Raising Absolute Hell
Every failing shop has a reason.
The owner steps out from behind the counter to go play golf. The employee left in charge turns unfriendly. There's no one watching, after all. A decent system can cover for an absent owner for a while — muddle through, keep the lights on. But no matter how well-built the system, people run it, and people don't last.
Nine Entertainment had been exactly that.
The CEO hadn't gone off to play golf, but he had started taking long trips abroad. The company's backbone had declared an indefinite leave. And the man who had been the salt of the company — the one whose absence had set all of it in motion — Director Kim Taewoo still hadn't woken up.
But this was a matter of speed more than cause. Even with reasons to fail, a company with Nine Entertainment's track record and infrastructure does not look like this after three years.
Something had been catalyzing the collapse. Accelerating it.
And the story the Ghost had just told him was about that catalyst.
The first episode of You Are My Straw had finished airing. They were in the car, heading home.
Late night.
The Ghost watched the streetlights smear past the window for a long time before his mouth finally moved.
"Even so, it shouldn't have gotten this bad in just three years..."
"That's true."
Jaewook didn't ask anything. Not what the message to Director Choi Yoona had said. Not who had sent it. Not what the other reason was for the company shrinking so violently in three years.
Wait long enough, and mouths open on their own. Just like now.
"Actors can be calculating, sure. But their emotional range is a lot wider than ordinary people's. Even someone like Tae-soo — doesn't talk much, even-tempered — the inside of him swings huge."
"I'm experiencing that plenty."
The Ghost smiled, bitter around the edges.
"Our company's contract system. You know it's basically built on loyalty, right?"
"Yes."
"But it's not as if the company just takes losses on it. If Nine Ent had been getting unilaterally fleeced, it never would have grown as big as it did."
"Mm."
He didn't agree, exactly, but he understood. Instead of saying so, he opened his ears a little wider.
"The contracts have almost no penalty clauses, so there's almost no signing bonus either. Not every agency does this, but when you're pulling in actors with a real name, you pay a signing bonus. We barely ever did. Come easy, work easy, leave easy whenever you want — that was the feeling. And it worked surprisingly well. Actors hate feeling boxed in. Every last one of them."
"Easy to come in. Harder to actually leave, I take it."
"Right. People assume that if leaving is easy, everyone will just walk. They don't. We supported them well, sure — but more than that, they felt like the choice was theirs, so they stayed comfortable. That sense of freedom. The good support. And the affection they'd built up over the years. There was never just one reason."
Jaewook found himself nodding. You could call it a kind of psychological game, and you wouldn't be wrong.
Years ago, a single idol group had detonated the push for standard contracts, which produced a standard contract for popular culture artists — meaning singers. Actors had one too. The Standard Exclusive Contract for Performers. Maximum term of seven years, same as the singers, though in practice most deals ran three to five. The higher an actor's tier, the shorter the term tended to be.
Three years? Five? Sounds fine, until you're the one signing. From an actor's seat, the risk is still there. Time-bound risk exists in every field.
Of course, risk analysis cuts both ways — the agencies carry it too. But looking at it purely from the actors' side...
Nine Ent had been a company with no risk at all.
No risk, so they walked in easy. Then the system was good, the company had real muscle, and booking negotiations went smoothly. Then they got attached, got comfortable, and didn't leave.
They could have walked anytime. And that, paradoxically, was what made them stay. It didn't make leaving easy — it made their hearts easy. Just one more year, they'd think, and the contracts would quietly roll over.
The Ghost let out a long breath.
"After the accident... even after things got like this, the actors still stuck together pretty tight for a while. They'd take turns visiting the hospital. Tell him they were going into this project, they'd landed that shoot, please wake up soon and look at the scripts with them..."
"..."
"That lasted a couple of months, maybe. Then they started leaving. One by one."
Once a conversation has come this far, pretending not to notice gets difficult. Jaewook spoke the way he might mention the weather, same even tone as always.
"So someone led the charge."
"...Yes."
The conclusion was simple.
Crowds are sluggish, more often than not. But point them in a direction, and they start running at a terrifying speed.
The running isn't the point. The pointing is.
Which is why things calcify when nobody steps forward first — and why, the moment someone breaks, everyone else follows with a much easier heart. They're actually running on their own. They just tell themselves they're following, and that makes it feel all right.
The Ghost spoke a name. Short. Quiet.
Even with his hands on the wheel, Jaewook's face turned toward the Ghost — then, catching himself, snapped back to the road.
"Im Jinseo was the vanguard?"
"Yes."
He'd known from the articles which actors had been at Nine Ent and which ones had left. But articles never give you everything. Some departures never made the papers. Sometimes the order they were reported in didn't match the order people actually walked.
So it wasn't the fact that surprised him. It was the name.
"She's one of the biggest stars in the country right now."
"That's because Chaeyoon unnie isn't around."
"Even when Shin Chaeyoon was still working, she was doing well, wasn't she?"
"...Not to that extent."
The Ghost's voice carried a density of dislike that was unlike him — a genuine putting-someone-down. There was something he wasn't saying.
"A congratulations at this point. It's not even teasing."
The question sat heavy. Even if he simply disliked her for being the first to run, going stone-faced over a congratulations text was...
If he hated her that much, maybe. Jaewook wanted the actual depth of it, so he asked precisely.
"Was the message just a congratulations?"
The Ghost's mouth worked for a long time, hunting for words, before the sound finally came out.
"It was just a congratulations. The problem is she's not the kind of person who sends a congratulations for no reason."
On set, Jaewook generally kept his focus on the actors. Which meant the Ghost went wandering. Bound to Jaewook as he was, the feeling seemed to be that if he was already out, he might as well look around as much as possible.
The You Are My Straw filming location.
"I'll be off, then."
"..."
The Ghost bowed in greeting, his face somehow fine again after a single day.
"I'll be right back."
Jaewook used the method of communication they'd grown used to — typed on his phone and tipped the screen toward him.
"Hehe. Okay."
And then he was off, slipping through walls and bodies, touring the set. Jaewook watched him recede, then turned his eyes to the shoot.
The atmosphere on set could not have been better. It was only the first episode, and they hadn't inherited any ratings from the previous show's collapse, so the numbers were still low. But starting on good reviews was a good thing, no matter who you asked.
In that good atmosphere, the day's first scene rolled on Bong Tae-soo's line.
"What are you doing here?"
The place where he was playing Oh Pil-seung, third-generation chaebol heir, was a coffee shop under the brand YOLO Coffee.
At Bong Tae-soo's performance, the female lead, Eun Na-na, pulled a face of pure disgust. Acting, of course.
"I'm working."
"That's a lie."
"What's a lie?"
"What kind of part-timer is at a gas station when I go to a gas station, at a convenience store when I go to a convenience store, and working the counter at a PC bang when I go to a PC bang?"
Eun Na-na — Jung Yoon-na, in the show — snapped back, all edges.
"If you're not going to order, get out."
"Who said I wasn't ordering?"
Oh Pil-seung — Jaewook would call him by the role, since they were rolling — pulled a wallet from his coat and held out a black card.
"The most expensive coffee you've got."
Jung Yoon-na took the card and muttered, half to herself.
"...Is this guy insane? How expensive can coffee-shop coffee even get? And he wants the most expensive one?"
"You were talking shit about me again just now, weren't you? Let me tell you something up front — you're the first woman who's ever treated me like this. That kind of thing doesn't work on me."
That was the setup. Those were the characters.
Oh Pil-seung was a chaebol, but he went to PC bangs and ducked into convenience stores. Things he never got to do as a child, now that he was free, he was determined to enjoy. And wherever Oh Pil-seung went, Jung Yoon-na was there working a part-time job.
The misunderstandings just kept stacking.
He told her he was a chaebol; she wanted to know why a chaebol would set foot in a PC bang, and treated him like a pathological liar. He, in turn, was convinced she wasn't a part-timer at all — that she was following him from place to place to seduce him.
Jaewook's gaze left the actors and found Director Yoon Hyunbae, monitoring the take. That kind of veteran instinct didn't come free. Yoon Hyunbae had worked his head to wring every last drop of product placement out of the show.
Jung Yoon-na had originally been a perpetual job-seeker who also worked convenience-store shifts. He'd rewritten her as a professional part-timer who happened to be job-hunting on the side. A scramble to land as many PPL deals as possible without gutting the writer's intent.
That was when the timing lined up. Team Leader Park Munsu called.
Jaewook glanced around, confirmed the Ghost was gone, excused himself to the staff, and slipped out the coffee shop's back door.
"You're on set?"
"Yes, this is Lee Jaewook."
"You're on set?"
"Yes."
"Different, right?"
A short question, amusement sitting in it — but Jaewook understood exactly what he meant.
"It is. They even let me onto an indoor set as the lead's manager."
"Right? It's a funny thing. A manager's treatment follows their celebrity's rank."
"That's only natural."
Jaewook cut the subject off with a short answer, and Team Leader Park Munsu went straight to the point.
"This was right before I joined Nine Ent, so I'm not completely sure."
The timing had been good because the Ghost wasn't there. Trying to look into something about the Ghost while the Ghost was standing right next to you — they were together every day — was a difficult thing. In theory you could just ask freely, since he was a ghost and nobody else could hear, but it didn't actually work like that.
The small mercy was that after months of traveling together, the Ghost had developed a lifestyle of his own. Gaps like this had started to appear.
If it had been anyone else's problem, Jaewook might have let it pass. Because it was the Ghost, he allowed himself a little nosiness.
Not that it was simply nosiness. When the name Im Jinseo had come up, the thought had already formed: maybe they could pull her back. She was a confirmed Lead / Established Tier actress.
"I'll take it with a grain of salt."
At that, Park Munsu dropped his voice and started talking.
"Im Jinseo used to be extremely close with Director Kim Taewoo, back when he was here. Close enough that other people wondered if something was going on. But Kim Taewoo was such a good guy that everyone just went, well, that's just how he is, and let it slide. Anyway — unlike Kim Taewoo, Im Jinseo was... pretty selfish. Actresses tend to be like that."
"I see."
"So that was the situation. And then a few months after Kim Taewoo's accident, she was the first one to bolt from the company. I got this from Chief Kim, so it should be solid."
"I see."
This much he already knew. That Im Jinseo's reputation had been bad — he'd guessed that from the Ghost's reaction. That she and the Ghost had been close... he'd guessed that too, to a point. Getting stabbed in the back usually means you were close. The closer you are, the more it hurts.
"The staff tore into her for it. Kim Taewoo had taken care of her in every way that mattered, Shin Chaeyoon-level, and the second the company atmosphere went sour she was the first one out the door. And this is just a rumor, but — you told me to tell you everything, Team Leader Lee, so I'm telling you."
"Go ahead."
"After Im Jinseo switched agencies, she took a few months off, and there were rumors. You know how this business is. An actress takes a long break and it's she had a baby, she got her face done, she had something put in somewhere, she's seeing a guy, on and on..."
"..."
"Anyway, the rumor at the time was that she'd been seeing a man during the break. And the story is that the man was the CEO of her current agency. Whether they dated and then she transferred, or she transferred and then they started dating, I don't know."
Jaewook hunted for an appropriate noise of acknowledgment and settled on something mild.
"There really are all kinds of rumors."
"There are. That's this industry for you. Anyway — this is also a rumor, but this one's pretty hot."
Jaewook kept his ears open and said nothing. Park Munsu kept going.
"She's not getting along with her current agency. They say she's raising absolute hell because they're interfering with her choice of projects."
"Not getting along..."
"Right. Depending on how you look at the timing, Im Jinseo could be the one being difficult, or the agency could be overreaching. Maybe both. But there's clearly a problem."
"..."
"Could also be that the dating rumor is true and they broke up, which is why things went sour with the agency. That happens more than you'd think."