Someone With Something to Protect (6)
The same hour. The PR office at W&U.
While Team Leader Park stepped out to call Jang Yoon-ok with her thanks, the female staffer and the male staffer finally let out sighs of relief.
Public opinion on Lee Songha had been seesawing all over again, but as Jang Yoon-ok's interview spread, it was tipping back toward the positive. Songha's name still held the number-one spot on the portal search rankings, and Cat Guardian Spirit was climbing once more—people hunting down the premiere date, swearing they would catch the live broadcast if only to see her acting for themselves.
The PR team's female staffer loosened up and said,
"Songha must really be that good. Teacher Jang Yoon-ok is notoriously picky. If she hadn't liked the performance, I don't think she would have given the interview no matter how much the CEO asked."
"At this rate, Songha might shoot up and turn into a top actress overnight."
At the male staffer's words, she laughed, flushed with excitement.
"That would be perfect. We lose so many projects to other companies because our actors' schedules don't line up. Such a waste. Songha's image isn't locked into one type, so she could pull off Juhee's vibe, or Sora's, and even Son Chae—"
"Hey. Hey."
She clapped her mouth shut, too late, and carefully turned her head.
Son Chae-young was still sitting in one corner of the PR office. Unlike before, her eyes were gloomy, boring a hole straight through her phone screen.
The walk from the stage down to where the van was parked felt endless.
The kids were buried in a crowd of about fifteen. Signing, holding hands, taking photos. The bodyguard kept nagging them to get in the car—the space was tight, and someone was going to get hurt—but the fans weren't the only ones who wouldn't budge. The Neptune girls stayed glued in place, with no intention of moving at all.
Fair enough. None of them had any immunity to a reaction this hot.
They held out until the next girl group took the stage, and in the end the Traitor, Kim Hyunjo, and I hauled them into the van, dragging from the front and shoving from the back.
"It's a total flea market out there."
I shut the door and sighed. Beside me, the Traitor let out a short laugh.
"This is nothing. Go watch a Blackout fan signing sometime."
"Why? What's that like?"
"This is a school of minnows. That's a school of piranhas."
He said it staring off into the distance.
Piranhas. Would a day come when I was buried in a school of those, too?
The Traitor climbed into the driver's seat first. I circled around to the passenger side.
"Excuse me."
Someone called, so I turned—and immediately regretted it. From the half-open window of a white van parked nearby, Han Saet-byul of Sugar Cat was beaming at me, all sweetness.
"Is Lee Songha okay? I saw things blow up again earlier."
"Sorry?"
"Someone from the drama was raving that Lee Songha's a genius. Is she actually that good? That girl..."
"Yes. She's actually that good."
She looked ready to wind herself up for more, so I cut her off clean.
"If you're that curious, read the follow-up articles."
I answered with every last scrap of courtesy I could scrape together, soul included, and turned my back.
I opened the passenger door and got in, but the mood in the back seat was strangely unsettled. Wondering what fresh trouble this was, I turned around—and startled. Lim Seoyoung was biting her lower lip, sobbing in hiccuping little gasps.
She'd been off since earlier, but the dam had burst. Her cheeks were soaked through.
The Traitor, frozen in a flustered stare, asked,
"Why... why are you crying? Did something happen outside?"
"No. She's crying because she's happy. Because she's happy."
Kim Hyunjo said it with a laugh.
"The day Neptune does a solo concert, she'll be wailing right there on the stage."
Lim Seoyoung smacked his back. Kim Hyunjo held out a tissue.
"All right, quit crying. Your eye makeup's all run and pitch-bla— wait, it's fine?"
"Mmngh... I guess because it's waterproof..."
Half a sob and half a voice came out of her. Everyone watching let out a helpless little laugh.
The truth was, right up until they went on, everyone had been worried sick. The moment they'd relaxed because opinion on Songha had improved a little, some so-called insider or whoever the hell it was started throwing around the word genius, and the whole situation flipped.
The second I find out who that bastard is...
Because of it, even Lee Taehee—who almost never got nervous—had gone stiff, and Lim Seoyoung had fidgeted the whole time, watching the crowd. She was afraid the audience cheering so hard for the other teams would go quiet the moment Neptune took the stage.
The worry proved pointless. The atmosphere had been good enough to bring you to tears.
I didn't know how long the people who had cheered today's show would remember this stage, or how many of them would search Neptune's name online. Still, it had been a successful performance. Successful enough that they had every right to be glad, and proud.
"Do you think any of them might have been our fans? Will anyone come see us again?"
Lim Seoyoung said it, rubbing her eyes with the tissue. LJ shrugged.
"Don't get your hopes up. The higher the expectation, the bigger the disappointment."
"I can't even hope if I want to? There were so many people. You never know!"
"This is Hongdae. Play a song and blow soap bubbles and you'd still get a crowd that size."
But even as she said it, LJ looked happier than she had in a long time. The afterglow of the stage hadn't faded; she was faintly humming under her breath.
"Fans, I don't know about that."
From the very back, her designated seat, Lee Taehee pushed herself up from where she'd been sprawled and held something out to Songha.
A cookie, the kind cafés sell in little packages. When Lee Songha stared at it, Lee Taehee nodded as if telling her to eat. Songha carefully tore the plastic and started on a cookie no bigger than a coin.
I watched her in silence.
Everyone had gone up with a heavy heart, but the heaviest load had been Songha's. The controversy centered on her was spilling over onto Neptune, after all. Earlier, all I could offer were soothing words. Now I had something that could lighten her.
I gave a small gesture, and Songha leaned toward me.
From behind, Lee Taehee scratched her neck and said,
"A tall person, built like an athlete, left it as a gift. That snack."
"Why are you only saying that now, unnie? Don't eat it! Don't eat it!"
Lim Seoyoung snatched the bag from Songha's hand, startled half out of her skin.
"It's the first gift we've gotten after a performance. We have to take it home!"
"It'll rot, idiot."
While the kids—and even Kim Hyunjo and the Traitor—made a racket over a single bag of cookies, Songha, robbed of her food right before her eyes, came toward me with a blank, bereft face.
And held out her hand.
On her white palm sat a cookie broken in half.
"Would you like some?"
"No. You barely saved that much. You eat it."
As if she had been waiting for exactly that, the cookie went into Songha's mouth. I smiled for a moment, then pulled my phone from my pocket, opened the new exclusive on Teacher Jang Yoon-ok's interview, and held it out.
"Songha. Look at this."
She lowered a puzzled gaze. Before long, her lips, dusted with cookie crumbs, parted just slightly.
Songha clutched the phone and couldn't tear her eyes from the article for a long while.
"Teacher Jang Yoon-ok's been acting for almost fifty years, you know."
"Ah."
"A senior like that said you're good. At this point it's confirmed—your old lesson teacher, that guy, was out of his mind. You don't need to remember a single word he said anymore."
The words that had left her with that trauma were better forgotten. Of course, Songha was the one who ought to forget. I couldn't. I had been sharpening something all this time. How was I supposed to let it go so easily?
I was sunk in that dark thought when Songha's lips moved. I leaned in, and a whisper slipped into my ear.
"Oppa, the things you say..."
"Hm?"
"They always seem to be right."
Then she stared straight at me. The back of my neck itched.
"No, it's... not to that extent."
At that, Songha smiled faintly, murmuring that no, it was, it really was. In the end I smiled too.
My heart loosened. In my head, the simulation of hooking Teacher Shim Kyung-taek tomorrow spun even tighter. If things went the way I pictured, I could pull the aching tooth in a single tug.
Right. Tomorrow... let's settle this.
The next day. Eleven in the morning.
I wasn't at the company. I was sitting on a sofa in an office at a specialized arts school.
My hair was a mess, as if I had just rolled out of bed, and I was still in yesterday's clothes. The crowning touch was the reek of soju, sprayed on in place of cologne. Even to my own eyes, I looked like a man who had been drinking straight through the night.
And across from me sat a man in his forties, posture high-handed. An expensive suit. A neat face befitting a theater actor in his prime, and a thick mustache.
Teacher Shim Kyung-taek. No—here, a man who went by the lofty title of professor.
"This important thing you said you had to discuss...?"
He looked me up and down as he asked. I scratched the back of my head and put on the act of a new hire who had made a mess.
"It's about the Songha issue."
"Lee Songha? I wondered what this was all of a sudden."
Teacher Shim let out a sigh.
"I thought I'd already apologized for that. I said I might have been a bit harsh..."
"It's not about that."
I nearly swore.
You hand a kid that kind of trauma, and then I might have been a bit harsh? Some apology. That was an apology?
"Things are incredibly loud right now over Songha's acting. Yesterday Teacher Jang Yoon-ok herself gave an interview saying Songha was born with a gift for it, and it became a whole story again."
Teacher Shim's expression turned uncomfortable.
Of course it would. A veteran actress seasoned to the bone in this industry had called a performer he had tossed aside as talentless a genius. He was only sitting there like that because his face was shamelessly thick. Anyone else would have been mortified enough to drown their nose in the dishwater.
"So?"
"I had drinks with a reporter yesterday... and they were incredibly curious why Songha didn't act at all during the two years she spent in an unknown girl group."
The further my lie went, the stiffer his face became. I scratched the back of my head again.
"I was too drunk, and I think I may have slipped up with the reporter."
"Slipped up? What kind of slip with a reporter?"
Panic was written all over him. I hurled the turd.
"That Songha quit acting after her old lesson teacher told her not to even show her face in this business... something like that."
Teacher Shim's face went sour.
"The problem is, the reporter heard me and figured there had to be some grudge for me to say that much. It looked like they were trying to find out who the teacher was."
"What?!"
Startled enough that his eyes bulged, Teacher Shim stared at me.
Right now, Lee Songha's name was the most appetizing prey any reporter could ask for. The moment a related exclusive dropped, clickbait pieces would blanket the news section in an instant, and netizens would haul them off in every direction and mount them for good.
So if word got out that Teacher Shim Kyung-taek, the man who had taught her, had maliciously poured trauma all over her and blocked her path as an actor? Especially if that incident had some connection to Son Chae-young—wouldn't there be a reaction beyond simple anger at what I was saying now?
He wouldn't want to be exposed to the press over something like that.
I was watching his reaction closely when another thing I wanted to throw occurred to me.
"I think I misspoke because of the alcohol. I came because I felt I should at least apologize."
All right. An apology.