The Hidden Card
***
Fly World Class 11 — a co-production between a major OTT platform and a public broadcasting station.
The influence that television once held had long since been handed over to YouTube and OTT services. Even so, the power of TV programming lingered on, particularly among the elderly.
That was precisely why the broadcasting station and the OTT platform had pooled their money into a joint investment.
Anyway — Hwang Hyun-woo, the main PD of Fly World Class 11, the very show Joo Jae-rim had auditioned for. There was no special reason he had come up with the program in the first place.
It was simply that, thanks to the nation's utterly wrecked birth rate, children had become a precious commodity all across South Korea.
You couldn't hear the sound of children laughing anywhere in the neighborhood anymore. All that remained were old folks sighing about how good the old days used to be.
Was it a product of that era? Around the same time, programs featuring children as their main stars had started trending one after another.
Hwang Hyun-woo had naturally ridden that wave when he planned Fly World Class 11.
Granted, most of the programs trending on television at the time starred preschoolers, but Hwang Hyun-woo's show couldn't revolve around children that young. There were outside shoots to consider, after all, which meant the production team would have a mountain of things to babysit.
So he'd decided to build the cast around kids of around ten — old enough to keep under control. A handful of the mothers would follow the crew to the set and look after their own children anyway.
By his calculations, that would be enough to wrap filming without any major problems.
'Yeah, pushy parents bulldozing their way into a broadcast shoot is a problem, technically.'
But that wasn't the main PD's problem to worry about.
'Besides, the ones who'll suffer aren't me — it's the kids under me, right?'
That was the entire reason assistant directors and junior PDs existed below the main PD in the first place.
Anyway.
"I'll bring in the next contestant."
Hwang Hyun-woo threw himself into the auditions for the sake of the program's success. But as time wore on, his face only grew graver.
He hadn't been able to find the hidden card — the ace who would carry the whole show.
'Haah... not a single one that grabs me.'
Most of the kids were too busy bursting into tears the moment their eyes met the judges sitting across from them. Even those who managed not to cry would glance at the camera, stiffen up like statues, and turn into voice-activated AI.
The child actors with broadcast experience were somewhat better off, but...
'Come on. Even if she's a girl, not knowing what a red card means is pushing it.'
It was obvious the parents had shoved her in here just so she could get her face on TV once. If they were going to shove her into an audition room, the least they could do was stuff some basic knowledge in there first.
'Judging like that makes it way too hard to pick anyone.'
There were other judges in the room besides him, so earning a good evaluation was no easy feat.
'Still, I should pull rank and pick one or two child actors as the main PD's picks. Gotta drag in as many viewers as I can. Well, judging by the interviews so far, two of them will probably get in even without me vouching for them.'
That was how abysmal the level of the ordinary applicants was.
'Not one of them satisfies me. Maybe I should've raised the age range a bit more.'
But that was impossible — he had already raised the age range once during the planning stage. Any older, and the show would take on a completely different tone from what he'd envisioned.
"Oh. The next one is a kid you know, PD-nim."
Hwang Hyun-woo reacted to the writer's words with a hollow, half-hearted hum. He assumed it was just another child actor who'd been in a drama or a variety show.
"Joo Jae-rim? Who's that?"
But when he saw an unfamiliar name written on the profile sheet, he frowned in confusion.
"You know, the son the camera director brags about at every staff dinner."
"Camera director? Who are we talking about?"
"Camera Director Joo Sang-hyun."
"Ah. Director Joo's son is already in third grade? Wow, time really does fly."
Hwang Hyun-woo let out a low groan. Time really did move fast. It felt like only yesterday he'd attended the kid's first-birthday party back when he was still grinding away as the youngest PD on staff — and now he was the main PD running his own program, while that clumsy cameraman had become such a veteran that every show fought to poach him.
'His pre-interview evaluation is really good. Is the camera director pulling strings?'
At that very moment, a boy with black hair and black eyes walked into the audition room.
'Oh. He's got a face that could sell.'
The kid's first impression wasn't bad. No — objectively speaking, it was exceptional. Barely a third grader, yet he carried the world-weary, bone-dry gaze of someone who had transcended it all. It was strangely memorable.
'Nth playthrough of life — that trend from a while back. Is that the vibe? Not bad at all.'
On top of that, the fact that he was 'pure-blooded' Korean, born to Korean parents, worked in his favor too.
"I'm Joo Jae-rim."
Hwang Hyun-woo felt a touch embarrassed to realize that he'd been appraising his acquaintance's own son through the cold eyes of a man pricing merchandise.
'Ugh, occupational hazard.'
The entertainment industry had a way of making you see people not as people, but as products.
At any rate, the more Hwang Hyun-woo traded words with Joo Jae-rim, the more he liked the boy.
"Is there a particular reason you're not in a soccer club?"
"The other kids are too far below my level."
The answer was flat and dry, yet brimming underneath with pure confidence — and it seized the main PD's attention in an instant.
'He'd be perfect cast as the arrogant genius type, wouldn't he?'
Unlike the other kids with their forgettable, vanilla personalities, Joo Jae-rim's broadcast character had crystallized in a heartbeat.
'That kid is a dead ringer for Seo Tae-woong.'
It was a basketball manga that had once defined an era and then trended all over again, and Hwang Hyun-woo — a fan of it back in the day — couldn't help comparing the boy to the characters on its pages.
People loved hardworking, underdog protagonists, sure, but they loved genius characters every bit as much. And an insolent genius was a popular archetype in its own right.
Given how much Korean society demanded humility, one wrong step could turn him into the nation's most hated child — but that was what editing was for. You just trimmed out the unlikable moments.
To be fair, there were cases where a cast member got dragged into the pit by scenes the PD and writers never saw coming — but Hwang Hyun-woo was not so tone-deaf as to let that happen.
'Well... there are also cases where you deliberately use a cast member as a hate magnet to whip up attention.'
As long as the ratings came in, a broadcasting PD couldn't care less whether a contestant got trashed or not.
'But that would be straight-up garbage behavior.'
Still, when it came to selling an acquaintance's son for ratings, even Hwang Hyun-woo had a shred of conscience. He'd need to stay on good terms with the camera director for years to come, after all — so he'd keep the devil's editing to a strict minimum.
"The most sought-after position in soccer is the striker, right?"
"Well... in the general case, sure?"
"Writer Hong, what do you think? Should we push our Jae-rim here?"
"...PD-nim, if you're planning any devil's editing, please go easy on it. Director Joo Sang-hyun is terrifying when he's angry."
And so the interview concluded, and when the judges exchanged their final opinions —
Joo Jae-rim passed the auditions for Fly World Class 11 by unanimous vote.
A few days later.
Joo Jae-rim has passed the audition for Fly World Class 11.
The news of my acceptance arrived through my mother's phone.
"Wow! Our Jae-rim is amazing! I heard the competition was brutal."
"Well, whose son is he?"
My parents beamed at the audition results until the smiles practically reached their ears. If I'd known they'd be this happy, I would've auditioned in earlier seasons too — a faint flicker of regret, just a little.
Anyway, I headed to the set with my mother, traveling light of heart.
Apparently the OTT platform had thrown a fortune at the production, because a rather grand-scale set had been erected. Cutting-edge equipment was staged everywhere. Perhaps it was because they intended to turn the program into a series if it succeeded — you could feel how much money had been sunk into this place.
'Did this show really do that well?'
I didn't pay much attention to TV programming, so nothing came to mind. But somewhere in the far recesses of memory, I had a vague sense of having heard of it once — apparently it had been successful to some degree.
'Speaking of which, nobody's even told me where to go.'
As I stood there looking around, a guide robot rolled up toward me.
I checked the cameras filming me from around the set, registered the fact that I was on a broadcast, and reacted exactly one beat too late.
"Ooooh. Wooooow. A. Ma. Zing."
Small as I was, the broadcasting station paid me an appearance fee. The moment money changes hands, you take on the obligation of doing your professional best.
The position assigned to Joo Jae-rim is Striker.
I nodded at the robot's announcement. Hearing my position, I immediately caught on that the main PD intended to push me.
For the record, it's widely known that fullbacks are an important position in modern soccer.
But you still couldn't put them on the same scale as a striker.
"Why is my child a defender?! Change it, right now!"
In fact, the moment a fullback position was assigned, one of the mothers outright exploded.
Unless a Ballon d'Or winner came out of the fullback position, I doubted this perception would ever be turned on its head.
"Ma'am, the position you've just received isn't final, so please don't worry."
The female assistant director, keeping herself one step outside the cameras' frame, sprinted over to the protesting ajumma and desperately tried to calm her down.
"Hmph. I'll be watching."
Once the surrounding stares converged on her, the ringleader of an ajumma glared openly at me — a striker, mind you — and stalked off.
"Is that woman insane?"
The assistant director, breathing a sigh of relief that the situation had been defused without incident, flinched at my muttered words and glanced around nervously.
She was wearing a deeply grave expression, apparently lost in some bizarre private daydream, so I kindly repeated myself.
"That woman's insane, right?"
The startled assistant director let out a sigh of relief and, in the same breath, delivered a brief lecture about how I shouldn't use such foul language.
'Honestly. I'm the one swearing, yet she's the one walking around looking relieved and refreshed about it.'
Life is short as it is — how sad to live it so worried about everyone else's eyes.
'Typical of the mediocre masses who can't regress, really...'
In my opinion, Koreans worry far too much about what the people around them think. Within the bounds of not harming others, people need to allow themselves to be free.
'That's why everyone ends up losing their minds.'
Anyway, I began walking slowly after the guide robot.
Following it, the other kids my age came into view.
'Ha. Already exhausting.'
This place, without exaggeration, was hell for me. I genuinely agonized over whether I should keep appearing on broadcasts at all.
But whenever I pictured my parents beaming with pride, I had no choice but to endure.
'...If it makes Mom and Dad happy, I'll put up with it.'
After all, my father — camera director that he was — was filming me right now with a smile on his face.
A short while later, the robot guided me out to a grass pitch.
Apparently, we were about to meet the director who would be leading us — the chosen children — through the show.
The kids were given a short break just before filming officially began, and I sought out the quietest corner I could find and shut my eyes. The ceaseless chatter of the other children was draining my stamina in real time.
Anyway — the striker position, the one I'd been assigned. If I had to compare it to a famous AOS game, I'd say it's the top laner. It's a position you simply cannot play without some degree of psychosis.
The defining trait of the position: even if your team wins, if you failed to score (solo-kill), you consider the game a loss.
And regrettably, it was also my favorite position.
Well. The striker becoming my preferred position was half by choice, half by circumstance.
As mentioned, the striker is the position that commands the most attention in the entire sport of soccer. To become the greatest player in the world, I had no choice but to play as a striker.
And unlike any other position, its greatest perk was this: as long as you put the ball in the net, you could ignore every single criticism thrown your way.
'So that's why the craziest lunatics in professional soccer were always concentrated among the forwards, huh.'
This, too, is purely my personal opinion, but by the time a forward reaches world-class level, the vast majority of them are narcissistic psychopaths through and through. Looking for a sane forward is like looking for a sane top laner — as in, they don't exist on this earth.
'I am the best.'
That is the emotion shared by the vast majority of forwards. Every last forward, no matter how pathetic, carries the pride of believing he is the greatest.
And when that pride shatters —
A forward becomes Cristiano Ronaldo.
After losing the battle for the throne to Messi, Ronaldo's grotesque antics became the punchline of soccer fans everywhere.
But I understood exactly how Cristiano Ronaldo felt.
If anything, I might be the human being on this planet who understands him best.
After all, I, too, had been losing to Lionel Messi for hundreds of years.
'Fucking hell. If I'd played in the same era as that midget, I would've snapped his ankles clean off.'
Personally, I respect Cristiano Ronaldo for never having done so. That's the reason he's my answer whenever anyone asks which soccer player I respect most.
That no-show incident in Korea, you ask?
What business was that of mine?
The Ronaldo Seoul no-show happened before I was born. And judging by the age I regressed to, it might as well be a Joseon-dynasty tale as far as I'm concerned.
So much time had passed that getting angry over a decades-old no-show felt utterly pointless.
'...So what he's reduced to at that age is playing with a bunch of brats, huh.'
An abrupt wave of existential dread crashed over me.
'Haah. This is what infinite regression is for...?'
The self-loathing started creeping in right after.
The other infinite regressors in web novels at least had some grand purpose — prevent the apocalypse, save the world, something.
Whereas the mission handed to me was, in effect, 'Surpass Lionel Messi.'
'What even is this, seriously.'
Oh — wait. Is the bastard who gave me this mission a Ho-dongsaeng?