CHAPTER 054: Ambient Advertising
CHAPTER 054: Ambient Advertising
The day I moved into the Jamsil Han River–view apartment CEO Hwang Cheoljun promised.
Jeong Daeyeop, my road manager, insisted on helping no matter what, but I politely refused.
A manager supports an actor, not someone who carries moving boxes.
“Besides, I didn’t have that much stuff to begin with.”
A few moving boxes sat by themselves in the empty living room.
In the semi-basement studio, even that had looked packed, but here it felt shabby.
After a brief bit of organizing, I slowly crossed the living room and approached the balcony.
The view spread beyond the floor-to-ceiling window.
The Han River opened up refreshingly right in front of my eyes.
Even the World Tower in the distance.
In my previous life, I’d been financially comfortable too, so I lived in places with a good view, but I couldn’t compare it to how I felt now.
Back then, that home had been a showpiece to fill emptiness, but this place was something I gained as the price of doing what I truly wanted and being recognized for it.
‘Right before my regression, the system said my life happiness index was only 8 out of 100.’
I couldn’t check it now, but it was probably over 80.
I hadn’t reached the final goal yet, so 90-plus would be too much.
I couldn’t be the only one to feel this overwhelming emotion.
I should brag to my family too.
I video-called my father.
“Hey, our Actor Ryu.”
On the screen, only my father’s ear looked huge.
“Dad, it’s a video call.”
“Ah, is it?”
Only then did my father hold the phone farther away and show his face.
“What’s this, my son. Did you swap out your face parts?”
It seemed like he was complimenting my looks after seeing the change in hairstyle.
“Filming’s done, so I cut my hair a bit.”
“Yeah, it’s way better. Before, it was real stifling. But what is it—did you call just to show your face?”
“Not my face. Look at this.”
When I turned the camera to show the Han River view, my father’s eyes went wide.
“W-what is this. Computer graphics?”
“It’s the real Han River. I moved. Not with my money—company money.”
“Huh? Really? (Me too, me too, I wanna see!)”
Then, my younger sister’s face suddenly shoved into the frame like a blur.
“Wooow! This is on a whole different level from a countryside rice-paddy embankment view!”
Her eyes sparkled, her mouth fell open, and she said in an excited voice,
“Tomorrow we’re voting for our class field trip location, and I’m gonna say we should go to your place!”
“…You can’t.”
Who does a field trip to someone’s house.
And in the middle of that,
I saw my mother standing far back in one corner of the screen.
“Dad, switch to Mom for a second.”
Sure enough.
My mother’s eyes were already red.
“My son… you’re really something… Mom and Dad didn’t help you with anything, but you grew up well on your own…”
No.
I was about to say it was all thanks to them, but if I did, she’d probably burst into sobs, so I changed the subject.
“Mom, Dad—when you have time, come up to Seoul once. I’ll show you the apartment, and I’ll show you around Seoul too.”
“Is that okay? You’re not too busy?”
“It’s fine. I’ll match your schedule.”
“Older brother! Me too!”
“Of course you’re coming with Mom and Dad.”
“Can I bring my friend?”
“…No.”
“What about Teacher?”
“Teacher’s not allowed either.”
“Ugh… okay.”
After I finished bragging to my family, I went out to the park near the apartment.
Appreciation time was over—I had work to do.
First, I walked slowly for a light warm-up and checked Instagram.
The photo I uploaded after cutting my hair at the salon had gotten a lot of likes and comments.
It felt like the most explosive reaction out of all my posts so far.
-Wow, what is this face?
-This is insane
-You should’ve cut your hair sooner!!
-Out of all your hair looks, this suits you best
-I thought you were going all-in on the nerd vibe after the Acting Awards… no. A handsome guy is supposed to show his face
-Thanks to you my eyes opened and my vision is 3.0!!
└Are you Mongolian??
-Excuse me, if you’re going to be this handsome, you can only be my husband
-Ryu Sunho, this might be a sensitive question, but I’m so curious I have to ask. Did you get kicked out of heaven? Or did you come down voluntarily…
All kinds of compliments and ridiculous fawning.
I scrolled down, reading for fun, and I also saw comments doubting the change in my looks.
-Did Ryu Sunho get plastic surgery?
-Looks like he tweaked his face
-That’s definitely plastic surgeryㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ
-If you mess with your face for no reason, it’s nice now, but later it’s easy for it to get “renovated” and collapse…
Put-down comments disguised as concern.
But those got buried immediately under other fans’ rebuttals.
-He posts his workout log on Instagram every day—when would he have time for surgery?
-Is there even plastic surgery with zero swelling these days?
-He cut his hair and his looks popped—now they’re jumping on the surgery joke like it’s their momentㅋㅋㅋ
-Please stop with the forced hate; just say he’s handsome—why act like you’re “worried” while being shadyㅋㅋㅋ
It paid off, building up the looks step-by-step.
The plastic surgery suspicion didn’t catch fire and died out as-is.
Still, some people who couldn’t let it go tried to find flaws no matter what.
-Guys but it’s a photoㅋㅋㅋ how many times do we get fooled by photos
-Yeah, with edits and filters anyone becomes a male godㅋㅋ
-We need to see how he looks on a broadcast camera; stop freaking out over a selfie
Well, there’s no need to react to those one by one.
Once I show up on media soon, those claims will disappear.
They’ll get tired on their own.
But the sunlight was too strong, so I couldn’t see the screen well.
I stopped for a moment and sat on a bench under the shade of a tree.
To check reactions to the Gangnam Station axe car too.
[Live Gangnam Station situation—what is this?]
People wondering what the hell it was.
Just as intended, curiosity kept snowballing, turning into nonstop buzz.
There were also a few sharp guesses.
-But doesn’t this feel like an ad? If it were a real incident scene, it wouldn’t be that neat
└Looking closely, the axe is a fake axe too. It’s reinforced plastic
└Oh, yeah. It doesn’t look like it’s really embedded—more like it’s glued on?
└But who advertises by smashing a car? And a McLaren, at that…
Of course it wasn’t an intact McLaren—it was a scrapped car meant to be used when filming that scene.
It had originally been prepared as a backup, but because we finished filming in one take, we repurposed the leftover prop for promotion.
As expected, all of this was a carefully planned performance.
‘Ambient advertising (Ambient Ad).’
A technique where you install an unexpected object in an everyday space to deliver a strong experience and message to consumers.
Of course, the biggest hurdle was regulations.
-The idea’s good, but would they really approve installing something like that in the middle of Gangnam?
As Han Seungwoo said, because of the Outdoor Advertisements Management Act, getting approval to install a large structure isn’t easy.
-But it’s different when I do it.
Han Seungwoo persuaded Gangnam District Office in his own way and eventually got approval.
-This is me.
Thanks to that, the first button was fastened well.
This ad campaign wouldn’t end with just one.
Tomorrow, the second structure would appear in Jongno.
If we kept stacking curiosity like this, then a few days later, when the poster and trailer were revealed, people would finally realize.
That all of it was one giant advertisement for the film Vacuum State.
The next day,
Inside the distributor’s office for the film Youth Blue.
Director Yoon Gyeonghwan walked in with a heavy expression.
“Director Yoon, you must be busy—what brings you here?”
“For no other reason than this: I’d like to push back the release a bit.”
“Huh? All of a sudden? Is there some kind of problem?”
Director Yoon Gyeonghwan muttered to himself.
‘A problem. There is. A huge problem.’
He recalled the completed cut of Vacuum State he’d seen recently in Director Ji Seongwoo’s studio.
Right before festival submission, Ji had asked him to watch once and give feedback.
It didn’t seem like a difficult request, so he watched lightly—
but two hours later, Director Yoon felt powerless.
‘Th-this… what is this? He realized something beyond the screenplay?’
He’d only watched it on a cramped edit-room monitor, not even a proper theater, but after it ended, he couldn’t get up for a long while.
Overwhelming acting had maximized the screenplay’s destructive power.
‘This is… a natural disaster.’
If it caught word-of-mouth properly, it was a monster film that would devour every other movie releasing around the same time.
And Ji Seongwoo had said:
“The release timing is probably around July.”
That was exactly when Youth Blue would collide with it head-on.
‘…No. This can’t happen. I need to avoid it.’
So Director Yoon was proposing to delay his planned mid-July release to September.
“September? Wouldn’t that be too late? It’s a youth film—summer is the prettiest picture for it.”
“When the forecast says a typhoon is coming, no captain who knows that launches the ship.”
“A typhoon? What do you mean…”
The distributor staff looked at each other, confused.
“Well… summers are getting longer these days, so September isn’t necessarily bad…”
One executive mumbled as he checked the calendar.
“Was there some Hollywood blockbuster set to release then…?”
Meanwhile, a studio officetel in Seoul.
After Survival Love flopped disastrously, writer Choi Jeongin spent many nights drinking in her workspace.
“This is humiliating, seriously…”
Because she’d always thought of writer Park Eunju as beneath her, the blow hit harder.
They’d gone head-to-head three times so far, and every time Choi Jeongin had won by an overwhelming ratings gap.
But this time, it was the reverse—she got crushed miserably.
Choi Jeongin decided she couldn’t let her pride be trampled like this.
She poured all the alcohol she’d been drinking into the sink and, steeling herself, started writing her next project.
“Ah, this is making me crazy!”
But the manuscript wouldn’t come, and the more stress piled up, the more her hysteria toward her assistant writers only worsened.
“You really don’t understand a word I’m saying. With this, how do you think you’re going to write!”
One day, as the assistant writers’ resentment—borne by their whole bodies—continued to build,
someone discovered news about Ju Hanbit winning the contest.
“Hanbit won the grand prize in the drama script contest…?”
“Huh? Really?”
“Let me see.”
“It’s real. And it’s hosted by JTBN?”
“Then she’s debuting?”
“Probably. It’s not just a selection—it’s the grand prize. Wouldn’t JTBN go straight into production?”
“She escaped here and things immediately went well. If she’d stayed, she wouldn’t have debuted and would’ve kept being an assistant.”
“She’d have just been fed false hope…”
“She’s getting worse these days… should we just crash into it and walk out too…?”
Choi Jeongin happened to overhear the assistants whispering, and she flew into a rage and kicked every last one of them out.
“Are you insane bitches? I fed you and housed you, and all you do is run your mouths.”
But she still wasn’t satisfied.
“Ju Hanbit, that bitch—after ruining my drama, she’s going to debut out there without fear?”
She dressed herself in full battle mode and grabbed her most expensive handbag.
Choi Jeongin went straight out and hailed a taxi.
Where she was headed—
“Take me to JTBN.”
It was the JTBN drama department, the place that might be making Ju Hanbit’s debut project.
JTBN lobby.
High heels broke through the revolving door, clicking sharply against the marble floor.
At the murderous aura, the information desk staffer’s shoulders hunched involuntarily.
Combat-ready clothes, a luxury handbag clutched like a weapon, and a face frozen cold.
It was writer Choi Jeongin.
“What brings you here? Visitor registration—”
Before the employee could finish, Choi Jeongin treated him like he didn’t exist and headed straight to the elevator.
The moment she arrived at the drama department office, the peaceful air froze instantly.
A junior writer making coffee flinched and nearly dropped the paper cup.
Every finger on every keyboard stopped.
“Writer Choi—what brings you here? If you’d contacted us in advance—”
A team-lead-level employee approached her with an easy smile, but Choi Jeongin only snapped back coldly.
“Where’s Director Park?”
“Pardon? Why the director—”
“He’s probably locked in his office watching dramas, as always. Whatever. Move.”
Choi Jeongin shoved past the employee and stomped angrily—thud, thud—toward the director’s office.
The staff couldn’t dare stop her and only fidgeted helplessly.
Whispers of “What is it this time?” followed behind her, but she acted like she couldn’t hear.
At last, she found the director’s office.
Without even knocking, she threw the door open and barged in.
Inside, two men were peacefully enjoying tea in the sunlight coming through the window.
The calm scene—so different from her raging self—only made her anger boil higher.
“Park Jongwon, talk to me.”
Startled by the sudden intrusion, Director Park rose from his seat.
“Writer Choi, what is it, barging in like this?”
But unlike Director Park, the man across from him wasn’t surprised at all.
Leaning deep into the sofa, he set down his teacup with a relaxed air.
Then he slowly turned his head toward Choi Jeongin and said softly,
“What is this, ma’am.”
“What? Ma’am?”
That relaxed man.
Han Seungwoo.
But Choi Jeongin, who had no idea who he was, was just about to shout—
when Han Seungwoo added one more line with a benevolent smile.
“Get out. Stop wasting my time.”
”