Welcome to Flame, a Company That Makes No Sense
Actors, as a rule, don't visit their agencies very often.
That sets them entirely apart from idol trainees, who practically live at the company full-time.
It's also a bit different from active idols, who can't stay at the office while promoting but flock back like migratory birds the moment a new album is in the works.
When actors do drop by, it's usually to sign a new role, check a script, or confirm some other piece of their schedule.
That's also mostly why acting agencies tend not to be all that big.
And yet Flame had gone and built officetel units across not one but two entire floors.
Decked out so lavishly that a plebeian like me would've gone wide-eyed at the sight.
Were these people planning to run a rental business out of the company on the side?
"In case an actor finds themselves in difficult circumstances, or needs a quiet space for a while, we keep lodging prepared. It goes without saying that it's free of charge."
"...It's far too nice a room to just be that."
"You are an actor of Flame, after all. Naturally, you deserve the finest accommodations."
So this is... free?
The officetel was immaculately clean, extravagantly upscale, and spacious to boot.
So much so that I couldn't even begin to guess how much the rent would run.
It was absurd enough that it was free, but apparently if a resident asked for anything — tidying, cleaning, laundry — it would be handled on the spot.
Wasn't this practically hotel-level service?
"How do you find it?"
"It's lovely. Then shall I go ahead and be in your debt?"
"Debt, you say. This is simply your right as an actor of Flame. We'll prepare this room for you, then."
"Yes, thank you."
Still, there was no reason to turn down whatever perks were on offer.
Even if I'd used my signing bonus to find a place of my own, I doubted I could have found anywhere better than this.
Flame really was Flame, wasn't it.
Thinking of services I'd never even imagined, I found myself impressed all over again.
With my decision to stay at the company for the time being, my signing bonus became mine to spend wherever I pleased.
And where that spending went was, naturally, paying off our household's debts.
I cleared the loans my father had taken out to open his chicken restaurant in a single stroke.
You know the type, don't you?
Parents who flatly refuse when their children bring home a large sum of money.
Spend it on your own future, they say, or save it for your wedding.
Or they'll leave their kids at a loss for words with some line like, I'm not old enough yet to need your help.
Not that there's anything wrong with that, of course — but that simply isn't the Baek family style.
"Son. You know I'm not the kind of man who refuses these things, right?"
"I know, Dad. I'm only giving it because I can afford to. Let's get it paid off first."
"That's my boy. Nothing more reassuring than a dependable son."
"What about you? Where on earth did this kind of money come from... I was planning to handle the family loans myself."
"You can buy the two of them a house someday."
"Hey! That's way more expensive than this!"
"Then you should've earned it faster."
Never refusing the kindness someone offers, and never reaching out a hand when you can't afford it — that's our family creed.
Our household was full of remarkably cool customers on this front.
Sure enough, both of my parents waited eagerly for the chance and wiped out the debts with my signing bonus, then warmly welcomed my independence.
Yeah. This is how it should be.
Thanks to me clearing the family's debts, the next runner-up — my dear little sister, Mom's Daughter Moron — inherited the burden of buying our parents a house, but that was none of my concern.
Though I did wonder whether she could actually pull it off.
No, wait — knowing her, wouldn't she pull some kind of scam?
Something like suddenly dragging a man home on the grounds that family matters more than a house.
Grabbing some poor guy by the waist and announcing, I have delivered your precious granddaughter! — and then...
"...In that scenario, I'd lose for sure. A granddaughter is invincible."
Well, no harm done, I suppose.
It'd be a good thing in its own way.
At worst, if some saint ever came along to haul her off, I'd have to thank him profusely.
Some man's life would spiral into ruin, but that would be his own choice — I'd just have to tell him to grit his teeth and endure.
"Right then, son. Come by often."
"I will, Dad. Take care, Mom."
"If you ever need side dishes, call right away. I'll pack some for you."
"I'll probably be fine. But if I do need anything, I'll swing by the house."
And so I, hero of the household after flinging my signing bonus around, was seen off by my parents as I moved into the Flame building.
I set up my new home.
Since I didn't have much luggage anyway, the move went off without a hitch.
And just like that, I became one of the residents who'd nested in Flame.
About two days had passed since I'd settled into Flame.
I was a bit dazed at first, but after a day or two of living there, I was starting to get a feel for the place.
Namely, that this company called Flame was even more out of its mind than I'd imagined.
First of all, this deranged company was using all eight floors of its building.
I'm sorry — an acting agency with eight floors?
Has everyone lost their minds?
It was a bewildering setup from the very start.
But when you looked at what each floor contained, it got even more jaw-dropping.
The question why is this an acting agency again? practically asked itself.
Here's roughly how it broke down.
Floors one and two.
The first two floors belonged to the guards — thirty of them — who had apparently set up housekeeping in the dorms and lived there outright.
Some kind of dispatched assignment, contracted on a year-long basis?
Two to a room, and though modest, the quarters were reasonably livable. The guards also had full use of the building, so they didn't seem to have any particular complaints.
The guards living on-site never felt cooped up, and I attribute that entirely to the first basement floor, the third floor, and the sixth floor.
A basement level that was nothing but a swimming pool, a third-floor gym, and a sixth-floor lounge.
Those three floors alone covered most of the usual amenities.
The sixth-floor lounge in particular even had a game room that someone had clearly spared no expense on.
This would be absurd even for an idol agency — and this was supposedly an acting agency?
It was a company where you genuinely couldn't tell what they intended to do here.
The fourth floor was the only place where you got so much as a whiff of "acting agency."
A few small practice rooms, an audiovisual analysis suite, and a cafeteria.
Though that cafeteria was... quite something in its own right.
For starters, anyone with access to the building could eat there for free.
I myself ate all three meals a day in the cafeteria.
Perhaps because there weren't many full-time staff yet, the place seemed to exist mainly to feed me and the guards, though no doubt that would change as the staff filled in.
But the cafeteria itself was a spectacle too.
"Mom. No steak for me — tteok-galbi, please. I love Korean chicken soup."
"Spaghetti, no-no. Mom, I want jjolmyeon. Jjolmyeon."
"Shut up and eat what you're given."
"Oh my God, Mom. I hate the shotgun."
The kitchen was staffed by an elderly head chef and three kitchen assistants — and the head chef herself was the problem.
"What? You want me to stuff a shotgun down that mouth of yours too?"
"No ma'am. I'll just quietly eat whatever you serve."
"Hmph. Good. Finally one normal guy walks in. In this kitchen, you eat what the chef hands you. Understood?"
A powerfully built Western woman who looked to be in her sixties.
From the very look of her, this head chef was not your ordinary cook.
Ridiculously pumped-up muscles and a thick scar by her eye.
Her forearms, glimpsed here and there, were covered in scars large and small — the visage of a woman who'd spent years, at least, rolled through a battlefield.
And on top of that, she was a foul-mouthed old lady, which made her a rather difficult person to deal with.
The whole shut up and eat what you're given policy reminded me uncomfortably of the Soma Pavilion back in the cult — our sect's training institution.
Honestly, if that had been the extent of it, I could have let it slide.
But this head chef kept an actual shotgun hanging on one side of the kitchen.
That thing. It's not a real shotgun, right?
Judging by how the guards roughhoused with it going mom mom, it seemed like a replica — but the thing looked far too real.
I decided not to ask, on the grounds that if I did and the answer came back yes, it's real, things would get considerably more awkward.
Our head chef had quite a few flaws (honestly, she was little else but flaws), but when it came to cooking skill, she was extraordinary.
Western cuisine was her foundation, she was deeply versed in Korean food, and by all accounts she could handle Chinese dishes to a respectable degree as well.
Admittedly, the Korean and Chinese food produced by this Yankee Grandma of a chef had been localized to a certain Yankee degree.
But skill is skill no matter who wields it, and even to my pure Korean palate, her cooking was pretty damn good.
And above all — agency or not, whining about the side dishes in a cafeteria that feeds you three square meals a day is just not done.
I had a conscience, after all.
Past the cafeteria floor (the fourth), which had been plenty shocking even for me, the fifth floor finally looked like an actual agency.
The fifth floor.
This was where the Flame Entertainment staff worked, though most of the departments still sat empty.
Once the company was truly up and running, these offices would no doubt fill with employees soon enough.
Then there was the sixth-floor lounge I mentioned earlier.
Coffee and drinks, plus light alcohol.
Snacks and instant ramen stocked to bursting, to boot.
One side even had a gaming room and a nap room — an all-weather rest space, fully equipped.
Frankly, even I was baffled when I saw it.
Whatever else you could say, a gaming setup of this caliber was far beyond anything you'd file under "employee welfare."
"So in the end, the only floor an acting agency actually needs is the fifth."
Basement swimming pool, first and second floor guard dorms, third floor gym, fourth floor practice rooms and cafeteria, fifth floor offices, sixth floor lounge, seventh and eighth floors actor lodging.
One glance told you everything: the only space an acting agency actually needed was one floor out of eight.
Same with the practice rooms and cafeteria on the fourth.
Actors rarely come to the office to practice anyway, so even those spaces were unnecessary.
As for the cafeteria — you could just go out and buy your food like a normal person.
No matter how I turned it over, this company was somehow off.
Though to be fair, the fact that thirty guards were stationed here around the clock was already a joke in itself.
"But still... this is insanely convenient."
It was true that the building's layout made no sense whatsoever, but from my standpoint, it was mind-blowingly comfortable.
Wake up in the morning, eat whatever Shotgun Mom (the head chef) served, loosen up lightly in the gym, then watch other actors' performances in the video analysis room.
Move to a practice room and rehearse for a while.
When I wanted a break, I'd wander up to the lounge and enjoy a game or two. (They even kept the latest game titles meticulously stocked.)
When I felt restless, I'd head down to the pool and swim it out.
"Is this... heaven?"
I could take care of practically everything without ever setting foot outside.
"So what if something's off about the place? It's this comfortable."
Only two days in, and I already didn't want to leave this life behind.
Yep, good. Living the dream. I'm going to bury my bones at Flame, no question.
...That was what I thought, for a time.
Until a shocking article began circulating through the internet communities, that is.
It was the news that the Heavenly Demon of this world — Cheon Yua, in other words — had joined Flame.
I'm sorry, the Heavenly Demon, who owns her own agency, is transferring?
She's abandoning her own company?
What kind of heavenly comedy prank show is this supposed to be?
Something... something was happening.