The Unexpected Match
I replayed my conversation with Seok-du hyung in my head and thought, ...So that’s how this ends up?
I was a little dazed.
Choi Su-hyeon, the rising star of Chungmuro who had cheated on his wife.
And Kim Seong-hun, the team leader who had recently started to get under my skin, had somehow been drawn to each other.
It was like a bomb hugging another bomb.
It’s like I’ve cleaned my nose without even using my hands.
Could things really be this easy?
They were going too smoothly, and that somehow made me uneasy instead.
I also felt a faint pressure, as if I ought to be doing something about it, but...
From a rational standpoint, the best thing was to stay still.
So I changed the subject in my mind.
When had Kim Seong-hun started bothering me, anyway?
Right... back when I was running errands as Lee Ha-eun’s road manager.
Before I became Lee Ha-eun’s new manager, her previous one had been Kim Seong-hun.
I’d heard he quit after breaking his arm when Lee Ha-eun threw an iPad at him.
That must have been the first time Kim Seong-hun, a man obsessed with results, ever tasted failure.
And then I held out.
I had stuck it out for a whole year with the very woman who had dealt him that defeat.
From that point on, Kim Seong-hun had started picking at me in subtle ways.
By the time I finished retracing it, I understood.
"It's a bad blood thing."
Kim Seong-hun and I were never going to get along.
What made it worse was that the gulf between us would only deepen from here.
At that thought, the anxiety and pressure crushing my chest all but scattered into the air.
"Yeah..."
If one of us had to disappear for the other to feel at ease, then maybe it made sense for me to dance first with the knife.
And once I decided on something, I didn’t hesitate.
I pulled the smartphone out from inside my jacket.
"Reporter Seo. Let’s break the Choi Su-hyeon affair story next week."
Tick, tick.
The timer on the time bomb had started moving.
***
A few days passed.
Nothing happened. No incidents, no accidents. Just ordinary days.
And yet, for some reason, the corners of my mouth kept twitching lately.
When I thought about the cause, the answer came quickly.
Kim Seong-hun.
Right.
Kim Seong-hun’s gaze kept spearing the back of my head and refusing to let go, so my mouth kept curling up too.
"..."
I hadn’t noticed it when I wasn’t thinking about it, but once I became aware of it, I could feel it clearly.
Kim Seong-hun was conscious of me.
Those hungry, ambitious eyes of his kept drilling into the back of my head whenever they found a chance.
Before I knew it, a laugh slipped out.
Wow... he’s been that wary of me?
More than irritating, it was astonishing.
What exactly was he dissatisfied with, to keep acting like this when he was the team leader with the best results?
At the same time, I became curious.
When Choi Su-hyeon, that walking bomb, blew up next week, would Kim Seong-hun still be glaring at me then?
I couldn’t predict what kind of move he’d make, but one thing was certain.
Starting next week, the management office would be in an uproar.
Well, more specifically, Team 1 would be, since that was where Kim Seong-hun was.
Thinking about that future made the corners of my mouth twitch again.
Honestly.
I really needed to stop smiling!
Forcing away the stray thoughts, I checked the schedule sheet.
My eyes widened a little.
"So today’s the day I meet Seo Tae-jun?"
My first meeting with Seo Tae-jun, the Romance Prince who had nearly become the Prince of Adultery, was set for today.
I scratched my chin slowly and muttered, "What kind of person is Seo Tae-jun?"
I prided myself on having met a fair number of celebrities, but I had never met Seo Tae-jun before.
Of course, not having met him didn’t mean I knew nothing about him. I had heard the rumors.
Supposedly he’s the type with a huge ego.
And on top of that, he was said to be pretty full of himself.
I clicked my tongue without meaning to.
"Tsk... if that’s true, he’ll be a pain in the ass to manage."
If the rumors were true, he was the kind of personality who would clash with a manager the most.
Feeling a little uneasy, I went down to the third floor, where Public Relations was located.
"Team Leader Seo. Do you know the actor Seo Tae-jun?"
"Seo Tae-jun? The one we brought in on FA this time?"
"Yeah. He’s been assigned to Team 5, but what kind of person is he?"
Team Leader Seo twisted the perm she looked like she’d gotten at the local salon.
"...Hmm. I haven’t heard any bad rumors, at least."
"At least?"
"People say he’s the type who’s kind of... obnoxious and arrogant?"
I let out a long sigh.
If that came out of Team Leader Seo’s mouth, it was practically a fact.
"Still, he’s not the type to go around causing trouble or anything. Don’t worry too much."
Why did the person telling me not to worry look so annoyingly pleased with himself?
I headed back to my office.
The moment I sat down, I searched Seo Tae-jun’s filmography.
"...His first debut work was Love of a Thousand Years."
After that, every drama and film he appeared in had delivered steady results.
Even his first work, Love of a Thousand Years, had ended with an 11.4 percent viewership rating, so you could say he’d at least done decently.
Without meaning to, I nodded.
With a filmography like this, I can see why he’d be arrogant.
An actor with no major hits, but no failures either.
In times like these, someone like that would be treated well everywhere they went.
Then an unfamiliar number called.
I cleared my throat and answered.
"Hello, this is Kwon Chan."
["Is this Manager Kwon Chan of Management Team 5?"]
"Yes, that’s right."
["Ah, this is Seo Tae-jun."]
He was calling sooner than I expected.
I stood up as I replied, "Hello, Seo Tae-jun-ssi. Are you at Baekhak headquarters right now?"
["Yes. I’m in the first-floor lobby now. Should I come up to the management office?"]
"Yes. I’ll come meet you."
I waited with my arms folded in front of the elevator.
Before long, a man in his late twenties with sharp, easy features appeared wearing a ball cap.
"Manager Kwon?"
He had a good voice.
At the same time, it was the kind of voice that carried weight.
That was exactly how the voices of people who were treated like leads everywhere tended to sound.
"I’m Kwon Chan, manager of Team 5. Nice to meet you."
Seo Tae-jun, who had been glancing around, took off the cap he was wearing and said, "Baekhak’s building is seriously nice."
"Everyone says that the first time they come here."
"Should we talk here?"
"No. We should head to a meeting room."
We exchanged a few casual remarks on the way there.
Once we were seated, Seo Tae-jun stared straight at my face.
What?
Did I have something on my face?
As I tilted my head in confusion, Seo Tae-jun finally spoke.
"So from now on, you’ll be the one handling me, Manager Kwon?"
Keeping a polite smile in place, I answered, "I’ll be in charge of you, yes. But once we get a road manager, I won’t be on-site myself."
Seo Tae-jun suddenly frowned.
"Ah, that’s a problem."
"...Excuse me?"
"I told President Park Yu-hyeon during my meeting with Baekhak that I wanted to work with you, Manager Kwon. You didn’t hear about that?"
My eyes widened.
Seo Tae-jun wanted to work with me?
Why?
No, more to the point, I had never heard that from the president.
I was thrown, but the expression under my mask didn’t move at all.
Acting like I knew the whole situation, I asked, "I’ll still be supporting you, Tae-jun-ssi, even if I’m not going to every set myself. But..."
I let my words trail off, laying the bait.
"Why do you want to work with me?"
Seo Tae-jun leaned forward.
"Actress Lee Ha-eun, Queen of Joseon."
"!"
"I heard you were the one who recommended that script."
Ah. So that was why.
As I felt the air in my chest cool just a little, Seo Tae-jun turned the heat back up.
"I also heard that all the actors you handle have good filmographies."
"..."
"And since I’m at a new company now, I figured I’d rather work with a manager who’s sharp and capable."
Without thinking, I nodded.
Hmm.
I did have a bit of ability, and I did know scripts pretty well.
"Usually, an actor at your level picks scripts for himself."
"Ah, not me."
"Why not?"
"Because I’ve got no eye for scripts."
"!"
This time, I was genuinely taken aback.
My voice trembled a little before I could stop it. "Then... what about all your past projects?"
"The company picked all of them for me."
I swallowed hard inside.
All of that solid filmography had been made up of work chosen by someone else?
"I tried choosing a few myself, but back at my last company, ATH, they practically lost their minds whenever they saw the projects I picked."
"What kinds of projects did you choose?"
"The scripts I liked most recently were Detective of 1950 and Secret Assignment."
My face turned dubious.
"Neither of those... had very good results."
"Didn’t go poorly. They tanked completely, didn’t they?"
"..."
I couldn’t argue with that.
Like Seo Tae-jun said, Detective of 1950 had burned through 30 billion won in production costs without even making back the break-even point and had failed to reach one million viewers, while Secret Assignment had been a total flop with a sub-one-percent rating.
Seo Tae-jun grinned in the middle of my silence.
"As long as the actor acts well, that’s enough, right?"
That was true.
An actor didn’t have to be great at choosing scripts.
But actors who chose good scripts usually happened to be good at acting too.
From that angle, Seo Tae-jun was an irregularity.
He had no eye for scripts, but his acting was solid enough for an A-list actor.
At that moment, I realized something without meaning to.
Seo Tae-jun... interesting.
I’d been worried, but Seo Tae-jun in person was very different from what I’d expected.
He really was arrogant, just as the rumors said, and you could feel how fiercely proud he was...
But on the other hand, maybe it was fair to say he was absurdly hungry for work?
He seems unusual in a lot of ways.
Without letting my growing interest show, I asked, "If we work together, you want me to pick scripts for you?"
"Yes."
"Any genre or character you want in particular?"
Seo Tae-jun answered flatly, "Everything except romance."
...What?
What had I just heard?
"You want me to recommend scripts that aren't romance?"
"Yes. Anything but romance."
That completely unexpected reversal sent a fresh tension through the room.
"As long as it’s not romance, I’m fine with anything. I’d even do an independent film."
The Romance Prince had rejected romance.
***
We left the meeting room and moved somewhere else.
It looked like the conversation would go on for a while, and since it was lunchtime, we visited an omakase place Seo Tae-jun knew well.
It was an omakase restaurant where one meal cost a staggering 150,000 won per person.
Seo Tae-jun chewed on the fatty tuna belly portion that had been set in front of him and said, "Why I left my old company? Nothing special. They kept telling me to keep doing only romance, so I ended the contract."
I bit into a piece of sushi topped with flatfish and replied, "Wasn't it because you’re good at romance acting, so they kept recommending those roles?"
"Exactly. I’m ridiculously good at romance acting."
"..."
"But think about it, Manager. If I’m going to keep acting for the next ten or twenty years, is it really right to spend all of that time only doing romance?"
I perked up.
In the meantime, Seo Tae-jun vented his dissatisfaction without any filter.
"Right now I can still land romance leads because I don’t have wrinkles and I’m still firm all over, but what happens five years from now?"
The newer actors coming up from below would take those roles.
Romance had a pretty high turnover rate, after all.
"If all I wanted was a quick score, I would’ve kept doing romance. But I don’t want that."
For the first time, the arrogance dropped out of Seo Tae-jun’s voice.
"I want to keep acting. For a long, long time."
Without meaning to, I responded to the honesty in his voice.
"You really mean it when it comes to acting."
"Does that not suit me?"
"No. Why wouldn’t it suit an actor to be serious about acting?"
I wasn’t the type to talk much about myself to other people.
But maybe because I’d gotten caught up in Seo Tae-jun’s way of speaking, which laid his own thoughts bare without hesitation...
I ended up saying what was on my mind.
"You’re a hundred times better than those guys who chase money without any professional pride."
Seo Tae-jun’s mouth curved into a grin.
"I feel like we get along pretty well, Manager Kwon."
Did we?
I thought about it for a moment.
No, far from it. If anything, our personalities are totally incompatible.
But... yes.
That one strength canceled out all the other weaknesses.
He’s passionate about his work.
I liked that enough to smash through the rest.
At that moment, I thought to myself:
Seo Tae-jun as a person...
He’s better than I expected.
So this is why you really have to meet people before deciding what they’re like?
"I’ll pay."
"You’ve got a company card. Why bother?"
"An actor has his pride. Put the company card away."
...Hmm.
Maybe I did need to watch him a little longer.
Everything else was fine, but could he please do something about this pretentiousness?
"I’m planning to take my time, so if you find a good script, contact me anytime, Manager Kwon."
And that was how my rather uneasy first meeting with Seo Tae-jun came to an end.
Back at the company, I grabbed my keyboard and mouse to get some paperwork done.
But I couldn’t focus at all.
Seo Tae-jun kept...
He just wouldn’t leave my head.
Setting down the mouse and keyboard I was holding, I muttered, "Wait... a romance specialist who doesn’t want to do romance?"
Let me think about this from a manager’s point of view.
How was I supposed to take an actor who specialized in romance saying he didn’t want to do romance anymore?
I’d have to stop him, obviously.
But I had heard Seo Tae-jun’s sincerity.
I knew the background: he wanted to change his acting style, so he had left his old agency behind and decided to take on a new challenge.
And I...
I was drawn to people like that.
People who threw themselves into their work with pride.
At that moment, one script suddenly came to mind.
A 5 million-view occult film.
Seo Tae-jun, the Romance Prince.
What would an occult film with Seo Tae-jun in it look like?
That’d be interesting.
One thing was certain, at least.
Seo Tae-jun, the Romance Prince, acting in an occult film.
Just imagining that scene made my interest flare up.
Touching my chin, I murmured, "Since it came to mind anyway, should I look for an occult script that can hit five million?"
I sat up straighter.
Resting my chin in my hand, I began running through one possibility after another.
An occult script that hadn’t even entered Baekhak yet.
Could I find one at this point in time?
The loose thread of my nerves pulled tight, and my head started turning at last.
Without meaning to, I muttered, "Could be worth a shot."
Yes.
It was worth a shot, quite literally.
Of course, there was always the chance that no such 5 million-view occult script existed, but that didn’t make the time spent a waste.
The corners of my mouth twitched again.
"Yeah... well."
If I had to do it anyway, wasn’t it better to do it once I’d made up my mind?
And once I decided on something, I was the type who didn’t hesitate.
Taking hold of the keyboard and mouse again, I started looking for a 5 million-view occult film script.