Human Garbage (1)
The entertainment industry was a market that took a mannequin stuffed with rotten, decaying organs beneath a skin of silicone and called it everyone’s idol.
I had once heard that phrase somewhere, and there was a part of me that agreed with it more than I cared to admit.
It had been a long time since I’d realized that among the stars the world worshipped, there was nothing truly beautiful all the way through.
Most of them had some flaw tucked away in the organs that made up their image, and the worse ones had whole organs that were beyond repair.
Of course, those problems usually never surfaced.
The media and press, who layered leather over them, did everything in their power to keep it that way.
But there was no such thing as absolute certainty in this world.
Sometimes their ugly secrets were dug up far too easily, exposing the rotten insides for everyone to see.
That was because crows that smelled a corpse would tear off the silicone skin.
Chu Hyeokjae was the angriest of those crows.
“Ah, over here!”
A quiet corner seat in a café just beyond the city center.
A sturdy middle-aged man with a scruffy beard and horn-rimmed glasses was waving at me with a grin that looked far too pleased with itself.
Not a face I was happy to see.
There was the usual sleaziness that came with a gossip reporter, and on top of that, I had memories of being hounded by this bastard. Naturally, that didn’t improve my mood.
Old memories surfaced.
The time he tried to drag me into Jo Duho’s sexual bribery scandal right after my first project.
The time he floated conspiracy theories that I was covering up an actor’s double life of infidelity in my next drama.
The time he used Ryu Cheong-ah’s last phone call before her suicide as leverage to keep digging at me, and every incident after that when he’d practically stamped his feet trying to tie me to it somehow.
I’d never seen a grudge twisted together this viciously before.
Did I know why Chu Hyeokjae had come after me that hard?
It wasn’t because I’d done anything wrong.
It was because I was in situations that stimulated people’s imaginations.
That was all.
The bad luck I’d been saddled with, which had even earned me the treatment of a plague-ridden idiot, was exactly the sort of thing that could breed horrific conspiracy theories depending on how you looked at it. And since the traffic those articles generated fed the bastard’s livelihood, he was willing to grind people into the dirt for a reason that stupid.
He was the living embodiment of the word trash reporter.
And yet he’d stayed active without a scratch all the way until the day I died, which made him living proof that justice and karma were a load of bullshit.
In a normal world, he was the kind of person I should never have had anything to do with.
And yet...
There isn’t anyone better for this.
I had rewound time and come back to the past, but I was certain I couldn’t block every misfortune completely just because I had knowledge from the future.
I assumed the plague-ridden idiot attached to me would lay mines under my feet whenever he pleased.
So what was I supposed to do?
Detonate them before I stepped on them.
In that sense, absurdly enough, this bastard who chased after mines was also the best mine-detonation squad I could ask for in the industry.
That was why I was being polite first.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you like this. I’m writer Han Jaekyung.”
“I’m reporter Chu Hyeokjae. Kihya, I was a little surprised. Not many people contact me first to make a public-interest tip.”
“I thought you were someone who handled issues well.”
“Heh. What I meant was that not many people call me even knowing how I handle them.”
The look he gave me as he scanned me was sticky as hell.
Like he was searching for a place to sink his teeth in.
“It’s not about you, writer-nim, but there are plenty of weird people who try to sweet-talk one reporter into doing whatever they want.”
Well, that’s exactly about me, isn’t it?
While I was thinking that, the bastard changed expressions.
“Anyway, yes, shall we get to the point? I heard the basics, but I’d like to know more in detail.”
“It’s a common story. A family agency extorting a rookie actress full of dreams and hope... yes, something like that.”
“That’s the drama you’re writing now, right? I looked it up. It’s a contest-winning project.”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“Are you personally close to the actress? Or do you have feelings for her?”
Such a rude question, and he asked it without even blinking.
“I want my work to succeed.”
“Then you could’ve buried it. Wouldn’t bringing it out cause trouble?”
“The opposite. If we solve the trouble that comes to the actress, people will be more likely to tune in out of sympathy and support for her, won’t they?”
When I said that, the corner of Chu Hyeokjae’s mouth twisted.
“...Writer-nim, I’m sorry, but why does that sound to me like you’re saying you want to use me for public spin?”
The phrasing was vulgar.
The filth at the bottom was embarrassingly transparent.
But separate from that, I couldn’t deny he was right.
If the right moment comes, I want it to explode in a useful way.
I knew exactly how Ryu Cheong-ah’s family would move from here on out.
I knew how long they’d keep lying to her while they picked at her vault.
To the point of nausea.
The parents I’d uncovered had done things at that level.
So since I’d decided to cut them out, might as well make sure I got paid for the trouble.
If you put the pieces together properly, it was perfectly possible. That was all I was doing.
“That might be a fair reading.”
“You’re a nasty one, writer-nim. What if I were recording this conversation?”
“You won’t be able to release it.”
“Why do you think that? I’m more reckless than you’d expect. But to me, you look like the kind of guy who doesn’t have anyone backing him up.”
It was a threat, plain and simple.
Of course, there was no reason for it to work.
Keep it simple.
My greatest asset was that I knew the biggest problem in this damned entertainment industry: people.
I had a roster I could pull up at any time, letting me respond with precision.
I wanted to cut Ryu Cheong-ah’s parents out of her life.
And I wanted to use Chu Hyeokjae as the card to do it.
But Chu Hyeokjae was the kind of buzzard who couldn’t rest until he’d ripped apart everything he could see and gorged on it.
So here was the problem.
How did you put a leash on a bastard who thought the zoo keeper was his next meal?
“PD Jo Duho.”
You put a feast in front of him, one he’d be too fat to resist.
If that feast happened to be the garbage I needed to dispose of anyway, all the better.
“I think I can give you some information on the scandal you’ve been chasing.”
“...!”
For an instant, Chu Hyeokjae’s face stiffened.
It was so brief it was almost nothing.
Right afterward he seemed to realize he’d been caught off guard and tried to smooth his expression back into place, but...
“What do you mean by that...”
“We know each other well enough. You need proof that Jo Duho received sexual favors, don’t you?”
This time, Chu Hyeokjae failed to control his expression.
He froze in an instant.
Then came the change.
“...Wow.”
If I had to describe his reaction...
“What is it with you, writer-nim?”
Yeah. I still didn’t like him.
“You’re an awfully interesting one, aren’t you?”
Chu Hyeokjae’s mouth twisted upward.
* * *
Hyeokjae was feeling an extremely unfamiliar sensation.
He was so dumbfounded that he could barely think, let alone speak.
After a moment of confusion, he finally managed to name the feeling.
Oh. So this is what it feels like to get blindsided?
Right. He’d hit plenty of people from behind, but never been on the receiving end, so it made sense that it shocked him.
What the hell is this guy?
Suspicion surged through him.
Meeting people always began with basic background checks.
There was no way he’d believe some nonsense about public-interest tips or whatever.
Hyeokjae knew himself better than anyone.
If someone came looking for him and had no hidden agenda, they were either crazy or stupid.
But Jaekyung was neither.
He was, in fact, the kind of person who made everything more baffling.
New writer. Graduated from a decent university, close friends with the son of the WBS bureau chief, and his debut script won a competition.
He’d looked into digging up dirt from there, but all he found over and over again was that the bureau chief hadn’t been involved in the preliminary screening and had even handed the final decision to the CPs. So that line of inquiry was discarded.
After that, the only thing he could confirm was that, unlike a debut writer, Jaekyung had somehow gone through production without any trouble.
From the outside, his profile read like a reasonably sociable rising talent.
And then this guy suddenly brought up Jo Duho’s scandal.
The same scandal Hyeokjae had pursued doggedly for two years and still hadn’t found decisive proof for.
Didn’t that make no sense?
So his nerves went taut.
But that tension collapsed almost immediately afterward.
“...Will you answer if I ask? How did you know that? I’m usually pretty careful with my investigations.”
“I can’t tell you. It’s my leverage.”
“Then I can’t trust you, writer-nim.”
“Why do we need trust between us? This is business.”
Hearing that, Hyeokjae blanked out for a moment.
“...Pardon?”
“Business. It means we’re making a deal. Don’t you know that?”
He looked at Jaekyung’s face.
In the eyes of a man who still didn’t look like he’d fully lost the milk on his breath, there was something older than his age.
Something beyond him, as if it had weathered every storm in the world and come out the other side so disillusioned it had stopped expecting anything at all.
It was strange.
Hyeokjae could swear he had never seen anyone like this in the entertainment industry, where every kind of human specimen crowded together.
No matter how he thought about it.
“Let’s just think about one thing. I can give you the source, and you can clear away the thing I don’t want to see.”
A person speaking so casually right in front of him.
“Isn’t that a good deal for both of us?”
A person who surely knew he was stepping into danger, yet didn’t seem to care.
“We take what we need, and when we need each other again, we meet face-to-face. Nice and easy.”
A person that unusual.
Someone Hyeokjae had simply never encountered in his life.
“...Writer-nim.”
It was so unfamiliar that...
“Aren’t you scared?”
It was fun.
“If it were me, I don’t think I’d ever say that in front of someone like myself.”
The grin on his lips wouldn’t stop rising.
“Are you confident, writer-nim? I really am the type to dig people up and bury them.”
There was one undeniable fact.
Chu Hyeokjae was the kind of human garbage whose nature delighted in tearing up other people’s basements and putting them on display until they collapsed.
He knew that himself better than anyone, so he didn’t bother denying it or pretending to hide it.
“If you try to stand toe-to-toe with me like this, I’ll get nasty and start digging into your background too.”
He didn’t know shame to begin with.
That twisted humanity made him place his own pleasure above honor, above achievements, above everything.
Hyeokjae was a madman obsessed with one proposition alone: the bottom of human nature.
Because that was how he was wired, he read people pretty well.
After all, the species called humans was simpler than people liked to think.
However complicated the psychological machinery seemed, in the end it was only repeating a handful of universal patterns.
So even as he spoke, he was still probing.
But...
Why can’t I see him?
Today was different.
It was the first time the pieces of a profile hadn’t fit together and thrown an error.
Why couldn’t he see through Han Jaekyung?
There was clearly something bottomless beneath that surface, and yet analysis refused to latch onto anything.
Is there a bureau chief behind him? Or a third party? A writer cartel?
No.
If there were, he’d have to move differently.
He’d have to make another opening somewhere else so the trail wouldn’t be exposed.
But Han Jaekyung had nothing like that.
He was intact.
He left every possibility open so that, no matter what you imagined, you could still connect him to it.
And because of that, it made you think none of your conclusions were right at all.
Is even that a bluff?
The thread of suspicion only kept stretching longer, and then he said something else that was interesting.
“Why would I be scared of you?”
Hyeokjae looked into Jaekyung’s eyes.
And he was sure of it.
It was one of two things.
“I’m such an innocent, harmless person. The kind who won’t have a speck of dust on me if you shake me out.”
A madman, or a con artist who had fooled the world.
“Why would I be scared of you?”
The confidence radiating from that mocking expression thrilled him.
“I’m just saying let’s talk business instead of this other crap. Is that so hard?”
“...So I sell you Jo Duho’s information, and in exchange I get to crush whoever I want crushed?”
“Crush? I’d call that justice.”
“Justice doesn’t come with rewards. But you get rewarded, don’t you? Then that isn’t justice.”
“My justice is rewarded. That’s why I’m alive.”
His heart pounded.
Forget being a reporter, forget scandals, Hyeokjae was simply too curious about Han Jaekyung as a person.
That single reason made the proposal feel irresistible.
So irresistible, in fact, that even Jo Duho himself fell to the background.
That was when it happened.
Jaekyung said, “If you’re not going to do it, get lost.”
Without even taking a breath, Hyeokjae replied, “It’s a bad habit to get a guy this worked up and then back out.”
It was effectively a yes.
Only then did Jaekyung’s eyebrows rise.
This was the greatest excitement Hyeokjae had felt since he’d started doing this.
There was no way this excitement would fade before he saw the bottom of Han Jaekyung.
“Fine. Let’s hear it. What do you want me to do? Blow it up right away? Make the whole country throw stones at those bastards?”
At that, Jaekyung looked at him for a moment before answering slowly.
“Not right away. If we’re doing it, we might as well set the stage nicely. First...”
What followed was, once again, not what he expected.
“...Pfft!”
Hyeokjae had to bite back a laugh.
Sure enough, he wasn’t going to be bored anytime soon.
* * *
Sword-Bound Gentleman was steadily building its shooting schedule in good spirits.
Even Cheong-ah, who had been as limp as boiled spinach, had recovered her energy, and once they were on set the laughter rang out so warmly it was almost infectious.
But just because things were good on set didn’t mean they were good outside it.
Someone still had to look at the shadows.
“Well, well, look at this. Isn’t this our busy little Byeongki, out here filming these days?”
On the day he went to the drama division, Byeongki had been sitting at his desk working when he jerked in surprise and looked up.
His expression instantly turned into a sycophantic smile.
“Yes, sir, yes! Senior Jo! Byeongki’s right here!”
Jo Duho, that narrow-minded toad still sulking over some trivial old grudge with Jaekyung, came shambling toward him.
Byeongki cursed inwardly.
Fuck, that venomous toad bastard is at it again.
He had to brace himself.
It was time for the regular scheduled bullshit again.