CHAPTER: 039 - Wrap Party
CHAPTER: 039 - Wrap Party
“…Do you only have white T-shirts and jeans at home…?”
How did he know?
“Even at the script reading, it was this outfit. When you came to my place, it was this outfit. When you come to set, it’s always this outfit. Are you Crayon Shin-chan or what?”
It was a habit I’d picked up since my days at the advertising company.
Every morning, it felt like a waste of time to agonize over what to wear, so I always wore the same style of suit.
That habit remained even after I regressed.
Only, I couldn’t exactly walk around in a suit anymore, so instead I bought seven sets of white T-shirts and jeans and rotated through them.
…Yeah. I really was Shin-chan.
“Ah, right. Sunho, you’re coming to the wrap party, right?”
“I have to.”
“Then even more you can’t do this. There’ll be a ton of reporters that day. If you’re going anyway, you should show up looking good.”
“Does it matter? A stylist will coordinate me anyway.”
“Ah, you might not know. Our drama can’t do that.”
“Why not?”
“It’s Writer Park Eunju’s style. For the wrap party, she said no stylists—everyone should dress themselves and come. She said we should shed the masks and just have fun together. And that those kinds of things turn into long-lasting memories and keep getting talked about.”
I didn’t know that.
This was my first wrap party.
So there really were writers who created a culture like that and played that way.
It felt cheerful and fun.
Good thing I followed Park Juwon out here.
“Perfect timing. I didn’t come alone today.”
“Who else is here?”
Right then, Seo Yoonha came out after washing her hands in the restroom.
“Me.”
Seo Yoonha was coming too?
You should’ve told me earlier.
Well, even if you had, it wouldn’t have changed what I was wearing.
Seo Yoonha rummaged through her handbag, pulled out a talisman, and handed it to me.
“Since we met, I’ll give you the real one.”
Huh—
Didn’t she say she’d give it to me later when we worked on a project together?
“…If I wait for that, I don’t think I’ll be able to give it to you until your next birthday.”
Then she slowly lifted one corner of her mouth.
“And it has to go well for the odds of me working with you to go up, too.”
Looks like she wasn’t discouraged even though Park Juwon stole the Professor Baek role from her.
“Don’t tell me, Yoonha—you’re trying to pass that off as your birthday gift?”
At Park Juwon’s joke, Seo Yoonha pulled out a black card and fluttered it.
“If I were going to do that, I would’ve mailed it.”
“Good. Then you can help pick out Sunho’s outfit with me.”
Park Juwon grinned slyly.
“Training newbies is my specialty.”
And so the styling session by two top stars began.
I ended up being a mannequin.
“Sunho, how about this?”
“Shit.”
Not my line.
“Sunho, how about this one?”
“Bleh.”
Also not my line.
They had completely different tastes.
“No, Juwon-oppa. Don’t you know the trend these days is ‘effortless-but-put-together’?”
“Actors are ‘put-together, put-together, put-together’ no matter what!”
Park Juwon pushed flashy styles, and Seo Yoonha pushed clean styles.
To me, both seemed fine…
But I knew nothing about fashion, so it was hard to mediate between them.
‘No—this is actually good.’
Better than one-sided opinions.
When positive and negative feedback bounced back and forth, you got a better result.
After trading sharp critiques for a long time, the two finally reached a compromise.
And at last, they chose the perfect combination.
When I changed in the fitting room and came out, exclamations burst from both of them at the same time.
“…Wow.”
“…This is good.”
Park Juwon walked up first and swept his gaze over me.
“…Hey, this is a kill shot. You should’ve dressed like this from the start. You’re the best I’ve seen among the kids lately.”
Seo Yoonha couldn’t bring herself to come closer—she just blinked from a distance, staring at me.
“…I didn’t know you could give off this kind of vibe too. This is like…”
She finally forced her mouth closed and continued calmly.
“If you show up to the wrap party dressed like this, you’ll get the most attention.”
The employee who’d been helping us check the fit reacted too.
It must’ve been a product she saw every day, but she unconsciously inhaled softly.
Behind her professional smile, her eyes held pure admiration she couldn’t hide.
“Your fit is perfect, sir. Like it was custom-made for you.”
Huh. Is it really that good?
It’s the same person—how different could it be?
That’s what I thought.
But when I looked in the mirror, I could kind of understand their reactions.
Instead of the plain vibe I’d had until now, there was a refined aura.
“…You dressed me up too well.”
“Of course. We’ve been in this industry for years.”
I sincerely thanked them.
Since I’d received such a big gift, dinner was on me.
But just as we were about to leave the department store, I stopped them.
“Uh… can I look around a bit more before we go?”
“Why?”
When you get a gift, you think of people you want to give something to too.
My team members.
They were the ones who, even though they were busy on my birthday, still surprised me with a cake.
• Sunho Sunho, happy birthday!
• H-happy birthday!
Because I knew how exhausting it was to work behind the scenes for someone else—
I wanted to repay their effort.
They were the family I’d keep working with going forward.
“I want to buy gifts for my team members.”
The next day, I headed to the Flash Entertainment office.
I gathered Jeong Daeyeop, the road manager, Woo Minha, the stylist, and Yoon Heeju, the makeup artist, and handed each of them a gift I’d picked out at the department store.
“What’s this?”
“A gift.”
Woo Minha, the stylist, opened her shopping bag first and let out a short scream.
“Oh my! These sneakers…!”
What she pulled out was a pair of soft-looking black sneakers.
I remembered her muttering in passing on set, “I should really buy a comfortable pair of shoes.”
“How did you know? I really wanted these!”
Judging by the kinds of shoes she usually wore, I thought they’d suit her perfectly.
Looks like I was right.
Next, Yoon Heeju, the makeup artist, opened her box.
“What’s mine?”
Inside was a set of hand creams with a luxurious scent.
The hands that always took care of my skin were rough.
“I was just about to buy hand cream!”
Lastly, Jeong Daeyeop, the road manager, carefully tore open his wrapping.
“B-bomb?!”
“It’s a tumbler.”
“Ah…!”
The tumbler he used to carry coffee every day was covered in scratches and dented here and there.
So I picked a new tumbler with a clean design.
“Wow, Sunho Sunho. How did you buy only exactly what we needed, one after another?”
I’d only paid attention to the things they said casually, and the worn-out items they carried around.
For an ad man, observation was a survival skill.
It wasn’t like I’d done anything amazing.
“Hey, but why gifts all of a sudden?”
“It’s a bribe. A bribe asking you to take care of me from now on.”
I waved it off because it was embarrassing to say something mushy.
Well—it wasn’t completely wrong, either.
Even so, the team looked genuinely moved.
“If it’s a bribe like this, I’ll welcome it anytime. I’ll work even harder from now on!”
“I’m seriously so glad I get to work with Sunho Sunho.”
“Th-thank you!”
Just then, Team Leader Jo Sehun arrived at the office and cut in with an easy grin.
“What, none for me? I’m hurt.”
“As if.”
When I pulled out the gift for him too, he dropped the playful expression and looked genuinely startled.
“No, I was joking. You’re really giving me one?”
“You helped me the most.”
“Seriously… Sunho, you’re different. It’s like you’ve been doing office life for decades.”
Jo Sehun marveled as he took the gift out.
He seemed pretty satisfied with his, too.
Watching several people get happy with spending that wasn’t even that huge made me feel good as well.
After a warm atmosphere settled in for a moment, Jo Sehun told me why he’d called me in.
“Sunho, I’ve got two pieces of news for you.”
Two?
“First is an interesting offer.”
“What is it?”
“A game company wants you as the ad model for their new mobile game. Faker—”
“Huh? I’m shooting with Faker?”
“No. The pay is very big.”
For a second, I almost got excited.
He drew a bunch of zeros in the air with his finger and added,
“The model fee is in the hundreds of millions. And the work is easy. You just go to the studio, shoot for a few hours like a pictorial, and you’re done. For a rookie, it’s an outrageous condition. So—want to do it—”
“I won’t.”
Jo Sehun’s eyes went round.
Not because Faker wasn’t involved.
It was because I hated that kind of game ad.
Ads that just slap a celebrity face on it and don’t actually show the game.
If it were a campaign with clever storytelling like Dolphin Kidnapping Group, maybe.
But I didn’t want to do ads that deceived consumers like that.
And it wasn’t only my ad-man pride.
As an actor, it would burn through my image too.
Now that I was rising fast, appearing in that kind of ad could easily give off a money-grubbing impression, and it would be a huge minus to the “mysterious” aura I had as an actor.
“You really won’t?”
“Yes.”
At my firm answer, Jo Sehun leaned back in his chair and burst out laughing.
“Thank god.”
“Huh?”
“Honestly, I was worried you’d bite. It’s hard to refuse that amount. But I couldn’t not tell you an offer came in, so I planned to hear your opinion, and if you said yes, I was even prepared to brief you on why you shouldn’t do it. You saved me the trouble.”
He smiled like he was genuinely pleased.
“Yeah, Sunho. I really don’t need to worry about you. You handle things on your own. So now—here’s the actually important news.”
Jo Sehun’s expression turned serious.
“You know PD Yeom Jaeho, right?”
Of course I did.
Wasn’t he a living legend of Korean variety shows?
The PD whose programs were the most broadly popular, watched comfortably by everyone.
But why bring him up now?
“PD Yeom Jaeho is planning a new variety show, and he wants to cast you. He said he wants to meet once.”
“Me?”
I could go on PD Yeom Jaeho’s variety show?
Wait—then…
That was an awareness-skyrocketing event, wasn’t it?
A few days later, the wrap party.
In front of the high-end Korean beef restaurant, the press crowd was so thick it proved just how hot the drama had been.
JTBN reporter Seo Jiyeon had also arrived early to secure a good spot.
“Wow, there are really a lot of people. It’s like an end-of-year awards ceremony.”
“It’s a wrap party for a drama that cleared 20% ratings. This much is expected. MBS is apparently in full festival mode right now.”
“Honestly, I didn’t think it would blow up this hard… I think Kang Seoho—no, Actor Ryu Sunho’s impact was huge. He hard-carried the early part.”
“The acting was good; the promotion was good too. He used Instagram really effectively.”
Hearing the other reporters talk, Seo Jiyeon just smiled quietly.
Then another reporter recognized her and spoke.
“Reporter Seo, you’re the one who spotted Ryu Sunho from the start, aren’t you? You got the exclusive interview back when he received the Brave Citizen Award.”
“I had a good hunch.”
Seo Jiyeon tried to sound modest, but her eyes were shining brighter than anyone’s.
“Then who’s your next hunch?”
“Next?”
Seo Jiyeon thought for a moment, then said,
“I don’t think there’s even a need for the word ‘next.’ It feels like Ryu Sunho will hold the spotlight for a long time.”
“Huh?”
“No. Just let it go in one ear and out the other.”
As the reporters tilted their heads at her confident tone—
“That’s Park Juwon!”
“Seo Yoonha!”
The actors arrived one after another, and the photo line started moving fast.
“Every time I saw Seo Yoonha in the drama, she was wearing mourning clothes. Seeing her dressed so elegantly like that, she really carries herself.”
“She’s been praised for her looks since she was a child actress. As she grew, it got overshadowed by her acting.”
“Yoonha definitely has fashion sense too. Not too much—she dresses in a way that fits her.”
“Juwon is flashy as always. After playing a detective role, he must’ve been dying inside.”
“Maybe that’s why—he really went all out. He’s stealing everyone’s attention.”
After the two leads passed and their interviews wrapped up, the press’s heat seemed to ease a little.
The camera operators took a breath and checked their equipment.
A slightly loosened air, like, now it’s just supporting actors left.
And right then—
A black Carnival stopped in front of the restaurant.
“Who is it?”
“Who hasn’t arrived yet?”
“Uh…….”
The door opened,
and what came out first was a pair of legs.
A perfect fall over luxurious loafers.
But what captured the reporters’ eyes wasn’t the luxury brand.
It was the unreal legs themselves.
The leg stretching out to step out of the car looked like it would never end.
‘…What? A model?’
Before the murmuring could even spread, the owner of that silhouette finally rose to his full height—185 cm—and stepped out slowly.
And the moment he lifted his gaze forward—
“……!”
The machine-gun burst of camera shutters stopped as if it were a lie.
A strange silence flowed through the noisy scene.
The reporters swallowed hard as they stared at the figure beyond their viewfinders.
‘That’s… Ryu Sunho?’
The chill he’d had while playing Kang Seoho was nowhere to be found.
The refined but restrained styling made his overwhelming physique stand out like a work of art.
A face and aura you couldn’t believe belonged to a rookie.
Then the momentary silence shattered,
and the scene was drowned in cheers several times fiercer than before—
“Ryu Sunho! Ryu Sunho!”
“Holy shit, he’s insanely handsome!”
“Look this way, please!”
“Over here too, just once!”
Flashes poured down like a bombardment.