Call Me Noona

Chapter 37 - Kihyun's Big Plan

Melody Reign, stage name obviously, was a gorgeous songbird/actress with a penchant for dating her costars. She ranked in the vocal diva category with Adele and Celine Dion, and she just happened to be a good actress too. HyunBin was the male lead in this movie, so I was curious how that would go over. He is incredibly handsome and in a relationship... just her type.

"She will be here next week, and they will send details to the agency. She wants to see Honey's studio where he mixed the song."

"Maybe we could invite her for dinner while she is here. I could use some American female interaction," I giggled.

"I don't know if she will go for it, she probably likes expensive restaurants," he joked. "The company will probably set something up."

"She would be crazy not to want to have dinner with the most handsome, sexiest, talented man in Korea. Hmm, that is incorrect... in the world, not just Korea." He looked at me with that shy smile and I squeezed his hand.

He got off the elevator at the dorm and I went on upstairs. I was feeling like a swim. Just as I got changed into my swimsuit and got my hair pulled up, Minhyuk called and asked me to come to the dorm. I slipped on some shorts and a T-shirt over my swimsuit and headed down.

When I stepped inside, they were all dancing around and Minhyuk was bouncing around the room and yelling excitedly. I wasn't sure what I had just walked in on, but they were obviously celebrating something. Min ran over to me and spun me around and then everyone joined in. They were bouncing and laughing, so I did too. Finally, I asked what we were celebrating.

"We are free!" Kihyun announced.

"Free? What do you mean? Free from what?"

"Free from the company! Free from Starship!"

"What? How? You are not messing with me, are you?" They finally settled down enough to explain what had happened. Kihyun did most of the talking, since he was the leader of this venture.

"You are aware how the company handles things and how they mishandled that shit with Wonho a few years ago. Things have only gotten worse. They were running us into the ground. We are constantly moving to the next thing without breaks. The hiatus came about because we gave them no choice. And when we had all those problems on set and that light almost hit Hyungwon a few weeks ago and they told us to keep going, well that was the leverage we needed.

We have all been saving our money and investing as much as we can to make it grow. I contacted an attorney on our behalf, and we met with a couple of banks to secure a loan to cover the remaining money." He paused and I leaned forward, waiting for the rest.

Minhyuk took my hand and grinned as he finished, "we bought our name and the rights to our name. All the rights to the music, the content, the merchandise, the images... everything associated with the name Monsta X and each individual member. We are independent of them now and we can keep performing the music we have made over the years."

I screamed and threw my arms around him, then stood up and hugged each of them. Joohoney touched my arm, "that is not all, noona. There's more."

Kihyun continued, "the extra money was to start our own label." They all stood together, "you are looking at the founding members of X-Ray Entertainment. We are still Monsta X, but we are also X-Ray Ent." I screamed again and started bouncing.

"I can't believe it!" I turned to Minhyuk, "how were you able to keep this secret? Not just from me, but from the media?"

"It wasn't easy. We only talked about it here or upstairs. We kept the people we met with to a minimum and made those few sign confidentiality agreements. It was worth all of it though."

"But what about the tour and the new album promotions? Are you going to keep making albums and touring?" I asked.

"We are obligated to finish those and then we are done. We are not making the announcement yet. We want to wrap all that up first. Hopefully, we can keep it under wraps until we are ready, but you know how likely that is. We are scouting locations right now to set up after the first of the year. Once this tour is over, we are all taking some time off. We will still release music and do the things we love to do, but the pressure will not be on us and we can focus on new talent. We will tour when we are ready, and only when we want to."

I was still in shock and was not able to process what this meant. Minhyuk put his arm around me and pulled me to his chest. "This means I will be home a lot more. We can finally start our family when we get back from the tour." He kissed my forehead as tears began falling onto my cheeks.

"That is the best thing I have heard since 'I do'," I said as I kissed him. "You could have told me though. I would not have said anything." I pouted at him.

"I wanted to, but we made a promise to each other that the only people we would tell were the ones who were able to help us make it happen. This started before you were in the picture."

"But don't you..." he put his finger against my lips. He already knew what I was going to ask.

"I do trust you. That has nothing to do with it. I made a promise to my brothers and I keep my promises. That is one of the things you love about me, isn't it?" He stroked my cheek as he cocked his head to the side and smiled... that disarmingly charming smile.

"Well, yes. It is..." I swooned over that smile.

"And if I had told you and it fell through, you would have been devastated... wouldn't you?" He lowered his face to get even with mine and looked at me. "We were not sure this was going to work. This was the best way."

"Ok, fine," I crossed my arms and looked at him with my chin in the air. "I suppose you will just have to make it up to me later."

"Count on it," his smile widened as he winky blinked at me.