Episode 87: Debut Team (1)
“Good morning, everyone.”
It’s a winter day so unusually mild that it feels like spring has already sneaked in. I let all but pour my sky-high mood into the greeting, using the warm weather as an excuse.
“Uh… why does Yujin-ssi showing up feel so natural right now?”
“Right? Same here, Deputy Park.”
Apparently, the recipients find it a little awkward.
The place I’ve come to today is the New Artist Development Team, a department that’s been friendly toward me even back when the company atmosphere was tense around me, yet somehow we’ve never had much direct contact.
There’s no bad blood between us, and no one here is twisted enough to push away someone being nice, but for a brief moment an unavoidable awkward current still lingers in the air.
“Yujin-ssi, did something good happen? Why are you in such high spirits?”
The voice from behind blows that awkwardness away in one shot.
“Good morning, Team Leader Jeon.”
“Well, it is a good morning… but is the weather really enough to get you this hyped like this? I’m pretty sure that’s not it.”
I scratch my cheek and smile sheepishly at Jeon Seonwoo’s half-polite, half-casual tone that doesn’t hide his familiarity at all.
He’s right. My mood Isn’t soaring just because the morning is nice.
‘I’m a man, after all.’
The real reason I’m feeling this good is that the worry that had been crushing me—“How the hell do I deal with this?”—was instantly lightened by the ultimate weapon only a lover can deploy.
‘Yeah, that’s definitely a natural disaster.’
As long as Lee Ahjeong doesn’t retire, it’s a typhoon that comes once a year, something I’ll eventually have to face.
I’ve been treated as that same natural-disaster level myself in the past, so now that I’ve fallen back to human level, all I can do is roll with it.
Life is unpredictable, as the old saying goes.
You never know what kind of good news that typhoon might bring along with it.
‘If it doesn’t happen this year, I’ll just use it as build-up and aim for next year.’
Of course, that doesn’t mean I won’t give my absolute best, but thanks to Zia, I was able to rein in the impatience that had flared up again.
It’s a little embarrassing to be drumming and cymbaling all by myself, flipping back and forth like this,
‘As long as Zia doesn’t see it that way, it’s fine.’
The only gaze I care about right now isn’t the millions of fans scattered across the globe; it’s the one belonging to the single person who saw me off just minutes ago.
I decide to set the Lee Ahjeong issue aside for now and focus on what I actually have to do today.
That’s exactly why I’m visiting a department I never bothered coming to even when I was poking my nose into every other corner of MyWay.
“Team Leader Jeon.”
“Yes?”
“The trainees’ monthly evaluation is over, right?”
“It finished ages ago, right when you were running around like crazy. Finished? The kids are actually busy preparing for this month’s evaluation right now. Speaking of which, they keep asking me when Yujin-ssi is coming.”
I haven’t forgotten that promise.
“When is this month’s evaluation?”
“Since the last day of the month is a Friday, we’re planning to hold it then.”
“Then I’ll come either the Friday of the week before or the Monday of that week.”
“Sounds good. The kids will be thrilled. So, do you need all of them? Or just half?”
Even though he can see right through why I’m here, the way Jeon Seonwoo still puts the trainees’ feelings first is genuinely touching.
I never went through the trainee phase myself, but I’ve seen plenty of kids suffer because they didn’t have someone like him.
Of course, this isn’t something I should take credit for, and that’s not the point anyway, so I tuck the sentiment away and answer.
“I’d love to see everyone, but for now just half is fine.”
“Half it is. Assistant Manager Kim?”
Jeon Seonwoo nods lightly, turns his gaze from me, and calls another staff member.
“What are you working on right now?”
“Nothing urgent, sir.”
The female staff member, startled at suddenly being called, answers as calmly as she can. Jeon Seonwoo just raises a thumb toward the meeting room and says,
“Sorry to spring this on you, but could you pause what you’re doing and throw together a quick PPT?”
“PPT? Which one?”
“How many PPTs have we been working on lately?”
“Ah. ‘That’ one?”
“Yep. ‘That’ one. Let’s do a dry run in front of our PD here before we present it to the CEO for real.”
“Got it. I’ll prep it right away.”
After that exchange ends,
“Now where did I put that… oh, here it is.”
While the staff member grabs her laptop and stands up, Jeon Seonwoo digs through the chaotic pile of documents on his desk, pulls out a single file, and walks back to me.
“Well, the really important stuff has to be seen on video anyway, but everything we can show in numbers—six months of monthly evaluation summaries, all the measurable data—is in here. Take a look before we start.”
“Come on, Team Leader, just giving me ‘this’ would’ve been plenty. You didn’t have to go all out with a PPT too.”
All I actually wanted was this one single file folder.
“So you’re not gonna look? Should I call Assistant Manager Kim back—”
“No, no! You went to the trouble of preparing it, so of course I’ll watch till the end.”
“Hahaha!”
There are definitely things numbers on paper can’t express, so I cut off Jeon Seonwoo’s fake modesty and turn the page as laughter ripples through the New Artist Development Team office.
[Provisional] BG-01 Related Materials
The title scrawled in what looks like Jeon Seonwoo’s hasty handwriting is missing several important words, but
This is one of MyWay’s top-secret documents: which of the raw gems the company has collected will finally be shown to the public.
In a single sentence,
It’s the data for selecting the debut team members.
Debut team.
Simply put, the final gateway for the countless trainees aiming to become idols.
To be honest, they say the real game only starts at max level, and for idols, the real beginning is after debut, but that’s beside the point.
There’s no set length for how long someone stays in the debut team, but on average people say it takes about two years, at minimum six months, of training on a completely different level from regular trainees before you can actually debut.
Because money is on the line.
There’s no guarantee that debuting equals success, and in an industry where you never know when or from where someone might try to trip you up, it’s only natural that the project has to be handled with extreme caution and time.
Of course, there are exceptions.
‘Starting with me.’
If Polaris’s original debut plan hadn’t fallen apart, I would’ve broken the record for shortest trainee period. Go Sena got eliminated from a girl-group survival show but was recognized for her talent and dramatically joined Hylliy just three weeks before their debut stage.
And if you look even further into the future, one member of Laira was street-cast, thrown straight into an audition program, and had her debut confirmed in exactly ten weeks.
Even setting aside those extreme cases, there are far too many idols who debuted just three or four months after their final audition to count on both hands.
‘But…’
There are also exists a tragically large number of talented people whose debut preparation period was dragged out to that two-year average precisely because of those prodigies who shortened it.
You don’t have to look far: Seonghun spent ten years as a trainee, six of those in the debut team alone. Hylliy’s leader Levi bounced between agencies for twelve years, and the number of times his debut fell through was either five or six years’ worth.
In short, even kids whose talent was acknowledged as “this one will make money” have faced those extreme situations, and there are more of them than you could count on fingers and toes. That’s this industry.
And yet,
Even though the songs are ready and the concept is more or less decided…
To finish launching an entire group—not just one member—in three months is, frankly, the kind of thing that would make anyone call you insane, and they wouldn’t even be wrong.
If Sunshine, Overwhelm, JWY,
Or even Starlight’s Lee Hee-kyung
Ever saw the picture MyWay is painting right now, they’d probably faint on the spot.
‘Still, the grounds are more than solid.’
The reason I—and everyone else in this company—am so confident about this lunatic plan is the unique trait that only MyWay possesses.
“The trainee we’re most certain about in the New Artist Development Team is this kid, Kyuha. He was at Hweil Company for about three years. He got picked for their debut team after only one year of training, but when Hweil collapsed he transferred over here. He’s in his third year with MyWay now.”
Yeom Kyuha.
The trainee who, when I visited during the last holiday, asked me for advice about a song called <Summer City>.
“He turns twenty-one this year. Aside from his vocals being a tiny bit behind, he’s the textbook definition of a perfect hexagon. His dance sense is excellent, and above all, his leadership is insane. If Kyuha debuts, the other trainees might actually be upset about losing him.”
In my previous life, Yeom Kyuha was the leader of Oberon.
I never saw it myself, but according to the members, when they were alone together he was overflowing with warmth, yet the moment they stepped outside he became the strictest leader imaginable.
“Next is Shim Minseok. His dancing is a little weaker than the others, but his singing is currently the best among all the trainees. Not quite Kang Tae-oh level, but we believe he’s more than capable of being the lead vocal that supports Tae-oh even right now.”
The explanation continues with Shim Minseok, who clawed his way up through bone-grinding effort to become Oberon’s main vocal,
And after the names of the remaining two original Oberon members—Yoo Phillip and Jung Bong-kyu—come up, Assistant Manager Kim Jae-yi pauses to take a breath.
‘As expected…’
After carefully reviewing everything from their footage eight months ago to the most recent monthly evaluation videos, my conviction only grows stronger.
“Yujin-ssi, this might be extra, but I personally think that if Kyuha, Minseok, Phillip, and Bong-kyu had even one true main-vocal caliber member among them, they could’ve debuted long ago without it being strange at all.”
Jeon Seonwoo’s added comment, perhaps misreading my silence, drives the final nail into that conviction.
‘MyWay really is a diamond mine.’
Is it because the trainee pool—boys and girls combined—barely reaches twenty, an absurdly small number?
Or is it because we’ve been giving only these kids the kind of training that other agencies reserve for debut teams?
Whatever the reason, MyWay trainees are on a completely different level compared to trainees from other companies.
They’re already at the point where you could debut the whole group and no one would bat an eye.
“Do you happen to have any footage of just those four performing together?”
“We don’t have anything with only the four of them, but there is a video of eight trainees doing a Trezit song together.”
“Could you show me that one, at least?”
I lightly nod again at the video Assistant Manager Kim Jae-yi plays.
Judging by the unity I can see between the choreographed moves, the teamwork—which I personally value the most—is overflowing, and their work ethic is already proven by the fact that they voluntarily came to practice even during the holidays.
‘No—“more than enough” doesn’t even begin to cover it.’
It’s almost a waste to pick only these four and shove the remaining six trainees back into the shadows where the spotlight never reaches.
But there’s no helping it.
Even Shim Minseok, the best vocalist among them, can’t properly handle the parts I used to sing, let alone the ones Seonghun sang.
If we give all of my parts plus some of Seonghun’s parts to Tae-oh,
‘Five members including Tae-oh is the absolute limit for the debut team.’
The conclusion is set.
The part distribution is already going to be heavily skewed toward Tae-oh as it is; adding more members would mean someone ends up singing only a line or two before the song is over.
“Then the remaining trainees…”
“Ah—no, that’s enough. Let’s stop here.”
I cut off Assistant Manager Kim Jae-yi before she can continue the presentation.
“With the current part-distribution structure, five members is the sweet spot. We can swap debut-team members mid-process if needed, but we won’t be adding any more, so we’ll look at the rest again in front of the CEO and discuss it then.”
“Then…”
Jeon Seonwoo trails off, eyes wide in surprise.
“I’ll be the one to have the final talk with the CEO, of course.”
I flash him a grin, stand up, and tilt my chin slightly upward.
Toward the place where the nameplate reading ‘Seo Yoonje’ hangs.
“Come on, we only have three months left. Let’s not waste any more time and get started.”