The Criteria for a Perfect Body
Episode 50 A body should be slender. It should be pretty. And, all things considered, it wouldn’t hurt if the breasts were big.
“Oh...”
That was genuinely fascinating.
[Emergency: 5%]
[Time Shop: 80%]
[Moonlit Garden: -27%]
[Black-and-White Photo: -13%]
…
[Whispers of the Stars: 90%]
[A Thousand Candles: -52%]
[Letter from the Last Winter: 1%]
“Interesting.”
The success rates floated up before me, and I couldn’t tell what on earth they’d been based on.
“Negative... huh.”
What struck me as most peculiar was that there were negative numbers at all.
A negative rate meant nothing, didn’t it? Even if you made money, there was nothing to get back in the first place.
Normally, you had to get past the break-even point before profits started rolling in.
Then again, wasn’t even that 1 percent project technically a successful investment, from a certain angle?
However small the return might be.
That said, even if the investment success rate is 100 percent, that doesn’t mean some indie film is suddenly going to pull ten million viewers.
So the most likely interpretation was that this reflected the general success probability for an independent film.
And it definitely wasn’t the limit, either.
After all, this was only an investment success rate, not the work’s actual success rate.
And a work’s success didn’t necessarily mean it would bring in a lot of money, either.
In the end, anything below zero is just a failure. Let’s say anything above 1 percent counts as a success.
That was all I needed to know. I wasn’t doing this business just to make money in the first place.
Money? The rent from the buildings I’d already bought, and the dividends from stocks were more than enough.
What I need is the calling card of a man who only makes winning investments.
Ten billion won spread across a dozen projects wouldn’t be bad at all.
Just in case, I carefully skimmed through the proposals, synopses, and full scripts from top to bottom.
I wanted to see whether I could figure out why the success rates varied so wildly within the range I could observe.
“...I still don’t get it.”
Nope. The more I looked, the less I understood. Some youth romance scripts were so cringeworthy they could make your hands and toes curl, yet their success rates were over 60 percent.
Meanwhile, some scripts made me think, Oh? This is pretty good. only for their success rates to hover around negative ten percent.
“So it’s a mix of factors, from the script all the way to the actors and director.”
I’d never actually worked in investment before, and I didn’t know the film industry well enough to identify where problems might be lurking.
In the end, I’ll have to learn by crashing into things one by one.
Still, how nice was this? Just not having to worry about money was enough to make everything else easier.
“Should I hire employees, then? I don’t think I can handle everything alone.”
Handling only the important moments myself ought to be enough, shouldn’t it?
Even if the tax side was being handled by Hanuri Tax & Accounting Firm.
“At minimum... I’d probably need an investment analysis team, a project management team, a legal contracts team, a finance and accounting team, and a PR team.”
I was probably going to have to lean on my network again, one way or another.
“Maybe I should just acquire some investment firm that’s about to shut down.”
All I’d have to do was change the sign or hire new people.
Of course, I’d need office space for that, but I already owned buildings anyway.
“Okay. First investment: around one billion won. Best to build this properly from the ground up.”
***
“Boss, any investment news?”
Park Junhyeong handed Kim Gwangsik a cup of instant mix coffee.
“What can I do? Haaah... These days, the indie film scene is practically wiped out. I’m not the only one on the brink—you know it too. Everybody making and distributing independent and small-scale films is dying a slow death.”
At Park Junhyeong’s words, Kim Gwangsik let out one long sigh after another.
“I know, but...”
“Banks and venture capital are all starting to pull out of film, too. Honestly, there’s just no money in it.”
He knew. He’d seen the reports the Korean Film Council put out. The return on investment for Korean films was posting negative numbers year after year.
If even the big films were like that, what more needed to be said about the small ones?
“But it’s such a shame. This is a script we worked so hard on. Besides, I’ve kept the budget as low as humanly possible.”
“I know. I’ve watched the whole thing from the sidelines. Honestly, wouldn’t it be better for you to go work under another director for a few years, get some mileage, and then shoot your own film? Something a bit bigger?”
Kim Gwangsik stared blankly down at the script in his hands.
Whispers of the Stars.
It was really a work he felt confident about. One he’d poured his heart into.
“And the subject matter was just too niche. A hearing-impaired heroine discovering a new star in an astronomy club? That’s...”
In plain terms, it was too artistic. Too full of youthful sentiment.
That didn’t mean artistic youthfulness was wrong. The question was whether a middle-aged man in his forties like Kim Gwangsik could actually express it properly.
Jingle—
“Ah, is this Wonderful Film Company?”
“Y-Yes! Who... who are you?”
Since they weren’t expecting any visitors, Park Junhyeong asked the question back.
“Whispers of the Stars. I came because I want to invest. I was introduced by a bank.”
Crash—bang—
Suddenly, a chair toppled over.
“Welcome! I was just here with Director Kim Gwangsik!”
“Ah. Perfect timing.”
The once-cluttered desk somehow looked neat all of a sudden, and sunlight poured into the dim conference room, making everything bright.
“My name’s Song Hoon, from Dice Capital Partners.”
“How did you...?”
“I just opened an investment firm, and the investment bank gave me a list of projects. I reviewed it, and this one looked like a good work that might never get the chance to shine because nobody would fund it.”
“That...”
Seeing a forty-year-old man on the verge of tears at those words made the atmosphere feel a little strange.
“How much are you thinking of investing...?”
Song Hoon handed over the contract.
“The required amount was listed as about 150 million won. But that probably isn’t the whole story. How much do you need?”
“Huh? How much...?”
Whispers of the Stars had a 90 percent investment success rate.
The necessary amount was 150 million won. So if a little more were invested than that, would the probability change?
“With some extra CGI costs... maybe 300 million...?”
“No, Director Kim, don’t throw out a number that huge all at once...! Whew! No, no, that’s fine. That amount works.”
When Kim Gwangsik blurted out the original estimate for the film’s space sequences—the very point of the project—Park Junhyeong frantically waved his hands, terrified that he might scare off the only investor who’d shown up.
“Uh... well. If that doesn’t work, 150 million would still be... okay...”
The big, burly middle-aged man’s voice suddenly dropped so much that his shoulders seemed to shrink along with it, and a laugh escaped me.
“300 million.”
Song Hoon wrote the amount into the blank contract.
“I believe it’ll be a good work.”
Kim Gwangsik and Park Junhyeong’s eyes went wide.
“Three hundred million... all at once?”
“Of course, the initial investment will be 150 million to start. The remaining 150 million goes in as a second round after I see the rough cut.”
“Yes! More than enough! We’re grateful beyond words!”
Wasn’t it basically a warning not to waste the money?
And besides, no director who’d finally found someone willing to fund the project would start thinking about squandering the cash.
“A benefactor... I was told a benefactor would appear in today’s fortune.”
Kim Gwangsik stared blankly at the contract, where the figure 300 million had been written, looking like he might burst into tears at any second.
“A benefactor is too much. I just recognized a good work.”
After finalizing the 300 million won contract, Song Hoon grinned as the investment success rate rose from 90 to 96 percent.
***
Damn it. I’m always short on Dice Points. Always.
I’d been saving them as carefully as I could, and I still only had 18 Dice Points left.
Just then, Seo Haneul messaged me at the perfect time. Really, the timing couldn’t have been better.
Besides, ever since she’d started calling me Master after the last time—and after I’d absolutely taken her apart for it—the title had stuck in her mouth whenever it was just the two of us.
As expected, the word shopping made her eyes light up.
Though I was pretty sure the kind of shopping she was imagining was very different from mine.
This time, I wasn’t planning to shop for clothes.
I was thinking of shopping for cars.
“I’ll replace the SUV, buy a sports car, and get a company car too.”
***
“Hmm... hmm... who should I call?”
Just because she was off today didn’t mean she’d be off tomorrow.
Just thinking about the day her legs had gone weak during cheering made me break out in a cold sweat. I’d been pounding her all night, and even right before she came to cheer, so by the end her legs had simply given out.
“Seriously. Where does all that sex drive even come from? It’s like an endless spring.”
Still, it was a relief that the rumor had settled on her being exhausted from cheering and losing strength in her legs because the team won.
“She really can’t keep her mouth shut...”
Seo Haneul dragged her finger down the names saved in her phone, sinking into thought.
She had to choose the right person to invite.
Since she’d gone on broadcasts and YouTube a few times here and there, she’d accumulated a lot of phone numbers without even meaning to.
And she’d made friends with quite a few women over drinks, too.
Of course, among them were people she’d shared more private tastes with.
Wasn’t it only natural to be more careful about that sort of thing when your job put your face out there for everyone to see?
In other words, there were plenty of people she could call.
The problem was the conditions.
“Someone who’s a bit below me, relatively speaking...”
From the conversations they’d had a few times, Seo Haneul had a pretty solid idea of Song Hoon’s type.
“A body should be slender. It should be pretty. And, all things considered, it wouldn’t hurt if the breasts were big.”
It was a very specific combination, but Song Hoon had more than enough capacity to accept all of it, didn’t he?
“And it’d be even better if she had a high sex drive.”
After staring at her phone for a long while, Seo Haneul looked at one of the names in the contacts and smiled slowly.
“She’d be just right.”
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