Character Details
"Nothing's set in stone yet, so let's brainstorm freely — throw out whatever ideas come to mind without holding back."
At Yeon-woo's words, the actors gathered for the meeting nodded.
They'd already been briefed beforehand, so each of them had prepared some degree of backstory for their characters. Building a production this way was a first for all of them and felt unfamiliar — but as they prepared, they found themselves intrigued by the chance to create their own roles.
Of course, the characters the actors had drafted wouldn't be adopted wholesale. Only Yeon-woo's protagonist role had any real background established so far, so the other parts would use the ideas from this session as a skeleton that writer Choi Mi-hyeon would reshape to fit the drama.
Yeon-woo was the central protagonist of the narrative, but the other roles were each compelling leads in their own right — so character depth mattered.
"The character I came up with is the youngest member of the basketball team — the one who brings positive, bright energy to the whole squad!"
When Dong-ha spoke up, Yeon-woo raised his hand.
"I figured Dong-ha would bring something like that. I'd like to add a little more detail on top of it, though."
At Yeon-woo's words, Director Kim Han-su stroked his chin.
"Hmm. What kind of detail did you have in mind?"
"What if he's a huge fan of basketball manga, and at every critical moment he ice-breaks the tension with manga-related one-liners?"
Ice-breaking meant shattering a heavy atmosphere in an instant — diluting the tension that wore viewers down with humorous beats scattered throughout the drama.
The directing staff and actors listening to Yeon-woo all nodded.
"Not bad. A basketball manga otaku… That could come in handy across a lot of scenes."
Writer Choi Mi-hyeon began typing furiously on her laptop, taking notes.
"Dong-ha, what do you think?"
"I like it."
As the actors nodded, Son Jin-uk pulled a sheet of paper from the document bag he'd brought.
"I didn't put together a full character backstory — but I did prepare a first appearance scene I thought up."
"Oh?"
At the unexpected announcement, every eye in the meeting lit up. Son Jin-uk handed the paper to Yeon-woo, who was sitting beside him.
"No dialogue written out — just a rough situation setup. Want to improvise a scene with me?"
"Sure. Got it."
Yeon-woo scanned the paper Son Jin-uk had given him, nodded, and spoke.
"Shall we start right away?"
"Whenever you're ready."
The sudden improvised performance had everyone in the conference room leaning forward with anticipation.
Then Yeon-woo's face shifted into a faintly thuggish expression, and he launched into dialogue invented on the spot.
"Hey. You've still got room on your phone micro-payment limit, right? Send me a gift. What do you mean you can't? You wanna die? Need another beating before you listen?"
The sudden hyper-realistic punk performance left the actors in the room wide-eyed. Satisfied by how detailed Yeon-woo's opening line was, Son Jin-uk dove into the improvisation.
"Hup!"
Son Jin-uk made a throwing motion and delivered a line with just a breath of effort, and Yeon-woo caught it.
The paper Son Jin-uk had given him read: Scene where a clueless punk gets hit by a basketball flying in from somewhere.
"Gah! You son of a— What? What? I'm bleeding? Mister! What are you gonna do about this? You busted my nose!"
"Looking at you shaking kids down in broad daylight, I figured the blood hadn't dried on your head yet — didn't expect it to start dripping out your nose, though."
So far, it was a classic cliché setup: the typical scene of a delinquent shaking someone down and the neighborhood big brother who steps in to save the day.
Then Yeon-woo started putting a spin on it. He immersed himself in the modern delinquent kids he'd watched while waiting for his little sister in front of school last time.
"Whoa, heh heh. This isn't for YouTube, is it? Some justice-obsessed adult type? You've lost it, for real. Do you even know what world we live in? Hitting a juvenile under the age of criminal responsibility? You loaded, mister? You know you're in deep shit right now?"
Since this was just performance to show the situation, Son Jin-uk matched Yeon-woo's variation and spat out whatever came to his mouth.
"Juvenile under criminal age, my ass. Then I'm a moist chocolate chip, you little shit. Juveniles under criminal responsibility are under fourteen — and looking at you lot, you're clearly high schoolers with full-grown sizes."
Son Jin-uk shrugged and continued in a dismissive tone.
"And when did I hit you? I just passed a basketball. If you've got a problem, go sue the basketball. Meanwhile, I'll hire a law firm and make you cough up everything you've shaken down from this kid plus every other crime you've committed — and as a free bonus, I'll throw in a full course at juvenile detention. Mister's got money and time to spare."
The nonstop barrage of Son Jin-uk's dialogue left everyone in the conference room stunned.
Then Yeon-woo, who for that moment had looked every bit the clueless delinquent teen, snapped back to his normal self as if nothing had happened.
"Jin-uk hyung. Want to keep going?"
"Nah. That's enough. Thanks, Yeon-woo."
Everyone marveled at the two of them improvising.
"Whoa, hyungs. That was really improvised?"
"Right? You two didn't write a script beforehand?"
"...Mo-moist what now? Jin-uk, do you practice trash-talking in your free time?"
At Jeong Cheol-min's words — mouth hanging open at his drinking buddy's uncharacteristic performance — everyone burst out laughing.
But writer Choi Mi-hyeon was typing with serious eyes.
"This is good. Jin-uk-ssi. Mind if I polish it up and use it?"
"Of course."
Then Jin Yu-han, who had been watching intently, raised his hand.
"Watching Son-sunbae and Yeon-woo trade lines just now, a detail came to me."
At the mention of a character idea, Director Kim Han-su looked at Jin Yu-han.
"Oh? What kind of character?"
"From the 'got money and time to spare' line, I pictured a justice-driven character who acts on whatever he wants without hesitation — what about a neighborhood freeloader who used to be an ethics teacher, won the lottery jackpot, and quit school?"
The sudden flood of information from Jin Yu-han's mouth made everyone freeze for a moment and process it. Son Jin-uk repeated Jin Yu-han's words back to himself.
"...So originally I was a school ethics teacher, won the lottery, handed in my resignation, and now I hang around like a neighborhood freeloader while playing amateur basketball?"
"Yeah."
"...Huh. That's actually fresh."
No one had ever seen a character quite like that. And coming from Jin Yu-han, it felt even fresher — like a tuna just pulled from the water.
Yeon-woo looked at Jin Yu-han and asked.
"Yu-han. That's a pretty detailed setup. There's a real-life model for this, isn't there?"
"Yeah. I had a teacher like that when I was in school. Watching sunbae act just now, I saw that teacher's face."
Everyone nodded at Jin Yu-han's story.
"Not bad."
"The more detail a character has, the better."
Director Kim Han-su steered the meeting forward again.
"Writer Choi will rework whatever's usable anyway, so shall we move on to the other characters?"
After that, the discussion moved on to the roles of kimbap shop owner Jeong Cheol-min and his daughter Jeong Su-yeon.
"A father who runs a kimbap shop and a daughter who comes out to help with the work."
"But kimbap shop owners usually get cast as struggling small business owners — does it have to be that way?"
Yeon-woo nodded at Jeong Cheol-min's words.
"True, that's a prejudice too. Let's make him the chairman of a kimbap chain with about seventeen franchises in the Gyeonggi area. Sponsor of the amateur basketball team and a player himself."
"Hmm. Not the owner — the chairman? Not bad."
The core of brainstorming was never criticizing any idea, and maintaining a comfortable atmosphere so creative thoughts could flow. With ideas pouring out freely, Choi Mi-hyeon would swallow what was usable and spit out what wasn't anyway — so they said whatever came to mind without hesitation.
Yeon-woo looked back and forth between Jeong Cheol-min and Jeong Su-yeon, then spoke.
"Should we just use our real names for the roles? Teacher Cheol-min and Su-yeon already share a surname, so a father-daughter relationship wouldn't feel out of place."
"Hmm. True. Su-yeon, what do you think?"
Jeong Su-yeon, who had been quiet, nodded.
"I'm fine with it."
Watching the actors exchange a flood of ideas in an instant, Choi Mi-hyeon was too busy typing to keep up, while Director Yoon and Director Kim's heads swiveled back and forth following the conversation.
Top-tier actors really are something else — each one of them is as good as most writers...
Director Yoon marveled inwardly.
In truth, whether film or drama, if the script was seventy percent, the remaining thirty was filled in by the actors themselves. Good ideas that struck in the moment created scenes that hadn't existed, and many of a film's most iconic lines were born from an actor's ad-lib.
If Choi Mi-hyeon could gather these ideas well, flesh them out, and attach them cleanly to the skeleton, a solid production would emerge.
And as she typed, Choi Mi-hyeon was thrilled — the actors were spitting out fresh ingredients, and she was capturing them on her laptop, already imagining how she'd cook them.
Of course I can't use every idea — but with characters this lively, the narrative will practically write itself.
Broadcasting stations were poking around everywhere trying to figure out what conditions Saebyeol Entertainment wanted and how far the drama production had progressed — and Yeon-woo headed home the moment the meeting ended.
"Alright. Time to check. What have those bastards set up all the way out on a hidden satellite island near Okinawa?"
"You're not?"
Of course, even if Kim Su-hyeok's reconnaissance succeeded today, they couldn't strike immediately. Through meticulous operations, they had to hit them hard while making sure the enemy never realized they'd been attacked.
It's not time for an all-out war yet. When you hunt an old beast like this, you wear it down until it's completely snared — too weak even to thrash — and then you take the head in one blow.
On the screen, Kim Su-hyeok prepared to cast off, looking out over a sea painted entirely scarlet by the setting sun. Loading heavy equipment onto the boat and untying the mooring lines looked like hard work for one person.
"Once this recon op is over, I should send Kim Su-hyeok on leave."
Okinawa was a vacation destination for Koreans, but since landing on the island he'd been through nothing but hell. Han Hae-un nodded at Yeon-woo's words.
"Not reasonable — send him ultra-luxury. We've got money."
And so, while his leave was upgraded to ultra-luxury without his knowledge, Kim Su-hyeok finished preparations and cast off.
Following orders, Kim Su-hyeok piloted the boat out, and upon reaching the designated point, cut the engine noise and killed every light. Then, silent as a reef on the dark water, he began advancing slowly.
The setting sun slipped below the horizon, and only silence flowed across the dark sea. After pressing on for a long while, a faint light appeared in the distance.
"Northwest, bearing 317. Just appeared on the horizon, so roughly five kilometers ahead. Check the map."
"Tell Kim Su-hyeok to hold position and begin drone reconnaissance."
On orders, Kim Su-hyeok stopped the boat and, in the pitch-black darkness, activated a low-noise drone and sent it skyward.
Cutting through the sea wind, the drone soon reached the airspace over the island they'd spent days hunting as their target. And what appeared on the screen exceeded imagination.
A roughly circular island with a decent stretch of white sand beach had been mostly cleared of trees into flat ground, and large-scale warehouses stood upon it. Warehouses stacked from dark-gray shipping containers — the sheer volume was enormous, enough to fill about thirty percent of an elementary school athletic field.
One of the warehouses had a chimney installed, and from the smoke rising, it seemed there was a furnace inside as well.
"Look at these bastards. The scale is bigger than I thought."
Yeon-woo shook his head at Han Hae-un's words.
"Not just domestic distribution — they're smuggling for export too."
Even while investigating, he'd always wondered why they'd gone all the way to Okinawa to build this. With Baeksol's reach inside the country, they could have hidden it domestically easily enough — so why come all the way to Okinawa to set up a secret factory? Turns out they were running export smuggling as well.
From that angle, Okinawa's location made it a strategic hub for shipping across all of Northeast and Southeast Asia.
"We've got the location, so we proceed carefully from here. Still — when all of that goes up in a chain of explosions, Baeksol's faces are going to be something to see."
He didn't even know what their features looked like — but he could already see the expressions on their faces.