We're Going Live (5)
TVL. The master control room.
Today, of all days, the place was louder than a marketplace. Not only the staff handling the transmission, but people from other teams as well—everyone talking over one another, waving crisp bills in the air.
"I'm in at 2.5 percent."
"You do realize the griddle's already screaming hot? I'm at three."
"Three-point-three."
"Stop! Stop! The bureau chief is coming!"
The moment someone yelled in a panic, the control room door opened. In walked Bureau Chief Bae of the Drama Division, Department Head Song, and Director Shin Tae-gyun. Interest in the drama was high enough that, just for today, they had arranged to watch the ratings come in together from the control room.
The people who had been murmuring coughed into their fists and slipped out in a hurry.
"Betting on the ratings again, I see."
At Department Head Song's words, the technical director gave an awkward laugh. Song snatched the Post-it scrawled with evidence of the wager and read it straight down the page.
"Almost all of you in the threes?"
"The buzz is so hot everyone set the bar high. Still, the way this feels... if it goes well, we might even brush four percent..."
"Fifty thousand won says we break four."
Department Head Song pulled a bill from his wallet with a snap. The control room staff looked dumbfounded.
"Department Head, isn't that pushing it?"
"There are plenty of dramas that never crack four percent all the way to the finale."
"I'll take five."
This time it was Director Shin Tae-gyun. A fifty-thousand-won note fluttered in his hand.
The technical crew and the programming staff took the money with careful glances, then muttered behind them in voices too small to carry. Those gentlemen, they figured, had started on the kimchi soup far too early—savoring a feast that hadn't even been served.
Not a few minutes later, they had to take the thought back.
"Two minutes out... huh?"
The assistant director, calling the time, checked the minute-by-minute ratings graph drawing itself live across the monitor and froze. TVL's line was climbing at a speed that didn't even belong in the same conversation as the other cable channels in the slot.
"This is—wait, what? We're already over two percent?"
"What is this? Is this real?"
A programming staffer even rapped the monitor with a knuckle, glancing back over his shoulder. In that same stretch, the line of the graph shot steeply past two.
The technical director swallowed hard and muttered.
"How high is this thing going?"
"We're not actually going to open by hitting three, are we?"
And that we're not actually became real.
"W-we've kicked off at three percent per minute!"
At a launch that blew clean past every prediction, the control room erupted.
On the screen, the title of Cat Guardian Spirit flashed past. Then a highlight reel—only the best frames pulled from the edit—came crashing in. Cuts of the leads and the supporting cast tore by at a pace that stole the breath, and then, all at once, slammed to a halt.
Lee Songha.
As if the director had meant to do it, Songha's highlight cuts had been laid in one after another, an overwhelming run of them.
The technical director forgot the graph entirely and stared at the screen.
He had guessed the acting would be good. Word had already gone around inside TVL that a real find had come out of this. He hadn't expected much beyond that. In all the years he had sent broadcasts out of this room, he had watched so-called acting-school performers praised to the skies until he was sick of them. These days, anything short of extraordinary didn't even stir him.
And yet he clicked his tongue, thrown.
After veteran actress Jang Yoon-ok's words, the camera director's interview followed.
The picture cut to the set. A Lee Songha with a cold, sunken expression—and another Lee Songha, a hamburger in one hand, trotting after her manager like a duckling—crosscut against each other, the double image pushed as far as it would go.
The technical director caught himself nodding.
If possessed meant anything, wasn't it exactly this?
"Uh... w-we've broken through. Four percent!"
At the cracked shout, the technical director snapped back to himself.
Everyone turned to the minute-by-minute monitor. The instant they saw the graph clear four percent, somebody let out a yell ragged with excitement, and applause broke right behind it.
"Right now we're almost triple GTBN in the same slot—triple!"
"A-at this rate, we might actually hit five, right?"
Department Head Song clenched a fist.
"Bureau Chief, what did I tell you? I'm telling you, this thing is the real deal! The veil comes off and we're already over four percent—four percent! At this level, we could go up against the terrestrial networks!"
Bureau Chief Bae nodded. His face stayed stern, but where no one could see, both fists were clenched tight.
"Director Shin—Shin Tae-gyun! Hell of a job, you bastard! All that's left now is to climb and keep climbing! First, call CEO Kim Pan-seok and CEO Baek Han-sung at W&U and pass the news—no, I'll call them myself...!"
"A little quiet, please, Department Head."
Director Shin Tae-gyun hadn't taken his eyes off the minute-by-minute monitor, not once. The staff who had been clamoring, the bureau chief, the department head—all of them looked at the screen again. No one could get a word out.
In a silence coiled tight with excitement, the ratings graph kept shooting upward.
Son Chae-young sat on the sofa with her legs crossed, staring at the television.
Only one thought was in her head.
Just crash and burn.
Lately, Lee Songha and that manager of hers—two faces she couldn't stand to look at—had ruined even her appetite. When something grated on her nerves, nothing else would stay in her hands. She felt she wouldn't be easy in mind or body until she watched that drama go under with a rating that couldn't even manage one percent.
On the television, veteran actress Jang Yoon-ok's interview was playing.
Son Chae-young, who had been gnawing at a fingernail, snatched up whatever was in reach and hurled it at the TV.
"Are her eyes broken? Well, that's why somebody with that career is stuck shooting cable."
Her face twisted.
The picture changed, and the cuts of Jung Haewon—the role Lee Songha was playing—came one after another. A chill went through her, and Son Chae-young found herself looking down at her own forearm.
The fine hairs were standing up.
She bit down hard on her lower lip. Unable to look at the screen any longer, she dragged the laptop over with a jerk of pure irritation. At times like this, nothing settled her faster than reading the hate comments on Lee Songha. Her heart would go smooth as a quiet lake in no time.
She opened the portal, and there was Lee Songha's name at number one on the real-time search.
The article pinned to the main page, and the pieces pouring out without end—every one of them had Lee Songha's name hammered into it.
Reporters. As if any of them know a thing.
The comments. The comments will be fine. Haters don't change.
She went into a site where, if you were a woman in the industry, people cursed you first and looked later. The posts were staggering, and so were the comments. The corner of Son Chae-young's mouth lifted.
"What is this!"
Face slack with disbelief, Son Chae-young flung the laptop. Even that didn't cool her, so she grabbed the remaining flowerpot, the remote, even the script for The Mermaid Princess Ashore, and threw all of it, spitting irritation.
Pacing the living room in a fret, she called Chief Jo. On the screen where Cat Guardian Spirit had ended, some other commercial was already running.
"Oppa, what's the rating on that thing? You checked, right?"
When she snapped it at him, Chief Jo mumbled in a voice that clearly wanted to be anywhere else.
"That's the thing, um, Chae-young..."
"How many percent! Two? Three?"
"I'm saying, it's... Aigoo."
At the ominous sigh, Son Chae-young's face crumpled, brow and all.
"...Don't tell me it's four."
"Chae-young, once The Mermaid Princess Ashore airs, that one's going to blow up in the ratings too. The gap with Cat Guardian Spirit could be double—no, even triple. So..."
"That's obvious! So what is that thing's rating!"
"I'll text it. I'll text it to you."
Chief Jo hung up the way a man backs away from a bomb. A few seconds later, a message arrived on her phone. Son Chae-young checked it in a rush and went rigid. She blinked and looked again, and the number was exactly the same.
"This can't be real..."
A vicious light rose in both her eyes.
And then the things around Son Chae-young began to shriek and break.
Same time. A low laugh spread through the CEO's office at W&U.
"If that's the start, I'm curious how high it climbs from here. Don't worry about the actress's condition. I'll be keeping an eye on it myself, and even now... she's got a good manager with her."
CEO Baek Han-sung traded a few more pleasant lines, then hung up.
He set the phone down and rose from the chair. A few steps brought him to one wall, where photographs of W&U's artists hung packed tight.
Rubbing a thumb along his lip, he looked at an empty space. Until not long ago, Sung Do-won's photo had hung there. He was thinking he ought to put up a solo shot of Lee Songha in its place when his gaze dropped.
Son Chae-young's photo, smiling brightly.
He stared at it without a word, then reached out.
A long fingertip flicked Son Chae-young's face, light as a man turning something over.
And in Jongno—the entertainment desk at G-Today.
Reporter Park Woo-jung side-eyed the mess of materials sprawled across her desk and hammered the keyboard like a woman possessed. The hair she kept yanking at between sentences was already a wild tangle.
Coworkers clicked their tongues as they passed. She paid them no mind, shoving her face at the monitor as if she might crawl into it. On the screen, the broadcast of Cat Guardian Spirit, the real-time searches, and the reaction comments lay scattered in a heap.
"Hey. What are you doing?"
She spun, startled. A man with unkempt stubble was standing there.
"Ah, Chief."
"Don't you know Songha's blowing up and articles are pouring out of every other outlet? You need yours up even one second faster—what are you still clinging to it for!"
"I'm close with Lee Songha's manager, so I was putting a little extra care into it... I'll have it up right away!"
"No, no—wait!"
The chief grabbed Reporter Park Woo-jung by the shoulder.
"You're close with Songha's manager?"
"Yes."
"Kid, you should've said so sooner. Right now the whole town is losing its mind trying to land a single interview with Songha or anyone around her!"
His eyes lit, and he added, "You ask that manager. Get us an interview."
Kim Hyunjo frowned. He gave the phone a couple of shakes and asked again.
"What percent did you say?"
While he listened to the voice on the other end, his expression grew stranger and stranger. The rest of us craned our necks like meerkats and stared at him.
What on earth. What percent is it. I'm dying. It would be higher than Next K-Star, at least. The reaction this time didn't even belong in the same room as that one. And the internet was one thing, but my phone had been thrashing since earlier. The calls that had come in this morning were cute next to this. Keep answering and I'd wear my fingerprints off.
At last Kim Hyunjo hung up. Lim Seoyoung pounced.
"What did it get?! Hurry, hurry, say it—I'm drying up from the suspense!"
Kim Hyunjo dropped onto the sofa as if his strings had been cut.
Then he looked at each of us in turn. Especially Lee Songha, and me.
"They say fifth place in TVL drama history is 5.9 percent. Winter Sun."
Where did that come from?
"And today Cat Guardian Spirit hit six percent in realtime. It's realtime, so the exact figure won't be out until tomorrow, but it won't be far off."
For a moment, nobody reacted. They were all parsing the number that had come out of Kim Hyunjo's mouth as if it were a cipher.
I was doing the same.
The reaction online had been so explosive that expectations were high, but still.
Six percent?
A cable drama that had only just fired its opening flare—and the rating was six percent?
"I-if it's all-time fifth... that's really good, right?"
Lim Seoyoung stumbled over it. LJ, looking dazed, said, "That's not... just nothing, right? Think how many dramas TVL has done."
"Oppa, I'm right, aren't I? This is a massive hit, right?"
Lim Seoyoung smacked my back with both hands as she asked.
I swallowed and answered.
"No."
"It's not?!"
"What just went off is a monstrous hit."
Lim Seoyoung screamed loud enough to lift the living room off its foundations. Lee Taehee and LJ, faces suddenly bright, latched onto Lee Songha. They planted her—still not free of the broadcast's afterglow—in the center and chattered at a volume. Seoyoung's voice accounted for about ninety-five percent of it, of course, but the excitement in the other voices was unmistakable.
Kim Hyunjo, who had been on yet another call, hung up and beckoned me over.
"Team Leader Park. Says the PR team is in chaos."
"Chaos?"
"People trying to jam a spoon in after the fact, inquiries pouring in from everywhere. So many calls they're saying it isn't a PR team, it's a call center. A call center. The felt rating's already around ten percent, apparently?"
Grinning so wide the corners of his mouth might have hooked his ears, Kim Hyunjo slapped my forearm.
"How's it feel?"
How it feels.
"Next K-Star was just you grabbing a chance that showed up. This one, you built the thing with your own hands from the start, didn't you? You got the synopsis, you pushed Songha into doing a drama, the audition, the prep for the shoot. Something you stacked up just detonated, and you're asking me how it feels?"
The first drama I'd had a hand in had gone on the air. How did it feel?
"Well," I said, grinning, "like I'm coming apart."
Kim Hyunjo laughed huge, like a man who'd already had a drink.
Something swelled up, full and proud. My chest ached with it, and my heart felt ready to burst. If these people hadn't been here, I might have let out one good shout. I might have called my parents and my brother and bragged at length. They would have been thrilled.
I clenched my fist.
That the things I had built one by one, the way Kim Hyunjo said, had come back as an enormous success. That I had accomplished something I could actually hold in both hands. Getting drunk on other people's recognition, and on the satisfaction of having done it myself. It felt incredible.
I looked at Lee Songha, buried in the Neptune kids and taking their congratulations. A moment ago she had been blank; they were making such a racket that now she was smiling, bright as anything.
Yeah. She should smile. This is a day you don't get to do anything else.
The people who had cursed Lee Songha were being shoved by the public until they couldn't even straighten their backs. If anything, the mood was a rush to tear apart anyone still leaving hate comments on her. People had started posting the old days—when public opinion had mobbed her and she had taken the hits—as evidence, and sympathy for her had caught like a fire. Neptune's fan cafe and the Cat Guardian Spirit fan page were heaped with posts of support.
So there wouldn't be any more heartache like before.
No need, anymore, to take the phone out of Lee Songha's hand. No more feeling sick at the occasional sneering look.
Maybe she felt my eyes; she looked my way. Our gazes met for a moment. Those picturesque eyes smiled, just slightly. So much feeling passed in that instant that if I could have, I would have stopped it there and looked at it up close.
Lee Songha, starting toward me, was caught again in Lim Seoyoung's hands and shaken side to side, and I turned my head at Kim Hyunjo's call.
"Anyway, because of this, tomorrow's Neptune album meeting is going to be a hell of an atmosphere."
"Ah."
"Team Leader Park said I absolutely have to bring you. A lot of people want to see you."
Kim Hyunjo smiled, meaningful.
"I mean, really. A Bundle of Fortune is a Bundle of Fortune. Even back when I first laid eyes on you, I..."
A repertoire I had heard more than a few times spilled out again.
Soon a modest little afterparty got underway. It spread into a proper drinking session because Kim Hyunjo brought out another bottle of sansamju—the wild ginseng liquor Team Leader 3 had given him. I had felt it last time, too: the stuff was no joke. Two hours in, almost no one was in their right mind.
Lee Songha, who had been nodding and nodding, finally flopped over. I barely caught her and propped her against the sofa, and she worked her mouth, drawing a contented smile. She had already put away a whole chicken—what was she eating in the dream this time?
I was looking over a living room closer to a disaster site than a girl-group dorm, and the people collapsed across it like the remnants of a lost army, when I noticed one person missing.
There wasn't a traitor in the bunch.
Now that I thought about it, I hadn't seen him in quite a while. Out for another cigarette?
After ending the call, Choi Geon-young stepped into the silent dorm.
The Neptune members must have been sent off to their rooms. Only Kim Hyunjo and Jung Sunwoo were left, coats pulled on, nodding off.
Choi Geon-young stood stock-still and looked down at Jung Sunwoo.
On his own face—the one that was always lit with a bright smile—there wasn't a trace of one. It was simply set, cold as a lump of lead.
Gripping the phone in his hand, he thought it.