Now I Finally Understand
Nine Entertainment. The office.
"Yes... yes. Oh, of course. Completely unfounded. We'll provide a thorough explanation from our end..."
"You keep saying it's unfounded. You keep saying you'll provide a thorough explanation. But nothing has actually been explained, has it? You have read the contract, I assume? If this isn't resolved, a certified legal notice—"
Choi Yoona had been about to answer when the voice on the other end launched into a fairly passionate outburst, and she pulled the phone a little away from her face.
"...Do you understand?"
"Yes. Of course I do."
She kept her voice carefully bright. In truth, she hadn't properly caught anything from the part about the legal notice onward — but did she really need to? The way this was going was obvious enough.
A dating scandal had broken around one of their actresses. Naturally, the advertisers who'd been using her in their campaigns had called to complain. A scandal like this wasn't, strictly speaking, grounds for terminating a contract or claiming a breach. But this was the entertainment industry, where incidents piled up without end, and every conceivable clause got written into the contracts as its own separate item.
Dating rumors included.
Then, after a brief pause — just when she'd thought the call was over — it continued.
"I wasn't going to go this far, but..."
Choi Yoona squeezed her eyes shut against a spike of stress. Sentences that started that way were, more often than not, sentences better left unsaid. And yet people always said them anyway. All the way to the end.
Like now.
"Back when CEO Choi was here, Nine Entertainment wasn't like this. You weren't the best in the industry just because you were doing well. It was because the work was clean and reliable. Because there were no incidents. That's why Nine Entertainment was number one."
"...Yes. I know... We're doing our best too, so... please wait. I'm asking you."
"Fine. Given my connection with CEO Choi, I'll try to persuade the client to hold off a few more days."
"Thank you."
Choi Yoona set the disconnected phone down without any strength left in her hand. She had bought some time. That didn't mean she had anything resembling a plan.
The two-piece suit she'd put on so carefully, hoping to look the part of a company head, didn't even have a necktie — and still it felt like it was closing around her throat.
And then...
Hm?
The view beyond the glass of the director's office was... odd. Choi Yoona stood up on reflex and opened the door.
"Jaewook...? What are you doing?"
The new road manager, who had been sweeping the floor, straightened his back.
"I'm cleaning."
"No... I mean, why? Ah... Actress Ha doesn't have anything scheduled today, does she?"
"No. No schedule, and nobody told me to come in, either. General Manager Kim Misook said that on days without a schedule, I should report to the office."
Well. That wasn't wrong. Managing was a fairly unusual line of work — when the celebrity you handled didn't move, you stopped with them. The company, for its part, couldn't just let people sit idle, so on days a manager wasn't needed, they came into the office.
That said... they did not have the managers mop the floors. The company's finances weren't good enough to keep a cleaner on staff every day, so they called in a cleaning service once a week.
"And who told you to clean?"
The new road manager answered with that distinctly vacant look of his.
"No one. I'm just doing it."
"Just..."
She almost told him to sit still, that a manager should just do a manager's job properly, that the mood in the company was bad enough already so he should keep his head down and learn the work — and then she swallowed it.
Right... he's only just returning to the working world after twelve years. Of course he's overflowing with motivation. Don't go crushing that for no reason.
He didn't seem to read a room anyway, so if he was at least working hard, that was something. She had to look at it that way. What else was she supposed to do?
The company atmosphere was a wreck, and here he was wandering around with a broom. Everyone else looked grim, and his face was perfectly fine, which was, if she was honest, a little irritating.
How many days had it even been? If he'd already been sharp and had the whole office figured out, that would have been the strange part.
He's doing his best, in his own way. It's been twelve years.
That was when General Manager Kim Misook appeared at Choi Yoona's side without warning.
"Director."
"Yes, yes. I know. We need to get this under control, fast. I don't know how, but I'm looking. Dad isn't answering, the reporters whose numbers I have won't pick up, and when they do they talk about something else entirely. The advertisers are furious and talking about sending a certified legal notice through the agency, and the agency — the same people who used to say please take care of us back when Aunt Chaeyoon was here — are lecturing me. Haah... is there anything else I haven't heard yet?"
"What are you even saying? You blasted through that like a storm. I didn't catch a single word."
"...I'm saying it's hard."
Kim Misook's thoroughly unimpressed eyes met Choi Yoona's thoroughly emptied ones in the air between them.
"So this wasn't our doing, then. Not that I expected it to be."
"What wasn't?"
"See for yourself. Whatever it is, it looks like it worked out."
Choi Yoona took the phone Kim Misook held out and focused on the screen.
The recent scandal involving Ha Eun-yul and Yoon Jun was a fabrication orchestrated by a reporter, identified only as Kim, who had abandoned all journalistic integrity in pursuit of a scoop, and by Ha Eun-yul's manager, a Mr. Moon, who needed fast cash after falling into illegal gambling...
In a direct interview, Mr. Moon — Ha Eun-yul's manager and the original source of the scandal photographs — stated: "I was desperate for money... an entertainment reporter I knew in passing... Eun-yul is actually such a sweet kid. On her days off she just reads scripts and watches dramas... the guilt..."
Photograph: Manager Moon shedding tears of remorse during the interview.
Choi Yoona's fingers, which had been moving slowly, began to swipe the screen in a rapid blur.
When she finished the article, she lifted her head and looked at Kim Misook, unable to make any sense of how any of this had unfolded.
"See? Not Director Choi's work, right? I thought maybe."
"Moon Cheol-sik was gambling?"
"How would I know. He says he was, so I guess he was."
A chime sounded as the large monitor mounted on one wall of the office flickered on, and Choi Yoona's gaze snapped forward again.
A vacant-faced man holding the remote came into view. Lee Jaewook.
"Um... Jaewook, the TV, why did you suddenly—"
The sound coming from the television stopped her mid-sentence.
"...?"
"Weird, isn't it? He leaked it himself, hid himself, then all of a sudden went to the police to be questioned, all by himself. And nobody even filed a complaint."
The tension that had been locking Choi Yoona's shoulders in place went slack all at once. It was strange, yes.
Fine. After three years of nothing but disasters, they're allowed to get lucky once...
Right now, figuring out what on earth had happened mattered less than sitting down.
"Please, sit here."
"...?"
Choi Yoona stared at Lee Jaewook, who had smoothly rolled over an office chair on wheels.
"You look exhausted."
"Ah... yes. Thank you."
A strange man. That much was certain.
"Actress Ha will be all right now, won't she?"
"Ah!"
Right. She needed to call Ha Eun-yul and tell her not to worry anymore. It didn't feel like they had actually resolved a single thing themselves, but it had been resolved all the same.
Kim Misook added quickly:
"Just take credit for it as our work, Director Choi. Who's going to know? And that'll reassure Actress Ha more, too. You can take the credit and look like you've got a handle on things. You know. With that agency that's been giving you a hard time."
Director Choi Yoona pulled out her phone at once.
"Hey, Jaewook."
Oh, for crying out loud. There he went again. Still, I was making an effort to keep my voice small, the way a ventriloquist might, so no one would notice. Sweeping the floor, I answered quietly.
"Go ahead."
"Why are you cleaning like that? Normally... managers, road managers I mean, when they don't have work, they come into the office and do other things."
"Such as?"
"They're called road managers, but they can at least look over a script with the actor, so they read the ones that come in. They're not the ones choosing the projects, of course, but that's how you gradually develop an eye for material. And then... they quietly work the phones with people in the industry, check in, say hello. They look at any new schedules that have come in and map out the logistics. They search the internet and the communities to see if anything's been posted about their actor. And also..."
I listened to the Ghost go on for a while, then opened my mouth.
"Do I know anyone in this industry?"
"...Well, no."
"And the scripts? Is a road manager who's been here two days supposed to sit there reading those?"
"Hahh... it's not that you can't, but it would look a little funny."
More to the point, I didn't see a single script anywhere. And even if one happened to be lying around, there was no way to know whether it had anything to do with Ha Eun-yul.
"So I'm just cleaning. It's the basics."
"So you'll step up and clean if that's what it takes? Ahh, as expected of the greatest aide..."
Please. I was just doing it.
Building an environment is the most fundamental part of taking care of someone. There are people who prefer a space that isn't tidy, but even those people, if they had an environment perfectly arranged around their own patterns of movement — and if it were clean without their having to clean it themselves?
They would like a well-ordered environment. Of course they would.
The same went for the company, even if it wasn't the actor's own space.
These days, more things got outsourced than you'd think. The biggest among them, without question, was cleaning. And there was a considerable difference between a space with cleaning staff on site and a space that farmed it out.
Starting with the office floor you could see. All the way to the places you couldn't — the corners under the desks.
"Hup—!"
I stretched my arm as far as it would go and kept sweeping up the dust that had gathered in every corner.
"I'm sorry for making you do even this."
I answered the Ghost without much interest.
"Even this? Cleaning? What's 'even this' supposed to mean? I work here, so I clean here."
"But back when you were an aide, you never did this kind of thing yourself."
"Back then I was in a position to give the orders. When the person in that position steps in and does the work themselves, the people underneath have an even harder time."
"As expected of the greatest aide..."
He got moved by everything I did. Exhausting type, this one.
The truth was, I hadn't started cleaning because of some grand principle. I was the sort of person who got restless sitting still, for one thing. And cleaning let me walk the company from end to end — where the documents were kept, which materials were stored where, how people's desks were arranged, and what was sitting on top of them. More basic than that, even: the layout of the office, where things were, the traffic flow.
Cleaning was a fairly effective way of mapping all of that.
Wandering around the company on your second day of work under the pretext of "looking around" would have looked a little off, after all.
"You can see why the company's in decline everywhere you look."
I said it quietly to the Ghost, who had been trailing after me in a state of rapture. His voice dropped at once, thoroughly deflated.
"You can already tell...?"
"It'd be stranger if I couldn't."
I straightened my back, then swept a look around under the guise of stretching.
"Employees sitting around with nothing to do and no purpose. Messy desks. Calendars and schedule sheets on those desks that haven't been flipped even though the month has changed. They seem to be using a contractor, but either they can't afford to call them in every day or they can't supervise the work. Dust, piling up a little more every day."
"...True. There isn't much... vitality. But as you saw yesterday, when there is work, everyone pulls together and gets it done."
"If you can't even handle the work properly when there is work, you're deadweight. That much should be a given."
Just then, the phone I'd set to vibrate went off, and I answered it at once.
"Yes. Choi Giseo— ...no. Lee Jaewook speaking."
Habits really were a frightening thing. I glanced around. Fortunately, no one seemed to have heard.
"About finding that other person. It's going to take a little time."
Detective Park Daesu. And when Detective Park Daesu said something would take time, it meant the other person I was looking for had hidden himself properly.
"Understood."
"I'll contact you as soon as I have something to report."
"Take your time. It's not urgent."
I'd barely hung up before the Ghost started nodding, in the tone of someone who had finally figured it out.
"Right. It's not urgent. Now I really get it. Why you tied it all up so fast."
See?
Makes sense now, doesn't it?