Camping and Friends (1)
"Hop in, little sister."
"Whoa. You bought this? Absolute fire."
So-hyun climbed in without a second's hesitation, as if the car had always been hers.
"Guys, I'm heading out first! Let's keep talking on chat. Driver Ryu, close the door."
"What? Driver Ryu?"
Yeon-woo caught the playful pout on Ryu So-hyun's face and laughed as he shut the door.
"So-hyun, make sure your friends get home safe."
"Yes, oppa."
"Insane."
Yeon-woo opened the driver's door, slid behind the wheel, and the red sports car pulled away with a throaty roar of the engine.
Meanwhile, in a corner of the parking lot, a group of rough-looking friends stood frozen with their mouths hanging open at the unbelievable sight, muttering to one another, "Is this for real?"
Yeon-woo's car glided home without a single snarl of traffic.
"Ooooh. Oppa, you can drive?"
"Yeah. I practiced."
For about twenty years?
After two days spent with his family at home, Yeon-woo drove back to Seoul once more.
He had just parked and was about to step into his officetel when his smartphone buzzed.
Vrrr—
Hmm? Senior Maseok Do?
Yeon-woo saw the name on the screen and answered.
"Yes, Seok-do hyung-nim."
"Oh. Yeon-woo, resting well?"
"Haha. Yes. I went down to my parents' place and just got back to Seoul."
"Oh-ho, that so? You like camping by any chance?"
Yeon-woo tilted his head at the unexpected topic.
"Camping?"
Does digging a trench and holding out for a week in a mangrove forest to track illegal arms deals by Myanmar ethnic-minority independence fighters count as camping?
Lighting a fire when it's cold, getting bitten by mosquitoes, sleeping in the rain—it's roughly the same, I guess.
After that absurd little detour of thought, Yeon-woo answered.
"Hmm, I've done a few things that were pretty similar."
"Whenever I've got outdoor shoots, I like heading out a day early and camping. Figured I'd call and ask if you were free and wanted to come along. No pressure at all."
Seok-do had grown noticeably closer to Yeon-woo while filming this movie.
He said it wasn't pressure, but the hopeful note in his voice was unmistakable.
"Sounds good. Let's go have a drink, hyung-nim."
"For real? Kwahaha. Perfect. I'll bring the full set, then. What's your address?"
"Send me the address and I'll come to your place. We can park there and take your car."
Yeon-woo hung up and climbed back into his car to head for the address that had just arrived.
Before leaving, he called Min-su.
"Ah, Min-su hyung. Today I'm going with Senior Ma to—"
"Yes, Actor-nim. Then I'll come pick you up at that address tomorrow at the right time."
After hanging up, Yeon-woo drove to Seok-do's house.
Seok-do greeted him warmly at the front door.
They parked Yeon-woo's car and climbed into Seok-do's together.
The back seat and trunk were packed solid with camping gear.
"Whoa, is all of this camping equipment?"
"I just keep it loaded all the time. I go camping whenever I get a free moment."
Seok-do looked thoroughly excited at the prospect of camping with Yeon-woo.
"You drive this car too, hyung-nim. Jin-uk hyung has the same one."
"Son Jin-uk? Celebrities do tend to drive these a lot."
Seok-do grinned as he shifted gears, and the car headed for a camping site in Incheon.
After driving toward Incheon for a good while, Maseok Do asked Yeon-woo,
"Yeon-woo, you ever done an SNS live broadcast?"
"A live broadcast? No! I only made my SNS accounts a little while ago."
"That so? When I go camping I sometimes turn one on to talk with the fans. What do you think?"
With filming so hectic lately, Yeon-woo had barely uploaded anything to SNS and had been feeling the lack of contact with his fans.
"Mm, I'm good with it. Talking with the fans is really important."
These were people who supported and loved his acting with no conditions attached.
"Then since I've never done it, hyung-nim can start the stream and I'll just show up naturally."
"Great. This'll be fun. We're grilling galbi for dinner—we can turn it on then."
Hearing that, Yeon-woo opened the fan café on his phone and wrote his first post.
Yeah, this should be enough.
A short note that he was going camping with Senior Maseok Do and that they would talk with fans on an SNS live around dinner time.
The fan café exploded the moment the first post ever uploaded under the actor's own account—[Admin] Ryu Yeon-woo—appeared. And it was an SNS live announcement, no less.
"Whew, we're here."
"This is the place, hyung-nim?"
Yeon-woo and Maseok Do opened the car doors and stepped out in the parking lot.
"Alright, now we have to haul everything over to our deck, but the luggage carts are—"
"Ah, over there."
Yeon-woo trotted off to one side of the lot, grabbed two large camping trailers—one in each hand—and dragged them back.
"Aigoo, those are heavy!"
Seok-do, who had been organizing the trunk, spotted Yeon-woo and hurried over.
"It's fine, Seok-do hyung."
Yeon-woo tried to wave him off, but they ended up amicably pulling one each.
"Which stuff do we need to take out? We're not using all of it, right?"
Yeon-woo asked, a little overwhelmed by the mountain of gear filling the back seat and trunk. Maseok Do answered,
"Hmm, we could use all of it if we wanted. Let's just grab the essentials first and come back for more if we need it."
Seok-do opened the trunk, pulled items out, and handed them over; Yeon-woo took them and loaded them onto the camping trailers.
"This should be enough, yeah?"
Bang—
Maseok Do slammed the trunk shut.
Watching him, Yeon-woo suddenly recalled a scene, flashed a grin, and delivered the line.
"Who was it? Did someone door-ding this?"
It was a beat from the early part of Master Plan.
"Ah, the trunk. The trunk."
Seok-do's deadpan comeback landed perfectly, and both of them burst out laughing.
Playing Pierre Choi had clearly brightened Yeon-woo's personality and brought out a little more of the mischievous side in him.
The man seated in the place of honor spoke in a voice like grinding metal.
"Lately the business world side's been looking pretty weak on the juice."
The man sitting opposite him bowed his head.
"I'm sorry."
"Look, if 'I'm sorry' is always the first thing out of your mouth, it starts to lose its charm."
The man kept his head lowered in silence.
"Tell them to push some new kids up. Nothing works better for laundering those senile old fossils than that."
"Yes. Understood."
The man who had been giving the report rose, opened the door, stepped out, pulled a notebook from his pocket, and began making calls in the order written there.
Meanwhile, in a corporate building in Gangnam.
The CEO's office of Plus10 Entertainment.
"Yes, understood. Yes, yes. I'll look into it."
The man answered the phone with a deeply furrowed face, repeatedly saying he understood.
His expression was twisted with irritation, yet his tone remained endlessly servile and polite.
Click—
"Damn it. Haa. I never should have set foot in this side of things in the first place. Fuck."
The moment he hung up, the man hurled his smartphone onto the sofa.
The nameplate on the desk read: Byeon Hak-gyu, CEO of Plus10 Entertainment.
Beep—
"CEO-nim. Jeong Su-yeon is here."
"Send her in."
Creak—
The door opened and Jeong Su-yeon entered the CEO's office.
"Hello, CEO-nim."
"Yeah, come sit."
He gestured while picking up the phone he had just flung onto the sofa.
The moment Su-yeon sat down, CEO Byeon went straight to the point.
As she listened to the lengthy explanation, Jeong Su-yeon's face hardened.
"…So what you're telling me is that I should go entertain them?"
"No, where does this kid keep picking up such ugly words? I just finished explaining it. It's not entertainment—it's just a friendly gathering I arranged. These are all people who can help your acting career."
Jeong Su-yeon rose from the sofa with a cold, rigid expression.
"…I'll pretend I didn't hear that. CEO-nim. I'm sorry."
"Adults aren't even finished talking and you just walk out? You think you can succeed without any of this? You ignore everything I say, so of course you ignore me too?!"
Already heated from the earlier phone call, CEO Byeon took out his frustration on Su-yeon the moment things stopped going his way.
Jeong Su-yeon glared at Byeon Hak-gyu.
Tears welled in her eyes.
"I kept telling myself it couldn't be true. Even after I heard Unni Ju-yeong complain two years ago when she was still a high-school student, I only half-listened."
"What?"
CEO Byeon's eyes widened at the name of the aspiring actress he had once tried to connect as a sponsor to a high-ranking official.
"…Even so, this is the company I've been with for years since I was little. The CEO who told me to call him Uncle back when I was a child actor."
Tears rolled down Jeong Su-yeon's cheeks as she fixed him with a sharp glare.
"I never imagined you'd do this the second I became an adult, like you'd been waiting for it."
The moment she finished speaking, Su-yeon turned and walked straight toward the office door.
Her legs seemed to give out for a second; she swayed slightly.
"You little bitch. I raised you myself and this is how you repay me?! You've got over two years left on your contract. Your career is dead until then, you understand? What's so hard about going and having one drink?"
At the desperate shout from behind her, Jeong Su-yeon bit down hard on her lip.
"…It wouldn't end with one drink. If that's the kind of filthy career I'd be building, then I won't be an actress."
Bang—
She slammed the door behind her and bowed her head to the startled secretary who had jumped at the noise.
"I startled you. I'm sorry."
"Ah, no, it's fine."
A single tear fell from her lowered face.
Without a backward glance she left the entertainment company building.
"Haa…"
Su-yeon let out a long breath.
If she stood still anywhere, the tears would come flooding out, so she simply walked without destination.
Kim Ju-yeong, the fellow aspiring actress at the same company—the only person around her whose mouth was tight and whom she could trust—had grabbed high-school student Jeong Su-yeon and poured out her grievances more than once. Every time, Su-yeon had thought that someday the same day might come for her.
I just wanted to solidify my footing as an actress a little more while I was still a minor the company couldn't touch.
Was that why her face had been so dark when she left the audition room after sensing she had failed the Summer's Closet audition?
She had shown good work as a child actor in several films, but that was all she had been—a child actor. Her only real credit was a web drama that was somewhat known among students.
Of course not the entire entertainment industry was like this, yet Su-yeon felt she had buttoned the first button wrong from the start.
Her parents would obviously dissolve into tears if they heard; she couldn't even complain to them. Having entered social life so young, she had not a single friend she could open her heart to.
"So that's why Ju-yeong unni used to grab me and talk like that."
When she was little, if someone bullied her there had been the solid presence of her parents she could run to.
Once she started working, she gradually realized that the society surrounding her had grown too large for her parents' protection to cover, and she had grown used to curling into herself.
Tending the wounds in her heart, she had sometimes even felt proud, thinking she was growing up in her own way. But on a day like today, when she desperately wanted to pour out her worries to someone and couldn't, the loneliness and sorrow were almost too much to bear.
She sat in the subway station and scrolled endlessly through the contacts on her phone.
So many "friends" were saved in the device, yet there was no one she could actually call. It was almost funny.
Her pale, slender finger finally stopped after a long, aimless scroll.
In the feeling that the entire world around her was shaking, she did something she would never have done under normal circumstances. A thought bloomed in her heart.
We're not even that close. He'll think it's ridiculous… right?
She wasn't hoping for any kind of solution.
She simply felt that if she could unload even a little of what was happening right now onto someone, that alone would make her feel better.
After a long stretch of hesitation, she finally seemed to gather her courage. She pressed her lips together tightly and tapped the call button.
After hauling all the camping gear and setting out only a pair of folding chairs, Ryu Yeon-woo and Maseok Do sat resting, feeling the breeze.
Sitting in the gentle wind, drowsiness began to steal over them before long.
Beside Yeon-woo, Maseok Do had already drifted into a light doze.
Vrrr—
Then Yeon-woo's smartphone rang.
Hmm?
Jeong Su-yeon, a friend he only occasionally exchanged KakaoTalk messages with.
A call from someone he had never once spoken to on the phone since they exchanged numbers.
What could it be?
Curious, he answered anyway.