The Preview
“A story?”
I gave his appearance a quick once-over. He was clean-cut. His natural features leaned toward the kind side, but those eyes were sharp enough to kill that kindness dead.
“Ah—please take this first.”
He held out a business card.
Blue Broadcasting
Jo Deok, Executive Producer
The card was embroidered with a flashy logo, but the only lines that mattered were those two.
“You’re from a broadcasting station?”
“Haha. Yes, that’s right. Blue Broadcasting—we’re a local station. For reference, we also run a regional newspaper.”
“I see.”
A local station. They might hang the word “broadcasting” on the door, but they couldn’t be producing much of their own content. Mostly just rebroadcasting footage that had been handed to them. Why would a place like that come looking for me?
“What brings you here?”
“Ah, nothing complicated. Introducing new restaurants is part of our job, you see.”
“Is that so?”
I hadn’t known they even ran a program like that. I hadn’t been settled in this area long enough to catch every local show. The producer read the blank look on my face easily enough and explained with a good-natured smile.
“Haha. Looks like you’re not familiar. We air a show at five o’clock called Hit-or-Miss Gourmet Travels. It’s a local restaurant feature program.”
That made sense. A restaurant feature. Getting introduced wouldn’t be a bad thing—it would be a good one.
If it’s just a brief corner segment, there’s nothing difficult about it.
From the way he was talking, I figured he had come for a scouting visit.
“If it’s a restaurant feature… are you planning to introduce us?”
“Hahaha. That is the purpose of my visit, yes—but we’re still treating you as a candidate.”
“A candidate?”
I wasn’t trying to be dismissive, but did a local station really need a shortlist?
“Yes. After dining alone, I can say it was extremely good. Still, we can’t just decide on a whim.”
“Hmm. Is that so?”
Did he really need to spell that out for me? A question mark started drawing itself across my mind. The producer, as if completely unaware of it, kept speaking with that smiling face.
“Yes. Haha. Broadcasts are broadcasts, after all.”
“Broadcasts are broadcasts. Understood.”
“Haha. I like how quick you are on the uptake. Anyway, you’re on the candidate list, so give it some thought. I’ll be on my way.”
Give what some thought? Weighing candidates was the producer’s job, not mine. I still couldn’t make sense of it. The man kept smiling the whole time, but offered no further explanation.
“I’ll be waiting for your call, then.”
Even his parting words were opaque.
Television, huh…
Even a short appearance was still television. When I looked into it, the local station put out a surprising number of original programs. No matter how much people said broadcast wasn’t what it used to be, it would clearly be a help.
“What’s got you thinking so hard?”
“Ah—you’re here, hyungnim.”
“Yeah. Thought we might as well have a cup of this.”
Woo hyungnim nodded at the two coffees in his hands—carefully hand-brewed, no doubt.
“Hup.”
He set one cup in front of me, settled into his seat as if it were the most natural thing in the world, and asked,
“Something on your mind? Business is good, and from what I’ve seen, even I-su’s been smiling lately. He’s all fired up about making proper Hong Kong food.”
“No worries on the inside of the shop.”
Putting Hong Kong cuisine on the menu had finished the internal cleanup. Come lunchtime the place filled with customers, and everyone moved in step with that pace. If things just kept going like this, I couldn’t ask for more happiness.
“So it’s an outside worry, then?”
“Pretty much. More than a worry, really—I got handed this.”
“What’s this? Hmm. A business card.”
I passed him the card I’d received and gave a short rundown of what had just happened. Listening, Woo hyungnim’s expression hardened at once. He delivered his verdict in a single line.
“This is garbage.”
“What?”
Garbage. That was a strong word. Woo hyungnim was not a man who got angry easily. For him to flare up and call something garbage…
“Aigoo. You still don’t get it?”
“Hm? Get what?”
“Honestly… little brother, there’s nothing you don’t know about cooking, but with stuff like this you never catch the scent. It’s like you spent years living alone on some remote island!”
“Ahem…”
Not an island, exactly. Something close enough, though. I swallowed a dry cough while hyungnim went on explaining.
“He said ‘candidate,’ right? Told you to think it over and call him back?”
“That part did feel off. Even if we were going to be on air, isn’t it normal for them to contact us first?”
“Normally, yes! Unless it’s a surprise shoot like last time, that’s how it works.”
“So this isn’t normal?”
Something had felt wrong; the bad vibe had been there. Its true shape came out soon enough.
“This is them asking for money.”
“What?”
“They’re saying they’ll put you on air—so pay up.”
“Huh…”
The reality of it was almost too absurd. I knew these things weren’t completely unheard of. On my days off I’d been peeling away the layers of my previous life by looking into all kinds of subjects.
So the thing I’d only ever heard about just happened to me?
I never expected it to land on my doorstep this fast.
“Ten minutes for this much, twenty for that much. A big splash costs this much. They’ll have a whole rate card.”
“That far?”
“‘That far’? You think broadcasting people are ordinary people? These guys sell airtime by the second!”
“Hoo boy. So in the end it’s ‘we’ll put you on TV, so hand over the cash’?”
“Exactly!”
Even with the situation sprung on us, it wasn’t irreversible. I sorted it out without much fuss.
We weren’t doing it.
No need to drag something like this out.
“Hm? Calling him right now?”
“Yes. Better to finish it quick so I can rest easy.”
I dialed immediately. The ringtone barely had time to sound before the producer’s voice came through.
“Hello?”
“Hello. This is the owner of the shop you visited earlier.”
“The place I visited earlier… hmm… which one?”
He’d been making the rounds in a hurry, apparently.
“Factory Restaurant.”
“Ah, that one!”
Our place was commonly called the Factory Restaurant. For the record, our individual shop names were fairly distinctive. Mine was The Table Setting. Woo hyungnim’s coffee shop was Sodam Roastery. Jang hyungnim’s Hong Kong place was simply named Hong Kong Restaurant. The names were all characterful in their own ways, so the regulars who came through here mostly just called the whole thing the Factory Restaurant.
The producer recognized it at once.
“Aigoo. Finished thinking already, huh?”
I could feel him smiling on the other end of the line—the kind of smile a man wears when everything is going exactly the way he wants. A thin undercurrent of see, I knew you’d come around rode along with it.
“Yes. Finished it quickly.”
“Well, you see. We’ve already got another place talking with us… so, ah, the terms are a little different from earlier.”
“Oh, is that so?”
Already treating me like a landed fish. The way he slipped casually into informal speech said everything about his character.
“The thing is… a little higher than usual…”
And now a last-minute change of terms. Classic strong-to-the-weak, weak-to-the-strong behavior.
“Those terms won’t have anything to do with me.”
“Huh?”
“‘Huh’ is informal. You’ve been sliding into informal speech since earlier—drop that first.”
“Uh—yes. Yes, yes. But when you say the terms don’t matter…”
“We’re not going on.”
“Excuse me?”
“I said we’re not going on. The broadcast.”
A complete refusal. That was when he started to scramble.
“What do you mean by that? If it’s because of the terms I just mentioned, I can work something out—”
He seemed to think this was still a negotiation, trying to drag things out by dangling the terms. There was no need to sit through any more of that useless talk.
“I’m hanging up.”
“Wait—if you hang up like that, I—”
Beep—
I ended the call immediately. When I looked up,
“Man, that felt good!”
Jang hyungnim, who had been watching the whole time, had both thumbs up.
That light refusal behind us, it was only a little while later.
During a short break between rushes—an easy afternoon with only a few café customers left—Jang hyungnim came over holding his phone, looking thoroughly entertained.
“Wow. So they actually took that one.”
“Took what?”
“Just look.”
On the phone, a broadcast was streaming through YouTube. These days stations ran live on YouTube too, so that part made sense. What was on the screen, though, looked very familiar.
“That’s Boss Bang’s ramen shop.”
“Right. Pier Ramen. That’s the place. Heh… but look at the top right.”
“Wow. They’re calling this an authentic ramen restaurant?”
“Exactly!”
Anyone who knew anything knew Boss Bang was assembling his product from commercially available ingredients. And they were calling it authentic.
There are so many places that just assemble and sell… if that counts as authentic, then sure, I guess it’s authentic?
Even a bad law is still the law—if they wanted to call that authentic, fine. The real show was what came after.
“Puhaha. Look at him making the broth. Shark fin? Does he think throwing in expensive ingredients is all it takes?”
“I know. Dumping this and that in doesn’t automatically make it taste good.”
“Ugh. What a waste. That stuff can’t be cheap!”
He threw shark fin into the broth, claimed it had been boiling for forty-eight hours straight while the camera showed him still working the pot late into the evening, then wiped away streaming sweat with a look of deep satisfaction—soulful acting, every bit of it.
“Man, Boss Bang should’ve gone into acting instead of ramen!”
“There’s soul in that performance! Real soul!”
“Right? Haha. It is pretty funny, though.”
If you didn’t know any better, the screen held the image of a master who had staked his life on ramen. You could feel the producer behind the camera putting his whole soul into the shoot as well. Boss Bang and the producer had both sharpened their knives for this one.
A few days later, the results showed immediately.
“Boss Bang’s place has been booming lately, huh?”
“Really?”
“Used to be you could hear the crickets. Pretty busy now.”
“I guess the broadcast really does work.”
Television had saved Boss Bang’s shop. The effect was better than expected.
“Right? If even a local station can do this much, no wonder everyone chases airtime.”
“Yeah, I can see why.”
“Tsk. The real thing that matters is the taste. Nobody seems to get that.”
“Hahaha. The fundamentals are the fundamentals, sure.”
“Exactly. Without fundamentals it all comes back around eventually. Still—we’ve lost a few customers ourselves, haven’t we?”
“Just a little, but yeah.”
“See?”
Our place had felt a very slight dip in traffic. A person only eats three meals a day; if the ramen shop’s customers went up, ours going down was only natural. Still, I wasn’t particularly worried.
“But we don’t need to stress over it, right? The effect’ll fizzle out soon enough.”
“That’s true enough!”
Broadcast effects never last. Just as Jang hyungnim said—if the fundamentals of taste aren’t there, the customers fall away soon enough. I set my mind at ease.
And sure enough, before long the customers we’d lost in small numbers came back. Word reached us that Boss Bang’s place was thinning out again too.
But then again.
Looking at it now, the local broadcast had only been the preview.
……Huh? What’s that?