Debut or Die-Chapter 335
This time it’s an OST, so everyone agreed we needed a different approach than the album tracks we’d been making.
“It’s not a game collab, so make it to fit the movie.”
“But it’s also important to let TeSTAR’s color show through~”
Make the film the focus and lay TeSTAR under it just enough to be recognizable as a base.
But there was a problem.
“Hmm... if there were a main melody like in a game, that’d be even better.”
“...They should give us material if they expect us to make something.”
The film company hadn’t provided much.
They claimed “restrictions due to leak concerns,” but the keywords and the snippet of the scenario they gave were thinner than expected.
Let’s look at the keywords first.
[space, cyberpunk, psychic powers, combat, focus]
The plot was the level of a generic SF hero movie. There was almost no worldbuilding.
“This is over the top.”
I frowned. We could’ve at least had them sign an NDA—this was less than what you’d tell auditionees.
“I’ll work from the perspective of film OST composition and proceed as background music....”
So Kim Rae-bin announced gravely and dove into work, but the rest of the members basically had nothing to do.
‘If we don’t know OST composition, what can we do from zero base?’
With four days left, it’s hard to cram and learn on the fly.
‘At best I can touch up some melodies....’
There wasn’t even brainstorming material. At this rate the surplus members would just give feedback on whatever Kim Rae-bin produced.
‘I started the camp to avoid this mess.’
For the OST, we were stuck following precedent; it left a bad taste. I turned and stood up from my seat.
“Where are you going, Mundae hyung?”
“To get water.”
“I’ll go too!”
Cha Yoo-jin followed. For some reason he always trailed me whenever I went to the kitchen... it wasn’t just my imagination.
“Can I eat this?”
“Sure.”
No need to tell him that since it’s being expensed, he’s basically paying half with the company’s money. He has enough cash anyway.
As Cha Yoo-jin raided the hotel fridge for snacks, he suddenly said,
[Hyung, you look worried?]
“...What.”
“This is tasty! Try it!”
No thanks.
I took the nuts he offered on reflex and chewed, mumbling back.
“You worried about something?”
Well, obvious, isn’t it.
“They’re pushing to get an OST out in four days. And the materials the company gave are poor.”
He wasn’t the kind to be swayed by practicalities, so it was okay to say that.
As expected, Cha Yoo-jin looked fine and shrugged.
Then he dropped a bomb.
“They’re doing this on purpose!”
“...!”
Cha Yoo-jin crushed the snack bag and tossed it in the trash.
Bang.
“On /N_o_v_e_l_i_g_h_t/ purpose.”
[Right. This is totally clear. They don’t want to give us work, right?]
“.......”
Keep talking.
I leaned against the wall. Cha Yoo-jin did the same.
[We barged in suddenly and annoyed them. There might be a little prejudice involved.]
Ah.
‘Racial discrimination, maybe.’
Since he’s a local, he might know that better than anyone.
“Is that from experience?”
“It’s not none! But I don’t care.”
Now he’s using double negatives.
Whatever Cha Yoo-jin’s Korean skills, his expression said it wasn’t a serious problem.
“So here’s another thing. If they do it right, we can’t say anything.”
Oh.
“And if not, we don’t have to do it. We’re cool without the OST!”
“You wanted to go to America, didn’t you?”
[Well, there are always other options!]
Same as always. He’s cool with refusing if it costs nothing.
‘It’s been a while since he’s shown this much proactive thinking.’
Interesting. Should I egg him on?
“I don’t want to quit, but if these guys are annoying—”
“Then I’ll scream for a 100% proper brief. Stars do that. And I want to do it! Tell our company to mail them.”
Hmm.
It’s a bold move, but since we slipped in via the T1 line, we shouldn’t give the other side a blatant excuse to rebut us.
I smiled.
“Is there a quieter, cleaner way?”
“...! Tell me!”
Right.
“First, notice that they’re phrasing ridiculous conditions—pay attention to that.”
“Two things are different?”
“They are different.”
I drank water.
“It means they can’t outright refuse us.”
In other words, they’re making awkward demands while pretending not to.
“Oh....”
Cha Yoo-jin nodded nonchalantly.
“But why is that good?”
“It means our company has some clout.”
“Is our company stronger than Rimestone?”
No way T1 could overpower that crazy copyright mega-company on its own.
“No, it’s just ties. T1 handles Limestone’s film distribution in Korea.”
“Oh.”
There’s a reason the film company couldn’t refuse. Whatever it is, T1 had put a better deal on the table than expected.
Maybe T1 saw our proposal as a bow of flattery and accepted on that basis.
‘They were miffed their direct-label proposal got scrapped, and thought we’d bowed to them.’
Completely wrong, but convenient.
Anyway, T1 probably wanted to grow the artist’s overseas share too, so they contacted the film company and struck a big deal.
But the film folks, considering T1’s involvement, said okay while the operatives were annoyed to have a K-pop idol—who wasn’t even American—intrude.
I tapped my chin.
‘Someone in the film company’s middle management is screwing around.’
Maybe they figured an OST from a foreign group was no big deal.
“Someone on the Limestone team is looking at us with contempt.”
“Got it! But when do you tell me the method?”
“Now.”
He’s pushy, so I grinned.
“All right. The meaning of what I’ve explained so far is....”
“Tell me!”
Confident.
“If you meet the ridiculous conditions they set, they’ll have to okay us.”
“Hmm?”
“They’ve already agreed at higher levels. Without a pretext, they can’t refuse. They might request revisions, though.”
So we can hit them hard.
“So the method is... send a perfectly made finished track.”
“Wooooo. That’s giving up.”
You little.
“Not just a good track—we add to the keywords on our own.”
I drank water.
“We add to the film’s existing hero-movie and game world keywords ourselves and do careful additional production.”
“Why would we do that?”
“To make them embarrassed.”
“Huh?”
I crushed the empty bottle.
“And while sending it, we honestly say we had to collect materials ourselves because they didn’t send enough.”
“Uuuuuh!”
“And this next part is important.”
“What is it?”
I smiled.
“The person in charge seems uninformed. When we request an OST demo, we politely tell them what level of info and time is usually needed.”
“...!”
I shrugged.
“And at the meeting, we teach them like kindergarteners what to prepare. Then it’s over.”
Even for one OST, the first external meeting would require higher-ups to be briefed. They can’t just omit that without reporting up the chain.
So whoever messed around can’t dodge it. Both companies will have to explain what happened.
“WOW.”
Cha Yoo-jin flipped to full-on mode.
“Hyung, that’s badass!”
“You like it?”
“I do!”
Glad he liked it.
Cha Yoo-jin demanded a high five and ran to the hotel parlor to start explaining it himself.
“Let’s make an awesome OST and embarrass them!”
“What?”
I knew he’d say that.
I expanded Cha Yoo-jin’s words into a full explanation. The members looked dazed at first, then got serious.
“A classy approach.”
“Not bad~ Even if it fails, we can say we did our best.”
That meant even if things broke, we’d win the public relations battle. That was part of the plan too.
“Shall we vote?”
“Yeah.”
The unanimous okay came immediately, and Cha Yoo-jin whistled.
“Our members are so cool!”
And Kim Rae-bin started getting excited again.
“Then let’s begin work immediately.”
“Right. We’ll fetch the film and game references~ Go, Rae-bin!”
“Yes!”
So even the surplus members finally had something to do.
“Should we tell the company we’ll write the explanatory brief to send them?”
“Hmm, it’d be more effective if we wrote it ourselves.”
No way they’d provide an interpreter who could capture nuance in this short time. Better if we invested the effort ourselves.
‘Luckily there’s a suitable person here.’
“You want me to do it??”
“No. You gather references. You know U.S. culture well.”
“OK”
Cha Yoo-jin — no. He’s proactive but not great with formal wording.
I turned my head.
“Ah-hyun.”
“Hmm...?”
“Can you make our work brief in English?”
Seon Ah-hyun’s face brightened.
“Uh-huh...!”
She studied abroad at an elite foreign private school and uses polished English, so she was perfect. We could have an expert proofread before sending.
Also, she hadn’t been able to participate much in producing, so she seemed glad to have something to do.
“I’ll work hard...!”
“Good.”
This freed some mental burden for Seon Ah-hyun.
Big Sejin grinned.
“Ah~ everything’s settled. Shall we rally and go?”
“Let’s do it!”
The air perked up again.
Then Kim Rae-bin murmured as if he’d realized something.
“Considering the brief and translation... the deadline’s been shortened by half a day.”
“.......”
“.......”
Kim Rae-bin gave a thumbs-up.
“The originally scheduled camp of three days fits exactly!”
If you’re fine, we’re all fine.
“Ah... I’m tired.”
T1 ENT’s external relations duty officer sighed.
International contacts come in at odd hours Korean time, so being on emergency standby one day a week was the worst.
He took cat naps and checked NetPlus, but it was still boring.
‘I hardly have access to this at this hour anyway.’
Unless an urgent thing came in from a few partners he was told to watch, there was nothing to do. The officer sighed and opened the company ERP.
Then a document caught his eye.
[TeSTAR movie collaboration]
TeSTAR was hot, so rumors had circulated in the department.
‘They said they’d work with Limestone.’
And a demo had apparently been sent the day before.
He didn’t have access, so he only peeked over shoulders, but he saw the attached explanatory brief looked painstakingly made.
So he felt uneasy.
‘All the way like this....’
Honestly, it looked a little sycophantic.
‘You can tell they’re being looked down on, yet they’re the domestic big-name idol...’
Maybe the company ordered it.
Feeling a bit affronted on the deputy’s behalf, he complained about the company for a bit and made a short prediction of the future based on his spare time.
‘If they give the okay like they’re choosing someone, they’ll PR it all over the place, this damn company...’
Then a new mail arrived.
[Fw: In response to your request of......]
The recipient line jumped out.
‘Limestone!’
He wanted to click but didn’t have permission. So he skimmed what he could, and one thing stood out.
The attachment size.
‘Uh....’
The incoming mail included a huge pile of files—on the level TeSTAR had sent.
‘What the hell did they send?’
If it were a simple okay, the file wouldn’t be that big; a contract clause wouldn’t be that large either.
‘Damn!’
He was frustrated he couldn’t open it due to lack of permission. The duty officer sighed.
And when morning came, he finally got the story behind that mail.
It was a self-initiated gesture of submission and reconciliation passed around.
‘Woooah!’
A refreshing proxy victory.
‘What on earth did they send? More importantly, how good were those tracks?’
“A proper brief arrived.”
“Oh.”
It worked.
Of course, we still didn’t know what they’d say in an actual meeting.
‘At this point we might even just exchange mails without a meeting.’
Still, I didn’t stop the members from smiling and high-fiving.
‘One win is one win.’
Ryu Cheong-woo continued the briefing with a smile.
“There are almost no revision requests, just a few arrangement requests regarding song structure.”
“That’s not hard!”
Kim Rae-bin was practically floating. After working three days on caffeine like it was water, he showed impossible enthusiasm.
‘He must be having fun.’
Then Ryu Cheong-woo showed a puzzled look.
“And... they want to bundle a cameo appearance into the contract?”
“...?”
“A real cameo? In the movie?”
“Yeah.”
I admired that.
These bastards...
They really wanted to squeeze Korean box-office juice out of this.
“You mean that movie, right?”
“Yeah. They said you just pass through the background.”
“If it’s just that....”
“Is that okay?”
Naturally, we all looked at one guy.
“Why, why...?”
“We’ll trust you, hyung.”
“...!?”
Child prodigy actor Bae Se-jin—his Hollywood moment had arrived.
“Don’t trust him!”
