The Edited Smile
“Indonesia’s number one NewTuber has fifty million subscribers?! I thought nineteen point nine million was already a lot, but… wow. Another league entirely.”
I was curious how entertaining someone had to be to build an audience in the tens of millions.
On the way home, I checked out Kim Yo-gi’s younger sibling’s NewTube channel online.
“This isn’t everyday life. This is the whole human condition.”
Starting with the first video of a baby turning over, then the first clap, the first steps, little baby Kim Yo-gi falling off the sofa and bawling—
It was a channel packed with her life: a free-spirited but sharp-tongued schoolgirl adolescence, then her life in Korea, and even K-pop reviews.
Every comment under the videos was full of affection: “Yo-gi is light,” “Our Yo-gi grew up so beautifully,” “Your internet aunties and uncles are rooting for you.”
“She was a total national little sister. Then I can understand the Indonesian reaction to Twice and Yuria Entertainment, too.”
Before I knew it, I’d arrived home after watching a few videos.
“We’re supposed to meet on March 18, so I should prepare a little.”
First, I opened the video appearance contract.
“It says the filming location may be changed later, and the schedule can also be adjusted by mutual agreement between the first and second parties.”
The appearance fee and payment method didn’t seem problematic either.
But one section stood out to me.
“Because the group still has many minors, they’re asking that rest breaks be guaranteed during filming.”
“They want to be allowed to review part of the video before broadcast.”
“And even a ban on negative wording.”
I could see in those terms just how much Han Yu-chan treasured Twice.
That also explained why he relied on photographs alone when he made his decisions.
“For now, I should check whether any negative wording was used.”
The opening segment of the February 2 broadcast of Welcome, Time to Work was full of gushing lines like “Twice, who swept through the Republic of Korea,” and “A goddess has descended.”
Buzz. Buzz.
Buzz. Buzz.
The endless vibration of KakaoTalk notifications could only mean it was Oh Ye-ji.
— Cat-Uncle! It took me a while to find this.
— (Contract file)
After I told her to stop using cat jokes, she’d gone and written “cat” with a playful lisp, anyway. That was Oh Ye-ji for you.
“...Fine. I give up. Use whatever you want.”
I downloaded the exclusive contract from Style Entertainment that Oh Ye-ji had sent me.
“I expected as much, but it’s even nastier than I thought.”
If I hadn’t studied entertainment law, even the lawyer who reviewed this might have let the poison clauses slip right past them.
“At least the termination clause is clean. I should tell Ye-ji to request cancellation without any penalty.”
I also told her not to forget to contact her uncle if Style Entertainment tried to attach conditions to the cancellation.
The immediate fire had been put out.
“Let’s check the video again.”
I kept hitting pause on the hour-long footage, and before long, I’d spent two hours watching it.
And the conclusion I reached was simple.
“The editing is meticulous.”
Twice had been framed. That much was obvious.
* * *
Monday, March 18, 10:00 a.m.
I visited Yuria Entertainment.
Since I’d been there once already, I had no hesitation ringing the bell.
“What brings you here?”
“I have a meeting scheduled with Kim Yo-gi of the performance planning team.”
There was no need to tell the security staff that I was a lawyer coming here about Twice.
The static in the speaker cleared up.
“May I ask your name?”
“Cha Do-hyuk.”
“Please wait a moment.”
With a click, the door opened.
“Mr. Cha Do-hyuk, Kim Yo-gi is in a meeting, so verification took longer than expected. Please go that way.”
The guard pointed toward the front desk.
I took out my ID and handed it to the staff member.
I received a visitor badge, then waited for Kim Yo-gi at the gate.
Bang, thump, clatter.
“...?”
I headed toward the noise.
“Duh, sakit.”
“Are you all right?”
The staff member had apparently tumbled all the way down the stairs and was hunched over on the floor.
“Hiss… I’m okay.”
“You should go to a hospital.”
“I’ve got a meeting, so that’s going to be hard right now.”
Frowning, the staffer slowly pushed herself up by the railing.
Huh?
It was a face I’d seen on NewTube.
“Kim Yo-gi?”
Startled, Kim Yo-gi blinked at me.
“...Who are you?”
“Cha Do-hyuk. We were supposed to meet today.”
“Oh—oh?”
“So let’s put the meeting aside and get you to a hospital first.”
She looked fine at the moment, but she could still suffer aftereffects later.
“...There’s an infirmary inside the company. Let’s go there.”
Dispensing even ordinary medication at the workplace would be a violation of the Pharmaceutical Affairs Act.
As she requested, I followed her to the infirmary.
Yuria Entertainment was a rather odd place.
Why is there a clinic inside the company? Is an infirmary supposed to be a clinic?
The staff member was an Indonesian celebrity YouTuber.
The infirmary was staffed by an emergency medicine specialist acting as a health manager.
What on earth is this place?
My head was spinning.
The items a health manager could dispense depended on the job category.
The ordinary kind we all knew could provide quasi-drugs, a nurse could provide over-the-counter medication, and a doctor could even dispense prescription medication. But at workplaces, it was often difficult to hire nurses or doctors, so many places only stocked quasi-drugs.
After she finished being treated, Kim Yo-gi scratched the back of her head awkwardly.
“Our company is kind of unusual, right?”
“Yes. Very.”
At my blunt answer, she burst out laughing. Apparently, she’d never met someone like me before.
“No matter how much they try to keep everyone safe, our artists get hurt a lot, so the CEO took extraordinary measures.”
“...That’s a pretty big move.”
“And very considerate. If the artists go to the hospital too often, rumors start flying, so he opened a branch of a partner hospital right here at the company.”
Staff could even get nutritional IV drips when they were tired, and immediate family members of employees could use the service at a discount.
It was the kind of welfare package you rarely saw even at massive corporations.
“As a work environment, I’d say it’s one of the best in South Korea.”
“Right? That’s why I came in as an intern and ended up putting down roots at Yuria.”
She laughed brightly, then bumped her forehead against the performance planning team’s door.
Is she a clumsy one?
“Are you okay?”
“Y-yes. Come on in.”
No one was there.
“I’d like to use the team’s private conference room, but they’re in a meeting. Is it all right if we talk here?”
“That’s fine with me.”
Monday morning was for whole-company meetings and team meetings, so all the conference rooms were occupied.
Kim Yo-gi dragged over an extra chair.
“So why did you contact me through the CEO?”
“I’d like to know what wasn’t shown in the February 2 episode of Welcome, Time to Work.”
“What wasn’t shown?”
She looked genuinely puzzled.
“For example, after your interview, a labor attorney came on and explained your work in detail.”
“Yes.”
“I’d like to know whether that labor attorney was someone the PD introduced, and what you talked about with that person.”
“Ah! If it’s that, I’ve got a lot to say! That PD was seriously awful!”
Frowning, she muttered something in Indonesian that I couldn’t quite understand.
“So, at the time, the PD grabbed me right away and started off by asking if I was Kim Glad Yo-gi.”
After that, he’d asked for a relaxed interview.
She said he’d asked how she got hired, what the company had done for her when she first applied, and so on.
He was probing what kind of training she’d received at the company.
“I clearly kept praising how amazing our company was. The PD even kept saying he was really jealous.”
Then he said that since she worked in the performance planning team, there must have been plenty of fun stories from concerts, and asked her to talk about what had happened during one of them.
He’d set the trap on purpose.
“I should’ve realized something was off then, but everyone was smiling and talking about it like it was just a funny little mishap.”
But in the broadcast, they reenacted the accident, then brought on a labor attorney to make it look as if, in cases like that, the workplace might not be held responsible.
Along with a caption that read: Major disappointment at Yuria.
“After that video aired, you can’t imagine how sorry I felt toward Twice and the staff.”
There was definitely a discrepancy between what Kim Yo-gi had said and what had been broadcast.
Since the filming took place at the company, there should be some unreleased footage.
“Kim Yo-gi, do you happen to have any behind-the-scenes video the company shot itself that day?”
“There are some videos for Twice’s NewTube, but none that were just of me.”
“What about the broadcast station? Couldn’t you get footage from them?”
“...I’m skeptical, but maybe.”
She opened her smartphone and scrolled upward.
“Don’t get your hopes up. Unaired footage usually gets posted to the station’s NewTube channel. Anything else gets treated as confidential and buried.”
“Still, we don’t know.”
If there was no footage from the filming itself, all I needed was to get into the station and find the camera they’d used that day.
Then I could read the past through psychometry and look for other evidence.
“I’ll give you Assistant Director Park Woo-chul’s number. It’s 010-...”
“Thank you.”
I saved the number immediately.
“Lawyer-nim, you should be nice to the assistant director. That way, even as time passes, he’ll still remember Twice and invite them back.”
“Understood.”
Kim Yo-gi’s phone suddenly rang with unrelenting force.
“Ah! Excuse me for a moment, I need to take this.”
“Go ahead.”
She dashed to the door and answered with a bright, “Yes, Team Leader!”
Click.
The moment the door closed, I swept my gaze across Kim Yo-gi’s desk.
I’d like to use something she had on her during filming.
Unfortunately, she’d taken the one thing that was certainly hers—the smartphone and staff ID—with her.
But then.
“...!”
I almost laughed.
If I hadn’t seen the Constitutional Court ruling, I might have overlooked this.
I picked up a transparent hard contact lens case.
Come to think of it, a perfectly healthy person who tumbles down the stairs, and occasionally wears that pinched expression, was probably making the face she used when her vision was blurred.
Before she came back, I focused quickly.
Show me the filming date, January 18. Show me the time when Kim Yo-gi gave the interview.
“Hup!”
* * *
Crackle.
People wearing staff badges picked out food and placed it on their plates.
When I looked closer, I realized it was Yuria Entertainment’s company cafeteria.
Twice, disguised as nutritionists, was handing out tonkatsu to the employees.
Kim Yo-gi watched the scene with a pleased smile.
“Our little Tris are adorable even when they’re working.”
Then a sharp-looking man came over with a cameraman in tow and found Kim Yo-gi.
Jo Ji-han.
“Hello, I’m main PD Jo Ji-han. You’re Kim Glad Yo-gi from Yuria Entertainment, right?”
“Yes, yes. I’m Kim Yo-gi from the performance planning team. Please take good care of our Twice.”
“Of course. All of Twice’s members are here, so we need to pull strong ratings.”
His fierce ambition to wring them dry made Kim Yo-gi laugh awkwardly.
“By the way, since this is fate, would you be willing to do an interview? I was actually looking for the performance planning team.”
Jo Ji-han’s eyes flashed like a predator that had found prey.
“...Why the performance planning team? Not A&R?”
She asked why he was singling out the performance planning team when there was no real reason to interview them, since they handled concerts and fan meetings.
“While filming today, I realized we need more content about the employees if the show is going to air. So I’d like to do a short interview. Here, look here.”
He exchanged a glance with the cameraman.
“Could you tell the viewers what the performance planning team does?”
Kim Yo-gi, the famous NewTuber who had shaken off her surprise, lifted her voice a notch.
Wow. No wonder she’s a NewTuber with ten million subscribers.
What she said was crisp and free of filler, and her voice landed clearly in the ear.
“Was there anything special that happened recently with the team?”
At the PD’s suggestion that it should be something related to Twice, so Twice could shine, Kim Yo-gi thought for a brief moment, then spoke.
“There was a Twice concert at the beginning of January. Something happened then, in the middle of preparing the stage.”
It was the same story I’d just heard from her.
“There was almost a major accident because of a speaker, but Twice laughed it off and said it was nothing serious... so I felt relieved. They’re younger than I am, but they were so mature.”
Jo Ji-han nodded, seemingly satisfied.
“Finally, send a video message to the CEO!”
“Han Yu-chan, you really worked hard this year, too, right? Please don’t forget my bonus!”
Cut.
* * *
I was furious.
Twice had laughed and said it was nothing serious, and this bastard twisted that into mocking laughter.
“You turned that into a power abuse story?”