That's What I Like
The conference room at Nine Entertainment.
Team Leader Park Munsu had stepped out, saying he had something to discuss with Assistant Manager Lee Jaewook. Left behind, Choi Yoona clutched her head.
"...My head is killing me."
Kim Misook was still in the room, and the look on her face was just as grim. They were clearly in the same boat. Choi Yoona spoke first.
"This is more than we can handle, isn't it?"
"Tell me about it. That's the first time I've ever seen someone that smart in real life."
"He is brilliant, I'll give him that. I can barely even follow what he's doing, let alone how he's doing it."
"Exactly."
Kim Misook drew a breath and chewed on her lower lip.
"I need to bring up the tutoring soon. He said he'd just take a look... but is that a one-and-done? If I ask him to do it regularly, is he going to start charging me? If my boy gets into Korea University, will he turn out like that?"
"Auntie!"
"I know, I know. The mood was getting too heavy, so I cracked a joke. Look outside."
At Kim Misook's words, Choi Yoona's eyes drifted past the glass wall of the conference room. Everyone out there seemed to be doing their own work, and yet she could feel every ear and every glance turned this way.
"No matter what kind of shit anyone pulls, the CEO is the pillar of this company. The pillar can't be seen wobbling. Act like nothing's wrong."
Choi Yoona let out a sigh.
"The day after Assistant Manager Lee Jaewook joined, Moon Cheol-sik turned himself in, didn't he?"
"He did."
"Which means he's known this whole time that Team Leader Baek Sungwook was the real culprit. And he never said a single word to me?"
"That's right."
"That's not okay, is it?"
Kim Misook smiled at that — a thoroughly adult smile.
"And if he had told you? Could you have taken Baek down the way Assistant Manager Lee just did? Our Yoona?"
"......"
Watching Choi Yoona come up with nothing, Kim Misook looked at her with an expression of pure fondness. In front of other people she was careful to use formal speech, every time — but that didn't change a thing. She was still a child.
The little girl who loved comic books. Who loved celebrities. Who had loved her father's company more than anyone alive.
She had taken on a position far too heavy for her. And the reason she was still holding on was simple: if even Choi Yoona gave up on the company, it would go straight into liquidation. A few of the staff quietly looked down on her for being young, but Kim Misook knew the truth. The person still holding up the Nine Entertainment signboard wasn't anyone else. It was Choi Yoona.
Kim Misook spoke in the tone of someone soothing a child.
"If you can't wrap your head around it, just take the situation at face value. He said he'd take the heat, didn't he? And that's exactly what he did."
"......"
"Two-thirds of the people in this building are the same."
"The same... how?"
"They're hanging on, reminiscing about the glory days. Ah, we used to be so big back then... Of course, if you get into the details, there are plenty of reasons. Paychecks come on time. Jumping ship means a hard adjustment. Even with the company shrinking, nobody's telling them to get out first. The actors? They rode the wave when this place was doing well. The ones who stayed are the loyal sort, y'know. Loyalty."
"Why the sudden country accent...?"
Kim Misook snapped back to her usual self and snorted.
"That's how you give talk like this its proper flavor."
"Ugh, honestly..."
"Well, at least we're off the hook for deciding what rank to give him."
Choi Yoona laughed, a hollow little sound. She had a point.
"We can make him Team Leader. We've got the justification now, and the headcount slot... he created that himself, didn't he."
The next day.
The day before, Ha Eun-yul hadn't had a shoot, so he had come into the office and cleaned. Today he had only stopped by to pick up the car, when—
"Congratulations. She said she wanted to give it to you herself, so she asked to see you."
He stepped into the CEO's office to find Choi Yoona wearing a deliberately stern expression. Except it looked exactly like... well.
Those elementary school recitals where they put on a play. The ones where they snip hats out of cardboard and the teachers run up little costumes for the kids to wear. It was like that.
It doesn't suit her in the slightest, which is exactly what makes it cute.
She herself, however, seemed fully immersed in the performance. Seated in the CEO's chair, she forcibly crossed her not-particularly-long legs and flicked two boxes of business cards across the desk — the way a bartender in a Western slides a rocks glass of whiskey down the bar to a customer.
"...Oh no."
One of the boxes caught on something, toppled over, and the cards spilled out.
"I'm so sorry."
"It's fine."
Choi Yoona was scooping the cards back into the box when a look of sudden realization crossed her face. She recrossed her legs and put the stern expression back on.
"Congratulations, Section Chief Lee."
"Thank you."
"...Is that it? That's your thank-you?"
"If there's something more you'd like to hear, please tell me. I'll say it."
"...Never mind."
Ordinarily, a conversation had a feeling of being over. With Choi Yoona, it was genuinely difficult to tell whether the conversation had ended or whether there was more still coming. So he asked.
"May I go?"
"Team Leader of Team 2. I'm appointing you."
"Yes. Understood. For the time being, I'll continue as Ha Eun-yul's dedicated manager. Fortunately, Team 2 isn't under any strain at the moment, so Assistant Manager Kang can continue on a one-to-one basis with Kim Hyunjun."
"......"
"Team 2 is nominally a rookie unit, but I don't intend to consider new casting for the time being. We'll proceed in line with their growth. The primary goal is getting the actors we already have on track."
"......"
"Kim Hyunjun's new project starts promotion next week — do you have a variety-show list drawn up? My industry contacts are still thin, so I'd appreciate it if you could pass that along. Once the promotion wraps, we'll start selecting his next project. Team 1 has also reached out about an issue with Ki Seongchan, so we'll need to sit down for a meeting within the next few days. And we should start narrowing Bong Tae-soo's next-project list as well."
Choi Yoona's mouth fell slightly open. More precisely, it looked as though it wouldn't close. Why?
"...Is there some kind of button?"
"Pardon?"
"Nothing... Did you already know you'd be made Team Leader? Or were you hoping for it?"
"I wasn't hoping for it, but I had a reasonably good idea it was coming. Given the company's situation, bringing in Team Leader-level personnel from outside on short notice wouldn't be easy, and you seem a little intimidated by me, so I figured — probably? The business cards came faster than I expected, though. I didn't think you'd go so far as to have those prepared."
"I see... Well, I'm glad at least one thing went off-script."
"May I actually go now?"
"Yes."
He stood and gathered up the two boxes of cards.
"Thank you for going to the trouble."
"...It's nothing."
The performance was over, and Choi Yoona was looking at him with the face of a child whose school play had just ended. Whether this was the entertainment industry in general or just this company in particular, he couldn't say.
Not a single normal person among them.
The set of Melancholy Romance.
"New business cards."
"Oh my god! You're already a Team Leader? Congratulations. You really are on a different level."
"It's not just because he's handsome?"
"What are you talking about? Look how many actors we have on this set."
"So Team Leader Lee is ugly, then?"
"That's not what I meant..."
He flashed a brief smile and moved on. He walked the set, handing out cards as he went. It wasn't as though he had never handed out his Assistant Manager cards — but back then, he had only offered them when introducing himself.
It wasn't that he was pleased about becoming a Section Chief and a Team Leader. It was simply a matter of position.
Back then I was closer to an observer. Now I'm a player.
A player benefited from as much interaction with other players as possible. That was how you acquired better information.
He was about halfway through the first box when he ran into Hyeon Jongdeok, the director of photography. Hyeon Jongdeok took the card, then looked from the card to Jaewook and back again.
"Team Leader in three months, huh?"
"So it would seem."
"Doesn't even look like you're that happy about it..."
"I'm thrilled. Shall I jump for joy?"
"Don't bother. Still, the card suits you a lot better now, at least."
Jaewook returned a light smile to the grin Hyeon Jongdeok was giving him. Then—
"If you'd like coffee, just say the word. I have a coffee truck."
"Gyeon's not exactly a great guy, but... don't torment him too much."
Of course. Whether it came with the job of putting other people on camera, or whether he had simply always had a sharp eye, Hyeon Jongdeok read the situation with impressive accuracy.
"Understood. I'll keep it to a reasonable level."
"Good. You brought umbrellas? Two of them? What, is it going to rain today?"
"The odds are high."
"When you say it like that, I feel like rain's going to come pouring out of a clear sky."
With Hyeon Jongdeok's congratulations as the last of them, Jaewook headed back toward the car. Lee Yujeong had messaged him, asking to talk for a moment.
He met her a fair distance from the vehicle. Lee Yujeong opened her mouth in a voice that barely made it out of her throat.
"...Thank you."
"Of course."
"You know you're a weird person, right?"
"Hm..."
That one wasn't so easy to answer. He considered himself a fairly lucid person. Precise. "Weird" was a word that sat at a considerable distance from that.
If they were talking about weird, the people at Nine Entertainment were in a league of their own.
Choi Yoona, playing at being a grown-up. Park Munsu, the directionally challenged Red Hare. Ha Eun-yul, currently doing her ice-princess impression. Kang Sangrok, the muscle gorilla. And Lee Yujeong herself, whose presence was so faint it could give Kim Taewoo the ghost a run for his money.
Lee Yujeong stared up at him for a long time, then said,
"You're not pretending. You actually think that..."
He changed the subject.
"Did you manage to comfort Ha Eun-yul?"
The aftershocks of the Baek Sungwook affair. He had persuaded Lee Yujeong to capture Ha Eun-yul's phone, and Lee Yujeong had in turn persuaded Ha Eun-yul to deposit ten million won into the account Jaewook had given her — Baek Sungwook's account. What had been slightly unexpected was how readily Lee Yujeong had gone along with everything he asked. Of course, Ha Eun-yul had clearly been hurt further in the process.
Her expression had been dark. Even though the matter itself had been resolved. Then again, he would have been the same. In a short span of time, the two people closest to her — her manager and her management Team Leader — had both stabbed her in the back.
Lee Yujeong answered.
"I'm the mean big sister who scolds her."
"I see."
"When people trust someone, they always get stabbed in the back. Just like Team Leader Baek."
"Hm."
"And that's with people like me. You think someone like Eun-yul only runs into one or two of those? I have to scold her into standing on her own. Don't trust people."
He considered that for a moment, then looked down at her. He wasn't particularly tall himself — Lee Yujeong was just that short.
"You're a good big sister. Standing on her own is the right call. It's not like anyone's going to look after her forever."
"...You're really weird."
He had understood her. Completely, from top to bottom. As he had said before, he was an orphanage kid, and inside those walls the children hadn't spent all their time reading the room and fighting over rank. There had been friendships of a kind. Loyalty, too. They had learned early that no one would protect anyone else for a lifetime, and so the older boys and girls had always pushed the younger ones to stand on their own — sometimes roughly, even a little brutishly.
"Go give Eun-yul some candy."
"Alright."
They started walking, and from behind him came a voice louder than Lee Yujeong's usual.
"If you can't take responsibility to the end, don't make her count on you."
"......"
"Leave it at candy. That much trust, and no more."
The fact that Lee Yujeong could state her position that clearly was evidence of how far their relationship had come, working together to take down Team Leader Baek. He turned and answered.
He chose his words with some care. How did you express this accurately to Lee Yujeong and Ha Eun-yul, who seemed like the most vulnerable people even in this already-fragile Nine Entertainment?
"I generally do my job properly."
"Okay... shh."
"I generally see things through to the end."
"......"
Lee Yujeong was shooting him desperate looks, so he gave a slight nod. Then he turned back toward the car.
"So you can stop acting in front of me. You too, Ha Eun-yul."
Ha Eun-yul was staring at him, eyes wide. From maybe six feet away.
"...Liar. Who even does that?"
"They exist. It's less lonely that way. For me."
Becoming an aide had been a choice made entirely for himself. Protecting someone meant, at the very least, that there were two people under the same umbrella.
An orphan has never once wished to be a lonely child.
Neither had he.
He held one umbrella out behind him to Lee Yujeong. The moment he felt it leave his hand, he opened the one tucked under his arm. And he held it over Ha Eun-yul — over her, and the rain that had suddenly begun to pour.
"Shall we go? I think filming's done for today."