
- Teen Spirit – Nana
Something’s real-time chart ranking was first.
***
We traced the cause through internet searches.
The event that started it all was a weekend variety show.
Our song was used as the background music for a scene where the virtual couple confirmed their feelings for each other.
Was this what Seok-hwan hyung had begged the PD to use?
Until then, people didn’t pay much attention to us.
The TV viewers just said, ‘Nice song.’ and moved on.
The real start was when the highlight scene was edited and circulated on SNS.
-Woobin and Jieun’s hug!
-So sweet… This is the best ㅜㅠㅠㅠㅠ
-But does anyone know the title of this BGM?
-I’m curious too. I’ve been hearing it on the radio and cafes lately.
-This is Jang So-won’s single song! The title is Something
We gained some recognition, but it wasn’t enough.
But then, a video changed everything.
An internet broadcast BJ sang a duet cover of Something with another BJ, and the video spread on SNS.
The word of mouth spread like a virus.
Thanks to the video that was shared on SNS, our song received a lot of interest, and since yesterday night, the ranking kept rising until this morning, when it finally reached the first place.
I must have refreshed the page a hundred times during the graduation ceremony.
“Is this a dream?”
“Should I pinch you?”
“You pinch yourself first.”
Bi-ju and I pinched each other’s sides, but only pain remained.
Honestly, what if it was a dream?
It was such a good dream that I didn’t want to wake up.
Even Jung-hyun, who was not easily surprised by anything, blinked his eyes like a bear that had woken up from hibernation.
Ri-hyuk shrank his shoulders and put his hand on his chest.
“Wow, my heart is pounding.”
“Are you okay?”
“It feels like the floor is shaking. My legs are trembling. Do you feel it too?”
“It doesn’t feel real when you suddenly call me hyung.”
Ri-hyuk glared at me.
When we were smiling, Bi-ju asked me.
“By the way, hyung. The company must be in chaos right now, right?”
***
Lemon Entertainment’s PR team.
It was as if a fire had broken out, with phones ringing everywhere.
“Hey! Someone answer the phone!”
“Yes, I’m on it!”
“How’s the press release coming along?”
“I’ve finished the draft for the reporters. I can finish it in 30 minutes.”
“Good. Hurry up.”
“Do we need to send someone to Ji-ho’s graduation ceremony?”
“I don’t think the reporters are that interested in our kids yet?”
“No way. There must be some fans of Girls on Top there, right?”
“What?”
“Boss, didn’t you know? Gil Chaekyung is in the same class as Ji-ho and Seoil.”
The PR team leader hastily grabbed his phone.
“Hey! Someone go to the graduation ceremony right now! Talk to the reporters and make sure our kids don’t mess up! Especially Ji-ho, he’s a ticking bomb.”
“Boss! Manager Yoon from the management department has already left.”
“When?”
“He rushed there as soon as he heard the news.”
“Okay. I can breathe a sigh of relief with Manager Yoon there. What’s going on here? Seriously.”
The chaotic PR team.
They only realized the situation after the ranking skyrocketed.
Who would have expected a singer whose best record was in the 30s to top the chart with a solo song?
There was no sign of it for the past two weeks, so no one could imagine it.
“These days, the teens are all about internet broadcasting, internet broadcasting. We underestimated them, huh? They totally boosted the song.”
“It’s a hit song, alright.”
“Honestly, the song was amazing. It’s just that we lacked capital.”
“Don’t get too excited. It’s common for a flash-in-the-pan hit to drop quickly.”
“Boss.”
Someone who was looking at the chart opened his lips.
“It doesn’t seem to want to go down, though?”
***
The one who brought us back to reality in this surreal situation was the youngest.
“Hyungs!”
The youngest ran towards us like a retriever, holding a bunch of flowers at the entrance of the auditorium.
“I’m not a middle schooler anymore!”
“Wow, you’ve grown up.”
“Did you see? Our chart ranking?”
We all nodded at the youngest’s words.
“We saw it.”
We saw it, alright.
He looked at us with a cute expression and pulled out a card.
“What should we eat, hyungs? I got this card from dad and it’s a no-limit card. Mom said I can spend up to a million won on anything.”
Look at the scale.
We were excited about what to eat, having achieved a good result on the music chart and finished the graduation ceremony.
“Hey, Ji-ho.”
We turned our heads and saw the students of this school.
They couldn’t approach us when we were four, but they came closer when they saw Ji-ho, who was familiar to them.
Well.
I admit, we looked pretty awkward.
“Can we take a picture with you?”
“Me too!”
“Me too!”
We took selfies with them.
It was a bit awkward at first, but after dozens of times, we started to smile naturally.
The students asked us if they could post them on SNS.
We were busy responding to the unexpected photo requests when another group of people found us.
“You’re New Black, right?”
“Yes?”
“Hello, I’m a reporter from Star Daily.”
The ones who had just finished interviewing Gil Chaekyung all flocked to us.
They must have thought we were newsworthy.
They suddenly shoved their cameras in our faces and we were speechless.
“Excuse me.”
Someone intervened with a soft voice.
Yoon Seok-hwan.
Our manager, whom we hadn’t seen for a while.
“These kids are new to interviews.”
He explained the situation to the reporters and stood by our side.
He helped us by cutting off difficult questions or coaching us from the side.
We managed to finish well, thanks to him, but we felt uneasy.
It was bewildering.
They threw questions at us out of the blue and our minds went blank.
To be honest, it was not an experience I wanted to repeat.
But there was a silver lining.
Gil Chaekyung, who was looking at us from afar.
She smiled and agreed to take pictures with them, but if you looked closely, you could see her lips trembling.
She had lost all the attention that should have been hers.
She hovered around the entertainment reporters, as if to say, “Look at me,” but no one paid attention to her, except for a few.
It was inevitable.
The graduation ceremony that had already been covered was less interesting than the song that suddenly blew up on SNS.
I smiled as I watched Gil Chaekyung kick the sand and leave the field.
She deserved it.
***
It was a magical time that started in mid-February.
Everything changed after we topped the music chart.
-‘Something’ hits the jackpot… Weekly chart No. 1
-Jang So-won’s dazzling comeback
-‘Something’s chart run, will it spark a collaboration boom in the music industry?
Our song was requested every time a love story came up on the radio, and TV was no different.
Our song was everywhere, from variety shows, streets, to cafes.
It was a strange feeling.
I couldn’t believe it when I saw our song playing as background music on a famous TV program, or when the guests hummed our song.
In a clip that Jang So-won posted on the group chat, the guests were talking about our song.
Inside a car with a camera installed.
-I want to hold your hand, but it slips away~
-What song is that, sir?
-Hey! Jinyu! Don’t you know this? It’s the hottest song these days, this is.
-Really?
We were on the most popular variety show, <Around the World with a Dice>.
I thought we made a good song, but I never dreamed it would be such a hit.
Of course, the song’s success and our popularity were unrelated.
-Who are the rookie singers who sang ‘Something’ with Jang So-won?
-Jang So-won, “New Black are really talented friends”
-Lemon Entertainment, “We are flooded with inquiries about New Black”
There were some articles that were curious about us, but they were few and far between.
Honestly, there weren’t many people who looked up the singers just because they liked the song.
Most people didn’t know the name of the singer even if they sang along to a famous movie OST.
Once, I asked Seok-hwan hyung out of curiosity.
“Are we really getting a lot of inquiries?”
His answer was simple.
“Do you think so?”
“…”
We didn’t care about the gap between popularity and recognition.
We were so happy with the success of the song itself.
We even enjoyed this gap, you could say.
Whenever a song came out of the cell phone store, I would record a video of myself singing along to that part, and when I stopped by the convenience store and our song came on, I would ask, ‘Whose song is this?’ pretending not to know.
Every day was fun.
Especially for me.
When Director Jo Gyu-hwan told me the estimated royalty income of the management support team, I opened my mouth wide in shock.
“Why are you so surprised?”
“Di-Director… Is it that much?”
“Of course.”
Director Jo smiled softly.
“You may not know this, but Something is a once-in-a-lifetime song for a composer. You were lucky to get it.”
“My heart is pounding.”
“Congratulations. You’re a real composer now.”
Even after splitting the ratio with Senior Jang So-won, I still got that much royalty income.
Director Jo said this was just the beginning.
At this rate, it would be a hit song throughout the first half of the year, and if I added up the income from karaoke and music downloads, I could buy a foreign car.
It was hard to believe anyway.
Every day was a thrilling, happy, and bewildering moment.
Of course, as the world goes, there were also those who sent envious eyes to my sudden success.
-Don’t you think Something’s music chart is rigged? The trend is weird too.
There were people who constantly posted such comments on the internet.
But they didn’t get much response.
-The article is really malicious.
-It could be rigged, but if you look at it from this perspective, all the music is rigged.
-I’m not buying a rigged bird.
-The problem is that the music is too good to say that.
-Yeah, me too. I sing this these days when I go to karaoke with people around me.
-The problem is that Lemon and Hwai are not those kind of companies. Lemon is too proud to do that kind of thing, and Hwai is just wtf.. let me say it…
-LoLLoLLoLLoLLoLLoL Hwa-i rigged? The same Hwai that stuttered when Joo-ha was there? These guys are too stupid to rig as smartly as you say.
-Oh, I was scrolling down and got cold from Hwai.
I was worried that it might be a problem, but these stories only circulated in some corners of the internet and had no effect on the offline world.
And finally.
The day I had been waiting for came.
Manager Yoon Seok-hwan came down to the basement practice room where we were practicing like crazy.
“Guys.”
He said with a face that said it had arrived.
“You’re going to be on a music show.”
And as a candidate for first place.