I Don't Know
Nine Entertainment Office.
Someone cut down the corridor at a brisk clip, and Manager Kim Nakyung's neck stretched out of habit to see who it was—then snapped straight back into place. Sensing something was up, Assistant Manager Kwak Eunji started craning out from the next desk. Kim Nakyung pushed her head back down.
"Duck."
"What? What is it? What's going on?"
"The royal inspector's here… shh."
"Ah……"
The rapid click of dress shoes faded into the distance. The two of them squinted around the room like a pair of flatfish.
A man in fairly sharp business casual—no tie—arrived at General Manager Kim Misook's desk. Every employee in the office, save the man himself, stopped breathing at once.
And then, as if announcing that the curtain had gone up, he set the armload of booklets he'd been carrying down in front of her.
THUNK—!
Hard.
"General Manager!"
"Wow… the inspector's still got that temper……"
"He's barely been around lately with how busy things got… what's he doing here?"
"Must've carved out a window. That's just the kind of guy he is."
As if determined to bury Kim Nakyung and Kwak Eunji's whispering, the man—no, Team Leader Park Munsu of Management Team 1—raised his voice.
"Are you seriously not going to give us more people? Huh?! When you brought me in, you said you'd let me work a little easier!"
"Park, you're here? Sit down. I'd love to hire more people for you. But what am I supposed to do? We posted the listing and nobody's applied. And Actor Bong still hasn't come back yet."
Kim Misook fielded it like she'd done this a hundred times. Park Munsu let out a long, heavy sigh.
"Haa… General Manager. Tae-soo hasn't gone into a shoot—that doesn't mean he's sitting around on vacation. This is a critical window, and he's burning himself out going through scripts with a fine-tooth comb. I'm supposed to be going through them with him, aren't I? Right? I'm the team leader. Look at this. Tae-soo went through all of this by himself. While I was out trailing Actor Ki Seongchan on a variety show!"
"…That really is a lot. He looked at all of this alone?"
"General Managerrr… that's what I'm saying! You have to give me the time if you want me to review them with him. And I am a team leader! If you brought me in to manage, then let me actually manage. Isn't that how this works?"
Park Munsu flipped his jacket open and planted both hands on his hips.
"I'm sorry. I need you to bear with me a little, Park."
"I am bearing with it. That's why I've been trailing him. Ki Seongchan is my actor. Bong Tae-soo is my actor. Lim Haran, who Seungyeol's looking after, is my actor. Kim Woohyung, who just went into management, is my actor too. That's why I want to go with them, why I want to review the project materials with them. Why I want to help when the diet's getting hard. But there's a difference between me filling in as a stopgap and me shadowing every single schedule, isn't there? Which means I can't do the things I'm actually supposed to be doing!"
There wasn't a single thing wrong with what he'd said. Kim Misook smiled, awkward.
"I'll hire someone as soon as I can. Really. I promise."
"No. I need you to do it now, General Manager."
He'd always been blunt, but today he had clearly come prepared. She knew exactly why he was making a scene. And while she was still fishing for a counterargument, Park Munsu landed the finishing blow.
"Team 1 has four actors and two managers. So why does Team 2 get two actors and three managers? Rebalance it. That's simple enough, isn't it?"
"We still have an existing company structure, Park, and a classification system…"
"Even as a temporary measure. Until you find someone."
The awkward smile left Kim Misook's face. She sat with it for a moment. It wasn't an unreasonable demand. It was, if anything, entirely rational. Adjusting fluidly to the situation was the normal thing to do. Clinging to a rigid system built for the company's old scale was what didn't make sense anymore.
"All right. How about this. I'll send Team Leader Baek over to support Team 1. The field managers on Team 2 have a good rhythm going—I'd rather not shuffle them."
"I don't get along with that guy. You know that. Are you trying to watch us take swings at each other?"
"……"
So Team Leader Baek was a no from that side. Of the two who remained……
Actress Ha's manager is out of the question.
He'd adapted with an almost eerie smoothness, but he'd only been here two months. Sending him over as a stopgap and having no idea what might happen was a problem in itself. And more decisively……
Actress Ha has no complaints right now. I can't make a change on this end.
Her previous manager had stabbed her in the back. They'd scrambled to attach a new one, and against all odds, things had gone quiet. Change it again now? If Ha Eun-yul read that as continued neglect—as the company still failing to take care of her—and her frustration finally boiled over?
That was a wide-open door for the actress to walk out. Wider than a door, even. At that point you could fairly call it actual neglect.
"I'll attach Sang-rok. Actor Kim Hyunjun's shoot is in the wrap-up stage anyway… if he hopscotches between the two, it shouldn't be impossible."
"…That's a promise?"
"Yes. You haven't said a single thing that isn't true, so what am I supposed to do? But it's temporary—I can't have him on you every day. You understand that, Park."
"Yes. I'm not asking for the moon. Just let me breathe. Let me do my job."
Park Munsu had cooled off considerably. Kim Misook pointed at the materials on her desk.
"And these? Want me to sort them? You've already gone through them all, right?"
"I'll sort them myself. I'm sorry I raised my voice, General Manager."
"Forget it. Go on. I'm the one who made a busy man come all the way in."
"No, it's this rotten temper of mine that's to blame. And while I'm already apologizing—if any new materials have come into the company, could I take those as well? Doesn't look like he's found the one yet."
"I'll pull them for you. Give me a minute."
While Kim Misook rummaged through the personal cabinet behind her chair, Park Munsu gathered up the materials he'd set on the desk.
…And a few minutes later.
Near the office entrance, Team Leader Park Munsu—who had been slotting the materials into a cabinet—caught Assistant Manager Kwak Eunji as she passed.
"…Assistant Manager Kwak. Let me ask you one thing."
"Yes… what… is it? Uh… uh, right now, uh, there's nothing particular going on with Team 1's actors on social or the communit——"
"Not that. Has anyone touched this recently? No—anyone can touch it. Do you know who looked at the materials in here lately?"
Kwak Eunji pressed a hand to her startled heart and answered.
"A-Assistant Manager Lee."
"Assistant Manager Lee? Who? Do we even have a Lee among the assistant managers?"
Kwak Eunji cleared up his confusion in a hurry. The faster she did, the faster she could run.
"The new manager. Assistant Manager Lee Jaewook."
Park Munsu's face twisted in a strange way.
"…The new manager? You're sure?"
"Yes. I saw him slot them back in and leave a few minutes before you got here, Team Leader."
In the car, pulling away from the company.
Park Munsu flicked a glance at the project materials piled in the passenger seat.
"…Creative writing major, maybe?"
It happened sometimes. This industry went around and around. A creative writing graduate who dreamed of being a writer, hit the wall of reality, and reinvented themselves as a stylist. Or a manager. Or took a job at an entertainment company and lived out their days on a support team. The reverse happened plenty, too.
"Ah… I should've asked just now."
Park Munsu eased the wheel around. If he'd asked Kwak Eunji what the new manager used to do, he'd have at least had a scrap of information.
He hadn't been able to ask. She'd taken off like she was fleeing. Part of it was the shock of hearing that the person who'd gone through the cabinet materials was the new manager. An even bigger part was that his own fiery personality meant he'd never gotten close with the in-house support staff. So he had no prior information, and nowhere obvious to go asking what this Assistant Manager Lee used to be.
Caught at a red light, he picked up one of the treatments—the ten-to-thirty-page planning documents that came after a synopsis.
Box office potential: low. Dated prose and a stale premise. Despite being a first-time writer, the author follows existing formulas to the letter. A printed draft would allow a more precise assessment, but at this stage, the likelihood of this going into production is even lower than its commercial prospects.
The analysis written on the sticky note. Fine. That could happen. You could analyze something if you were studying.
But the next one?
Box office potential: considerably high. Success or failure will likely hinge on who takes the director's chair. The synopsis has real power, but the fact that the writer is a newcomer remains a significant variable. Likelihood of going into production: considerably high.
It was a synopsis Park Munsu himself had checked off. He'd rated the box office prospects low, and the odds of it actually getting made even lower.
That was how it usually went.
Dozens of synopses circulated through this industry—sometimes well over a hundred—and only a handful ever made it to production. That was why first-time writers sent planning documents developed all the way to the treatment stage, the way this one had been. Even then, getting a project made was brutally hard.
"Except this one… it's already in production talks. What the hell is this guy?"
As the team leader in charge of actor Bong Tae-soo, he'd gotten the call right before leaving for the office. They were in production discussions—was there any interest in coming aboard?
There hadn't been.
Rating something that low in the first place meant you didn't think it would even get made. And Bong Tae-soo was being so careful about his choices right now that a first-time writer's project was even further off the table.
Think too long and you only gave yourself a headache.
For Bong Tae-soo's sake—clutching at straws, if that's what it took—he punched in the number he'd jotted down.
The phone rang.
Before the second ring could finish—
"This is Lee Jaewook, manager for actress Ha Eun-yul."
Well, well.
Two months on the job, and both the timing of the pickup and the greeting were clean. Curiosity about a man he hadn't given a second thought to until a few hours ago spiked hard. This, he decided, was worth a little more of his time.
"This is Team Leader Park Munsu, Team 1. Could we meet for a moment?"
"I'm on my way to Paju Drama Studio. Given the shoot schedule, I should be able to spare a few minutes."
"I'll be there soon, so wait. Don't go anywhere."
In the car bound for Paju Drama Studio.
The Bluetooth call clicked off, and the Ghost in the passenger seat let a scrap of information slip, half to himself. That was how the pattern of conversation had settled whenever other people were around.
They avoided speaking to each other directly whenever possible. But if he judged something to be useful information, he said it.
And if Jaewook needed to speak, he would keep it as quiet as a mutter. The Ghost would listen closely and pass along anything worth knowing.
That was the arrangement.
A few months of living together, and Jaewook figured they'd found their rhythm.
"Team Leader Park Munsu wasn't originally one of ours. He came in right before I had my accident, so we barely got past introductions. That guy cut his teeth at a major music agency on the idol side."
"Mm."
A signal to keep going. The Ghost picked up the thread.
"This kind of move isn't common. If you come in on the actor side, you usually stay on the actor side; if you came in on the singer side, you stay there. We've each got our own specialty, you know. Switch in the middle and your expertise changes—there's no real upside."
Jaewook understood. Aides specialized the same way—political affairs, policy, or the district. Take someone honed in one field and drop them into another, and most of them showed the rust.
Which meant there had been a clear reason he'd crossed over to an actors-only company.
And then—from the back seat, where she had been quiet all day, the way she usually was—Ha Eun-yul spoke, her voice low.
"Why does Team Leader Park want to see you?"
Hm?
He checked the rearview. Ha Eun-yul was wearing an expression full of open dissatisfaction. Not that she was failing to hide it, exactly. More that she couldn't.
Ha Eun-yul was someone who generally kept her feelings to herself.
So why? What was she unhappy about?
Park Munsu hadn't told him the reason. There was no way even he could have known. So that was all he said.
"I see."
The short reply, and the cold mask settled back over Ha Eun-yul's face.
Why?