After finishing a brief text exchange with PD Nam Yunsoo, Seon-ho headed to a café near the broadcasting station.
It was because Nam had said he’d be there within the hour.
At the café, as Seon-ho was placing his order, a female employee in a uniform asked him a question.
“Which team are you with?”
“Pardon?”
“I mean, which group are you from?”
Understanding the question, Seon-ho smiled.
“I’m with Personal Color.”
“Don’t joke.”
“I’m serious. I really am with Personal Color.”
The employee gave a sceptical laugh at his answer.
“Which one are you? Baek Songyi, Woochan, Teiji, Riha, or An Jia?”
“Hmm… Woochan.”
“Yeah, right. Our Woochan oppa is way more… well, not better-looking maybe, but way sexier than you!”
Seon-ho paused at the words “our Woochan oppa.”
“…Are you a Personal Color fan?”
“Yes! And you look like a rookie, so you really shouldn’t pretend to be a senior member!”
Seon-ho looked at the employee with fresh curiosity.
He had figured there must be fans of Personal Color out there somewhere—but seeing one in person was strange and almost surreal.
It felt like encountering a creature that had only existed in imagination.
“You’re really a Personal Color fan?”
“Why? You got a problem?”
“No. I just don’t think I’ve seen one before.”
“Wow, sounds like you’ve done this fake act more than once.”
The employee pulled out her phone.
“See this?”
What she showed was the main screen of the Personal Color fan café Canvas.
But Seon-ho’s eyes caught something else first.
2,328 members.
“It’s grown a lot, huh?”
“Sorry? What has?”
“The café’s membership. I think it had barely passed a thousand just a few days ago.”
“It grew a bit after the official Idol War casting article dropped… wait, how do you know that?”
“Because I’m with Personal Color.”
“Oh my god… can’t you see this?”
She pointed to the ‘Manage Café’ button just below the member count.
“I run this café, you know. This is the official fan café of Personal Color.”
“But Personal Color doesn’t have an official fan café yet.”
“If the company’s not managing one, the one with the most members is the official café!”
Seon-ho was utterly fascinated by the employee’s fiery outburst.
Not only was this café worker a Personal Color fan—a group whose fans were said to be rarer than endangered animals—but she was also the president of the fan club.
“Why did you become fan of Personal Color?”
“Why should I tell you?”
“No reason. Just curious. But you don’t have to if you don’t want to.”
With a tch, the employee finally spoke.
“About two years ago? I was at a taping of Music Box on a rainy day. Slipped and got mud all over my clothes…”
Her eyes closed as she recalled the day.
“And then Woochan oppa happened to walk by.”
“And?”
“He must’ve thought I looked pitiful. Gave me clean clothes to change into, opened his car door so I could change in there, and even bought me a coffee because I looked cold. And get this—I was holding a fan sign with another group’s name on it. But he still helped me… That’s when I became a fan.”
“Yeah, Woochan’s a nice guy.”
“He’s not just nice. He’s hot, too. When his eyelashes droop after sweating… my heart just goes wild.”
Now her eyes turned dreamy.
Just a few minutes ago she’d been yelling at him, but all it took was a mention of Woochan to make her forget everything.
Back when Manager Kwon Hosan had said, “To real fans, idols are basically gods,” Seon-ho thought he was exaggerating—but now he saw it wasn’t.
And strangely, it didn’t feel silly or pathetic.
Sure, there were probably over-the-top fans out there, but the employee in front of him didn’t seem like one of them.
Her devotion felt pure.
“This is what you meant when you said Woochan is sexy, right?”
Seon-ho pulled out his phone and showed her a picture.
Woochan, dripping with sweat, in gray shorts and a loose T-shirt.
He’d taken the photo during a practice session, just in case they needed it for promotions one day.
The employee gasped, tossed aside her own phone, and carefully received Seon-ho’s phone with both hands.
“H-How did you get such a precious photo…?”
“Go ahead, swipe through.”
Each time she swiped, a strange sound of awe escaped her lips.
Thank god the boss wasn’t around—otherwise she might’ve been fired on the spot.
Though Woochan was her favorite, she reacted the same way to the other members’ pictures too.
“What are you? Are you maybe a new member of Personal Color?”
“Nope. I’m their manager.”
With the joke over, Seon-ho handed her his business card—but the employee didn’t believe him at all.
At first, he thought it might be due to his looks.
But it turned out she actually thought he was some professional scammer targeting fans for money.
She even tried to call 112 in a rage.
In the end, only a video call between her and Woochan cleared up the misunderstanding.
Once the commotion passed, she returned to him, starstruck from the call, carrying his coffee.
Upon closer inspection, she wasn’t just carrying coffee—there was also a box of assorted cookies and a slice of cake.
“I only ordered coffee…”
“The cake’s on the house. The cookies… are a gift to Personal Color.”
She looked embarrassed, probably feeling guilty about mistaking him for a scammer.
“All right. In return, I’ll take a photo with the gift and send it to you—so you can post it on Canvas.”
“O-Of course! I’d be honored!”
They exchanged numbers, and Seon-ho saved her under the nickname ‘OurWoochan.’
Seeing that he wasn’t angry, the employee looked visibly relieved and asked,
“Manager-nim, do you think Idol War will go well this time?”
“Of course. It’ll go great.”
“Really?”
“Yes. We’ve worked really hard preparing for it.”
“I don’t even hope for them to win or anything… I just want them to survive as long as possible.”
“Actually, that reminds me.”
Taking a sip of his coffee, Seon-ho shifted the conversation.
“One of the ranking metrics in Idol War is SNS buzz.”
“Oh? Really?”
“Yep. I think other companies have already started doing some ‘boosting.’ And they’ve probably contacted their fan club presidents secretly.”
The employee tilted her head.
“I keep an eye on a lot of other fan cafés, and I didn’t hear anything like that.”
“They wouldn’t say it openly. No one wants the backlash. It probably only went out to the VVIPs under strict secrecy.”
“Ah… I see.”
In reality, most of the so-called “monitoring staff” in entertainment companies were just tasked with boosting metrics.
Boosting—also known as abusing—meant repeatedly searching specific keywords to push them onto real-time search rankings, or refreshing pages to increase view counts.
The employee asked,
“But isn’t MOK famous for not doing that kind of thing? No boosting, no fake buys?”
“True. CEO Kim Dong-han believes fake popularity will come back to bite you eventually.”
“Then what do we do? We already have fewer fans as it is…”
Actually, MOK also did some astroturfing. *Manipulated publicity
It wasn’t like they had a professional team—just the PR team helping out when they had time on the side.
But astroturfing was only ever a catalyst, no matter the company. It couldn’t create public opinion out of thin air.
No matter how many sparks you made, you still needed something flammable for a fire to catch.
In that sense, Personal Color was in the most disadvantaged position.
Producer Nam probably had that in mind, too.
“So, I was thinking—what if we move the Canvas to a full-on SNS page?”
At Seon-ho’s suggestion, the part-timer made a troubled face.
“On SNS pages, posts don’t stay visible, and it’s hard to find what you’re looking for, so they’re not that great for fandom activity… A lot of fan cafés have flopped trying to move too quickly to SNS.”
“But a lot of them do well too, right?”
“Only the really, really popular ones. Teams that are big enough to run both a fan café and an SNS page separately. But for our café, splitting things up would be a disaster. If we’re going to SNS, we’d have to shut down the café entirely.”
The part-timer continued.
“And the real problem is the trolls and hate commenters. There are way too many of them.”
“Hm.”
“The café requires sign-ups, and I can manage it. But SNS is so open that the troll comments get really bad. Just random people throwing insults while scrolling by—it really stresses the fans out.”
“I realized something while reading the comments on the recent article. Fights are perfect for setting things on fire.”
“What?”
“When people fight, comments increase. And when comments increase, so does the topic trend score, right?”
“Well, yeah…”
“Once the idol war is over, we’re going to need an official homepage. Because they’re going to get popular.”
Seon-ho said with a smile.
“I can offer you the position of site admin, at least. The company will cover some support costs too.”
At that, the part-timer raised their hand excitedly.
“I’d love to do it!”
Seon-ho was waiting for Producer Nam Yunsoo while staring out the window.
He had already finished his coffee. He’d refused the part-timer’s offer to buy another and ordered one himself.
Producer Nam, who’d said he’d be there within an hour, still hadn’t shown up after an hour and a half.
Sure, tomorrow was the first recording day, so he might genuinely be swamped—but Seon-ho figured he was doing this on purpose.
A kind of power play.
Seon-ho looked down at his half-eaten cake and recalled what he’d said to the part-timer.
“Once the idol war is over, we’re going to need an official homepage. Because they’re going to get popular.”
He truly believed that.
But that belief depended on one assumption—that Producer Nam Yunsoo wouldn’t pull any tricks.
No matter how spectacular the performance, a cleverly edited video could twist everything.
If the footage was mostly reactions from other teams and audience shots, with their stage chopped into fragments, viewers watching on TV wouldn’t be able to make a proper judgment.
And even those reactions could be pulled from elsewhere.
They could take a different team’s reaction and overlay it onto Personal Color’s performance.
That’s why Seon-ho had come here today.
To become the godfather.
To threaten Producer Nam Yunsoo.
Bzzzz.
Just then, Seon-ho’s phone buzzed.
“Americano. No syrup. Strong.”
It was a short message from Producer Nam.
Seon-ho chuckled at the text and turned to the part-timer.
“Ordering another coffee?”
“It’s for someone I’m meeting.”
“Should I bring out two at once, then?”
“Sure.”
The part-timer tilted their head as they watched Seon-ho return to his seat.
They’d just been talking a moment ago, but his entire vibe had shifted.
Even someone as oblivious to mood as them could tell—he seemed like a completely different person.
Did something upset him?
But all the manager had done was sit there and check a text message.
Weird. Maybe something’s going on.
The part-timer shook their head and started preparing the drinks.
A few moments later, Producer Nam Yunsoo entered the café.
He looked about as haggard as Seon-ho—or even worse.
Hollow eyes, dark circles down to his jaw, messy hair, and a wrinkled shirt that looked like it had been worn for days.
The very picture of exhaustion.
“You’re late.”
Seon-ho stood up and handed him the coffee.
“It’s been a while since I directed a program. I’m swamped.”
“Shall we talk outside?”
“Outside? Where?”
“In my car.”
At Seon-ho’s suggestion, Producer Nam scoffed.
“I see what this is about… Fine, let’s go.”
Even though it was broad daylight, the underground parking lot was dim.
And quiet.
After climbing into the Personal Color van and taking a few sips of coffee, Producer Nam spoke.
“Recording’s tomorrow, and you’re only contacting me now?”
“What you asked for wasn’t something I could handle on my own.”
“Asked? What did I ask for?”
“You requested someone from the blacklist, didn’t you?”
“Did I?”
Producer Nam shrugged.
“I don’t recall that.”
Feigning innocence, he continued.
“This is such a textbook setup.”
“What setup?”
“Hmm… so what comes next? A bribe?”
Producer Nam reached over to the glove compartment on the dashboard and rummaged around.
He pulled out a thick white envelope.
“Wow, that’s hefty. Doesn’t feel like checks, though.”
He casually tossed the envelope at Seon-ho and asked,
“So where’s the recorder and the camera? If you were planning to use the dashcam, that’s insulting.”
“……”
A heavy silence filled the van.
Seon-ho just hung his head, while Producer Nam seemed to savor the moment.
After a long pause, Nam finally said,
“Mr. Han Seon-ho, you came in here acting all dramatic. I was kind of looking forward to this. But this is just disappointing.”
“……”
“You bring up a blacklist, hand me an envelope, and record it to blackmail me?”
“……”
“You really picked up all the wrong tricks… If you’re going to learn, at least do it right.”
Despite Producer Nam’s mocking words, Seon-ho remained silent, his head bowed.
Then Producer Nam noticed Seon-ho’s shoulders shaking.
He looked bewildered.
“What, are you crying?”
Still no response.
But the trembling only grew more intense.
Then, Nam’s expression hardened.
Because he realized—Seon-ho wasn’t holding back tears.
He was holding back laughter.
“…Hahaha.”
Then came a burst of laughter.