SS-Rank, Huh. Not Exactly Easy Pickings.
“Yeah, yeah—good work! Go on in. Tomorrow’s schedule is in the evening, so get some proper rest!”
“Okay~”
“Go on up first. I’ll head in after I see you get inside.”
Yu Jiyeon closed the car door, let out a soft sigh, then pulled her cap low over her face and held her card key to the security checkpoint.
“Verification complete.”
Only after the card key, apartment number, and resident registry had all been checked did the door open.
Buzz—
And only then did the car pull away. Yu Jiyeon finally relaxed and stepped into the building.
At the very least, no one could easily violate this home.
“Tiring.”
A crazy stalker, or an over-the-line sasaeng fan.
Just thinking about it was enough to make her skin crawl.
It had only gotten worse since she started her solo activities lately, and today’s shoot had been an absolute disaster. Why were people so shamelessly pushy when they were filming?
Fatigue had settled into every corner of her body. All she could think about now was getting inside and collapsing onto her bed.
“Hello.”
“Yes. Hello~”
Yu Jiyeon smiled brightly, greeting the security guards and the staff at the reception desk with a cheerful little grin.
No matter how tired she was, wasn’t this the fate of an entertainer?
It was better to just say hello once than let people start gossiping online for no reason.
Ping—
When the elevator arrived—
Hm?
There was already a man inside, so she glanced over at his face. It was someone she’d never seen before. A strange unease began creeping up her spine.
And he hadn’t pressed any floor buttons at all. In this elevator, unless you had a resident card key, you couldn’t select any floor except the lobby.
“Stalk—…”
Yu Jiyeon started to tremble, wondering how a stalker could have followed her all the way in here, and gripped her phone tightly in her hand.
Then she covered her mouth.
“N-no… no!”
She slammed the emergency call button in the elevator.
The security guards came, and Yu Jiyeon clutched at her pounding heart.
Now everything would be fine.
“He was just staring blankly in the elevator without pressing a floor button, so I thought it might be stalking… and he’s a face I’ve never seen before, too.”
“Ah? A floor.”
Song Hoon, who had been listening quietly and wondering what on earth was going on, finally realized why Yu Jiyeon had reacted like that. He scratched his head, then pulled out a black card.
“Huh?”
“Uh… black means….”
He swiped it in the elevator and pressed the 23rd floor.
Only then did the security guards begin to back away, as if they had finally sensed that the situation had taken a turn for the weird.
“I was working overtime all night, so I guess I got too tired and forgot to press it. And this is my first time here since buying the place, so yes, I really am a face you’ve never seen before.”
The 23rd floor was the only super penthouse in this ultra-luxury apartment complex.
It wasn’t just a place worth ten billion won, but a super penthouse worth a staggering forty-five billion won.
And to go up there, you didn’t just need a resident card. You needed a special one.
The black card. The exclusive card for the super penthouse.
“Uh… th-there’s….”
On top of that, rumors had already spread like wildfire among the staff. The new tenant on the 23rd floor hadn’t rented the place—he’d bought it outright.
And not with a loan, either. All cash.
Someone like that filed a complaint? Especially when the staff were the ones clearly in the wrong?
In other words, the man standing right in front of them now had their lives in his hands.
“Well, I can understand why that lady, whoever she is, hit the emergency button for some reason. I get it. And if she said something about a stalker, then sure, that’s understandable too.”
Suddenly, dopamine surged through his body, and the last traces of fatigue melted away.
Ah, I can understand Yu Jiyeon. I absolutely have to understand her. No question about it.
Here was a chance to leave an impression on an SS-rank existence like Yu Jiyeon.
“But you people here sure seem to skip right over context and procedure and go straight to browbeating the resident, don’t you?”
“S-s-sorry!”
“I mean, in an apartment worth hundreds of billions of won, there should be some process, right? But instead you just demand she submit to a security check out of nowhere? Push her into it like that?”
It was obvious he was overdoing it just to make a good impression on Yu Jiyeon.
“Pick it up.”
Song Hoon’s face twisted with irritation as he gave the order.
“Huh? Y-yes!”
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m truly sorry.”
The security guards began picking up the papers that had fallen to the floor.
Honestly, a part of him wanted to go full villain and throw a tantrum with a sword-dance’s worth of outrage.
She looks genuinely flustered and apologetic.
Yu Jiyeon was standing behind them, looking mortified and helping gather the scattered papers.
Can’t be helped. Besides, Yu Jiyeon seems to have a pretty kind personality. She’s helping pick up papers like this while looking so rattled.
Strategy adjusted. This was the moment to show magnanimity. If he pushed any harder now, the backlash would be one hundred percent guaranteed.
“Please be more careful from now on. This time I also forgot to press the floor in advance, and she probably had her own reasons, so I’ll let it go. But still.”
The moment he finished speaking, the security guards bent at the waist so sharply it looked like they were folding in half.
“I’m sorry. Truly, I’m sorry.”
“If something like this happens again, I won’t be letting it slide.”
“Sir, I’m really sorry. I’ll keep that in mind.”
Song Hoon let out a sigh, gathered his documents, and leaned against the elevator wall.
“Um… sorry….”
“No, it’s fine. From the looks of it, you’re a celebrity. And if you said stalking, then of course you’d react sensitively. There’s no need to apologize.”
Song Hoon waved a hand.
“Still, I’m sorry.”
“Yes—apology accepted. Really, it’s fine. If you went through something like that, it makes sense.”
Coolly.
“Th-thank you!”
Yu Jiyeon seemed to want to say something else, hesitating several more times, but after wavering for quite a while, she finally bowed politely and got off when the elevator stopped at the 15th floor.
This should be enough. She still won’t have been able to fully calm down. And I’ve definitely left the impression of a new tenant who lives in the 23rd-floor super penthouse.
The next time she saw him around, there was no doubt she’d think, Ah, that time! rather than Who?
“Haa. This isn’t easy.”
The moment Song Hoon got home, he tossed the documents onto the table—clothes and all—and collapsed onto the bed room floor with a thud.
SS-rank, huh. Not exactly easy pickings.
Even if he tried to imagine just how strong SS really was, he honestly couldn’t get a clear sense of it.
Even Kim Nagyeong and Seo Haneul were the sort of women a man might go his whole life without ever meeting if not for the System. And they weren’t just pretty faces who felt like you were humping empty air, either—they had the kind of obscene tightness that could make a man lose his mind.
“I don’t have the leisure for this.”
He dragged himself up, changed clothes, and flopped onto the living room sofa before opening the Dice Shop.
“First, buy at least two Eye Acquisition items.”
This was a kind of long-term investment. Something he’d have to buy every time he got the points.
Then came the next item.
Purchasing Stage 2 Value Confirmation Item.
Each time a value is checked, 1 D.P. will be consumed.
This was essential.
Honestly, there were a lot of things he was curious about. Up until now, he had poured a great many points into values that didn’t change, but every investment carried risk, didn’t it?
“Even if I invest and make the success rate 100 percent, it could still change. And I don’t even know what that 100 percent is based on.”
There were just too many variables. An actor suddenly getting caught in an issue, for one. Staff problems. Or any number of other things.
What if he spent precious points to make something 100 percent, only for an incident like that to pop up and force him to reinvest?
Or what if solving a range of issues first could reduce the amount of investment needed later?
“What do you think, System?”
That goddamn unhelpful System, of course, would never tell him anything like that. He’d have to figure it all out and decide for himself.
“I’d like to buy the future prediction simulation too, but….”
He didn’t have enough Dice Points. That item alone cost a whopping 100 Dice Points.
What he had left now was only 39 Dice Points.
“So it always comes back to sex. Sex, sex, and more sex.”
He spread open the investment list lying haphazardly on the living-room table and went into his mailbox.
Scripts and the like had been sorted into a separate folder in there.
“There are actually a surprising number of ways to invest.”
Crowdfunding, micro-investment platforms, securities-based crowdfunding.
“Forget all that.”
He picked up the film investment list. Independent films, low-budget productions, even big-budget movies.
The more investment money, the better.
“Hmm… yeah, choosing an investment bank was definitely the right call.”
It wasn’t as if he had opened an account at an investment bank for no reason when he founded the company. This place was the most active bank for cultural-content investment.
He’d invested there because he figured he could get quite a bit of useful information out of it.
“A few hundred billion at the high end, a few tens of millions at the low end.”
Sure enough, the film industry was every bit as uneven as people said.
He scanned the film list, which was spread out before him, and started with the ones marked in red.
The number of films that failed to go into production because they couldn’t find investors was significant.
He’d heard that, after the COVID era, investment sentiment had become much more cautious and profitability had shrunk as well.
“Focus on independent films.”
There were about twenty projects on the verge of collapsing outright because they couldn’t secure investors immediately.
“Check the investment success rate.”
With a throbbing sense of anticipation, Song Hoon checked the values.
Twenty points disappeared, and the success rates for twenty different listings began to appear.