“She’s still holding out?”

“Yes, sir……”

“Mad bitch. Nothing but a decent face and no money, the beggarly cow! We made her a star and she talks about her own music?”

DM COMPANY, one of the foremost production houses in Korea.

A firm known as DMC for short.

It sits under DM Group, settled at fourteenth in the 2021 chaebol rankings.

DM Group was Dongmyeong Group before the name was changed.

Food and catering services, biotechnology and logistics, entertainment and media — the core subsidiaries are managed under a holding company.

It is the only group settled inside the top fifteen with no heavy industry in it.

With K-culture running worldwide at its back, DMC has grown into the group’s principal affiliate.

The director’s office at that DMC.

A top-floor office in a large building holding a good pitch in Sangam-dong.

Unlike in the past, it has now established itself as the group’s principal affiliate.

It puts its strength into producing films and dramas and into raising idols and solo singers.

Alongside that it is pursuing sales tie-ups with global content operators and the like.

Turnover for a year went well past four trillion won.

It has settled itself as a DM Group affiliate now, and made a point of it, and at the start it was nothing of the kind — a place of banishment for the heirs.

It was the share that fell to the daughters, who had been pushed out of the succession to the core affiliates.

And it came off like this.

It is the result of twenty years of care put in by the present chairman Go Jaeyong, whose management ability is outstanding, and his younger sister Go Mihyeon.

The trouble is that once DMC showed explosive growth, Chairman Go Jaeyong’s manner changed.

He showed his appetite to absorb DMC openly.

It began with Go Mihyeon being posted to the honorary position of group vice-chairman.

Following that he had his daughter and his son-in-law take up senior executive posts at DMC together.

Go Mihyeon’s blood shot backwards, and she is in a position where she must follow the majority shareholder’s instruction.

She kept the vice-chairmanship alone and took her hands almost entirely off the company’s work.

She spent her time travelling abroad whenever the chance came, cooling the burning in her chest.

The castle Go Mihyeon had finished became, in that way, the playground of Chairman Go Jaeyong’s daughter and son-in-law, its new masters.

Yang Docheol, the man occupying the director’s office, is a connection the son-in-law Jang Jonghun planted.

Yang Docheol ran a small entertainment agency, joined when DMC’s side merged it in, and took a directorship.

Yang Docheol is on close(?) terms with Jang Jonghun, the chaebol house’s son-in-law.

Trusting in Jang Jonghun, he exercised powerful influence at the company with not a soul beneath his eye.

Just now, too, he put out curses without a check in them over a woman singer-songwriter whose contract expires soon.

He is showing that he holds a grudge over her album last time going down in flames.

The singer had said she did not want it at the time, and Yang Docheol pushed it through.

A woman singer who specialises in quiet, aching love songs, and he recommended funky rock.

Anybody could see it was a plan that did not suit her.

Yang Docheol had already taken money under the table from the composer.

He packaged it plausibly to the outside as a fresh challenge and shoved the woman singer forward by the back.

The intention behind this plan is the same.

No — the problem is more serious.

Trot is what the moment is running to, and he pushed her at it, in a direction that does not suit her at all.

This time too the singer refused.

Yang Docheol is applying pressure with the contract’s expiry as his pretext.

His line is that nobody will take on a woman singer-songwriter with no prospects.

“How would you like it handled?”

“You’re putting her on the diet hard, aren’t you?”

“…… She could end up in a hospital at this rate.”

“She won’t die! Most of them get through a day on water and salt and one egg. Since when was she a top singer!!”

Yang Docheol raised his voice again and again over a woman singer who will not move as he wishes.

Fucking bitch! Getting on in years and playing haughty!

Yang Docheol swallowed a sneer inwardly.

Several people up the line have picked her out and want her at their drinking tables.

A woman singer with a sweet tone and a strange sexiness about her that carries no cheap smell.

There are several who have their eye on the hidden appeal she does not spill about.

Yang Docheol once seated her at such a table without knowing better, and got told off to his face.

It was a public warning about bringing a woman singer under contract to sit at an entertaining table.

From straight after that business he sought out ways to break her spirit.

But the world has changed a great deal, and the mood of society did not back him as far as he wanted.

If a thing like this, done behind the scenes, gets out at all, DMC and Yang Docheol are finished that instant.

So he applies the pressure, adjusting the strength of it so that it does not show.

First he threw her songs that are barely songs.

He restricted her meals on the pretext of managing her looks and her weight.

He increased her exercise hours to take away her rest and worked her to exhaustion.

He controls her private life through her manager.

She is not an idol singer, and even so he put her thoroughly under the company’s control — under Yang Docheol’s control.

“……”

The team leader who had been reporting the situation shut his mouth.

Get marked by Director Yang Docheol and you are out at once.

The entertainment market in Korea is a narrow board.

Get marked and cut and it is hard to find work again on this floor.

“Squeeze harder! Control her thoroughly until she puts her seal on and sings trot!”

“Yes, sir!”

“And next month, clear her out of the flat! She has no right to live there on the company’s money.”

“Y— yes, sir.”

She was a singer with plenty of appearances too, at the height of her run.

Working alone, so every time she moved she brought in a decent sum.

Afterwards, on the pretext of the year-end settlement, they closed the accounts at exactly enough for her to live on.

When there were many events that landed at middling-hit or better, they cut the settlement figure down firmly under the heading of expenses.

Put coldly, it was a typical case of an unfair contract.

Nearly every artist works inside a structure like this one.

The contracts are drawn so that every cost that goes to each of them is deducted from the artist’s earnings.

The same for costs the company ought properly to bear.

It proceeds by the first contract signed in the past, and there is nothing to do but follow it.

“Heh heh…… Seo Dahui! I will have you on your knees without fail!”

Seo Dahui??

A woman singer-songwriter, stage name FURIA.

A singer who puts weight on the delivery of her words and carries meaning through a tone that is her own, rather than on popular appeal.

She pulls her words out of her own life and writes the songs, over folk that could otherwise be plain.

By way of comparison, a modern version of an ancient bard.

I like her songs.

And I have met her.

The woman who collapsed at the gym and whom I helped.

She was wearing a mask, so I did not recognise her then.

And now the mask is off.

The bare face, with no make-up on it, is white enough to look wan.

Clean skin without a single blemish.

The feel of her is different from the Cheonghwa girls I see every day.

She is older than I am.

Seo Dahui, in her late twenties now.

The scent of a grown woman could be caught off her.

A slight body and clear pupils with something pure in them.

Down to the particular wave of energy that comes off her, there is a specialness the young pupils cannot imitate.

A born talent.

“What is it?”

I enjoy the songs, and it does not go as far as a devoted fan’s heart.

I ask her in a calm voice.

The cap pulled down low and the way she checks her surroundings look like somebody very conscious of other people.

The clear pupils carried an uneasy look.

It is not behaviour to be expected inside the Signiel security system, where there is nothing to be chased by.

“That time…… thank you. For helping me……”

“Not at all. Anybody would have done the same, obviously.”

The woman I helped was Seo Dahui.

The fact of it surprises me too.

Getting a greeting like this puts me in a good mood for no reason.

A woman singer who sang songs I like.

“……”

By the look of her there is something more she wants to say.

And she only works her lips a little and stops.

The force she gives off and her expression are not bright.

“Is there anything I can help with?”

It is a first — no, a second meeting.

She looks in more danger than the first time I saw her.

The dark force circling Seo Dahui swells as though it would swallow her.

It is a colour of force I have not seen before either.

Like what Park Jiung showed and also not.

Jiung was standing at a fork where he was going to choose the road of evil, and Seo Dahui now is——

Shff.

She lifts her head slightly and looks at me.

Trickle, trickle, trickle.

“……!!”

Thick tears ran down out of her clear eyes.

What…… have I done??

For a moment I was thrown and only blinked.

“Your name is……”

“Ha Tae-ung.”

“I’m——”

“I know.”

At my answer Seo Dahui wipes at the running tear-tracks.

She seems to live next door to me.

You cannot go up to any floor without a resident’s master card.

“I have something to ask……”

Yes, that is the face I expected the line from.

Only the hour is far too late.

A deep hour of the night, going past eleven.

A scene of a man and a woman talking in front of a lift.

If somebody happened to see it they could take it wrongly.

And if it did bring on a misunderstanding, she is the only one who takes damage.

“So……”

Her, with the sexy expression and the sweet voice I saw on a television screen.

Faced with it in reality she finds it very hard.

“Go on. What I can help——”

Rumble, rumble, rumble.

“……??”

Just then a loud sound leaked out of her stomach.

Embarrassed, apparently, Seo Dahui drops her head right down.

Surely not?

Shff.

A moment later Seo Dahui lifts her head straight and looks at me, as though she has decided something.

And.

“If you have ramyeon at home…… could you cook one for me?”

“……??”

(End of Chapter 77)