Chapter 5
Chapter 5
The Rookie Who Saved the Music Video (1)
I was working hard at the company.
Not because I was hoping to run into Cha Seoyoon again or anything.
My job was just miscellaneous work in the administration department, but there was still my uncle’s reputation on the line since he helped me get hired here.
More importantly, I got to see all kinds of people here.
Not on Cha Seoyoon’s level, of course, but rookie idols and actresses were easy to spot in the lobby.
‘She’d probably do really well in villain roles.’
‘That one feels more suited for heroic roles.’
A complete beginner with zero film club experience was out here spinning endless fantasies about rookie idols and actors.
But honestly, it was more fun than I expected.
It even felt like creative desires I never knew existed inside me were steadily growing.
In other words, seeing all kinds of people I’d never normally encounter in everyday life was helping inspire me.
Lately, I’d even started writing drama and movie stories.
I had absolutely no understanding of proper structure or fundamentals, so I just wrote whatever I personally wanted.
Once, I even uploaded one to a community full of media industry people and asked for feedback.
The reactions were…
└Just keep watching movies instead
└That’s too harsh. To me he just looks like a chick who doesn’t know anything yet
└Shouldn’t you at least study the basics before asking for criticism?
└Honestly though, I don’t really sense any talent
The response was so disastrous it barely even qualified as criticism.
But my mentality stayed perfectly intact.
The last thing I’d ever written before this was military book reports. Of course I sucked.
I didn’t even know the basics.
Still, there was one incident that completely overturned my image as a clueless beginner.
Some aspiring writer uploaded a post asking people to read their screenplay.
[I wrote this screenplay. Please give me honest feedback.]
It wasn’t fully complete.
The author said they’d only uploaded around the first fifth of it.
‘This is interesting.’
I read it while gripping my sweaty palms tightly.
And after finishing it, I genuinely wanted to read the rest.
It felt strange.
This wasn’t even a novel.
It was a screenplay composed mostly of dialogue with extremely concise scene descriptions.
But somehow the characters and actors inside my head started vividly moving around.
It felt like I could actually see the scenery unfolding.
My heart started pounding hard.
‘Hey, video app. I want to turn this into a storyboard. Like an actual moving storyboard.’
A storyboard.
A first visual representation of a screenplay.
No matter how much a director verbally explains the images inside their head to staff and actors, there are limits.
Drawings communicate far more clearly.
Apparently there were even professional artists who specialized solely in movie storyboards.
【Rather than still images, I recommend a short black-and-white animation.】
‘That sounds even better. Video communicates more effectively than drawings anyway. Especially for a screenplay.’
Click. Click. Click.
Not with fingers, but with my brain cells.
Click, click, click.
Whew. I burned way too much glucose.
Anyway, after spending around one or two minutes, I created a five-minute black-and-white animation.
A monochrome video version of the screenplay’s most intense scene.
Then I scheduled the upload for five hours later.
[The screenplay was so interesting that I turned it into a moving storyboard.]
I was already excited to see the reactions.
Tomorrow’s commute would fly by while reading comments.
But I never got to enjoy reading those comments on the way to work.
Because the moment I woke up, I received an urgent message from my uncle.
[Uncle] When you wake up don’t go to the company
[Uncle] Go directly to the address I sent you
[Uncle] ASAP
Something serious must’ve happened.
I hurriedly got ready and boarded a bus.
My uncle wasn’t reading my messages.
He must’ve been completely overwhelmed.
So instead, I asked in the employee group chat.
[Me] I got told to report to ○○-dong right now instead of the office. Did something happen?
—That’s a music video filming site. There was a fire at dawn
—Huh? Don’t tell me they’re making us put out fires
—The fire’s already extinguished
—Feels like they called employees over for cleanup work
—Why would regular employees do that?
—Who knows. If they tell us to do it, we do it
This was weird.
Why call regular office employees to clean up a fire scene?
Shouldn’t they wait until the investigation ends and then hire professional cleanup crews?
I only understood the situation once I arrived.
“We’re screwed. Four entire days of music video footage got wiped. Apparently the data manager panicked during the fire and evacuated without grabbing the laptop.”
“What? He didn’t even take the laptop? It’s not even heavy!”
“They said he wasn’t near the laptop when the fire started.”
After hearing the full story, it was hard to simply blame the data manager.
Everyone had rushed to evacuate once the fire alarm went off.
There was no way he could run against the escaping crowd alone just to grab a laptop.
Still…
“You son of a bitch! What are we supposed to do about four days of footage?! Do you even know how much money that represents? You should’ve backed everything up beforehand!”
“I-I’m sorry. The external backups were all kept in the same place too…”
“Why the hell would you keep them together?! Don’t you know what backups are? BACKUPS?! You should’ve at least left one hard drive set inside the car!”
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
The producer looked ready to devour the data manager alive.
Nearby, my uncle stood there drenched in sweat, clicking his tongue while watching the scene.
“How bad is the damage if four days of footage are gone?”
“Time’s part of the problem, but the real issue is the money. We’d have to rebuild the sets from scratch, redo all the filming, pay labor costs again… minimum damage is over one billion won.”
“Music videos cost that much?”
“It’s WISH’s new title track MV.”
WISH was the most successful five-member girl group at our company.
“The data manager couldn’t have predicted a fire, but preparing for situations like this is part of the job. I understand why the producer’s furious. Sigh.”
Once the fire department completely withdrew, company employees were sent inside.
Our mission was to locate the laptop and external hard drives.
【Beginning lost media search.】
‘Huh? You’re helping?’
【Under no circumstances can the loss of video content be tolerated.】
Maybe the app felt some strange sense of solidarity.
For some reason, I got weirdly emotional.
A golden light flickered at the edge of my vision.
I walked toward it.
After digging through blackened debris, I found the laptop and external hard drives we were searching for.
Honestly, they were so badly burned that another person might’ve walked right past them.
“I found them! I found them!”
“What? Seriously?”
“Yes! I found them!”
The coworkers who’d been suffering through exhausting cleanup work cheered loudly.
I felt good too, knowing I’d saved everyone time and effort.
But then the producer rushed over, looked at the laptop and hard drives, and his face twisted horribly.
“They’re completely burned. At this point the platters probably melted too, didn’t they?”
“Looks like it.”
“Fuck! FUCK! FUUUUUCK!”
The good mood vanished instantly.
The producer exploded into a meltdown, and the atmosphere fell silent again.
Even I awkwardly froze after expecting praise for finding them quickly.
【Data restoration is possible.】
‘What? Aren’t the disks totally destroyed?’
【Over 80% has been lost. With this era’s technology, the damage would be permanent. However, restoration is possible for me.】
‘Is there some kind of price?’
【According to the user development support manual, this normally requires 100 million points, however—】
It almost sounded disappointed it couldn’t help—
【Since you are still in the tutorial stage, I will provide restoration free of charge. This falls under my discretionary authority.】
‘Good. You’re sure the recovery will work?’
【The restoration has already been completed.】
…You almost got me there.
The video app displayed the restored footage.
Even from a quick glance, I could tell it was the music video shoot data.
And wow, the choreography for the new song was good.
No wonder they were the nation’s top girl group. They were all gorgeous.
‘Still, Cha Seoyoon really is… no wait.’
What the hell was I thinking?
I quietly approached my uncle.
“Uncle, I know a company that’s insanely good at restoring video data. Should we try taking it there as a last resort?”
“Really?”
“Yeah. They’re incredible. But if we’re doing this, they said to bring it immediately. Apparently they have somewhere to be this afternoon.”
“Hold on.”
My uncle walked over to a middle-aged man in a suit who looked utterly devastated and started talking.
The suited man glanced toward me, then explained something to the enraged producer.
The producer immediately came charging toward me with fire in his eyes.
“Hurry! Hurry and take it! I won’t blame you even if recovery fails, so just GO!”
“Ah, yes. Understood.”
My uncle handed me his car.
I spent the entire day wandering around Seoul wasting time before finally contacting them late in the afternoon.
“Uncle, I restored it.”
—Really? Seriously?!
“Yes. Please confirm if it totals a little over 600 gigabytes altogether.”
Wild cheering exploded through the phone.
It sounded like they’d spent the entire day waiting only for news from me.
Maybe I should’ve told them sooner.
Still, even this recovery speed was already suspiciously fast.
Originally, I planned to wait several days before reporting back.
But honestly, it felt like several people were going to collapse from stress before then, so I informed them around evening instead.
—Doyoung! Come to headquarters immediately! Hurry!
“Yes, I’ll be there soon.”
I drove my uncle’s car toward headquarters.
The atmosphere in the lobby already felt different the moment I entered.
People clearly recognized me now.
It was strangely embarrassing, but at the same time my shoulders straightened with pride.
I felt like some victorious general returning from war.
The producer stormed toward me like he was ready to eat me alive.
“The data?”
“Right here. I backed it up onto three drives.”
I handed him the three external hard drives.
The producer grabbed them and immediately ran off somewhere.
“Doyoung. Follow me.”
My uncle dragged me toward Team 3’s office.
While I sat waiting on a leather sofa, the middle-aged man in the suit from earlier approached with a bright smile.
“I just heard from Producer Jung. He confirmed all the data was restored.”
“Thank you.”
“There are some people who really wanted to thank you personally, Doyoung. Girls, come on in.”
The door suddenly opened.
And at the sight of the girls flooding inside, I unconsciously stopped breathing.
It was the girl group WISH.
“Thank you! Seriously, thank you so much!”
“You’re Doyoung, right? Thanks to you, we saved all the footage we worked so hard filming! Thank you so much!”
Surrounded by the mixed fragrances of several girls at once, my nose, eyes, and mind all started spinning dizzily.