You're the Cutest in the World - 3
July 1.
Inside Aurora Prism Entertainment, things were in a frenzy.
The team had to handle the outsourcing liaison for Berriri Land, which was live that very day, and there were plenty of events already lined up after that.
At one corner of the office, a large whiteboard was crammed with writing.
- Regular operations report contact: Go Min-young
- Regular PR report contact: Jo Eun-bi
- Berriri Land open period: 7/1~7/7
- No Big Plan meeting during the third and fourth week of July
- Intensive member training period: 7/19~7/26
- Live rehearsal: 7/29
★ 7/30 ABCD Summer Live Concert (confirmed)
The company hallway was chaotic.
The PR team leader and the operations team leader moved briskly back and forth. It was the kind of energy you rarely saw in regular employees at a small company. Of course, that energy came from the incentives and bonuses they’d been getting thanks to the Big Plan.
“Yes, this is Team Leader Go. I’m calling about adjusting the group lesson schedule for this week…”
“Ah! I see. Yes, understood. I’ll send over the banner design right away.”
They were women who had somehow kept swimming even in open water. Put them by a flowing river, and they could swim hard enough to split the current.
Even so, inside that busy company, the president’s office where CEO Baek Su-cheol sat remained quiet.
There was an important meeting under way.
The person he was meeting was their own talent, Aki. Even in the middle of a hectic day, he insisted on these meetings, stubborn as ever.
- They’re the treasures of our company. The busier things are, the more carefully we need to hear what’s bothering them.
- The most uncomfortable thing would probably be talking to you, President…?
- Don’t use language that strong.
The meetings were held, and surprisingly useful feedback was exchanged.
Aki was the last one on the list.
Baek Su-cheol sipped a cold juice and said, “Whew. Sorry I had to meet you last, A-young. We’ve really been running on fumes lately. You’re the roof over ABCD’s heads.”
“No, it’s okay. Hehe….”
Aki gulped down her juice too. Then she flicked a glance at his clothes and gave an awkward laugh.
“Hahaha… uh, Boss, your clothes, um… look really… nice.”
“Huh? Oh.”
It was a white suit from top to bottom, shoes included.
So white he probably couldn’t even dream of eating jjambbong or curry in it. He looked dressed to open a fried chicken shop in Kentucky.
Baek Su-cheol scratched his cheek, embarrassed. “I’ve worn it so long I’ve gotten used to it… Doesn’t it suit me? I even wore this to a contract signing.”
“…”
“Be honest with me. I’ve been thinking I might need to change up my style.”
“Yes, I think changing your style would be… good.”
“Ugh.”
When even the honest and kind Aki said it, he looked genuinely depressed. When he’d checked the mirror in the bathroom, he’d actually felt like a rather dashing middle-aged gentleman.
So it really does look horribly out of place…
Still, in the end, he gave up.
“…Still, if my older sister says so, I have to listen.”
“Older sister?”
“Ah, you know, I told you she was a shaman during the last meeting.”
“Ohhh!”
Aki remembered.
The shaman lady said if my luck got too ridiculously good, I might die, so I should wear funeral clothes?
She tilted her head. “But do you really have to follow that?”
“Well….”
Baek Su-cheol shrugged.
“It’s true my sister’s a gifted shaman, and objectively she’s a pretty incredible person, too. But more than that, she’s the one who saved our whole family’s lives. Ever since then, everyone in the house has agreed to listen to her no matter what.”
“Your lives?”
He looked off into the distance, memory softening his expression.
“Was it about a week before she had her shamanic awakening? I nearly died then.”
“Shamanic… awakening?”
“When the divine spirit enters a shaman’s body, they go through this period of fever, pain, strange behavior, all that. I think it’s like… some kind of license? A rite of passage, maybe.”
“Ah….”
“Anyway, my sister was around twenty when it happened, I think? Before that, she was just a regular college student. She was pretty enough to be popular, too. She’d even get stopped on the street and asked to model.”
“…”
Without thinking, Aki scanned Baek Su-cheol’s face, then tilted her head. If they were family, they should look somewhat alike. But no matter how kindly she looked at him, he was just ordinary.
The boss doesn’t really look handsome… Unless he’s the dependable type like Taek-oppa.
Maybe that thought showed on her face, because Baek Su-cheol looked embarrassed.
“Yeah, my face is totally hopeless. But my sister was really beautiful. Even now she still is…. She looks nothing like me.”
“Ah….”
“Anyway, that’s not the important part.”
He took another gulp of juice and kept going.
“She was a pretty, ordinary college student. Then one day she came out of her room, and her hair had turned completely white.”
“Haha.”
A sister going white-haired overnight? The smell of melodrama was already strong.
Holding onto her smile, Aki laughed awkwardly.
Still, Baek Su-cheol went on.
“A white-haired sister suddenly came out, and the whole family asked if she’d dyed it. She ignored everyone, then grabbed my hand like a madwoman and dragged me outside.”
“Outside?”
“Yeah! But the really creepy part comes next.”
“…”
Aki gave a wry smile.
This sounds like it’s going to be a long story.
Baek Su-cheol paid her no mind. Staring into the distance, he spoke as though the memory were still vivid enough to touch.
“She held the hand of me, a middle schooler, and suddenly went all the way to a tiny corner store really far away to buy a scratch-off lottery ticket. Just one ticket.”
“A scratch-off lottery ticket…?”
“Then she bought some snacks and told me, ‘Soo-cheol, eat this and don’t move. Stay right here until your sister comes back.’ Then she got into a taxi and went somewhere by herself.”
Young Baek Su-cheol stayed in front of the corner store, missing school and passing the time watching the TV outside. His sister returned six hours later.
She came back looking like she’d been through every adventure a person could possibly survive in a lifetime, hair disheveled and utterly exhausted. Tears streaming down her face, she said, “Let’s go to the hospital now.”
- Are you crying, sis?
- …
She held Soo-cheol and sobbed.
- It’s all done now. I saved everything. My little Soo-cheol…. You’ve suffered enough.
- I didn’t suffer, th…
And the moment they reached the hospital, young Baek Su-cheol’s memory cut off.
He woke up a week later.
“What was it again? There was some disease where your heart would burst or something, and they said that day was supposed to be my original day to die. The doctors were apparently terrified because they had to operate immediately….”
“…”
Aki’s eyes widened.
The boss had a heart condition…? But how did she know that?
When the person who’d almost died said it himself, it was hard to call it a lie.
The next story was even harder to believe.
“The even more amazing thing was that in the afternoon that same day, the neighborhood gas line exploded and the whole residential area got blown away.”
“Wh—?!”
“And yet nobody died. It was a place where hundreds of people lived.”
“Whaaaat—?!”
Baek Su-cheol’s sister had used every means possible that day to evacuate people. She’d used the lottery winnings to do it. That was why people were grateful to her, but also afraid.
- How did you even… win the lottery?
- Why would you spend that money…?
But she didn’t care.
After that day, the bright, lively girl she’d been was gone, replaced by someone who seemed like an old woman. Then she quietly went into the mountains. By the time Soo-cheol woke after his surgery, she was already a shaman.
That was the end of his story.
“Well, that’s how it happened.”
“…”
Aki stared blankly.
It was… spectacular, and yet suspicious.
But it’s so detailed that it doesn’t feel completely made up, either.
The two of them fell silent for a moment.
Baek Su-cheol drank the rest of his juice because the long story had made him thirsty, while Aki wore a puzzled expression.
He set the glass down.
“…Well! That’s to say, something like that happened. Why did I even bring this up?”
“The white suit.”
“Ah! Right. So after that, I’ve always followed my sister’s advice. I still do.”
He turned his head and looked behind him.
There, hanging on the wall, was a plaque of gratitude from Bigman.
“With heartfelt thanks for the precious and invaluable support of ‘Bigman.’ — All of us at Aurora Prism Entertainment.”
“?”
At the familiar sight, Aki smiled—then suddenly felt a strange mismatch. Hanging from the plaque was a worn five-color cord, something she’d never seen before.
“Boss, what’s that cord for?”
“My sister said I’ve got this excess fortune energy just pouring out of me, and asked if I was secretly worshipping some weird god of luck or something. When I told her no, she said to hang it where the ‘benefactor’ touched. She said if the good fortune leaks out like this, even the benefactor could be at risk….”
“The benefactor being at risk….”
“If we knew where the actual person was, we’d be supposed to hang it directly on him for the strongest effect. But we don’t know where Bigman is, so this is the next best thing. We live like this because of him.”
Bigman.
At the thought of him, both of them smiled.
“It’s only been two months, hasn’t it?”
“Ugh, it feels like two years. And when A-young said she’d invest another one hundred million won… I really didn’t know what to do with myself from feeling so guilty.”
“…”
“Honestly, I decided that no matter what happened… I had to keep ABCD alive.”
“…”
Even now, when one hundred million won felt like a joke, that feeling still remained in Baek Su-cheol.
- Numbers disappear, but feelings remain.
For some reason, Taek’s words came back to me.
Aki nodded.
“Because it was something I had to do.”
“You’re still worried about that back then?”
“Huh?”
“That one hundred million won prize event on Live Future last year. A-young sent in a singing video and got rejected, right? You don’t need to keep thinking about it. It’s not something one person can just make happen alone.”
“…”
One hundred million won.
If only they’d had that money…
She’d thought that before.
She had prepared desperately.
Of course she’d been rejected for lack of skill.
If it were now, I think I could take first place.
But time had already passed.
“…”
Aki shook her head.
“Even so, I’m sorry. If I’d won the prize money, everyone would’ve suffered less.”
“Don’t be sorry. I’m the one who should be more sorry. We didn’t have enough money, so lessons got cut off halfway, everyone had to stream without even getting 3D models, and we were all scrambling. I should’ve gone and found more investors.”
“…”
“…”
An awkward silence settled between them.
Then, bashfully, they picked the conversation back up.
Baek Su-cheol grinned. “Still. You’re excited now, right? It’s live.”
“Yes!”
Lessons started again.
Their skills kept improving.
The streams got a lot more fun.
I was so happy now.
“Let’s make the live a success, no matter what.”
“Yes!”
“Anything bothering you? Anything hard?”
“No! Not at all! I’ve got energy to burn!”
“Oh, that’s reassuring.”
“Hehe.”
And so the meeting between the two of them came to an end.
Before leaving the president’s office, Aki gave the Bigman plaque one last sideways glance.
“…”
A golden plaque with an old five-color cord hanging from it.
Looking at it, she offered a quiet prayer.
Bigman…
Because of you,
we made it this far.
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