The Article That Lit the Fuse
[Sigma Entertainment] CEO’s Office.
A nameplate reading CEO Han Kwang-chul sat on the desk, and behind it, a man was seated.
His hair was cut short, a long scar ran down his left cheek, and above it, the sharp line of his eyes flashed coldly.
As he leafed through the documents with an expression full of irritation, his gaze stopped on one line.
His brows drew together, and his fingertips tapped against the page.
“...Ha, these bastards are really—damn it...”
The man barked out his anger and picked up the receiver.
- Yes, sir.
“Section Chief Park. This Autumn-Light Memories piano version—what do you mean it can be remixed and done in a rock version, but this one can’t? Why not?”
- Yes, sir. The piano version needs the emotional tone drawn out very delicately, and with the vocal track we have now, there are limitations. If we use the original vocals as they are, it’ll sound awkward.
“Then tweak it. Isn’t everything fixable these days—vibrato, pitch, all of it? You can do that artificially now, can’t you?”
- Even so, if we leave only the piano, the texture of the vocals stands out too much. The current recording has a bit of breathing noise too... and the tone doesn’t really match the piano. In the end, we’d have to re-record to get the quality up.
“Aigoo, why are you talking so much? I’ve never seen a man good at his job start by saying it can’t be done!”
Thud!
He slammed his palm hard against the edge of the desk.
“Just do it. Make it work. Stretch the vocals, change the tone, rip the voice apart with a computer for all I care—figure that out yourselves. Just bring me a finished product.”
- ...Yes, sir. Understood, sir.
“And what’s that bastard Shin Yeon-ho doing right now?”
- He’s in the practice room.
“What’s he supposed to be doing in there? He’s not even a singer anymore, so it’s not like he needs to dance.”
- He’s preparing a script from the questions the variety show PD sent over. We picked out a short scene for him, and I told him to practice acting too.
“Good. But don’t leave him alone. Put Teacher Kim Hyun-taek with him. Start again from the basics. Make him look like an actor even when he’s saying nothing. That show is going out with Lee Hwa-young too, isn’t it? We need to ride her coattails. If we can grab the viewers’ attention once, we need to seize it hard.”
- Yes, I’ve already contacted her. I’ll have them paired up and training as soon as she arrives.
“Good. At least handle that properly.”
He slapped the receiver back into place.
Then, immediately, his eyes moved on to the next page.
***
In one corner of the practice room.
Shin Yeon-ho sat in front of an old desk beside a guitar amp.
His face was stiff, his eyes fixed on the phone screen clutched in his hand.
His brows were knotted tight, and his stare had gone so cold it was almost sinister.
As his thumb slowly slid across the screen, endless lines of text reflected in his pupils.
In an instant, the letters vanished before his eyes, and a man’s figure filled his pupils instead.
Wearing a white jacket, he drove through the choreography with dazzling force, one hand thrusting straight forward while he pressed the microphone close to his mouth.
An explosive vocal line soared up, rising above the drums that had been pounding all the way down to the floor and flooding the entire hall.
Shin Yeon-ho’s face twisted violently.
The hand gripping his phone began to shake, and a muscle in his arm jumped hard all at once.
“...Guhhh...!!”
After letting out a strangled groan, he swung the hand holding the phone wildly into the empty air.
Crash!
The phone smashed against the wall and shattered, then bounced to the floor.
“...Fuuuuuck!!”
Grinding his teeth, he hurled his fist into the air again.
“It should’ve been meee...!!”
His body swayed and then collapsed straight to the floor.
“It should’ve been me, not that bastard!!!”
Under the brilliant lights of the stage, he had once danced amid the cheers of countless people.
Even the center position on today’s stage should have been his.
He sat there, fists clenched.
Blinded by rage and despair, he swung one fist hard at the floor.
Thud!
At that moment, the practice room door flew open.
A man in a black suit stepped inside.
His eyes, hidden behind black-rimmed glasses, narrowed sharply.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
And then came a second man in a gray jacket.
“...Ha, this has completely gone off the rails.”
He let out a disbelieving sigh, then crooked one corner of his mouth upward.
***
After the Friday music show appearance, the weekend with no filming schedule was spent resting so thoroughly it was practically like a bear hibernating through winter.
With several days of back-to-back schedules weighing on me, fatigue had piled up, and I needed to stay in top condition if I wanted to handle the next round safely.
And on Monday morning, I went to the company office with Hwang Dong-jun.
The storyboards for the MG Construction apartment commercial had been finished, and now it was time to rehearse with the other actor.
Hwang Dong-jun and I were sitting on the office sofa, waiting for the team leader who’d gone into the CEO’s office meeting to come back.
In my hands was the storyboard for the scenes I’d be filming with actress Hong Yoon-hwa.
Just as I was focusing on picturing each shot one by one in my head,
“Wow—this is seriously unreal.”
An excited voice echoed through the office.
Hwang Dong-jun, who had been staring down at his phone, was grinning so wide it looked as if his mouth might touch his ears.
“The whole internet was flipped upside down by you all weekend, and I was wondering why the reporters were so quiet—turns out the article finally hit the portal. Look at this, it went up huge!”
He shoved the phone screen right up in front of my face.
His expression was overflowing with joy and barely contained energy.
I shifted my gaze from his face down to the screen.
The headline wasn’t bad.
But the real issue was the body of the article.
There were plenty of pieces that pretended to praise you on the surface while slyly mocking you underneath.
I took the phone and slowly let my eyes drift down from the title.
Actor Han Seo-jun pulled off a stunning reversal on a flawless stage.
When the stage for the drama Possessed by a Trash Idol Friend, filmed live at last week’s MBS music broadcast site, was revealed, gasps of admiration spread among those present and the staff on location.
The performance was shot to recreate the stage of the fictional idol band “KoaPa” from the drama in the format of a real music-show broadcast.
In particular, actor Han Seo-jun, who took the center position, completely overturned his former image and proved at a glance why he had been cast in the role.
Once mocked as the icon of being “clumsy,” “tone-deaf,” and “the king of terrible acting,” he was reborn into an entirely different presence during that day’s rehearsal.
Appearing in a white jacket, Han Seo-jun dominated the stage with polished choreography and a stable live vocal.
His movements carried clear dynamic contrast, his rhythm was locked in with tight precision, and his emotionally charged singing changed the atmosphere of the venue in an instant.
One on-site staff member said, “It didn’t feel like the result of simple practice, but rather the concentration of someone with a stage performer’s instincts.”
He added, “Everything was perfect, from expression to gaze to gesture. It felt less like watching an actor and more like watching the best active idol in the business.”
What further elevated the completeness of the stage was the teamwork of “KoaPa.”
His chemistry with the other four members, all former top-tier idols, was perfect, and each member’s movement flowed as though they were one body, creating overwhelming unity.
A music-show staff member evaluated it by saying, “The balance of the entire performance was flawless, not just the center. Easily the best stage of the broadcast.”
Director Kang So-hee, who helmed Possessed by a Trash Idol Friend, said, “To convey actor Han Seo-jun’s transformation as realistically as possible, we used the actual music-show stage set, lighting, and sound system exactly as they were.”
She added, “As a result, we achieved a vivid realism where the boundary between drama and reality disappeared.”
Meanwhile, this stage is scheduled to be inserted as the climax of episode 6 of the main broadcast, and the footage captured at the time of filming will be released in the form of a making clip through MBS’s official channel for promotional purposes.
“Well?”
Hwang Dong-jun looked at me with a bright expression as I handed the phone back.
“It’s not bad.”
“Hey, not bad...?”
At my answer, he smirked and lifted one corner of his mouth.
“That’s Kim Ha-rin from The Celeb Enter. Do you know how picky that reporter is? She doesn’t write good articles unless it really deserves it. That’s why people call her the fox among foxes, or the witch reporter. So if it came out like this, it means it was genuinely good.”
I knew that.
She’d been the kind of reporter who, when Shin Yeon-ho had gone on stage with my vocals, latched onto even the smallest mistake in the choreography and tore him apart for lacking star power and effort.
That article was what made Shin Yeon-ho explode.
He’d thrown a vase off the table, sending shards flying everywhere and soaking the floor in water.
And apparently that still wasn’t enough to vent his anger, because he stomped out, crushing the flowers that had rolled onto the floor.
In the end, the manager was the one who told me to clean it up.
What did the flowers, just beginning to bud, do to deserve that?
As I tossed the trampled pile of crimson gladiolus into the trash, I thought to myself:
Someday, that bastard was definitely going to end up exactly like this.
“And this is the one sitting on the portal main page right now. There’s more too—look here.”
Just as Hwang Dong-jun was excitedly flicking through the screen with his fingers, the office door opened behind me.
That meant the meeting in the CEO’s office had finally ended.
In other words, it was time to head out.
“.....?”
As I propped the papers upright and tapped them lightly against the table to straighten them, footsteps reached my ears.
There was no way those were the team leader’s heavy steps.
They were the crisp, rhythmic clicks of high heels.
“....!”
I looked up and saw Hwang Dong-jun beside me.
Even the way his lips twitched and curled made it obvious who it was.
When I turned my head, Lee Hwa-young came into view, walking toward the head seat with a cool, composed expression.
Inside her deep camel coat, a black silk shirt flowed naturally along the line of her chest.
Elegant and sexy at once, with a cold gleam in her eyes that completed her air of haughty poise.
“Did you go meet winter all by yourself?”
Hwang Dong-jun tossed out the teasing remark casually, and she shot back,
“At least I’m not some primitive covered in hair from head to toe like certain people.”
Her gaze landed on Hwang Dong-jun’s forearms, where he had rolled his sleeves up.
Hm...
He really did have a lot of hair on him.
There was plenty of it starting from the backs of his hands and spreading across his arms.
Still, calling him a primitive was a bit much.
“Ha....!!”
With a sigh, she shifted her gaze to me.
“I can’t believe I made that one promise and ended up going on some third-rate variety show of all things... Honestly.”
She shook her head, and her face was full of regret.
“Why? The producer, Go Gwang-sik, is just behind the curve right now. He’s going to blow up big soon.”
At my words, Lee Hwa-young’s expression twisted hard.
“You think I don’t know that? Who are you trying to scam? I heard he’s got zero variety sense and is on the verge of getting kicked out. He’ll probably get dragged in and chewed out by the CP or the station director.”
Where did she dig up something like that so accurately?
“People like that are the ones who suddenly catch fire with one big hit. When that happens, won’t he be grateful to actress Lee Hwa-young for coming on the show? He’ll be standing there at the year-end awards, crying his eyes out with a trophy in hand, saying, ‘This award is all thanks to actress Lee Hwa-young.’”
“Ah, seriously! If you can’t even talk properly—”
Her brows furrowed as she complained irritably, her expression already gone gray with annoyance.
But it wasn’t a look of complete rejection.
I’d added a little tasty MSG to the story.
“Still, you have to admit my instincts are exceptional, right? I was the one who said Kang Hojun looked like he was about to blow up. And what happened? A few days later, he was suddenly on TV.”
She puffed out her lips, then finally let out a bitter laugh.
After that, she shot a glance toward the partition, lowered her head slightly, and dropped her voice.
“Seriously, I’m only doing that one thing. Don’t even think about making me do anything else, not even a speck of dust more.”
“That’s enough. What more could I ask for?”
At my answer, she still couldn’t hide her displeasure and chewed at her lip.