Preparing for the Next Step
The first shot was fired by a single newspaper.
Most of the press never expected White Blood to claim the global number-one ranking. Its calculated score had always trailed well behind Alliance, the long-standing frontrunner. But Jeong Yu-jin of the Hansaeilbo was different.
She was the reporter who, with Yeon-woo's help in Berlin, had landed the first exclusive interview with the Sketch team among Korean media, and who had broken the Golden Bear win and the Berlin Film Festival coverage as a solo scoop. She was also a full member of the fan café Woo's.
Armed with a near-religious conviction that the world would finally recognize the series' true worth once the final episode dropped, she monitored the global rankings with a diligence that rivaled LN Enter and Snowbish Mount themselves. The moment White Blood hit number one, she published the article she had already written and waiting.
Other outlets scrambled to catch up. Within hours, Korean news pages were wallpapered with White Blood coverage—not only in the entertainment section, but across society and business as well.
Articles poured out like a dam bursting. And the articles were the polite ones.
Nationalist YouTube channels that had sprouted overnight took it several steps further, riding the wave with titles engineered for maximum clicks.
That kind of sensationalism inevitably triggered a backlash, and malicious pieces began to surface as well.
Under those posts, the comment sections turned into bloodbaths without mercy.
The controversy began to settle once someone posted screenshots of the current state of Ryu Yeon-woo's fan café, Woo's, and the images started circulating through the major communities.
Machine-translated posts from overseas fans flooding in were surging in real time.
At that very moment, Yeon-woo was grilling meat at a wrap party held to celebrate the release of the final episode.
"Hyung!"
Dong-ha, who had grown close to him over the course of filming, called out warmly and slid into the seat beside him.
"You know Reddit's going crazy right now?"
"Reddit?"
Reddit was the largest online community for English-speaking internet users—a platform built around threads that branched into cascading comment chains. Dong-ha held up his phone for Yeon-woo to see.
The early comments mostly discussed Ryu Yeon-woo's filmography from his profile or debated the story of White Blood itself. But somewhere past the midpoint, Korean users—almost certainly members of Woo's—began filtering in, and the thread took a sharp turn.
They started dumping scene after scene from Yeon-woo's appearance in Summer's Closet, and other fans piled on.
Under the endless barrage of image dumps, the foreign users hanging out in the thread went wide-eyed.
Domestic fans decided the tide was fully in Yeon-woo's favor and started rowing for all they were worth—giant oars, the kind that crossed the Pacific. Domestic image macros mutated into overseas memes and began shipping abroad. And then a variety show filmed before the number-one ranking even landed finally aired, pushing the reputation of both White Blood and Ryu Yeon-woo to an absolute peak.
It was a national MC's talk show that invited high-achieving guests from various fields for relaxed conversation—and Director Hwang Min-gwon had appeared on it. Normally so shy in official settings that he had hidden behind Yeon-woo and left everything to him at the launch event, Hwang had accepted the booking out of a sense that, with the series this successful, a director ought to do something.
Whether out of consideration from the production team or pure luck, the air date fell on the day the final episode of White Blood dropped. In other words—today. They had already hit number one before that consideration even paid off, but still.
At the barbecue restaurant, CG Director Jeong Yo-han rose from his seat with a sly grin, remote in hand.
"All right, everyone. Today is Director Hwang's variety debut. Looks like it's about to start. Heh heh heh."
"Hey! I wasn't telling anyone! I was trying to let it slide quietly—why would you say that?!"
As Hwang Min-gwon flailed in panic, Han Byeol, who had come to the dinner with her mother, shot her hand straight up.
"Director! I already knew from the articles!"
"Me too."
Jeong Su-yeon chimed in with a smile.
"Well then—shall we all watch together?"
"Aagh!"
Hwang Min-gwon bolted from the restaurant, apparently lacking the courage to sit through it with the whole cast and crew.
"Ah—hello. I'm Hwang, Hwang Min-gwon, who appeared in White Blood this time."
"Director, you're too nervous. You didn't appear in it—you directed it. Honey, help him relax."
"Ah, yes, understood. Then, if it's not too rude, Director—how much revenue has this project generated so far…"
"Hey now, honey. Why bring up money?"
Ironically, Hwang Min-gwon's sheer nervousness came off as endearing, and the segment got off to a smooth start. After talk of the shoot wound down, the co-host spoke up.
"We've heard there was a rather unusual production story behind how Director Hwang came to take on this project."
Hwang nodded. The bumbling demeanor vanished; his eyes sharpened. Even through the screen, you could feel that this was the one thing he intended to say properly.
"Yes, that's right. I was, frankly, a failed no-name director. Same as always—sitting at home in nothing but an undershirt, ordering jjamppong, patting my full stomach. Then I saw an interview our lead actor, Ryu Yeon-woo, gave after winning the Golden Bear for Sketch."
The broadcast cut to archival footage of Yeon-woo speaking about romance and artistic passion.
"I went looking for him with no plan at all. Ready to grab him by the pant leg if I had to. Looking back, I have no idea where that courage came from. I lied and said I already had an appointment with the CEO, then charged all the way up to the top floor of the company building before anyone could catch me."
He went on to recount the meeting with Ryu Yeon-woo, how the LN Enter CEO and Yeon-woo had read the scenario and agreed to take it on. The MCs, sensing a story that would dominate headlines, kept their mouths shut and listened quietly—where normally they would have jumped in with jokes for laughs.
"And to clean up my complete mess of a script, Actor Ryu Yeon-woo personally brought in Writer Kim Jin-ju and started taking an active role in shaping the story himself."
Having laid out the entire production backstory, Hwang Min-gwon spoke with a slight catch in his voice.
"Ooooh!"
The directors and actors at the barbecue restaurant erupted in cheers, all eyes on Yeon-woo. The words applied to every single person in that room. They were only sitting there, only able to have made this work at all, because Yeon-woo had decided to make it.
Hearing the cheers from inside the restaurant and figuring the variety segment was mostly over, Hwang Min-gwon came back in. Yeon-woo grinned at him.
"Director—did you cry because of me?"
"Aaagh!"
Hwang Min-gwon slammed the door he had just opened and fled all over again.
The next day, White Blood was still holding the number-one spot without wavering, still shaking the entire country—but the man at the center of it all woke up and reached out not to a co-star or a producer, but to Han Hae-un.
There was no way of knowing how long Baeksol would keep using methods this close to child's play. So far their probes against LN Enter had been little more than exploratory jabs—testing the distance. But if those people ever decided to get serious, they would strip off the gloves and come at them like wolves going for the throat.
They never bothered distinguishing legal from illegal to begin with.
To prepare for that, he needed a certain degree of operational capacity secured. Using the list Yeon-woo had drafted as a foundation, Han Hae-un fleshed out the details. In his past life as Baek Yu-hyeon, Hae-un had served in special forces before joining the NIS, and he was drawing the list primarily from former comrades of that era. After carefully investigating what each of them was doing now and what backgrounds they carried, he planned to approach the suitable candidates with a proposal to establish a private intelligence firm inside the country.
Of course, throughout the entire process, both my identity and Hae-un's will have to stay completely buried.
Operating funds were not a problem—Yeon-woo's own earnings had already reached a level that could not be ignored, and routing money to Baek No-ya through Hae-un would raise no flags. Baek No-ya was the absolute king of money laundering in Korea; even the entire Financial Supervisory Service throwing its full weight at him would struggle to catch a trail. And in principle, Baek No-ya would cover nearly all of the financial support himself. The wider the front against Baeksol grew, the more a man who valued his own life above all else would understand the necessity of field operatives.
One way or another, they had to be ready before Baeksol stretched out a larger claw.