41 A Helping Hand

Min-soo was in the middle of a pleasant dream when he felt someone gently shake him. He opened his eyes and saw the slightly concerned face of Uncle Sun. Uncle Sun then laughed as he patted Min-soo's shoulders and took a seat beside him, after Min-soo sat up.

"Not been getting enough rest lately, Min-soo?" He asked kindly.

"No, no. I'm not quite sure why I fell asleep here." Min-soo wondered puzzledly.

"Well, I don't blame you, this is a nice spot you've found here. Must be good to be young." He remarked bemusedly.

"Uh, how did you find me?" Min-soo asked in curiosity, as the spot he was in was a little out of the way.

"You should be glad you did not wake up to a gaggle of starry-eyed employees. One of the gardeners saw you asleep and took a picture and sent it to her friend and before I knew it, the whole lot of them were banging on about how cute you looked. Obviously, I found out through Jang-mi squawking to Jae-eun." He grumbled in response.

Min-soo laughed at his response and felt glad that this nightmare scenario did not come to pass. He then looked over to Uncle Sun and asked. "Is there a problem, for you to come out here looking for me?"

"No, no. Just wanted to make sure you were okay. Oh, but I have heard something interesting lately, apparently, Lee Soo-man is back in the country and he plans to dip his feet into the idol business again. Do you think we should be worried?"

Min-soo's eyes widened slightly at mention of Lee Soo-man, arguably the pioneer of the Hallyu Wave, as well as being the founder of SM Entertainment in his previous life. In this world, however, things had not been so smooth.

Instead of being the one to push the Hallyu Wave forward, he was the straw that broke the metaphorical camels back. As scandal after scandal broke out in the industry, it was not until Lee Soo-man got into some trouble and was wanted by Interpol that the industry came under sustained pressure, that eventually resulted in the formation of a special taskforce by the President.

The taskforce had one simply aim, investigate and cleanse the industry of corrupt practices. Instead of giving it a fresh start, the public eventually grew extremely cynical of the industry and having lost their support, it heralded its rapid decline.

Until now, of course. With a neutral general public, a new agenda and an upcoming election, it appeared it was time to revive the decade old policy. This made it ripe for old hands like Lee Soo-man to take another crack at their dreams.

Min-soo felt a little concerned, but at the same time he felt excited, after all, it was never a realistic expectation for him to be the one and only company that brought forth the joys of K-pop. It was also similarly unrealistic for him to go around and gather up every 'successful' K-pop artist from his previous life and copy and paste them into this one.

One, he did not know where they were now. Two, he did not have the time to manage so many of them. Three, he also feared that in his hands he might destroy them. Fear of failure was what stopped Min-soo from jointly debuting a boy and girl group.

After all, this was his first time doing something like this, in both of his lives. As a result, he wanted to take debuting BTS slowly and ensure that he could cultivate some model of success, to which he could replicate in the future.

Foundations were important.

Since Lee Soo-man was going to reform SM Entertainment, Min-soo wondered whether he would debut a boy or girl group first. Min-soo then turned to Uncle Sun and reassured him, "I think it should be fine. Do you know Lee Soo-man well?"

"Well, I would not say we know each other well. We have spoken a few times before, after all, he is an alumnus of Seoul National like myself. However, his situation during those troubled years was not good at all and so I stayed away from him. Last I heard he co-operated with Interpol a while back and putting that behind him, has been trying to crack into the Chinese market for the past few years." Uncle Sun responded in his scholarly manner.

"How did that go?" Min-soo asked with some scepticism.

"He has had some middling success, the Chinese government are always a little suspicious of foreign cultural exports, so he's stuck to locals he trained up and they've all been solo artists. One of his more popular artists, I believe he's called Lay has quite the outreach in Southeast Asia. So, I am sure he has possibly been waiting all this time for an opportunity like this to re-enter the industry here."

"Hmm…" Min-soo had a lot to ponder, especially with the revelation that Lee Soo-man was managing Lay. He was sure this was the same Lay from EXO in his previous life and it was not unreasonable to assume he had picked up the other Chinese members from the group as well.

In fact, Min-soo would not be surprised if Lee Soo-man created EXO as his first group. However, this was merely his conjecture, he needed more information on his future competitors. Why did he need it, well, a better question would be why not?

"Uncle Sun, could you keep an ear out for Lee Soo-man's plans and others like him. If possible, see if they are willing to partner up, I have quite a bit of money in the bank and I'm feeling generous. Perhaps, some of them may be in need of investors or a helping hand." Min-soo mused in a cautious tone.

Uncle Sun laughed at Min-soo's malicious intentions, it was clear as day that he merely wanted insider information, but he thought this was a wise move. "No problem, leave this to me, I will try and contact some of those in the know and see if anyone needs a boost."

With that said, Uncle Sun then got up and the two of them headed back into the company building.

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