“Then we will begin DM Entertainment's regular meeting.”
The entertainment agency held its regular meeting on the first day of every month.
Each month, DM Entertainment reviewed the revenue and schedules of its debuted singers and the progress of its trainees, then decided whether to place those trainees on the debut team.
The main agenda today was a report that the singer whose album ‘Tom boy’ had become a massive hit last year had fallen into a slump while preparing a second single.
“Haa.”
CEO Kim Dae-myeong sighed.
This was the problem with a fledgling agency.
If the first singer it debuted delayed their activities because of a slump, an accident, or some other reason, the agency had no choice but to halt its activities too.
Training a new singer in preparation for cases like this was a fledgling agency's highest priority.
“What about those kids?”
CEO Kim Dae-myeong—no, not only the CEO, but all ten or so employees at DM Entertainment—had high hopes for the newly selected trainees.
The two who had displayed abilities far beyond those of any other applicants at the audition.
They had recruited exactly those two and no one else, placing all their faith in them.
It had now been one week since the two became trainees. The employees were curious about whether they were adjusting well to the company.
In response to CEO Kim Dae-myeong's question, vocal trainer Park Mi-yeong and dance trainer Jang Ji-su shot him resentful looks.
“Why are you looking at me like that?”
“Are they really trainees? Teaching them isn't satisfying at all.”
Park Mi-yeong, who had come to work excited to have trainees for the first time in ages, had suffered a great disappointment.
The kid named Yujin sang so well that it seemed genuinely insane.
His technique felt slightly lacking, but when it came to putting emotion into a song, Park Mi-yeong could confidently call him the best of all the trainees she had ever seen.
And what about the kid named Chanhwi? He lacked some of Yujin's depth, but his technique was outstanding. He could rap well and knew exactly where to pause.
Even saying they were lacking only meant those aspects seemed slightly weaker compared with their greatest strengths.
Neither was at a level that required a trainer's instruction.
Instead, Park Mi-yeong could tell that the two had worked hard for the fields they loved, so she taught them with as little interference as possible.
“You didn't bring me blank canvases. You brought me finished paintings.”
Park Mi-yeong muttered about having to postpone the pleasure of teaching until the next trainee arrived. CEO Kim Dae-myeong looked away from her and turned to Jang Ji-su.
“Are you saying the same thing?”
“Uh, my situation is a little different.”
To begin with, Chanhwi was extremely good.
He had memorized the choreography for almost every dance song currently in fashion, and even when he encountered something he did not know, he could usually copy it after seeing it once.
Yujin's dancing ability, on the other hand, was atrocious.
Jang Ji-su sighed upon recalling how rigidly his body had moved. The description of a log pounding grain in a mortar suited him perfectly.
Since then, Jang Ji-su and Chanhwi had been trying to teach him, but whether they would achieve any meaningful result remained doubtful.
“Put him in ballads. Ballads. Dancing truly doesn't suit him.”
“Sorry, but I can't do that.”
CEO Kim Dae-myeong shook his head.
“They're going to debut as a duo.”
“Didn't they refuse that?”
Remembering that it had been refused, the two trainers tilted their heads.
“They did.”
‘But it would be such a waste.’
CEO Kim Dae-myeong still could not let go of the idea of those two as a duo.
“Let's wait a little longer.”
“But sir, you know we'll end up with neither one thing nor the other if we sit still like this, correct?”
At the employee's blunt criticism, CEO Kim Dae-myeong set a deadline.
“Exactly one month. We'll wait one month, see whether they maintain their form at the monthly evaluation, and then decide.”
***
“What?!”
Having finished practicing, Yujin turned his head toward the loud voice beside him.
“No, you can't tell me that now.”
Had something happened?
-Chanhwi, is there any way you can find someone?
Chanhwi, who was speaking with his smartphone pressed to his ear, met Yujin's eyes.
“I'll bring one person for now.”
Chanhwi pressed the end-call button, then grabbed Yujin's hand.
“You're coming somewhere with me today.”
“Where?”
“A part-time job.”
Leaving only those words, Chanhwi dragged Yujin off somewhere without warning.
“Beef Man...?”
As Yujin tilted his head at the unusual business name, Chanhwi entered the barbecue restaurant first.
“Boss, I'm here.”
At Chanhwi's call, the man grilling meat for a customer turned to him.
“Chanhwi. Good, you're here. Where's the new kid you mentioned?”
“I brought him.”
When Chanhwi pointed to Yujin behind him, the owner grilling meat looked at Chanhwi in surprise.
“Chanhwi, what are you going to do now?”
“About what?”
“If you bring in a tall, handsome kid like this, you'll look like a squid beside him. Are you all right with that?”
Pfft.
Stifled laughter came from the customers eating nearby.
“Come on, Boss.”
“I'm joking. Joking. Our Chanhwi is a very handsome man. Sales have gone up thanks to you.”
This was the barbecue restaurant where I had started a part-time job right after my regression.
If I explained my circumstances, I could receive an advance on my wages, so I had used that money to move between practice rooms before the audition.
I had already achieved my modest goal of taking the audition, but I had brought an extra mouth into our house and already felt self-conscious about it, so I continued the job with the intention of giving my wages to my parents.
“You came home late every day because you were working here?”
The owner tilted his head at Yujin's question.
“Came home late? Are you two...?”
“More importantly, Boss, you need to take that order.”
I quickly changed the subject before he got the wrong idea.
Conveniently, a customer behind him was waving a hand too.
Nice one, customer.
“Yes, coming! You two, hurry up and change.”
“Yes. Yes.”
“Clothes? What clothes?”
Before Yujin could ask his question, I quickly grabbed his wrist and pulled him into the storeroom.
In the locker room, I took out two uniforms bearing the words ‘BEEP MAN.’
I put on one and handed the other to Yujin.
“Here, put this on.”
“Hey. What is this?”
“Hurry.”
After confirming that the pouting Yujin had changed, Chanhwi dragged him out into the dining area.
“Excuse me!”
“Yes, coming!”
An order came in immediately, and I moved to take it.
“Yes. One serving of skirt steak and one serving of ribeye. Is that correct? We'll bring them right out!”
After that, Chanhwi moved so busily that the sight nearly made Yujin dizzy.
“......”
Unlike the busy Chanhwi, Yujin still stood blankly in the middle of the dining area, unable to determine what he should do.
“Excuse me.”
He realized someone had raised a hand toward him.
But Yujin's gaze moved elsewhere.
“Ah......”
The owner and Chanhwi both seemed busy grilling meat, so he had no choice but to take the order himself.
Yujin walked neatly to the customer's table, thought for a moment, and asked a question.
How had Chanhwi phrased it earlier?
“Have you decided on your order?”
“Wow, you're really handsome.”
“......?”
That did not seem like an answer to his question.
“The other server is handsome too, but you're on a completely different level.”
“Um, your order......”
The customer took a memo pad from her bag, wrote down a string of numbers, and handed it to Yujin.
“Here's my number. If you think of me later, give me a call.”
“......?”
I'd asked her for her order, so why was she giving me a number? Was I supposed to give her my phone number too?
Just as Yujin took out his phone, Chanhwi suddenly approached and grabbed his wrist.
“I'm sorry, but we don't accept numbers as part of an order.”
He took the number from Yujin's hand and returned it to the customer.
“I'll give this back to you.”
Then Yujin turned back to look at Chanhwi and spoke.
“Don't give out your number either.”
“I'm not allowed to give out my number?”
Chanhwi stared at Yujin in disbelief when he asked that.
The bastard apparently did not realize that giving out his number could cause serious trouble if matters became tangled.
‘Come to think of it, this bastard...’
Had it been shortly after his debut?
When a fan asked for his number, Yujin had naively handed it over and been hounded by that sasaeng fan for quite some time.
‘Was that when this bastard's personality began to change?’
Looking at him now, he had such vacant moments that Chanhwi wondered whether this was truly the same bastard he knew seven years later.
“If it weren't for me, you seriously would've......”
“......Don't make me laugh.”
For some reason, shrill squeals came from somewhere.
The two resumed taking customers' orders, and the owner watching them merely grinned, pleased by the prospect of increased sales.
“You're hired!”
The moment closing was over, the owner of Beef Man approached Yujin and abruptly announced that he was hired.
“Come on, Boss. He can't even grill meat.”
There had been so many orders that I once told him to grill some, but it was my fault for asking. He burned all of it, forcing us to provide the customers with another plate on the house.
Yujin pouted at my complaint before speaking.
“I still got a tip.”
“No, that's the part I don't understand?”
No matter how carefully I grilled the meat, I was lucky to receive a tip of ten or twenty thousand won, yet someone had suddenly handed him fifty thousand?
“It's because you're handsome. Ah, of course I'm not saying you're ugly, Chanhwi.”
“Oh, my head.”
***
[Breaking News: The Handsome Guys at Beef Man in XX-dong]
[Photo]
I came here because I had plans with a friend, and we got hungry around dinnertime, so we stopped at a random place?
But seriously, two ridiculously handsome guys were working as servers.
Even when I saw PTS, I never thought they were that handsome, but wow. Did faces like that really exist in this world? I asked for a number and came back to leave a review.
-So did you get the number or not?
-But their looks really were insane. XX-dong, right? I'll go tomorrow.
-Too slow. I'm already on my way.
-Damn, you're fast. Go and leave us a review too.
-OP, are you still there? Tell us whether you got his number!
-I'm the OP. I failed to get it. I tried to ask the guy in the back of that photo, but the other guy suddenly came over, grabbed his wrist, and said, “How many times have I told you? Don't give out your number.” Wow, when I saw that... Thanks for the meal.
-What the hell did you eat? Hahahaha.
-Damn, that's hilarious. Hahaha. I'm going too.
-What, what? What's going on between those two...
Perhaps word had spread somewhere, because from the day Yujin started working part-time, the number of customers doubled.
“Yes, this is Beef Man in XX-dong, rumored to have handsome servers who grill your meat. People in chat were clamoring for me to visit yesterday, so I came to see it for myself.”
It reached the point where people who called themselves NeoTubers or streamers began visiting.
“What does that person do?”
“She's a NeoTuber. It's a job where you record videos and show them to people.”
Even after hearing the explanation, Yujin looked as though he did not quite understand.
“You can make money doing that?”
“You can earn money and gain popularity.”
At that, Yujin could not take his eyes off the NeoTuber.
The NeoTuber mistook his fervent gaze for interest in her and began tidying her appearance again. The sight was so absurd that Chanhwi let out a humorless laugh.
“Why? Are you interested in that woman?”
“No, NeoTube.”
Of course.
At Yujin's answer, I thought for a moment, then asked another question.
“Then do you want to try it?”
“Can we?”
I shrugged at the question that followed.
“There's no reason we can't.”
***
Chanhwi set up a camera in front of the desk and began introducing himself with an awkward expression.
“Hello. I'm Chanhwi, a trainee.”