The Price of Removing a Nightmare
The conference room emptied out until only two people remained: Cheon Yu-ah and Representative Ju.
As a heavy silence settled over the room, Representative Ju was the first to speak. His plan was simple enough — open with something light and easygoing, let the atmosphere warm up, then ease into the real subject. He was opposed to investing in this production, and given that some fairly sensitive topics were about to cross the table, he was treading carefully.
"So in the end, you'll be working on a production with Baek Si-woo."
"I did want to appear in the same work as him, but not like this. A double lead? Isn't that a bit much?"
"You seemed rather calm about it, all things considered."
"That would be him being confident. To be honest, I figured he was at least capable of that much, which is why I made the offer. Still, this isn't a situation I'm thrilled about."
Cheon Yu-ah had thought appearing in a production alongside Baek Si-woo wouldn't be so bad — but this was not what she'd had in mind. She'd assumed that, given his position, he would land a substantial supporting role at most. It wasn't that she didn't acknowledge his ability. It was that his experience was simply too thin. In her estimation, if he were to take a lead role opposite her, another two or three productions' worth of experience would have been the appropriate threshold.
"In that case, it might have been wiser to pass on this production and find him another one first."
"You want me to drag Yuri into the company and then do that? That's a bit cold, don't you think? Si-woo seems attached to this project, too. Once a script starts being passed around, there's no telling how long it'll sit in limbo. Plenty of people just shove it in a drawer and assume it got shelved for a reason."
"It's a business riddled with superstition, after all. No shortage of people who consider a script that's been bounced around unlucky."
"Exactly. Once you've drawn the sword, you commit to production, no matter what. So the answer is simple — we invest in it ourselves."
"Ah..."
Representative Ju, who had been steering the conversation along gently with the intention of proposing they steer clear of the investment, found himself struck dumb by Cheon Yu-ah's ambush. The sharp-eyed young lady had already seen straight through him.
Which meant there was nothing for it but to take the proper, formal route. Investing in this drama under current circumstances meant accepting considerable risk. If it truly came to it, he needed to avoid this side bearing the burden alone — even if that meant moving forward with co-investors.
"To be frank with you, madam, our finances aren't in particularly good shape. It's not impossible, but we would be wagering a great deal."
"I imagine so. You can't very well pull funds from Sunny Investment, after all."
"Precisely. If headquarters were willing to cooperate, Finesse would never have rejected this production in the first place."
"Isn't that just a little stingy of them?"
"I'm sure they have their reasons. From our standpoint, however, it's a decision we can hardly welcome."
S&M, which took its media business quite seriously, held a substantial stake in the global streaming giant Finesse. Now that this production's script had been submitted under Flame's name, even a modicum of cooperation from headquarters would have made moving to production an easy matter.
Instead, headquarters had pushed Finesse toward rejection — and the card Cheon Yu-ah had trusted most was snatched out of her hand. That, too, was part of why her stubbornness had kicked into gear.
"So Cheon Financial's funds alone won't cover it?"
"They could. But if this production fails, the fallout would be severe."
"I'd say beyond severe."
"Yes. This building, our recent expenditures — spending has been heavy lately. Even pouring in every last bit of surplus capital, it remains an open question whether it will suffice. If this drama fails, we would have to liquidate a significant portion of our existing assets."
"Well, at least it's possible. That's a relief."
If they couldn't pull in Sunny Investment — run by headquarters — then Cheon Yu-ah would have to solve this herself. Fortunately, Cheon Financial's funds could stretch far enough to manage it somehow. But no one could guarantee a drama's success, and so the worst-case scenario was impossible to ignore. The very reason Representative Ju stayed glued to Cheon Yu-ah's side was to prevent such a situation. And it was his duty, in preparation for exactly that, to speak plainly to her.
"Might I suggest considering a partnership with outside investors? Sharing the production costs may serve you better than Cheon Financial covering all of it. As you're aware, Finesse..."
"You mean a drama we produced entirely ourselves would face scheduling disadvantages, correct? If headquarters applies pressure."
"That would almost certainly happen. But supposing production moves forward regardless, minimizing the risk as much as possible remains one option."
His argument was this: if Cheon Financial covered only a portion of the investment, production could proceed one way or another, and the remainder could be raised externally. Since Finesse was likely to pass on this production anyway, the prudent move was to reduce exposure as much as possible.
But Cheon Yu-ah's response was decidedly negative.
"An outside investor barging in and meddling with the production — there'd be nothing more infuriating. If it were only their name attached, I might learn to live with it. But if I'm paying money into it and have to endure that? How exactly am I supposed to stomach it?"
"Well, that is..."
"Besides, once production is actually done, securing a slot will be the easy part."
"How do you figure?"
"Because we'll have an absolutely insane drama on our hands. Anyone with functioning eyes is going to turn that down?"
Cheon Yu-ah's position was that hearing a pitch or reading a script was a completely different matter from seeing a finished product with one's own eyes. If the drama they made became killer content capable of reshaping the entire OTT landscape, then Finesse would be the one clinging to them, not the other way around.
Faced with Cheon Yu-ah's ever-confident reply, Representative Ju found himself at a loss for words. All he could do was let out a long sigh.
"Still, if they do decline to schedule it..."
"I doubt they will. My thinking is that Finesse will end up taking it after all."
"Finesse, you say?"
"They have the best instincts in the business, and the deepest pockets. And any OTT that lets this slip through will end up churning out cheap knockoffs trying to copy it."
Headquarters may have wielded considerable influence over Finesse, but Finesse was not an S&M subsidiary, nor was S&M its largest shareholder. The people running it weren't senseless enough to miss out on genuine, top-tier killer content — which meant that, in all likelihood, this production would land with Finesse.
She found herself wondering what faces the Finesse executives would make when they had to buy, at a steep premium, the very show they could once have picked up cheap as one of their originals.
It promised to be a rather entertaining spectacle.
"And above all — if you had to put a price on removing Cheon Yu-ah's nightmares, how much do you think it would come to?"
"...Hmm."
"By my calculation, that value has to exceed three hundred million dollars at the very least. Is my math wrong?"
"You could not buy so much as the corner of a nightmare for a sum that small."
"Precisely. So let's drop the money talk, shall we?"
"...Understood."
It was Cheon Yu-ah's warning: the benefits Baek Si-woo had already delivered to the company dwarfed any such figure, so the subject of money was closed. Representative Ju had no intention of disputing this point, and quietly bowed his head. Whatever the circumstances, when Cheon Yu-ah set her mind on something, that was simply how it would be. Having delivered every piece of advice for the worst-case scenario, he had done all that could be asked of him.
I have absolutely no doubt that this production will be made with the company's money. Once Cheon Yu-ah decides something will happen, it happens.
In a sense, she's just cast a giant "Please, do it for me!" on the company — but I figure it'll be fine. If we were broke, that would be one thing, but this company clearly has money to burn.
And above all, I genuinely believe this is going to work.
Generous funding to shore up the CGI quality that fell short before, while nailing the steampunk aesthetic. The audience-hesitation problem — people balking at an unfamiliar genre — gets solved the moment a superstar of Cheon Yu-ah's caliber is attached.
"At that point, there's no way this fails."
So let the company eat every last morsel it can.
"Production and the actors stay free of investor interference, and the company pockets the profits."
A happy ending for everyone.
"Which is why I should just get back to the script."
The script with Cheon Yu-ah attached was already substantially complete. Or, to put it more precisely, Yang Yuri had been keeping a script she'd written long ago safely tucked away. It would need a fair amount of revision, of course, but it was more than enough to review the story and characters. That was why I'd asked her to make me a copy.
What I needed to confirm from this script came down to two things: how much the flow of the story had changed, and exactly what kind of character Cheon Yu-ah would be given. The latter, especially, genuinely intrigued me.
"So... Violet?"
Violet Langdon.
A freelance private detective, formerly of the Pinkerton National Detective Agency. Dispatched to Joseon at the request of the Arcane Goldberg Company to assess the profitability of the Unsan Gold Mine.
"Ah, so the Arcane Goldberg Company partially holds the mining rights to the Unsan Gold Mine in this version. So that's what the original story was."
The harshest criticism leveled at Joseon Gold Rush had been the CGI. That failure came down to budget, so there was never really any arguing it.
But there had been another target of nearly equal vitriol: the historical accuracy. The mining rights to Unsan Gold Mine had clearly passed to the Americans — so were we seriously expected to believe Joseon, Qing China, and the Japanese Empire would then spend the whole series squabbling over it?
Honestly, the historical plausibility was already dead on arrival the moment Joseon went steampunk, but plenty of voices insisted that basic coherence should still be maintained, and it kicked up a fair bit of controversy. It might have been less egregious if there'd been even a passing mention of America selling the rights to Qing or Japan — but the original had nothing of the sort, presumably because its premise was simply that a single protagonist was dispatched from America to assess the mine's viability.
"Which means Cheon Yu-ah is... American?"
Violet Roberts — a blonde, blue-eyed woman and a private detective. In that era, the Pinkertons operated at roughly the level of wartime mercenaries, so she was versed in combat, reconnaissance, and search operations alike. A veteran field agent who had traveled from nation to nation racking up distinguished service.
Her weapons of choice: a pair of revolvers, and a Gatling gun.
"...A Gatling gun?"
So let me get this straight. Cheon Yu-ah is playing a gorgeous blonde private detective... who wields a Gatling gun?
"Isn't that a little much?"
I'd assumed Myeongmyeong — the man carving a swath through the steampunk era with a single sword — was this story's resident lunatic. Turns out the truly unhinged one was someone else entirely.
Good heavens. A Gatling gun.
Yang Yuri, what kind of monster have you created?
The writer had absolutely bellowed at me to go all-in on giving Cheon Yu-ah power, and now, faced with an adversary far stronger than I'd bargained for, I didn't know whether to laugh or run.