Cliché
Yeon-woo had never been much of a glutton, and with his constant diet management he almost never ate fried chicken.
Hmm. The only times I ever have chicken are when friends come over to the house, or when I go down to my parents' place and So-hyun says she wants some.
In this entire life, he could not recall a single time he had ordered chicken for himself.
But Seong-sik and Jun-su are both in the military now, and it's been a while since I last went home…
Naturally, there had been no occasion to eat it. So this was his first chicken in months, and today it tasted especially good.
He found himself thinking that once he got back to Seoul, he might order some even when he was home alone.
The batter was fried to a perfect crisp, delivering that satisfying crunch, and over it the sweet-and-spicy sauce had been tossed just right.
Even Yeon-woo, who had no particular appetite, was enjoying it—so of course the other members' eyes had gone wide.
"Man, why is this so good?"
"Right? When this airs, viewers are going to say we're not even trying to hide the product placement…"
"Hey, we're not faking it. This is legitimately delicious."
Whenever you watched celebrity party footage on variety shows, there was always one common feature.
They would laugh and chat for ages, yet the food on the table barely diminished.
The chicken in front of the Gaeya-do cast was nothing like that.
They had brought four birds, and the pieces vanished in the blink of an eye.
Yeon-woo watched them and smiled faintly.
They skipped breakfast, then six people split one not-especially-large octopus for lunch. Of course they're starving. And they burned calories all morning catching chickens.
He looked from the members tearing into the chicken over to the production crew, lingering for a moment on PD Joo Hyun-seok before sinking into thought.
The way he slipped product placement in that fast… it doesn't feel planned from the start. He must have called the company on the spot. Good improvisation, sharp situational judgment.
They would be shooting more self-produced content like this variety show going forward. Building a long-term relationship with PD Joo Hyun-seok would only create better synergy.
Meanwhile, PD Joo Hyun-seok was watching Yeon-woo among the cast eating chicken.
Honestly, I never expected that spur-of-the-moment PPL request to go through… It's because of that young actor, of course.
The sudden product-placement deal had closed so quickly partly because of the other actors as well. Han So-hyun, Son Jin-uk, and Jin Yu-han were all the kind of faces any advertiser would covet.
But every one of them belonged to Saebyeol, and the person who effectively moved Saebyeol was Ryu Yeon-woo. No further explanation was needed.
PD Joo Hyun-seok began seriously considering a longer partnership with Saebyeol Media.
Through the previous Saebyul Family and now Summer's Table Season 2, there had been zero interference in production.
They simply let him make the variety show he wanted while Saebyeol quietly provided solid support from behind.
It was, in essence, the ideal every producer dreamed of.
If Saebyeol has another project coming up, I'd love to take that on too…
After three days of filming on Gaeya-do, the members returned to Seoul via Gunsan Port.
Without a moment to rest, Yeon-woo stopped by a salon with Son Jin-uk and Jin Yu-han, then headed straight to a studio in Gangnam.
Only after finishing the YouTube-based interview they had booked to promote Parabola could they finally catch their breath.
"Whew. I'd gotten so used to island life I almost forgot—today's already the second-week broadcast."
Jin Yu-han nodded at Son Jin-uk's words.
"Netflex is really pushing it. Think the ratings will climb a bit…?"
"Oho. First time I've ever heard you worry about ratings, Yu-han."
Until now, Jin Yu-han had never given much thought to ratings or box-office success while filming.
It wasn't as if every project he touched became a hit—far from it. With so many works under his belt, some had flopped.
He simply found joy in the act of acting itself; once the work left his hands, the results were out of his control. His principle had been not to rejoice or despair over success or failure.
After joining Saebyeol, that changed.
Or rather, it had started even earlier—when he experienced Theater Group Saebyeol with Ryu Yeon-woo, before Saebyeol Entertainment and Saebyeol Media existed. A sense of responsibility and belonging had taken root.
Before, he had merely felt cast in a project. Now he felt like a member of Saebyeol, building something together.
"Ratings don't decide everything, but honestly… I'd like us to beat Daytona."
Son Jin-uk grinned at Jin Yu-han's words.
"You little punk. Same here, man."
Just then Yeon-woo came out of the restroom, shaking water from his hands.
"Today's the Episode 3 air date, so tomorrow's Episode 4."
Son Jin-uk tilted his head at the obvious statement.
"Huh? That's just like saying 'today's Wednesday so tomorrow's Thursday'…"
But Jin Yu-han seemed to understand; he nodded.
"Right. Episode 4 drops."
"Why? Is something special happening when Episode 4 airs…? Ah!"
Son Jin-uk caught on and clapped his hands.
"That thing's coming out! The friendly match we filmed in advance!"
"Yes. After Episode 4 airs tomorrow, the full version is scheduled for release. The teaser alone got a pretty good response, so it should be worth looking forward to."
Son Jin-uk nodded at Yeon-woo's words.
"Yeah, true. These days if a drama wants to blow up, it needs one solid clip that hits hard."
Just as he said, whether it was YouTube Shorts or short clips trending on other social platforms, something had to explode for a sudden influx of new viewers.
In that sense, the synergy between the first friendly match inside the drama in Episode 4 and the actual friendly match against the celebrity basketball team 'Fast' was something to watch.
Jin Yu-han recalled the moment Yeon-woo had dribbled out, flashed four fingers high, and shouted "Episode 4 pattern!"
He never imagined it would come back around as a marketing tool.
"Don't tell me you planned that for promo from the start…?"
Yeon-woo snorted and shook his head.
"No way. Back then I was just burning with competitive fire, thinking about how to win the game."
Son Jin-uk stretched and rubbed his neck.
"Yaaawn. Anyway, good work, both of you. Sleeping outside for days has me all stiff. Let's go home and rest properly."
"Yes. Thank you for your hard work."
After the goodbyes, Yeon-woo climbed into Kim Min-su's waiting car.
"Week two starts airing today."
Yeon-woo nodded at Kim Min-su's voice from the driver's seat.
"We were just talking about that."
"Ah, I see. By the way, Daytona's been hammering the promotion hard. You think we'll be okay?"
Hearing the worry in Kim Min-su's voice, Yeon-woo smiled faintly.
It wasn't just Kim Min-su—everyone seemed invested in the rivalry between Daytona and Parabola.
The media had even run articles focused on their ratings competition.
Same day, same time slot, both premiering together—it was only natural.
And from Parabola's perspective, with a production budget less than a quarter of Daytona's, that competitive framing was actually welcome.
Every time the other side spent big money on promotion, the ratings-war articles gave Parabola free publicity right alongside them.
"Pulling on a rice stalk won't make it grow any faster."
Even if Daytona, trailing in the 2049 ratings, stuck to the old-fashioned method of simply pouring money into marketing, the numbers weren't going to jump dramatically.
Kim Min-su nodded at Yeon-woo's words.
"Oh, that's a cool line. Rice stalk, huh…"
"It's something Master Toegye Yi Hwang said."
"Ah, the guy on the five-thousand-won bill…? Truly a great man."
Yeon-woo scratched his head at Kim Min-su's reply.
Uh, the five-thousand-won bill is Yulgok Yi I… Nah. Doesn't matter. As long as the meaning lands.
He quietly nodded and let it slide.
Just as Yeon-woo expected, the reaction exploded.
Episode 3 followed Ryu Yeon-woo as he gradually grew interested in basketball, receiving private lessons in turn from the tsundere Jin Yu-han and the hot-blooded neighborhood-big-brother type Son Jin-uk.
In the drama, Yeon-woo only played basketball because the crushing headaches that usually plagued him vanished like a lie the moment he stepped on the court. Beyond that, he was so hopeless he didn't even know the basic rules.
"The pro should teach him. For a basketball newbie, you need an expert to systematically coach him, right?"
"Why should I bother?"
"Because you're the pro."
"Ugh, this is gonna be such a pain… Fine, I'll show you a little. Special exception. I used to be a player, you know."
"Th-thanks… Wait, why are you talking down to me…?"
As his skills steadily improved, Yeon-woo advanced so rapidly that his teammates started calling him a basketball genius and clicking their tongues in awe.
Of course they did.
To Yeon-woo's eyes, everyone's movements looked as if they were in slow motion.
Cutting off passing lanes, faking out the defender in front of him and driving past—it was all easy.
That was how Episode 3 ended: a friendly match arranged against the best basketball team in the neighborhood.
And the long-awaited Episode 4 was the first proper basketball game of the series.
At first, even though it was only an amateur indoor court with a referee, it was their first real match, and they were thoroughly dominated.
But as the game went on, the true value of the teamwork they had built through practice began to shine.
They moved as if they could read each other with a single glance, closing the score gap bit by bit.
It was classic sports-drama cliché.
A cliché is a tired, formulaic plot or fixed idea—but the fact that something becomes a cliché means it has been used so often, through countless trials and errors, that it is a "proven structure" people love.
Sports dramas have been almost nonexistent lately, so the genre itself became fresh by default. If we twisted the plot too hard on top of that, it would backfire.
With that in mind, the parts that needed impact were filled with the so-called "familiar flavor."
Even if it had been cliché progression in the sports stories that poured out in the '80s and '90s, for the younger generation encountering a "sports drama" for the first time through Parabola, it would taste fresh.
At the same time, a full forty-five-minute variety episode went up on YouTube.
When the short teaser had dropped earlier, the comments had erupted into heated debate—"It's staged vs. It's not," "They just rearranged the order in editing and they still lost vs. It's a thrilling comeback win," and so on.
Now the entire friendly match had been uploaded as the main episode.
The internet began to boil over the forty-five-minute pre-release variety special.