In This Life, The Greatest Star In The Universe

The Lemon Entertainment PR team was in full swing.

With Jang Sowon’s collaboration track Something about to drop, they hustled to cover every angle.

“Will our boys appear in the music video?”

“For Something? It’s not the title track, so no.”

“Too bad.”

“Even if they shot one, they’d only show their own artists.”

“Right. Seung-hee?”

“...Yes?”

From the corner cubicle came a hollow voice. The woman who peeked out looked like she’d been up all night—sunken eyes and pale complexion.

“You called?”

“How’s the video for the company’s MyTube channel going?”

“It’s fine,” she answered. “I’ve mostly finished editing the footage of Jang Sowon and Jiho working on the track. Just need to add subtitles.”

“Okay. Upload it as soon as it’s ready.”

The PR manager shifted his gaze.

“You’ve set up the group’s official Twitter and SNS accounts, right?”

“Yes, all done.”

“First, post only the song promotional copy. If the response is good, we can share practice clips later—to reel in anyone who’s curious after hearing the song.”

“Yes.”

“When the tide’s high, row fast.”

That was Lemon Entertainment PR’s motto.

“All our press release materials are ready.”

“Boss, do you think that’s enough?”

“Why?”

“Well, Hwayi isn’t doing any promotion. We’re more passionate about pushing track three than they are.”

“Why’s that?”

“They’re a weird company, really.”

“Right. At the last press dinner, reporters said...”

“What did they say?”

“That Hwayi Ent is terrible at crisis management. Other labels at least pretend to respond when something breaks; they just sit on their hands. They’ll dither until the situation explodes, then scramble.”

“They tanked Sugarfish that way.”

“Exactly.”

“But think about it—their main act is Girls on Top. Sowon’s album is single-only because of a smaller budget.”

To steer the conversation back, the PR lead clapped his hands.

“All right, enough chit-chat. Let’s focus on the press release we’ll send out tomorrow morning—”

“Boss!”

The staff member monitoring the web interrupted.

“I don’t think we can promote tomorrow.”

“What?”

“Look at the internet.”

“Where?”

“Anywhere.”

He sounded vague, but his expression was deadly serious. Without a word, the manager pulled out his phone and checked the entertainment news section. His brow furrowed as he read the headlines:

This was an unprecedented scandal.

Sixty Seconds Leaked Recording Scandal... Agency: “Verifying Facts”

The popular boy group Sixty Seconds is embroiled in a historic controversy. Early this morning, an anonymous user ‘King Bam-Bang-Bang’ posted a one-minute leaked audio recording on an online forum.

The recording, apparently captured inside the group’s vehicle en route to a broadcast shoot, includes backbiting about fellow entertainers, graphic sexual talk, and vile profanity. It has spread rapidly on social media, igniting heated discussion across communities.

Netizens reacted: “OMG Sixty Seconds’ manners are insane,” “Unbelievable they’d say such things,” “They’re so immature.” Calls to remove them from upcoming broadcasts surged.

KM Entertainment commented: “We are investigating the recording’s authenticity—whether it truly features Sixty Seconds. We may take legal action against baseless defamation.”

Nearly 5,000 harsh comments followed:

The scandal’s outline was simple:

Sixty {N•o•v•e•l•i•g•h•t} Seconds—one of the top boy groups, produced by KM Ent’s famed “idol-factory” producer Heo Gang-min—had been riding high alongside TNT in popularity. Then, their vile in-car conversation was leaked. The content was so shockingly explicit that everyone who heard it stopped playing it immediately. South Korea was ablaze.

Sixty Seconds were branded pariahs. Their activities halted, and their fandom collapsed. One member escaped with milder remarks, but online they were lumped together as villains.

Watching the avalanche of articles and vicious comments, we trainees trembled. Director Yoon’s warning rang in our ears:

“You haven’t experienced this yet. A word in a car can circle the entire set by next morning.”

“Director’s scolding was for real,” I said.

“That was almost us,” Riheok replied.

“How could it be that filthy? Even reading the transcript made me dizzy.”

“We’re pretty tame compared to those guys,” I added.

“People our age usually speak more politely,” Junghyun said.

“Dude, nobody says ‘our age’ nowadays.”

Ah.

“Seriously, Woo-joo hyung. If it weren’t for you, we’d have been toast.”

“Yeah, we’ve got you keeping us in line.”

Ignoring their teasing, I scrolled through the article. It was absurd—after the CSAT incident, now this disaster on the eve of our release. All the PR materials we crafted were undoubtedly shredding by now. In this chaos, promoting the album was pointless. No choice but an honorable defeat. If we had to fail, at least we had an excuse.

Release Day

The Sixty Seconds scandal still dominated the real-time search trends:

Interest had bizarrely shifted from the tape’s content to dating rumors about members Joo-wan, Baek Yoo-jin, and Ju Hana. The media and netizens pried into girl-group members’ private lives. Maliciously edited clips spread; some posts were pulled when legal threats loomed. Rumors of an even more explicit “full recording” trended.

Then the source of the leak was revealed: an SUV mechanic. After the schedule, the group’s manager noticed car trouble and sent the vehicle for repair. The technician, curious about the celebrity ride, copied the dashcam memory for himself—and shared it with friends, who posted it online for kicks. The mechanic later confessed.

“All the front pages are Sixty Seconds news,” someone muttered as we viewed the headlines up to page twelve. We were sick of it.

I switched my laptop to Mango, the streaming site:

February 3

In five minutes, Jang Sowon’s album would drop at noon.

One minute to go. We’d been hitting refresh for ages. When the tracks appeared, we clicked download instantly.

All three tracks from Wishful Thinking—including Something—we downloaded, hearts pounding.

Something:

The album art caught my eye first: two figures, back to us, seated at a bus stop, each wearing one earbud. A soft beige pastel background. Their gazes fixed on a sky sketched in colored pencil.

JangSowonXNewBlack−SomethingJang Sowon X New Black - Something

Composed by: Jang Sowon, Woo-joo

Lyrics by: Jang Sowon

Seeing my name in the credits made me smile slyly. This really was our song.

The moment the acoustic guitar struck, we gasped. We’d underestimated mixing and mastering. Compared to the rough version we’d heard, this was a world apart—like how a tiny change in expression can transform a face, the engineers had polished Something into a sleek masterpiece. I closed my eyes and savored it.

It was perfect: gently evocative, stirring bittersweet memories, fresh yet warm.

Catch these four hands almost within reach

I’ll draw our worlds a little closer

As Jang Sowon’s sweet voice carried the chorus, I grinned. The production quality was top-tier. We listened spellbound until the last note.

Though it was our voices, it felt unreal—thrilling and deeply moving. All our hard work culminated in this moment. Yes, this was it: our song was in the world.

With Sixty Seconds swallowed by their own black hole of scandal, we chose to focus only on the fact that New Black’s debut track had finally arrived. Though the title track “Boy and Girl” barely scraped into the top 90 and our song didn’t chart, none of us felt disappointed.