Someone Who Now Has Something to Protect (8)
“...!”
Son Chae-young froze before she could even scream. Like a mannequin. Her eyes were stretched wide, and only the pupils drifted slowly downward—she clearly hadn’t worked out what had just slammed into her face.
All the while the tiramisu clung, black with cocoa, to the left side of her face and oozed downward in a slow, filthy slide.
I stood before a sight I would never see twice in my life and gave it a moment’s thought. The cake I’d bought with good money was ruined. I did not regret what I’d paid. Not one bit.
The menu choice had been excellent, too. Plain whipped cream would have been a disappointment.
“Th-this, this—Chae, Chae-young...”
Chief Jo’s stammer broke the silence. Pale as a man who’d just sat through a horror film, he glared at me, then at Lee Songha, then fumbled through his pockets before blurting that he’d go find tissues and vanishing in a hurry.
“...Have you lost your mind?”
Son Chae-young wiped her cheek with the back of her hand and shook a chunk of cake off as she spoke. I’d expected her to thrash like the frenzied animal from a moment ago, but her voice was unexpectedly calm—the stillness before a storm.
Her eyes, though, were murderous.
Just in case, I lifted an arm and barred the space in front of Lee Songha.
“No.”
The answer came from behind me.
I turned and startled. Her voice was as flat as ever, but both eyes were burning. If Son Chae-young raised a hand again, Songha looked ready to hurl the cake box after it.
Right. I’d forgotten, for a while.
Lee Songha only lost her nerve when she’d done something wrong, or made a mistake that burdened the team. Otherwise she said what she had to say—and when it was time to charge, she charged.
“You started it.”
“I did?”
Son Chae-young laughed as if she couldn’t believe her ears. Songha went on, unbothered.
“You were going to hit him.”
“And did I? He dodged like an eel. So because I vented a little on a manager, you throw a cake at a senior from your own agency? People call you a genius, a genius, and now there’s nothing you won’t do? And you still think you’re going to—”
“Don’t take it out on him.”
Songha cut her off clean.
“What?”
“On someone else’s...”
Someone else’s?
“Don’t take your anger out on... my oppa.”
It felt as if she’d swapped the words in a hurry.
But there was no time to wonder. The door opened again behind Son Chae-young, and Chief Jo—still pale—glanced out at the hall, shut it, and came back in.
A box of tissues in one hand.
“Chae-young, before anyone sees you, your face—”
“You think the problem right now is someone seeing me? I got hit with a cake.”
Son Chae-young snatched the tissues and snapped at him. Chief Jo flinched and turned a frown on Lee Songha.
“You—what on earth were you thinking...!”
But his expression soon soured. Chief Jo clearly knew as well: that Son Chae-young had asked Professor Shim Kyung-taek to block Lee Songha’s path. Which was why he couldn’t raise his voice. Considering what she’d done, a cake to the face was nothing. She deserved to be stoned.
So he turned on me instead.
“And you, you little—! You just stood there and watched instead of stopping her?!”
“I didn’t see it in time. I was thinking about Professor Shim Kyung-taek.”
Chief Jo flinched as if he’d been ambushed. The sight seemed to grate on Son Chae-young; she flung aside the tissue she’d been wiping her face with, all nerves.
“This is so annoying. Seriously. Don’t even think about dragging Professor Shim into this. You said you heard everything. Fine. I did it. I asked him to make sure Lee Songha couldn’t act.”
“Chae-young!”
Chief Jo startled and checked the door.
I froze for a second too. Even if Professor Shim had spilled everything, I hadn’t expected Son Chae-young to admit it so calmly, in her own voice, as if it were nothing worth fussing over.
A jolt of worry made me look at Lee Songha. If anything, she was less shaken than a moment ago. She simply watched Son Chae-young with eyes gone still and deep, like water with no visible bottom.
Eyes you couldn’t read at all.
“So you found out. What are you going to do about it?”
Son Chae-young turned the question on me instead.
“Go crying to someone? The director? The CEO? Go ahead and try. What do you think the CEO is going to say to me?”
“Chae-young, seriously—what if someone hears you!”
When Chief Jo caught her arm to stop her, she raised her voice.
“There’s no one here to hear except these two anyway! And how much did I even do wrong? I hid it because it was embarrassing, not because I was scared. Don’t get it twisted.”
“You—haah—you told the team leader straight out that you wouldn’t do it again...!”
“I did it because I didn’t like her. The thought that she might end up in my project pissed me off so much I couldn’t even pick up the script. I couldn’t sleep! Do you have any idea how much money I’ve made this company? They can let that much slide!”
Even Chief Jo, her own manager, looked struck dumb. He stared at her the way you’d stare at a bomb that had started moving and burning on its own and was about to blow—but she didn’t stop. She went on in an utterly ordinary tone.
“And after that, I felt better, oppa.”
“What?”
“Once the thing irritating me was gone, my mind settled and the stress went away. Thanks to that the drama did well, and the movie did well. Do you know how many ads I shot last year and this year? Even if she’d kept acting, you really think she would’ve earned more than me? When you think about it, wasn’t this better for the company too?”
Rage surged, then cooled, then left me speechless, and at last it sank.
Only one thought remained.
How does a person like that even exist?
It felt as if I were looking straight into the insides of Son Chae-young the person, not the actress. Strip away the clean, innocent mask built by image-making, and what sat underneath was a shapeless, revolting monster.
“Want me to tell you something?”
She didn’t wait for an answer. She said it with a sneer.
“My contract doesn’t have much time left. So right now, whether it’s the director or the CEO, nobody’s saying a word to me. There’s the drama that starts airing in January, ads that need renewing—do you have any idea how much is riding on me alone?”
Ah. So that was it. The meaning of what Professor Shim had said at the end.
That it would have been better not to know, and to let it pass.
“If the CEO tells me to apologize, well, I’ll think about that much. So until then, don’t irritate people over nothing. You haven’t been in this business long, so maybe you don’t know, but this industry has always been like this.”
I swallowed the flood of words that had risen to my throat and said only one thing.
“I haven’t been at this long, but there is one thing I learned properly.”
“Learned?”
The eyes that had been gloating narrowed.
I looked at Lee Songha. She still stood firm, half a step behind me.
But I could feel her slender fingers gripping my shirttail with all her strength.
I wasn’t some pure fool who knew nothing of the world. Hearing Son Chae-young out, I wasn’t naive enough to believe, with absolute faith, that CEO Baek Han-sung would make her pay a price that fit what she’d done.
That wouldn’t be innocence. It would be stupidity.
This industry was a breeding ground of unfairness and absurdity. In an entertainment management company especially—a vast food chain of tangled power—there was nothing more to say. Son Chae-young was a top star living in the upper reaches of that chain. Songha and I had been buried somewhere far below, barely visible, and had only just stuck our heads out to look up at a height we could hardly see.
But precisely because it was that kind of place, I could say this.
Kim Hyunjo and the Team 3 leader arrived long past the time they’d set.
The moment the team leader took in the cake smeared across the conference-room floor, and the cocoa powder still stuck to the nape of Son Chae-young’s neck, his face went hard. At the sight of the two men she clicked her tongue, as if she’d been interrupted.
Then she gave the team leader a nod and walked out.
“Son Chae-young.”
He called her name, and she paused for a moment.
“This isn’t something you get to walk away from.”
“I’m tired of repeating myself. Talk to my team leader.”
She said it with a bright little smile and vanished without so much as a backward glance. Chief Jo read the team leader’s face and hurried after her.
Kim Hyunjo and the team leader shook their heads. Both of them wore the same look I’d had a moment ago. What kind of person is that.
It struck me all over again how formidable a top star’s swagger really was. And that if you wanted to stop seeing and hearing filth in this industry, you needed at least the title of CEO hung around your neck.
“The nerve of her. That one’s barely human. Barely.”
The team leader dropped into an empty seat and spoke to me.
“That damned Shim Kyung-taek must’ve called the Team 2 leader too. The man was stomping around looking for you, snarling about people overstepping, so I went and had it out with him. That’s why we’re late.”
“He was ready to grind you up and drink you.”
Kim Hyunjo added it with a scowl.
I was already on the Team 2 leader’s bad side over the Sung Do-won business, and with this I’d crossed a river there was no crossing back. Not that I wanted to take this particular mess back.
The team leader tapped my arm.
“You don’t need to worry about it anymore. I made it very clear to the Team 2 leader that it was on my orders, and that he’d better not think about taking his temper out on you.”
“Ah. Yes.”
“He shoots himself in the foot and tries to vent it on someone who had nothing to do with it? He should’ve managed his own people properly in the first place. If it were me, I’d be too ashamed to show my face.”
As the team leader kept grumbling, Kim Hyunjo rapped the table to pull us back.
“Anyway. Hyung and I both heard the recording. Start from the beginning.”
Aware of Lee Songha still sitting beside me, I opened my mouth.
From what had happened with Professor Shim that morning through the incident just now. I left out what ought to be left out and added what ought to be added, and as the story went on, Kim Hyunjo’s face and the team leader’s grew endlessly vicious. The only one keeping her composure was Songha herself—the person it had actually happened to.
No. That was past composure. That was an unmoved mind.
The two of them, by contrast, reacted violently to every word I spoke and salted the listening with curses I’d never even heard. By the time they reached the part where Son Chae-young had brought up the director and CEO Baek Han-sung, they were as rough as enraged bulls.
“Even wickedness has a limit. At that point she’s a crazy bitch. A crazy bitch.”
“Songha. You should’ve thrown the table, not the cake.”
Kim Hyunjo added it darkly to the team leader’s words. I agreed completely.
“Hyung, how much is left on Son Chae-young’s contract?”
“I don’t know the exact date either, but last time she signed a two-year exclusive, so there can’t be much left. That’s why the Team 2 leader’s been busy stroking her ego since last month. Team Leader Park in PR is wrung dry too.”
“You don’t think... the director and the CEO might actually...”
Kim Hyunjo said it with a glance at Lee Songha. He was worried about exactly what she’d claimed—that with so little left on her contract, the director and CEO Baek Han-sung might try to paper this over and let it go.
The team leader’s brow knotted hard.
“This isn’t a one-woman agency built around Son Chae-young. You answer for what you do. Same goes for that bastard Shim Kyung-taek. I looked into it—seems Songha isn’t the only one he’s done this to. I’ll call the director and the CEO and talk it through.”
The two of them talked a while longer, offered Songha a few words of comfort at the end, and stood. They left with killing intent in their eyes. I had a feeling they were headed for wherever Chief Jo or the Team 2 leader happened to be.
I meant to leave too, but the wreckage of the conference room snagged my eye.
I rolled up my sleeves and wiped the cake plastered over everything. Beside me, Songha pulled tissues one after another and helped.
“I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
“For throwing the cake you bought me.”
As she said it, she looked at a lump of cake that had fallen under the table as if it were a shame to waste.
She’d just learned that Son Chae-young’s malice had nearly twisted her whole life, and the serious thing she had to say was this. I wanted, just once, to crack open that small head and see what was in it. For this moment alone, I regretted that my ability wasn’t mind reading.
“I only got one bite, and it was really good. That was expensive, wasn’t it.”
“No. You threw it well.”
What did a little cake money matter.
“It went to a worthwhile cause. That’s enough.”
The memory of Son Chae-young’s face plastered in cake pulled a short laugh out of me. The corner of Songha’s mouth lifted too, as if she’d pictured the same scene.
“Don’t feel bad. I’ll buy you a bigger one.”
“Okay.”
Busy scooping tissues into the cake box, she said it in a passing tone.
“That witch.”
“Hm?”
Even after I dropped Lee Songha at the dorm and clocked out, her last words kept circling in my ear.
Whether she could drive Son Chae-young far away.
She’d tossed it off in passing, but the more I turned it over, the heavier it sat.
I was slumped in my desk chair, turning it over, when the phone rang.
An unfamiliar number.
Well—my number had practically become public property, with drama writers and entertainment reporters calling day and night, so unknown numbers were familiar by now.
“Yes, this is Jung Sunwoo.”
“Mm. Is this a good time?”
I jumped.
I yanked the phone from my ear and checked the number. Had I seen it on the company directory? It sounded exactly like CEO Baek Han-sung.
“Excuse me... CEO?”
“That’s right. I called because there’s something I want to ask you.”
A low laugh came from the other end.
In that moment, something he’d said the day we met alone in his office came back to me. If the drama succeeds, what should I give you this time. If there’s something you want, tell me then.
I sat up straight.
“Now is fine. And there’s something I’d like to tell you as well, sir.”