Save a Failed Idol’s Life

#026. From Opportunity to Crisis

After taking a picture, I first turned on the editing app. 

At this age, you might say that I know how to do everything, but—.

It was my theory that the CEO of the food division, who lives on marketing, doesn’t know how to do this much.

Originally, there was a separate department in charge of this kind of thing.

Is it because I came up from the bottom when there was nothing?

If I didn’t know how to do even this little thing on my own, I wouldn’t be satisfied. 

‘It’s called perfectionism in a good way, and tired style in a bad way.’

That’s how I wrote the myth of the restaurant industry and survived, so I could say that my judgment was correct in the end.

With a few clicks, the color temperature was raised with a few clicks to make the food look as appetizing as possible.

The colors of the faces were adjusted so that the skin didn’t appear too yellow or red.

“Okay, they all came out pretty.”

Yejun screamed when I showed the screen to everyone to check before uploading it.

“Hyung, are you crazy? Are you going to post it like this?”

“Let’s take another picture again, I don’t think this is right.”

People who had never disagreed about my opinion before were suddenly shaking their heads in groups.

“Is this so strange?”

Everyone’s face came out neatly with no cuts, and the food came out looking really delicious. 

I didn’t expect much, but I showed it to Seongwon, hoping that even this guy would take my side. 

“I… I don’t know.” 

Seongwon replied in a voice that looked really unsure.

“Hey, you don’t have eagerness in selfies, so that’s why, eagerness!” 

I couldn’t figure out what the hell he was talking about.

“Tell me to understand. Because I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Then, Kyunghwa replied with a genuinely embarrassed expression.

“Do you really think this picture is okay?”

“Yeah. So, could you please explain?” 

I was quite surprised as I had never seen Kyunghwa look so serious. 

“What if you only took pictures of the food to make it look delicious! Seongwon and I came out very strangely. His chin sticks out, his eyes wide open.”

What do you mean ugly? If the eyes, nose, and mouth come out well without any cuts, that’s a good shot. 

When I narrowed my eyes as if it was a joke, Kyunghwa took away my cell phone.

“I’m going to take the picture again, so you stand at my place.”

I was momentarily confused, but then I did what Kyunghwa told me to do and moved and changed places.

“Raise your head a little more, put a light in your eyes to come out well. If you cast shadows in your pupils, you might be ridiculed for looking gloomy.”

As Kyunghwa told me, I changed my position, and the picture was taken as if it were a pictorial.

“Do I have to go this far?”

Rather, the food was taken out of focus and looked less appetizing than before.

When I licked my lips in regret, Kyunghwa replied in an unprecedentedly stern voice.

“Anyway, there’s no eagerness in this good-looking things. Eagerness.” 

“Who will write the comment?”

“I’ll write it, Yise, I can’t entrust you with something like an old man. What do you mean by kimchi?”

“What am I?”

Who is the one who keeps saying things I can’t understand? The one inside is in his 40s, what should I do? Do you think you will never age?

I swallowed the complaint that was building up inside me.

Then, I edited the photo again to make it taste good and sent it to my manager.

[Me] Hello, manager hyung. You should be taking a break, I’m sorry. Right now, Sunwoo seems to have become a hot topic when he posts the lunch box I packed for him on his sister’s SNS. Even our SNS followers have increased, so I’m going to take a picture like this and post what we’ve been up to. Is it okay? 7:13 pm.

Even though it wasn’t that late, I didn’t get a reply, as if he was doing something else. 

We shouldn’t miss a golden time like this. We should row when the attention is at its peak.

We decided to upload it right away because there’s nothing that could hurt our image, which is already bad because we’re failed idols anyway.

If something goes wrong with this, they’ll say it’s done, put off a comeback or something, and think about disbanding it.

[The number of followers has increased a lot! Thank you for your interest. I’m sure everyone is curious about who made the salad, so I’m revealing the answer. 

Cheon Yise, who is known as Climax’s sexy brain, will soon come back with a recipe that anyone can easily follow.

#Climax #NaSunyoungSalad #Polaris #Thank_you_for_eating_deliciously #Sunwoo #Yise #Seongwon #Kyunghwa #Yejun]

When Kyunghwa uploaded a picture with a carefully written comment, the number of shares soared instantly.

The response didn’t come this fast, even when I paid and advertised. 

In an instant, shared numbers went from single to double digits and from double to triple digits. 

“Wow, there are so many quotes and comments!”

“I didn’t know there were so many people watching.”

Yejun was surprised to find out each and every reaction people left, and his eyebrows wriggled dramatically.

Most of the responses were about who these guys are, what they do, and what group they are in.

What—their mouth is watering? I saw quite a bit of such talk. It must look delicious no matter what on someone else’s table. 

“What, why are you talking like this?”

Yejun was frowning, so I looked into what he saw, and it was—someone trying to make a hot topic about a failed idol who was sticking to his sister. That’s what it was about.

It was enough to ignore such things. It’s not like anyone asked me to make it. It was foolish to throw away an opportunity that came without a hitch.

Has it been like that for 30 minutes? As the share number broke through the four digits, then I got a call from Manager Hyung. 

“Yes, Hyung. I sent it via chat earlier.”

Then Manager Hyung was surprised and asked.

– What’s happening? What is Na Sunyoung salad?

I answered calmly.

“That’s how things turned out. Sunwoo slept at his home for the night and I brought him a lunch box to eat. Sunyoung Noona ate it and posted a proof shot on Instagram.” 

– What? That kid? 

“Yeah. Thanks to that, our group also got a little publicity and the number of followers increased a bit… Looking at it earlier, it was about 800….” 

When I asked Kyunghwa to check the exact figure with a gesture, Kyunghwa’s eyes opened with surprise.

“What? What’s wrong with your face?”

Then Kyunghwa replied with an expression that looked like he would cry at any moment. 

“We have more than 10,000 followers!”

– What?

The manager, who was listening on the phone, was surprised to hear Kyunghwa’s shout and asked loudly.

I put the phone back on speakerphone for a moment so he could hear what we were saying. 

“You didn’t see it wrong?” 

“No, it finally changed to 10K. The number of shares is now over 4,000.”

Fortunately, taking pictures and posting them seemed to be an appropriate action to take when the tide came in.

“Hyung? Are you listening?”

I first drew attention to addressing the areas that needed the help of a manager. Then it switched back to normal mode.

– Y, yeah, sorry. I was surprised to see if what Kyunghwa said was true, so I went to check it out.

“Fortunately, I think the publicity went well. So that’s what I mean. Could we do a live broadcast right away, like tomorrow?”

Then the Manager answered after hesitating a little.

– I think it will be around 9 o’clock tomorrow night. Are 2 hours enough?

If it’s 2 hours… I’ve never done an idol live broadcast, so I’ll have to try it. It was a perfect time to show who ‘we’ were.

“Yes, that’s enough.”

– Yes, it’s time for Floss’ regular live show from 11 o’clock, so you only have to finish it within that time. I’ll tell Kyunghwa how to turn on the broadcast, so prepare what to do in advance.

Originally, this is an area that we need to take care of.

There was unexpected good news, so they would give permission, but it was obvious that they couldn’t support it.

“Yes, I understand.” 

– Yeah, well…you have to think that there are all sorts of special things in life. I’d like to help with something, but I’m busy with work right now, so there’s nothing I can do. 

“No, it can’t be helped. We’ll do well on our own.” 

It can’t be helped. It would have been distasteful as a company to waste dedicated manpower on a group that didn’t make money—.

It was heartbreaking that we couldn’t get help when we really needed the staff. 

“Yeah, you guys are the ones who do it. The comeback isn’t too far away, so take advantage of this opportunity.”

The situation was inevitable, but I didn’t even feel grateful for the verbal support. 

When I finished the call and put down my phone, Yejun continued to refresh the SNS page.

“What? Stop it.” 

It’s not stereotypical behavior. When I took Yejun’s phone as if I were taking it away, Yejun raised his head.

“Hyung, the number of followers increases every time I keep refreshing.” 

Looking at the screen at Yejun’s words, the number that had just passed 10,000 just before had changed to 13k.

The number of shares also doubled.

“Is this something to react to?”

When I went into the notification window in bewilderment, there was one tab that kept getting notifications as well as posts.

“What is this…” 

As I read the grayed-out text, a notification message popped up saying, “Kang Yoogun tagged me in my post.”

‘What, why is this brat here?’ 

Click. When I clicked on the notification area with my finger, a short word was added.

[ㅋㅋ Please invite me too!]

When I clicked on the profile of the account that wrote the post, there was an official account mark next to it.

‘Our account didn’t have an official mark….’

More than that, weren’t idols who just debuted banned on their personal SNS these days? 

Feeling a bit resentful, I looked at his account some more. 

What’s good about posts that are only eight letters, including exclamation points?

Less than 20 minutes after it was uploaded, the number of shares exceeded 40K.

Looking at the posts that even posted selfies, it had more than 100,000 shares. 

‘Their popularity is really overwhelming.’

The group’s own announcement account alone has 8 million followers. Each member had 2 million followers.

It would be a lie if I said I wasn’t jealous.

However, it was my theory that apart from individual annoyances, nothing comes for free. 

In his own way, this guy would have been dealing with the pressure of having millions of people watch him.

‘I don’t know why he suddenly asked me to invite him.’

Anyway, after Kang Yoogun’s post, I could see that the number of followers increased tremendously.

“This…Are we supposed to respond this?” 

Kyunghwa swallowed dry saliva and looked at me.

We couldn’t pretend we didn’t know when we were getting attention, as if we suddenly opened a portal.

“L, let’s press like for now.”

Yejun wiggled his fingers and pressed the empty heart to fill it with red.

Then, Kang Yoogun immediately posted a new post with a messy selfie that seemed to have been taken roughly.

[If you press like, does it mean you’ll invite me?]

[Picture]

This time, people started sharing it faster than before, probably because it had a selfie attached to it.

“What should we do?”

The bewildered eyes of the three handsome men were instantly pierced by me.

No matter how many trials and tribulations I went through and how tall I stood as a businessman, this was the first time.

What should we do if an overwhelming top star who has once given us shit suddenly shows a beneficial interest?

My head hurt like a storm was coming in.