The Only One Who Came
Representing the Home AI project, Marketing Team 3 had been assigned to Han Yojung's commercial shoot.
The concept was simple and clean.
Dress the set like a real home and film Han Yojung living her everyday life inside it. Of course, each smart-enabled appliance had to be hit as a deliberate product beat along the way.
That work fell to us, naturally.
No one on set understood the concept more precisely than we did.
The shoot would run about three days, six hours a day.
Our marketing team would handle brand-message strategy, concept direction, on-site response and feedback, then package the final cut—or the rough—and report it upstairs.
We also had to aggressively mine behind-the-scenes content and feed it into SNS and viral campaigns.
As overall PM and the person responsible for the ad concept, I took the bulk of the hands-on work even inside the team.
My teammates—and people from other teams—started coming to me first without being told. They even ran past me anything that needed to be shared with Han Yojung.
It made sense. No one else could approach her easily. I was the only one treating her like work instead of a monument.
A top star was a top star. The job was still the job.
"All right—this scene is the smart oven in the kitchen. Yojung turns the functions on with a simple gesture and a voice command, then we show the auto-menu screen running. That's the flow."
I stood beside the director, eyes on the monitor, and laid it out briefly.
I timed her lines to the motion-sensor cues and asked for the product name to land naturally in the upper-left of frame.
Han Yojung was a professional among professionals—the kind who didn't need words.
One rehearsal and the timing, the blocking, the expression all locked in perfectly.
It was as if she had been born for this exact kind of work.
The set, packed with cutting-edge gear, was chaos in motion.
Staff, designers, lighting, sound, the product-install team—everyone moved at a sprint, and in the middle of it I checked problems in real time and answered them as they came.
"Camera two—you're too wide at the top of this scene. Pull in a little."
"Media team—I just revised the product-info subtitle text and sent it again. Please swap it in."
I answered the voices calling for me from every direction out of habit, but my eyes kept drifting to one place.
Behind the lights.
Kang Bitna, quiet in front of a monitor, staring at her tablet.
Unlike usual, she barely spoke today. No opinions, no smile, no light in her eyes.
The team had to have noticed. No one said a word.
They seemed to write it off as fatigue—we'd all been buried lately.
But I knew exactly why she looked so defeated.
That was when it happened.
Han Yojung, still in front of the monitor, put on a cool little smile and walked toward me.
"Hoojin—for the smart-mirror scene, if we just carry it through this naturally, does that work?"
She kept the distance tight, shoulder nearly pressed to mine as if she meant to look at the tablet with me.
"That's fine. We can run it that way. Later we can cut so the fashion-pattern analysis feature reads visually, too."
I answered as flatly as I could and held the space between us.
The conversation was over. She still didn't leave.
"But you know—"
She raised her voice for the next line.
In an instant the director and the crew all turned toward her.
"That last dishwasher scene? I'd rather not do it alone… I want one more person. It feels awkward keeping it solo the whole time. Like talking with a friend at home, you know? I'll do the acting—back of the head is fine for the other person. We can edit around it, right?"
"That works."
"Yeah, I like that."
"What do you think, Hoojin?"
Positive reactions spilled in from every side.
Once the mood had set, her gaze slid, almost casually, toward Kang Bitna.
Something about it felt wrong.
"There's someone on Hoojin's team who's pretty and bright… the one sitting back there."
At Han Yojung's words, every pair of eyes—including mine—swung to her.
Kang Bitna was still staring at her tablet with no expression at all. Han Yojung watched her with a look that meant something.
"…Hm?"
Sensing the attention, Kang Bitna lifted her head and looked my way.
A staffer hurried over, relayed the request, and Kang Bitna walked toward us as she listened.
"Hey—"
I started to speak to her, but Han Yojung got there first.
"Would that be all right?"
In that brief second, a thin smile flicked across Han Yojung's eyes. It was a clear provocation.
She added, perfectly confident:
"Only your back will be on camera, so no pressure. Just react naturally to whatever I say. The script can be ready in a minute, right?"
She turned the question on the writer.
"Of course."
The set already had a positive current running through it.
Staff were saying it would be fine—that it might even feel more real. Everyone was matching the mood of a global top star.
My brow tightened on its own.
I really don't like this. Still—this isn't right.
I stepped straight toward Kang Bitna and closed the distance.
"If you don't want to, you don't have to. There's no reason to play along with their little game."
I cut it clean and firm. She raised her head and met my eyes.
For a second I felt something I couldn't name in her gaze.
Anger? Resentment? Defeat? Irritation? What was that look?
She bit her lip once, then turned to the director and spoke with her chin up.
"…I'll do it."
There was a resolve in her voice that refused to lose.
Soon the smart-mirror scene wrapped and the dishwasher scene began.
In front of the smart sink, Han Yojung led the mood with practiced ease. Kang Bitna stood beside her, expression blank but posture neat, looking at the dishwasher and giving the right little responses.
She had been in on the concept from the start, so there was nothing awkward in her movement. She played it clean.
Both of them smiled brightly for the camera. A thin heat of competition still ran between them.
"Good—hold that pose! Eyes on the product! Start the dishwasher!"
The director's voice rang out—and then it happened.
Whirrr—
KRRRAAK!!
A grotesque, clogged roar exploded from under the sink.
What—?
In a flash I reconstructed water pressure, pipe layout, the smart-sink wiring diagram in my head and projected what would follow.
My body was already moving.
BANG!
Whoosh—!
Something burst, and a massive jet of water poured over the set like a waterfall.
"Kyaa!"
"Ah—!"
Han Yojung and Kang Bitna took the sudden drenching at the same time, lost their balance, and dropped to the floor.
Whooosh—!
In seconds the studio became a shallow sea. Chaos hit full force.
"What the hell is this?!"
"The pipe blew! Shut the water off—now!"
"Get Han Yojung first! Hurry!!"
While everyone scrambled, every staff gaze locked on Han Yojung.
The thin clothes both women were wearing soaked through and began clinging straight to skin.
"Han Yojung—are you all right?!"
"Towels! Where are the towels we left here?!"
"Get a dryer—costume team, now!"
"Yojung! This way—careful, careful!"
Three or four people rushed her, peeling off their own jackets to cover her, but they couldn't hide everything.
Meanwhile—
Kang Bitna was still sitting on the floor by the right-side sink. No one looked at her.
Her hair hung wet and heavy. The thin shirt plastered to her body, underwear and bare skin showing through clearly.
Set or not, it was winter. Cold hit her at once, and she started to shiver hard.
Even so she steadied herself, bit down on her lip, wrapped both arms around her upper body as if to hide it, and tried to stand quietly.
She was fighting, desperately, not to fall apart.
No eyes were on her—but she still had her pride.
Right then—
Flap—!
A big white towel unfurled like a blanket and wrapped around her whole body.
I settled it over her completely, then held her tight.
Checking how she was, I spoke carefully.
"Are you okay…?"
Kang Bitna lifted her head as if startled.
A face that had expected none of this.
Our eyes met. We were close enough that another inch would have put our noses together.
"You must have been terrified."
Tears welled at the corners of her eyes. She looked ready to cry any second.
All the hurt she had been holding down until now came up at once.
"You're freezing. You'll catch a cold."
I cupped her face quickly with both arms and pressed it into my chest.
"We're leaving. Home. Now."
Then I walked straight through the swarm of panicking staff and out of the set.
Soaked without warning, Han Yojung watched the two of them walk away with a perfectly calm face.
The staff around her, by contrast, were flailing like idiots.
"I'm fine. Just bring me my clothes."
Han Yojung stood up in one clean motion and stripped off the jackets and fabric that had been piled on her without hesitation.
Her long, lean body was suddenly fully visible.
"Ah…"
Steam rose from her skin in soft curls from her body heat, giving her an almost otherworldly, fairy-like air.
The staff could only stare, mouths open.
Her composure and physical presence had knocked the sense clean out of them.
She walked off the set with that cool, unhurried stride while managers scrambled after her with clothes and towels.
"…So I'm not even on the radar."
"Unnie! What are you talking about? Everyone's looking at you! Come on—let's get you changed!"
When she said it with a hint of hurt, the manager wrapping her in a towel hurried her inside. Han Yojung still walked slowly, glancing once more at the two people leaving the set.
"Guess there's no room for me in this one. Boring. Let's go. I need a hot shower."
Without a second look back, Han Yojung left the set.
At the parking lot outside, Kang Bitna headed for the driver's seat. I forced her into the passenger side instead.
"I'll drive. I'll take you home."
"…I can drive myself!"
When she kept insisting, I caught her wrist.
Her hand was trembling finely.
"Ah—!"
"Your hands are shaking like this and you want to drive? Absolutely not. Set the nav. I'll get you home."
The drop in temperature in her wrist. The uneven pulse.
What Kang Bitna needed right now was lower stress, stable body heat, and dry clothes in a space she knew.
She flushed, flustered. Silence hung for a moment. Then she pointed weakly at her own hand.
"You have to let go first…"
"Ah—sorry."
I released her at once. She still didn't touch the nav. She looked at me, lips moving as if she couldn't quite say it.
"If I go home like this… it'll be a disaster. Um…"
She hesitated a long time, then avoided my eyes and spoke.
"Could I… dry my clothes at Manager Noh's place…?"
"What?"
I stared at her, completely blank.