An Encounter with the Future (2)
A chill raced over me, the kind that hits when you've just seen something frightening.
Meeting someone in the present whom I'd already seen in the future felt genuinely strange. How was I supposed to put it? Like locking eyes with a person who had stepped straight out of a television.
"Manager, you're Jung..."
"Ah, I'm Jung Sunwoo. My business cards aren't in yet, so I've got nothing to give you."
"You haven't been doing this long, have you?"
"Today's my second day."
Park Woo-jung looked startled.
Unlike Bureau Chief Park, who had carried herself with the weight of someone weathered by every battle there was, the Park Woo-jung standing in front of me was still in her twenties—awkward, and nowhere close to controlling her face.
To think this woman, who looked parked at the very bottom of the food chain, would become that forceful bureau chief in twenty-odd years.
You really never knew where a life would go.
"We're about the same, then. I'm new too."
"Really?"
"I haven't been at it long. It feels like forever, though..."
Her expression was complicated, worn thin. Fair enough. She'd just been torn apart by her so-called senior in front of everyone. If I'd been in her place, I'd still be hunched in some corner muttering that I was going to claw my way up out of pure spite. Fuck. Fuck.
"I look forward to working with you, Reporter. The moment my cards come in, you'll be the first to get one."
"Working together, going forward..."
Park Woo-jung hesitated, then said it.
"I'm not staying a reporter."
"What?"
"I'm quitting. I can't hack this. I don't think I'm cut out for it anyway."
"...Seriously? From where I'm standing, you look like someone who's going to make it as a reporter."
I meant it.
The instant she heard me, Park Woo-jung laughed, wide open.
"Hahaha! ...Ahem. Even if it's empty flattery, thank you."
"It's not empty. I mean it. If I could, I'd put money on it..."
"Hey."
All at once she leaned in close.
"...I'm quitting anyway, so I'll tell you."
Her voice shrank to a whisper.
"Senior Hwang. Reporter Hwang Jeong-gu. Complete garbage."
"Sorry?"
"You give him one thing in an interview and he writes an article that sprouts ten branches off it. And Lazy, the one who interviewed earlier—she wasn't late because she was sick. Reporter Hwang Jeong-gu gave her the wrong time. I told him in the interview room that we still had to do Neptune, and he said Lazy mattered more than some nobody rookies and to just send Neptune home. I barely talked him down by saying they'd been cast on K-Star and there'd be plenty to write. He didn't even know the interviewees were Neptune until a minute ago, and then he shoved his way in insisting he'd do the interview himself. It's obvious. He's going to tie Lemon Girls to Next K-Star, dump a truckload of MSG on it, and run it as an exclusive."
I stared at her, blank. She looked enormously relieved, as if she'd poured out everything that had been backed up inside her.
So... Reporter Hwang Jeong-gu was garbage. That was the gist?
"W&U's a big company, so once the piece runs, if the PR team calls, the desk might order it taken down. But Urakkai rewrites blanket everything in a flash, and once that happens, W&U's PR team could grow wings and still not clean it up. Search Reporter Hwang Jeong-gu and the girl group Happy Candy."
I pulled out my phone and searched exactly as she'd said. An article he'd written not long ago came up at once. The headline alone made me flinch.
I'd never even heard of Happy Candy, and Seraphic was a ten-year veteran at the top of the girl-group heap, a name most people knew. Being called the second Seraphic would already draw side-eyes, and they were unhappy about it? What had he been thinking, baiting people like that?
As expected, the comments had been carpet-bombed with hate. I searched again without his name and found several pieces that had copied his with only the slightest changes.
"Did they actually say it like that in the interview?"
"No. He asked them, 'It must feel bad, getting compared over and over to a great senior like Seraphic,' and they said, 'Yes.'"
The nuance was completely different!
"After the article ran, Happy Candy's manager begged and pleaded for the headline to be fixed, and he ignored them. Their company's small, too. And it's nowhere near the first time."
What kind of trash was this guy?
Was this how the kids ended up getting torn apart?
Thinking about the reach of an article, it seemed possible. Either way, they were in there right now interviewing their hearts out without a clue. I needed to tell Kim Hyunjo and find a way to head it off.
Right—say something to Park Woo-jung first.
"Reporter, thank you for the tip."
"No, I'm really sorry about the break room."
"I told you, it's fine. I'll see you next time. Oh, and..."
I weighed it, then said it.
"If something newsworthy comes up, would it be all right if I contacted you?"
Something like the Lemon Girls manager nursing a grudge and swinging a fist at Neptune's manager, for instance?
"Of course. Call my number— wait. I told you I'm quitting."
Park Woo-jung shot me a sidelong look. I smiled without a word and took off toward the interview room.
Inside, the interview was still going. I opened the door to find Lim Seoyoung walking them through this album's concept, point by point.
"Chief. A moment."
"Hm?"
I put on the gravest face I could manage. Kim Hyunjo paused the interview and stepped out. I shut the door, walked a few paces off, and relayed what I'd heard from Park Woo-jung word for word. His face twisted at once.
"You're sure? How'd you know?"
Better to keep the source anonymous.
"A whistleblower told me. This, too."
I showed him the article I'd just pulled up. He read it in a flash and glared at the interview room.
"God, that hack bastard, I swear...!"
"It might not happen this time. Still, we ought to prepare, shouldn't we?"
"We should. Once the article's out, it's too late. I'll call Team Leader Park in PR and come back. You go in first and kill some time with useless chatter in the kids' place."
I carried out the order faithfully. Back in the interview room, I burned three minutes on how the hand soap by the bathroom sink happened to be exactly my kind of scent.
A little later Kim Hyunjo came in and the interview resumed. I didn't know what he'd said to Team Leader Park, but he was clearly watching every answer. Even the trivial how-have-you-been questions, he fielded most of them himself.
In the end Reporter Hwang Jeong-gu wrapped it up.
"Thank you for your time. Head to the studio now and we'll take the photos."
"You worked hard too, Reporter. We're counting on a good piece."
"Yeah, well..."
We moved to the studio inside the building and shot the group photo and the individual shots that would run with the article. Only then was the interview schedule over.
On the way back, the moment Kim Hyunjo brought it up, the van got loud.
"We were this close to a real disaster! I kept wondering why you wouldn't shut up about the bathroom."
Lim Seoyoung frowned and grumbled.
"That reporter's questions did feel kind of off. Does he have some grudge against us?"
"Where would that come from? He just wants to juice the piece and run up the clicks. Doesn't care if the frog dies under the stone."
"That's honestly scary."
"So are we okay now? The article's not going to come out weird, is it?"
When LJ asked it, worried, Kim Hyunjo nodded as if to tell them to relax.
"Team Leader Park knows the entertainment desk editor over there a little. Said they'd handle it so nothing goes wrong. Told us not to worry."
"For real?"
"If that hack writes it crooked and files it, the desk will tear it up and make him fix it. He's not a bureau chief. When the people above say jump, he jumps. What else can he do?"
It felt like I was looking at one cross-section of an enormous food chain.
"I'll remember this reporter's name from here on and screen him as hard as I can, so don't worry. But, Jung Sunwoo."
I was untangling a twisted seatbelt and turned my head.
"Yes?"
"Are you just insanely lucky, or is there something to you?"
There was something, obviously. Though this time the luck hadn't hurt either.
"Since yesterday you've been bringing back the oddest useful things. How do you go to the bathroom and come back with a whistleblower?"
Lim Seoyoung craned her neck and chimed in.
"Huh? Didn't we also run smack into PD Go Joon-tae yesterday on the way to the bathroom?"
"Oh. We did, didn't we?"
"Whoa, whoa! You must be carrying some kind of good energy. We should all stick to you like glue. Oppa, just pack your bags and move into our dorm!"
My face burned.
I hadn't even said I was moving in. So why was everyone looking at me like that...
"Lim Seoyoung, it's time for your medicine. Quit the nonsense, and if you're sick, just sleep."
LJ kicked the seat Seoyoung was in, thump, thump.
"It's not nonsense, it's based on evidence!"
"Evidence?"
"Mom went to this gifted shaman not long ago and asked when we'd start doing well, and the shaman said a great fortune was coming at the end of the year. A snake would bring that fortune in its mouth, so we mustn't let the snake go. We had to catch it for sure."
Seoyoung made a huge fuss of it, but the members didn't react. She wilted almost at once and muttered.
"It's true, though... She said we have to catch the snake..."
A snake. Now that she mentioned it, something did come to mind...
"Aren't you a snake year?"
The traitor at the wheel blurted it at me out of nowhere.
"I am. We're the same age, so... right?"
"Right."
Kim Hyunjo laughed from the back.
"Knock it off. Why do you lot take a joke this seriously?"
"It's not a joke."
"What?! So you're both actually snake years?"
"Yes. Born in '89. Year of the Snake."
"No way."
A few seconds of silence, and then the back seats erupted.
"Aaaah, the chiiiills...!"
I quietly brushed my own forearm.
Maybe this future-seeing thing wasn't as rare as I'd thought?
That evening we met the Next K-Star production staff.
The place was an expensive Korean barbecue house, so I'd wondered if the show's budget was generous. Turned out W&U was covering the first round. They said the meat was extraordinary, but between pouring drinks and drinking them I never really got to taste it.
Still, the mood stayed warm the whole way through, thankfully. The Neptune members seemed to have left a good impression on the staff, and they'd shown plenty of personality besides.
The pre-meeting that started at the barbecue place ran through a second round and a third and didn't end until past three in the morning. We saw off the PDs and writers, pleasantly drunk, and climbed into the van ourselves for the last time.
While Kim Hyunjo and I took glass after glass without a break, the traitor who'd been guarding his liver took the wheel. We dropped the kids—yawning nonstop, half asleep—at the dorm, and then, same as yesterday, only three of us were left.
Wow. That had been yesterday... It felt like a month had passed.
The long day was over. All that remained was going home to rest.
"You both worked hard again today. Tired?"
Kim Hyunjo's words came out with a tangled tongue.
"Get home and sleep, and eat something good in the morning."
Déjà vu?
"Be at the office by seven. Plenty to do tomorrow, too."
I didn't repeat yesterday's mistake of dumbly asking him to say it again. Still...
"Chief. Would it be all right if I just slept at the company?"
"Me too..."
"Yeah? I was going to sleep there anyway. Let's go together! The company nap room's decent."
I laughed—ha, ha, ha—and followed Kim Hyunjo.
Damn it. I needed to get out of here as soon as humanly possible.