The Cut That Broke Jo Ji-han
"You mean you're going to take out Jo Ji-han?"
"Yes."
Park Woo-chul seemed to understand exactly what I meant by going after one man and one man only.
"Are you crazy? Sure, this is in the past, but Jo Ji-han is a star PD! No way!"
"Then what about you, Park Woo-chul? Did you think you could go tattling to the higher-ups and still keep your footing in this business?"
He fell silent.
Of course he’d be scared. He was staking his paycheck on this.
The half-hearted volunteer could stay right where he was; all I had to do was take the wheel and direct him.
"And if the people above you try to crush you? You said you'd hold a press conference then, right?"
"...Yes."
"Let’s be blunt. Would the press conference you hold actually pull any views?"
It was a question that went straight for the gut.
But society was merciless when money was on the line.
"A case that doesn’t make money, and doesn’t interest the public, dies without even making a ripple. Even if you bet your life on it."
"E-even so, I can't do it. If it's not me, no one will step up. Who in Welcome, Work! would even dare?"
I felt a little sorry for him. Even as a fan who cherished Twice, he was the only one in that broadcasting station willing to risk his own job and push back.
Which meant he had no one to lean on.
Die-hard fans really are terrifying.
Now it was time to bring out the card I’d been waiting to play.
"Give me a moment. I need to check KakaoTalk."
"Please tell the CEO of Yuria Entertainment I'm sorry about this."
That was still a matter for later.
Tap, tap-tap.
Tap-tap-tap-tap.
...pfft.
The other side’s KakaoTalk response was full of question marks. He seemed quick enough to catch the gist of it, though.
"Cha Do-hyuk, sir?"
At Park Woo-chul’s puzzled look, I shook my head.
"Nothing serious. I just forgot my niece’s profession for a moment."
……?
I told him to wait for an answer.
It might have been an answer that could come at any moment, but Park Woo-chul nodded and told me to make myself comfortable.
Wuuung.
"You timed the three minutes you said you needed perfectly."
"What?"
I opened the vibrating smartphone and pressed the video call button I’d been hoping for.
"Oh Ye-ji."
"Uncle! We said that was our secret!"
Rather than explaining myself, I decided action was best in moments like this.
I turned the screen so Park Woo-chul could see it.
"You weren’t planning to go tattling to Mom, were you!?"
"Oh Ye-ji, say hello to the fan."
"...Hello! I’m Oh Ye-ji, the hot-visual main vocalist of We are A to Z Twice! Nice to meet you!"
Oh Ye-ji instantly flipped into professional mode, and I looked at the blinking Park Woo-chul as if nothing were unusual at all.
"I’m Cha Do-hyuk, the lawyer pursuing the case against Yuria Entertainment! Nice to meet you."
Whether Ye-ji was shouting, "Uncle Kitty, you should’ve introduced me as Oh Ye-ji’s uncle! Are you embarrassed of me?" or not, I was a slightly sly lawyer.
When a negotiation was nonnegotiable, I preferred a direct showdown.
"Park Woo-chul, talk to Ye-ji for a bit. You said you had something to say about Welcome, Work!, didn’t you?"
"No, wait. I didn’t mean I was going to talk to Twice directly, did I?"
"Wow! Uncle, that’s seriously slick!"
I hurriedly handed over the phone.
At first, the two of them exchanged awkward greetings.
Park Woo-chul poured on the fan service, telling her that he’d known Oh Ye-ji back when she was a public trainee at Style Entertainment.
Ye-ji, naturally born to dominate her fans, had him wrapped around her finger in no time.
All right, that should do it.
With no one paying attention to me, I looked around the editing room.
There was almost no difference between it and the editing room I’d seen on old variety shows, except for the tapes that had once been stacked here.
The outer seat where I’m sitting must be the main PD’s seat.
I checked the bookshelf where the main PD kept the most important materials in the editing room.
A transparent box held a toothbrush and a jumble of everyday odds and ends.
Nothing useful here.
Just then, as I turned my head, I spotted a file folder wedged in the center section with a label that read “Jo Ji-han.”
Swish.
Unfortunately, there was nothing about Twice in it.
But the notes for an April location scouting trip were written inside, which meant it was definitely connected to Welcome, Work!
This’ll do.
I focused, hoping Ye-ji would keep buying me more time.
And, above all, I hoped she’d show me footage connected to Twice.
Gasp!
Static crackled.
The whiteboard listed plans for December, January, and February.
January 18: Twice shoot. February 2: broadcast date, guest: Twice.
This was the office of the Welcome, Work! team.
The printed materials I’d put in the scrap-paper box had been tossed aside, and the open cabinet showed the props they’d used over the years, along with cameras they no longer used much.
Too bad it isn’t the camera that filmed Kim Yo-gi.
Time kept moving, but I still couldn’t see anything I could use as evidence.
Just as I was deciding to ask Park Woo-chul to bring over the scrap-paper box, an irritated voice came from the window seat.
It was PD Jo Ji-han.
"You told me to be careful this year, and now this happens, damn it."
He tapped his phone a few times with his finger, then kicked over the stool he’d propped his leg on with a hard, vicious thud.
What is he looking at?
It was a stock app.
"Aaagh! What the hell is this?! Minus 12% all of a sudden? What the hell happened now?!"
Jo Ji-han opened a news app.
Then he spat out a curse.
"What the hell is romance doing right now?!"
He jabbed the call button as if he were having a seizure, but the recipient didn’t pick up.
Furious, he yanked documents out of a file folder and tore them to pieces.
Then he tossed them into the scrap-paper box.
I have to protect it.
Click.
There was madness in Jo Ji-han’s eyes.
No wonder. If that much money was on the line, anyone would go crazy over stocks.
At a glance, his balance had been about $850,000.
That wasn’t the kind of money a salaried employee could simply save up over ten years of work.
He must’ve thrown every last bit of the contract money he got for moving to AB into stocks.
A 12 percent nosedive because of a dating-news scandal? Of course he’d lose his mind.
First I need to find the production journal Jo Ji-han tore up.
The miscellaneous section of that production journal was probably full of raw, ugly scribbles about what he’d been thinking about Twice before filming even began.
It would be perfect evidence to submit in court.
And if I could also secure the footage before and after Kim Yo-gi from Park Woo-chul...
I could win this.
When the video call ended, I’d have to tell him we were going to the team office.
I was waiting for Park Woo-chul at the sixth-floor lounge.
He was carrying the scrap-paper box in both hands.
"Uncle."
"Yes."
Thanks to Ye-ji, I’d been promoted to uncle, and I’d long since given up on being called Cha Do-hyuk or even lawyer.
I didn’t care what they called the point man shaking up the network in my place.
After sitting down, he carefully checked the surroundings.
"The youngest writer is still inside, so I brought everything out while saying I was throwing away the scrap paper."
"Then we should check whether there are any torn documents inside. This place is a little risky, isn’t it?"
"Probably. The youngest writer might come out at any time."
"Where should we go? The restroom?"
"Uncle, there’s a place where they dump scrap paper. How about we sort through it there while pretending to reorganize things?"
"That’s good."
I couldn’t help admiring Park Woo-chul’s quick thinking.
"Let’s go right away. We have to take the elevator down to the B3 parking garage."
He said there was always a chance we might run into a network employee, and handed me an outer layer with the station logo printed on it.
So that’s why he brought the outerwear. He’d planned everything.
He even showed a meticulous side by pinning an intern badge to the clothes.
I went into the restroom and changed.
"You look exactly like a PD."
"......"
The outerwear I’d been wearing went into Park Woo-chul’s backpack.
I pressed the elevator button for the basement.
"This time of day, a lot of people are outside smoking and then heading back up to the office, but you never know how things will turn out."
"Right. You have to prepare, because the future is impossible to predict."
If there was anyone who truly knew that,
he was either insane or a scammer.
Ding-dong.
We got into the elevator quickly and hit the close button.
4F.
3F.
2F.
Every floor we descended made my heart pound harder.
"As soon as we get to B3, turn left. After that, just follow me."
He said the security team would be watching the CCTV nonstop, so as long as we didn’t act strange, we’d be fine.
Ping.
Lucky for us, we made it down to B3 without running into anyone.
"Left first."
He kept himself just slightly to the side, never looking like he was leading the way.
"Turn right along the corner."
"Okay."
"Go straight to the disposal room."
At last, the tense Park Woo-chul let out a sigh of relief.
"This is the safest area, at least. Just be careful of the CCTV near the disposal room."
"The security is tighter than I expected."
"Especially the elevators and the basement."
The office itself didn’t seem too bad, since you had to scan your employee badge on every floor to get in.
"There was an incident where obsessive sasaeng fans came up from the basement parking garage on the elevator and threatened the idols in the waiting room."
"What?"
"It was a huge deal, but the network just brushed it off. That’s why regular people probably don’t know about it."
It was honestly shocking.
"Even after they restricted parking access and split up the elevators, there are still sasaengs who try it, so this place has had a rough time."
"...Why would they come all the way to the network for that? Just listen to the songs, watch the stage videos, go to the concerts, and call it a day."
"Who knows? Maybe that’s why they ended up at school on a trespassing charge instead of in a hospital."
Well, if it happened at a broadcasting station, the building itself would count, and if two or more people had threatened someone, that would make it aggravated assault or something similar. They’d be going to prison, 100 percent.
There hadn’t even been a motive worth considering, so they wouldn’t have gotten any leniency at sentencing either.
"Uncle, we’re here."
"Here it is."
In a corner of the basement parking lot, he punched in the code in front of the disposal room surrounded by chain-link fencing.
"They even installed a door lock because someone once stole company documents."
"...This place has a lot of incidents."
"It’s a broadcasting station. Put it over here."
We dumped the scrap-paper box into the designated waste area.
Just like Park Woo-chul said, I crouched down and began rummaging through the paper.
The whole thing looked exactly like I was checking whether someone had thrown away documents they still needed.
Oh, this is better than the documents we were supposed to find?!
I straightened up and patted his shoulder, where he was still crouching.
"This is a much bigger haul than I expected."
"Oh, oh! Come to think of it, this was in here!"
He laughed brightly.
I told him I’d contact him again later and that he should keep looking for evidence.
The point man nodded as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
I slipped the documents into the file folder from my backpack, then left the scrap-paper box in the disposal room just as Park Woo-chul and I had planned.
"I can come back for that later, so let’s head up to the first floor without looking suspicious."
I thanked him as he said he’d receive his employee badge outside.
And then, in the elevator, I burst out laughing.
Ding!
The elevator stopped on B2.
……!
……!
Park Woo-chul subtly stepped in front of me.
Please, just ignore us.
I leaned my head against the elevator wall and pretended to be exhausted.
A moment later, the doors opened.
"Good evening."
"Working late, aren’t you."
Following Park Woo-chul’s cue, I gave a slight nod, looking as harmless as possible.
Fortunately, the two people who had gotten on the elevator ignored us and started talking among themselves.
"By the way, are Twice doing something?"
"No answer. Ever since we said there was something going on between Welcome, Work! and AB, they’ve suddenly gone cold."
"...Should we call in Dailia?"
"Not those guys."
"Even one Twice member appearing would send the ratings through the roof."
With his arms crossed, one of them watched the elevator doors with a distinctly sour expression reflected in the metal.
"Try contacting them again."
And the very next words were the answer I’d wanted all along.
Broadcasting bastards are ruthless when it comes to ratings.