A Past That Would Not Stay Buried
The person who barged in, paying no heed to the fact that the camera was still rolling, was singer Kang Sehyun's manager.
A somewhat heavyset man, he came rushing over with a face drained of color.
Everyone stared at him in bewilderment at the abruptly severed flow of the shoot.
"Excuse me! What do you think you're doing?"
The PD raised his voice at the sheer absurdity of the situation, but the manager brushed right past it as if he hadn't heard a word, closed the distance to Kang Sehyun, and whispered in his ear.
It was quiet enough that even I, standing right beside them, couldn't catch it — but apparently it came through loud and clear for the man himself.
The face that had been staring at his manager in confusion turned the color of dirt in an instant.
At the sight of it, the PD, who had been mid-tirade, fell silent.
The manager belatedly came to his senses and fired off his words like a machine gun.
"Ah, um, I'm so sorry, PD-nim. We — well, anyway, we're going to have to stop filming for today. I'll contact you later!"
"What — what on earth is this all of a sudden…"
While the PD was sputtering in disbelief, the assistant director stepped up and handed him a phone.
One glance at the screen, and the PD's face froze too.
What is going on?
I stood blankly under the umbrella Ahn Jinbae had opened for me, gazing vacantly around the set.
Kang Sehyun had been standing there with his soul visibly departed from his body since a moment ago.
Then his manager seized him roughly by the arm and dragged him away, and the two of them vanished from the set.
With the actor gone, there was no filming to continue. I bowed politely to the grim-faced PD as he called for a withdrawal, then headed back to the car.
"Actor-nim, please wait here for a moment. I'm going to call the company."
"All right."
Perhaps the unfolding situation looked serious even to him — Ahn Jinbae seemed rattled as well.
Inside the air-conditioned coolness of the car, I watched him make his calls with a grave expression, sighing and rubbing his face dry at intervals, and racked my brain hard.
Did a dating scandal break?
One thing was certain: something had happened to Kang Sehyun.
I was just considering turning on my phone to check when Ahn Jinbae returned. And with a hollow look on his face, he said:
"A school violence rumor about Kang Sehyun just broke."
"I'm sorry — what?"
"Someone posted claiming they were bullied by Kang Sehyun in high school, and the articles are stacking up one after another as we speak."
It was so far beyond anything I'd imagined that I could only stand there dazed. I was still struggling to process it when his next words froze me solid.
"Actor-nim. If things go badly… the drama could be pulled off the air entirely."
He used to go around doing this whole "I'm a believer in nonviolence" bit on broadcasts lolol. Where was your conscience then?
There's not a shred of evidence right now, just the victim's post. I'm not even a Kang Sehyun fan, but this has happened how many times before, and we're doing this whole circus again? The person who filed the national petition to suspend Kang Sehyun's activities — are you twelve? Everybody please just calm down.
Episode 1 JUST came out… (┬┬﹏┬┬) This whole issue blows up before the serialized episodes have even properly aired, what do we do…? Please tell me it's not getting pulled off the air?
Honestly, I'd been wondering why they stayed quiet all this time and only brought it up now, almost ten years later? But after reading the post, I'm having second thoughts…
Summarizing just the key points: it's a FACT that she was beaten by KSH and received medical treatment at the time (she says her eardrum ruptured and she was diagnosed with three weeks to recover — she posted the medical certificate too). She says that if her dream hadn't been to become an actress, she would have called the police the moment he beat her up. She thought about her future and settled out of court, and afterward she threw herself into auditions, trying desperately to forget and move on.
She held it in the entire time, from Space's debut straight through to seeing him all over TV at the peak of their success, but the drama she'd applied to — thinking it was her genuinely last chance after grinding through her struggling years — turned out to be Hello, My Summer… (┬┬﹏┬┬)
She said she finally broke down when she heard that KSH had been cast as the male lead of a drama she could barely work up the nerve to audition for. I cried at that part too… (┬┬﹏┬┬)(┬┬﹏┬┬)(┬┬﹏┬┬) If it were me, I'd have written that post out of sheer frustration too.
If this is really true, he needs to leave the group (┬┬﹏┬┬) Let's all stop consuming our drama, guys…
The internet was in absolute meltdown.
The drama had launched with the hottest attention any web drama had ever received, and it had just barely aired its first episode.
With everyone scrambling just to get episode 2 edited, the entire production staff had gathered to debate replacing the actor.
But this wasn't a simple matter of swapping out one cast member, and the long conversation kept losing its way.
"Let's just work on the assumption that Kang Sehyun is out. Announce a short production hiatus, find a new male lead fast, and start shooting again — simple!"
"The drama's name has already bounced up and down the rumor mill a dozen times, and you think we can just take a quick break and come back like it's nothing?!"
"If our schedule slips even two weeks, everything collapses. We'd have to rebook every single filming location, redo the poster shoot… and how exactly are we supposed to win the investors over a second time?"
The cramped broadcast station meeting room filled with the sound of sighs.
The PD clawed at his hair until, at last, he couldn't take it anymore and took it out on the station's youngest staffer.
"You STILL can't reach Kang Sehyun's manager?"
"He keeps sending texts saying he'll get back to us in a bit. We don't have Kang Sehyun's personal number."
"And his agency?"
"When something like this breaks, WB Entertainment pulls the phone lines out of the wall. Standard procedure."
At his subordinate's utterly useless answers, the PD let out a hollow chuckle.
It was the laugh of a man losing his mind.
"Ha ha. Human decency, right — if he actually did the school violence, he shouldn't be planning a career as a celebrity in the first place, should he? Eh? Is there something wrong with my brain for saying so?"
Not a word of it was wrong, but this was no time for lamenting.
The sixteenth round of debate for a solution resumed, and the meeting room grew clamorous once more.
At that very same moment, Kang Sehyun was sitting on the sofa in the CEO's office at WB Entertainment.
"CEO-nim. I'll just leave. The drama, the group — all of it."
"……"
The CEO, turned toward the window with his back to him, said nothing.
Kang Sehyun, the very man at the center of the scandal, looked detached — almost aloof — while the manager sitting beside him was the one who couldn't keep himself together.
"It's not like it's a false accusation, and there's nothing to rebut it with. The real miracle is that it stayed buried this long."
"If we look hard enough, there'll be a way. We're going to handle this on our end first, so you show up to every single one of your schedules starting tomorrow."
"How am I supposed to work a schedule right now? The sooner I pull out of the drama, the—"
"If you withdraw on your own initiative, no one will believe a word of your explanation later, no matter what you say. So you hold the line."
The CEO was immovable.
He cut off whatever rebuttal was coming with a single wave of his hand, then turned his gaze to the manager at his side.
"You — take good care of Sehyun. I'll put my weight behind keeping the drama side on schedule."
"Yes. Understood…"
"CEO-nim. Then as for the official statement, until we find a way to resolve—"
"Don't you worry about that. For the time being, go straight back to the dorm when filming wraps. And keep the members off social media."
In the end, Kang Sehyun left the CEO's office as if he'd been shown the door.
Back at the dorm, the members — who already knew what had happened — drifted toward him hesitantly.
Watching them stand there awkwardly, shifting on their feet, Kang Sehyun gave a crooked smile.
"I'm sorry. All this, and it's for nothing but my sake."
"Don't apologize. Honestly, it's not like you did anything wrong, hyung."
"Whatever the circumstances were, the fact is I hit someone. It was my fault."
"Can't you just tell the truth? They don't have any evidence either way."
"No. If we move too fast, we could get called out for secondary victimization."
Even among the members, opinions split.
He listened quietly as they hashed it out back and forth, then excused himself to rest for a while and retreated to his room.
The moment he sank onto the bed, an exhausted sigh escaped him.
Why did it have to be now, of all times…
It wasn't as if he'd never imagined this could happen.
This was the very reason that, when the other members signed their renewal contracts without a moment's hesitation, he alone had wavered to the bitter end.
The gnawing fear that the things he'd done in his past could surface at any moment.
When the past rose to the surface, he had only ever prayed that he alone would be the one to pay for it.
And for it to erupt precisely when so many people were tangled up with him through the drama — it was the worst of every scenario he had ever imagined.
Seven years had passed without incident, so maybe — just maybe — it would be all right…
It had been his own fault for thinking so optimistically, foolishly so.
Like a machine left too long without oil, every one of his thoughts seized up, stiff and grinding.
He'd been staring blankly at nothing like an idiot, and only noticed far too late that his phone was vibrating.
2 missed calls
Both from the same number.
He assumed it was another sasaeng fan and was about to shut the phone off entirely when a text message arrived.
Ah, right. There was him too.
The thought of a good actor being dragged through the mud because of him made his head throb.
He decided a personal apology was the least he owed, even if an official statement was out of his hands, and hurried to dial the number.
— Hello?
"Yeonjae. I got back to you far too late. I should have called sooner, I—"
— Hyung.
He was doing his utmost to apologize with every ounce of sincerity he had, but Lee Yeonjae cut him off.
And what came next made no sense at all, so he had to ask him to repeat it.
"…I'm sorry, what? What do you mean, you'll do something?"
It was a tone so packed with incredulity that it bordered on rude, but Lee Yeonjae paid it no mind.
Only that calm, level voice came back through the receiver.
— I said I'm going to help you.