The King of Hipsters
"Hey, CE. What's all this?"
I arrived at work and was greeted by a bizarre sight.
Lee Yoo-jun, the assistant CE assigned to Kwon Cheol, had built a mountain of scripts on my desk.
Mountain might be a bit of an exaggeration, but it was definitely no small pile.
Even at a glance, it had to be over fifty copies.
Maybe around seventy?
Lee Yoo-jun bowed his head in greeting and answered.
"The headquarters manager told me to bring them to your desk, sir."
"The headquarters manager? Why?"
"He said these are all the scripts that came in for you, CE."
"All of these came to me? In just one day?"
I couldn't wrap my head around it, so I pulled out my smartphone.
Seemed faster to check with the headquarters manager directly.
The call connected right away.
"Yeah, you see the scripts?"
"All these came to me? Not the CL team?"
"I picked out the ones that came straight to you. The assistants already filtered out the junk, so give 'em a once-over."
"When did they start coming in?"
"Been trickling in steadily since At Your Fingertips wrapped, I think? Figured I'd hold onto them in case something caught your eye."
It clicked immediately.
The headquarters manager, who'd been pushing me as a workaholic, had been hoarding these just in case I latched onto something weird.
"Didn't I tell you I'm doing a web drama?"
"Can you drop the web drama talk already?"
The headquarters manager wasn't thrilled about my web drama plans.
He'd suggested I take it easy helping the 4 Team CEs develop their scripts or kick off something entirely new.
If I picked a project, he'd review it as a 100% SSK production.
We had the budget for it after this last payout.
But it wasn't like I wanted to do a web drama... well, okay, I did, but I needed to test my abilities too.
"Not interested."
"You're the only one in this company who'd say no to my face. Even the CEO wouldn't."
The headquarters manager let out a deep sigh before continuing.
"Fine, then review them thoroughly. If anything grabs you, I'll take a look right away."
"If I find something decent, can I pass it to the other CEs?"
"Not other teams. These came because they want your hands on them. 4 Team's fine, though."
Perfect.
I had no dealings with 1 Team anyway, and things were frosty with 2 and 3.
What I really cared about was finding something solid to hand off to No Jae-wook.
Plus, there might be a decent rom-com writer in this stack?
I hung up and sat down, only for the CEs—who'd arrived without me noticing—to swarm over.
"Overheard your call. All these came for you, Do CE?"
"Yeah, apparently."
"Scripts targeted at a specific CE? Does that even happen?"
"It does, but usually after some prior contact. Dumping them like this is rare."
"Ryu Hyun-seok senior might've had something like this."
Ryu Hyun-seok was 1 Team's senior.
"Back to work, everyone. It's already nine."
I shooed the CEs back to their desks and dove into the scripts for real.
Total: 34 works.
Just parts 1 and 2 each, so 68 parts.
And each part 1 came with a short planning intent attached to the first page.
In page terms, nearly 3,000 pages.
Any 40-minuters in the mix?
A mix of excitement and dread washed over me as I started reading.
Couldn't tackle them all at once, so I'd skim the planning intents and part 1, drop the duds, then read part 2 for the survivors. Efficient, right?
But midway through, something felt off. I stopped.
What's going on here?
Is something wrong?
Not that the quality was low.
The assistants had already weeded those out.
The issue was the genres.
Every single script I'd seen was detective, mystery, or thriller.
Maybe sorted by genre? I started from the bottom—no change.
The only difference: a sports script or oddball concept here and there.
But a boxer possessed by a ghost? What the hell?
And it was actually readable, which made it even more baffling.
What is this really?
Puzzled, I set the scripts aside and skimmed just the planning intents.
Then it hit me.
These were all...
"The king of hipsters indeed."
Chae Seo-hee's words were impossible to deny.
But how'd she know without even looking?
The answer was simple.
"Do I need to? Scripts sent straight to Hyun-woo means they think he's the best fit... so either straight thrill-myst or weird concepts, right?"
"At Your Fingertips had tons of romance, and it killed."
"Sure, but everyone saw that as the B-plot. Main track was e-sports and AI corp. Weird stuff."
Damn, I knew it too.
Just wanted to deny it for a sec.
But seriously—no rom-coms at all?
Seventy percent of scripts hitting agencies are rom-coms, right?
The rest intense melodramas?
"What can ya do about your track record? Looks like you'd ignore anything too mainstream."
"Feels pretty unfair."
Contrary to the rumors, I didn't hate rom-coms.
Hell, I even liked them.
K-dramas had built on rom-com foundations and expanded globally, proving it worked worldwide.
Think about it.
What emotion grabs all humanity like love and laughter?
One problem, though: rom-coms were the toughest for unknowns to break into.
No indie films directing rom-coms.
If any, they'd twist 'romance' or 'comedy' into something dark.
Gore-coms or ironic tragedy.
So I'd just been unfamiliar with them.
Not avoiding out of hate.
Chae Seo-hee, listening to my rant, suddenly pointed at my monitor.
"What's that?"
"Post it on SNS."
"I don't do SNS."
"Make one and vent. Otherwise, the misunderstanding won't clear."
Open an SNS just to praise rom-coms?
Wouldn't that be weirder?
But the more people assumed I wouldn't, the more I wanted to do one.
Crush expectations by nailing the genre they thought was off-limits.
"Guess I need a planning project after all."
A planning project.
Where the production company picks a genre or hook first, then finds a fitting writer.
More common than you'd think.
But they were double-edged swords.
Starting from the producer's idea boosted production odds.
Pre-considered budgets, locations, crew paths—made agencies think, "This could work."
The flip side: high flop risk.
Writers often failed to immerse since it wasn't their brainchild.
Or they'd burn out on feedback and just "Fine, whatever you say."
But I saw that as the producer's skill.
Select with the writer's tastes in mind, incorporate them into the script.
"Strangely resolute, aren't you?"
"The more they say I won't, the more I want to."
"Hipster syndrome goes that far?"
"..."
Lately, every chat with Chae Seo-hee left me on the ropes.
"So? Genre's set—what's the story?"
"Gotta find it."
My daily routine simplified drastically.
Finish must-dos after arriving, then binge dramas nonstop.
That's when I realized: since becoming CE, I hadn't watched much.
As an actor, I'd hunted down every new release.
But as CE? Not so much.
Thrillers nonstop for Criminal Community, sports flicks for At Your Fingertips.
So the rom-com backlog from the last two years was massive.
Took two weeks to plow through.
By then, rumors swirled at SSK: I was prepping a rom-com planning project as my next gig.
Web drama whispers too, but those got shot down quick.
No one sane follows At Your Fingertips with 10-20 min shorts, right?
I'd said it outright, but the vibe suggested 4 Team was total outcasts.
Headquarters manager probably wasn't running around debunking rumors.
Finished monitoring new releases, then hit the rom-com classics.
Ones that defined seasons, years, eras.
I'd seen them all, but memories faded on plenty.
Fun fact: top rom-com writers from a decade ago still ruled.
Hong Hee-young of Emergency Alert had smashed 25% ratings ten years back with Tug of War.
Right when I joined theater troupe Gamtan—still vivid.
Loved it then, loved it on rewatch.
Watched it twice, thinking, "This is what we need."
No change in genre tropes.
Just shifting eras and character prefs.
Something like inspiration brewing... but still fuzzy.
Amid those days, a welcome contact after ages.
Eum Sung-hyun, who'd started shooting Upshin a few months back.
The request? Not so welcome.