This Shouldn't Feel This Good
Cha Hyunjin climbed into the car.
The front seat... no. The back.
Behind the wheel sat the employee Cha Hyunjin trusted most.
Of course, to a man like Cha Hyunjin, people were measured by their usefulness and their value. Translated into his language, trust came out something like this:
"There's more value here than I expected."
Value. As that phrasing suggested, when Cha Hyunjin called someone trustworthy, what he meant was that they had worth — that he could put a certain amount of work in their hands.
The inverse followed just as cleanly. Untrustworthy meant he couldn't assign them anything, which meant their value was low.
The moment the word left Cha Hyunjin's mouth, the employee in the driver's seat checked his face in the rearview mirror.
"It seems the conversation was enjoyable."
"Mm. Entertaining. A type you hardly ever see in this industry. Or rather — he was never an industry man to begin with, so maybe this is just what normal looks like."
"How did it go, sir..."
Cha Hyunjin lifted his gaze from his fingertips and met the driver's eyes in the rearview mirror.
"There's clearly value there... I just haven't put a price tag on him yet. But he slapped one on himself. A very high one."
"...I'm afraid I don't quite follow, sir."
"He shoved a bill in my face. A steep one."
A question mark flickered through the employee's eyes and vanished.
The man he served held the title of Division Head, but it was more accurate to say Cha Hyunjin was the brain that actually moved KSH Entertainment. What kind of bill could anyone possibly present to a man like that? He couldn't make sense of it.
Even though his employee hadn't grasped it immediately, Cha Hyunjin didn't stop replaying the match. His eyes had the look of a student who had just finished a thoroughly enjoyable game of go.
"He knows me, and I know him. And we both know that the other one knows."
"......"
"If they're weaker than me, I swallow them. If they're stronger, I back off. But if you've taken the measure and you still can't pin down their weight class... what would you do?"
"I'd test them once, I suppose."
Cha Hyunjin smiled.
"That's why I came. Today. Here."
"Yes, sir."
"I came to poke at him. I gave him a little prod, and he was strong, he was solid, I liked him — so I held out my hand. Let's make peace. And he set a bill on my palm. What do you suppose that means? Take a guess."
The employee considered it briefly, then answered.
"...I'm hesitant to say it, sir."
Cha Hyunjin burst out laughing.
"That's it. He's saying he's the stronger one. That's how it works. Only the stronger party gets to present the bill. Chief Kim — could you present a bill to me? You couldn't, could you?"
"...No, sir."
"Hmm... hmm, hmm... Whether that price tag he stuck on himself is the real thing, or just a delusion of overconfidence leftover from his days as an aide... I'm curious. Heh heh..."
Cha Hyunjin hummed under his breath. He was clearly in high spirits. And that was exactly where the employee sensed danger.
Cha Hyunjin was a persistent man. For someone like that to meet a person in the flesh and come away with no harvest — to go in for a probe and still submit an answer sheet that said I don't know — that was unlike him. And to look this thoroughly satisfied on top of it was even more...
Dangerous.
This employee, known as Chief Kim, was not a man who made judgments. He was a man who investigated. And that meant there were times he felt things that never made it onto a report.
That a company was in worse shape than the paperwork suggested. That a celebrity's value ran higher — or lower — than anything written down. Or, as now... that he could feel a danger the documents simply couldn't capture.
"It might be best if you didn't concern yourself any further at this point..."
Cha Hyunjin cut the advice short.
"No. If you want to open the box, you have to bid first. That's how you find out whether the price is right."
"......"
"Pick a suitable SPC from the subsidiaries — a special-purpose investment vehicle — and wire a billion won to TVK. The investment contract... he said the meeting is tomorrow, so confirm the timing and send someone to match it."
"Yes, sir. Understood. As for the exact details... how should we handle those?"
The question made Cha Hyunjin realize he hadn't mentioned the details. His conversation with Lee Jaewook had clicked so cleanly that he'd assumed a rough explanation would be enough for his employee to fill in the rest.
"TVK's Running Today as Well — the follow-up. Confirm the co-production terms with Nine Entertainment, then stamp the contract. When you draft it, hammer this point home. Nine. Entertainment. Co. Production."
"Understood. I'll handle the rest."
"Good. Let's go. Ah — and don't negotiate for a bigger equity stake just because you can. Take whatever share they offer."
"Yes, sir."
"No, wait. Shave two percent off whatever they offer and take that. If they give ten, take eight. Two... they won't offer two, but if they somehow do, take one. It's a settlement, after all. Getting greedy would hurt their feelings."
"Understood."
Chief Kim eased the car into motion.
And yet, from the back seat, Division Head Cha Hyunjin's voice continued, laced with amusement.
"If I lose a billion won... then I'll be the one presenting the bill. Which means throwing it away might actually be the better play?"
The next day, 6:50 p.m.
The conference room of TVK's Drama Bureau.
Director Yoon Hyunbae set aside a faint unease and greeted his visitors.
"A pleasure. Yoon Hyunbae, TVK Drama Bureau."
"Good evening. Lee Jaewook, Management Team 2 Leader at Nine Entertainment."
He accepted a business card from a tall man — not quite handsome enough to rival an actor, but with a pleasantly appealing face. Choi Yoona, the director he'd already met, offered a light nod.
Which left one person...
"And this would be Writer Na Malchul?"
At Director Yoon Hyunbae's words, the remaining visitor bowed at the waist — a measured, polished bow. Neither excessive nor insufficient.
"Hello. I'm Na... Yoonjeong."
"So you are Writer Na Malchul, then?"
"Yes..."
"Aigoo, I've been wanting to meet you — and you're a woman? I had a feeling from the writing. That snappy, sparkling quality. I liked it. Hahaha."
"Thank you."
"A few people who read the script with me kept insisting it had to be a man. No way a woman would use a pen name like Na Malchul, they said. I was right."
"Ah... yes."
As the confidence of Writer Na Malchul — who'd introduced herself as Na Yoonjeong, a woman who looked to be in her late twenties — visibly shrank, a flicker of unease rose in a corner of Yoon Hyunbae's mind.
Did Nine Entertainment just grab whoever they could find because they were desperate?
But that was unrealistic. Someone might say you could just take a drama's synopsis or treatment and assign a new writer to it. Except then it would become an entirely different drama.
Even starting from the same concept, the number of dramas multiplied by the number of writers. That was why people called drama the writer's art.
In the end, a drama was a painting that bloomed from a writer's hands.
And so Yoon Hyunbae, who had been sitting on this synopsis for years, was certain. He could tell a real writer from a fake one. Provided, of course... that he was given the proper materials to work with.
Even as he told himself it couldn't be the case, Director Yoon Hyunbae wanted to be sure. He made no effort to hide his suspicion.
"Let's start with the materials. Looks like you brought quite a bit."
At Yoon Hyunbae's words, the man called Team Leader Lee Jaewook rose from his seat and went to collect the printouts he'd left at the end of the table.
Up to that point, the picture still made sense. He wasn't sure why a Management Team Leader had come along, but it wasn't strange. Having one or two staff members accompany Director Choi Yoona from Nine Entertainment was perfectly normal. Choi Yoona was a director and the man was a team leader, so of course the man would be the one fetching papers.
A writer... he would say it again: in a drama, the writer was the very spine. Even a rookie. The scale of their influence might differ, but they were precious all the same.
So if the team leader was just here to help with the grunt work, then...
And yet.
"...Writer Na Malchul?"
At Director Yoon Hyunbae's call, Writer Na Malchul — who had started to follow Team Leader Lee Jaewook to gather the documents — turned around in an awkward half-crouch.
"Yes?"
"Mm... sit down. First time on this side of things, I take it?"
"Pardon? Ah, yes... it is my first time. But why...?"
"Just sit. All I need from you, Writer, is good writing. Of course, since this is your debut, I may... do a bit of editing."
"Ah... yes."
Even so, Writer Na Malchul started to move again to help Lee Jaewook — until Team Leader Lee Jaewook shot her a discreet look. Only then did she sit back down. Her eyes, still full of apology, remained fixed on the man named Lee Jaewook.
She's got an awfully kind heart.
Or maybe she simply couldn't stand the thought of inconveniencing someone else. Either way, having a decent person to work with was never a minus. Yoon Hyunbae silently rooted for Writer Na Malchul to prove herself with the materials she'd brought.
Thirty minutes later.
Color had returned to Yoon Hyunbae's face.
"You wrote this thoroughly. That's not easy to do."
He had gone through everything they'd brought. And he was certain. The person sitting in front of him was Na Malchul.
Just as Yoon Hyunbae himself had said, the materials were meticulous and abundant.
From the character profiles of the male and female leads to the major supporting characters — she'd even detailed backstories and family relationships that would never appear on screen. Down to birth dates and MBTI types.
The male lead's company, too, had been convincingly assembled from a blend of two real corporations.
And the decisive proof: the scripts she'd prepared through episode four confirmed that the woman in front of him was the real Na Malchul. They aligned perfectly with the direction of the synopsis Yoon Hyunbae had been holding onto. Besides, if you were the original writer, having scripts drafted from episode two through as far as episode six was ordinary — expected, even.
You couldn't take yesterday's materials and produce four episodes of script that matched this precisely in a single day.
It was enough. No — it was more than enough.
Yoon Hyunbae looked at Director Choi Yoona with something close to affection.
"Let's set up the team tomorrow and get moving."
"Thank you, Director."
"We've secured five billion won in production budget for now. If Nine Entertainment wants to put more money in, you're welcome to — but there's no need to take on that risk."
"Ah... yes, I apologize. Our finances aren't quite that comfortable yet..."
Director Yoon Hyunbae waved both hands at Director Choi Yoona's words.
"Aigoo, no, no. I'm not asking you to put money down. Even if this is a filler slot, Nine must have its own assessment of this script's potential, right? If it works, you'd be willing to throw money at it — that's all I meant. No need to overextend."
"Yes..."
"You might think five billion is low by today's standards. But I put a lot of care into this. I'll be directing it myself, so I squeezed the numbers a bit."
He hadn't said it to take credit. He'd brought it up because the financial framework had to come first before they could negotiate the details.
Depending on how they shot it, and how things developed, there could be fluctuations — but nothing would shift by a wide margin. They'd fill some of the gap with product placement, but no one was going to pour a massive sponsorship into a drama that was obviously a filler.
The drama would essentially be shot live, so if it somehow exploded midway through, that would be a different story.
As if that would happen...
Just as Yoon Hyunbae privately thought, the current figure was effectively the ceiling. They had to make it work within this. And the budget had to be locked in before they could even begin discussing actor guarantees, who to cast, what level of location they could compromise on — all of it.
"Five billion is tight. But it's doable. As I said, we'll max out the product placement. I'm sorry to the writer, but right now, filling the budget that way is the better call."
"I'm fine with that."
Writer Na Malchul answered, and Yoon Hyunbae continued.
"If we pull hard on PPL, we can add up to another billion. Car sponsorships, beauty, coffee brands, every hotel scene — we'll pack it all in. If expectations were higher we could do more, but as I keep saying, this is a filler at the end of the day."
"Yes."
"So let's think of the production budget as six billion at the max."
He was hammering the numbers down quickly for Director Choi Yoona's sake, who looked uncomfortable talking about money — when the man he'd assumed had come along as an assistant, Team Leader Lee Jaewook, pulled a phone from his jacket, checked it briefly, and looked toward the conference room door.
"What is it? Is someone coming?"
Team Leader Lee Jaewook answered Director Yoon Hyunbae's question with perfect calm.
"There's a party that wants to invest."
"Invest? This is... our first meeting today."
"Yes."
Yoon Hyunbae tilted his head slightly and asked again.
"Did you already meet with an investor yesterday?"
"Director Choi handled the discussions. She mentioned it to me, but I didn't expect them to come today, so I didn't bring it up in advance."
At Team Leader Lee Jaewook's words, Director Choi Yoona's eyes went round as well. Director Yoon Hyunbae's gaze flicked quickly to her, then back to the man called Team Leader Lee Jaewook.
He had a feeling.
This wasn't discussed with Director Choi in advance, was it?
At that exact moment, Team Leader Lee Jaewook spoke again.
"They decided quickly, just as Director Choi said they would."
Or was it?
It would have been easy to let it go — except the head of a drama bureau wasn't a position you won by being good at cards.
However little interest he had in office politics, however many hits he'd directed to climb here on merit alone... once you reached a seat like this, even if you tried not to play the game, what grew was your instinct for reading a room.
If Director Choi Yoona had known in advance — if this had been something she'd directed — her lack of confidence just moments ago wouldn't add up.
He didn't just tag along. This one is the lucky charm.
No wonder Writer Na Malchul had been watching Team Leader Lee Jaewook's face, not Director Choi Yoona's.
Lee Jaewook opened the door. A man in a crisp suit offered a greeting, stepped inside, and — as if discussion were entirely unnecessary — pulled out a contract.
Director Yoon Hyunbae shot to his feet, checked the contract first, and then let out a laugh that came from deep in his chest.