A Company Full of Questions
The person waiting for me in the CEO's office was Richard Langdon, an American in his fifties.
For a moment I wondered if this was secretly some sort of "Stateside" company after all, but thankfully, it wasn't.
Richard was, in essence, a chief financial officer dispatched by the investors. The actual CEO existed separately, but was temporarily away handling other business, or so I was told.
Richard's involvement, he assured me, was limited to internal operations and financial affairs—looking after the artists themselves remained the job of the CEO and the Korean staff. That was enough to put my mind at ease.
Perhaps the reason so few people in this industry actually know how to run a company is precisely why they've built a system like this one.
Which isn't a bad thing at all.
Plenty of entertainment agencies have gone under after betting everything, recklessly and senselessly, on a single star.
This business is crawling with people who don't know the first thing about management—the literal first letter of the word.
Come to think of it, maybe a firmly established division of labor like this was exactly what lay behind Flame's success all along.
After the contract was finished, I sat down for a separate meeting with Team Leader Seo.
Now that I was officially part of Flame, we needed to start getting to know each other in earnest.
I had plenty of questions of my own, so without protest I followed him into a private consultation room that had been set aside for us.
"I noticed a lot of guards earlier. On the first floor. Mostly foreigners, too—are they connected to this company?"
"Ah, the S&M guards?"
"S&M guards?"
"Yes, they're dispatched from S&M. They're one of Flame's major investors. Oh, and CFO Richard was sent over from there as well."
"Is that so?"
The strangest part was still those guards I'd seen earlier, no doubt about it.
Their numbers were one thing, but most of them had been foreigners.
And apparently they, too, had been sent over by the investors.
A foreign company? No—even a foreign company wouldn't have any reason to send over an entire security detail like that.
Besides, if it was S&M, I'd heard of them somewhere before...
"It's not that S&M, is it? The one I'm thinking of?"
"If the S&M you're thinking of is the Shine Phone S&M, then yes, that's the one."
"What? Why would a company like that..."
The smartphone that every modern person on earth carries. Here in Korea, Changcheon's Blue had the edge over S&M's Shine, but overseas, S&M's Shine held an overwhelming lead.
In other words, S&M was a global colossus that sold smartphones to the entire world.
And of course, S&M's business interests were hardly limited to smartphones.
Those S&M guards mentioned just now were presumably one of S&M Group's many ventures as well.
The thing was, this was, unambiguously, an American company.
It was multinational, but with its headquarters in the United States, calling it American wouldn't be wrong.
And a company like that had invested in a Korean entertainment agency?
I don't underestimate the power of media, but for a giant like S&M, the partner would need to be at least on the level of 'Finesse', the global OTT platform, for the match to make sense.
And they were even dispatching their own staff—it didn't exactly feel like a casual investment, did it?
The people holding the purse strings were that formidable. That meant it was good news if anything, but I couldn't help tilting my head anyway.
"That much, I couldn't tell you. I'm just a salaryman myself. All I can say is that S&M seems quite serious about entering the Korean market. Korea is, after all, the one place where Blue is uniquely dominant..."
"When you put it that way, I suppose..."
Really, there was no point in thinking too deeply about it.
The reason S&M's Shine Phone couldn't gain traction in Korea was, quite simply, that Changcheon was a Korean company.
If S&M could break into the field the public was most familiar with—media—raise its name recognition across various industries, and squeeze out even a single percent more of the smartphone market, that was a win for S&M.
I could think of S&M's investment in Flame in roughly those terms.
"But I don't understand why the investors would go so far as to send security guards. Does that side own this building, by any chance?"
"Oh, this building belongs to Flame."
"...Really? A building this size?"
"Yes, it was built brand-new for us. We're still a young company, but Flame has real potential, if I do say so myself."
Brand-new meant, ultimately, that this absurd design had been Flame's own request.
I had no idea who the CEO was, but they clearly had no taste whatsoever.
To think another person existed with the same catastrophic sense of style as the Heavenly Demon, who rebuilt Cheonma Hall entirely out of pitch-black profound stone.
The world really is wide, and full of strange people.
On the other hand, if a building this size belonged to Flame outright, I probably didn't need to worry much about their finances.
For all that it's called a talent agency, an actor's upkeep costs aren't exactly staggering.
They don't hire that many employees to begin with.
I figured leasing out half of this building alone would more than cover the company's operating expenses.
"Well, good enough for me."
I'd managed to resolve my nagging questions to a reasonable degree through Team Leader Seo.
Granted, why S&M had gone to the trouble of deploying security guards remained a mystery, but that was best left as their problem alone.
It had nothing to do with me, honestly.
To an actor, an agency is simply a place that cleans up your messes and brings you good work. That's all it needs to be.
So I decided to just erase the whole matter from my mind.
"Then let's discuss your upcoming schedule. How are things going with the Yoon Seoeun shoot?"
"Pretty much wrapped up."
"Oh, is that right? Any difficulties, or anything unusual I should know about?"
"Well... hmm. Unusual—if you want to call it that, there was something."
"And that would be...?"
Now it was my turn to talk, and Team Leader Seo leaned in to question me.
He wanted to check on my filming situation first—how much was left on the Yoon Seoeun shoot, and whether anything had gone wrong during production.
I was about to answer that there'd been no problems at all when I paused to take a breath.
As far as I was concerned, it was nothing whatsoever, but I figured I should mention the clash with Jo Yooshin.
We were all in the same boat now, and if even a small problem arose, we'd share the responsibility—which meant the company needed to know.
Truthfully, I'd joined this agency partly in hopes they'd handle exactly this sort of thing cleanly for me.
"Actually, I had a bit of friction with Jo Yooshin-sunbae during filming."
"Ah, I did hear something about that. It even made the articles, didn't it? Of course, we smoothed it over discreetly, together with Rion's people."
"Yes, that's how it went. But..."
"Go on."
"During the shoot, I sort of... hit Mr. Jo."
"...Sort of? You hit him? Jo Yooshin?"
Good grief.
So the man was capable of making that kind of face.
Watching Team Leader Seo's pupils dance wildly in what had seemed a perpetually composed face, an awkward laugh burst out of me before I could help it.
After that, naturally, I explained the situation to him, even as he glared at me as if to ask whether this was really the time to be laughing.
He seemed to judge that the matter had been contained well enough, and eventually composed himself—but with sweat beading on his philtrum, it was clear he'd been thrown badly off balance.
"...Just, please, restrain yourself going forward. Given Mr. Jo's personality, I doubt he'd go around blabbing about it, but violence can become a habit, you know."
"Understood. I doubt it'll happen again."
"I'll take your word for it."
Having offered his mild warning, Team Leader Seo began scribbling furiously in his notebook.
Don't tell me this is going to count against me somehow?
I'd disclosed it because the company had every right to know, but the meaningful look on his face made me a little uneasy all the same.
Having recorded whatever it was he'd recorded, Team Leader Seo returned to his usual professional self and tossed me the next question.
"Then would your next commitment be the wrap party?"
"Yes, that's right."
"And your next project..."
"Ah, that one I'd like to think over for a bit. And there are a few things I'll be needing, actually..."
"Of course. Please, go ahead."
"I think I need to study acting a little more."
"Acting? But you're..."
"Honestly, I'm confident in the acting itself. It's acting for the camera that turned out to be a different beast."
"Ah, of course. You still lack experience with it."
"Right. So if at all possible, I'd prefer someone well-versed in on-camera work rather than stage acting."
"Understood. I'll inquire about that with the CEO directly."
The acting lessons were an issue I'd been aware of the entire time we shot the drama.
It was true that I had confidence in my acting, but when it came down to it, this had been my first real experience performing in front of a camera.
Well, no—if I was being pedantic, not my first.
After all, I'd made reasonably regular appearances in various things for about five years back in the day.
But I'd spent fifty years in Murim and forgotten every trace of that life, and the me of today was merely a master of everyday acting who found a rolling camera somewhat awkward.
It hadn't been much of a problem on this drama.
PD Yoo's crew were seasoned veterans, famous in the industry, and they'd managed things skillfully enough that my shortcomings never showed.
But I couldn't count on that kind of consideration forever, could I?
To be fair, it's the sort of thing that corrects itself naturally with time—but for me, awkward acting means death.
Granted, nobody here comes running at me with a blade, but if my acting looks stiff, I simply can't stand myself. Something like that.
An agency at Flame's level should be able to attach a decent acting coach to me, so I figured it was fine to lean on the company for this part.
Once my requests had all been relayed, I received a briefing on my schedule.
Or more precisely, an apology and an explanation for why my team was taking so long to be assembled.
The company had only just been founded and hadn't finished hiring its staff yet, and the team members who'd be assigned to me were apparently still being recruited as well.
For the time being, my schedule—including the wrap party—would be handled by Team Leader Seo, sitting right in front of me.
Come to think of it, the office had been practically empty on my way up, so that checked out.
They clearly hadn't managed to hire a proper staff yet, so this much I could understand and let slide.
The fact that they'd come courting me(?) before they'd even finished hiring said they took me quite seriously—and that was hardly an unpleasant thing to learn.
But what Team Leader Seo said next was something even I hadn't anticipated.
"Which brings me to this—are you planning to keep living where you are now? It's not urgent, but..."
"Ah, right. Our apartment's security is..."
"Yes. You'll need to start preparing soon, Actor Baek."
He was talking about my living situation.
My apartment, if you could call it that, was a place where "security" wasn't even a remote consideration.
It might not matter right now, but the moment my face gained even a little recognition, that place would inevitably become a headache in one way or another.
And it wasn't just my problem—it could affect my whole family, which meant I had to think it through carefully.
"Looks like I'll have to find a place with the signing bonus, then."
Reading the dismay on my face, Team Leader Seo made a careful proposal.
"If you need secure housing, the company may be able to help arrange something for you."
"The company will?"
He was offering to find me a place to live.
Since my signing bonus was already spoken for, I listened to Team Leader Seo's pitch with genuine interest.
And the residence Team Leader Seo introduced me to was...
"...Why on earth is there an officetel inside the company?"
An officetel built directly into the company's own building, of all things.
Flame Entertainment turned out to be a somewhat bizarre mixed-use complex, with living quarters spread across not one but two full floors—the seventh and the eighth.