Someone With Something to Protect (2)

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Lee Songha moved first. She gave Son Chae-young a short bow, then pulled her eyes away at once, as if she had no intention of looking at her a moment longer.

Son Chae-young's face changed the instant the greeting landed. Every trace of unease vanished, and one corner of her mouth climbed into a slanted smile.

"Hey. You..."

Songha was already coming toward me in quick strides, which was to say she was ignoring Son Chae-young entirely.

"Oppa, we have to get going, don't we?"

She caught the coat in my hands and hauled on it.

"Right. We should go."

I nodded and stepped into the elevator with her. In the few seconds before the doors shut, it felt as if a stare were cinching around my throat. Dead ahead, the woman she'd just snubbed stood with her eyes blown wide, glaring.

It looked like a frame from a horror movie. No. Horror movies at least cut away. That was a horror movie locked on a lag spike.

At last the elevator began to move.

Songha, still gripping my coat, muttered under her breath.

"Witch."

How had we landed on the exact same thought.

More than that, Son Chae-young had clearly said something like Lee Songha, was it? That girl. It had sounded as if she didn't even know the name properly.

"Songha. Do you know Son Chae-young outside of this?"

"I hate that woman."

She said it staring into a corner of the elevator. It went past distaste and into open hostility, a voice I had never heard from her except when she was playing Jung Haewon.

"How do you know her?"

"...I saw her a few times. When I was taking lessons."

Lessons.

The thing that had been sitting wrong with me all this time seemed, at last, to crawl out and take a shape.

Songha said nothing more. Her mouth closed. But the word hate had come out of that usually expressionless mouth, and if they had crossed paths during lessons, it could not have been anything warm. My suspicion only hardened. Between the lesson teacher and Son Chae-young, there might well have been some scheme, with Songha caught in the middle of it.

The elevator stopped soon after. I headed for where we had parked, turning over how to drag the truth of the thing into the open, and only then noticed the space beside me was empty. I looked back. Songha had halted inside the elevator and wasn't coming out.

Worry sat on her face, and the moment I registered it, she spoke.

"If I ignored that woman, could you get in trouble because of me?"

"What?"

"If that's what it is, I'll go back up, greet her properly, and come back down."

I stared at her, blank, and then a short laugh escaped me.

Had my face looked that serious? Was that why she was thinking this way?

The truth was, I wasn't without worry. ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Not because I was afraid of taking the heat myself. Because of Songha.

This was my first time doing a real job out in the world, but the army and part-time work had taught me a few things. I knew that no matter how much of a lunatic the person above you was, charging in with nothing to back you up only wore you out. Songha, especially, was a celebrity who lived on the chopping block. We had gotten away with it only because this was the company and there had been no eyes on us. Anywhere else, it might have become a problem.

In any other situation, I might have said as much to her. But.

"No."

Son Chae-young was the exception. If she raised hell upstairs and lightning came down on my head, then fine. I would take the strike once and be done with it.

"Let's go. Before the witch comes after us."

"Okay."

I had folded a joke into it, and Songha's face cleared at once. She came up beside me on light steps.

I got her into the car first, then called Kim Hyunjo from outside. If I was going to be struck by lightning, I had no intention of taking it alone.

We traded a brief hello, and I went straight to the point.

"Chief. Songha's lesson teacher and Son Chae-young. Has anything turned up?"

I rubbed my lips with my thumb a few times, then said,

"That teacher, Shim Kyung-taek. Would it be all right if I met him once?"

"There's a method I'd like to... try."

My face stung. My back stung. Honestly, my whole body stung. I felt like a human dartboard.

It wasn't even lunch hour, but the crowd in the TVL lobby kept growing. They were definitely looking our way. Maybe because it was a broadcast station, they only murmured among themselves. No one came up asking for an autograph or a photo to prove they had seen us. Fortunately, no one was saying anything openly nasty, either.

I swept the surroundings with care, then glanced ahead. Songha had her eyes fixed on the script as if she couldn't feel a single gaze in the room. Her lips moved in tiny increments. She seemed to be reading alone.

She had been through that script more times than I could count, but with the group reading right in front of us, the air around her was different. I could feel her sunk deeper into it than ever. I didn't want to break that, so I watched in silence.

About five minutes passed.

All at once the lobby grew loud. Somewhere a high, bright scream cut through. I turned my head, and of course. Two people were coming through the crowd the way someone parts the sea.

Seo Ji-joon. And his manager, Chief Lee Bong-joon.

The day I had first met Seo Ji-joon, a few weeks ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠back, came to me in a flash. It had been a shock. My worry over whether he could even pull off a performance in which he came undone had been ripped out by the roots and thrown away before thirty seconds with him were up. I had understood at once what Team Leader Park meant when he said casting Seo Ji-joon would be a masterstroke for the drama.

"Hello."

I stood to greet them. Songha, still buried in the script, followed with a dazed face. Seo Ji-joon and Chief Lee exchanged a brief hello with her first, then turned the same look on me.

"You went a little... hard today?"

At Chief Lee's words I scratched the back of my neck, sheepish.

A suit had felt like too much for a script reading, so I had hauled every piece of clothing out of the closet and given it serious thought. In the end I had gone with a turtleneck, slacks, and a classic wool coat. Up to there, I didn't think I had done badly. The problem was the shop I had stopped at afterward.

"Sunwoo, want me to do a little something with your hair?"

The shop chief, a man I saw more often than my own family, had asked, and agreeing to sit in that chair had been the mistake. I had genuinely thought he was only going to touch it a little.

"This just... sort of happened."

"No, no. I'm not saying it's bad. You look sharp. It suits you."

Chief Lee waved the thought off.

"I feel like I ought to be speaking formally to you. Seriously, it suits you. When you introduce yourself to the staff, don't say you're a manager. Say team leader. No. Tell them you're the division head of W&U."

Then he grabbed his belly and laughed, smacking my shoulder with a palm the size of a pot lid. He kept laughing the whole way up as we looked for the script-reading room, which was supposedly on the sixth floor. I told him it wasn't ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠that funny. He laughed harder.

In the end Seo Ji-joon clicked his tongue, as if to stop him.

"Instead of laughing, hyung, you should dress like that too."

"What?"

"I want to know what it feels like to be looked after by a division head."

He wasn't stopping him at all. He was giggling right along with him.

"Give it a rest. Clothes like that don't suit me."

"It's not that they don't suit you. They wouldn't fit."

Seo Ji-joon said it while eyeing Chief Lee's round belly, and Chief Lee snorted.

"You're young. You don't know a thing. From your thirties on, belly fat is character, kid."

"If belly fat is character, hyung, you're already Gandhi."

And then they were giggling together again. Quite the pair.

When the laughter had died down a little, I glanced back. Songha was still following with her head lowered, thoughts apparently still on the script. I caught Chief Lee and spoke quietly.

"Chief, I'm counting on you today."

"Not at all, Division Head. I'm the one who should be counting on you."

This man. Honestly.

"I'm joking. Joking. Don't look at me like that. It's scary."

Chief Lee cleared his throat, scratched his head, and this time spoke in earnest.

"They told us from above to look out for you anyway. And even if they hadn't, Ji-joon and I were going to keep an eye out. We're not blameless in this mess, either. You two chose the project first. We wedged ourselves in, and the whole thing blew up."

He clicked his tongue. Seo Ji-joon, walking ahead, nodded as well. They had called to apologize after the incident broke, and it seemed they had kept it on their minds.

I shook my head. Seo Ji-joon had only chosen a good project. The one who deserved the blame was PD Go Joon-tae.

Chief Lee went on.

"And don't worry too much. Nothing much is going to happen. You got the lineup, right? Who's been cast?"

"Yes."

"The director cast incredibly well. They're all good actors, and as far as I know, they're good people, too. While we're shooting, you won't be taking any stress from inside the production."

"Really?"

I knew they were good actors. Most of the cast were performers I had found memorable in dramas and films. What worried me was what they were actually like as people. Their images were good, but a celebrity's public image was exactly that. An image. I had learned as much properly over the past month, going through Sung Do-won, Son Chae-young, and Seo Ji-joon.

Chief Lee rubbed his nose and continued.

"And our situation right now is a little unusual, isn't it. When it's this loud outside, the people on the inside often end up pulling tighter together. So don't worry."

I nodded, relieved.

A little later we reached the sixth floor, and the door of the script-reading room. Seo Ji-joon and Chief Lee Bong-joon opened it and went in as if it were nothing.

In the few seconds I looked inside, a fair number of people had already gathered. Staff setting up cameras and lighting. Familiar actors I had only ever seen on television.

I stopped at the low threshold and drew a breath.

For more than a month I had managed Neptune and met the industry head-on. Music shows, variety recordings, events, magazine interviews, pictorial shoots. I had been through all of it, and I had thought I was getting used to this glittering world, and to the darkness that matched it.

But now my heart was pounding the way it had on my first day of work.

I looked back. Songha still had her head half lowered. Her loosely worn hair cast a shadow, so I couldn't quite read her face.

"Songha."

No answer. Was she nervous?

"Songha, you okay?"

I called again, and she lifted her head. For a moment I couldn't speak.

An atmosphere barbed enough to keep anyone from coming close. A gloomy light in her eyes, as if something were pressing down hard on her. It wasn't Lee Songha's gaze. It was Jung Haewon's, the one I had met over and over through weeks of script readings.

No. Similar, but a little different.

I had never once failed to be struck when I saw it, but right now, of all times...

"Ah."

Her expression changed completely, as if she had truly been possessed by Jung Haewon and then let go.

Songha blinked a couple of times and said,

"I'm sorry. I got mixed up for a second."