Wind Planning’s president Choi Sun-Myung recently sent Manager Jo Ki-hyeok and three gangsters to threaten Lemon Flower. But they were caught by Seo Jung-woo, and Jo Ki-hyeok got beaten up and driven off. Lee Seon-hwa and 4cats were also present at the time.

Lemon Flower had originally intended to quietly consult with ES Entertainment, but after that incident, they changed their minds and showed up at the office openly.

Lemon Flower’s Yoon Mi-so and Choi Soo-ah made a proposal to Oh Dong-Cheol.

“We’d like to sign with ES Entertainment if you can meet just two conditions.”

Oh Dong-Cheol grinned broadly.

“Good thinking. I’d be happy to have you. Whatever the conditions are, I can meet them…”

Then it hit him—his company still didn’t have any money.

The revenue from music sales goes to Seo Jung-woo and 4cats. The company’s share of that revenue was already promised to Seo Jung-woo. In return, they received sheet music instead of paying separately for the songs.

ES Entertainment planned to make money through TV, commercials, and events. As long as 4cats stayed popular, there’d be plenty of income from those, so they weren’t too worried about finances.

Recently, one of their songs had been used in a commercial, and just last week they performed at their first event. Right after that event, the international industrial espionage incident brought them some unexpected publicity benefits.

The problem was, almost no income had actually been deposited yet.

“It’ll take some time to get the down payment ready.”

Yoon Mi-so shook her head.

“We get the situation. We’re not going to demand the signing bonus right away. You can take your time with that.”

“Then what are the conditions you want us to meet?”

“We want a song from Dimension.”

Oh Dong-Cheol was caught off guard.

“Huh? That’s your condition for signing with us?”

“Yes.”

“Dimension isn’t under exclusive contract with us, though.”

“We already checked. You handle all of Dimension’s music business, right?”

“Well, that’s true.”

“We saw on TV that 4cats seems to know Dimension pretty well. We want that kind of relationship too.”

Choi Soo-ah added,

“Our popularity really depends on the quality of our songs. If we get a bad song, our popularity drops instantly. But with a good song, we can rise again. We were so jealous of the song Dimension gave to 4cats. That’s exactly the kind of song we want.”

Oh Dong-Cheol had been a famous singer before he injured his throat a few years ago. He agreed with what Lemon Flower said.

“Yeah. I know that. Your group really depends heavily on the song quality. But, the thing is…”

Seeing him hesitate, Yoon Mi-so asked,

“Are you hesitating because of Wind Planning?”

Oh Dong-Cheol bristled.

“Of course not! I can’t stand Choi Sun-Myung. That guy’s a scumbag.”

“Then why are you hesitating? Just give us a good song and we’ll make loads of money for you. If we’re changing companies, we’ll need a new song anyway.”

“Whether to give you a song or not is up to Dimension, not me.”

“Then please let us meet Dimension. We’ll ask directly.”

“Huh? Uh… That’s going to be tough. Dimension doesn’t meet people easily.”

“But 4cats met them, right?”

“That was… I’ll talk to Dimension. Just wait for now.”

“Okay. Oh, and one more thing about Detective Seo.”

Oh Dong-Cheol flinched. Dimension is Seo Jung-woo.

“Huh? Detective Seo? Wh-who’s Detective Seo?”

“The famous Detective Seo Jung-woo. Who else?”

“What about him?”

“He seems pretty close with 4cats.”

“Yeah. I know him a bit too. He saved Nana from a murderer, remember?”

“We figured. So this is our second condition.”

Yoon Mi-so smiled brightly.

“Please set up a meeting with Detective Seo. Soo-ah and I want to make a move. We’ve agreed to let him decide who he picks.”

“What? No way!”

“Why not? Don’t tell me you’re going to put a no-dating clause in the contract?”

“Date all you want, I don’t care. Just… not with Detective Seo. He’s super famous right now. I heard he went to Gangwon-do to avoid the reporters.”

Oh Dong-Cheol went to see Seo Jung-woo. He didn’t go to the police station, fearing he might run into reporters, so he went to his house instead.

The four members of 4cats were caught red-handed by Oh Dong-Cheol as they were eating pizza, chicken, and jokbal at the house.

“You girls are singers! Idol girl group singers at that! You should be losing weight, not eating like this!”

Seo Sora shouted back.

“Our fans probably think our bodies were always like this. So it’s fine.”

“You’re already a problem!”

Yoon Nana tried to excuse herself.

“I only ate jokbal. I didn’t touch the chicken or the pizza.”

“But you finished all the jokbal and only left the bones! That was the special size, wasn’t it? It was!”

The twins were proud.

“We’re minors! At our age, we need to eat well!”

“If we eat a lot, we’ll grow big and strong!”

“But haven’t we grown enough already?”

“There are still places we need to grow!”

Oh Dong-Cheol covered his face with his hand.

“Forget it. When have you ever listened to me anyway? Want more? Should I order more food?”

Park Da-yeon quietly raised her hand. Seo Sora, realizing what was about to happen, quickly grabbed it and pushed it down.

“If you eat more, you’ll gain weight.”

“You’ve already—uh, never mind. Please spare me.”

Oh Dong-Cheol asked Seo Sora,

“By the way, where’s Detective Seo?”

“He said he’d be here soon.”

Soon after, Seo Jung-woo arrived.

Oh Dong-Cheol explained the situation to him.

Yoon Nana, listening in from the side, asked,

“So, President, the Lemon Flower unnies will only sign with our company if they get a song from D oppa, right?”

Oh Dong-Cheol glanced at Seo Jung-woo and answered,

“That’s right.”

“They said that earlier too. They must really want it bad.”

“They said it earlier and before?”

“Yeah, because Jung-woo oppa saved them from Wind Planning’s manager and some thugs.”

Oh Dong-Cheol was shocked.

“What! Then do they know that Detective Seo is Dimension? Is that why they want to join our company?”

Seo Sora shook her head.

“Nah. They only know him as Detective Seo Jung-woo.”

Oh Dong-Cheol sighed in relief and asked Seo Jung-woo,

“Lemon Flower wanting to meet you—we can make up excuses and delay that. But asking for a song is their condition for signing, so we can’t stall that. What do you want to do…”

Seo Jung-woo thought of the two women and said,

“Those two…”

They were popular singers in the other world too. He had never met them in person but had seen them on TV often and listened to their songs.

But the songs they sang over there were different from the ones here.

‘Over there, they were both solo artists. But here, they’re a team?’

“First, let’s listen to their songs. Those two people’s songs.”

Seo Sora quickly searched the songs on her phone and played them. Songs sung by Lemon Flower came out one by one from the Bluetooth speaker. Seo Jung-woo only listened to a bit of each before skipping to the next. None of the songs were the ones he had heard in the other world.

‘The genre is completely different. How can it be this different?’

In that world, both of them had become popular by singing sorrowful love songs.

But here, they only sang upbeat dance tracks. Fans thought Lemon Flower was a singer specialized in dance music.

“Hmm.”

There was no need to turn away someone who was coming willingly. Though the worlds were different, he didn’t like that singers he enjoyed listening to were being threatened by their original agency.

He recalled what Park Cheol-woo had said about the two of them recently.

– They’re both talented, hardworking, and have good personalities.

That was good enough. No problems with them as people.

“I’ll give you an answer tomorrow.”

The next day, Seo Jung-woo crossed to the parallel dimension and met with Park Cheol-woo. Park Cheol-woo was still fighting at the Jeokseong Gate in northern Gyeonggi Province.

Seo Jung-woo handed him a bottle of alcohol and said,

“Can you get me some songs?”

Park Cheol-woo never went on infiltration missions while drunk. So Seo Jung-woo intentionally gave him alcohol as a gift.

Park Cheol-woo let out a dry chuckle.

“Take any of my songs. Why are you being formal with me?”

“No, not your songs.”

“Huh? Then whose?”

“Yoon Mi-so and Choi Soo-ah.”

Park Cheol-woo tilted his head.

“Their songs don’t match the vibe of the four you’re raising. It won’t suit them.”

“No. There are people with the exact same voices as those two.”

“Ahh. Really? But they’ve sung so many songs. Which ones do you want?”

Seo Jung-woo laid out the conditions. Since they weren’t songs composed by Park Cheol-woo himself, there were things to consider.

“One definite hit song from each of them. Something with at least a little bit of featuring. I’m going to have Choi Soo-ah feature in Yoon Mi-so’s song, and vice versa.”

“Not the actual singers, but people with the same voices?”

“Yeah. And not anything composed too long ago—I need songs composed within the last fifteen years. So I need the composition date, not the release date. If it was sitting on a shelf for years and only got released recently, that won’t work.”

Park Cheol-woo tilted his head again.

“I don’t get why you’re setting such weird conditions.”

“If things go well later, I might be able to tell you. Much later. For now, just go with it.”

Park Cheol-woo didn’t think about it for long.

“Got it. Buying songs isn’t hard. But it might cost some money. We’re talking about remaking their hit songs. That won’t come cheap.”

“They won’t be released to the public anywhere in this world.”

Park Cheol-woo laughed.

“Why do you always have that condition? It’s not like you’re taking them past the Gate to perform or anything……”

His expression stiffened.

“Wait. Don’t tell me you’re planning to cross the Gate again?”

“I’m not looking to die.”

“Right? Then what, you’re launching a spaceship or something?”

“There aren’t any spaceships around these days.”

Places like the U.S. occasionally launched satellites, but they focused on high orbits that could be maintained for a long time, so their reconnaissance effectiveness was low. Small Gates didn’t show up well from those satellites. Cracks that existed before Gates opened couldn’t be distinguished at all.

Gate-detecting radars capable of picking up cracks couldn’t be miniaturized enough to fit on a satellite.

Space shuttles and the like had all been destroyed long ago.

Park Cheol-woo asked,

“Then what, you actually got invited to some secret billionaire gathering or something? You bring in rare food easily, and now you’re buying songs under nondisclosure terms.”

“Just go with it.”

“Alright. You just need me to get the songs, right? With those conditions, I can probably get them cheap.”

“You still have to give me feedback on the songs. Including the featuring parts—if anything needs adjusting, take care of it.”

“That’s easy. Looks like I can keep mooching off you.”

Seo Jung-woo pulled rice out of his bag.

“Eat some real food. Oh, and how much savings do you have?”

“What, now you’re charging me for food? Is that all our relationship amounts to? Come on, that hurts!”

“I think I might be able to get a Red Potion.”

Park Cheol-woo’s face lit up immediately.

“Really? Wow! Now that’s the kind of friendship we have!”

After resolving the recent curse incident, Seo Jung-woo had demanded the government sell him a Red Potion instead of awarding him a medal.

If that had been an official government mission, he would have asked for a Red Potion from the beginning, but since he’d fought to save Lee Seon-hwa, he had decided to just pay for it.

“Red Potions have been practically extinct lately. How did you manage it?”

“I haven’t gotten it yet. I need the money to get it. So, your savings?”

“Uh……”

“Start saving now, at least.”

Seo Jung-woo and Park Cheol-woo moved to the rear lines.

After calling several composer contacts, Park Cheol-woo came to a conclusion.

“Jung-woo, to confirm your conditions properly, we’ll need to go to Seoul.”

“Then let’s go. Take a day off from battle, get a wash, sleep well. You look like a total mess.”

In Seoul, Park Cheol-woo met with people he knew in the music industry. Many were glad to see him after so long.

They also met separately with Yoon Mi-so and Choi Soo-ah.

Yoon Mi-so clicked her tongue when she saw Seo Jung-woo.

“Oh my. Totally my type.”

Seo Jung-woo replied,

“Not interested.”

That day, they bought two songs. One was a hit sung by Yoon Mi-so, the other by Choi Soo-ah.

After adding lots of notes to the sheet music files, Park Cheol-woo said,

“If their voices are the same, there’s no need to tweak the featuring parts either. I added notes for guidance, but if you deviate too much from the original intent, bring me the recordings and I’ll advise like last time.”

The next day, Seo Jung-woo returned to the other world—one without monsters.

He called Oh Dong-cheol.

“President Oh.”

– Have you decided what to do?

“I sent you an email. Check the two sheet music files I attached.”

– Huh? Sheet music already? And two files? Don’t tell me… two songs?

“Each file has the assigned name on it.”