The One Who Dreaded It and the One Who Couldn't Wait

"We already filmed the entire prep process, and this is supposed to make sense? It's obvious as day who copied whom!"

Jong-woo asked, laughing hollowly in sheer disbelief.

Eun-seon's face darkened.

"That's..."

Seeing that expression, an ominous thought crept over Jong-woo as well.

"Don't tell me — you're not planning to reveal on the broadcast who started filming first?!"

Instead of answering, Eun-seon lowered her head.

Jong-woo barely kept himself from cursing out PD Kim Moo-rok on the spot — then, in the end, failed to hold it in, and dialed the man directly to demand answers.

But PD Kim Moo-rok brushed off every objection with an easy laugh, entirely unbothered.

Jong-woo shot a sidelong glance at Rembrary, then stepped out into the hallway to argue back.

Is this guy for real...? Jong-woo clutched the back of his neck and squeezed his eyes shut. The heat had climbed all the way to his forehead; it felt as though steam might come hissing out of him at any moment.

"What's wrong?"

When Rembrary poked his head through the half-open door to ask, Jong-woo waved him off and headed straight for CEO Im.

Hearing the story, CEO Im's expression warped too. Letting talent stumble into trouble was one thing; deliberately manufacturing trouble was another matter entirely.

"Yeon-woo's been so unusually mild-mannered that I suppose they've decided to manufacture some buzz around him."

"What do we do?" Jong-woo asked anxiously.

"Should I get ahead of it and prepare that article we sent to the press? For right after the round — something along the lines of, 'turns out our side planned it first, and we were stunned to see it.'"

"That'd be fine. Fine, sure — but if we do, PD Kim might just make our kids' screen time vanish entirely from here on out."

"He wouldn't go that far out of spite... no. No, he would, wouldn't he."

Even mega top stars who clashed with a director routinely saw their scenes disappear or their reputations sour. The staff naturally sided with the director — the person they'd be working with again and again — over some one-off celebrity, and since the cameras rolled around the clock, digging up dirt was all too easy. Nobody can smile pleasantly twenty-four hours a day, and if a weakness doesn't exist, it's simple enough to manufacture one. A top star backed by a huge agency could retaliate later by withholding their other talents, but even that was useless. Far too many competing celebrities were starving for that empty slot, and they would swarm the director, treating it as the opportunity of a lifetime. Fighting a director was always a losing game.

"You know Yeon-woo's stepping into a supporting role on a terrestrial drama soon, right?"

"Yes."

"Get the article ready just in case. Then once we screen the broadcast — if this looks bad for his image, be prepared to pull the kids and release it ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠anyway."

"Understood."

After his meeting with CEO Im, Jong-woo returned to the waiting room. Rembrary was in conversation with Eun-seon — Rembrary utterly composed, Eun-seon visibly fretting.

Jong-woo made his request with a grim face. "Eun-seon, if it's not too much trouble, could you head home for today?"

Eun-seon was fond of Yeon-woo and had grown somewhat close to him over the course of the Sing Survival shoot, so that part was no issue. But she held no authority over how the footage would be trimmed and cut. With today's material headed straight into PD Kim Moo-rok's hands, there was no telling how else things might tangle — so Jong-woo preferred not to film at all, even at the cost of their airtime.

Eun-seon looked conflicted, but in the end she agreed.

Before she left, Jong-woo asked whose concept theirs had overlapped with.

"That would be... Oh Jung-shin."

"I'm sorry — what?!"

"But I doubt Oh Jung-shin came up with it himself. From the footage I've seen, he just seems to prepare the stage exactly as it's been set up for him."

Jong-woo spat a curse under his breath.

Oh Jung-shin's fans were notorious for their savagery. They already had their teeth bared at Yeon-woo over the penalty business. If the concepts turned out similar and Yeon-woo happened to perform better, they would absolutely lunge at him to tear him limb from limb. And if Yeon-woo performed worse, they'd churn out side-by-side comparison images of the two and spread them far and wide.

Once Eun-seon had gone, Jong-woo asked Rembrary, "So what are you going to do? The concepts overlap — you're still okay with that?"

"And who was it that copied whom?"

"Oh Jung-shin."

"The Million-Anti fellow?"

"Yeah. This just got thorny. If it were any other contestant, it'd be fine as long as we simply outperformed them. But against Oh Jung-shin, even if we do better, it's bound to stir up talk."

Rembrary folded his arms and considered for a moment. "I suppose the concept cannot be changed at this juncture."

Jong-woo sighed. There was nothing for it but to do their best with what they had.

And then, out of nowhere, Rembrary said something entirely unexpected. "I am thinking of changing the concept."

Jong-woo's face scrunched up. "Hey, you did it first — why should you be the one to back off? You're the original and that side's the knockoff, so why?"

Rembrary shook his head, smiling. "I am not backing off."

"From where I'm standing, that is exactly what backing off looks like."

"The truth is, another idea came to me, but it seemed ill-advised to change course midway, so I held my tongue."

"What?"

"The idea came to me days ago."

"What is it?"

"I intend to perform it to sorrowful music."

"Sad music for a Carnival?"

"A carnival for one alone."

"?"

"A song of parting. He sings it wearing a weeping mask, then at the climax strips the mask away and, smiling, conjures a brief festival mood — all while the song stays sorrowful to the very end."

"!"

"He sings as though grieving, yet behind that sorrow he delights in the festival — I wish to portray that hypocrisy."

Jong-woo's eyes went round. Could it be...? he murmured.

Rembrary nodded. "Aye. Come to think of it, done this way, the story will carry straight into our next album. What say you?"

"It works. If the carnival mood only surfaces at the climax, we won't need a heavy arrangement either."

Jong-woo stood there dazed for a beat, then hastily grabbed his phone. "I'll go line up a composer, fast."

"What? You're casting who?"

After signing on the dotted line to confirm his appearance in Dear God, Maeng Woo-shin had been listening to the rundown of the other major cast members — and gaped at his manager in horror. "I heard that wrong, right? Tell me I heard that wrong."

"What did you hear?"

"They're putting the lunatic in it."

"They said Woo Yeon-woo."

"He is the lunatic."

"He's a lunatic?"

"The whole nation agrees he's a lunatic."

"Huh. I don't know about that. This industry runs on rumors, you know."

"You call spouting nonsense live on air 'a rumor,' hyung?"

Maeng Woo-shin shot one glare at his stone-faced manager and clicked his tongue. The man only talked like that because he'd never laid eyes on the lunatic himself. Even now, that voice was vivid in his ears — "Senior, are you an attention seeker?" — right down to the way the kid's own eyes had gone huge with shock afterward, as if he were the one who'd been startled.

"Well... seeing that performance, I suppose he must act well enough."

"Oh, come to think of it — Woo Yeon-woo came by here once, didn't he? Clung to you all sweet, saying he was your fan?"

"'Sweet'... wow. Who the hell phrased it like that? Whoever it was, steer clear of them — their eyeballs look about ready to pop out."

Maeng Woo-shin fired off the words coldly and popped the tab on a can.

The attention-seeker remark had been bad enough, but what the lunatic had said afterward nagged at him all the same. The guy had talked as though he knew something about Hongwoodadae. It was, admittedly, about time they took in new members — but with word of a tenacious detective sniffing around, the timing sat uneasily with him.

To crush the unease, Maeng Woo-shin forced a smile. "Well, he's only a supporting role. There won't be many scenes with me anyway."

"You didn't hear them say he'd be following you around?"

"So he follows me around — that's, what, a few shared scenes at most."

"They said the scenes without you are the fewer ones."

Maeng Woo-shin's face crumpled like a crushed tin can. "What did you say?"

"The boss apparently asked, all worried, why they'd cast a kid who's never acted a day in his life — whether they were sprinkling an idol over a finished meal and asking for trouble. But apparently what the role needs isn't lines so much as a face. Word is, you'll be delivering all of his dialogue for him?"

"Ah, for crying out loud. Someone seriously hexed me."

Around the time Maeng Woo-shin was raising hell to tear that contract back up, Lim Yu-han — the female lead contracted for Dear God — also happened to be deep in a conversation about Woo Yeon-woo.

Her agency happened to be the same one as Oh Jung-shin's, and with Oh Jung-shin's fans bombarding Woo Yeon-woo with attacks, the topic had come up in passing.

"His fans are truly repellent. Running errands was the penalty, so the guy made him run errands — and they spewed hate comments over it for weeks. Am I wrong?"

Lim Yu-han laughed lightly at her manager's grumbling. He heaved a heavy sigh.

"I mean, fine, granted — that whole incident is part of why his fandom got that way. Still, you don't get to gnaw on some random rookie. The person they're waging war over is from a completely different group, you know?"

This time, too, Lim Yu-han answered only by flicking her phone screen with one finger.

Watching her keep so quiet, her manager grew curious. "You're awfully calm about all this? Things are about to go sour between Oh Jung-shin and Woo Yeon-woo — what if Yeon-woo's fans show up on set and take it out on you? Or what if Oh Jung-shin's fans pretend to champion you while trashing Woo Yeon-woo? You'll be walking on eggshells for the entire run of the drama."

Only then did Lim Yu-han smile, pressing her phone's power button. "Sis, have you ever actually seen me walk on eggshells?"

"No, never. Not once. And that's exactly why I worry — I do the worrying for both of us. I'm already scared, okay?"

Lim Yu-han smiled, warm and easy. That flawless face, which had dominated the real-time search charts ever since her very first CF, glowed only brighter when she smiled. Even her manager, who saw it every single day, flinched for an instant.

But after scattering that picture-perfect smile, what Lim Yu-han did next was fish a cigarette out of her small clutch bag and set it between her lips.

She placed the slim cigarette with practiced ease, leaned her head back against the wall, and let out a lazy, decadent laugh. "I like being in this with him, sis. I've been wanting to meet him."

"He's famous for being rotten to the core."

Lim Yu-han tipped her chin up, drawing out the corners of her eyes. "That's why I like it all the more. Kids like that ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠are truly adorable when they cry."

When she finished and held out one hand, her manager grumbled as he fished a lighter from his own bag.

There were variety shows that asked celebrities to reveal the contents of their bags. Because the cast of those programs roamed the broadcasting station nonstop while filming, she kept exactly one cigarette hidden deep inside her bag as a precaution — and the manager carried the lighter.

When he lit it for her, Lim Yu-han's shoulders shook with a small laugh. "I do hope he's just as cute in person. And if he is — can I keep him and play with him a little, sis?"

"Are you insane? Absolutely not!"