The Density of Demon Cultists Around Me
It had only been a few days since my run-in with the guards, yet I'd already completely forgotten something. The fact that the guards had known Cheon Yua for a long time. And the fact that the real reason they'd been deployed to this company was to protect her. Those revelations had been so staggering that I'd had no room in my head for anything else.
Apparently, though, my little sparring match with one of the guards hadn't been a trivial matter at all. How else to explain Cheon Yua coming to find me and offering a personal apology?
“Ah, right. There was that racism thing too, wasn't there.”
Truthfully, I've always been rather insensitive to things like racism. When you've spent your life in a world crawling with Xin Sect bastards who'd draw a blade before saying a word, getting worked up over verbal abuse just doesn't register. In my case especially, since I came equipped with the mindset that if someone discriminated against me and cursed me out, I'd do exactly the same right back. And in fact, I did pay that guy back in kind.
But thinking about it now, what he'd done really was absurd. He came to Korea on a business trip and pulled racist crap on an East Asian. At that level, you could get your skull cracked and have nowhere to complain about it.
Rick, the leader of the guards, also came to apologize separately. He'd known the incident would become a problem, he admitted frankly, but Cheon Yua's protection was the top priority, so he hadn't stepped in to stop the sparring. His first goal, apparently, was for the guy to somehow beat me so that I'd be barred from using the gym in the early hours.
Honestly, I could acknowledge that much, so I accepted his apology. If Rick was half Xin Sect himself, then using any means necessary for the mission was the most natural thing in the world.
“Should I just drop the early-morning workouts, then?”
“I don't think that'll be necessary. I received a warning not to interfere, you see.”
“Ahah. So that's how it went.”
“And the fellow you sparred with will probably be suspended.”
“Feels like he's getting what he deserves.”
“He's skilled, so I was willing to look the other way, but if he can't tell his ass from a hole in the ground, there's nothing to be done.”
So the guy was being shipped back to headquarters with a suspension hanging over him — I could only hope the whole affair knocked some sense into him. Whatever he thought in the privacy of his own head, coming to Asia and discriminating against an East Asian was a foolish act that dragged down the dignity of the very organization he belonged to.
“Setting that incident aside, Siwoo, you don't seem to have the slightest awareness that you're an actor.”
“Ah, that's...”
“I'm not listening to excuses.”
“Yes, well. I was a bit rash.”
Regardless, I ended up getting a rather lengthy lecture from Cheon Yua over the sparring. And she was right, honestly. An actor has to take care of his body. It's all an asset.
There was a certain irony in the lecturer being Cheon Yua, who struck me as even more of a hothead than I was, but I didn't press the point. The last thing I wanted was to manufacture conflict with her over something like this.
The amusing part was that after the sparring incident, my relationship with the guards advanced by leaps and bounds. The same guards who used to sweep past me with their noses in the air began actively greeting me, and if we crossed paths at the gym or the pool, some of them would even ask to work out together. When I asked what had gotten into them, apparently they found sparring with me insanely satisfying. An actor who wasn't exactly built like a tank climbing into the ring and putting one of their own on his back turned out to be quite the novel event for these muscleheads who'd been rolling around in fights forever.
“Ah, Johnson? That bastard was always a moron. Guy brought shame on the whole guard corps, I'm telling you.”
“Is that so?”
“Everyone flinched when it happened too. Like, what kind of insane stunt is this now? We kept quiet because of the mission, but in the end he got exactly the punishment that was coming to him.”
“Good to hear you see it that way.”
“That's why I told you not to go around saying the n-word.”
“...Mm. My apologies on that front as well.”
“Oh, I was just messing with you.”
Apparently, the fact that the guy I'd flattened had a lousy reputation to begin with also counted points in my favor. They say men grow up through fighting — at this level, it felt like everything had been settled cleanly, no hard feelings on either side.
Truth be told, I'd never harbored any ill will toward the guards anyway. As I'd mentioned briefly before, looking at them always stirred up a pang of pity in me.
If S&M really was something like the Xin Sect, as I suspected, then those guards occupied roughly the position of the Sect's combat division. Which meant their treatment was predictable. A quasi–Xin Sect drowning in money would no doubt keep their paychecks stuffed to bursting, but without ever granting them the free time to actually spend that money — so it would just keep piling up like mad.
Look at the current situation, for crying out loud. They'd hauled the guards here and dumped them at Flame Entertainment under the banner of protecting Cheon Yua. Late twenties to early thirties is precisely when a man has a family or needs to start building one, and what good is being stashed away in a place like this?
It really was pitiable, no two ways about it.
So why bother putting up walls with men I'd be sharing the same pot of rice with for a good long while? Better to just let it all go, trade jokes, and get along.
Granted, the jokes from that black fellow who kept bandying about the n-word weren't funny in the slightest.
“It's time for you to begin preparing for your official activities as an actor, Siwoo.”
“Right, isn't it? My acting practice is more or less on track now.”
“Yes, so we've assembled a dedicated team for you. Nothing grand — one manager and one coordinator to support you. I'll be handling the business side of things myself.”
“Oh, is that so?”
Just as the commotion from the sparring affair had finally died down, Team Leader Seo came to see me and announced it was time to prepare for my next activities. Then he introduced the two people assigned to my newly formed team — and as it happened, I was already acquainted with both of them.
“I'm Kang Chul-nam. I'll be serving as your manager.”
“Right, I know you, Chul-nam hyung. Weren't you with the S&M Guard, though?”
“Flame's apparently paying me a separate salary on top.”
“Ooh... a two-job situation?”
“That's right.”
“Good for you.”
The man hired as my manager was one of the S&M guards stationed at Flame. When I asked how an S&M guard had ended up as my manager, he explained that the station was overstaffed anyway, and when Flame offered a manager's salary on top, he snatched the offer up without a second thought. Since Team Leader Seo handled all the actual work, the manager's duties boiled down to driving and security — hardly a full workload, he admitted.
From the guards' perspective, it was apparently the dream side gig, and the competition for the post had been fierce. Kang Chul-nam had only managed to snag it thanks to the Korean-national premium. When Cheon Yua moved, the guards all swarmed out en masse to do manager-like work anyway, so if you were going to do roughly the same job regardless, getting paid for it on my end did seem like the better deal.
“And this is Ju Seo-jin, joining as your coordinator.”
“Ah, yes. Hello. Though... I feel like I've seen you somewhere.”
“You have. I touched up your makeup once. Before that, I spent five years working for the Young Lady.”
“The Young Lady... you mean Yua sunbae?”
“Yes. The Young Lady personally vouched for me, so please trust me with your care.”
The brown-haired woman in her twenties joining as my coordinator was also a familiar face. When I asked, it turned out she was the very coordinator Cheon Yua had brought in during my acting practice for the camera test. Since the test was about how well I took to the camera, my makeup needed to be properly done, and I hadn't had a coordinator — so Cheon Yua had borrowed a person for the occasion. The woman who'd done my makeup that day was her.
“...Well then, I'm in your care.”
Which meant my team consisted of one S&M guard and one coordinator who called Cheon Yua “the Young Lady” and radiated Xin Sect vibes from every pore. Was it just me, or was the density of Xin Sect around me rising in real time?
Granted, since the company itself belonged to Cheon Yua, this was a problem I could have predicted — but I hadn't expected such an openly dense concentration of these characters to be deployed. It all felt a bit uncanny, but with so few actors currently signed to the agency, I decided to take it as special treatment and move on. Besides, I had a nagging sense of security in it too — something told me that no matter what happened, these people would never breathe a word of what they witnessed to outsiders.
“And this is your stack of scripts.”
“Oh, that's more than I expected.”
“Yes — fourteen in total, to be exact. Do note that none of these productions approached us for you specifically, so if there's a role you want, you'll have to go through auditions.”
“I know that much. The trade-off being that I'm guaranteed an audition for any of these, right?”
“Yes, that much is doable.”
“Sounds good. I'll read through them at my own pace.”
Once the team introductions were done, I received the scripts right away. Even narrowed down to only the projects the company could get me into, there were a full fourteen. Each script came with its prospective roles sorted out, along with a tidy deadline for when I'd need to decide — genuinely convenient reading.
A rough glance showed underlines scribbled across everything from major supporting roles up to leads, which told me the company intended to push for me quite seriously. For someone in an ambiguous position like mine, getting a shot at auditioning for lead roles is no small thing.
And these weren't the kind of auditions where you're invited just for show — these were the real deal, where if they liked what they saw, they'd actually cast you. It meant that if all else failed, the company was prepared to throw investment money at the problem just to manufacture the opportunity for me.
“A company this likely to be swimming in money is surely considering exactly that kind of play.”
Looking at the mountain of scripts stacked before me, I found myself wanting to pat my past self on the back for choosing Flame. Who cared whether it was the Xin Sect or something Xin Sect–adjacent? As long as a company fed me good work and could pull out the investment card when the going got tough, the rest was neither here nor there.
Financial therapy really is the right answer, I thought, as I began slowly leafing through the scripts.