Two Currents and One Gamble
The lounge on the seventh floor of the O2 Entertainment building.
Between the quiet hum of a capsule coffee machine, low, hushed voices were being exchanged.
"The broadcast date for Park Songhwa's Our Hospital has been confirmed for next week."
"I know."
Ju Gyeongseok, Head of Management Division 1, lifted his coffee cup.
Fifteen years managing actors, and nothing else. He was a man who had memorized with his whole body how many meetings and how many deep bows it took to raise a single rookie to a leading role.
Across from him sat Min Hyeran, head of General Affairs. Behind her horn-rimmed glasses, her tablet screen flipped through pages without pause.
"I'll stick to the numbers."
Min Hyeran tapped her tablet.
"Park Songhwa's penalty clause stands at a confirmed 12 billion won as of now. The company has set aside 4 billion in liquid funds as a buffer against it. If her comeback card collapses at this point, that 4 billion goes straight into the fireplace."
"Collapse would be the lucky outcome. If someone pours oil on public opinion, the fire spreads to every artist under our roof."
Ju Gyeongseok took a sip of coffee and clicked his tongue.
"Three months of self-reflection, then a comeback through variety. Find me one case where that actually worked in this industry. In all my years, I've never seen it once."
"Well, they said the atmosphere at the recording was good."
Ju Gyeongseok laughed in disbelief.
"Funny on a set and funny in the living room are two completely different things. The only people in that studio are the ones getting paid to laugh."
"...."
"If public opinion were fickle enough to be won over with a single joke, why would we have a crisis management team, and why would we be pulling all-nighters?"
A few employees passing by the lounge slowed their steps and pricked up their ears.
"And the thing I understand least is that hiring."
Ju Gyeongseok lowered his voice further.
"He picks up some shaman who got a few clicks and puts him on the road. Let that reach an investor's ear. The moment the rumor starts circulating that O2 makes its decisions by fortune-telling, do you have any idea how much credibility this company loses?"
"I could overlook the hire itself as the CEO's prerogative, but the real problem is the signal it sends."
Min Hyeran pushed up her glasses.
"On his very first day, a corporate-card charge got written off as executive discretion. What are the employees below going to learn from that? That all you have to do is skip the process and strike it big in one go."
"I'll guarantee you this."
Ju Gyeongseok crumpled his empty cup and tossed it into the trash.
"The morning after the broadcast, we'll be drafting an official apology."
Within half a day, that conversation had grown flesh and made the rounds of the entire building.
Rumor, after all, always travels faster through a company than any official memo.
And as the rumor spread, a line was drawn.
On one side stood the so-called system faction, led by the Head of Division 1. The seasoned field staff and the number-crunching departments mostly lined up there — people who read both the shaman hire and the three-month comeback as signs of a company coming apart at the seams.
The other side had no name at all. If pressed, you'd call them the witnesses: the people from Management Team 2 who had watched with their own eyes as he opened, in five minutes flat, a door that Producer Choi had kept sealed like a fortress wall, and the younger employees who'd heard the story secondhand.
Even today, whispers rippled through the company cafeteria.
"They say Mishin reports directly to the CEO?"
"What do you mean, 'directly to the CEO'? That's way too far."
"Division 1 says it was just coincidence stacking twice."
"Coincidence stacking twice is what we call talent, buddy."
"So if I want to ride the shaman's line, where do I queue up? Do I have to get a reading first?"
"Can we put the offering money on the corporate card?"
"Hey, hey — quiet. He's walking past with Team 2."
"...Team Leader Gu is beaming."
The people holding their trays exchanged glances and shut their mouths.
It was a scene you'd find at any company. The only part that existed at no other company in all of Korea was that a shaman sat at the very center of the divide.
The CEO's office could read that air too.
"...."
Cha Eunseong finally made up his mind — and that was why he'd booked the table.
A private-room restaurant in Cheongdam-dong called Byeolshil. Reservation only, which meant the soundproofing was guaranteed.
The food arrived first, and then the long-haired road manager sat down across the table. Even in front of a spread of braised short ribs, pan-fried croaker, and some ten kinds of nameless wild greens, his expression stayed flat as ever.
"Thank you for the meal."
"The croaker's supposed to be good here."
His chopstick manners were courteous, and his pace was diligent. Cha Eunseong watched him for a while before speaking.
"There are two currents flowing through the company right now. One treats you like a living deity. The other treats you like a bomb."
"...?"
Cha Eunseong poured water into a glass.
"The people who see you as a bomb aren't bad people. If anything, they're the ones who do their jobs well. From where they stand, results without an explainable basis are indistinguishable from an accident."
"...That's a fair point."
"Call it wariness, if you like. For the record, I'm not taking your side or theirs right now. But I figured you ought to at least be aware that this current exists."
"...."
The long-haired shaman simply nodded in silence. There wasn't a trace of hurt feelings to be found.
Cha Eunseong liked that about him.
Employees that age usually lead with their grievances. They whine about wanting their achievements recognized, or at the very least, wounded pride bleeds through their expressions.
...Wow, the CEO was right. This croaker is absurdly good. Really.
Meanwhile, this one was focused entirely on flaking the croaker flesh apart with his chopsticks.
Whether it was detachment, or whether he genuinely saw everything — Cha Eunseong found himself wondering all of a sudden. Where did that composure, at that age, come from? So the mountain-dwelling ascetic training really did exist, apparently.
"So, let me ask you again."
Cha Eunseong set down his glass.
"Turning public opinion around. Are you certain?"
"Yes. Fifteen percent in viewer ratings. Public opinion, split down the middle."
His creed of not believing in shamans was in full effect today as well. And yet, strangely, the numbers that came out of that blank face sounded like a line item on a balance sheet.
"Good. Then here's what we'll do. On broadcast night, we gather every employee in the building for a group screening. The PR team's real-time monitoring feeds go up on screens right there with it."
"...."
"Let everyone see, in front of everyone, that you were right."
* * *
A celebrity on the eve of a comeback has more to do than you'd think.
Today's schedule was a pictorial for a fashion magazine and a written interview — work to preheat her image before the broadcast, or as the PR team put it, laying kindling under the fire.
I saw Park Songhwa into the Seongsu-dong studio, then went back to the van in the parking garage.
Thank god I got my Class 1 license.
Eighty percent of a manager's job is waiting. The other twenty percent is goofing off while you wait.
To faithfully fulfill that twenty percent, I opened my laptop. A cascade of folders filled the screen.
[Ballad_FINAL]
[Ballad_ACTUALfinal]
[Ballad_WhyDidntThisSell]
[Ballad_Die_FFS]
Three years' worth of legacy. Well, I had a job now — high time to clean house. Close the stock-music account, close the lingering regrets, all of it.
Still, these are my last ones. I should give each of them a listen before sending them off.
I plugged in my earphones and hit play.
Back when I started, I'd been sure that the moment one of these dropped, it would flip the charts upside down. And to be fair, something did get flipped. My parents' stomachs.
Knock knock—
At the tapping on the window, I turned my head. A face hovered beyond the glass — hat, mask, just a pair of eyes peeking out.
"...."
I rolled down the window.
"Aren't you supposed to be shooting?"
"It's the outfit-change block, so I snuck out for a sec. Here, this is for you."
A cup slid in through the window. A top star hand-delivering coffee to her manager — the world was spinning in reverse.
...? That's not coffee.
Damn it all. It was sujunggwa. Cinnamon ginger punch.
Anyway, that aside—
"This kind of thing is what I'm supposed to be taking care of for you."
"Oh, come on. You take care of me, I take care of you. That makes us even, right?"
Then her eyes above the mask locked onto my laptop screen.
"Huh? What's that? That's a MIDI track, isn't it?"
"...."
"Mishin, you compose too?"
There was no reason to hide it, so I answered honestly.
"As a hobby, once. Now that I've got a job, I'm planning to quit for good."
"Hold on a second."
Park Songhwa whirled around the front of the van, yanked open the passenger door, and climbed in. She moved so fast that her backside hit the seat before the door had finished closing.
"Play me something."
"There's nothing worth hearing."
"Whether there's something worth hearing is for me to decide. I may not look it, but I'm ten years into this debut, you know?"
One side of my earphones got plucked away, and she fitted it into her own ear. Sharing an earbud each, in the cramped interior of the van, the play button got pressed.
"...."
"...."
At first she wore a polite listening face — eyes crinkled in a smile, head bobbing along. But the moment the hook passed, the bobbing head went still, and the smile drained out of her eyes.
"Wait, play it again."
Rewind. Second playthrough. This time she listened with her eyes closed. When the song ended, Park Songhwa pulled out the earphone.
"...This is really good, you know?"
"Thank you, even if you don't mean it."
"I do mean it."
Park Songhwa turned to face me, her expression suddenly serious.
"What's the title of this song?"
"It doesn't have one."
"What? Something this good is untitled?"
"Naming them makes me attached. They're headed for the stock market either way."
"Then can I name it? So it doesn't get forgotten later."
Was this person serious? I just stared at her in blank disbelief, and Park Songhwa jolted in alarm.
"Eeek...! A-again? What are you seeing in me this time?"
"...."
Partly to change the subject, I asked what I'd been curious about.
"At the studio for God's Touch the other day, there was talk of your comeback. What happened with that?"
"Ah...."
The face above the mask, tugged down to her chin, turned visibly glum.
"It all fell through, obviously."
"...."
"It was supposed to be next month. I'd finished almost the whole album, and then the controversy broke, and the songwriters took back all their tracks. They said having their songs on my album was... too much of a liability."
"...."
"My producer stepped down too. Well, I get it. If I were them, I'd have done the same."
She said it evenly, but her fingers were fretting uselessly at the cup holder.
"I want to sing again. Soon."
She let it slip like a murmur to herself, then smiled for no real reason and asked,
"Why, though? Are you offering to produce me, Mishin?"
"Oh, come on, what—"
Park Songhwa rustled open a bag of cookies.
"Oh right, want one of these? Mint chocolate."
"I don't eat that."
"Why not? It's delicious."
"I'm against it on principle."
"...Against mint choco?"
"Yes. Toothpaste and chocolate are natural enemies. Ingesting them together clouds your spiritual energy."
"No way...."
Park Songhwa froze mid-bite, cookie in hand, with utter gravity.
"What do I do, I love mint choco... Is that why I ended up like this?"
"That was the casino."
"Ah...."
Park Songhwa bit into the mint-chocolate cookie. The bite mark it left behind — her teeth were as neatly aligned as a toothpaste commercial.
"Then what do you eat, shaman-nim?"
"Chicken."
"...That doesn't cloud your energy?"
"The chicken is a noble creature that heralds the dawn, so it's fine."
"Whoa, that's fascinating...."
She actually believed this. This was exactly why I worried about what would happen if she ever got fleeced by a con artist. I made a mental note to add fraud-prevention training to my road manager duties.
Before long a staff member came to fetch her, and Park Songhwa scurried back to the studio, tiptoeing in penance for her escape.
I followed her in to do my actual job as manager, when—
"Excuse me, Manager-nim, sorry to bother you...."
The editor approached and asked carefully.
"You're her, right? The one from, um, YouTube...?"
"Yes."
"Forgive me, but would you consider doing the shoot with her? This mood is seriously in demand right now. Mystique, long hair, deadpan—"
"I'm a manager, though."
"A manager special feature could work too."
From across the studio, Park Songhwa spotted the scene under the lights and burst out laughing, and the photographer declared that burst the best shot of the day and raked the shutter on continuous drive.
At the end of the shoot, two outfits remained as finalists.
"Mishin!"
Holding a hanger in each hand, Park Songhwa asked,
"A or B — which one?"
"Left."
"The left one!"
The stylist's eyes went round. The assistant beside her murmured,
"See that? If the shaman picked it, there's a reason."
"Insane. Must be an outfit that brings pictorial luck."
I'd just said "left" because the left one looked better. But at some point, people had started attaching wondrous justifications to everything I said.
On the drive back, humming drifted from the back seat. I glanced in the rearview mirror — Park Songhwa, gaze fixed out the window, was quietly singing to herself.
A familiar melody. Familiar because it could hardly be otherwise. It was the hook I'd written.
...And so the hook of a song that sold for nine thousand won is drifting out of the most expensive voice in South Korea.
"This song's been stuck in my head since earlier. What are you going to do about it? Take responsibility."
Our eyes met in the mirror.
"...I got carried away. I apologize."
"...."
* * *
Two days before the broadcast, Division 1's meeting room.
Ju Gyeongseok had them write out three scenarios on the whiteboard.
"Prepare everything as of the morning after the broadcast. One, response protocol if public opinion sours. Two, approved language for advertiser inquiries. Three, a media response chain for the worst-case scenario."
"Um... what about a scenario where it goes well?"
When the rookie road manager raised his hand, Ju Gyeongseok snapped the cap back onto his marker and answered.
"If it goes well, there's nothing to respond to. Contingency plans exist for when things blow up. That's the whole point of them."
"...."
Around the same time, in the General Affairs office, Min Hyeran took four phone calls in a single afternoon. All of them from advertisers.
"Yes, we'll issue an official statement once we've reviewed the broadcast episode... Yes. Yes, thank you."
She set down the receiver and opened the Excel file on her monitor. The sheet tab read:
[Scenario C_WorstCase]
Numbers don't lie. The creed Min Hyeran had lived her whole career by.
And by that creed, next Tuesday night was the most expensive gamble in the company's history. Deciding the comeback of a singer ruined by gambling — with a gamble. It was ironic, to say the least.
And so the day arrived.
Eight-thirty in the evening. The main auditorium. A giant screen fed by the projector, with three PR-team monitors lined up alongside it. The portal real-time reaction windows and the community boards were already glowing on standby.
"He's here, he's here."
The moment the long-haired shaman walked in, the murmur of the auditorium swelled like a wave, then subsided.
"Hey, Mishin. It's really going to be fine, right?"
Gu Wonho whispered.
"I didn't sleep a wink last night. At three in the morning, out of nowhere, I started imagining the worst — that five minutes into the broadcast, 'Park Songhwa removed from lineup' trends in real-time searches."
"...."
"Say something, please."
Cha Eunseong in the front row was also watching the screen with outward composure. Only the director beside him noticed that, every so often, his leg was bouncing.
So even the CEO is human after all....
As nine o'clock drew near, Lee Mishin closed his eyes.
One side of the auditorium stirred.
"He sees it... he's seeing something right now."
"Is he checking the results in advance?"
"Shh, quiet. You'll interrupt the trance."
Ha. Why are my eyes so dry all of a sudden.
It was thanks to Park Songhwa's needless fuss that I'd stayed up until dawn reopening my composing folders.
"Here we go!"
With the shout from the PR team, the lights went out. Our Hospital came up on the screen.
The familiar hospital-room set, the familiar fixed cast members. And the instant Park Songhwa entered in a patient gown, the entire auditorium held its breath.
"The visuals are insane...."
Someone's admiration leaked out, then died under the glares around it. This isn't the time to be impressed was the message.
On screen, the cast members' jeers swept past. And then, at last, the question came.
-What are you in here for?
On the screen, Park Songhwa blinked.
Silence. Without meaning to, everyone in the auditorium leaned forward in their seats.
-...Gambling addiction?
In that instant—
"Pfft—!"
"Oh my god. It's her, it's really Songhwa?"
"Ah, damn, I sprayed spit everywhere."
On one of the monitors the PR team had put up, the live chat was scrolling upward like mad.
"...."
"...."
Every gaze in the room swung to that screen.
To CcongnangCcongnang and J-Plus — thank you for your support!