Top Management Chapter 4

As if the woman, girl, woman or whoever had just gotten out of the shower, her wet hair was covered with a towel.

It felt as though s.e.xiness and innocence coexisted perfectly. She was pretty, yet had unique features.

Praise came out naturally. Out of all the people I have seen in real life, she was the prettiest. There was an enormous gap between first and second.

She should have been an actress, not a singer.

“Maknae[1] woke up the earliest again. You practiced until late yesterday, aren’t you tired?”

“I need work even if I’m tired… It’s the first broadcast in a long time.”

“Lee Songha, you’ve grown.”

The youngest member of Neptune, Lee Songha.

On her profile, it said she had just graduated high school this spring. Even in Neptune, where everyone was responsible for the visual, she was superior. Mood breaker, even her blank stares looked as if she was lost in thought.

It said her position was sub-vocal and sub-dancer, I think I need to study more about these positions. Although I know the positions for soccer and baseball, it was my first time dealing with girl group positions. I didn’t know that the positions were so specifically divided. It was to the point of culture shock.

“Oppa. When do we leave?”

“We have to leave at 4:30. 30 minutes left.”

“Okay.”

Even her voice was good. Since she was a singer, she was good at projecting her voice and p.r.o.nunciation. Above all, she had a good rhythm in her speech. It had the addictiveness of getting stuck in the ears of the listeners.

That’s rare.

If she was an actress, I would have gathered all her previous works, it was unfortunate.

Songha rubbed her tired eyes and approached me. Drops of water dripped from her hair, which was simply covered with a towel. My hand flinched as I subconsciously wanted to wipe the drops. She stopped right in front of me.

Is this the right time to say h.e.l.lo?

Just as I was thinking that, Songha nodded her head. Before I could even say h.e.l.lo, she tilted her long, white neck and looked over my shoulder.

“Please move a little.”

“Yes? Ah, yes.”

It seemed she had some business with the refrigerator behind me. After I moved aside, Songha opened the freezer and took out a container of ice cream. It had “Lee Songha’s” written in thick permanent marker.

I thought those kinds of things only happened in families with quadruplets…

“Everyone get up!”

Hyunjo shouted again.

“What are the unnis[2] doing while maknae is already up and ready!”

That appearance overlapped with my previous self who had to wake up the quadruplets and send them off to day care before going to school.

Haaa… It was war. It was an endless battle, if I woke one up, another would slump on the sofa and sleep, if I woke another one, another one would crawled back into his blanket… d.a.m.n. Let’s stop thinking about those kids. It didn’t seem like I was a fresh new recruit, but an exhausted working daddy!

“Good morning…”

The door with a dinosaur sticker opened. Messy, curly hair. A woman wearing a yellow one-piece pajamas came out rubbing her eyes with her head bowed.

She’s Im Seoyoung.

She’s 21. Her position is sub-vocal. Lead dancer. On her profile, it said that she had a lovely baby face and a voluptuous body.

That really was the case. If you didn’t know them, you’d think she was the youngest, not Songha. She looked like a high schooler.

She was even responsible for entertainment shows. In a program I have never heard of, she momentarily appeared as a guest reporter. In a group that was obscure as Neptune, she was the young breadwinner who was busy attempting to raise their popularity.

“Oppa…”

“Yeah. Wake up, quickly.”

The totteringly walking Seoyoung suddenly opened her eyes.

“Songha. You’re gonna get fat. Do you know how much calories that is?”

Songha, who was scooping up ice cream while standing, briefly glanced at Seoyoung before turning her back. She hugged the ice cream container as if she was trying to hide it, but still continued to dig in.

“You think I can’t see it just because you eat like that?”

“Then, unni shouldn’t look.”

“How can I not look at my favorite food!”

“Then do you want a bite?”

“Don’t tempt me! I’ll get fat!”

“Yak yak yak, nagging so early in the morning…”

“Yak yak yak? To your unni? Wah, oppa, look at the way she talks to me. She doesn’t try to lose, not even once. If you were in a different team, they would insult you every day for your ill-manners, then you’d be crying in a corner and eventually quit. Do you know how many girls there are who have bad personalities? You should know that you are only able to live so luxuriously since you joined our team.”

The lovely Seoyoung was actually responsible for the nagging of this household. As the nagging continued to go on, Hyunjo pushed Seoyoung towards the bathroom.

“Hurry up and wash while I wake the others up. Want something light… like an apple?”

“Yup yup! Thanks oppa!”

After finally getting Seoyoung in the bathroom, Hyunjo sighed.

“Two down, I still have to wake the other two. So can one of you peel an apple?”

“I’ll do it.”

I raised my hand. I had confidence in this. I found two large apples in the fruit drawer of the fridge and a fruit knife in the corner of the sink. Soon, a thin paper-like rind was peeled off smoothly.

Look at it, look. Even when I looked at it, I couldn’t help, but to appreciate the level of skill.

The spectating Gunyoung applauded.

“Work of art.”

“If you summed up all the fruits I’ve peeled; you’ll probably get an orchard.”

While preparing snacks for the quadruplets, you naturally become a master at peeling… stop already. This is excessive, really.

After peeling the apples, I placed them on a plate and stuck a fork in a slice. At the same time, the other members of Neptune had woken up. The blond mixed-race main rapper LJ. And the oldest in the group, the main vocal. The charismatic leader, Lee Taehee.

That’s what it said in the profiles…

Taehee was scratching her stomach with her hand inside her s.h.i.+rt. While Hyunjo was busy waking everyone up, she nonchalantly sat on the sofa and nodded off. LJ was stretching and eating apples in front of me.

“This is yummy. It’s sweet.”

“You have a lot. If it’s not enough, I can peel some more for you.”

Why does it feel like I became a food demonstrator at a grocery store?

Well, if a Barbie doll was sampling my food, it would be worth it. If Taehee had the body of a model with long legs, LJ had a perfect hourgla.s.s figure. Her voluptuous b.r.e.a.s.t.s and the S-line figure that follows through her waist, hips and her legs which seem to extend endlessly from her training shorts made her seem unrealistic.

Being a.s.signed to a girl group was good thing. It was very good.

“Hey, give me my apples!”

“I don’t want to?”

As soon as Seoyoung, who had just finished was.h.i.+ng herself, urgently yelled, LJ picked up the last slice and teased her. As if their arguments were a common occurrence, Hyunjo didn’t even attempt to stop them and sighed. Eventually, I had to peel more apples.

While the members washed, changed their clothes and got ready, Gunyoung and I were waiting like bags of barley.

After seeing the familiar scene of the quadruplets from Neptune members, I became less nervous. However, Gunyoung was still stiff.

“I really can’t adjust to this.”

“I know, right? I guess it’s because it’s our first day.”

Gunyoung covered his mouth and spoke in a quiet voice.

“I graduated from a male-only middle school, high school and university. I don’t even have a nuna[3] or a younger sister.”

“If that’s the case, you really will have a hard time adjusting.”

“Right? But it’s still good.”

“Really good.”

We worked hard to cover the tips of our lips from curving upwards.

As soon as the girls gathered in the living room, Hyunjo clapped his hands.

“Now that everyone is up, let’s say our greetings. They will be staying with us for a while.”

“What, you changed the manager oppa again?”

“What happened to Chulhyoung oppa?”

“That b.a.s.t.a.r.d is in hiding. He even changed his phone number.”

“Really? That’s too much. He should have let us know before quitting.”

“Don’t say that b.a.s.t.a.r.d’s name. It p.i.s.ses me off.”

“But I thought this would happen. He was sullen and always looked at my legs.”

As Seoyoung complains, LJ skimmed over her legs.

“Don’t worry about your legs. Look at how many legs there are here, why would he look at yours?”

“What?”

When the two who were the same age fought, the leader, Taehee didn’t even try to resolve it. She was the type of leader that let things resolve by themselves. And Songha was carefully nibbling on the apple core for some time.

“The conversation is going nowhere again. I said greet each other. We don’t have much time.”

Hyunjo patted my back. I gulped down my saliva and tried my best to smile.

“h.e.l.lo, my name is Jung Sunwoo.”

“He’s… much older than you and his nickname is Jungjumma.”

“Chief, that’s an old nickname…”

Seoyoung raised her hand.

“Question! Why is your nickname Jungjumma?”

“He said his brother had quadruplets and he had to be the babysitter.”

“Wow.”

It wasn’t my intention, but the story of the quadruplets helped here as well. The members looked up at me. I hope my image was okay.

“And this is Choi Gunyoung. He worked briefly with Blackout.”

“Cough, h.e.l.lo. I am Choi Gunyoung.”

Neptune members introduced themselves one after the other. I heard that there are some celebrities who swear at their managers to release stress. Luckily, it seemed like they wouldn’t do such a thing.

Was it because they weren’t popular yet? Would they change once they became popular?

Since they were younger than us, we decided to speak casually, but I still had to prepare my heart. It was the first time seeing beauties of this level, four of them at that, so close to me. Maybe if they were moderately pretty, but currently I felt pressured since they were too pretty.

I’ll probably slowly get used to it.

Wait. If I get used to it, wouldn’t it be a problem if my standards rise?

“Now that we’ve introduced ourselves, let’s move. Get up.”

Hyunjo urged as he looked at his watch. All of us lifted our b.u.t.ts and got up.

“Is it cold out, oppa?”

“It’s a bit chilly. Wear something on top before you come out.”

The members covered their slim shoulders with outerwear or a blanket before going out.

The sky was still dark.

It would take 30 minutes to get to the shop in Chungdam-dong. 2 hours pa.s.sed as the artists did their hair and makeup.

As their managers, we had to wait and keep an eye on their blankets and their bags during that time.

Hyunjo was sleeping, Gunyoung was dozing off and I was yawning while I looked at my phone. I was gathering information on Neptune. I saved some good pictures and monitored their broadcasts. I downloaded their songs and continuously listened to them.

In the past 2 years, Neptune released four alb.u.ms. One was a full alb.u.m, the other was a mini-alb.u.m with 4 songs and the rest were digital singles.

They all failed. There were more than 10 songs and I haven’t heard of even one them.

I didn’t think their t.i.tle track was bad though.

Especially their current single, the hook was very addicting. Looking at their alb.u.m information, the composer seemed familiar. That meant that the composer was familiar enough to me to be famous.

Their dance was good enough to stare blankly at it for 3 minutes and their music videos showed that the company had spent quite a lot of money. However, when I looked through all the music charts, I couldn’t find any of their songs.

Why weren’t they popular?

Was there something else they needed? Besides good songs and good looks? Was it really bad luck?

There was a girl group in the past who could lift the whole industry up and down. They were an unknown group for a while, however a video of them became viral and their songs became the number 1 hit on the charts.

Their song was that good, they were a group that was going to succeed. The ones who deserved to be successful will eventually become successful, these were words they said but they could only say this since they had already become famous.

This type of situation wasn’t uncommon. As expected, even if they had the looks or good songs, they still needed luck. That’s really……. It wasn’t like they could just buy it, nor was it something they could gain through hard work. Idol contractors must have a hard time.

No, if you think about it, this didn’t just apply to idols. There were probably plenty of unsuccessful actors who had good looks and were good at acting. Many of the top actors and actresses who had a slew of box office hits had times when they were unknown… Hmm. I guess I should gather more information about how these people became successful.

At 7, we went out to buy some food. Since they told me to go to the convenience store and buy whatever there was to eat, I bought plenty of boxed lunches and salads and returned with bulging bags. This was our breakfast. Looking at this, it looked like I wouldn’t be able to proper take care of my meals while working here.

Once the members were done with their makeup, they were stuffed back into the van. Today’s schedule was a music program on a cable network.

Kpop Concert. KpopCon for short.

Since the quadruplets were avid viewers, I ended up watching a few shows as well. A group swarmed out, performed their song and returned, another would swarm out and do their dance and return. To me, they all looked the same, but it was surprising to see the quadruplets name each of them…

The van drove along the Olympic Highway as we made our way to Sangam-dong. The traffic was congested with cars going to work.

When I looked out the window to yawn, I realized the sky had turned bright.

Right, it was morning.

Although it felt like it was the afternoon, we were just starting our day.