Ball Play
"What's your name?"
"Y-Yuto! Hosoya Yuto."
"I see. Yuto-san. Feel free to shoot as many natural shots from whatever angles you like. I'll make sure the pay is solid."
"Th-thank you! I'll do my best!"
Leaving Yuto bowing behind him, Yeon-woo walked toward the beach.
Hong A-yun, who had been taking pictures with Lee Ye-eun, tilted her head.
"Who's that guy?"
"A photographer I hired for the day. He's pretty good."
Hong A-yun's mouth fell open.
"Wow. You even hired a photographer? You were really serious about this reward vacation. But we can't even go out sightseeing. It's so disappointing."
"...Hmm?"
Something felt a little off, but he let it slide. Pointing at the smartphone mounted on the tripod Lee Ye-eun had been using for selfies, he told Hong A-yun,
"If you want photos, just wave at the photographer and strike a pose. He'll shoot plenty on his own. They'll come out like pictorials."
"Really? Got it. Ye-eun unnie!"
Hong A-yun nodded and ran over to Lee Ye-eun. Watching her go, Yeon-woo yawned.
"Haaam. Still a little sleepy."
He stretched his arms and legs thoroughly, then looked around. On one side of the beach the staff had set up a net and were playing ball. One of the camera directors approached him.
"We're playing beach volleyball, but we've got an odd number so the sides don't match. Want to join?"
They called it beach volleyball because they were on the sand, but the rules would just be regular volleyball. Actual beach volleyball was a doubles game with two to a side, unlike team volleyball.
"Hmm, why not? I'll play."
Volleyball or K-beach volleyball—moving the body was still the best way to wake up.
"Hey!"
Yeon-woo reacted to the call. The camera director floated the ball right up against the net; Yeon-woo exploded upward, rotating his shoulder through a full arc and slamming the ball down.
Whoosh—.
Thud!
While his body was still descending from the midair spike, the volleyball that had left his hand buried itself dead in the corner of the beach court.
Tweet—.
With the whistle, Lee Yong-su, acting as referee, shouted,
"Point for Team B! Twenty-three to eight!"
"Aargh! This is a scam. How are we supposed to win this?"
Hearing the grumbling from the other side, Yeon-woo scratched his cheek. It wasn't as if he could deliberately miss just to keep the score respectable.
"Nice! That was great!"
His teammates, at least, were thrilled. His height was already considerable, and the basketball drills for Parabola had sharpened his jump. He had never played much volleyball in either life, but the spiker position was something raw physical ability could carry.
Serves and tosses are the hard part. At this amateur level, just hammering spikes is doable.
Meanwhile the paparazzo—no, the dedicated photographer Yuto—kept framing the action and firing the shutter in pure delight. Volleyball had always been popular in Japan; there were entire boys' manga series about it. Capturing Yeon-woo rising over the net and burying spike after spike had Yuto buzzing. Photographers always got excited when they met a high-quality subject.
Further back, a few actual paparazzi who had caught the tip through their shared messenger and rushed over were scowling.
"What the hell. They already have a dedicated photographer with them?"
"Thought I might snag something. Damn it."
Scarcity was the lifeblood of paparazzi photos. Intimate private moments, skin, angry outbursts—anything that showed the side of a star the public wasn't supposed to see sold for the highest prices. If those were impossible, you at least needed an exclusive. Even ordinary daily life had value if no one else had it. But when a dedicated photographer was already shooting high-resolution frames from arm's length? Blurry long-lens shots from the dunes weren't worth a yen.
"Screw it. Nothing to grab and a waste of time. I'm out."
As one man turned, the paparazzo beside him asked,
"Takahashi. Where you going? Got another tip?"
"Tip my ass. Just heading home early today."
Another man cut in.
"Around four, Minami Yuko and her husband are flying into Naha Airport for vacation, I heard."
"Ah, shit. Why'd you say that?"
"Whoa, Takahashi. Talking about going home to rest while planning to sneak off to the airport alone, huh?"
The paparazzi scrambled away in competitive haste. The clueless photographer's presence had become a natural defensive barrier.
The photos Yuto delivered needed no editing, so the moment Yeon-woo returned to the lodging he uploaded them. Woo's was instantly overwhelmed by the sudden flood pouring through Yeon-woo's personal SNS and the Woo's cafe. No captions, no explanations—just a simple dump of roughly forty images.
The photo flood that ended the drought for fans also fed the internet news desks. Journalists spent twenty-four hours a day refreshing stars' personal SNS accounts and hauling anything usable into articles like tow trucks. Among them, Ryu Yeon-woo—young, scorching hot, and almost never on social media—was an A-grade account: the moment anything appeared, it had to be published immediately.
After playing on the beach, showering, and collapsing onto the bed for a quick search, Yeon-woo broke into a cold sweat.
When did I ever show off my visuals.
And lighting the ocean in place of a lighthouse... Even though the shots weren't pictorials, the outlets had boldly slapped on the label [Pictorial] without a second glance. Fan love was wonderful and acting made him happier than anything, but every time he saw these over-the-top captions his hands and feet curled in secondhand embarrassment.
While Yeon-woo rested before dinner with the staff, the community reactions and articles spawned by the photo dump were benefiting someone else as well. Tak Jeong-a, executive director of A-Pictures, was checking real-time portal search traffic when she tilted her head.
"Why the sudden explosion?"
They hadn't run any extra promotion today, yet search volume for the film Moon had jumped noticeably. She traced the inflow paths and related queries to find the source.
"...Huh. Impressive."
A simple photo upload had already surpassed the inflow generated by the expensive SNS sponsor campaigns the distributor had paid for. Opening day had drawn roughly 270,000 viewers—strong enough that Tak Jeong-a had high hopes. Within the first week alone, Moon had already crossed its break-even point of 1.5 million. The most successful Korean romance of all time was still Wolf of the Forest, which had opened in 2012 and topped seven million; that record had stood for years. Yet Moon's first-day haul had already smashed the previous opening-day mark.
"Please, just once, let's make a legend..."
Staring at the traffic graph spiked by the uploaded photos, Tak Jeong-a nodded with conviction. If A-Pictures could maintain a long-term relationship with Saebyeol Media—or more precisely, with Ryu Yeon-woo—and handle his future releases, the current distributor rankings might actually reverse.
The next day, while they toured remote areas by large bus, Kim Min-su took a call from the company.
"Yes, understood. I'll pass that along."
He hung up and relayed the message to Yeon-woo.
"Actor-nim. You know that making-of footage the Parabola team is shooting of the basketball training?"
"Yes. They said they'd edit it later into a follow-up variety show."
"Right. The making team floated the idea of a friendly match against another group and wants to set one up. The company is asking for your opinion."
Yeon-woo stroked his chin at the unexpected proposal. Even while juggling separate shoots they had managed to practice quite a lot together. Of course a drama didn't require actual game-ready basketball skill—just enough clean dribbling that a full shot wouldn't look awkward, and enough understanding of off-ball movement to act the flow. Still, after all that chemistry and training, finishing with a real match felt like the proper way to close things out. It would also give the upcoming variety show better footage.
"Hmm, a friendly match... I don't mind. Have they already looked for a team?"
"Yes. Apparently it's an entertainment-industry social team mostly made up of idols."
"Ah, I only knew about the futsal and soccer teams. There's a basketball one too?"
"Same here—first I've heard of it. I'll tell the company you're in."
Once Yeon-woo and the rest of the members all agreed, the making team excitedly began arranging the match. The opposing side was the entertainment social basketball team Fast.
"Whoa, so we'll actually get to see Ryu Yeon-woo in person. I've never run into him even once in this industry."
"I went to a late-night screening of Moon the other day. It was really good."
"Hyungs, I heard Son Jin-uk and Jin Yu-han are on that drama team too?"
The members of Fast were already buzzing at the news that a friendly game had been set with famous actors like Ryu Yeon-woo and Jin Yu-han. One person among them, however, could not smile. When Yeon-woo had first appeared on music shows under that bizarre "Jainari" concept, Jae-yun had simply disliked him for no good reason. When Dong-ha landed the White Blood role Jae-yun had auditioned for and the series became a massive hit, pure envy had followed. Now that Yeon-woo had become an untouchable world star, Jae-yun felt both reluctance and a faint, body-deep fear from "a certain incident."
Ah, I really don't want to do this...
Jae-yun of N-Boys, member of the social basketball team Fast, felt a phantom ache around his groin and absently adjusted the position of his underwear.