As Popularity Grows
If anything, Yoon Jay thought the truth had come out late. Plenty of people had seen him at the funeral, after all. Most of the mourners had been industry people.
"So the person who told you about me was... Writer Park?"
"Yes."
"Heh..."
Lee Seo-won let out a hollow laugh. He'd considered himself fairly close to Yoon Su-heon, yet he'd never once imagined the man had a hidden son.
Come to think of it... he did mention family.
Over drinks with Yoon Su-heon, the man had confessed, liquor-loosened, that he had remarried. And he'd complained bitterly about how he'd wronged his old family so badly that his own life had fallen apart. Lee Seo-won glanced at Yoon Jay's expressionless face. A grave mistake, huh... What on earth could it have been?
"Ah, anyway, that's not why I called you in... We're revising your contract."
"Are the terms getting better?"
"Of course. In exchange, the term gets extended. Seven years — the industry standard."
Yoon Jay flipped through the contract Lee Seo-won handed him at a rapid pace.
"...I take it I passed the test, then."
"You passed that test ages ago. Take your time reading it."
"No need. I've read it all."
"Already?"
He looked up and met Lee Seo-won's eyes, wearing an expression that said, is that a problem?
"You're raising the signing bonus, and you're re-settling Along Along under the new terms..."
He... he really did read the whole thing? Lee Seo-won was briefly stunned before recovering his composure. The man had gone straight into acting without any formal training, so it was quicker to assume he'd simply always been sharp.
Yoon Jay signed the contract and slid it back across the desk.
"I'm happy with it."
"Good. So am I."
Still, Lee Seo-won felt a flicker of worry. The man had enlisted right after high school, so he probably wasn't well-versed in this sort of thing... not that the contract contained any predatory clauses.
"So the twins — you first met them at the funeral?"
"Yes."
"Wow... it's like something out of a drama."
"I hear that a lot."
And he hadn't even gotten to the part about his family in America yet. Yoon Jay simply smiled.
"So you've known them less than a few months? And you're already that close? From those sighting reports, it seems like the kids really adore you."
"I'm used to looking after younger siblings."
The two men exchanged the signed contract and traded small talk for a while longer. Then, glancing down at his phone, Lee Seo-won's face abruptly twisted.
"Son of a—"
"Sir?"
"Nothing. It's nothing."
What was that? Did something happen? Yoon Jay couldn't ask, because Han Jin-woo flung the door open right then.
"Sir! Jay, we have to go now."
"One last thing before you head out."
Lee Seo-won rose from his seat and walked the two of them out. They passed through the office and called the elevator.
"You've noticed things are different now, right, Jay? How people look at you, how visible you've become?"
Yoon Jay nodded.
His day began with exercise. There happened to be a walking trail and public workout equipment near his home, so he made use of them — but lately, more and more people had been snapping photos and greeting him. He'd actually been debating whether he needed to get a gym membership instead.
"All kinds of people are going to latch onto you from here on out. We manage your social media on our end, but there are people who'll ask you for money, or try to get you to buy strange things... Anyway, you were abroad a long time, so watch out for the scammers over here."
"Thank you for looking out for me."
"And you do know that the more popular you get, the more people will come out of the woodwork with malice for no reason at all?"
Oh, I know it very well. His childhood held the record for the largest anti-fan cafe membership of that era.
Of course, then wasn't now, and he might still get hurt. But he'd long since built up an immunity. It would be fine.
"What I mean is — don't let any of it get to you."
"I don't think you need to worry about that, sir."
"Good. Still, if anything comes up, make sure to go through Jin-woo."
"Yes, sir. I'll be on my way, then."
"Good luck with the schedule. See you next time."
Lee Seo-won saw Yoon Jay off with a smile. The moment he turned back toward his office, his expression turned murderous.
Before long, he grabbed the back of the chair where Lee Da-hyun sat, eyes glued to her monitor, fingers drumming away at her keyboard — despite Yoon Jay having just been there.
"Da-hyun, you're swamped right now, aren't you?"
"Yes."
Lee Da-hyun ground her teeth and bore down on her keys. The growing clatter of the keyboard came to sound like fists hammering a desk.
"I'll hire you more staff. How many do you need?"
She shot her hand up and flashed two fingers. Then added one more. Three.
"Okay. I'm building you a dedicated task force."
"Sir! When we find out who it is, we kill them!"
An employee asking her CEO for a murder... Lee Seo-won snorted, then his mouth curled into something vicious.
Which side is touching my actor, hmm...?
First, there was the agency that had circled the casting for General Muhwi... and it could be his old company, West Company. Scrolling down his contact list, he dialed someone.
That had been the first thing Yoon Do-jun said the moment the family story went public. Yoon Jay narrowed his eyes, unable to make sense of it.
See? I told you Yoon Do-jun was the soft one. Yoon Jay laughed lightly. Had Yoon Do-hwa been watching, she'd have made a gagging motion — but unfortunately, she was in the middle of promotions.
And so Yoon Do-jun put up a post alongside the photos he'd taken with Yoon Jay.
Cute move. Yoon Do-hwa had posted one too, it turned out — apparently the two of them had coordinated to upload at the same time.
Their fans loved it, of course. Yoon Jay hadn't been riding his siblings' names for attention, and the news had broken only after the drama was already a hit.
But, as ever, not every reaction was positive.
In fact, Yoon Jay had sensed negative undercurrents even before the Along Along shoot began.
The role of General Muhwi was charming enough that plenty of agencies had coveted it, and it showed in the articles questioning how a rookie had landed a supporting role at all.
Barely two months had passed, and a single work had turned Yoon Jay into a certified Rising Star.
Once you played one supporting role, only scripts offering supporting roles or better came your way. And so rival companies lobbed probing articles at him, and — just as Lee Seo-won had said — people brimming with pure malice tossed in a jab of their own, one after another.
Going by the headline alone, it read like a puff piece. The contents were anything but.
Yoon Do-jun and Yoon Do-hwa had been known as entertainment-industry silver-spooners since their debut. The fact that their father worked at a fairly influential film production company, and that their mother was Park Hyun-ah, a hot-ticket drama writer, had never been a secret.
And so the article unspooled a long, breathless list of insinuations: that a rookie had walked straight into a supporting role only because drama writer Park Hyun-ah had pulled strings for him.
Plenty of people already took these speculations as established fact.
Still, not everyone believed it. Those who had seen enough of the industry's inner workings were certain: Yoon Jay had been hit with a full-blown reverse viral campaign.
Negative-slanted articles and comments seeded across mom cafes kept multiplying, scattering strange rumors like ash.
The finishing touch was a stray fragment from some minor media outlet.
...Mr. A, recently rising as a hot new star, had a glamorous past even before his debut. Industry heavyweight Mr. B made sure to stamp his presence on the industry long before then.
Given the suspicious absence of any past photos of Mr. A online, and the powerful sponsor said to stand behind him, the author suspects that Mr. A may once have worked in the adult entertainment trade.
He'd evidently heard somewhere the rumor that Cho Youkyeong kept Yoon Jay at her side, then padded it out with whatever else he could invent and written it up as fact.
Whether Astra had leaned on them or not, the post vanished within the hour — but people had screenshotted it and spread it far and wide in the meantime.
Yoon Jay turned off his phone screen and drank some water.
So that's what it was.
The reason Lee Seo-won had suddenly soured a few days ago.
Hm. Not as bad as I expected, actually.
He came from a country where free speech was guaranteed. He'd received his fair share of hate comments back when he was a firefighter, so this was quite tolerable. He'd been hardened by it since childhood, after all.
What did bother him was the possibility that they'd start touching his family... He'd have to talk to Director Kwak about that separately.
"Hyung. You must be tired."
"I'm fine. Are we all here?"
Sour posts and articles were trickling in, but the agency was fending them off — filing immediate complaints to pull the pieces, then putting up friendly coverage in their place.
Besides, none of it could be felt offline.
"Hello."
"Hello there... Oh my goodness! You're here!"
The moment he appeared at the photoshoot set, several staff members clapped their hands over their mouths in awe. Seeing him in person, Yoon Jay found himself thinking that the camera simply failed to capture what he truly looked like.
"I'm a fan!"
"Thank you."
Even the catering had a welcome banner and a bouquet of flowers — it was a thoroughly proper production.
Yoon Jay greeted the people involved while taking stock of the space. A single-family house that specialized in photo studio rentals; sunlight streamed into a beautiful garden.
"The weather's so lovely today, the shots should turn out great. Is this your first photoshoot?"
"My second. The interview will be my first, though."
"You can just answer comfortably while we shoot. It might take a while — is that all right?"
"Of course. This is my only commitment today."
"Well, isn't that nice?"
Good heavens, even his voice is lovely. The magazine editor-in-chief overseeing the interview beamed.
Yoon Jay had changed into his wardrobe, and just as the first shutter was about to click, someone scurried over.
"Um, Team Leader?"
"Hm? What is it?"
"You need to see this."
The team leader checked the screen, then stared at Yoon Jay in shock.