The Reincarnated Idol Hard Carries an Indie Band - Chapter 38

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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The Former Idol’s Indie Band Hard Carry
Episode 38
I accepted the smartphone Cha Seo-ha handed over.
What on earth could make him wear such an intrigued expression?
“Just scroll through horizontally and take a look.”
What he’d given me was dozens of screenshots.
I checked each photo carefully, one by one.
-Kang Min, you absolute traitor, showing up on music shows and joining Oktatop, what even is that
-This idol band stuff is utter garbage, they’re running such a blatant viral campaign from the start, there’s literally nothing likeable about it
-But isn’t the music at least decent?
└There are still people saying this? The company dumped capital into it, so would they really come out with trash-tier songs?
└Are you crazy? If you had money, would you buy good songs or garbage songs?
-On the music show they only seemed to do live vocals, are the instruments actually live? Or is it lip-sync?
└How would we know? Kang Min’s skilled, so maybe not for him, but the rest probably lip-synced
└There was a broadcast station strike that day, so it had to be lip-sync
└Wait, really? Not live?
└ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ A band on TV doing lip-sync ㅋㅋㅋㅋ They’ve got some nerve
-But the atmosphere at the music broadcast was really good, and you’re saying that’s not live?
└These days there’s something called Live AR where they use recordings from rehearsals or pre-recordings and play them over the actual broadcast
└Right, so most of what passes for live is just lip-syncing to track
└Huh? I’m shocked
-I kept thinking surely not, right up until the Star Watch Cam episode with Moon Ga-young aired……
└The birth of a legend. Ah, but obviously in a bad way ㅋㅋ
The screenshots he’d collected were capturing public opinion about Oktatop.
Of course, there was plenty of other content too vile to even repeat.
“Oh, by the way, the Kang Min they’re mainly cursing out is our drummer’s name.”
“Yes, but… why are you showing me this?”
“Um, just a moment, may I have the phone back?”
“Oh, sure.”
Cha Seo-ha took the phone back and after a moment showed me something else.
-[Star Watch Cam (Moon Ga-young)] Moon Ga-young VS Oktatop real match with music – who wins?
-[Special Guest Stage] Oktatop–Rendezvous #K-Countdown EP.531┃K-Net 180205 Broadcast
This time it was two YouTube thumbnail screenshots.
“Do you see the view counts?”
“The view counts?”
The two videos were approaching one million and 710,000 views respectively.
“Whoa!”
“We’re getting absolutely hammered right now. We’ve become complete villains in the band scene.”
“Yeah… that does seem to be the case.”
“We’re happy to become your scapegoat. Danggo gets the view counts pulled out, we get content riding on top. How about it?”
I’d thought this guy had caught some celebrity disease, but turns out he’s just a genuine lunatic.
The older man who came with him was laughing pleasantly.
These people are insane.
Cha Seo-ha handed me his smartphone one last time.
It contained a screenshot of comments posted on YouTube.
There, Oktatop was receiving quite a lot of love.
It wasn’t just people viewing them favorably—it had the nuance you’d only see from core fans.
Clearly divided public sentiment.
“As you can see, we’re getting cursed at in the band scene while being loved by the general public. One side clicks to curse, the other clicks out of curiosity about us, and listens to our songs.”
Like getting hit hard in the back of the head.
“To be honest, I want more attention. I think I might’ve picked up a bit of celebrity disease lately, and it’s that lack of attention that’s getting to me.”
He really is a lunatic. Who says stuff like that at a business meeting?
But wait—the real issue is that this lunatic’s proposal is far too sweet to turn down.
I submitted this planning document because I loved band music.
I thought nostalgia would draw in lots of viewers, but that was my mistake.
Right, Danggo Music was never an artist collective.
We were a business enterprise.
No matter how much we pushed music as our main content, if we don’t make money, we can’t sustain operations.
We put these kids on the chopping block and we make our profit.
And I make this project succeed.
All we need is good view counts.
“What do you think, President? Doesn’t it look promising?”
“Yeah, it does seem fun.”
While I was lost in thought for a moment, they started murmuring to each other.
It did seem fun, somehow.
If they’re willing to be a shield for my personal success, why would I have a reason to refuse?
Of course, I’ll need to do some persuading upstairs, but that’s something I have to handle.
“Good. But this isn’t a decision I can make alone—I need approval from the higher-ups, so please wait a few days.”
“Thank you for thinking positively about it.”
“Yes, I’ll be in touch soon. Let’s call it a day here.”
After I saw the two of them out, I immediately started drafting a new proposal.
* * *
“President, you really just watched today, huh?”
“A road manager shouldn’t be flapping their mouth at a business meeting.”
Aren’t there cases where a road manager does get involved?
Ah, this person’s from a major talent agency.
Then I guess they could think that way.
In the car heading home, we made small talk.
“What do you think, President? Do you think it’ll work out?”
“I think it will. That person had the look of someone who’d caught something—a hunger in their eyes.”
True businesspeople are different, aren’t they.
I wouldn’t have spotted that.
“Actually, I was ready to step in if you made any mistakes, but you handled it well.”
“Not at all, I just spoke honestly.”
“Honestly?”
“Yes, is there something wrong?”
The President’s expression stiffened slightly as he gripped the steering wheel.
“Did you really come down with celebrity disease or something?”
“Ah, that was just something I said!”
“Ah, is that so? Haha!”
The man worries like his life depends on it.
* * *
There were three reasons I wanted to appear on Killing Band.
One was naturally for the fame.
The second was to prove the Live Performance skills I couldn’t fully demonstrate on music broadcasts.
And the third was this.
“What? You guys made this?”
“Yeah, how is it?”
“I… wow.”
The song Kim Ji-hu had been working on recently was far better than I’d expected.
We’d done a rough recording with cheap mics in the practice room, so the sound quality was terrible, but the intention came through crystal clear.
“How did you put this together?”
“Oh, I laid down the framework, and Min helped a lot. The others played well too.”
Kim Ji-hu had studied piano deeply since childhood.
He’d mastered both classical and jazz piano.
So Composition wasn’t difficult for him.
Kang Min had spent a long time in the band scene.
And he’d spent considerable time with people known for their real skill.
He’d added a spoonful of the know-how he’d picked up there.
Heo Jun-sung poured his ambitions into this song.
His intentions were probably to show off more of his own parts, make himself look cooler, and all that—but such surface appeal becomes a real strength of the song.
And I heard later that Lee Do-young’s playing was excellent.
He expressed his bass line delicately yet powerfully.
During recording, there wasn’t a single moment where he played it wrong.
“When did you guys grow up like this?”
“We’re the same age?”
“No, I don’t mean it like that.”
This untitled song felt, to my ear, much like Rendezvous—it captured youth well.
But now with intensity layered in.
If Rendezvous was a song reminiscing about youth, this song was like me in that youthful moment charging toward the future.
Song quality wasn’t the point.
The fact that listening to the music stirred those feelings—that’s what deserved praise.
“So what was the intention behind this song?”
“We actually drew a lot from Rendezvous. I kept thinking, what keyword suits Oktatop? And it seemed like youth was it.”
“Mm, I see. Youth…”
“But I couldn’t just make it the same, right? So I took out some of that wistfulness from Rendezvous and added intensity and recklessness instead. Heo Jun-sung played a big part. And Lee Do-young kept it from getting too over-the-top.”
My thoughts and his intentions aligned perfectly.
“Yes, I listened very carefully.”
“…carefully?”
“My own thoughts about it, and the… well, the Composer’s intention. Yes, they aligned very well, or rather, perfectly, in a way that was, very… perfect in that regard.”
“What?”
“Yes, what I mean is, the youth, the Teenagers vibe came across so clearly, and that first impression hit me way more Wild than I expected. But it wasn’t too much, not Too much at all—it was just the right amount, threading that line really well. That kind of thing, yes.”
“What are you even talking about?”
“Kim Ji-hu.”
“What.”
“I’ll greenlight you.”
“What the hell are you saying, you lunatic.”
* * *
The first reason I wanted to appear on Killing Band was naturally to draw attention the moment we went on air.
The second reason was to showcase our true skill in a Live Performance environment better than a music broadcast.
And the last reason was that I wanted to give our next album—including this excellent song Kim Ji-hu made—a sneak peek.
No matter how much Oktatop had gained some fame, we still couldn’t pull off agency-level promotion by ourselves.
We needed media power.
On Star Watch Cam and music broadcasts, Rendezvous was all we showed properly.
If we just kept showing the same song, the cursing and interest alike would dry up.
We needed another Aggro at this point.
Of course, since Killing Band required us to fill roughly thirty minutes, preparing songs was part of that too.
And somehow, word got out that we’re preparing an album right now.
President Jang Deok-chul said it was probably because of him and apologized, but we didn’t mind.
If anything, it worked out well.
The band scene was definitely expecting our album to be a mess.
They would definitely listen to our album.
They had to hear it and laugh their hearts out.
Why not give them a little spoiler?
Of course, all of this hinged on Danggo Music contacting us to shoot episode three.
I’d communicated the pitch to the planner, but I had no way of knowing what the people above him would think.
I just had to hope he was smart enough to pull it off.
If that didn’t work out, we’d just release the album ourselves, simple as that.
Either way was fine.
-Zing…
Then a call came through, and I paused my work.
“Hey, I’m gonna take this call real quick. You guys think about how to finish off this back section.”
“Okay.”
I tossed the song I’d been working on to the others and left the practice room to take the call.
“Hello, President.”
-Yeah, Seo-ha, word came through.
“What did they say?”
-They want to shoot.
“Episode three?”
-Yeah, episode three.
“Yes!”
-You worked hard. I’ll text you the shooting date and location.
“Thank you, President. You worked hard too.”
-Hard work nothing, all I did was drive. Anyway, keep working on the songs.
“Okay, I’ll hang up now.”
I need to go back in and brag to the guys right away.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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