One-Day Bodyguard
Lee Da-hyun, marketing team leader at Astra, was combing through social media to scoop up photos from the Along Along cast's reward vacation.
Looks like they all gathered in someone's room earlier and had a little bonding session.
For fans of a drama, pictures from the reward vacation were content in their own right — proof that the actors and crew of a show they loved were taking photos together, growing genuinely close.
And the Along Along team had only grown tighter since the fire incident. None of the actors were difficult to work with, and Kim Hyun-jun — driven by his need to be at the center of everything — had accidentally done a fine job pulling everyone together.
First, I'll post a few of the shots Jin-woo sent over.
Han Jin-woo, who had tagged along on the reward vacation, had appointed himself Yoon Jay's official photographer. He thought of his client as a magnificently handsome man, but when it came to Jay's skills behind a camera, magnificence was in short supply.
Prince Muhwi in the drama had been cold and ruthless. On the rare occasion he smiled, it was nothing more than a faint softening of his expression for Jung Yeon-hwa's sake — no one had ever seen him laugh this openly before.
Mmm, even his laugh is gorgeous.
Then, in the middle of it all, the full text and photos from Yoon Jay's interview went up as an article. What caught Lee Da-hyun's eye was a single line — one telling readers to look up what he had done before becoming a firefighter. So what had he been doing all that time?
Yoon Jay was a mysterious man. There was something impenetrable in his expressions, and according to Han Jin-woo he was suspiciously talented at just about everything. He carried a strange aura that made a person's past itch with curiosity, and on top of that…
I want to know.
Should she dig into it? Just as the temptation got the better of her and she opened a browser window, Lee Seo-won walked into the office.
His phone was blaring with someone's shouting — and, sure enough, it was CEO Oh Seung-han, the man who had so cleverly orchestrated the reverse viral campaign against Yoon Jay.
“CEO Lee, this is your doing, isn't it?!”
“Goodness, my ears are about to fall clean off.”
Lee Seo-won pulled the phone away from his ear and gave it a good scratch.
“So? Did you enjoy your little gift?”
“You said we'd talk about it back then! Weren't you letting it go?!”
What on earth was the man on about? Lee Seo-won had simply wanted to scare him once. Startling people and then acting baffled by their outrage was one of his signature moves.
“As long as there's nothing to feel guilty about, there shouldn't be a problem, no? Why are you fretting so much?”
The man who had delivered a tax audit to CEO Oh Seung-han as a "gift" looked up and met Lee Da-hyun's eyes. She raised both thumbs in salute.
Meanwhile, Yoon Jay found himself surrounded by a crowd of people.
“So, that scary older gentleman from earlier — who was he?”
“A former superior.”
“That's it?”
“Yes.”
What more was there to say? Yoon Jay blinked. He couldn't fathom what was so fascinating that it warranted questions. He wasn't that entertaining a person.
“What did you do in the military? I heard earlier that you were deployed overseas, too.”
“Hmm….”
Some of it was classified, so he simply drained the soju glass in front of him. He didn't drink, but that didn't mean he couldn't. The people around him groaned in unison.
“Can't you tell us just a little now?”
“Where's the fun in that? This way is better.”
“Argh!”
He was smiling, but the man remained anything but easy to read. Which was exactly what made everyone want to know more.
While Park Seo-ah, Im Hyun-hee, and the rest of the group were busy plotting which questions might actually extract an answer from him, the man who had assembled this whole gathering sat off in a corner, voicing his grievances.
“Doesn't anyone have questions for me, instead of him?”
“You tell us things without our even asking, Mr. Hyun-jun.”
“Aigoo….”
I should've played it that way. But his image had already been set wrong from the very beginning. Kim Hyun-jun stole a glance at Park Seo-ah's earnest expression, then flopped over sideways with a thud. Someone pay attention to me too.
Over at the entertainment division of the broadcaster that had aired Along Along, the production team of Manager's Daily Life was banging their heads against a casting problem.
“What about Im Ji-hwan?”
“His last appearance didn't exactly set the world on fire.”
“Hmmm… Lee Yu-na?”
“Does she even have anything worth appearing for?”
The observational variety show about managers and their stars had drawn a warm reception at first, but now there was simply no one left to feature.
They had tried mixing it up — a star appearing as a one-day manager for their agency's CEO, or for a close celebrity friend — but even that formula had its limits.
“What about another round before Along Along's popularity cools off?”
“Park Seo-ah and Kim Hyun-jun already did it. Stale.”
The two leads had appeared before the drama aired, as part of its promotion. Park Seo-ah had handled herself with easy grace, but Kim Hyun-jun had spent his screen time subtly browbeating his own manager while showing off, and an unfortunate amount of footage had ended up on the cutting room floor.
“Not those two. This person.”
The youngest writer tapped at her tablet and pulled up a face.
“…Prince Muhwi? Hmm, another promo appearance, I suppose? I heard he's doing well for himself these days.”
“No.”
“Then why—”
The director waved her on impatiently.
“It just so happens that Buster and Flava are both having their comebacks around the same time.”
“So what?”
“Oh, you didn't hear? There was a huge wave of articles about how one of their most popular members is Yoon Jay's half-brother.”
“And?”
The director stroked his chin — a clear sign he still wasn't following. Idols appeared on Manager's Daily Life all the time once their promotion periods rolled around, and Buster and Flava, being under a major agency, were no exception.
“Well, I looked into it, and it turns out Yoon Jay used to be a professional bodyguard. So — a star and his bodyguard, who turns out to be his brother?! Wouldn't a concept like that feel fresh?”
“Oh.”
“What do you think?”
A one-day bodyguard, hm. The director stared, half-hypnotized, at the photos the youngest writer was swiping through. There was even that shot of him working security at a red carpet event — the one that had sent the internet communities into a frenzy.
“…Not bad? You can handle the coordinating yourself?”
“Yes.”
Having successfully won over the director, the youngest writer flashed a sly smile and texted Lee Seo-won.
This, too, was one of Lee Seo-won's specialties — a design in which the other side never had to be begged, and instead laid out the table on their own. He had taken the gamble because Yoon Jay seemed to adore his younger siblings so much.
I had no idea that many people would come out to see me.
Returning from the reward vacation, Yoon Jay had been stunned by the crowd of fans waiting for him at the airport. So many of them pressed dolls and fan letters into his hands, promising to cheer him on from now on, that it was hard to fight his way out. No wonder his follower count had spiked out of nowhere.
Soon after, he made special appearances in a handful of films and dramas that Lee Seo-won ferried his way. The screen time was modest, but with his face popping up in so many different projects, the fans would surely love it.
Still not enough.
Being cameos, the roles were painfully short. A breakneck schedule — shoot fast, get out — and staff who offered no explanation of the character beyond a breezy "you just walk from this mark to that one."
He'd tried to piece together a story of his own, but with no time and barely a line of dialogue, it had been a frustrating exercise.
I need more training for this.
The art of switching a character on and off, snapping from one role to another in an instant. He could have sworn he used to be better at it….
And even with Along Along's stellar ratings, plenty of people simply didn't watch dramas.
That was why Kwak Dohyun had built his schedule primarily around video and billboard advertising — the point being to carve the name into the public consciousness.
They're paying quite a lot, actually.
Yoon Jay tilted his head at the deposit notification that had just arrived. His contract renewal had raised his percentage, but this was more than he'd expected. Did I shoot that many ads?
“Hyung, what are you doing?”
“Revising my will.”
“I'm sorry?”
Han Jin-woo froze on the spot, wearing the expression of a man who had just lost his country.
“Hyung, are you dying?”
“What, suddenly?”
“Then is it some kind of terminal—”
“It's nothing like that.”
Yoon Jay had learned how to write a will not long after enlisting. He'd revised it each time he was promoted, when he deployed overseas, and several more times during his days as a firefighter.
Bouncing between jobs that walked the line between life and death had made updating his will a habit whenever circumstances changed.
“Ah. Right. That kind of thing.”
“So don't worry about it. What brings you here, anyway?”
“Would you do a variety show, hyung?”
“A variety show?”
As far as he knew, variety appearances were for promoting a work before it aired — and he hadn't decided on his next project yet.
Of everything Astra had sent his way, two projects had made his shortlist. One was a provocative drama from a famous screenwriter. The other was a rookie writer's work, fresh out of a contest — chosen, honestly, because it kept pulling his gaze back.
[Seems that writer fell for you, Jay. She insisted that if it wasn't going to be you in this role, it would be no one.]
The former was, in Kwak Dohyun's words, "a classy makjang drama."
A crime thriller dressed in the clothes of a medical drama, with a streak of pitch-black comedy — the story of doctors and their families locked in a war of nerves and naked ambition over who would claim the hospital director's chair.
[It's got a name-brand writer behind it, and the network's betting the farm on it, so the ratings are practically guaranteed… but the role's a bit much, isn't it? A married man's lover.]
[It's not a role I'd have much use for going forward, so I'm fine with it.]
[There's nothing you won't take, which I like, but — a tyrant, a cult leader, and now an adulterer, back to back to back? Doesn't that start to look a little off?]
The Garden of Evil would be released soon enough: a blood-mad lunatic, a deeply unsettling cult leader, and now a handsome homewrecker luring away a rival's wife.
[You think so?]
[I do.]
Any other actor would be on their knees begging for an offer from a writer this famous, but Kwak Dohyun showed no particular desperation — the confidence that he could push plenty of other work ran quietly beneath his tone.
[Well, we'll keep this one on the shortlist for now… you picked the other one too, didn't you?]
[I just… liked what it was trying to do.]
The latter was a human story, a healing drama with a thread of thriller woven through it.
Its protagonist was a collector of small delinquent taxes — a man who went door to door visiting people too strapped to pay even modest arrears, gathering their tears and quiet moments of grace along the way, while doing the small public service of teaching them about the welfare systems they never knew existed.
And then, in a village he'd been dispatched to, a suspicious murder case falls into his lap — the investigation tightening the story with real tension.
[The pacing's slow, so handled wrong, it could come off boring. Rookie writer, too — it's a gamble.]
[Which could make it just that fresh. By that logic, I'm still a rookie myself.]
[A monster of a rookie.]
The production schedules overlapped, so he couldn't take both. He was still torn between the two — hammer his name into the public's mind with a string of guaranteed hits, or choose the slower, quieter work that tugged at his heart.
“It's still just at the proposal stage, but it's called Manager's Daily Life — you know it… ah, you don't, do you.”
Judging by Yoon Jay's preoccupied expression that he didn't, Han Jin-woo pressed on with the explanation.
“It's an observational variety show that follows a celebrity's manager through their day — honestly, you can just think of it as a celebrity promo show.”
“Are you okay with it? Your face being on camera?”
“I'm not going on.”
Yoon Jay narrowed his eyes. The look on his face clearly said: then why are we having this conversation?
“Your twin siblings are starting their comeback soon, right?”
“Yeah.”
He'd heard they'd been buried in work lately. Something about barely sleeping at all once their promotion period started?
“Well, since your former job is bodyguard, they came to us with a proposal — you'd appear as the twins' one-day bodyguard.”
“They'd allow that?”
“It stopped being a show about observing managers ages ago. Close celebrity friends go on as one-day managers, that sort of thing.”
I see…. Yoon Jay suddenly remembered something the twins had once said.
[A lot of people still don't know us. Sure, we have fans, but we don't have much mainstream recognition.]
[True. Plenty of people know our songs without having any idea what our faces look like.]
“Would going on a terrestrial variety show raise my profile a bit?”
“Of course. It's a long-running program.”
Sounds fun. He seemed to recall reading somewhere that fans considered his old bodyguard career a selling point. It would be good fan service, and the twins would get some screen time too.
“I'm in.”