Scandal Upon Contact
This was so fucking messed up. Of all the smear jobs in the world, this one took the crown.
Kim Moon-hwan hounded his staff like a drowning man clutching at straws.
"There's no way the restaurant only has one CCTV camera, is there? What? You checked every other camera and that spot's the only one that doesn't show? Ahh! I'm going to lose my mind."
Kim Moon-hwan was so panicked he couldn't get a word out.
"So what do we do now, Team Leader? I think we need to find another way..."
Once he'd collected himself, Kim Moon-hwan told them to check whether any of the other customers at the restaurant had filmed the incident, then hung up.
He let out a long, heavy sigh, and another staff member asked with a worried look.
"What's wrong? No footage?"
"That's what they said. Ha! We're completely stuck. How did it even come to this? No matter how busy I was, I should've gone with him."
As Team Leader Kim berated himself, a staff member offered a suggestion.
"What if we put out interview clips from the staff who were with him?"
Team Leader Kim raised his voice, the frustration spilling over.
"You think the public is going to listen to a manager and his staff? They'll just point fingers and say we're all in on it together."
He called in the PR team leader and the legal team leader, and they put their heads together for over an hour. No viable plan emerged. Eventually, Kim Moon-hwan took it out on the staff who'd been there.
"I trained every one of you to start filming the second anyone picks a fight, and the moment it actually mattered, you all froze. Hah—"
"They said they were too shocked to do anything. Ji-young almost burned her hand."
"Even so. Ahh— forget it. Blaming the staff is just spitting in my own face."
The only thing left to count on was the mediator Cha Eun-yu had agreed to meet. Team Leader Kim Moon-hwan and his staff waited with their hearts in their throats for one o'clock to arrive.
A call came from the front desk that the expected visitor had arrived. Team Leader Kim Moon-hwan and a PR staffer rushed out to greet him.
Kim Moon-hwan bowed deeply toward the man whose back was still turned, pouring out his gratitude for the visit.
"Thank you so much for coming all this way. Our situation right now is extremely dire, so we reached out in a panic..."
When Kim Moon-hwan lifted his head, confusion crossed his face.
"Uh... Kang Minhyuk, by any chance...?"
"Yes, that's right."
"Wait — Iljin Group...?"
"Yes. That's me."
The man smiling brightly at him — wasn't this the same guy who'd come by yesterday asking about Cha Eun-yu's advertising rates, claiming he wanted to shoot a corporate image ad? Kim Moon-hwan felt something off and cranked his wariness to maximum.
The moment he saw me, his eyes shifted straight to suspicion. I'd expected as much the second I received this place's contact information, so I played it cool.
Kim Moon-hwan dismissed the staff member who'd come with him and led me alone into a conference room.
"You're the representative of Xeros Group, is that right?"
"That's correct."
"Then what's Iljin Group?"
"Iljin Group doesn't prohibit side jobs."
"You said you were in the real estate business in America."
"How would I manage a property that size by myself? Of course I hire people."
"Ah..."
My answers came without a hitch. Kim Moon-hwan, looking exhausted, laid out the situation Cha Eun-yu was in. The restaurant's CCTV had malfunctioned, so there was no way to prove it hadn't been an assault. He asked if I might be willing to sit for interviews with the press.
"An interview would be difficult."
Just last night, I'd sworn I wouldn't do a single thing to get my name out there until I was a fully established rich man. If it came out that I'd helped Cha Eun-yu, his hardcore fans would start going on about a righteous citizen this and a good Samaritan that. I'd be all over their mouths.
Absolutely not.
At my refusal, Kim Moon-hwan looked almost wounded.
"What? But you said you'd help our Eun-yu?"
"I never said I'd help. I said I'd appear as a witness."
"Wait, what does that even—"
Manager Kim Moon-hwan. The type who'd wear you out if you let the conversation drag. I placed the USB I'd prepared in the center of the table.
"This should explain the situation well enough."
Kim Moon-hwan caught my meaning immediately, his eyes going wide.
"Don't tell me this is—"
"Footage of the incident as it happened."
"How did you even—"
He looked at me the way you'd look at a paparazzo or a stalker, unease written across his face.
"The table behind us was being too loud while I was eating. I filmed it because I was worried they might pick a fight with us too."
Kim Moon-hwan looked a little more at ease at that.
"Is our Eun-yu in it too...?"
"He came out quite clearly, actually."
With trembling hands, he took the USB, plugged it into his laptop, drew a deep breath, and hit play.
Three hulking men with terrifying tattoos covering their necks and arms. And at a table set on the diagonal, Cha Eun-yu and his party. From the moment the instigator shoved one of the women, to the way he'd deliberately provoked Cha Eun-yu. The way he'd raised his voice like a victim of violence, putting on a whole performance to draw every eye in the room. Even the part where, as Cha Eun-yu stood up to the men to protect the women with him, the instigator pretended to be shoved. It was all captured, raw and unfiltered, on the footage.
After watching the video through to the end, Kim Moon-hwan finally dropped all suspicion of me. Relief washed over his face.
"Hah— you just saved us, Mr. Kang Minhyuk. Once this footage is released, we can prove the assault video is fake."
"When you go public with this, I'd appreciate it if you could keep me out of it as much as possible."
"Of course. Without question."
Manager Kim Moon-hwan quickly called a staff member over and handed off the USB, telling them to clip the key sections first and get them out to the press.
"And this."
Once the staff member had left, I handed Manager Kim a slip of paper with the instigator's contact information.
"I took down their numbers because I was worried the people who picked the fight might try something later. The way they worked together, that wasn't amateur hour. Keep it on file, and if they cause trouble down the line, get the police involved."
"Even their contact info! Thank you so much for this."
Kim Moon-hwan shot up from his seat and bowed at the waist. He had every reason to. A delayed response of even a little would have meant being sunk to the bottom of the ocean.
Then he looked at me with a serious expression.
"We're already so grateful for everything you've done, but if there's anything you need, please don't hesitate to say so. We'll make sure you're more than compensated."
"I don't need money."
Kim Moon-hwan tensed, having no idea what was about to come out of my mouth.
"I'd like to meet Cha Eun-yu."
"Ah, of course. Someone of your standing has come all this way — he should absolutely come greet you. He said he'll be here shortly."
The door burst open. Cha Eun-yu appeared, wrapped head to toe in cloth. There had been reporters packed in front of the agency — surely he hadn't come here thinking that counted as a disguise? If anything, it made him more conspicuous.
Cha Eun-yu peeled the wrapped cloth off layer by layer and sat down immediately beside Kim Moon-hwan.
"You found footage? I thought there was no CCTV?"
"Uh, well. This gentleman here had already filmed it."
Only then did Cha Eun-yu notice me. He pointed at me with his index finger, his face startled.
"Huh? The Iljin Group Deputy from yesterday?"
Kim Moon-hwan quickly pushed his hand down and scolded him.
"What are you doing. You haven't even thanked the man who saved your life."
Cha Eun-yu bowed deeply. His manners were genuinely excellent. Or maybe he was just a little... off.
"Thank you, truly, truly. I had no idea this would blow up so big, and you helped without a second thought. If it weren't for you, I would've been forced into retirement."
The moment he sat back down, he turned to his manager.
"So how much did we agree to give him? A billion won? No. Given my base market value, we should give him two billion, right? Wait, no. I basically came back from the dead — that's not enough, is it?"
As the figure kept climbing, the manager cleared his throat pointedly to stop him.
"He says he doesn't need money."
"Then?"
"He wants to meet you. You, specifically."
"What?"
He seemed to take that the wrong way. Cha Eun-yu startled, wrapping his arms around himself and dragging his chair backward, away from me. The grave, composed image I'd seen on TV shattered in an instant.
Yeah. "A little off" was putting it mildly.
"I'd like a moment alone with him, if that's all right."
Cha Eun-yu shook his head as if to say don't you dare, but Team Leader Kim Moon-hwan looked at him with something like pity and left the conference room anyway.
Does he have a bit of a persecution complex...?
Then again, after getting beaten that badly online, being mentally intact would have been the abnormal part. Worried about feeding any further misunderstanding, I cut straight to the point.
"I understand Iljin Group recently made you an advertising offer, Mr. Cha."
At the unexpected question, Cha Eun-yu went on high alert.
"And? Why does that matter?"
"Why did you turn the ad down?"
"My schedule wouldn't allow it."
He said it firmly.
"Your manager doesn't seem to know your schedule very well, does he? I heard you told other companies you had availability from early to mid-December."
Sensing the lie wouldn't fly, he refused in a cold voice.
"I don't do Iljin Group ads."
"That's what I'm asking. Why?"
"Because I never want to be involved with that woman again."
There was one woman Cha Eun-yu would hate that viscerally.
"Is it because of Yang Mi-jeong?"
Cha Eun-yu's eyes went wide with shock.
"H-how do you know about that...?"
"Because I'm one of her victims too."
Yang Mi-jeong had a bizarre nickname that circulated grimly among her anti-fans. Scandal Upon Contact. Any male actor who'd so much as shared a scene with her inevitably became the subject of one of her scandals — hence the name. Rookie actor Cha Eun-yu had been one of her sacrificial lambs as well.
Cha Eun-yu's agency immediately issued a correction stating it wasn't true, but when Yang Mi-jeong kept her mouth shut about it, the arrows of public condemnation turned on Cha Eun-yu — the one who'd actually denied it.
These days, Cha Eun-yu's stature towered so far above Han Se-ah's that everyone would call the whole thing nonsense. But back then, the narrative was that a rookie actor had used a senior for publicity and then discarded her, and it had been an absolute circus.
I found out later, listening in on a call between that vixen and Song Jiho. Yang Mi-jeong had deliberately leaked a fake story to gossip reporters, then stayed silent when the public demanded the truth, letting the suspicion fester.
When I first heard that, I was simply relieved that Yang Mi-jeong and Cha Eun-yu had never been involved. The entertainment industry was so drowning in noise marketing that I tried to tell myself that was just how they built a name. That had already been five years ago. And Cha Eun-yu still seemed to feel it like a knife.
"Almost nobody knows that Yang Mi-jeong became the Iljin Group chairman's granddaughter. How did you find out?"
Cha Eun-yu's tightly clenched hands trembled as he forced his dry mouth open.
"Someone named Song Jiho came to see me not long ago. Yang Mi-jeong's manager. He said he'd become secretary to a chaebol granddaughter, and that she was extremely fond of me. That he'd make sure I never wanted for money for the rest of my life, if I'd just meet with her in private."
He'd told the man he didn't need a sponsor of any kind, snapped at him never to come back, and sent him packing. A few days after that, leaving a restaurant after dinner, he'd run into Han Se-ah standing there with Song Jiho.
"She grinned at me, and I got chills all over. She looked like a completely different person, but something about her overlapped with Senior Yang Mi-jeong, you know?"
Actors really did have sharp instincts.
"I just ignored her and walked past. But when I got home, she was waiting for me in the parking garage. She stared right at me and said—"
Cha Eun-yu murmured it with a vacant look on his face.