The New Host Is Too Good
Kim Namhu did not need to be the one who crushed Choi Moon-ho's spirit. If the maknae handled it instead, Jang Hyo-woon would simply say thank you.
And Jang Hyo-woon had one more piece of advice to give.
“Ah, since the maknae is bringing in strong sales, there will probably be some seniors who feel jealous and irritated. But that’s just the way it is. It’s a natural emotion, after all. Just let most of it slide. If it gets unbearable, come talk to me about it.”
In other words, he would personally resolve it.
To Kim Namhu, this was a warning to treat him like a senior while at the same time declaring protection.
“Yes. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. I’m the one who should be grateful.”
And the warning Jang Hyo-woon had given in advance came true almost immediately.
**
Kim Hye-ji barely had any downtime because she alternated between two shoots. There was hardly time to even meet up with friends.
That was why, on days when she needed healing, she would send a secondary outing request to Kim Namhu.
She could afford to pay the cost of borrowing him for a single night, and talking to him instantly washed away the stress of acting.
And on the day Kim Hye-ji called Kim Namhu, a customer suddenly appeared looking for him.
Kim Namhu had informed all his regulars that he would be away from the bar, so regular customers never came. But this was different. These were customers who had heard his name and decided to visit anyway.
“Is there no Kim Namhu host here? I thought he was on shift every day except Wednesdays.”
“Ah, I’m sorry. I’m currently out with another customer and I don’t know when I’ll be back.”
The bar staff member bent as low as possible to not upset a woman’s mood. To keep sales up, he even offered an alternative.
“But our bar has plenty of hosts as excellent as Kim Namhu. Would you like to try choosing one?”
The staff member was simply doing his job, but today his luck was terrible.
This woman customer was not like the others.
“Choosing? I’ve come three times already wanting Kim Namhu, and every time I’m told he’s not here. I’m being fed lies. What is this?”
It was impossible to say the customer had terrible luck when Kim Hye-ji was the one who usually requested him. But the staff member could not say that, and the woman’s voice grew louder.
“Hey! Are you ignoring me? Call the owner right now! I want to see what kind of owner runs a place that treats customers like this!”
The staff member said he would ask upstairs and rushed outside.
There was nothing he could do from here.
In truth, there was nothing he could do even if he stayed outside.
Hosts who could calm a woman like this customer down were rare, and good hosts did not want to deal with this kind of trouble.
Today, the staff member had been lucky. A host had stepped forward to take the case.
The Ace of The Queen, Choi Moon-ho.
He opened the door of the room where the woman was and entered.
When Choi Moon-ho was expressionless, he looked like ice-cold masculinity, but the moment he smiled, no woman could resist him.
He bowed respectfully and apologized.
“I’m sorry for the wait. We do our best to manage hosts, but occasionally one like that appears.”
Choi Moon-ho was a host, but he carried an air of elegance and charisma that made him seem like someone from a higher world.
The woman’s voice, which had been demanding answers, softened a little.
“Who are you?”
“I’m the Ace of The Queen. Choi Moon-ho.”
No matter which host bar you went to, the Ace was the most difficult host to meet. They were always surrounded by waiting clients, and unless you spent a ridiculous amount of money, you were not even allowed to speak to them.
The woman was satisfied that the Ace had come out to deal with her.
“So what now?”
“I overheard a little outside. You came three times because you wanted Kim Namhu and couldn’t get him. It’s a bit cruel for you to just leave today. How about I take care of you instead?”
The woman looked at Choi Moon-ho.
He looked like a cold, handsome man, and someone you would never meet in the outside world. But he was offering to entertain her.
If this man smiled even once, women who were cold to everyone else would be gentle with her.
The woman smiled and nodded.
“Then I’ll do that.”
**
Kim Namhu always stayed in close contact with his regulars. He had to become their boyfriend and a place to relax, and he had to maintain steady affection.
Just asking once or twice a week if they had eaten was a small effort, but it produced big results.
When Kim Hye-ji asked him how her shoots were going, a different message arrived.
— You’ve been really busy lately?
— A little, yeah.
The reason for her busyness was Kim Namhu.
Other regulars, even if they went to a secondary outing, were satisfied after about three hours of entertainment and went home. They still had plenty of time to entertain other customers even if one showed up.
But Kim Hye-ji was different.
She spent a lot of money and a lot of time.
Once she received a secondary outing request from her, it was the same as giving up an entire day.
It was time Kim Namhu spent less on making other regulars.
Kim Namhu did not complain.
It was his own schedule issue, and it was not right to make the customer feel responsible.
— Huh? Being busy isn’t good. I told some big names in the entertainment industry about you. Some of them might even come looking for you.
— Really? Thanks.
The entertainment industry was inseparable from the underworld.
Among the big names there, many were from the underworld, and many people used the underworld.
Kim Namhu thought back over the past few days. Had anyone who had come thanks to Kim Hye-ji’s introduction shown up?
Not yet.
There had been a few people who came because of him, but none who had identified themselves as coming through Kim Hye-ji’s introduction.
‘They’re probably coming later.’
Kim Namhu decided to take it easy.
He did not dwell on problems for which there was no solution.
And then one host approached Kim Namhu and started a conversation.
It was Choi Moon-ho.
“Kim Namhu.”
“Yes?”
“Let’s talk for a minute.”
“Of course.”
Kim Namhu found it strange that Choi Moon-ho had come to talk to him.
Normally Choi Moon-ho was not the type to speak kindly to other hosts.
Most of the time, talking to hosts below him was basically issuing orders.
‘And I thought Choi Moon-ho hated me?’
This month, as Kim Namhu’s sales steadily caught up with Choi Moon-ho’s, Choi Moon-ho’s dislike had grown stronger.
The two of them stepped outside The Queen for a while and went to a café.
Choi Moon-ho, still acting the senior, paid for his own coffee.
Kim Namhu could feel the bad feeling growing.
Good instincts did not match dirty things in life, but dirty instincts matched perfectly in life.
Choi Moon-ho looked at Kim Namhu with his usual expressionless face and said:
Kim Namhu could not understand why women liked Choi Moon-ho when he saw that face.
Women who liked bad men in particular felt the same. Even if they knew the fact, they could not understand it.
“I had a customer who requested you yesterday when you were gone. I served her.”
Now Choi Moon-ho had recognized Kim Namhu as one of his own hosts.
So he skipped all the preliminaries and got straight to the point.
He thought Kim Namhu would understand everything from those short words alone.
Of course Kim Namhu understood the full context from the few sentences.
‘This situation is screwed up.’
Even if they were bottom-of-the-barrel hosts, there were certain rules of propriety that had to be followed.
The most forbidden one was stealing someone else’s designated jimyung.
Usually the client chose, and stealing another host’s regular was like stealing their livelihood.
Customers who lost their regulars because of this often ended up in fistfights.
But yesterday Kim Namhu had been away because he had taken Kim Hye-ji’s secondary outing request.
If he had been there and dealing with other customers, he could have greeted the client briefly and asked a close host for help. But that was impossible.
In that situation, if another host had stepped in to fill in, Kim Namhu could not have openly gotten angry.
‘The problem is that Choi Moon-ho, my direct competitor in sales, took it.’
If a host who was not even in the same league as Kim Namhu had done it, Kim Namhu would have truly thanked him.
But when the rival Choi Moon-ho did it, the rotten smell was unavoidable.
“Wasn’t the first thing to do to contact me?”
“Contact me? Then I would have rushed over?”
Choi Moon-ho knew.
These days, once Kim Namhu took a secondary outing request, it meant he was not coming into work that day.
And Kim Namhu was earning so much money that such requests were allowed.
There was no way Kim Namhu would give up those requests and come back.
---
**CHAPTER_END**