I Woke Up and the World Had Changed (5)
"What on earth..."
The division head had been the one to stick his neck out, but every face in the room wore the same look. The look of people being fed nonsense.
CEO Baek Han-sung settled back into the sofa and laced his fingers together, perfectly at ease.
"Team Leader Park. You said public opinion was split right down the middle."
"Ah, yes. There are still more people criticizing her, but fortunately Neptune is starting to pick up a reputation as a girl group that can actually perform. And Songha's visuals are so strong that the people defending her keep growing."
After Team Leader Park finished, the leader of Team 3 wet his dry lips and added his piece.
"Songha hasn't shown them anything yet, so a lot of people are keeping quiet and saying they'll talk once the lid comes off. The lucky part is, if it had been nothing but backlash, she would have had to drop the drama. In a climate like that, TVL was never going to keep holding on to Songha. She isn't Ji-joon."
"That's true," Kim Hyunjo put in. "But with the side tearing her down and the side standing up for her locked even, the controversy isn't showing any sign of dying down. Both camps keep taking turns throwing wood on the fire."
"The premiere is in January. The table read?"
"Three days from now. The twenty-fourth."
That answer was mine. I had the date flagged in my scheduler and had been waiting on it until my neck ached, so it leapt out of me.
Baek Han-sung's gaze rested on me for a moment, then moved on.
"Good. Then let's raise the stakes. See just how high this goes."
"Sir?"
"Talk to TVL. Tell them we should put together a proper making-of team. The table read, the poster shoot, behind-the-scenes on the actual set—keep the making-of cameras rolling, cut teasers, and release them one by one... Actually, I'll just walk into TVL myself."
The division head cut in, looking thoroughly unconvinced.
"A making-of, a teaser—those run thirty seconds, a minute at the outside. You can't tell from that whether the acting is any good. That won't put the controversy to rest."
"They shouldn't be able to tell. That's why people will keep watching. They're curious."
Baek Han-sung's eyes went thin.
"Controversy turns into attention. Carry that attention cleanly through to January, and I think we can post a premiere rating that stands with the networks. And if the work is good, from there it catches the current and climbs on its own."
I stared at him and did not blink.
I had thought the exact same thing.
Yesterday, the first time Lee Songha's name started moving across the internet, I had turned it over. Cable was a much harder door than the terrestrial networks. A network drama was guaranteed three percent at a minimum even with no promotion at all, while a cable show could spend the entire month before premiere hammering its publicity and still be called a success if it cleared three. Fail to become a topic, and even a finely made drama sat in the one-percent range, acknowledged only by the people who had actually watched it.
But gather enough buzz, and the picture changed. Once something became a topic, work that had both popular appeal and real quality pulled viewers no matter the channel. The proof was already out there. Dramas that had whipped up a fever online and set portals and communities shaking had sailed clean past ten percent—the figure that might as well have been a wall for cable.
So I had thought it. The controversy had already broken. Seen the right way, this controversy, this buzz, might be the very engine that made people wait for a drama called Cat Guardian Spirit.
I had not said so to the people who were worried. I could think this way only because two things sat underneath it. One was the weeks of table reads with Lee Songha, in which I had kept confirming an acting ability and a concentration that left me quietly stunned. The other was that I knew Cat Guardian Spirit stood a very, very high chance of becoming a massive hit.
Tell any of that to people who knew neither fact, and all I would get was that I was being an optimist. LJ had already said as much. And yet—
How does he make a decision like that off nothing but an audition video?
"If it goes wrong, the blowback won't be small."
Right. That was the ordinary reaction.
The division head had barely opened his mouth before Team Leader Park followed, worry written all over his face.
"Isn't the risk... too big? Of course, drag this controversy along the way you're saying and the premiere rating might well put the networks to shame. But everyone will be watching to grade Songha's acting. They'll pick it apart."
The division head, the leader of Team 3, and Kim Hyunjo all nodded along.
Team Leader Park kept going.
"And the people who've been cursing her will sit down in front of the TV already looking for a handle. 'All right, let's see how good you really are.' The second Songha looks even a little off, it'll be chaos. 'I knew it.'"
The Team 3 leader piled on at once.
"The weight on Songha will be enormous, too. Her acting is better than I expected, I'll give her that, but even veterans can't find their real level once the pressure sits on them. This is her first project. One wrong step and..."
"Then she has to be good. An actor acts well."
CEO Baek Han-sung said it looking at me again.
"And a manager takes good care of her."
The meeting ran on for a while after that. The division head and the others raised their worries a few more times, but in the end it was settled as Baek Han-sung wanted: he would go to TVL himself and sit down with CEO Kim Pan-seok, Director Shin Tae-gyun, and the network's bureau chief.
Team Leader Park dragged both hands roughly down his face, a dry wash with no water in it.
"Hold the controversy in a dead heat and drag it all the way to January... My shoulders just got heavy. Thin ice, right up to premiere night."
"If the ember looks like it's going out, tell me."
CEO Baek Han-sung said it with a low laugh.
"I'll give an interview. It's been a while."
"You, sir?"
"If she couldn't act, I wouldn't have told them to audition her. Or how about this—if I were going to parachute someone in, why would TVL be the only place I could land her? Drop a line like that and I expect it would catch beautifully."
Everyone listened with the color gone from their faces, and only at the very end realized it was a joke.
Team Leader Park let his shoulders sag and breathed out a short laugh.
"Oh, it would catch. It would catch and burn the whole company black. I'll handle it on my end, so you won't have any reason to give that interview."
"Good. Then all of you, get some rest. You've worked hard."
The room was beginning to empty, so I gathered my laptop, left sitting alone on the table. I had just stood to follow Kim Hyunjo out when a voice came, abrupt.
"If you're not busy, I'd like a word."
CEO Baek Han-sung.
Surely not to me. I looked around, and everyone was looking at me. Baek Han-sung included.
Me?
"There's one more thing I want to ask you."
"Ah... yes."
I answered first and sat back down. The others wore the faces of people dying to know what would be said, and one by one they cleared out. Kim Hyunjo went last. He pointed at the floor with one finger—downstairs—and stepped outside.
What remained in the CEO's office was me, Baek Han-sung, and silence.
What is this?
What else does he want to ask me?
Something about the drama? Or about Lee Songha? I was running through every possibility I could, so that whatever question came I would have a perfect answer ready, when one that was not among them flew in.
"How did you know about Sung Do-won's problem?"
"...Sir?"
"You didn't turn down Do-won's offer because you knew. Did you?"
My head, stalled for a second, started turning fast again.
So he had found out. Sung Do-won only looked clean on the surface. Underneath, he was full of problems. Well, weeks had already passed since that day. In the future I had seen, W&U cut the contract before the exposé war between Sung Do-won and Pure Star Entertainment ever broke open, so I had already thought they might learn of it early.
"I'm not sure I follow what you're saying, sir."
I lied with a perfectly blank face. Admit that I knew, and it would begin with how, and the cleanup after that would be a headache. I looked at him as guilelessly as I could, and something subtle crossed Baek Han-sung's expression.
"A coincidence, then."
Those long fingers tapped the arm of the sofa again. Once. Twice.
He was not even pressing me, and still it was hard to breathe. A good thing the month since I had joined had been spectacle enough, and a better thing that the foresight had hardened my nerve several times over. Otherwise I could not have held my face this still.
"All right."
At the end of the silence, CEO Baek Han-sung nodded.
"I hear you brought this drama in as well."
"I thought it was a good drama, so I asked Team Leader Park."
"If this succeeds, what am I supposed to give you this time... If there's something you want, tell me then. I ought to load your arms with this and that and keep you close. A person with luck."
He said it with a brief grin.
"Go on, then."
"Yes. I'll be going."
I was gathering the laptop again when his voice dropped from above me.
"Oh. And Lee Songha. Stay with her."
Stay with her?
"Actors who can take the weight of a performance—the pressure, the responsibility—and simply endure it are rare. So most of them try to lean on something. Sometimes that becomes pills, or alcohol. And sometimes it becomes a person."
My face set before I knew it.
The smile was gone from Baek Han-sung's when he spoke again.
The moment I stepped out of the CEO's office, I called Lee Songha. If I could talk to her, maybe the strange churn in my stomach would settle.
I had told them to keep her off the internet, and they had gone and taken the phone outright. I cut across Lim Seoyoung's familiar voice, and the other end went quiet.
That would have been a shock of a different kind.
What was that?
The reaction was strange, but before I could get any more curious, Lee Songha's voice came through.
The same voice as always.
Good. So she wasn't eating because of the stress.
I let out a sigh she wouldn't be able to hear, and said it anyway.
The moment I heard that answer, without a hitch in it, the corner of my mouth curved up on its own.
A pleasant voice went on, under the crisp sound of something being bitten into.
Lee Songha let a beat pass, then asked.
I answered the way I always did. Smiling.