What Matters Most in This Business: Choice (4)
If I ever wanted to look a top star in the eye and say it clean — Didn't watch it. Don't plan to. Turn around and go. — how far up would I have to climb first? CEO, obviously.
"Oh, I did. The drama was really good. Congratulations on taking first in your time slot."
The traitor had risen from his seat to deliver it, all courtesy.
"Choi Geon-young. Neptune's manager."
A pleasant face, the kind that drew goodwill from anyone, man or woman, young or old. It did not land on Son Chae-young. The instant she heard Neptune's manager, her eyebrows shot up.
She looked straight through him and turned the question on me.
"And you? Did you watch?"
"No. I was too busy yesterday."
I said it as if it were nothing. Son Chae-young was openly the crazy bitch of this floor, which, strangely, made her easier to handle than the traitor. Six of one, half a dozen of the other — but at least she tied my head in fewer knots.
She had come fully armed to gloat, and now the space between her brows pinched.
"...You didn't watch it? Why on earth wouldn't you watch it?"
"I was too busy getting through the schedule to see it, so if you ask me why I didn't, all I can really say is that I was too busy to—"
I was halfway through a shrug when the sharp heel of her pump stabbed the floor.
"No matter how busy you were, you should have watched that. I watched Cat Guardian Spirit!"
She barked it, then seemed to catch herself and hurried to tack something on.
"We eat from the same pot. Isn't that much just common courtesy?"
Courtesy? Out of that mouth? Goosebumps.
She had clearly come expecting something along the lines of Goddammit, Cat Guardian Spirit lost to the mermaid? Songha lost to Son Chae-young? I'm furious! Nothing doing. Even if I hadn't known the ending — the little mermaid who came ashore flopping her fins until she dried out and died — I would never have given her that reaction to her face. I'd sooner play patty-cake with the traitor.
Still, thanks for watching Cat Guardian Spirit. Just picturing the look on her face when she did was like someone pouring cold soda straight into my veins.
"That Lee Songha. Did she watch it?"
"Who knows."
Something ground between her teeth and leaked out past her lips.
"You watch it today. You have to."
"We've got another drama shoot on the schedule tonight, so..."
"Watch it!"
Christ. The longer I looked at her, the more accurate the Team 3 leader's verdict from last time became. At that level, it was a clinical condition. She was hammering the floor with her heels as if she meant to punch straight through it when the glass door banged open again.
"Chaeyoung! You left your phone and everything — do you have any idea how long I've been looking for you!"
Chief Jo. He was hauling in rough breaths; the moment he saw me, a deep sigh came out of him. His face said he'd taken the whole situation in at a glance.
"You said you were going to see the CEO. His meeting just ended, so let's get over there."
Watching him coax Son Chae-young away, I suddenly remembered the day I'd first laid eyes on him. Hearing he was her manager, I'd thought he must have saved the nation in a past life. It was the other way around. At this rate, he had clearly sold the country in a past life.
Meeting CEO Baek Han-sung must have mattered more than roasting me, because she fired off one last shot — watch her drama even if it was only a rerun — and swept out.
Of course I meant to watch it. Once the show started its real slide. Before I'd seen the future, even I had read the synopsis for The Little Mermaid Who Came Ashore and thought it was a perfectly good drama. Watching the process by which a good work falls would be an education in itself.
"Really is a peculiar personality."
The traitor let out a short laugh as he said it. A moment ago his face had gone a little stiff when he looked at me. Now it was his usual face again.
I answered the way I usually did.
"Peculiar doesn't come close to covering Son Chae-young."
"Well, she started as a child actor. She's spent almost her whole life in the industry. Think of it that way, and it's not impossible to understand."
Not impossible to understand?
My brow furrowed on its own.
"Even so, there's a line. You know what she and Professor Shim Kyung-taek did to Songha. That isn't something you just understand and let go."
At that, the traitor answered with a blurred little smile.
"That's true, but... this business turns people into that. A bit."
This business makes people that way.
It wasn't wrong. Every kind of thing happened in this place. Even I, only a few months into the job, had stood in front of someone and done what you could fairly call a threat. There was no law saying it wouldn't happen again.
But there was still a line.
I looked the traitor straight in the eye.
"Not everyone who works in this business is like Son Chae-young. People like that — maybe the business didn't make them. Maybe that's who they were from the start."
Coming face to face with the traitor and Son Chae-young in the same breath, I couldn't tell whether I was standing in the company or sitting in a den of demons. When was this damned place ever going to be cleansed?
I was on my way into the office, turning over the remaining episodes of The Little Mermaid Who Came Ashore and the release window for Neptune's next album, when a voice caught me.
"Jagi, you called this one wrong, didn't you?"
I turned. Team Leader Park was sprawled across the lounge, the energy drained clean out of her face. Right — Son Chae-young had been hounding her.
"Called it wrong?"
I sat down across from her to ask. She swept a look around, and only after confirming the place was empty did she drop her voice.
"The day you first clashed with Son Chae-young, you said it. The Little Mermaid Who Came Ashore didn't feel right. But right now it looks like it's about to blow up."
I only smiled and said nothing.
She patted my shoulder as if to comfort me.
"Well, don't be disappointed. Cat Guardian Spirit alone put your name out there for good."
I thought of the people who had been waiting for me in the PR office last time. Once The Little Mermaid Who Came Ashore went under, I had a feeling the PR staff would come running with those exact same faces. From here on, I really had to watch my mouth.
I was locking the vow in place when Team Leader Park spoke with a loaded look.
"It's not just the staff. The talent knows, too. I can't say who, but someone went to the Team 3 leader and said they wanted to work with you."
Wanted to work with me? Who?
I stared, eyes wide, and she let a laugh slip.
"But the Team 3 leader said absolutely not. This is an important stretch for Neptune, and also..."
Also?
"If someone took you, he's afraid Songha would flip the whole company upside down."
"Songha?"
Was she serious?
I scratched at my neck and thought it through. If I ever had to change the artists I managed — I didn't want that now, but if I assumed the situation arrived anyway — how would Lee Songha react? She'd be sorry, no question. She might even try to hold on. If she just said take care and sent me off, I'd be the one in shock.
But flipping the company?
"I don't think she'd go that far."
"Celebrities get possessive pretty often, once they decide something is theirs. Or someone. Flipping the company was a joke, I'll give you that, but watching how Songha is with you, I wouldn't be surprised if that day actually comes."
Possessive?
Not a word that sat well on Lee Songha.
I tilted my head, and Team Leader Park snorted.
"Bring it up with Songha sometime, nice and casual. See how she reacts."
Kim Hyunjo, who had walked off with the USB, went completely silent. Word finally came while I was deep in standby on the Cat Guardian Spirit set.
For how long it had taken, the news was nothing much. He had played Lee Taehee's self-composed track for the Team 3 leader, and they meant to discuss it at the next internal meeting with the staff and the executives, CEO Baek Han-sung among them. I wasn't greatly worried. Pushing Lee Taehee's song as a double title track shouldn't be difficult. In the original future that song had become the title track, which meant people had chosen it then, too.
I passed the situation on to Lee Taehee and hung up, and Chief Lee Bong-joon — pressed right up beside me, warming himself at the campfire — jabbed me in the side. Then a jerk of the chin. I turned my head. Lee Songha was watching me, quiet and steady.
"Why'd you come out? It's cold. The scene ahead keeps getting delayed, so we've got more waiting to do."
Today's outdoor location was a campsite buried in thick woods. Being a forest, the felt temperature plunged as the night deepened. Thank god for the campfire. Without even that, we would have frozen solid as a pair of fish.
"Come here."
I beckoned, and Lee Songha came over in small steps and stood right against my side. It wasn't a long walk from the parked van, but her cheeks had gone pale with cold, so I pulled out the two hand warmers I'd been gripping in my pocket.
"Here. One in each pocket. They're small, but they run pretty warm."
Her small white hands closed tight around them. She slipped one into each pocket, just as I'd said, and the pockets squirmed as if she were fiddling with the warmers from inside.
"Were you just on the phone with Taehee unni?"
"Yeah. Her voice sounded rough. Well — she worked almost two days straight without sleep. What's even left of her? She's skin and bones as it is. I don't know if her condition's all right. When I drop you off later, I ought to look in on her."
"By then I think unni will be asleep."
Maybe it was the pop and crack of sparks, but her voice came out unusually small.
"Oh. Right. It'll be pretty late."
"Yes. It might be past one."
"I almost woke every one of them who was actually sleeping. Glued to you until dawn every other day — guess my sense of time's gone."
"Then if I go in and Taehee unni isn't asleep, I'll ask if she's all right and call you, oppa."
"Yeah? You'd do that?"
Lee Songha smiled, small, and nodded.
A little later, the scene with her in it began. Watching her act beside Seo Ji-joon and the other actors, the Lee Songha of a moment ago was nowhere. What stood out there was already Jeong Haewon.
"The costume's thin. She must be freezing. I hope this one wraps soon."
"Songha? She hardly ever NGs. She'll finish and be right back."
Chief Lee Bong-joon said it with a shrug.
That much was true. Even set beside the other actors, Lee Songha blew remarkably few takes. And when she did, it was mostly because the blocking tangled and Director Shin Tae-gyun had to direct it again, or wind and other noise bled into the audio and they had to reshoot. I was watching the set with a pleased eye when he asked:
"I'm hungry. Songha got any snacks left?"
"Have you met Songha? She is not a girl who leaves snacks behind."
Early on I'd worried, because once Jeong Haewon took her over her eating went thin. She adapted fast. A mountain before the shoot, and another mountain after.
"Aigoo, I ought to start carrying something myself. Cold, sleepy, and hungry on top of it — I can't hack this. Winter shoots are harder on the body, I'm telling you. You watch yourself while you're young. Finish one drama and you're wrecked. Wrecked."
"Why don't you hire a road manager and split the work?"
"Aigoo, I'd love to. Dying to. But that Ji-joon..."
Chief Lee Bong-joon grumbled, eyes on Seo Ji-joon mid-shoot.
"The boy can't stand the sight of me resting. Disappear for a minute and it's where are you, what are you doing, where did you go and leave me. Some days it doesn't feel like I'm hauling a celebrity around. It feels like I'm living with a man sick with jealous-husband syndrome."
Fair enough. Seo Ji-joon did seem fiercely attached to him.
"That's its own kind of hardship, then."
"From what I see, it's hardly someone else's story for you, either."
"Sorry?"
"Songha. Take you away from her and all hell would break loose."
Same thing Team Leader Park had said.
"I don't know. Team Leader Park said something like that earlier."
"Team Leader Park did?"
"Yeah. Couldn't tell you if the name was Bae Eun-ji or Ga Sun-ji, but anyway, somebody went to the Team 3 leader and said they wanted to work with me. Team Leader Park told me to try mentioning it to Songha and see—"
I was still in the middle of it when Chief Lee Bong-joon jabbed my side again, the way he had before, and jerked his chin.
I turned. A few steps behind us, Lee Songha was standing perfectly still.
