Save a Failed Idol’s Life

Translator: MarcTempest

Editor: NicoleTempest

Chapter 27 From Opportunity to Crisis

The first thing I did after taking the picture was to turn on the editing app.

I guess I could say that I can do anything at this age, but…

As a food industry CEO who lives on marketing, I shouldn’t be ignorant of this much.

That was my opinion.

Originally, there was a separate department, or rather, an employee who was in charge of this kind of thing.

But maybe it was because I came up from the bottom when there was nothing.

I couldn’t stand it if I didn’t know how to do even such a trivial thing myself.

‘You could say I’m a perfectionist, or you could say I’m a tiring style.’

That’s how I wrote the legend of the food industry and survived, so I could say that my judgment was right in the end.

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

I adjusted the color of the faces so that they wouldn’t look too yellow or red.

“Good, everyone looks pretty.”

I showed them the screen, thinking of getting confirmation from everyone before uploading it, and Yi-jun screamed.

“Hyung, are you crazy? You’re going to upload this as it is?”

“Let’s take it again, this doesn’t look right.”

The guys who had never been negative about my opinion suddenly shook their heads in unison.

“What’s so weird about this?”

The faces were all neatly cut without any flaws, and the food looked delicious.

I didn’t expect much, but I hoped that this guy would be on my side, so I showed it to Seong-won as well.

“I don’t know…”

Seong-won answered with a voice that looked really unsure for the first time.

“Hey, you don’t have any desperation for selfies, that’s why. Desperation!”

I had no idea what he was talking about.

“Speak so I can understand. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Then, Kyunghwa answered with a sincere expression of confusion.

“You really don’t see any problem with this picture?”

“Well. Then explain it to me.”

I was quite surprised to see Kyunghwa look so serious.

“What’s the point of making the food look delicious! Seong-won and I look terrible. Our chins are sticking out, our eyes are squinting.”

They looked ugly. If there was no part of the eyes, nose, or mouth that was cut off, that meant it was well taken.

I narrowed my eyes as if I was being unreasonable, and Kyunghwa snatched my phone.

“I’ll take it again, so you stand in my place earlier.”

I moved to change places as Kyunghwa told me.

“Lift your head a little more, the light has to get into your eyes. If there’s a shadow on your pupil, you’ll look gloomy and be ridiculed.”

As I followed Kyunghwa’s instructions, the picture looked like a magazine shoot.

“Do I have to do this much?”

The food lost its focus and looked less delicious than before.

As I regained my appetite, Kyunghwa answered with an unprecedented stern voice.

“Anyway. The handsome ones have no desperation. Desperation.”

“Who’s going to write the caption?”

“I’ll do it, Ise. You sound like an old man, I can’t trust you. What’s kimchi, kimchi.”

“What did I do?”

Who has been making incomprehensible noises since earlier. I’m in my forties inside, what do you want me to do? Do you think you won’t age?

I swallowed the resentment that rose up inside me.

And then I edited the picture to make it look more appetizing and sent it to my manager.

[Me] Hello, manager hyung. I’m sorry to bother you when you’re probably resting. It seems that Seon-woo has posted the lunchbox I made for him on noona’s SNS and it’s become a hot topic. Our SNS followers have also increased a lot, so I wanted to post this picture of our recent situation. Is that okay? 7:13 PM

Even though it wasn’t that late, he didn’t reply. Maybe he was busy with something else.

I couldn’t miss the golden time. I had to take advantage of the attention while it lasted.

Anyway, we were already a flop, so it’s not like our image would get worse. I decided to post it right away.

If this caused any trouble, I would just say it was a good thing and postpone our comeback and whatever else. Maybe he was already thinking of disbanding us.

[Wow, our follower count has skyrocketed! Thank you for your interest. You must be curious who made the salad. Here’s the answer.

Climax’s certified sexy man, Ise, will soon show you how to make it easily.

#Climax #Climax #NaseonyeongSalad #Polaris #Thankyou_for_enjoying_it #Seon-woo #LeeSe #Seong-won #KyungHwa #Yi-jun]

[Me] As soon as I posted the picture with the caption that Kyunghwa had carefully written, the number of shares soared.

We never got such a fast response even when we paid for ads.

The number of shares changed from one digit to two digits, and from two digits to three digits in an instant.

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

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

Yi-jun was surprised and looked through the reactions one by one, then his eyebrows twitched dramatically.

Most of the reactions were asking who we were, what we did, and what group we belonged to.

And some… said they were drooling? I saw that a lot. Well, of course it looked delicious, it was a feast that someone had prepared.

“What the hell, why are they saying things like that?”

Yi-jun frowned and I peeked at what he saw. It was something like… they were trying to make a fuss by clinging to noona, even though they were a flop group.

I ignored that. It wasn’t like they asked us to make it. It was stupid to waste the opportunity that came our way.

About 30 minutes passed like that. The number of shares broke four digits and then the manager hyung called us.

“Yes, hyung. I sent you a message earlier.”

My manager asked in surprise.

-What’s going on? Na Seon-young salad?

I answered calmly.

“That’s how it happened. Seon-woo went home for a day and came back with a packed lunch for me. Seon-young noona ate it and posted a proof shot on Instagram.”

-What? She did?

“Yes. Thanks to that, our group got some publicity and our follower count increased a bit… It was about 800 when I checked earlier.”

I gestured to Kyunghwa to confirm the exact number, and his eyes widened in astonishment.

“What’s wrong, why are you making that face?”

He replied with an expression that looked like he was about to cry.

“Our followers exceeded 10,000!”

-What?

The manager, who was listening on the other end of the phone, was startled by Kyunghwa’s scream-like sound and asked in a high-pitched tone.

“Are you sure you’re not seeing things?”

“No, it finally changed to 10K. The share count also surpassed 4,000.”

Fortunately, taking a picture and uploading it was the right thing to do when the opportunity arose.

“Hyung? Are you still there?”

I drew his attention to the area where I needed his help. Then I switched back to the normal mode.

-Oh, sorry. I was shocked by what Kyunghwa said and had to check for myself.

“It seems like the publicity worked well. So, I was wondering. Can we do a live broadcast tomorrow or something?”

My manager hesitated a bit before answering.

-How about tomorrow night around 9? Is two hours enough?

Two hours… I had never done an idol live broadcast before, so I had no idea. But it seemed like enough time to show who ‘we’ were.

“Yes, that’s enough.”

-Okay, then you have to finish by 11, because that’s when Floss’s regular broadcast starts. I’ll tell Kyunghwa how to turn on the broadcast, so prepare what you’re going to do in advance.

Was this supposed to be our responsibility?

He seemed to grant us permission because of the unexpected good news, but he didn’t offer much support.

“Okay, I got it.”

-Well, you know… life is full of surprises. I wish I could help you with something, but I’m swamped with work right now.

“It’s okay, we can’t help it. We’ll do our best.”

We can’t help it, my ass. He must have been unhappy to waste dedicated staff on a group that didn’t make money…

I felt bitter that we couldn’t get any help when we really needed staff.

“Alright, you guys are doers. You don’t have much time left until your comeback, so make the most of this opportunity.”

He might have had no choice, but his words of encouragement didn’t make me feel grateful.

I hung up the phone and saw Yi-jun refreshing the SNS page over and over.

“Hey, stop it.”

It wasn’t like he had anything to do. I snatched Yi-jun’s phone as if to take it away, and he looked up at me.

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

I looked at the screen and saw that the number that had barely passed 10,000 a while ago had changed to 13,000.

The share count had also doubled.

“Is this something to react to this much?”

I was bewildered and went to the notification window. There was a tab that kept getting notifications as much as the post.

“What is this…”

I read the faint gray letters. ‘Kang Yu-geon tagged me in his post.’

‘What the hell, why is this kid here?’

Click, I tapped the notification area with my finger and there was a short comment attached.

[Lol, invite me too!]

I clicked on the profile of the account that posted the post and there was an official account mark next to it.

‘Our account doesn’t have an official mark…’

Besides, weren’t personal SNS accounts banned for idols who debuted these days?

I felt a bit wronged and looked at his account more closely.

What’s so good about a post that doesn’t even have eight characters including the exclamation mark?

It had been less than 20 minutes since it was posted, but the share count was over 40K.

The posts with selfies were over 100K in shares.

‘He’s really overwhelmingly popular.’

The group’s official announcement account had 8 million followers.

The individual members had 2 million followers.

It would be a lie to say I wasn’t jealous.

But regardless of how annoying the person was, nothing came for free.

This guy must have been coping with the pressure of having millions of people watching him.

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

Anyway, after Kang Yu-geon’s post, I could see that the followers were increasing tremendously.

“Do we… have to respond to this?”

Kyunghwa swallowed his dry saliva and looked at me.

We couldn’t pretend we didn’t know when we were suddenly getting attention like a portal had opened.

“Let’s, first of all, like it.”

Yi-jun moved his finger and clicked the empty heart to fill it with red.

Then, as if he had nothing to do, Kang Yu-geon posted a new post with a sloppy selfie that looked like he had taken it casually.

[Does liking mean you’ll invite me?]

[Picture]

This time, since there was a selfie attached, it started to be shared at a crazier speed than before.

“What do we do?”

The anxious eyes of three handsome guys pierced me in an instant.

I had been through a lot and stood tall as a businessman, but this was the first time I had encountered such a situation.

How should we deal with the overwhelming top star who had once screwed us over, and who was suddenly showing us a favorable interest?

My head hurt as if a storm had hit.

A life of saving a loser with my hands