Translator: MarcTempest
Editor: Rxel
Chapter 289
The first part of ‘Men on a Mission’, the show they appeared on, was a huge hit.
-[Oh! Focus] Why ‘Men on a Mission’ Police Special Forces Special is Anticipated
-‘Men on a Mission’ Next Week Preview Sparks Netizens’ Curiosity... ‘The Mystery of Space’
-Netizens’ Interest Explodes for Special Forces Special, Ratings Rise
As soon as the broadcast ended, articles started to pop up like crazy.
It felt like every entertainment reporter in the country was writing about ‘Men on a Mission’.
The top five of the real-time ranking on the portal entertainment section were all articles about ‘Men on a Mission’.
In no time, the comments grew by hundreds and two hundreds.
As soon as Woojoo liked one of the latest comments, it was pushed back to the third page in an instant.
“What did you say?”
Even Seokhwan Hyung, who rarely got excited, called Woojoo and spouted some incomprehensible words.
“Junghyun ate a squid? No, you’re just babbling right now. I didn’t hear it wrong.”
-Junghyun...!
“Hold on.”
Woojoo handed the phone to his younger brothers. The youngest, who was listening intently, showed his amazing hearing ability.
“Earth’s four seasons, Armageddon rolling, soft.”
“Ah.”
Woojoo understood right away.
“Don’t post anything on SNS right now.”
Rihyuk blinked his eyes.
“How did you understand that?”
“I’ve been listening to his voice for over five years.”
Seokhwan Hyung soon calmed down and told them to ‘be careful with SNS, there are a lot of eyes and ears’.
He meant not to act rashly since they were getting national attention.
There was an actor who became a hot topic with a variety show before, and he got drunk with the attention and posted something that broke the mood on SNS.
It was a half-joking post, but the reporters made it into a documentary and buried him.
Woojoo saw that actor on ‘New Star’ and he said he got and lost 10 billion won worth of ads in one day, making a joke of ‘the day of 10 billion’.
Attention was a double-edged sword.
He accepted that the huge positive attention that was drawn to them could turn into the same size of negative emotion in a moment.
Their youngest also turned off his phone.
“Why did you turn off your phone?”
“I feel like I might make a mistake if I talk or text. I’m preventing it in advance.”
“As expected of our youngest. You know yourself so well.”
Woojoo proudly smiled and patted the head of the blanket monster.
They also joined the phone-off club, leaving only the public phone that they used to contact the company and post on the official SNS.
Then they monitored the internet reaction.
“The response is really good.”
“Hyung practically made all the content. The ‘Men on a Mission’ viewers called you a content alchemist.”
Woojoo laughed at the youngest’s words.
The ‘Men on a Mission’ cast and other guests also contributed to the content, but most of the scenes that became the talk of the town were mine.
-‘New Black Woojoo’, the MVP of the Special Forces Special?
-‘Woojoo’, the ultimate athletic genius... Why he was called ‘Jumong’ at the Dolympics?
-[Entertainment in Inside] The secret of Woojoo, who captivated the ‘Men on a Mission’ viewers with his bright energy and positivity
The last one was written by Reporter Oh Sohee.
Their fans called her a Soufflé.
Woojoo felt his limbs go numb at the praise-like article titles, but the response was good.
–ᄏᄏᄏᄏᄏᄏI laughed so hard today
-The chemistry with the Special Forces team was amazing. In that sense, one more time...?
┕You’re Satan. Satan
-Instructor: Trainee Number 8. Descend!
┕Woojoo: Aaaah!!! Hueruedulkkuup!! (Perfect posture)
┕Lmao
┕This comment is the best no matter how many times I see it
┕Humanity explosion
-As a critic, I give it five stars. “A delicate balancing act between humanity and silliness.”
–ᄏᄏᄏᄏᄏThe army is best in the middle^^ A great saying, but you couldn’t practice it yourself haha
-I’ve felt this since he was on a variety show before, but I feel good when I watch Woojoo
-Yeah, he has that kind of bright energy
The blanket monsters who were resting their faces on Woojoo’s shoulder stopped at the last comment and looked at him.
Their eyes were barely open, as if they were wondering ‘Bright energy? Is there such a thing?’
“Capture this. And this. And this too.”
The most excited main dancer among them was capturing the articles and comments without a break.
Rihyuk asked him, “Why do you need to take screenshots of all these compliments? They’re all the same.”
“No, these are proud moments that I have to keep.”
“Are you that happy?”
“Yeah. I love it when someone praises our members.”
Bijoo smiled happily as he captured the comments on Woojoo’s article.
Junghyun pointed at one comment and said, “Junghyun looks great in his uniform. Here’s my compliment. Are you going to capture it?”
“No.”
He rejected him flatly, and Junghyun pouted.
“I’m hurt.”
“I’ll give you one more sweet potato.”
“Thank you.”
The bear who was happily munching on his sweet potato soon pointed at the screen.
“There’s no end to these articles. It feels like I’m reading a biography of you from volume one to twenty.”
“Seriously. There’s no end to them.”
The articles kept coming up.
When they went to the second page, the articles they saw earlier were pushed to the first page, making it hard to skim through them.
And 90% of them were about Woojoo.
“But didn’t you say that the weird stuff you did was focused on part two?”
“I did.”
“You threw a boomerang and hit the instructor with an ice cream, right?”
“It was a bet. A bet.”
He twisted the truth.
But as Jiho said, if the reaction was this good for part one, there was no need to talk about part two.
“I’m speechless...”
Woojoo was stunned by the endless articles.
It was a good thing that they had finished filming the show. If not, he would have stayed up all night with the pressure.
It felt like people were expecting him to blow something up in the next episode.
He felt overwhelmed by the attention for the first time.
He was usually the type to enjoy it to a certain extent, but it had gone way beyond his limit, so he calmed himself down and took a deep breath.
“...”
This must be how entertainers felt when they got noticed.
He felt a moment of respect.
They had an album preparation period, but the entertainment industry had to keep up the buzz in real time.
“I’m glad I’m a singer.”
“What are you talking about all of a sudden?”
“I think I would have messed up if I was an entertainer...”
The younger ones looked at each other and shook their heads.
“No way.”
“You would have done great.”
“You would have been the top of the class if there was an entertainment school.”
Woojoo sometimes wondered what they thought of him.
“They want to sign a contract quickly before the second season airs. They think it will be more popular then.”
“Oh...”
“Of course, the modeling fee is big now.”
Woojoo had a blank expression for a moment as the numbers flowed out of her mouth.
It was like juice that he had left half-eaten, the numbers tried to enter his ears but flowed down.
“Uh, how much?”
“What do you mean? Assistant Manager Hong?”
They gasped as they heard the sound of billions coming and going.
Assistant Manager Hong said, “Strictly speaking, it’s because your recognition has exploded.”
“But isn’t it better to use TNT or Teen Spirit for this money?”
“Not at all. You have a better advertising effect.”
“...?”
“You’re the top boy group in terms of advertising effect, you know?”
Woojoo almost said, ‘What, what top?’
They stared blankly as she spoke.
“They did a survey on the recognition and likability of boy groups in the advertising industry a while ago, and you were the overall first place.”
“...”
“Your position is very rare. There are many girl groups with mass appeal, but even the top boy groups are not well known by people. They know TNT, but unless it’s a popular member like Han Taehyun, they don’t know. But...”
“They know all of our faces?”
“Adults know you from Legendary Song Discovery, and 2030s know you from the History Discovery Team and various variety shows.”
Even though there were groups with more overwhelming fandoms, they were the most popular among the current boy groups.
What should he say?
His heart was pounding and fluffy.
“So what do you think about the advertising contact?”
“Um...”
Woojoo looked over the list and said, “Most of them are personal ads for me or Junghyun.”
“That’s how it is.”
“I’d rather do something that we can all do together. I’m still not comfortable with personal ads.”
He would definitely benefit from personal activities since he had a contract to take the income individually.
But that wasn’t his goal.
He was already making money from the royalties of the songs, and for now, he wanted their New Black to be higher than now...
“Do it, Hyung.”
“You have to do this. Why aren’t you doing it?”
“If you feel guilty about taking all the money, just shoot it and give us one-nth of it.”
“Huh, then what about our money cushion...?”
Woojoo could only smile at the faces of his siblings who were soaked in capitalism.
They pretended to be tempted by Jiho’s one-nth joke, but they seemed to tell him not to feel burdened and do whatever he wanted.
Woojoo lowered his head and said, “I don’t know if I’ll have time to shoot, but if there’s an ad that we can all do together, I’ll try to ask for that one.”
“You guys are busy too. I’ll just look at the schedule and see what I can do.”
“Thank you. ...Oh, by the way, you said there were two good news earlier, what’s the other one?”
“Oh, that?”
The other person tapped on the laptop and turned the screen to Woojoo.
“This.”
“...?”
He saw an SNS screen on the screen.
There was a tweet in English under the logo of a blue bird chirping.
“John Edwards...?”
“Who is this?”
It started with a tweet from a famous Hollywood director.
@John_Edwards v
(A 17-second video that combines a scene from the movie ‘Codename 17’ with someone in a black suit subduing a Special Forces agent with a strange technique.)
[Translate] Wow. That’s possible.
There was a tweet below that said, ‘We shot it with wires, how did he do it with his bare body?’
There was a familiar account among the retweets.
@Olive_House_Official
(A picture of New Black, the Korean model for Olive House.)
[Translate] He’s our promotional model.
It was a perfect niche promotion.
Anyway, the tweet from John Edwards, who directed many famous movies, spread quickly in the English-speaking world.
It also spread in Korea when Hanmo from TNT retweeted it.
“...What is this.”
“What’s going on here.”
The situation turned really awkward.
At first, John Edwards, who was in LA, asked his agent, ‘Who is he? He’s amazing, find out more about him.’
Soon, the answer came back, ‘He’s Woojoo, a member of a K-pop group.’
“The director seems to be curious and watched some of the performances of New Black and stuff like that.”
“Ah...”
“So he asked me to arrange a meeting.”
The conference room of the movie distributor ‘Forest’.
As Woojoo sat with Seokhwan Hyung, the distributor’s staff explained how they got to have the meeting.
They whispered to each other while eating the snacks they were served.
“Why did he suddenly call us? Maybe a cameo appearance in the movie...?”
“The shooting is over, right?”
“Oh, right.”
The youngest, who was dreaming of a sudden Hollywood debut, looked a little sullen.
The laptop was ready for the video call in the conference room.
As the distributor’s staff and their company’s people sat down, the video call was finally connected.
「How’s the connection... Oh, it’s connected.」
A middle-aged man sitting on a folding chair with his legs crossed appeared in what looked like a shooting site.
He was a Viking-like man with brown hair and a sturdy physique, just like in the photos.
John Edwards smiled and said.
「Nice to meet you.」
「Hello! We are New Black!」
Ouch. His ears.
Their youngest shouted loudly with his eyes sparkling, as if saying ‘Look at me! Look at me!’ The other side laughed.
It was amazing to talk face to face with someone on the other side of the earth.
They had a conversation one by one, slowly, because of the slightly interrupted call.
After a brief exchange of ‘Nice to meet you’ with each other, the other side brought up the main topic.
「I’m shooting a musical movie right now, and the reason I wanted to see New Black is because I want to do a related project.」
Project?
They were about to ask him about it.
Then, a familiar figure came into view between the moving staff behind him.
A dancer with a lean and muscular body walked along to the beat with his daughter.
“Huh...?”
“Isn’t that Clay and Joy?”
“Clay?”
They must have heard them, because they looked up and shouted, ‘Clay! There’s New Black here!’
Whoosh!
In an instant, the Tyler mother and daughter disappeared like the wind.
‘They sure know how to run.’
‘Look at the afterimage on the screen.’
Woojoo wanted to say hello, since he was happy to see them, but they seemed busy.
Well. Too bad, but he would greet them later.
For now, their work came first.
“So.” Woojoo asked the director, who was smiling leisurely, “What is the project that you want to do with us?”