Save a Failed Idol’s Life

Translator: MarcTempest

Editor: NicoleTempest

Chapter 211 Pretending to be reluctant

It took a while for the door to open after the intercom was cut off inside. I guess she was getting ready to greet the guests.

“Hello!”

All three of us had rather gloomy faces until the door opened, but as soon as her mother appeared, we switched to business mode and greeted her with the happiest smiles in the world.

“Oh, you came with three people? I don’t think I’ve met one of you before?”

Her mother, who had a keen eye, noticed me right away and asked. I put down the gift I was holding in my hand and handed her my business card.

“Hello, are you Naru’s mother? I’m Cheon Ise, the head of Composition, a label under WePlanet. It’s not as grand as it sounds, we’re a place that handles various things from album entertainment to web variety shows, centered around our affiliated groups.”

WePlanet was already disappointing enough, let alone Composition, which she probably had never heard of. Her mother’s expression darkened.

I quickly flipped over the back of my business card and showed it to her.

“We’re a new label, so you might not be familiar with us, but we’re only cooperating with WePlanet for business purposes. You can think of us as a subsidiary of Cheon Soo Group.”

As soon as I mentioned Cheon Soo Group, her mother lifted her head and looked back and forth between me and the name on the card.

Cheon was a fairly common surname, but still. He looked too young for such a plausible position, and he had the Cheon Soo Group behind him.

She seemed to have something in mind and asked me bluntly.

“Is your father the chairman?”

I nodded with a cool smile.

“Yes, that’s right. He’s the chairman of Cheon Soo Group.”

Then she seemed to have some interest in what I was saying and stepped back to make way for us to enter the living room.

“Hmm… Well, I’ve prepared some tea, so warm yourselves up a bit. It’s cold today.”

Sigh… She doesn’t seem like someone who would let this go easily. I sighed inwardly and took off my shoes and put on the guest slippers.

Yu-geon was acting like a polite and friendly young man with a constant smile on his face, and Hwijin was a bit nervous, but he didn’t show any signs of trembling since he was an actor by nature.

“Thank you. Then, please excuse us.”

As soon as we stepped into the living room, we heard a voice from inside the room that Naru was presumably using.

“Mom, tell them I’m not home!”

“…”

“Ahem…”

Yu-geon failed to hold back his laughter and turned his head, shaking his shoulders. I pinched his arm in a direction that her mother couldn’t see.

“Naru must be having a hard time…”

I laughed as if I was looking at a distant mountain and said, and her mother started to complain.

“I shouldn’t have left it to President Hong as he wanted! You all know, right? The voting was really fair, without any manipulation. It was a matter of explaining it well, but he couldn’t solve it and made it like this. I’m so upset that he’s not eating and acting like that.”

She was not regretting why she did something that was not honorable to others, but complaining why she entrusted it to someone who couldn’t handle it properly and made her suffer.

The voting was indeed as her mother said, the fans had gathered one by one. But how could it be nothing to start from a slightly favorable starting line with a subtle preference?

Even if it was virtual, if they knew how frustrated and miserable the trainees who didn’t get the attention of the camera and were outside the screen were, they wouldn’t think so.

‘But Naru wasn’t in that position from the beginning.’

So, after receiving all the benefits like this, pretending that nothing happened. In the end, everyone felt the most wronged and pitiful from their own perspective.

Even if he was one of the privileged ones in that program.

I glanced at Yu-geon, who clenched his fists on his knees.

“You must be very heartbroken. Then, do you have any plans for your future activities?”

I asked, ignoring my mother’s complaints. With such a big issue… the large or medium-sized companies with some name value wouldn’t want to take him.

He might have gotten some offers from small ones, but he would have snorted at the ones with no sales power that were smaller than WePlanet.

“Well… for now, the controversy is not dying down, so~. I was thinking of giving him some time to rest and think for himself.”

Look at that. If a large company said they would take us, he would have signed OK by now. The meeting that said they would take him was probably canceled.

“Hmm… I see. What about Naru? Does he think the same?”

As soon as I nodded calmly, someone burst open the door and jumped out.

“I, no, no more… I, I won’t be a singer! I’m going to retire!”

His face was very red and swollen. Naru, who seemed to have written “I’ve been crying since this morning” on the door, squeaked and came out to the living room.

“Oh… you’re brave.”

Yu-geon exclaimed mockingly, as if he wasn’t the one who raised him, and I stepped on his foot with my slipper.

Then Naru screamed with his eyes full of tears.

“What, what are you doing here! Who, who came to raise, sniff, him?”

He was very polite to his mother in the video, but. His voice got louder when he talked to us, as if we were easy.

“I didn’t come to raise him. I came to give Naru a chance.”

Then he got angrier and glared at me and yelled.

“Ha…! What do you want? The internet, the school, the reporters, they all make me trash, what do you want to give me a chance?”

Naru’s fierce reaction, as if he had touched his sore spot, startled my mother, who had a lot of affection for the word ‘Cheon Soo Group’.

“Hey, don’t talk like that to your brothers who came to see you because they were worried!”

But even that pushed Naru’s nerve button, and he raised his voice at his mother for the first time.

“Mom, you…. don’t know anything!”

He probably still had a grudge against me for the advice I gave him when he lost his voice.

Does he think I’m a nobleman who hasn’t suffered more than him? I snorted, but I was here to help him out for now.

“Sit down for a moment. I’ll explain it to you slowly.”

I smiled patiently at Naru. I wanted to give him a honeycomb and ask him what he knew, but I was an adult and he was still a kid.

If the life he had experienced was limited to the narrow cage that his parents had set, then. He would think that his own thorn was more impressive than someone else’s gunshot wound.

Yu-geon watched the situation with interest, and Hwijin couldn’t intervene and didn’t know what to do. I was the only one who looked at my mother and Naru alternately and smiled kindly.

You can’t spit on a smiling face.

***

“Ha…. It’s finally over.”

A little later. As soon as I got back in the passenger seat after taking the elevator down to the parking lot, Hwijin sighed with relief.

I did the most work, but why are you the most tired? I smirked with a sense of injustice and grabbed the handle.

“I’ve already told him, so now we have to wait for his decision.”

I drove the car casually (well, it was not my business anyway) and took a sip of water to refresh my mouth.

“You can stay at my place. And Mr. Hwijin, you’re going to the hotel, right?”

I glanced at the navigation and asked. Hwijin nodded.

“Ah, yes. I’ll talk to my manager and see if I can switch labels based on today’s situation.”

“Okay. We don’t have much time, so please cooperate as much as possible to resolve this within a week.”

“Yes…!”

Hwijin looked at me with sparkling eyes, as if I was his savior. It made me feel uncomfortable.

Of course. Naru didn’t want to hear anything from me because of his resentment. My mother still couldn’t accept the current situation and dreamed of a rosy future with the agencies.

It was a remarkable feat to get him to say ‘I’ll think about it.’ in this hopeless situation.

‘Well… that’s that.’

It was all thanks to Malbal that I changed the stubborn mind of the boss.

I had been observing Naru closely for a while, looking for something to learn from Seong-won or Seon-woo, who were in the same main vocal position or received attention for their visuals. I used that information as much as possible.

Naru had various strengths, and some of them were maximized in certain areas, but they were not highlighted in the previous activities, which was a pity.

If I could take charge of the whole production process, I would support him to make Naru more noticeable by enhancing those aspects.

That was all I said. It also helped that the conditions I could offer from the composition were not bad.

People tend to be more swayed when someone shows interest in them in detail, rather than just saying ‘You did great.’.

‘Especially for someone like Naru, who has too much self-consciousness.’

He said he would think about it and contact me, trying to save his pride, but the result would probably not be bad.

He will call me by tomorrow afternoon at the latest.

“Anyway, you all worked hard today, so go and get some rest.”

I dropped off Yu-geon at my place first and then took Hwijin to his hotel. Then I returned to our dorm with a long sigh.

Luckily, I was able to come back a little after lunch and the members who were waiting at the dorm greeted me.

“Did it go well?”

Seon-woo, who didn’t even know what I was doing, asked me first if it went well, making me laugh.

“I think it will be fine.”

I patted Seon-woo’s head and threw my tired body onto the bed. As the fatigue hit me all at once, my eyes closed involuntarily.

‘Ah… I need to wash up and sleep first…’

I lost consciousness before I could think any further. When I woke up later, my coat was gone and the blanket was covering me.

‘I must have looked pitiful.’

I stretched my back and got up, and saw a missed call on my phone screen.

‘Was it Yu-geon or Hwijin? Or Naru?’

I opened the phone screen, thinking of the possible line-up, and one of the expected calls had arrived.

[H] Floss will have a disbandment press conference tomorrow 3:11 PM

It was late or early news, depending on how you look at it.