When I Woke Up, the World (3)

"W-wait, for real? She's actually going to be okay?"

Lim Seoyoung was more wound up than Lee Songha, the person the whole thing was about. No—Lee Taehee and LJ had shed the afterglow of the celebration too, watching her with open worry.

"Oppa, you're not just telling us to stop worrying so we'll feel better, are you?"

"I'm not. I really don't think this is that serious. Controversies like this vanish the moment Songha proves herself with her acting. Think of it as noise marketing. The more people start paying attention to Cat Guardian Spirit, the better the premiere ratings. That's a win."

I shrugged, and Lim Seoyoung's lips worked soundlessly a few times.

"Th-that's true, but..."

"Isn't that a little too optimistic? What if..."

LJ flicked a glance at Lee Songha and let the rest trail off.

She was worried about what would happen if Songha's acting wasn't strong enough to bury the controversy. Anyone would have been, not just these three. Plenty of idols had marched into the drama world with bold ambitions, only to spark a bad-acting scandal and fail.

But...

I turned my head, and my eyes met Lee Songha's in the empty space between us. She'd been watching me the whole time. The look on her face—Are we in trouble?—pulled a laugh out of me before I could stop it.

We'd spent the past several weeks reading the script and rehearsing together. We'd sat down with writer Hong Joo-mi and director Shin Tae-gyun more than once to talk through the character, and every time the new acting coach watched Songha work, his jaw dropped.

I hadn't seen a precise future for this incident, so I couldn't be a hundred percent certain how things would unfold. Even so, I simply could not picture a future in which Lee Songha acted poorly enough for viewers to tear her apart.

"There's no reason to get hurt by people who don't know a thing. Don't let it get to you, Songha. Just keep doing what you've been doing."

"Okay."

She nodded as if she'd been waiting to hear exactly that.

"I will."

That was when Kim Hyunjo came out of the kitchen.

"Pack your things. Team Leader Park's still at the office, so we should go in and see how this develops."

"Right."

I grabbed my coat, laptop, and bag and stood. The girls followed us out with complicated faces, and Kim Hyunjo left them with a few words.

"Look, we half-expected this from the moment Seo Ji-joon was confirmed for the drama Songha joined. It'll quiet down soon, so think about the good parts. Either way, tonight's broadcast put Neptune's name out there for real. Keep going like this and starting tomorrow, every single day is going to look different. You all did well, yeah? No schedule tomorrow, so get some rest."

"What about you two? What are you supposed to do if you can't rest?"

"We'll go to the office, talk for a bit, and head straight home. Taehee, you look after the kids. And keep Seoyoung off the internet."

"Got it."

Lee Taehee scratched the back of her neck as she answered, then added, quieter:

"If it blows up, call. I won't be sleeping."

Kim Hyunjo clicked his tongue.

"You too..."

"Call."

"All right, all right. I'll call."

I felt their eyes on my back as we left the dorm.

And contrary to Kim Hyunjo's prediction that we'd clock out right away, we met the brightening morning in a conference room.

It was the longest, most nauseating night since I'd joined the company. The wild-ginseng liquor hit me late, phone vibrations wailed from every corner and hammered at my skull, and after hours of staring at the sesame-seed print on a laptop screen, real dry heaves climbed all the way up my throat. Going home to rest wasn't an option either, not with public opinion on Lee Songha this unsteady.

In the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠end we left the rest to Team Leader Park and the PR staff and decided the three of us would grab a little sleep. I said good night to Kim Hyunjo and the traitor and closed my eyes on the bottom bunk in the nap room around three in the morning. That was the last thing I remembered.

When I opened my eyes again, Kim Hyunjo was looking down at me like a reaper come to collect a soul.

"God—you scared me."

"You alive?"

"I almost died of a heart attack just now."

I cracked my eyes halfway and looked around, and my heart lurched a second time. Across the dim nap room, the traitor's face was floating in the dark. Nearly gave me another one. I pressed a hand to my chest and looked again. He was staring at his phone, with a face like his soul had left his body.

What was wrong with him now?

I tilted my head and stretched long. Something in my shoulder and back cracked like a bone being shoved back into place. God, I was going to die. Today was supposed to be the day I came in late and shook off the fatigue I'd been stacking up.

Damn it. I was cursing PD Go Joon-tae under my breath when my head snapped clear.

"Chief, the public opinion—how'd it go?"

"Hard to say. On the one hand, it went well. On the other, we're fucked."

"What?"

Kim Hyunjo scooped up my phone from where it had rolled beside the pillow and held it out.

"Check the real-time searches. It's a historic moment, so brace yourself."

A historic moment?

I tilted my head, turned the phone on, and flinched. Forty-eight missed calls. Most were unknown numbers. The few that were saved belonged to reporters I'd met over drinks. Some had called three or four times, and there was a flood of texts begging me to reply once I'd seen them.

For a second I thought I'd slept half the day, but no. The clock said I'd only gotten three hours. It was six, the sun not even up.

Did they think managers didn't sleep? What kind of rudeness was this, at this hour?

Wait. Had public opinion gotten even worse?

I rushed to the portal's real-time search rankings. The moment I saw them, I understood what Kim Hyunjo had meant—and why the traitor was staring at his phone like a man whose soul had walked out.

Eighth, Neptune. Sixth, Next K-Star. Fifth, Cat Guardian Spirit. And Lee Songha—her name sitting at number one.

I'd wanted a day like this. A day when the Neptune kids' names climbed a portal's real-time searches. A day when you opened the entertainment page and their names were on the main, with reporters filing story after story about them.

I just hadn't wanted it to happen like this.

Neptune and Lee Songha were nailed into the headline on the portal main, and into the headlines of the articles breeding underneath it like a litter.

I started with the pieces that had gone up after I fell asleep.

Unbelievable.

I opened the comments and closed them again in three seconds. Curses and sneers fouler than anything I'd ever seen in my life were occupying the best comments. I steadied my startled heart and went back to the articles.

After the company sent out its first clarification, the headlines shifted.

The articles written from that release noted that Lee Songha had been taking acting lessons to begin with, and that Cat Guardian Spirit had already been under discussion inside the company even before the Next K-Star mission was filmed. After reading the synopsis, Songha herself had asked to audition. Seo Ji-joon had joined the project only after she passed and her casting was locked in. Following our side, Pan Production CEO Kim Pan-seok spoke about the audition as well.

Thanks to that, a defense rose up where the attacks on Lee Songha had been overwhelming, and the two sides fell into a rough balance. The controversy, though, showed no sign of dying down. It only ran hotter. It wasn't just the portal articles. On social media and across internet communities, posts tearing into each other over the incident kept the pages scrolling and scrolling.

I clicked my tongue and shut the window.

Some of those posts looked like every single character was packed with malice. Enough that I wanted to ask whether Lee Songha had wronged them in a past life. They made me frown, and I was only a bystander. If Songha read them...

Kim Hyunjo had already called the others and told them to keep her off the internet, but I still couldn't stop worrying.

How were we supposed to settle this?

An acting controversy could only be answered with acting, and the premiere was still more than a month away. Should we film even a script-reading rehearsal and put it up? Would that be enough for people to believe she hadn't been bundled in—that she'd auditioned and gotten the part?

"What is all this fuss, all of a sudden?"

Team Leader 3 opened the conference room door and came in. He was still holding his bag, as if he'd come straight here the moment he arrived.

"Sudden, my ass. It's been a mess since dawn."

Kim Hyunjo said it with a hollow face. Team Leader 3 clicked his tongue at the sight of it.

"It's been sitting on the real-time searches this whole time, hasn't it? Songha at one, Cat Guardian Spirit at five."

"Ah—Cat Guardian Spirit just climbed to four."

The traitor, hammering his laptop like he was in a war, corrected him.

I refreshed the portal. Sure enough, Cat Guardian Spirit was at four. Lee Songha was still first, and beneath her Next K-Star, Neptune, and even Seo Ji-joon lined up in a row. It was no exaggeration to say last night's broadcast had seized the real-time rankings.

Team Leader 3 muttered as he peered at the monitor over the traitor's shoulder.

"Well, I'll be. I thought they'd take a little heat and it'd pass. At this rate, it might spread into something big."

"It's already chaos everywhere."

Team Leader Park said it without taking his eyes off the monitor.

"Team Leader Park, why's your voice so shot?"

"I had it out with the Next K-Star side over the phone."

At that, twin flames lit in Team Leader 3's eyes.

"Those bastards. What'd they have to say?"

"With their mouths, they're sorry. All bowed and meek. They say Cat Guardian Spirit is a sister-company drama, so they were just trying to give it a little push for promotion, and they didn't know it'd overheat like this."

"Is that an explanation, or is that makgeolli talking? You should've cursed them out."

"I did. But their show's a smash hit—what's a little cursing from us to them? They said the live ratings sat in the two-percent range from the middle of the broadcast on. With this much buzz, the downloads and the reruns are going to be enormous, and episode two's ratings will climb even higher. They're probably celebrating their heads off over there right now."