The Dragon's Eyes
The phone rang like a siren.
Ring—!
Ring ring—!!
Ring ring ring….
From the crack of dawn, the phones in the publicity team’s office had been screaming nonstop.
One exhausted employee finally couldn’t take the gradient-tone hell any longer and grumbled as he opened the door.
“Hey, can you at least—”
Bang!!
The door slammed shut before he could finish.
What the hell did I just see…?
Energy drink cans scattered everywhere. Hollow-eyed staff mechanically answering calls. Each person juggling three or four phones at once.
Yes. If hell existed on Earth, this was it.
“…T-Team Leader, the calls just keep coming. What should we do?”
“They’re all demanding more material on the Representative. They say they’ll run our guild’s promo with a killer visual package.”
“The click-through rate is insane… Look at this. Our guild articles are taking up the entire front page. We used to struggle to get even one piece a week.”
“What do we do, Team Leader? Keep going?”
“Team Leader!!”
“Team Leadeeeer!”
“Unnie, snap out of it alreadyyy!!”
The publicity team leader’s half-lidded eyes answered with a dazed “Huh?” as her soul visibly evaporated in real time.
She never imagined it would get this bad.
Honestly, when Lee Shin told her to sell him, she had assumed it was just another case of terminal main character syndrome.
Sure, he was handsome enough to slap an S-rank actor across the face. Sure, he was ranked first among the richest people in their twenties in Korea. Sure, he was called the national team’s resident troublemaker and lived rent-free in everyone’s mouths. But at the end of the day, wasn’t he still just a regular person?
Handsome enough to slap an S-rank actor, but still not an S-rank actor.
Ranked first among the richest in his twenties, but the money wasn’t even his.
That left only the “national team troublemaker” title. When exactly had he become some irresistible bad boy?
That was why she—herself a hopeless eolppa—figured he would only appeal to people like her. The kind of fleeting interest that sparkled for a moment in some online community, got saved to a folder, and disappeared.
In short: she had been dead wrong.
Their troublemaker had mainstream appeal.
And an absolutely ridiculous amount of it.
5. Lee Shin (NEW)
Every random item he tossed out became an article. A few photos uploaded, and followers poured in like rain.
That alone would have been crazy, but the real kicker was something else.
Aggro.
After all, a troublemaker lives and dies by aggro, doesn’t he?
And that just so happened to be Lee Shin’s main specialty. The moment he got serious about stirring the pot, the media swarmed like they had been waiting for it their entire lives.
Entertainment reporters, social affairs desks, variety show PDs, even journalists from regional women’s magazines.
Brrrr—
Just remembering it made the publicity team leader’s body tremble.
It was pure terror.
The second an article went up, every phone in the publicity team rang in unison exactly three seconds later. The chills were unreal.
From that moment on, those phones never stopped ringing. The poor publicity team hadn’t slept a wink since.
They say superstars drive both their fans and haters insane.
Insane calls. Insane situation. Insane workload. The entire world seemed to have lost its mind over Lee Shin.
At this point, she was starting to get scared.
She had lit the fire like she was told, but as anyone could see, the situation had long since left her hands.
Virality was a double-edged sword. If you drew this much attention in such a short time, you had better have something prepared to match it.
If you didn’t, you’d be burned alive by the backlash wildfire you created.
“How on earth is he planning to handle this…”
She couldn’t even begin to picture what Lee Shin was drawing.
Ring—!
Ring ring—!!
Ring ring ring….
Of course, even while she was thinking, the phones never stopped.
“Mmm~ mmhmm~”
Lee Shin’s fingers danced along to a cheerful rhythm.
“Nice. Piano sound.”
The car was filled with elegant melody.
It was the kind of music you’d hear in a commercial or as a ringtone somewhere, but there was a clear difference when a professional played it.
The melody was refined, the ride was smooth, the cushions were plush, and the sunlight pouring through the windows felt perfectly warm.
If only he could pop one of those soft, fluffy steamed potatoes from the rest stop right about now.
Yeah. Perfection.
“This is heaven.”
The way Lee Shin’s lips curved into a triangle showed just how flawless the moment was.
His passenger, however, felt differently.
“You seem to be enjoying yourself,” Chae Dong-ha said.
“Yeah, I am. What’s this song called? Beethoven’s Four Seasons?”
“That’s Vivaldi.”
“Don’t sweat the small stuff. If it slaps, it slaps. I’m having a whole new appreciation for good speakers.”
“Ah… yes…”
Chae Dong-ha stared at him blankly. The dark circles under his eyes were heavy with exhaustion.
It was only natural. For the past several days, the entire guild had been pulling all-nighters carrying out Lee Shin’s orders. And Chae Dong-ha, as the control tower, had been the one handling and directing all of it.
Sleep had become a foreign concept.
Yet here he was, still groaning over the mountain of documents that kept piling up, while the man beside him casually waxed poetic about heaven. It was enough to make anyone’s blood boil.
“You’re gonna burn a hole through my face, man.”
“…It’s just your imagination.”
“Heh heh heh. Imagination, my ass. You’re radiating dissatisfaction. Want a potato?”
“I’m fine.”
“Why? They’re good.”
Lee Shin popped the rejected potato into his own mouth and decided to offer some advice to the sulking little sprout beside him.
“Everyone has their own strengths, man. Think about it. What if I stayed at the guild and had to deal with the staff every day? It’d be uncomfortable as hell, right?”
Self-objectification.
It was Lee Shin’s strongest field.
He believed that looking at himself objectively was the only way to solve the next problem. After all, the one taking action was always himself.
That was why, whenever a problem arose, Lee Shin always tried to view himself from an outside perspective.
Am I better at answering phones than the publicity team?
Am I better at reading metrics than the finance team?
In the end, you had to use what you were good at—your unique strengths.
“You draw the big picture.”
“The big picture?”
“Yep. An insanely big picture.”
This wasn’t some ordinary drawing. Have you ever heard of the kind of big picture that comes from twenty years of experience?
Right on cue, a phone rang. Chae Dong-ha quickly cut the conversation short and answered.
A moment later, he reported the results to Lee Shin.
“We got word. Guild Leader Jeong Sun-dong says he’s finished locating the targets.”
“That’s our Guild Leader. I knew I could count on him.”
A few days ago—back when he had boldly declared to the publicity team leader that he would sell himself—Lee Shin had pulled Jeong Sun-dong aside for a separate conversation.
The core of that talk had been simple.
You had to clearly distinguish between means and ends.
Virality and fame were nothing but tools. Their true goal was to restore Mir Guild’s faded glory and rebuild it into a prestigious guild once again.
The answer was performance. Therefore, they absolutely had to achieve promotion this year.
With that, Lee Shin had handed Jeong Sun-dong a thick stack of profiles. Those were exactly the recruitment list that Chae Dong-ha was currently reviewing.
“As expected, Guild Leader Sun-dong is better at this than management. His work is so clean and efficient.”
“It’s impressive. How did he even find them? Normally, if you ask another guild about their promising prospects, they refuse outright.”
“Connections.”
“Connections?”
“What do you think runs Korean society? School ties, regional ties, blood ties. In the end, it all comes down to personal networks. Our Sun-dong has an insane network.”
Jeong Sun-dong.
To Lee Shin, the name was more familiar as Vice President Jeong Sun-dong of the Association.
He wasn’t a major character in Genius Manager.
In a way, he was little more than a minor NPC who only appeared to give congratulatory remarks when you received a trophy.
But this character had one interesting trait.
Despite having only a few lines of description befitting a minor NPC, one phrase stood out clearly.
『 …Has a good personality and treats everyone sincerely, earning the support of so many hunters that he is called “Papa”… 』
Exactly.
This character was what people called an “in-crowd” type—someone who rose through connections rather than raw ability.
Some people looked at networking with colored glasses. They called it pathetic, saying it was nothing but brown-nosing superiors to parachute into a position instead of earning it through skill.
But Lee Shin didn’t see it that way.
In the end, connections were also an objective competitive advantage.
For example, even though Lee Shin had hated his previous boss with a burning passion, he still showed the man proper respect because of how well he could work a room.
In the same way, despite his indecisive personality, stuttering speech, and weak appearance, Jeong Sun-dong had risen to Vice President of the Association purely through his network.
Of course, because of that kind personality, he ended up being manipulated by the cunning Yang Pan-seok and eventually discarded. But that was a future that no longer existed in this world, so they could set it aside. At any rate, depending on how he was used, the man could be quite useful.
After hearing Lee Shin’s slightly edited explanation, Chae Dong-ha finally nodded in understanding.
“Having a wide network means it’s statistically easier to gather information. It would also be possible to subtly probe for promising prospects.”
“Even if you make contact, there’s a world of difference between hearing something through an acquaintance and walking up to someone cold. If you compare the success rate of random hunting versus a blind date, blind dates win by a landslide.”
“That’s true. I saw a survey once that said blind dates lead to couples six times more often than random approaches… Why are you looking at me like that?”
“Hmm~ Our big brother here is lonely, huh?”
“…I watched it with my younger sibling.”
“Sure, let’s go with that.”
“Ahem. Anyway, it’s strangely convincing. I understand now. So that’s why you left the recruitment to the Guild Leader.”
“Well? Can you see the big picture I’m drawing?”
“Well…”
Chae Dong-ha, who had seemed ready to agree, suddenly asked something else.
“It feels like the picture you’re looking at is too big.”
“What do you mean~?”
“Public opinion. The fire you lit is still burning fiercely.”
There was definitely persuasive power in Lee Shin’s words.
To the public, Lee Shin was known as an irredeemable troublemaker. But the Lee Shin that Chae Dong-ha had observed up close was different. His behavior and frivolous speech might suggest otherwise, but when it came to guild management, he was a specialist with unmatched insight, godlike foresight, and zero weaknesses.
Still, even taking all of that into account, the picture Lee Shin was currently drawing was undeniably dangerous.
“In my opinion, you plan to calm the burning public opinion with recruitment. The standard strategy of soothing fan dissatisfaction through new signings. However, Representative.”
He gathered all the profiles he had been reviewing into one stack and continued.
“That burning public opinion has already slipped far beyond our control. Simply recruiting a few promising prospects will clearly be insufficient to quell the topic.”
The entire raid team had transferred. More than half the front office had left, leaving the place in chaos. At this point, the only ones left in Mir Guild were the fans.
And right now, they were at war with those very fans—the very heart of the guild.
To throw those fans away just to use them as kindling for virality? That was basically asking to die.
“How about revealing the truth and enduring the aftermath? If we can’t calm this public opinion first, only ashes will remain. We’ll lose the fans, lose our image, and have nothing left.”
At Chae Dong-ha’s claim that drawing too big a picture risked tearing it apart, Lee Shin’s expression changed.
Concern? Worry? No—it was admiration and pride. Like a child who had just watched a cactus grow overnight.
“And?”
“Pardon?”
“What comes after? Is that all?”
Anyone could point out problems. If you wanted to prove your ability, you had to present solutions.
At Lee Shin’s question, Chae Dong-ha thought for a long time before answering.
“Sigh. The only thing that comes to mind right now is that we need a heavyweight recruitment.”
For the scales to balance, the weights on both sides had to be similar.
If explosive public opinion like a volcano was weighing down one side, the other side needed an equally shocking recruitment to restore balance.
“Yes, no matter how I think about it, that seems to be the only way. Regardless of the reason, you drove out Yang Pan-seok, a guild legend. The fans will want that void filled with someone even greater than Yang Pan-seok. Only then will their anger subside even a little.”
Having given his answer, Chae Dong-ha turned his head only to find Lee Shin grinning from ear to ear.
Clap clap.
“Everyone give him a round of applause!! You too, bro—wait, you’re driving. My bad. Anyway, whoaaa~ When did our big brother grow up so much?”
Eighty out of one hundred points.
In an environment where he could have easily stayed passive, he had identified the problem and proactively offered a solution. That alone deserved applause.
This is why innate rank matters.
An S-rank could grow into an SS-rank, but an innate SS-rank was different from the very start.
“You’re almost right. That’s the answer you came up with. But here’s the thing…”
Offset the uncontrollably grown virality by recruiting new faces. In broad strokes, that was correct.
But Lee Shin was looking much further ahead.
“What if we make a signing that’s not just hot, but incomparably hotter than the current topic? Instead of putting out the fire, what if we pour even more fuel on it?”
At that point, it would go beyond simple support.
“That kind of shock itself becomes a single ‘image.’”
Image.
The decisive difference between lower-league guilds and Major League guilds could be summed up in how distinct that image was.
What seemed useless at first glance became a brand when used commercially and a mascot that united fandoms.
“Shock value! For Mir Guild, which has been pickled in defeat and left with nothing but malice, I think that’s the exact image we need most.”
Even if it was nasty, it was never boring. Even if it was crazy and gave everyone headaches, it was always worth watching. Every day was precarious, yet the tightrope walk was thrilling.
This was the big picture Lee Shin had drawn, and the way to save the patient in critical condition.
“That’s why where we’re going right now is important.”
“Why is that?”
“Because.”
The finishing touch.
“We’re on our way to recruit the dragon’s eyes.”
At the end of this road lay Mir Guild’s final dot.