A Cut Above
I'd felt it the last time my Editing Stat crossed twenty, too — every time the number broke across a multiple of five or ten, the leap in skill hit like something physical. Even now, thanks to closing out yesterday at thirty, the waste and the keepers in Park Woojin's footage sorted themselves in my head almost on contact. I could already see, start to finish, exactly which parts needed fixing.
If thirty already felt like this, climbing higher was going to be something else entirely. That much was obvious.
"Hmm. The BGM pick is pretty weak. Noona, could I get a look at the tracks you use a lot? I feel like you've got something in rotation that would sit on this way better."
"Whatever I've got, it's yours. I've got a stash the old editors left behind when they quit. Give me a second."
While she went off to email me her library, a voice slipped in from the doorway.
"Dohyun, how's it going?"
Eunchae had padded in, apparently worried enough to check on my progress herself.
My Speed Stat had started at ten. It was sitting at eighteen now, staring down twenty. I was definitely faster than before, but without crossing that threshold I couldn't say the work had really kicked into another gear. That said, the way everything organized itself in my head meant the actual time on the clock had shrunk more than a little.
"Hmm. Looks like it's going pretty well, from where I'm sitting. Hard to say for sure, though."
When it came down to it, none of this mattered unless Dayeon liked what she saw. I couldn't exactly call it done.
"Park Woojin's still editing, too, from the looks of it."
"Huh? Why would he bother?"
He had other videos waiting. Why was he still cutting the same footage he'd already handed off to me? I had a pretty good idea what was going through his head, honestly — but even if it was a pride thing, this was just wildly inefficient.
If he was going to do this, he should've just done it right the first time. Guess he didn't see this coming.
"Dohyun, I sent everything over. Want to take a look?"
"Ah — yes. Thank you, noona."
"Eunchae, what are you doing in here?"
"I just popped in because I was a little worried about Dohyun. What about you, unnie? Didn't you say you had stuff to do?"
While the two of them murmured back and forth, I started scrolling through the BGM she'd sent. I'd had a track in mind that I thought would fit, but I didn't know which file it actually was, so I had to listen through them one by one. And since committing them to memory on a first pass would make the next job easier, I found myself filing each one away as I went. This was going to take a minute.
"Nah. Not this one. Not this one either."
The further I got without finding what I wanted, the more restless I started to feel.
"Should we slip out quietly? We don't want to get in his way."
"Aww, come on. I want to watch him edit, too."
"Then just watch quietly from the back for a bit and head out. I should get back to work."
Whatever else they said barely registered. I kept digging through the folder, a little on edge — and then it was there.
"Ah. This is it."
The exact track I'd been thinking of filled my ears. Relief settled in at once. I dragged it straight into the timeline, laid it over the footage, and moved on to the next pass — cleaning up the awkward subtitle work, tweaking the fonts across the board, stripping out the effects that didn't need to be there. A completely dry cut could feel flat, though, so I dotted in a few small, unobtrusive ones just to give it some punch.
"Whoa. I think I've actually gotten better…?"
For all the revision notes Park Woojin ate on a regular basis, you could still tell he'd been at this a while. There were plenty of little things that needed a touch-up, but the overall flow — and about eighty percent of his cut points — was usable. That alone made the work go faster than usual.
"This should be about right. Hmm."
I'd fixed the awkward spots and added what needed adding without making any of it feel forced. Subtitles, effects, BGM — I thought it had come together pretty well. Whether Dayeon would like it, though… that was another question.
"Eunchae, did noona leave?"
"Oh, yeah. She stepped out a minute ago — said she had something to take care of."
"Where do I send the finished edit?"
"You can just email it to unnie, but she's around, so I'll go grab her."
Reviewing it together would mean faster feedback on anything that still needed work, so I nodded easily. Of course, showing her something I'd just finished was a little embarrassing. Nerve-wracking, even. But this was going to be the job from here on out.
"Dohyun! You're already done? That's insane!"
"Ah, yeah. It was already partly cut, so it didn't take that long."
"Alright then — shall we take a look?"
Thump-thump.
I'd been doing my best to keep my nerves in check, but my heart was pounding anyway. Some things you just couldn't control.
Get an Editing Job!
While Dayeon reviewed the video, I finally checked the notification that had been nagging at me since earlier. I'd been turning it over ever since I signed the contract — the completion notice never popped, and I couldn't figure out why. The second I actually started working, it showed up.
It was a rush job, so I'd put off looking at it until I finished the edit. Should I have just checked it first, dumped the points, and then started cutting? If I'd put this into Speed, I probably could've finished even faster.
Not that regretting it now did me any good. The edit itself had gone quickly enough as it was.
I'd put all five of the new stat points into Speed.
Crossing thirty in Editing had sped up the way the right cuts assembled themselves in my head, and working the software itself barely felt like work anymore. Which meant if Speed could just keep up, I could knock jobs out at a ridiculous pace. That lingering frustration was exactly why I put the points there this time.
"Ohh, yeah… mmm. This is good."
Dayeon was still going through the video, eyes moving with the timeline.
"Whoa, you did it like this? Ohh, that's nice. The quality's really good."
Eunchae sat beside her, tossing in little reactions as they watched. It put me in a strange mood.
And just as the three of us were wrapping up the review—
BANG—!
"Boss! I finished revising the video — please take a look at mine too…!"
Park Woojin flung the door open and burst in, practically shouting, out of breath.
So he really had been sitting there cutting the same video this whole time.
Good grief. The reigning champion of inefficiency.
Dayeon couldn't stop herself from being impressed as she watched Dohyun's cut.
She'd always liked the fan videos he made, and she'd hired him because she could see the potential in how fast he was growing — but even she hadn't expected a result this satisfying, this quickly.
He was working from something Park Woojin had already started, sure… but taking someone else's half-finished cut and making it this seamless? That's honestly not an easy thing to do.
Once you started editing, you developed a style. If someone else picked up a project without fully understanding that style, you usually ended up with two aesthetics colliding — a video that was neither one thing nor the other. That was exactly why Dayeon had hesitated so long before handing Park Woojin's footage over to Dohyun.
But this… he kept Park Woojin's style intact and still wove in the kind of fun that only Dohyun could bring out. Harmoniously, even.
Melting your own style into someone else's and making them work together was not something just anyone could do.
"Whoa, you did it like this? Ohh, that's nice. The quality's really good."
Eunchae didn't have Dayeon's professional eye, but she was giving feedback from a viewer's seat — and she was pickier than people expected. Generous reviews did not come out of her often. And even though she'd been interested in Dohyun from the start, she'd roasted his old fan videos before. This wasn't just bias talking.
It had been a while since a video she actually loved had come across her desk. She was about to give it the green light and tell them to upload when—
"Boss! I finished revising the video — please take a look at mine too…!"
Park Woojin's sudden intrusion left Dayeon with no choice but to look thoroughly put out.
"Woojin. Have you been editing that same video this whole time?"
"Yes — I mean, it was my video. I felt like I should see it through. That guy… I mean, Dohyun's a newbie, and he's slow, so he probably hasn't even finished yet…"
As he talked, Park Woojin's eyes drifted to Dohyun's computer, where Dayeon was sitting.
"Wh— wait, what? He already finished?"
This time, even Park Woojin couldn't hide how thrown he was. A newbie. First day on the job. Someone with zero professional editing experience. How had this guy taken his footage and finished the cut faster than he had? None of it made any sense.
But still — that was originally MY video! Of course mine's going to be higher quality!
He could already tell Dohyun's video had been mostly reviewed. That didn't stop him.
"Since it was my video to begin with, why don't you watch mine too and just upload whichever one's better quality?"
Park Woojin hadn't even entertained the thought that some newbie could beat his cut.