Human Garbage (3)
Beasts, by nature, never bothered to show off their majesty.
They didn’t need to. Their mere existence was enough to command respect.
Just as a tiger ignored the bark of a dog.
Just as a lion didn’t fear hyenas.
There was that vast a gap between Go Yeongchan and Jo Duho.
Duho’s face turned white in an instant.
And the more he paled, the redder Yeongchan’s own face grew.
The room fell into a silence so deep it couldn’t be compared to a moment ago.
Even the people who had been watching with interest held their breath.
Yeongchan was usually strict, but he was also famous for not punishing subordinates out of personal feeling.
He’d held on through the brutal entertainment world of the nineties and early two-thousands with nothing but grit and ferocity, swearing he would never pass that kind of rot on to the next generation.
And yet, how ridiculous must this situation look to someone like that?
Nobody.
Not even his classmates and executives who had worked with Yeongchan for more than ten years had ever seen him angry like this.
Today was the first time.
First time he’d shown anger in a form that boiled cold.
“Jo Duho.”
“Uh, ngh······.”
“Answer me.”
“Yes! Yes!!!”
“How am I supposed to take this situation? Answer me.”
He hadn’t raised his voice, but that only made the pressure of it heavier.
The growling resonance in his words resembled a tiger’s roar; the moment you heard it, your body stiffened on instinct.
Duho couldn’t answer.
He’d been harassing Min Byeongki, then lost his temper and started shouting; when Jaekyung stepped in, Duho got angry at him and laid hands on him.
That was the plain truth, and there were so many witnesses here.
How in the world was he supposed to dress that up?
His teeth clacked together as his eyes darted around, desperately trying to come up with an excuse, but there was no way one would appear just because he wanted it to.
Of course, Yeongchan understood that better than anyone.
“Choose your answer carefully. If it isn’t a reason that’s fully convincing, then your offense to decorum gets added on top.”
“T-tha, that is······.”
“Don’t think I’ve been ignoring your behavior because I don’t know about it. Turning a blind eye and choosing to overlook it are two very different things.”
By then, Duho was completely at a loss for words.
His legs trembled as he lowered his head, looking so much like a pig moments before slaughter that it was uncanny.
Yeongchan knew that attitude was proof of guilt.
A long breath slid out of him.
Then Yeongchan turned his head.
“Writer Han. Are you all right where you were hit?”
“It stings.”
“I’m sorry. This is all my failing.”
“It’s not something the chief producer needs to apologize for······.”
“No, it’s my fault for failing to keep that bastard under me in line.”
With those words, Yeongchan lifted a fist like a rice-cooker lid.
Smack—!
He hit his own cheek with all his strength.
“······!”
Someone sucked in a sharp breath.
It was that shocking a sight.
Yeongchan, grimacing fiercely, soon bowed his head to Jaekyung, his cheek already swelling red.
“I’m not shameless enough to ask you to take that as payment for being struck. And I’m not going to tell Writer Han to forgive me either. So can I ask just one favor?”
“Chief producer, please lift your head first······.”
“Let us handle this according to our internal rules.”
“······Chief producer.”
“It won’t be bad news for Writer Han. I’m going to make sure that bastard gets properly crushed. That’s the more certain way, I think.”
Yeongchan knew better than anyone that he was saying something humiliating.
But whatever the cost, as the person responsible, he had to cut this off before it spread any further.
And in this case, by asking Jaekyung for such a favor, one fact was established for certain.
“Please raise your head, Chief Producer. Of course this should be left to you. Anything I do would be overstepping.”
From this point on, Jaekyung had acquired a knife he could raise against the broadcast station whenever he pleased.
So long as he didn’t cross the line in the future, WBS would have no choice but to make concessions for him.
Even with that kind of relationship set in stone, Jaekyung didn’t act haughty.
“I’m fine. Getting hit isn’t fine, but I don’t plan on taking it out on anyone else.”
Yeongchan found that deeply reassuring.
If this wasn’t humanity, then what was?
In any case, there was no denying that he now owed Jaekyung both a physical debt and a debt of the heart.
“······That’s why I really like Writer Han. How could I ever meet another writer like you in this industry?”
With his head finally raised, Yeongchan was looking at Jaekyung with warm eyes full of goodwill.
It was the Yeongchan everyone knew.
“I won’t be able to go to the meeting today. Sorry. I’ll sort things out here, so go on ahead. Be sure to put ice on it, and if anything urgent comes up, discuss it with Byeongki. I’ll get the report from him separately.”
“Yes, and I’m sorry too. I feel like I soured the mood.”
“No, Writer Han, don’t apologize like that. You’ll make me into the guy who slapped his own cheek and cried.”
Yeongchan patted Jaekyung’s shoulder, then gestured to Byeongki to get moving.
Jaekyung and Byeongki left the room.
Only then did Yeongchan’s expression harden into something cold.
“Jo Duho.”
“Y-yes······!”
“Do you know why I slapped my own cheek instead of yours?”
Duho felt a chill run down his spine.
One thing was certain.
“If I beat you here, I’d have to bury this whole incident. If I let it turn personal, then I’d be no better than anyone else.”
In the WBS drama department, which was ruled by an extreme devotion to results, Duho had enjoyed a lofty authority until yesterday, regardless of appearances.
But that authority existed only because higher-ups had been willing to recognize his performance.
That was all there was to it.
“No matter what happens, you no longer have the right to defy orders. This will be handled strictly, by the book.”
Those same higher-ups had now turned their backs on him.
The authority that had made Duho so arrogant was about to become nothing at all.
* * *
Byeongki followed after Jaekyung in a daze.
He didn’t say a word the entire time they walked down the hall, or even later in the break room while Jaekyung took out an ice pack and held it to his cheek.
Everything had moved that quickly.
One moment he’d been enduring the usual abuse and swallowing his rage in silence, and then suddenly it had become this. His brain couldn’t catch up.
Only after the fact did it fully sink in.
Jaekyung had been hit because of him, and that had become the spark that got Duho crushed.
That he no longer had any reason to be bullied.
His clenched fists shook.
Rage came before joy.
I-I’m such a fucking loser that I couldn’t say a word······!
He felt pathetic.
What if he’d at least been able to talk back, the way Jaekyung did, point by point?
What if he’d been someone who could intimidate others without even raising his voice, like Yeongchan?
The ego that usually inflated him shrank all at once, and self-loathing rushed in behind it.
There had never been a day he hated himself more than today.
That was when it happened.
“Are you all right?”
“Huh?”
“I’m asking if you’re okay, Director. You seemed to get hit pretty badly earlier.”
Jaekyung asked it without the slightest change in expression, rubbing his swollen cheek with the ice pack still in place.
That casual attitude left Byeongki flustered.
“I-I’m not the one who······”
“I got hit once and then crushed that bastard, so it’s a win. He won’t be bothering you anymore, right?”
The implication of those words made Byeongki’s eyes go wide.
“Y-you stepped in because of me······?”
“Then why else would I have stepped in? It’d just be more trouble for me.”
“Wh-why······?”
Jaekyung was a rookie writer too.
If things went badly, his reputation in the industry could take a hit right then and there, and beyond that, he might not be able to get work anymore.
He couldn’t be stupid enough not to know what kind of risk that was, so why?
For someone like me, of all people.
The moment that thought took shape—
“Why? Because you’re one of mine, Director.”
Those words pierced Byeongki like a needle.
“I don’t just sit still when someone touches what’s mine. If the most valuable people I picked myself get put through hell by people less than them, how fucking miserable is that?”
It didn’t seep in through the ears and into the head.
It seeped straight into his chest.
One of mine.
The most valuable.
How grateful he was to have those positive words directed at him.
How special it was that someone believed in him like that, when he’d never really accomplished anything and did nothing but complain whenever he had the chance.
No one in this industry had ever said anything like that to Byeongki before.
Everyone called him eccentric.
Even without saying it aloud, he could feel just how much they looked down on him.
But what in the world had that man seen in him to say something like this?
To step in and stake his own career like that?
He couldn’t make sense of it, and the feeling itself made his throat tighten.
Byeongki felt tears welling up.
No, his eyes were already shining with them.
“W-writer······!”
“What’s with that face? Men shouldn’t make each other look creepy.”
“I-I······ *sob*······!”
At last, Byeongki’s eyes grew wet.
The tears wouldn’t stop, and he wiped at them with his sleeve.
Even then they kept coming, until he finally let out a cry that was almost a groan.
Then, in a trembling voice, he blurted out, “I-I’ll work really hard! I’ll grind down to the bone and do my absolute best······!”
What does a man live for?
He lives for the one person who recognized him.
So the choking words he forced out were not really for Jaekyung, but for Byeongki himself.
It was his honest wish not to become any more of a burden to this person.
Jaekyung gave a small, disbelieving laugh.
“Yes, do your best. Grind down to the bone if you have to.”
It was a vow made in the corner of a humble little break room.
But because it was made there, it was all the more sincere.
So Byeongki would have been better off not knowing.
That not long ago, Cheong-ah had said the exact same thing to Jaekyung, and that his answer then had been, “Do your best in moderation. If you collapse, the filming schedule gets messed up.”
It was probably better that Byeongki never knew that fact for the rest of his life.
* * *
Authority was no different from a drug.
Its nature was deeply addictive and pleasurable, so if you indulged in it carelessly, before you knew it the line of good sense disappeared and it could end up strangling its own master’s neck.
That was why authority should always belong to people who understood the weight of responsibility that came with it.
This was the outcome when someone who didn’t understand that seized it.
He really got the bastard good.
A few days later, I got the news of Jo Duho’s punishment from an exuberant Min Byeongki.
Three months’ suspension, and after that, reassignment.
It was basically enough to make sure he could never work as a PD again.
By the time he finally walked out on his own, the rumors would already have spread through the industry, and all he’d have left would be to chew over his humiliation and stare at what he’d lost.
From the broadcast station’s perspective, it was better to sacrifice one bastard than risk an external scandal.
Of course, if he’d only kept his filthy hands inside the company, maybe they would’ve let it slide. But he’d gone so far as to reach outside the station, so what else could they do?
He was too drunk on it. That bastard.
Pick a fight and beat a writer because you’re excited?
The very fact that he could do that without a shred of hesitation was proof enough.
From the start, he’d probably been walking that line far more dangerously than anyone realized.
And if you added in the still-unexposed sexual-favors scandal, that was even more reason.
So, should I just call it a gain and stop here?
As if.
I wasn’t nearly virtuous enough to let something done to me go with just this much being evened out.
More importantly, I still had use for Jo Duho.
The scandal will break······ next year. Probably after the show airs.
Then I’d squeeze every last useful drop out of him.
After thinking that far, I dismissed him from my mind.
Right now, the rails that would be laid out on the road ahead mattered more than the poisonous toad that had been swept out from in front of me.
Filming has started, and progress is faster than I expected.
Late autumn, October. In the middle of good weather and a good atmosphere, everything was settling into place.
If there was anything still worrying me, it was Ryu Cheong-ah.
Her mental resilience still seemed strong enough to worry about other people.
Separately, though, the message made me sigh first.
That idiot Min Byeongki, running his mouth for no reason.
Some of the filming crew had learned what happened at the station.
After that, Cheong-ah had started contacting me privately.
Does she know she’s the one I’m most worried about?
I didn’t know why she was worrying about my body.
Getting hit in the cheek wasn’t going to kill me.
[Han Jaekyung: I’m fine. The swelling has already gone down.]
[Ryu Cheong-ah: That’s a relief! Please let me know once you’re fully recovered! Then maybe to celebrate, I could get you a gift or······!]
It’s not like that’s necessary.
I closed the phone.
Then I placed my hand over the keyboard.
Hide out until the final episode.
Writing the script didn’t mean it was over.
Depending on production, revisions could always still happen, so with that in mind, I needed to finish the first draft before winter ended.
This time.
For sure. Absolutely.
I wanted to show the world my writing in its proper form.
I was done with being consumed by human beings and fading out before I even saw the light.
I’ve already cleared out everything risky for this stage.
Every time I felt how close the summit really was, learned anxiety drove the whip deeper into my back.
I couldn’t let myself relax, because the moment I did, it felt like something that had been holding me together at the edge would come crashing down.
Pressure and anxiety.
As I moved my fingers in a struggle to shake them off, the tapping finally filled the room.
Tap, tap!
The rhythm blurred my sense of time.
It devoured my moments without mercy and digested them whole.
And so the autumn of my beginning.
[Ha! Writer Han! It’s me, Byeongki! We finally wrapped the fall portion of filming, haha!]
Autumn passed into winter.
[Ryu Cheong-ah: Merry Christmas, Writer Han! Are you maybe very busy? The thing is, our filming team is thinking of having a little Christmas party together! I know you must be busy, but if, if, if you happen to have time, maybe you could come and talk about the characters with us······.]
Winter passed, and then spring again.
[Ryu Cheong-ah: (photo) Hello, Writer Han! We’re filming in the spring, and the flowers are so pretty I wanted to send you a picture! Haha. Oh, and do you maybe like flower viewing? I thought it might be nice if you stopped by the set and took a look, just to clear your head a little! Of course, I’m absolutely not forcing you! You always work so hard writing our scripts, so······.]
When you lived day after day thinking only about production, time passing like this felt like nothing more than an instant.
Before I knew it, I was already here.
[Heh heh, Writer Han! Next quarter, you’ll finally be making your debut as a lead writer—how do you feel!]
When I came to my senses, it was the second quarter of 2014.
That was when the countdown to airing began.
---