Chapter 244
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 244
A viewer’s interest in a program never lasts long. That is why producers constantly add something new—be it through different themes, formats, or cast members.
In that regard, parenting variety shows were at a disadvantage.
While it was best for the children to have a fixed cast, the show needed a constant influx of novelty to maintain its viewership ratings.
Ten-year-old Han Se-eun, eight-year-old Han Jae-eun, and twenty-month-old Han Seol had been appearing on Clumsy Family Diary for a year now.
Han Se-eun, in particular, already understood the inner workings of broadcasting.
“Why do you like Uncle Ho-yun?”
In a brief interview conducted with her parents present, Han Se-eun answered the production team’s question with remarkable poise.
“His face, for one.”
After quietly adding, “My mom said a handsome face is the best,” Han Se-eun began counting on her fingers as she continued.
“And the fact that he calls himself an ajusshi.”
The show’s head writer found herself nodding in agreement before she even realized it.
Most guests who had appeared so far introduced themselves to the children as ‘Oppa,’ ‘Hyung,’ ‘Unnie,’ or ‘Noona.’ If they went a bit further, they’d use ‘Uncle’ or ‘Aunt.’ But to a child, isn’t every adult who falls into the ‘grown-up’ category just an ajusshi or an ajumma?
The head writer had initially assumed Seo Ho-yun was only there because he was in the same group as Kim Seong-hyeon and happened to be the most famous member. She was surprised to see how well he understood the nature of children.
“Do you know who I am~?”
“……Umm.”
Actually, there was another mistake guests often made besides the titles they used.
It was asking the children if they knew who they were.
Unless you were Pororo, the President of Children, that question was never going to fly.
One day, an idol guest had performed their own song and dance for the kids. The second child, Han Jae-eun, had burst into tears.
“Wh-why are you crying?!”
“Waaaah… I-I’m scared.”
Since Clumsy Family Diary prioritized the children’s feelings above all else, self-promotion in front of the kids was banned from that day forward. In exchange, the production team promised to edit the footage to ensure the guests still got plenty of exposure.
“Uncle, I can’t do this.”
“Oh, let ajusshi do it for you.”
Because of this, Seo Ho-yun was the perfect, ideal cast member.
After filming concluded, the PDs, having captured plenty of satisfying scenes, quickly released a pre-release clip.
*
[Title: I’m seeing The Dawn on Family Diary for the first time, why is this so funny?]
I’m talking about the pre-release clip for Family Diary that came out yesterday.
I always enjoy watching Family Diary because the kids are cute, but lately, I’ve hated how it felt like a promotional vehicle for guests.
I know the guests are trying their best, but the kids looked overwhelmed lol.
It was always edited from an adult’s perspective, and it felt like the guests just wanted to see the kids being cute and then leave.
But I heard Kim Seong-hyeon went viral as a ‘housekeeping king,’ so I checked it out. LMAO.
This definitely deserves to go viral.
Is this what they call the ‘K-Son-in-Law’? No, seriously, he looks so sharp and edgy, like he’d only drink Evian while wearing a black dress shirt, so how can he be so gentle?
I love that you can see how much he likes the kids ㅠㅠ.
He seemed to get close to the second and third kids quickly, but the eldest, Se-eun, has been shy lately, so they looked a bit awkward at first. I was worried.
Then Seo Ho-yun shows up in the pre-release.
I thought, ‘Oh, he’s probably just here because he’s popular from The Complete Singer.’
I watched it thinking, ‘Yeah, yeah, it’s just promotion’…
But man…
Se-eun freaking loves Seo Ho-yun.
Ho-yun: (Enters) Hello~
Se-eun: Oh…..
‘Oh…’ < Se-eun-ah, seriously ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ
I guess he’s exactly 10-year-old Se-eun’s type…
She just sta-a-a-ares at him from the side…
Se-eun: (Sta-a-a-ares)
Ho-yun: (?)
Se-eun: (Sta-a-a-a-ares)
Ho-yun: (...??)
Se-eun: You’re very handsome.
Ho-yun: Ah… thank you… haha.
Se-eun: I’m not just being polite.
Ho-yun: You’re very well-spoken.
ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ Holy crap, this is hilarious ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ
Look at them using formal speech, ah ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ
└ The “Mom said a handsome face is the best” comment… ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ The moment her mother’s early education truly shines ㅋㅋㅋㅋ Se-eun is so bright and cute ㅠㅠ
└ Our Se-eun… she didn’t care at all when Ju Woo-seong visited back in the day…
└└ Ju Woo-seong takes the L, this is too funny.
└└ The second one, Jae-eun, loved Ju Woo-seong though… Their tastes are so distinct ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ
*
[Title: Seo Ho-yun boldly claimed to be an expert in 10-year-olds]
I guess he really is an expert in 10-year-olds.
He gives off that vibe… like the cool uncle you only see during the holidays… The type who acts like the kids are a nuisance, but when they cling to him laughing, he ends up playing with them a ton.
But Mr. Seo Ho-yun… you clearly have no experience with toddlers…
They are animals living in a jungle…
He was talking fine with Se-eun, but then Jae-eun, who was sitting quietly on the sofa, suddenly bolted away, and he had his 1st mental breakdown.
Ho-yun: Wait, why are you running away?!
Then they handed him the youngest, Seol, and he was so awkward he didn’t know what to do. He just paced around, and when the baby started crying, he had his 2nd mental breakdown.
Ho-yun: (Panicked) Should I… should I sing a song?
Seong-hyeon: ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ (Bursts out laughing)
Kim Seong-hyeon is dying in the background, ah ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ
I mean, do you really think a baby is going to stop crying just because you sing?~~~
└ Why was he so confident in the first place?
└ Seo Ho-yun is the spitting image of my uncle back when he was a bachelor… My uncle said every time I cried, he wanted to cry too ㅋㅋㅋㅋ
└└ To be fair, you can communicate with a 10-year-old, so that’s fine ㅋㅋㅋㅋ but the second one, Jae-eun, is a total tomboy ㅋㅋㅋㅋ
*
The reactions to the pre-release were quite good because the situations didn’t feel cliché. Seizing the timing, the production team dropped a few more clips on Nutube.
Soon, a fan who was both a long-time viewer of Clumsy Family Diary and a Noeul compiled the highlights and posted them to a community site.
*
[Title: Compilation of the best moments between Se-eun & Seo Ho-yun]
Seriously, what is this duo?
It’s so funny I had to make this.
└ It’s so rare to see Seo Ho-yun this flustered.
└└ No, but seeing him so drained by a little kid is ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ freaking hilarious.
└ It’s been a long time since I’ve seen Se-eun chat so comfortably without being shy ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ
└└ It’s so cute how much Se-eun loves Seo Ho-yun’s face.
*
Seo Ho-yun, who happened to be reading that post, felt a slight sense of defeat.
‘I thought I had plenty of experience from raising Seo Ho-jin….’
Not a trace of that experience remained.
He realized only now, more than ten years later, that Seo Ho-jin’s difficulty level as a child had been at the absolute bottom because he had been so well-behaved and quiet in front of his brother.
* * *
“Kids these days aren’t easy.”
Of course, he knew Seo Ho-jin had tried to act mature beyond his years.
After his portion of the filming ended, the eldest, Han Se-eun, had spoken to him while eating ice cream.
“Uncle, I think you have a younger sibling.”
“Huh?”
Aside from the members and the company, even the fans didn’t know that fact.
“A sibling with a big age gap.”
He only smiled instead of answering.
‘She’s sharp, that Se-eun.’
After scrolling through the comments on the pre-release video, he felt a sudden urge to contact Seo Ho-jin.
[Me: How were you so well-behaved when you were little?]
[Seo Ho-jin: Huh?]
[Seo Ho-jin: I’m well-behaved now too, aren’t I?? ㅋㅋ]
The same punk who hit his brother with a bouquet?
He lightly ignored his brother’s nonsense and was about to prepare for the next round of The Complete Singer when a notification preview popped up.
[Seong Ji-won: My variety show appearance is confirmed! ㅎㅎ]
[Seong Ji-won: I’ll let you know once the departure date for Europe is set!!]
[Me: Congrats]
Smooth sailing.
Just as he thought he could breathe a sigh of relief—
[Kang Yi-chae: Then Ho-yun hyung gets a solo room?]
“…….”
He quietly closed the messaging app.
Believing that someone would surely cover for him.
‘There are three of them… at least one of them will stop him.’
Ever since he collapsed, the members never left him alone. It was as if they were treating someone with a terminal illness.
‘I guess it can’t be helped for a while.’
He figured they would calm down once more time passed.
More importantly, he needed to plan how to spend the remainder of the year productively to make it a stepping stone for next year.
As the vanguard, Kang Yi-chae was already building solid recognition by appearing as a mentor on Rising Rookies.
The guy, who seemed to be born with a natural gift for music, was actually someone who filled dozens of notebooks with his ideas and lyrics and never skipped a day of work.
As Rising Rookies aired, those aspects were highlighted, and simultaneously, the credibility of the advice Kang Yi-chae gave to the trainees increased.
Some trainees even looked up to Kang Yi-chae with reverence.
“Mentor Kang Yi-chae told me my voice seemed better suited for low notes than high notes, and when I actually tried it, the reaction was really good!”
“Mentor Yi-chae is very strict… but if you listen to him, good things will happen even while you sleep…….”
“Isn’t he just cool??”
Did they all get brainwashed together?
The man himself, Kang Yi-chae, acted like it was no big deal.
‘He is a talented guy, after all.’
Anyway, the next ones up were Kim Seong-hyeon and himself.
Kim Seong-hyeon, who had appeared on Clumsy Family Diary—a show that had dominated terrestrial weekend TV for a long time and was known as a national variety show—would make his face known to various age groups. Meanwhile, Ho-yun himself, appearing on The Complete Singer scheduled for Sunday prime time, would maintain a long-term presence to re-evaluate his skills and promote The Dawn even a little more.
So far, everything was proceeding like clockwork.
Even better, all three shows were being distributed on OTT platforms that serviced overseas, so he expected some interest from abroad. However, according to the analysis Lee Ji-hyeon gave him, the domestic reaction was unexpectedly better.
‘Up to this point, the target was both domestic and international simultaneously.’
And the rearguard was Seong Ji-won and Jeong Da-jun.
The youngest’s program was confirmed, and Seong Ji-won was a bit of a concern.
However, since he was the main vocal The Dawn proudly boasted, Ho-yun wanted to showcase his skills. So, he had written down Restart—a show where one stays abroad for a month and busks in various locations—as his hope.
It hadn’t performed well overseas, but it had been incredibly popular domestically.
After finishing his thoughts on the members’ individual schedules, he stood up abruptly.
“Let’s go practice for the competition.”
As he opened the door and stepped into the living room, a strange smell and gray smoke wafted from the kitchen.
“Oh!! Hyung, I was just about to call you!”
He quickly grabbed a fire extinguisher and ran to the kitchen, where Jeong Da-jun, wearing a yellow apron and holding a ladle, looked at him with startled eyes.
“Do you want to try some?!”
“No.”
Leaving alone the nonchalant Jeong Da-jun, who even had soot on his cheek, Ho-yun checked the induction stove first.
He was certain he smelled burning meat, but on the frying pan, something presumed to be strawberries was melting grotesquely like lava.
After turning off the stove and switching on the ventilation fan, he turned toward Jeong Da-jun and asked.
“Are these strawberries? What are you trying to do with this?”
“It’s Sweet Potato Strawberry Pasta.”
Setting aside the bizarre menu for a moment.
“But why is there smoke?”
“I’m not sure either……?”
This looked like something even the great Min Ji-heon, who would probably drink lye if it were edible, would shake his head at and run away from….
Jeong Da-jun gave a harmless, silly grin.
“Right.”
Ho-yun also gave a thin smile in return and turned around.
“Enjoy your meal.”
“D-don’t go! I made this so you could eat before you go to practice?!”
I have no intention of eating that.
As he was about to shake off the clinging boy and head out, Jeong Da-jun’s phone rang.
Confirming the caller was the road manager, Jeong Da-jun put it on speakerphone and answered.
“Yes!!”
[Ah, Da-jun. Are you at the dorm?]
“Yes! I’m with Ho-yun hyung too!”
[I see…. Um. I’m calling because there’s something I need to relay urgently.]
His voice sounded a bit troubled.
For some reason, Ho-yun felt the same ominous gut feeling he had when he faced the Sweet Potato Strawberry Pasta.
[Da-jun, the cooking variety show has been canceled.]
“……What?”
The youngest, whose face had been flushed with anticipation just moments ago, froze in his tracks.
Ho-yun gestured for the phone and took it.
“Why?”
[Ah, Ho-yun. Um… they asked if we could push the schedule back.]
“I’m asking why.”
[That’s… well….]
After hesitating for a long time, the road manager carefully gave an answer.
[Well… they said the schedule of another idol they were in talks with only works at that time…….]
“…….”
In short, they had been pushed aside by a bigger agency and bullied by the broadcasting station.
‘Things have been going so well lately with bookings that I forgot.’
That their agency, Daepasung, was a small-fry in the entertainment world.
They were showing their lack of power in a place like this.
[Sigh, we’ve already filed a complaint on our end…. I’m sorry it turned out like this. The production team there asked if you’d like to appear around the middle of next year instead.]
“Middle of next year…….”
He wondered if he should put the production team, along with his own CEO, into a salad spinner and spin them like crazy to make them snap out of it.
The road manager apologized a few more times before hanging up.
It wasn’t his fault, but regardless, if they just sat and waited for the management team to take action, they would miss the timing to row while the tide was in.
As he popped a cherry tomato from the table into his mouth to organize his thoughts, the youngest was too quiet.
“Hey.”
Thinking he might have lost his mind, Ho-yun leaned down to check his face.
“Jeong Da-jun—”
“Ugh, this makes me so mad.”
Contrary to his heated tone, Jeong Da-jun was calm.
The youngest grumbled and set down the ladle.
“Then I don’t need to prepare this anymore, right? I went through all the trouble of developing Sweet Potato Strawberry Pasta, and now it’s all for nothing.”
It should have been for nothing from the start.
Shrugging his shoulders, Ho-yun sprawled out on the sofa. Jeong Da-jun followed him like a puppy, carrying the entire bowl of cherry tomatoes, and sat beside him.
“Hyung, hyung. But it’s still better to appear even if the schedule is delayed, right??”
“No.”
Ho-yun cut him off flatly.
“You won’t be at a level where you need to go on that show by next year, so why bother?”
“……Eh?”
As a former PD, he didn’t not understand the desire to use someone more buzzworthy.
But being pissed off was a separate issue.
They had researched where to send the youngest for his first solo schedule, secured the casting, cleared his schedule, and Jeong Da-jun had even prepared the cooking himself—though whether it was edible was a mystery—only for it to be suddenly canceled.
And then they acted like they were doing him a favor by saying they’d use him later?
‘Who do they think they’re treating like this?’
“What? Why are you saying such heart-fluttering things?”
Instead of grinding his teeth, Ho-yun chewed on a refreshing cherry tomato while Jeong Da-jun stared at him with sparkling eyes.
Ho-yun took out his phone and looked for the contact information of a documentary PD he had met at the K-pop concert in Berlin.
‘Should I call or not?’
It wasn’t that he hadn’t prepared a Plan B.
If individual schedules weren’t working out, he could just move up a variety show they would appear on as a group.
The common trait of popular celebrities preferred by the public is that they are perfect at self-management yet easygoing with others, and possess a slight clumsiness in certain areas.
It sounded like a contradictory request—like asking for something ‘simple yet glamorous’—which is probably why it was considered the ideal.
Or,
‘You leave a strong impression on people by showing them something beyond the 4th dimension—something like the 16th dimension.’
And didn’t they have a natural-born 16th-dimensional comedy goldmine, Jeong Da-jun?
Ho-yun called out to the team’s youngest affectionately.
“Da-jun-ah.”
“……!!”
Sensing danger from Ho-yun’s expression, Jeong Da-jun’s face instantly went stiff, and he began to scoot his butt backward.
Ho-yun grabbed the strings of the apron he was wearing so he couldn’t escape.
“Wh-why? What’s wrong?”
“Our youngest.”
While holding onto the panicked Jeong Da-jun, Ho-yun leisurely smoothed out his crumpled apron.
“Seriously, what is it?!”
Imitating a kind older brother, Ho-yun asked gently.
“By any chance, do you get seasick?”
“……Yes?”
Why?
This is quite important.