Free Web NovelI wonder what this could be.
It wasn’t unusual for the PR team to contact us—usually it was the management team, but sometimes they’d call us directly.
They’d ask our opinion on copy for promotions, or warn us about topics to avoid in interviews with journalists. But this time...
“What’s up?” I asked.
“I’m not sure,” Bi-ju said.
It didn’t sound like good news. Deputy Hong always ended her texts with “^^” almost habitually, but today’s message was a brief, blunt line. Still, at least it wasn’t a call—that would mean something truly urgent.
I led the younger members out of the studio. They clustered ◈ Nоvеlіgһт ◈ (Continue reading) around the elevator panel as if on cue.
“We’re taking the elevator for one floor?” I laughed.
“Yep,” the maknae said, pressing the button as though it went without saying. “We have to enjoy the taste of success.”
“...How is riding the elevator success?”
Bi-ju shook her head seriously. “Someone once told us, ‘Why are you taking the elevator when you haven’t even debuted yet?’”
“Really?” I said, surprised.
“Yeah. ‘Why would you take an elevator before debut?’” Bi-ju mimicked, and Ri-hyeok added, “There were plenty of weird people back then.”
We waited for the elevator to go from the second to third floor, and I had to smile at how excited they were. Come to think of it, we’d always used the stairs until now; this was a first.
“Here it comes!” ding
When the doors opened, a kindly middle-aged man stood there—our company’s CEO, his head gleaming under the elevator light. We froze.
“Uh, hello,” we stammered. The CEO, the Head of the Division, Director Jo, and the Head of Administration were all blinking in surprise.
The Head of Administration politely pressed the “close door” button. The CEO, with a warm smile, asked, “Oh, long time no see. Going upstairs to take care of something?”
“Well...” I began, glancing at the kids, who immediately ducked behind me at the tiniest hint of awkwardness.
“I pressed the down button but... I think I hit both by mistake,” I managed, grinning.
“I see. Well, take care,” the CEO said, nodding.
“Yes, you too, sir,” we replied, bowing.
As the doors shut, I whirled around to glare at the kids—then burst out laughing at their sheepish expressions. It reminded me of that meme of the fox whose meal got stolen by an eagle: the “I’ve lost everything” face. I patted them on the shoulder. “Let’s just take the stairs, like normal.”
The PR office was peaceful. I’d half expected a crisis, but there was none.
“So what’s all that?” Ri-hyeok said, pointing to a corner piled high with boxes.
“Delivery?” I asked Deputy Nam, Deputy Hong, and an intern I didn’t recognize.
“Hi,” I greeted them, then dove right in. “Did you call us because of all these packages?”
“Yeah, we suddenly got flooded with shipments,” Hong admitted.
“What’s in them?” Ji-ho asked eagerly.
“They’re gifts for you,” Hong said.
“Gifts?”
“That’s right. I thought you’d said on your fan café notice that you don’t accept personal presents....”
“We did, but people still sent them. It looks like they timed deliveries to celebrate your first reality broadcast.”
Still, it felt odd. Fans had sent gifts before—when you hit number one, they came pouring in. But company policy banned such tributes, so PR always opened shipments, kept letters, and returned the gifts. That agreement had worked fine... until now.
“Is there another reason you wanted to see us?” I asked.
“Well...” Deputy Nam drew me closer and opened a box. “I’d normally send these back, but these are expensive items, so I hesitated.”
I looked at the younger members. They nodded in agreement. “Yes—regardless of cost, please return them all. If there are fan letters, we’ll keep those.”
“Understood,” Hong said with a smile.
As the intern re-taped the boxes, Jung-hyeon pointed to another stack. “What about those?”
“Oh, those are all ginseng,” Hong explained.
“Ginseng...?” We blinked. “Woo-joo said on his live that ginseng was great, so fans must have sent it.”
“...We’ll return those too,” I nodded.
Bi-ju came close, looking worried. I couldn’t help but smile—she was like a little hamster trying to share warmth.
“Hey, would you like to go upstairs first?” Hong asked. “I need to give you your fan letters and discuss some PR stuff with Woo-joo.”
“We’ve got time, we can wait,” Bi-ju answered confidently.
Bi-ju and Ri-hyeok cheerfully led the way, leaving me alone with Hong Nam, who beckoned me closer.
“Hey, come here.”
I followed him past some partitions and saw a separate bundle of boxes.
“These are personal gifts sent only to you. I thought they’d make the others uncomfortable, so I set them aside.”
“I understand.”
He handed me a packet of fan letters that had been in his drawer—thin sheets of paper that felt unusually weighty today.
“Since the Joo Se-han special, your fandom’s grown a lot. That’s why these gifts showed up now,” he said.
“It’s really kind of them,” I replied.
He looked at me thoughtfully. “Woo-joo, about tonight’s first reality broadcast—you said you’d watch it live with fans, right?”
“Yes.”
“I think these gifts came unrelated to that... so should we cancel the live broadcast notice in the fan café?”
“No.” I waved him off with a laugh. “We promised the fans. We have to watch together.”
“Got it,” he nodded.
“As for the gift senders—could you let them know we really appreciate their thoughtfulness?”
“Of course,” he smiled. “I’ll tell them.”
I felt sorry for the fans. Reflecting on recent days, I realized I’d talked about ginseng a lot during lives and posts—because I’d been amazed by the effects after winning ginseng as a prize. But I hadn’t considered how some fans might take that the wrong way. It reminded me to be more mindful of my words.
“What are you thinking about, hyung?” Ji-ho asked, snapping me out of my reverie.
“Ah, you startled me.”
“Was my beauty that surprising?”
“You really are an amazing little guy,” I said as I petted his head.
Ri-hyeok, watching me with a playful look, offered me a dried sweet potato slice from his bag—his own kind of love token.
“Nothing happened upstairs, right?”
“Nothing—aside from those who insisted on taking the elevator.”
“Cough.” The younger siblings cleared their throats and averted their eyes.
“Are you ready for the live broadcast?” I asked.
“Yes! We set up the tripod,” Bi-ju said, proudly pointing to her phone on a stand.
She noticed a ginseng packet on the table that the camera might catch and quickly tucked it away.
“What’s on TV now?”
“Looks like a behind-the-scenes replay of the music show from a few days ago.”
“Oh.” “Oh, there’s Scarlet.”
On my laptop Scarlet’s members, wearing black feathered outfits, were being interviewed backstage before their performance.
“Those costumes are gorgeous. A crow concept?”
“Our concept this time is Black Swan—a black swan,” their leader Ara said. The younger members clapped and giggled.
Ji-ho fidgeted with his phone. “I have to send this,” he murmured.
“Don’t,” I warned.
Then “Street Boys,” who were promoting their second album, appeared in loose school uniforms. One member, Han Jo, sporting heavy smoky makeup, gave an interview.
“Our second album’s title track ‘Deeper’ is a more profound comeback than our last title. Please cheer for us! Peace!”
They waved roughly, then shyly walked off.
Bi-ju laughed. “He’s your friend, hyung.”
“He’s not my friend,” I said, blushing. Every time Han Jo appeared, the kids teased me about juggling friends in the industry. It would be so awkward if we ever met in person.
I pictured it: us facing each other, “Hi, could you introduce me as a...?” “Oh, yes. In the interview...” Ugh, my temperature dropped ten degrees.
As the behind-the-scenes footage neared its end, Scarlet, fresh from a first-place win, appeared backstage holding their trophy.
“Always gently wrapping us, our curtain—thank you, we love you!” their leader said, blowing heart-shaped kisses, and the members danced crazily with the trophy.
As the commercial aired, we chatted quietly.
“You know, fans sent a lot of gifts today. We couldn’t accept them all by policy, but....”
“It can’t be helped. We made that promise.”
“Right. And honestly, if anyone should be giving gifts, it should be us—I hate receiving things.”
The four of them scanned the maknae from head to toe: Bi-ju’s gifted earring, the yellow T-shirt I’d bought for his birthday, the black jeans Ri-hyeok ordered ten pairs of, and the sugar-free snacks Jung-hyeon had given them.
Ri-hyeok clicked his tongue. “Where’s your conscience?”
“What do you mean?” the maknae asked.
“It’s like that folktale where a triangle in your heart spins into a circle,” Jung-hyeon teased.
“Um, Jung-hyeon hyung, it’s ‘spin-spin,’ and it’s Native American folklore, not a folktale,” Bi-ju corrected.
“Oh, Native American folktale,” Jung-hyeon said, trailing off.
They all laughed at the maknae’s casual munching. Suddenly I had an idea.
“These gifts got me thinking—shouldn’t we give gifts at the fan meeting?”
“I like that. It’d be meaningful,” Bi-ju agreed, and Ri-hyeok nodded too. “But... with a thousand people, handmade something might be impossible.”
“True,” I said, scratching my cheek. “Even if we folded a thousand paper cranes, that’s only one per person.”
“Still, imagine handing out a paper crane to each soufflé,” the maknae said, miming the gesture. We cracked up again.
“No, we can’t do the same gift as the first fan sign,” Ri-hyeok said. “Too many people.”
“How about tote bags, season two?” Jung-hyeon asked.
“Hmm, that might feel stale. It’s the first fan meeting—we should give something more special.”
“Any ideas?”
“When you said special gift, I thought only of money. My dad always says the most meaningful gift is cash.”
“Wow,” I marveled. “If we gave envelopes of cash, that’d be legendary. We’d make headlines. One of us would get arrested as ring leader.”
“Arrest?...” The maknae shuddered at the thought.
Then Bi-ju, sounding determined, said, “We’re not leaving you to go alone, hyung—” and burst out laughing at his own joke. The laughter spread instantly.
Maybe because we’d been so focused on work, our laughter barrier was as high as a garden fence. But I loved it. The way our conversation bounded from one absurd topic to the next was like a hangover cure for the mind.
Clapping my hands, I brought us back to the present. “Let’s save fan-meeting gifts for later and first watch the broadcast.”
We cleared the clutter from the table as the reality-show logo appeared at the top right of the screen. I opened the live stream on the shared phone and, watching the viewer count climb, we waved wildly at the camera.
“Hello!” freēwēbηovel.c૦m
“Puhahaha!”
Definitely, deciding to watch episode one live with our soufflés was a brilliant idea. Watching people’s real-time comments makes any show more fun, and this was no exception. I laughed every three minutes at the fans’ jokes.
“It’s the New Black” opened with a pink, beauty-show–style title card and delivered 50 minutes of packed content: our self-introductions, reservist training footage, the exploding kimchi jar—and a news article popped up too:
– “New Black’s Woo-joo, video call with TNT’s Tae-hyun in reality show ‘Golden Connections’”
Most buzzed about Tae-hyun; I bet articles about our reality content will follow.
As episode one wrapped, a special clip emerged:
– “Special Preview: New Black’s 2nd Album Production!”
And on screen appeared me, sitting in the studio, ready to reveal what’s next.
