Another Past
The comments came pouring in, one after another.
Even with the agency's official denial, the controversy refused to die down. In the eyes of these people, Yoon Jay had already become a former worker in the adult entertainment trade, and words far uglier than gigolo or host-bar boy were being hurled around.
Rarely had a celebrity ignited such a syndromed-level craze in such a short span after debut, which made Yoon Jay the perfect target — easy to chew up and tear apart on the internet.
Of course, not everyone swallowed the controversy whole. Some of it had almost certainly been quietly manufactured in the shadows — reverse viral marketing outfits or rival agencies slipping in through the cracks while the fire burned.
These sons of bitches······.
Lee Da-hyun already believed, without a shadow of doubt, that Yoon Jay had never done anything he couldn't hold his head high about. If anything, the flood of photos from his colorful past had secretly pleased her — though watching her actor get torn down with such vile language naturally dragged curses out of her before she could stop them.
The volume of fact-checking phone calls exploded overnight, yet handling them wasn't exhausting at all. Not that the netizens would ever believe that.
"Ha. Every single time something like this happens, I lose a little more faith in this industry."
"Team Leader, look at this."
"Now what······? Aaargh! This is infuriating!"
The agency staff who had watched Yoon Jay up close were furious as if the attacks were on their own families. Nobody can stand to watch someone else shine, after all.
So when Yoon Jay himself appeared at the company, everyone hung on his every word, waiting for his mouth to open.
"Those photos were from a brief time in Miami. I worked as a bartender there for a while."
"A bartender?"
"Yes. Don't let appearances fool you — I was quite professional."
Soldier, bodyguard, firefighter — and now an entirely new profession on top of the pile. Kwak Dohyun, Lee Da-hyun, and several other staff members stared wide-eyed. Among the astonished was Lee Seo-won himself. Mr. CEO······ aren't you busy?
"It wasn't one of those establishments you're all worried about. It's a little bar near the beach."
"Then this photo······"
"That was during our White Day event."
With the bar's interior and lighting decked out in pink tones for the occasion and a subtly sultry atmosphere hanging in the air, the story that he had been a stripper was almost convincing.
"Strange thing was, after I started working there, the number of female customers shot up. So we tried the event once······"
"Ooh-ho. I bet I know why."
Lee Da-hyun wore a wicked grin. A man like that standing behind the bar pouring drinks — how could word of mouth not spread? Impossible.
"Then the person next to him······"
"A regular. She kept pestering me to take a photo with her, so I obliged — it looks like it came from her social media."
The bar sat right on the beach, so plenty of people wandered in and out in swimwear.
For a moment, Yoon Jay drifted back to those days. He had been living a nomadic life then, passing through, liked the look of the beach, and settled in for a long stretch of surfing. A few days in, his feet started itching for something to do, and that was how he found the job.
"You're hired. Can you start today?"
The moment the owner laid eyes on Yoon Jay, he declared him hired on the spot. He'd been interviewing for a kitchen helper to do serving work, and yet before anyone noticed, Yoon Jay was standing behind the bar itself.
Assisting the existing bartender was easy. All he had to do was watch and copy.
"You memorized all the recipes already?"
"I've always been a fast memorizer."
"Then want to try taking orders on your own?"
Perhaps because he was such a natural at the work, Yoon Jay went from bar back to bartender in a single leap.
As for mixing drinks, the senior bartender had supposedly been quite famous in the industry back in his day, so watching him and imitating his every move was enough.
"Are you here vacationing in Miami?"
"You speak French?"
"A little."
On top of that, he spoke several languages, and with an aura that drew people in effortlessly, handling customers was never a struggle. From the moment Yoon Jay took the bar, the place was always crowded, and more and more people singled him out. Many asked to take photos with him; some asked for his social media or his phone number.
"Ahhh······ so he was already semi-celebrity material back then."
See? What did I tell you. Lee Da-hyun snorted. Even though the old photos were grainy and low-resolution, Yoon Jay's signature magnetic presence radiated through them unmistakably.
"Here it is."
Yoon Jay searched for the shop he'd worked at and showed everyone. The bar's interior was vintage and no different from any other bar. Better yet, it had plenty of solid reviews from Korean visitors.
There were even photos of the infamous White Day event taken from other angles. The controversial shot only stood out because of how it was cropped; every other picture looked utterly wholesome.
"Ugh, this is just sickening."
"Wait, doesn't this photo look like someone ran a filter over it?"
"Exactly what I was thinking."
The staff, who had been run ragged since morning dealing with this nonsense, ground their teeth. Of course. Our actor worked himself to the bone to live an honest life, and this is what he gets.
"I'll handle this one personally."
Lee Seo-won said it while massaging his tired eyes. Unlike the other actors he had groomed, Yoon Jay gave him the sense that these incidents would simply never stop coming.
Superstars really are a different breed from the cradle, I suppose. He was, admittedly, wearing his own rose-tinted glasses where Yoon Jay was concerned.
Managing the fallout would be easy — they even had a relative who would throw herself into the fire the moment it was about Yoon Jay······ though really, why was Cho Youkyeong so determined to prop him up? It felt deeper than simply being smitten with a promising actor the way she was with Kwon Min-jae.
"So you can make cocktails and all that too?"
"Shall I make you one? I haven't forgotten the recipes yet."
"Whoa. Mr. CEO! Let's build a mini bar right here in the office!"
Lee Da-hyun threw her hand up in excitement, and Lee Seo-won gave an awkward laugh.
"Just how many jobs have you had?"
"Right? A past-wealthy guy. Rich in past, I mean."
"I just did a bit of this and that."
Even Yoon Jay himself had stopped counting at some point. The tension broken, Kwak Dohyun cracked a joke.
"At this rate, what if some genuinely unexpected past pops up? What do you think?"
"That could happen."
Honestly, something stung deep in his chest. It stung all the more because his eyes kept meeting those of his own self on the The Child poster hanging on the wall of Lee Seo-won's office.
"You know my heart nearly stopped when you suddenly showed up at the office?"
Yoon Jay did drop by the agency fairly often, but given the circumstances, he could have simply cleared things up by phone or text — his sudden appearance had genuinely startled them. They'd wondered if the rumors were actually true.
"Partly that. There's something I wanted to discuss."
"About your next project?"
"Yes."
Yoon Jay showed him a screen he had prepared in advance on his phone.
"I want to do this one."
"Hmm······ that's not one of the synopses that came through us?"
"They're holding large-scale open auditions."
Thanks to Lee Seo-won's influence, all Yoon Jay had needed to do so far was lift a spoon at a table already set for him. He'd been able to land great projects without ever sitting an audition — but now he wanted to try something new.
"If you want to do it, do it. Anything you need?"
Even with Yoon Jay declaring he wanted to try a modest production that made people audition from scratch, neither Kwak Dohyun nor Lee Seo-won's attitudes wavered in the slightest. Astra wasn't in the business of trading on its actors.
Lee Seo-won and Kwak Dohyun had decided to leave him to his own judgment to sharpen his eye for scripts. And honestly, they had a feeling that if anyone could turn even a pile of garbage into gold, it was Yoon Jay.
And if things went sideways and the project flopped like a greasy soup kitchen bowl, they were confident they could haul him back up with their own strength.
"A blind audition······ wait, hold on."
It's a music film, isn't it? A band? Kwak Dohyun looked up at Yoon Jay in surprise.
"You play instruments too, Jay?"
"A little······"
Back at the bar, they occasionally invited musicians in to perform — mostly jazz players, though a local rock band had come once as well. Just watching them a single time had been enough for Yoon Jay to replicate their skills.
"They're saying both the playing and the vocals have to be at a professional level······"
"Then I'll have to try."
Watch enough performers on MyTube and the technical side can be more or less mastered. Anything beyond that required artistic talent, of course — but playing was secondary. What mattered was the acting.
While Kwak Dohyun and Yoon Jay discussed the next project, Lee Da-hyun returned to her desk and cracked her knuckles lightly.
And just let that gorgeous face of his get dragged through the mud? Not a chance.
Maybe I'll take a stroll through social media for the first time in a while. Her eyes sparkled.
Whoa. That wasn't part-time-job skill, that was the real deal.
Perhaps because she searched with genuine determination, the results came quickly. The sight of him finishing a cocktail with those deft, practiced hands was honestly spectacular.
And so an article — complete with the additional evidence Lee Da-hyun had dug up and the name of the bar itself — spread like wildfire.
With the Seoul team's shoot complete, the grueling months-long march of Permafrost had finally come to an end.
"Ughhh······ I'm dying."
Director Lee Han-lim had practically been living in the editing room. With so many heavyweight actors in the cast, he couldn't get a feel for where to place the edit points.
Worse still, the film required a massive amount of CG work, so the edit had to be brought to a certain point before being handed off — otherwise the production budget would bleed dry.
As written, Jin Young-do — the role Yoon Jay played — was meant to be a study in barely-sustained tension, a man so ravaged by trauma that he mistook his own allies for enemies and opened fire on them.
"Does Jin Young-do really need to be this suffocating?"
"No. The tension can be carried by the monster instead······"
But the edit points had shifted. Audiences these days hate a frustrating watch.
Jin Young-do could easily have become an insufferable character — instead, he would become the captain of the Antarctic team, a man who sacrificed himself to save the others. Cool as hell.
Yoon Jay — that man really does act too well for his own good. A waste to leave him as nothing but a tension device.
That was the power of editing. So much could change.
"Shall we grab a coffee in a bit?"
"Sounds good."
Just as Director Lee Han-lim and his editing assistant were stretching, a knock sounded at the editing room door.
"Director. Busy?"
"Ah, Ji-hwan. You're here again."
It was Im Ji-hwan, the top actor in his forties who had poured everything into his role as a young politician in the Seoul-set portions of Permafrost. He held out a coffee with a pleasantly warm face.
"Figured you'd be needing the caffeine."
"Oh, thank you. I was just running on fumes."
"How's the editing going?"
The industry was a small world, so everyone kept things civil on the surface. Instead, the arena where top actors waged their subtle wars of nerves was, precisely, the editing room.
A film is a battle fought over barely two hours. With every minute and every second at stake, actors would cast pointed glances at the director to secure more of their own screen time — a tactic that only the true A-listers could afford to pull.
Lee Han-lim could hardly be unaware of Im Ji-hwan's veiled signals to cut him back in. Hadn't even Moon Chang-min, of all people, dropped off premium sushi with a "keep up the good work" and sailed out the door?
"Whew······ flattering, but exhausting. So exhausting."
"Choo Young-mi dropped by yesterday too······ I suppose I'd better not play favorites from here on out."
"Agreed."
After Im Ji-hwan left, Director Lee Han-lim let out a long sigh.
Im Ji-hwan's acting was decent, nothing more. Among actors his age he had the name recognition, but he lacked gravitas, which was why Lee Han-lim had sidelined him considerably — and seeing him show up like this pricked a little at the conscience.
"Director, what do we do with this scene?"
"Keep it. It actually adds more grit to the field, doesn't it?"
"Fair. It would be a shame to cut."
Confined to the editing room as they'd been, the two of them were well aware of the strange controversy swirling around Yoon Jay these days.
"Ahh, the curse of being popular, I suppose."
"It'll blow over, right? Because if this drags on and we have to re-edit······"
"He's not that kind of man. Look — Cho Youkyeong's already stepped in. Our film will be fine."
Well, aunt and nephew and all — no wonder Cho Youkyeong stepped in personally. Lee Han-lim still believed that Yoon Jay and Cho Youkyeong were actual relatives. A scion of a chaebol family, working as a stripper? As if a man like that would ever have done something so absurd.
Still, though······ I want this man in my next film too.
He paid the controversy no mind. His thoughts ran along a single track: how to get Yoon Jay into his next project.