To Make It More Perfect
To make it more perfect.
"Whoa. What is this, a circus act? Is this what modern art is all about these days?"
Outside, Ji Seungcheol's heart was still hammering in his chest.
The way Cha Doyoung had casually dabbed food ingredients and sauces from the plates and painted with them — just like that. Exactly as Kim Gyeonguk had said: it was so uncanny you half expected to find a printer attached to the man's hand.
"If he can do that with no real materials at all… what the hell comes out when you actually hand him proper art supplies?"
From what he'd heard, Doyoung had failed fine arts admissions and switched tracks into directing. And Pine Tree Entertainment was pushing him hard.
"What kind of art school lets a talent like that slip through their fingers…"
Jo Unseok had even shown him the storyboards Doyoung had drawn on his phone. Even in monochrome black-and-white, they carried the presence of a master. When Ji Seungcheol heard how long each page had taken, he'd nearly shouted out loud.
"Director."
"Ah, Team Leader Jo. Out for a smoke too?"
"I quit a long time ago."
At that, the director quietly slipped his cigarette back into the pack.
"You can go ahead and smoke."
"I don't smoke in front of people who don't."
"This is a designated smoking area."
"Still."
The two middle-aged men stood in the evening breeze and talked.
"About Manager Cha. Why is he still at Pine Tree Entertainment? He's not built to be a manager."
"Pure coincidence, really. He took a general affairs job with us just to earn money for camera equipment, and I was the one who found him."
"You got lucky, Team Leader Jo."
"Oh, absolutely. Extremely lucky. The CEO is spinning up a separate media production division, and Doyoung's going in as a core talent."
Ji Seungcheol already knew how obsessed the Pine Tree CEO was with drama and film production.
"Once they set up a studio subsidiary, they're even talking about giving him a little equity and stock options."
"They're going that far?"
"He's the kind of talent who warrants going that far. He's barely been with the company, and what he's already contributed is enormous."
Jo Unseok smiled brightly and locked eyes with Ji Seungcheol.
"So no."
"N-no to what? I wasn't thinking anything weird."
"You weren't even a little tempted to recruit him?"
"…A tiny bit. Just a tiny bit."
A talent his company desperately needed. Claiming he'd never considered it would have been a lie.
Then a thought struck Ji Seungcheol out of nowhere.
Asking him to come to our company… wouldn't that just be dumping dirty water all over Manager Cha's future?
The recruitment hunger he'd briefly entertained suddenly felt like a sin against Cha Doyoung. A sharp wave of guilt hit him.
"I won't think about it again."
"Besides, Manager Cha is so fond of our Hyejin that he'd never go anywhere else."
Just then, Ji Seungcheol's phone buzzed.
"Ah — call from the executive director. Give me a second."
"I'll head back in first."
Team Leader Jo Unseok went inside. Ji Seungcheol spent about twenty minutes getting his energy drained by his superior before finally ending the call.
He sighed, pulled out a cigarette by habit, and raised it to his lips — then stopped.
I quit a long time ago.
Turning Jo Unseok's words over in his mind, Ji Seungcheol quietly took the cigarette out of his mouth.
"I should quit too."
He tossed the barely opened pack into the cigarette butt bin.
"Whoa, look at the color on this beef. That's a full-on steak right there. A steak."
"Is it because of that demonic talent of his? The way he sears the beef is pure art."
Had I always been this good at grilling meat?
The server had been gone forever, so I'd grabbed the tongs and tried my hand at it — and even I had to admit the Maillard browning was so gorgeous it stopped people mid-conversation. One bite and it just melted.
Director Ji Seungcheol came back.
"Our executive director heard about the Nike advertising drama and said he wants to come here right now."
"To grab me by the collar?"
"Hardly. He's completely fired up. Kept asking if we're really participating in a Nike IP production. Demanded the address so he could show up immediately — I barely managed to talk him down. Don't worry, he's not coming."
Thank god.
I really did not want to meet that executive director. Something about him gave off the vibe of a man who could suck the life force out of you in real time.
"Executive Director Song may not know the business and burns through production budgets like confetti, but he's not a bad person."
"Of course not. Our executive director is a man of excellent character."
I had my doubts about that.
"Thank you for today. If you need anything, just say the word. And Director Cha Doyoung — looking forward to working with you."
I still didn't understand why a team leader and a manager who outranked me were speaking casually while I got the full polite treatment. Anyway, dinner was over. We settled the bill and stepped outside.
"Team Leader Jo, Manager Kim. See you next time. Director — next time I'll treat you somewhere really nice."
Director Ji Seungcheol kept thanking us as he got into his car and drove off.
The back of a middle-aged man who could casually drop forty billion won and walk away — how beautiful was that? We'd just been handed free money that fell into our laps, and somehow we were the ones receiving the gratitude.
So this was Nike's brand power.
"Nike really is something else. I didn't fully feel it during the meeting, but now…"
"There's a reason they're the number one empire. Partnering with Nike? You don't overthink it — you just jump in. You're swimming in money."
Manager Kim Gyeonguk chimed in from the side.
"And that same untouchable Nike was batting its eyelashes in front of our Manager Cha like a well-behaved little ragdoll, all because he represents 30THC."
"Ah, Manager."
"What? Was I wrong?"
"I'm just embarrassed."
Embarrassed — and yet it felt even better than that. But if I showed how much I liked hearing it, these people would immediately start roasting me, so I had to be careful.
"With T-Mind on board to help, the shoot should go a lot smoother now. At least we won't have the catastrophe of CG costs wiping out the entire production budget."
That was a little disappointing, actually.
Ah — not sincerely, of course.
I'd felt it during the mermaid-and-sneakers CF shoot: just rolling cameras in front of a green screen and then clicking everything else into CG got boring fast. A chaotic set full of people rushing around — that had the flavor of real life. Like the Winter Castle set.
"Is Netprince's studio monopoly really that bad?"
"Bad doesn't cover it. Movies are one thing, but for dramas, Netprince has so many first-look deals locked in."
"Ordinary rom-coms don't matter much since those are basically just the writer's script playground, but every studio capable of cinematic, dynamic direction is tied up with Netprince."
I'd heard Netprince was the rising heavyweight of the Korean media scene, but I hadn't realized it was this severe.
"Manager Cha, you're heading home, right?"
"I have an oil painting I've been working on. Thought I'd stop by the studio."
"Oil painting? Studio?"
Team Leader Jo Unseok looked at me with eyes that had instantly sobered up. Manager Kim Gyeonguk, his own buzz wiped clean, leaned in close.
"You're working on a painting? Of what?"
"I got some inspiration while working on the mermaid-and-sneakers CF, so I've been filling a canvas."
"Ooh. If it wouldn't be a bother… could we take a look?"
"I'll be completely quiet, I swear. I'm just dying to see what comes out when Manager Cha gets serious about painting. Please? Can we?"
Honestly, I was a little curious about their reactions too.
"Then let's go."
"Okay. Let's go."
And so we headed to the studio.
It was the office that served as headquarters for FreeCutter, the corporate entity behind the 30THC channel — and the place where I'd been doing the oil painting.
"I'm in the finishing stages, so it should be done today."
"Oh, this is lucky."
"Manager Cha, if you were working on something like this, you should've said so earlier. We almost missed it."
"It's just a hobby I do in my spare time."
More like a computer benchmark test, really. Checking how far the Future App could "output" an image — oil painting edition.
With oils, there was the whole drying process between layers, so you couldn't just click it out in a single day.
We took a car with a designated driver and the three of us arrived at the studio. The moment I flipped on the lights—
"Whoa…"
"Manager Cha…"
Neither of them could finish a sentence.
Don't just stand there frozen — say something. Tell me how Premium Cut 3000 performs.
A massive canvas well over two meters wide overwhelmed the two of them.
Jo Unseok trembled at the hyperrealistic image that filled every inch of it.
Chae Seoyun was inside that canvas.
A cascading ocean waterfall and a vast lake. Against that majestic landscape, Chae Seoyun rested her chin on her hand and gazed into the distance. The long, elegant lines of her body perched on a surfboard, the clean profile of her face — so vivid you could mistake the painting for a photograph.
Nothing came out except the word beautiful. A rapturous combination of light.
Manager Kim Gyeonguk could barely breathe. His face flushed red as he stammered.
"Manager Cha… when did you start something like this…?"
"After we finished the CF work. It's in the final stages."
A masterpiece like this, in that short a time?
Jo Unseok's whole body shuddered.
He finally understood: those storyboards Doyoung had casually sketched on the drama set had been, for him, genuinely easy work.
Those storyboards… to Manager Cha, they really were just child's play…
"Mind if I get a little closer?"
"Of course. Look as much as you want, and please evaluate it without holding anything back."
"…H-how are we supposed to evaluate something like this?"
Even to two men who knew nothing about art, it was clearly a masterpiece collectors would kill for. Stepping closer, they could feel the presence radiating from the painting even more thickly. Every single delicate stroke drew nothing but awe.
Chae Seoyun's irises and eyelashes, even the translucent veins visible beneath her pale skin — all rendered in meticulous detail.
Is this what they call hyperrealism? No matter how I look at it, this isn't a painting — it's a photograph.
Still steeped in emotion, Kim Gyeonguk asked in a tight voice:
"Manager Cha… can I call Seoyun right now?"
"Sorry?"
"You said it's finishing today, right? I think it would be good for Seoyun to see the process. I really want to show her. Is that okay?"
"I'm fine with it. Having the model present for the moment of completion is even better."
"Got it. Just a second."
Kim Gyeonguk pulled out his phone and called Chae Seoyun.
Jo Unseok studied the enormous painting from corner to corner once more, then asked:
"Maybe my eye just isn't refined enough, but this already looks finished. Is there still something left to touch up?"
"The base is complete, but there's still one important finishing touch left. The final stroke that brings the dragon to life."
Was that not a heart-stopping answer?
No matter how brilliantly you paint a dragon, without the eyes, it remains unfinished.
"So it's a really critical finishing touch, then?"
"Yes. This one decision, I want to make myself."
"Huh? What do you mean? This is your painting, Manager Cha — what decision is there to make or not make?"
"Ah, well. The painting work itself I left entirely to the art algorithm inside me. But where to place the Nike logo — that, I want to decide myself."
Jo Unseok felt his heart drop with a thud. He stammered:
"Ma-Manager Cha…. What did you just say? My hearing's been bad lately — I must have misheard something."
"I'm deciding where to put the Nike logo so it looks natural and unforced."
Standing before the canvas, Cha Doyoung pointed with a thin pointer stick.
"Should I put it small on the model's shoulder, like body paint? Or on the surfboard, like in the CF? I've also been thinking about making the sun reflect on the lake surface in the shape of the Nike logo…"
"Look, Manager Cha. I don't know much about art, but no matter how I think about it, that is not it."
"Seoyun, get here now! We've got a serious problem!"
Manager Kim Gyeonguk's voice on the phone turned frantic.
"Hurry up and come stop Manager Cha!"
"Manager Cha, how about thinking this over one more time? This is already perfect as it is."
"Putting the logo on it will make it even more perfect."