Book 2.
Story 1. A concert just for one.
Chapter 45
All the members looked panicked at Hyoyoung’s question. They looked at each other nervously and started to blame each other.
Finally, Hyojun replied to her, “Of… course, we feel sorry.”
“Are you sure? Are you really sorry?”
“Yes…”
“And what are you sorry about?”
At her unexpected question, the members seemed speechless. Hyojun scratched his head while Jiwoo coughed awkwardly. Kiwook kept glancing at Hyoyoung, trying to figure out what she was thinking. The only one who was calmly watching Hyoyoung with interest was Hyunsuk.
Hyoyoung offered, “If you guys are really sorry, then you need to do me a favor.”
“A… favor?”
The guys froze and asked at the same time. Looking at each one of them, one by one, Hyoyoung announced, “I want you guys to do a concert.”
“A concert?”
Again, all the guys asked at the same time. Hyoyoung replied, “Yup. You were gonna do a concert anyway, right?”
“Well, the thing is…”
“You were planning a fan meeting, right? Just change that into a concert.”
“But Hyoyoung, a concert isn’t something that can be arranged easily or quickly. So…”
Suddenly, Hyunsuk replied, “Let’s do it. Why not.”
“WHAT?”
The other three guys exclaimed in shock. Hyunsuk replied, “I said, we can do it.”
Kiwook asked him cautiously, “Hey, for something big like this, we need to discuss this with our CEO first, and… what are you thinking, Hyunsuk?”
“I will talk to the CEO and make it happen. I don’t know how I’m going to convince him, but let’s just decide right now that we are doing it. I will make it work.”
Jiwoo turned to Hyunsuk and asked, “Hey, Hyunsuk. How can you be so confident? This is a huge deal and you know it.”
“Well, you can’t just say it’s not possible. Once we put our mind to it, I am certain we can make it happen. I mean, think about it. What do we need for a concert? We can probably figure out most of the things right now.”
“Umm… how about the location?”
“We can rent a place. Easy.”
“Repertory? What are we actually gonna do during a concert?”
“We can start planning right away and practice.”
“We don’t even have a theme for it!”
“We can work on it when we do our planning.”
“The audience…?”
“I don’t think we have to worry about that. We have plenty of fans who plan to come to our fan meeting anyway.”
“Well, what about the sounds… and we don’t have a stage producer either….”
“We have two weeks left, so those things shouldn’t be a problem to arrange.”
“How are we going to promote it?”
“Many artists do impromptu concerts and thousands of fans often gather for those. Once we know where we are doing the concert, we can start promoting. It shouldn’t be an issue.”
“What about the cost of it all…? I mean, a concert would cost lots of money, right?”
“Let’s skip that problem for now. When you think about it, money is the easiest problem to solve. Let’s forget about that for now.”
“By the way, Hyunsuk…”
“Yeah?”
“Why are you so adamant about doing this concert?”
“Hey, have you been wanting to do a concert?”
When the guys asked Hyunsuk, he grinned and instead of answering the question, he asked Hyoyoung, “Hyoyoung, why did you ask us to do a concert?”
She replied calmly, “I have been wondering why I had to lie to Mikyung and get into this messy situation.”
“And?”
“I realized that the reason was because I had a secret that I had to keep safe. And the biggest problem was that I enjoyed having this secret about you guys. We all did.”
“Oh…”
“Then, I thought even more carefully about everything, and I learned that this situation… it’s not just a problem between me and Mikyung. The last few days were hard for all of us. The rumors and scandals… I realized that the main source of it all was right here.”
“What do you mean?”
“Think about it. You guys have a job that by definition involves showing yourselves off to the world. Your job requires all of you to open and expose your lives to the public. Yet, you refuse to do that. It is no wonder these things happened. You all had no choice but to lie because you have so much to hide. Don’t you get it?”
Jiwoo exclaimed, clearly impressed, “Wow, Hyoyoung, you are a genius.”
Hyoyoung waved him away and replied, “Oh, stop. So I thought about it all and tried to come up with a solution. Something that will satisfy everyone’s thirst for you… and the answer is that you guys need to show yourselves to the fans.”
“And… that’s why we decided to do a fan meeting. So why do we have to do a concert?”
“Distance.”
“D… distance?”
“Yup. As of now, you guys are like rare diamonds.”
“What? Diamonds?”
“Yeah. Everyone wants you for themselves. For truly rare diamonds, people will kill to possess them.”
“And those diamonds can be considered cursed, right? Because they will make people crazy and do insane things.”
“Bingo. Like Hyunsuk Oppa just explained, you guys are making people insane right now. People are dying to know about you, and some will really do crazy things for it… and that is why I thought a fan meeting could be very dangerous. Fan meetings involve the fans meeting you up close, and I am afraid it could be very risky.”
While Hyoyoung explained, Jiwoo leaned towards Hyojun and whispered, “Hey, Hyojun… your sister is not what I expected. She is scary. You sure you know her well?”
“I had no idea that she is like this. She is… so… resilient, especially in bad situations. I feel like she can survive anywhere.”
“Do you think Kiwook can handle her?”
“Who cares?”
“Wow, you really don’t care, huh?”
Kiwook tapped Jiwoo’s shoulder and glared. He motioned for Jiwoo and Hyojun to pay attention to Hyoyoung.
She continued, “So, you guys all need to step up to the throne.”
“T-throne?”
“Yup. You all need to become stars so great that people can’t even dare to get close to you.”
The four members of The M became silent for a minute.
Then suddenly…
Clap, clap, clap.
Hyunsuk applauded her and exclaimed, “You are amazing, Hyoyoung.”