One Out of Every Five
This is a story from my days in Murim.
A village near Xinjiang was massacred, every last inhabitant wiped out.
The Wulin Alliance trumpeted it far and wide as the work of a Demon Brain of the Divine Cult who had mastered forbidden martial arts.
It was an absurd accusation.
The Divine Cult had banned those brutally refined arts long before.
The imperial family of the 'Jun' Empire that ruled the Central Plains maintained a basic policy of non-interference in Murim affairs.
What you might call the sanctity of separation between throne and martial world.
To the throne, the Divine Cult and the orthodox sects were all cut from the same cloth, so unless special circumstances arose, it paid no mind to clashes between martial sects.
But there were incidents that forced the imperial hand — namely, when civilians untrained in martial arts were slaughtered.
This incident was roughly one of those.
As the affair escalated, the imperial family took an interest, and the Divine Cult found itself in a position where it had to make a decision of its own.
The Cult judged the whole thing to be a scheme of the Wulin Alliance.
The plot: massacre the residents near Xinjiang to turn public sentiment against the Cult while simultaneously provoking a collision between the throne and the Divine Cult, reaping the benefits from both sides.
The Heavenly Demon and the Cult's leadership erupted in fury at such villainy and resolved to crush them for it.
The Cult's response was simple and brutal.
First, they handpicked several orthodox sects closest to Xinjiang.
Then they infiltrated covertly and hid the old Blood Sect manuals those sects kept in their archives.
After that, it was easy.
Wipe out the orthodox sects, then announce to the world that they had been remnants of the Blood Sect all along. Done.
Forbidden Blood Sect manuals were discovered with imperial inspectors standing right there, and the Alliance's strike force — its excuses flimsy beyond salvaging — withdrew without a single achievement to its name.
Peace(?) returned to the Xinjiang region at last.
"This is genuinely how the Divine Cult handles things, mind you."
Coming from an organization like that, spreading a few rumors wasn't exactly shocking — but I had my doubts about whether it would actually work here.
Because while flaws might have surfaced on other celebrities, we hadn't secured anything that would actually defuse the school bullying issue aimed at me.
It wasn't a real solution, was it? Just shuffling the deck.
But astonishingly, it worked.
First, the initial article — the one that brazenly named names — blew up, and public attention converged on it.
Naming a celebrity directly in tabloid trash takes a certain audacity you simply can't afford without conviction.
Whether it's spreading false information or defamation by stating facts, something is bound to stick, so everyone avoids direct mentions that could become a problem.
But the moment someone fired off an article that boldly, people started thinking — well, maybe there's something to it?
The rookie actor targeted by that first rumor belonged to a fairly solid mid-tier agency, and the company responded swiftly.
As it turned out, this one had lived an upright life — even acquaintances from his school days came forward to testify that no such thing had happened.
It was a reasonably wise response, and the rumor seemed poised to be dismissed as groundless.
But right then, rumors about celebrities sharing the same initial spread all at once.
"Actually, I think the B from K High isn't that one — it's this one."
The attention that had gathered on the first rumor now shifted entirely to the question of who the *real* B was, and each targeted celebrity went about quashing the rumors in their own way.
The first article, with its reckless name-dropping, had only poured fuel on the fire.
And around this time, the rumor about me finally broke too.
Somehow they'd even dug up my graduation album and lovingly crafted an entire novel out of it.
Our company's countermeasure was an aggressive one.
We flatly dismissed everything as baseless and fired off a lawsuit at the rumor-mongers.
"Honestly, I expected it to go about this far."
"So did I."
"But I never imagined it would unravel like *this*..."
"Wherever five people gather, at least one of them is bound to be a thug. You cast seventeen — of course there'd be a thug among them."
Things turned bizarre when, out of the seventeen targets we had indiscriminately set loose, an actual school bullying perpetrator crawled out of the woodwork.
Public attention gathered where it would gather, and posting people's past transgressions online spread like some kind of viral challenge.
Perhaps energized by the mood, victims of past school bullying began stepping forward to expose their tormentors.
Of the seventeen, no fewer than three turned out to be genuine bullies.
The famous proverb — that among any five people, one is garbage — had been proven in the flesh.
With real perpetrators exposed, the other celebrities vanished from everyone's field of vision entirely.
I never proved anything one way or the other, and my name had long since disappeared from the conversation.
The actual bullies got torn apart like dogs, and just like that, the rumor crisis was more or less settled.
"It's not like we came out unscathed either..."
The unforeseen damage to me, specifically, was that stories from my school days were now circulating on the internet.
"No friends, but at least he's got witnesses."
"Um, yes. Well..."
Good grief — when did I ever do that?
Why should I have to feel embarrassed over stories from a past I can barely even remember?
Then again, thanks to my classmates' testimony, I was swiftly crossed off the suspected bullies list.
"Was all this really necessary, if it was going to end like this anyway?"
From where I stood, I'd been cleared purely on the strength of my classmates' accounts.
A clarifying article plus eyewitness testimony was enough to dodge the rumor.
Why blow the whole thing up in the first place? I asked Cheon Yoo-ah, and her answer was resolute.
"No. You have the order of operations backwards. It's precisely *because* things blew up this big that the testimonies came in so easily."
"...Is that so?"
"And it's because there were real perpetrators to take the beating in my place that this didn't drag on. If the rumor had spread about you alone, it would never have resolved this cleanly."
Fair enough — as the incident escalated, a challenge emerged to find the real B among the seventeen, and naturally an atmosphere formed where people uploaded what they'd witnessed of their pasts.
Cheon Yoo-ah's analysis was that without that atmosphere, my own testimonies would never have surfaced.
Especially since, had I been latched onto as a bully, nothing good would ever have been posted about me.
If people got flak just for posting, feelings would get hurt, after all.
"By the way, what happened to that outlet that ran the naming article in the first place?"
"They posted a retraction. The actor's agency didn't want things escalating any further either."
"That's all it takes?"
"Plenty of outlets don't even do that much. Judging by that company's track record, they probably planned for exactly this outcome from the start."
What an inscrutable world. So this is how media scum make their living.
It's not that there are no good journalists — it's just that the entertainment beat is uniquely infested with them.
Granted, I benefited from the media scum this time, but they weren't exactly people I warmed to.
That said, entirely apart from that, I was quite satisfied with how Flame Entertainment handled the press — the way they managed the narrative, the sheer firepower they could deploy at a moment's notice.
Granted, having anticipated the opponent's dirty play in advance counted for a lot, but in the end, we'd won the media war outright.
At this rate, this really might be worth a shot.
"Senior Yoo-ah."
"Yes."
"Don't you think it's a bit much for us to just keep taking hits like this?"
"You mean Mun Entertainment?"
"If we hadn't seen it coming, we'd have been in real trouble if they'd blindsided us — like with this whole affair."
"...That's true."
"And this isn't just about me. Company money was invested in that drama — it nearly got torpedoed."
Anyone could see that the one who'd run the operation against me was Mun Entertainment.
I hadn't made enemies anywhere else to begin with.
The closest thing would be Jo Yooshin, but SD would never go to these lengths just for his sake.
If I'd actually been a rising star who stole someone's role, maybe — but for a low-tier nobody like me, there was no reason to deploy something like that.
If she hadn't pointed it out, I'd have wandered around for ages wondering who the culprit was, but that wasn't the situation anymore.
With a culprit whose motive was this obvious standing there in broad daylight, all that remained was sweet(?) revenge.
And the justification was more than sufficient.
This drama was a flagship production, funded entirely by the company.
Forget me — merely attempting to harm the drama was a crime deserving of death.
"But Mun Entertainment doesn't exactly have anything we can grab. Their only star is that one woman — why would they touch a core role in *our* drama?"
"Right. All Mun Entertainment has is Luna. Which is exactly why we go for their most vital point."
"How?"
"We bring Luna over. What attack could possibly be more devastating than that?"
"...That woman?"
I hadn't the faintest intention of interfering in her career.
She was already a star living her best life — why on earth would I mess with that?
But looking at the situation, something about it left a sour taste in my mouth, and I found myself thinking I had to do something.
She was a talent far too precious to be wasting away at a company like Mun Entertainment.
Ideally she'd simply transfer over, but judging by how Mun Entertainment operated, that wouldn't come easy either.
Unlike a sports star's free agency, I'd never once seen a celebrity split from their agency on good terms.
Over a grueling seven-year contract, the company handles every last chore for them, which makes it easy to find leverage — and once they slap you with that peculiar frame of "betraying the company that raised you from debut," the odds turn against the artist. That's showbiz free agency for you.
With vipers like Mun Entertainment especially, a smear campaign was all but guaranteed — and for cleaning up exactly these kinds of problems, no matter how I turned it over, our Flame was perfectly suited.
In the end, her nesting at our company was the cleanest possible outcome — good for the company, and good for her.
"Moon Soo-yeon, hmm..."
But Cheon Yoo-ah still seemed dissatisfied with something.
As far as I was concerned, the justification and the profit were both more than sufficient.
Just watching her acting, she was exactly the calibre of performer Cheon Yoo-ah would appreciate — so what on earth was the problem?
In the end, I had no choice but to play my last card.
"I'm using the Free Pass, Senior Yoo-ah. You promised me, remember?"
"...I did promise. But you're spending it *now*?"
"Yes. I have no doubt whatsoever that this is the wisest choice."
The Free Pass I'd secured back when I went to volunteer at the orphanage.
Cheon Yoo-ah's promise to recruit one person of my choosing, no conditions attached.
When I brought out the Free Pass, even Cheon Yoo-ah reluctantly nodded.
"Hah. I never imagined you'd use it here. But understand — I can't recruit someone who doesn't want to come."
"I'm well aware."
"I'm only saying this because I've heard things myself. Keep my words in mind."
"Yes, I'll keep them in mind."
"But... if she wants it... then Flame will move heaven and earth to bring her in."
And so, Cheon Yoo-ah's approval was granted.
All that remained now was waiting for the woman's own decision.
She'd begun opening up, little by little, ever since the guqin shoot — which meant it was just about time to move into full operation.