The Victim Card
“What? A special episode? At this point?”
Following his parents’ teaching to never yield to injustice, Choi Bul-gul carried something close to a sense of mission when it came to pursuing justice.
This was why he had stubbornly protected the exposé program that everyone else avoided until the very end. This time, just like always, he had pushed forward with the ‘Busan Supply Gate’ story despite external pressure.
The core message he wanted to deliver was ‘external pressure.’
The broadcasting station had clearly tried to bury the supply gate scandal. That was a fact.
Rumors said the higher-ups had dropped a single line: ‘You think that’ll make money?’ They had even told him to look for items that could support product placement instead.
Product placement? In an exposé program? All they cared about was money, money, money. A bunch of money-obsessed ghouls.
And yet… now they were suddenly throwing him a special episode like some generous favor?
“Why?”
“One episode feels like a waste, doesn’t it? You’ve been obsessed with this story for half a year. You must have a mountain of unused material. I’ll set the stage for you. Let’s make this special episode slick and polished.”
“Why??”
“I’ll give you a fat activity budget. Film the opening at that site you investigated, tour all the places you visited, call in every informant who gave you tips for interviews. Want CG too?”
“Why???”
“Hey!!”
The CP’s roar was even louder than Choi Bul-gul’s shriek.
“Do you think this is a charity? The same higher-ups who told you to drop it because it wouldn’t make money are now telling you to do a special. What do you think the reason is?”
“……Because it makes money now?”
“Exactly. It makes money now. Because—”
“Hold on. I’ll take it from here.”
“……?”
“……??”
At the voice coming from behind them, both men turned their heads.
“……!!”
“……!!”
The jaws of two people who, as broadcasting veterans, rarely showed surprise, dropped all the way to the floor.
In the broadcasting world, there was a man regarded like a legendary Pokémon.
Calling him a viewership guarantee was an understatement. He was a viewership nuclear bomb.
Just a glimpse of him sent the ratings graph shooting straight up.
The fashion he wore sold out instantly. His style became the next day’s trend.
He was the man who popularized paparazzi culture in Korea.
The ultimate role model for the variety department PD next door.
Even the heavy-bottomed news division guys drooled over him.
He was the true superstar of this era.
“Nice to meet you, PD Choi. I’m Lee Shin, representative of Mir Guild. Let’s make something together.”
Choi Bul-gul finally understood the money-obsessed higher-ups’ feelings.
How could anyone resist this?
Lee Shin has entered the game.
Why do humans go crazy for that perfect sweet-and-salty balance?
It’s because humans are designed to get tired of any single flavor easily. Too sweet becomes nauseating. Too salty becomes unbearable.
Constant stimulation doesn’t just dull people—it becomes unpleasant.
Lee Shin was fully aware of this.
“So it’s about time to show a different side~ That’s what I’m saying.”
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“By a different side, you mean playing the victim?”
“Playing the victim? I was a perfectly innocent victim groaning under the tyranny of my suppliers.”
“Innocent my ass! You’re the one who blew up the supply gate scandal in the first place!”
“Oh dear, how scary. How could someone like me possibly do such a terrifying thing?”
Lee Shin was shameless.
Chae Dong-ha, sitting beside him, was utterly floored by the sight of Lee Shin wrapping his arms around himself in mock fear. How could one person have such a thick face?
Even with the supply gate scandal rocking Busan, Mir Guild was still soaring high. The Mountain King was still the Mountain King, and the young prospects like Park Jeong-seok, Lee Hye-jung, and Park Su-bin were finally unleashing their full potential.
On top of that, after cutting out the malicious contracts, the dramatically improved quality of their supplies had pushed their momentum—which already seemed to have nowhere left to climb—through the stratosphere and into outer space.
So what Chae Dong-ha wanted to say was this:
This was already a resounding success. No, it was beyond successful. It was an unprecedented season.
Yet his boss still wasn’t satisfied. He had come all the way to Seoul and was determined to stir up even more trouble!
“Hmm. Looking at your face, it seems like you’re thinking, ‘Is this really necessary?’”
“I was also thinking that the words ‘stability’ and ‘peace’ must have been erased from your vocabulary, Representative.”
“Not entirely wrong. But what do you think, hyung? That we should settle down now?”
“Even if you’re running, there comes a time when you need to rest. Though honestly, saying ‘rest’ feels ridiculous. Look at our guild’s current record. Wouldn’t ‘flying’ be a more accurate description than ‘running’?”
Park Jeong-seok, Lee Hye-jung, and Lee Shin’s top pick, Park Su-bin.
Beyond them, Mir’s other young prospects were also exploding with potential. Their growth had turned the Mountain King into ‘Dragon Dad’ and ‘Mountain Dad,’ ushering in his second golden age.
And the front office? The chaos from the beginning of the season had vanished. Everyone was now properly carrying their own weight in their respective areas.
The result was that Mir Guild was setting new records in every gate they participated in—an unprecedented run that would likely never be seen again.
“You’ve seen the community reactions. The Yongbung fans’ support for you has reached the level of a religion. It’s almost scary. Yet you still don’t seem satisfied at all.”
“A monster who knows no satisfaction. I like the sound of that.”
“Sometimes it frightens me. You always succeed, so I can’t really complain, but it is concerning.”
“Wait, wait.”
Lee Shin, who had been listening quietly, suddenly furrowed his brow.
“This feels familiar… Ah! I remember. Heh heh heh. We had this exact conversation before, didn’t we?”
It was back when Lee Shin had preached his grand plan.
He had clashed with the fandom and set the public opinion on fire. Chae Dong-ha had desperately tried to stop him, yelling, ‘We’re all going to die like this~!’
But what had been the result?
In the end, with the recruitment of the Mountain King and the greatest showcase in history, Mir Guild had become the idol of that year’s Stove League.
“It’s different this time. Back then, you had already secured the information on the Mountain King in advance.”
“No, hyung. It’s exactly the same. Then and now, it all comes down to how far and wide you can see, and how big a picture you can draw.”
Lee Shin could easily guess what picture Chae Dong-ha was looking at.
It was obviously promotion.
He was looking at their stellar performance this year as the final period on the sentence and aiming for League 3. That was why he kept saying those things. Honestly, at their current pace, promotion to League 3 seemed more than achievable.
His words weren’t wrong at all. In fact, they were excellent.
Chae Dong-ha hadn’t even finished one full season yet, but the fact that he was already thinking step by step about promotion and what came after proved he had the makings of an outstanding general manager.
However.
If Lee Shin were asked whether that was the right answer from his perspective, he would answer without hesitation.
No. Not even close.
“Hyung, there’s a fundamental difference in our vision.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’ve already stood at the peak once.”
“……?”
Peak? Did he go up to the roof or something? At that questioning look, Lee Shin chuckled softly.
In a world of GMs with no endings, Lee Shin was the ultimate veteran who had come closest to reaching one.
When the rookie vice-leader Chae Dong-ha looked up at the summit from the base of the mountain, Lee Shin had already been standing at the top, chewing on a cucumber and admiring the view.
How could their visions be the same when the scenery they saw was completely different?
“You know, even now, if I close my eyes, I can see so many things. They’re incredibly big, cool, fun, and fantastic.”
“I don’t fully understand what you’re saying, but you’re telling me you’re still not satisfied?”
“Yeah. This time, I’m going to take them all down.”
“Yes, take them all down… Wait, what?!”
Chae Dong-ha stared at Lee Shin with wide, round eyes. The pure, innocent expression had vanished from Lee Shin’s face, replaced by a sly, crooked smile.
“Just imagine it. What if a massive investigation sweeps through the entire supply industry because of this supply gate scandal?”
“No way…!”
“What if the supply companies are temporarily paralyzed? What happens to the guilds that rely on them?”
“Ah… ah……”
“The big guilds will be fine. They’ll have other channels. But what about the lower-tier guilds? The League 4 and League 3 guilds at our level? Do they have other channels?”
“Representative, are you saying we’re going to do to them what they did to us…?”
“Heh heh heh. Doesn’t that sound fun?”
The fastest way to gain competitiveness.
That was to crush your competitors.
A raid was coming up in a couple of days, but their supplies were running dangerously low. That tension was pretty intense, wasn’t it?
“It’d be unfair if only we had to suffer through something this good.”
“……I know this is rude, but I really want to open up your head and take a look inside.”
“I’d like to show you too. It gets lonely seeing this scenery all by myself sometimes.”
Time flew by, and the day of the special filming finally arrived.
* * *
“Unnie, I’m so confused. This is our filming set, right?”
“……Y-yeah, I think so…?”
“Ugh, I feel nauseous.”
was one of the few remaining traditional exposé programs that had fully inherited the spirit of pursuing justice.
In the example above, what do the words justice, spirit, and traditional mean? (3 points)
Answer: Ratings disaster.
That’s right.
The program wasn’t entertaining.
So people weren’t interested.
It was simply a token program for the public broadcaster to proudly declare, ‘Unlike those money-crazed evil cable channels, we contribute to society like this.’ That was .
That was why the production staff were currently so confused.
The CCP on the left, the head of the educational department on the right. Turn your head and there was the head of the production department. And why the hell was someone from the variety department here?
People who had no business being on this set were swarming everywhere.
“It’s all because of that guy, right? Lee Shin.”
“Now that I think about it, this is your first time seeing him. He’s handsome, isn’t he?”
“Hehe.”
The writers huddled in the corner poked their heads out like baby chicks and stared at the other side. There stood Lee Shin, casually chatting on the stage.
“Wow… Seriously, the word ‘handsome’ doesn’t do him justice. He’s beautiful.”
“He really is insanely good-looking. He’s got this insane glow! We don’t even need lighting.”
“The saying that cameras can’t capture the real thing was made for moments like this.”
“No wonder the rumors spread. Even among actors, someone at his level is rare.”
Working at a broadcasting station, you saw actors and idols quite often.
Idols with heads the size of fists, actors whose names alone were recognizable. Some of them looked unrealistically perfect. Yet even compared to them, Lee Shin’s appearance was on another level. In fact, it was so overwhelming that they looked lacking by comparison.
While some people were completely focused on Lee Shin’s overwhelming beauty, the veteran PD Choi Bul-gul and the main writer were looking at him with a completely different meaning in their eyes.
“I’ve lived long enough to see everything. Never thought we’d have that guy as a guest on our program.”
“Well, you knew we’d use him someday, right? Like that guy who turned the plane around.”
“Heh heh, true.”
If an exposé program PD didn’t know about the national team troublemaker Lee Shin, that would be dereliction of duty. In fact, he had tried to cover him several times only to get cut by the higher-ups.
“When he first went down to Busan and said he was going to be a guild representative, the rumor was that he’d been exiled.”
“Probably half true, don’t you think? Even now, whenever I watch the video of him recruiting the Mountain King, I still feel dazed.”
“If the investigation results are accurate, it doesn’t seem like he’s actually changed.”
“Maybe he just found his calling. The results speak for themselves.”
“True. I heard his reputation inside Ido Group is improving day by day. That must be why those sneaky senior executives came running down here in such a hurry.”
While Choi Bul-gul personally found Lee Shin’s transformation interesting, he didn’t forget his duty as a PD.
Either way, Lee Shin had come to them of his own accord.
A troublemaker and national team disaster, but with topic-generating power that was practically a cheat key. Just securing Lee Shin was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for Choi Bul-gul.
“If I can’t produce results with him sitting right here, then it’s time for me to leave this industry.”
At the same time, he had personal expectations as well.
This supply gate scandal was something Choi Bul-gul had poured a great deal of time and effort into. Although the decisive tip had come from an anonymous woman, he had worked just as hard and didn’t want the case to fizzle out.
He needed the public’s sustained attention, and to get that attention, he needed topic power.
In the end, the answer was simple.
“Ratings. It has to explode.”
Choi Bul-gul stared intensely at Lee Shin on the monitor.
Show me what you’ve got. Show me why people are so crazy about you.
The broadcast began with those swelling expectations.
To put it bluntly, Lee Shin exceeded Choi Bul-gul’s expectations by two hundred percent.
“Is that guy… crying?”