An All-Time Drama, in More Ways Than One (1)
Was it time to strike up the band? Was that what this was?
I pulled out my phone and searched for The Mermaid Who Came Ashore. Lee Songha leaned in beside me, sleep still dangling off her face, and peered at the screen.
Posts about Mermaid were pouring in across the portals, social media, even the drama's fan pages. Thanks to the original novel's fans, the buzz had stayed decent enough until now, but I had never seen a reaction blaze like this. And only fifteen minutes into the live broadcast.
Today's episode had clearly struck a nerve.
Here and there, the extreme posts were already showing: the writer had lost her mind, the director had gone insane.
Seo Ji-joon, who had been huddled over a phone with Chief Lee Bong-joon, let out a scoff.
"Hey. You were singing the trending-search song, and now your drama's going to hit the real-time searches before the broadcast even ends."
"What?"
Son Chae-young's brow knotted hard.
"Oppa, your phone—! Never mind. I don't need it. Where's my phone."
When Chief Jo hesitated, she dug through the coat she had taken off and her handbag herself, and came up with a phone whose case was printed with one of her own pictorial shots.
Chief Jo hovered around her in a fidget, as if she were holding a bomb instead of a phone.
"What on earth is so—"
Muttering, Son Chae-young moved her fingers across the screen, and at some point her mouth snapped shut. Her eyes went wide. Her gaze drove straight down into the glass.
"What is this. What happened to cause this much of a mess?!"
"First—first I'll try calling the director."
"Check the live broadcast first! I need to see how they cut this together to make it look like this!"
She had snapped, and then she froze. An irritated glance slid sidelong toward us. A moment later she thrust out a hand at Chief Jo.
"Give me the earphones."
"Chae-young, calm down first..."
"I said give me the earphones!"
Right. About time she blew.
Unable to withstand the shouting stabbed straight into his eardrums, Chief Jo offered up the earphones like a tribute. Son Chae-young plugged them in and locked onto the screen.
I considered pulling up the live broadcast myself, then thought better of it. Watching Son Chae-young would be more entertaining than the show. The face that had been vivid only moments ago was rotting in real time, while inside me, freshly sprouted green shoots were tap-dancing.
Ah. What a devastatingly refreshing feeling.
Mermaid's fall was finally picking up real speed. I felt sorry for the people involved, but I was enormously excited—as excited as the day a sequel opened for a blockbuster I had waited two years to see. My grudge against Son Chae-young ran deep, it turned out. Ever since the day she had laughed in my face—Please don't irritate people over something this trivial. This is just how the industry works—I had been pressing it down, hard.
I glanced sideways, curious how Lee Songha, the person actually concerned, was taking it. She was eating gummy bears with a blank face. A stranger might have admired her for staying cool even now, but this was clearly different from usual. She was eating with unusual gusto.
"Is it good?"
"Yes. Tastes like honey."
She whispered it while massacring five or six gummy bears in a single bite, then pressed a few into my hand as well. I happily ate them and savored Son Chae-young's rotting, thoroughly contorted face.
"What kind of random— What was the director thinking..."
"Chae-young, please, calm—"
"Calm? Do I look like someone who can calm down right now?! I barely managed to act that scene off some scrap of a same-day script, and they slapped it together into this? If they were going to do this, why even reshoot!"
Ah. Joy like this ought to be shared.
I wished I could show the Neptune members, Kim Hyunjo, and the Team 3 leader, but that was a shame. Filming it wouldn't end at a slap across the face, would it? Was there anything like a CCTV in the lounge?
I was looking up at the ceiling when a knock sounded.
"Hello!"
A man in a backward cap came in. Behind him, staff trailed in one after another, shouldering a heavy broadcast camera and lighting gear. It was the PBS crew.
The timing was uncanny.
The PD was quick on the uptake. He seemed to grasp in an instant that the mood in the lounge was anything but ordinary, hurriedly pulled off his cap, and bowed his head.
"Aigoo, I'm so sorry for being late when such busy people are waiting!"
He offered a gentle excuse about traffic, or whatever it was. He had clearly mistaken the chill in the room for anger over the crew running late. Perhaps because of Seo Ji-joon and Son Chae-young's name value, he came in far too deferential, so Chief Lee Bong-joon heaved his heavy backside up and smoothed things over.
In the meantime, the charged air of a coming storm that had been whipping through the lounge died down. Seo Ji-joon, who had been snickering at his phone, and Son Chae-young, who had been cursing the director as if she meant to hammer a nail into a doll, had both slipped on masks of perfect composure. Of the three, only Lee Songha was still wearing her real face.
After a light round of greetings, the PD finished his preparations and spoke in an ingratiating tone.
"We'll grab a bit of sketch footage for the bumpers around the bridge. Just talk naturally, the way you usually do. The audio won't be used."
Naturally. The way you usually do. Talk.
Then this was a hundred percent meant for a smear. Since the audio wouldn't go in, maybe it was fine. I shot a glance at Chief Lee Bong-joon, who yawned hugely, as if to say not to worry.
Son Chae-young was the first to open her mouth, utterly unfazed.
"You know how they say one step back for two steps forward. It's like that."
She kept going, looking back and forth between Lee Songha and Seo Ji-joon.
"Nothing to worry about. The director and the writer are both people you can trust, so we'll be back on track soon. What's the point of getting worked up over every little thing."
She was the one who had been getting enormously worked up until a moment ago.
I stared at her, clicking my tongue. There she was—the Son Chae-young I had known before I joined the company. The symbol of purity. A smile at the corners of her mouth, a mild voice that could put a narrator to shame. Hard to believe this was the same woman who had been cursing the director with both eyes blazing only minutes ago.
She swept her long hair back and added,
"In the drama world, this much is just everyday life."
"Yeah. Hopefully the ratings don't take a hit."
Seo Ji-joon answered with a smile. Not the sneer from earlier—a smile that felt sincere. I couldn't help admiring it.
Translated, the exchange went something like This much is everyday life, so don't even think about baiting us with bullshit, and Who said anything? But at this rate, forget twenty percent—think we can even hold steady? On the surface, though, it was nothing more than small talk between colleagues who ate from the same pot.
Fortunately, Seo Ji-joon brought up the drama shoot with Lee Songha as well, so she slipped naturally into the conversation. The picture on the camera monitor looked friendly to a frightening degree.
"See? Nothing to worry about."
Chief Lee Bong-joon grinned and elbowed me in the side.
"You're right."
"Course. They're both pros."
"I'm worried about Songha. I don't think she's very good at putting on an act like that."
She showed little emotion and spoke even less, and what she did say tended to be blunt. I wasn't sure she could blend into a scene like that, especially among people like Son Chae-young. When she worked on her own, the members couldn't even back her up. It might have been needless fretting, but I was worried. I was worried.
I sighed, and beside me Chief Lee Bong-joon muttered.
"Hard to say. Looks like a sprout with a future to me. Judging by how she is with you."
"With me?"
"Well, the way I see it, you don't really need to worry."
He tossed out that bit of cloud-grabbing nonsense, then got up, saying he was sleepy and ought to get a coffee from the vending machine. Chief Jo had already stepped out to call the Mermaid director, so I was the only manager left.
I stood with my arms folded, watching the shoot, when someone came up beside me and whispered.
"The W&U artists are really close with each other."
"Sorry?"
I turned, thinking someone was talking nonsense, and found a young man. He had introduced himself as an FD, and he chattered on.
"Maybe because it's a big agency, or maybe because the atmosphere's so family-like, it seems like W&U only has nice people. Yesterday we filmed an interview with Sung Do-won, and wow, he's a really good person too."
"Hahaha."
Funniest thing I had heard in a while.
Only nice people? A good person?
This place was a den of demons wearing the mask of show business, pal. If they ever threw off the act and held an inter-agency brawl tournament, nowhere else would match the combat power here. The gold medal was already in the bag.
I swallowed the words forcing their way up and smiled, and the FD made a careful request. After the shoot, could I get a few autographs from the three of them? So that was why he had been laying on the compliments. I said I would ask, and he lit up like a man who owned the world.
After the sketch, the three stood side by side and delivered their New Year's greetings, and finally the PD grabbed a few more simple interviews. I had been watching in silence when my ears pricked up at Son Chae-young's turn.
"All right then. Son Chae-young, what kind of junior is Lee Songha to you?"
"...What did you say?"
A crack split across her mask.
Seo Ji-joon, seated beside her, fake-coughed into his hand to cover his mouth. His eyes were laughing. I swallowed a laugh of my own that threatened to escape and quickly pulled out my phone.
This had to be filmed. It absolutely had to be filmed.
Everyone would assume I was monitoring, so I filmed it right out in the open. Chief Lee Bong-joon, sipping coffee beside me, snickered and made me promise to send him the video too.
"So, to you, Lee Songha is..."
No—Son Chae-young hadn't failed to hear it. She didn't want to hear it.
She slowly closed her eyes and opened them. Inside, she was probably cursing a blue streak. She was already irritated to the top of her head because The Mermaid Who Came Ashore had stumbled, and she couldn't swear in front of a camera. I was extremely, extremely curious what she would say.
Below the frame locked on her upper body, her hand clenched the sofa cover tight. She was so furious that veins stood out on the back of her hand.
"Lee Songha is, well..."
After dragging out a long pause, she spoke slowly.
"She's a good actress, and she's kind..."
She drew a deep breath, and in the end she vomited it out.
After the crew left, Son Chae-young glared at Lee Songha with murderous eyes, shouted over and over that the line just now had been a courtesy for the viewers, then kicked an innocent table and vanished.
Not even a finished human being. Not human.
I sent the video to Chief Lee Bong-joon and uploaded it to our team group chat, where the Neptune members, Chief Kim Hyunjo, and the others were gathered. They all had plenty of grudges against Son Chae-young over the Lee Songha lesson incident, so it was only natural that the chat exploded.
Just as Seo Ji-joon had said, The Mermaid Who Came Ashore hit the real-time searches.
And the ratings, which had been marching from victory to victory, faltered.
The problem was a revision the writer had produced against her will under pressure to fix it, same-day scripts that wrecked the shooting schedule, and rushed editing piled on top of that, until the story turned its bow toward the mountains. The bigger problem was that the mountain in question was the one no one came back from. You could climb it whenever you pleased. Coming down was impossible.
Regrettably, I never got to clash with Son Chae-young directly after that. I did hear she was hounding the PR team. At times like this, the media play had to be even better, or so the word went.
In truth, up to that point the prevailing view was that they could regroup and take off again. Well, it was still early.
But the situation refused to improve. The writer's nerves were shot, and a vicious cycle kept repeating: a swarm of original-novel fans, the network, the production company, the directing staff, even the sponsors—countless boatmen all shouting orders this way and that. In a situation like that, dumping out promotional articles did nothing.
In the end, the following week.
The ratings of Mermaid, which had been shooting for twenty percent, snapped clean off.
And Cat Guardian Spirit broke the ten-percent mark.
From the hallway outside the Knet dressing rooms to the studio.
A walk that should have taken two minutes at a brisk pace had already stretched to ten. Next K-Star staff and network people I knew kept stopping me as I passed. Everyone was making a racket of congratulations. Cat Guardian Spirit had already earned more than enough of those for landing on the list of successful cable dramas, but once it crossed ten percent, the reaction was fiercer than anything that had come before.
Because now it was truly beginning to overtake terrestrial drama ratings.
The numbers were still climbing, and entertainment reporters and critics were turning out feature after feature, calling it a reversal for Cat Guardian Spirit—a show no one had expected to be a hit, one they had predicted would become an all-time drama in the bad sense, too much talk and too much trouble. There were articles comparing it to Mermaid as well, the most anticipated title of the season, now staggering.
In every way, the air around us was stirring.
How to put it. It felt like water steadily filling up behind a massive dam. What would happen when that dam burst was, for now, too much even to imagine.
"Sunwoo!"
Someone caught me by the ankle again. I turned and found PD Go Joon-tae's sly face.
"The drama ratings—they went over ten percent, right?"
"Ah, yes."
I answered with a pleasant smile, and he clicked his tongue, impressed.
"Wow, ratings climbing like a network show. If Songha's drama keeps doing well like this, and our Next K-Star just clears eight percent for a beautiful finish, Neptune will be running a proper double haul from the start of the year. Don't you think?"
"That's right."
I answered, still smiling.
"So, about that."
PD Go Joon-tae glanced front and back, as if conscious of the people around us. I waited, with a heart as wide as the sea, for him to get to the point.
At last he asked,
"Before some other show snatches him, I'd like to lock in Seo Ji-joon's booking and send him out in a two-shot with Songha on the finale... any good news?"