The Wine's Signal and the Surprise Announcement
◈ Drama Pre-Production Press Conference ◈
Young-hoon was sitting blankly in his office when a flood of KakaoTalk messages began pouring in from the Five Girls members, all at once.
Meanwhile, over at Subak, the man most responsible for the sudden shift in Five Girls' chart position, Ki-hyun, had opened his specialty coffee shop that morning just like any other day and, out of pure habit, logged onto the streaming platform.
Ever since he'd posted his review of Five Girls' "A Loving Heart" on social media yesterday, he'd been dying to know how hard his followers had been spreading the word.
"Huh? They're still at number 76? How is the world sleeping on a masterpiece like this? Time for another round of promotion to my followers. Let's see if I can push them into the top 50 at least."
And with that, Ki-hyun began firing off tweets like a man possessed.
Chairman Jang woke up late in the morning. After downing a glass of cold water, he lay there replaying the previous night in his head.
He had shared the wine Young-hoon brought over yesterday. The taste alone had been superb, but the conversation with Young-hoon had been the real treat. A young man barely old enough to be his grandson, yet he knew how to honor his elders — and he was far more erudite than his age suggested. Literature when the talk turned to literature, economics when it turned to economics… the man was well-versed in every field under the sun.
Chairman Jang had taken a real liking to him. A sip of wine on an empty stomach, and roughly an hour after breakfast, the signal had started to come in. His lower half had begun to ache with a stiff, throbbing fullness — the roaring vigor of a man in his prime, and his equipment seemed to have swollen a full one-and-a-half times its usual size.
He had wolfed down his meal and rushed straight to Ji-hye's house. It felt as though he'd run all night long with her. Ji-hye kept begging that she was about to die, and yet kept clinging to him all the same. He was no different — a fountain of endless water, poured out and poured out again without ever running dry. As far as he could tell, they hadn't stopped until around three in the morning. Viagra, even properly prescribed, gave him twenty minutes at most. This defied all explanation. Five or six straight hours of relentless exertion…
Ji-hye lay sprawled across the bed, utterly wrecked. And yet, despite having gone at it all night, his own body felt impossibly light — as though he'd been restored to his fifties. When he flipped back the covers, his lower half was standing stiffly at attention, gazing straight up at the ceiling. A chuckle escaped him before he could stop it.
Good grief, that wine really was a tonic. Young-hoon, that boy has given me back the pleasures of life… how on earth do I repay him? Ah, right — I owe Executive Director Lee a phone call. He's probably been counting the days waiting to hear from me. And as for that Choi bastard — you're dead meat now, my friend. Hehehehe.
Chairman Jang couldn't hold back the laughter bubbling up out of him.
Chairman Choi was a private moneylender whose reputation in the back alleys of Jongno rivaled Chairman Jang's own. Where Chairman Jang walked in the sunlight, Chairman Choi had chosen the shadows. Still, the two had been friends and rivals for fifty years. On the whole, Chairman Jang considered himself the slightly superior man — except in exactly two respects.
The first was children. He had only the one daughter, while Chairman Choi had two sons. His daughter had gone off to study in America as a girl and settled there for good. His son-in-law was a managing partner at a prestigious American law firm — a sellout, in Jang's book. Still, the man had given him two adorable grandchildren, and visiting the US once or twice a year to see their faces was his one remaining joy in life. Chairman Choi's sons, by contrast, did no economic activity whatsoever — whether out of sheer idleness or because they were already waiting for their father to die, who could say. Classic layabouts, the pair of them. Chairman Jang had only two grandchildren; Chairman Choi had five. On the children front, he was hopelessly outmatched.
The second deficit was virility. Even now, Chairman Choi was still enjoying an active sex life, if only with the help of pharmaceuticals. Chairman Jang himself had been in a state too embarrassing to put into words. But that deficit had been completely reversed by the tonic he'd gained last night — and he still had another full 700ml bottle of the stuff in his hands. Today he would call that Choi bastard and brag shamelessly. The man would probably be foaming at the mouth with envy. He felt so good he might just faint.
Beaming down at his freshly recharged equipment, Chairman Jang gave Ji-hye a playful poke.
Ji-hye had opened her eyes only moments earlier, stirred by the shuffling beside her. Seeing Chairman Jang grinning ear to ear, she wondered what on earth had put him in such a mood. She herself had nearly been run into the ground by his tank-like stamina the night before — she'd played the first half and the second half at full throttle and barely lived to tell the tale. Last night had been truly something. She'd been living with Chairman Jang for close to five years now, and last night was, without question, the best it had ever been. That was why she still couldn't summon the strength to get up.
And yet here he was, poking at her. What is this absurdity? He wants to run overtime? And yet — she found she didn't mind at all.
And so a hot wind swept through Ji-hye's house from the very start of the morning.
Park Dae-ri shot Young-hoon a meaningful glance, jerking his chin toward the break room. Young-hoon followed him in and sank into a chair. Several teams had already claimed seats around the room. Worried about being overheard, Park Dae-ri pitched his voice just barely loud enough for Young-hoon to catch, murmuring like a conspirator.
"I found out why Hong Dae-ri blew up and stormed out yesterday."
"Oh yeah? Why'd he bolt?"
"Heard it from Section Chief Choi Gi-hong in HR. You know Choi, right?"
"Yeah. Your university senior, isn't he?"
"The day before yesterday, group HR asked our company's HR manager to hand over Hong Dae-ri's personnel records. His attendance records especially."
"Group HR… isn't that where Hong Dae-ri's own brother is the team leader? Why would they want his attendance records?"
"That part I don't know exactly. So Choi sends the attendance records over — and get this, it says one hundred percent perfect attendance, full hours, no exceptions. HR obviously knows exactly how the guy behaves. Then, about thirty minutes after the records were sent, our HR manager gets a second call from the group HR team leader. And according to Choi, our guy was trembling like a leaf. The group team leader apparently chewed him out good and proper."
"Why chew him out? They're both HR team leaders."
"There's levels to this, man. One's Royal Family, the other's just a commoner. Anyway, the gist was: why is your attendance management such a total mess? Choi said he actually felt sorry for the guy, getting dressed down like that. Then our HR manager went and threw a fit at Deputy General Manager Cho — he's Cho's university senior, after all."
"So that's why Cho said something to Hong Dae-ri yesterday morning, and Hong couldn't take it and snapped back at him?"
"That's the rough picture."
"So Deputy General Manager Cho is a bastard too, then. Everyone on our floor knows how Hong Dae-ri behaves — and he stamped it one hundred percent perfect attendance, full hours?"
"Either Hong Dae-ri's got dirt on him, or he's groveling for favors in advance. One of the two, I'd bet."
"Either way, it's a shit show."
"Tell me about it. By the way, why are you in a suit today?"
"Oh. An acquaintance's daughter is getting married this afternoon."
"Where's the wedding?"
"Why, thinking of coming along?"
"No, no. Just making conversation."
"Jamsil, at the Castle Hotel. Five o'clock."
At that, Park Dae-ri's eyes went wide, as if something had just clicked.
"Hold on a second! Five o'clock… isn't that where they're holding the drama pre-production press conference today? If we time it right, you might catch some celebrities!"
Young-hoon's heart skipped a beat. For the truth was that he wasn't attending a wedding at all — he was the one attending the pre-production press conference. He forced himself to play it cool and changed the subject. It was a secret that no one could know about. Not yet.
"Really? If I'm lucky, I suppose I might catch a glimpse."
"Man, that drama — the production company must be hyping it like crazy. They only just started filming, and they're already holding a production announcement?"
"So when is a production announcement normally held?"
"Come on, I'm an entertainment industry sage, remember? Usually it's held right before the drama airs — you do it to build buzz. Holding one before filming even starts only happens when the writer is a megastar, or the lead actors are, or the director is. I saw online that if the writer is Lee Na-yeon and the leads are Seo Jae-won and Han Hyo-jin, people are saying it's guaranteed a baseline 20 percent rating."
"You really know a lot about the entertainment business."
"That's entry-level stuff. You're just oblivious. If you happen to run into Han Hyo-jin, at least grab an autograph for me."
"Okay, okay. Let's get back to work before the section chief says something."
Young-hoon and Park Dae-ri returned to the office and were just settling into their work when a text arrived from Ki-jin.
Apparently Chairman Jang had been satisfied. Young-hoon was turning back to his work when he suddenly remembered something he'd arranged with President Lee Jae-man and fired off a text.