A Legendary Drama, in Every Sense (4)
The commercial that had come in for Lee Songha was one Son Chae-young had originally been set to shoot.
The corner of my mouth split into a grin all on its own. Now that was news worth ringing a victory bell over—and buying coffee for the whole floor. Losing an ad to another celebrity had to be thoroughly unpleasant. Losing it to Lee Songha, who had stood so impossibly far beneath her, might even have taken that sky-high nose down a peg.
Either way, I folded up the impulse to go see Son Chae-young. For all I knew she was coughing fireballs and tearing the place apart. No reason to crawl in there on my own two feet and catch a stray spark.
"Sensible of me to come take shelter. Thank you, Team Leader."
"We're in the same fix. Might as well share an umbrella."
Team Leader Park added, mischievous:
"If you're truly grateful, buy me a slice of cake."
"Hold on. I suddenly have a craving for tiramisu, too."
I was rising with a laugh when my phone rang.
"Hello, this is—"
"Where are you right now? Talk to me."
The coffee that had just gone down nearly came straight back up.
No introduction. A voice fired at me in the absolute certainty that I would know who it was, in a tone that said she had decided we were talking, so I had better answer yes this instant. I didn't need a second guess. Her face flashed up at once.
But why? She had no reason to call me.
A normal person's way of thinking couldn't begin to guess what was going on in that head.
"What is this? Why isn't he answering? Are you sure this is the right number?!"
The voice boiled over. Someone was with her; another voice followed, confirming the number was correct. A man's voice, awkward and flustered. Faint, but unmistakably a traitor.
What kind of combination was this?
I was frowning, about to answer, when the world went pitch-black.
"Chief!"
The future. The instant noise crawled across my vision, I emptied my head of every snarled thought. There was no room for anything else. I couldn't afford to miss even the smallest thing, so I shoved everything I could see straight into my skull.
"Thank God. Chief, are you off the phone?"
A young man with clean, handsome features hurried over at a quick step.
Short sleeves. Thin fabric on the trousers. Summer?
A stranger, and a strange place. All I could tell was that it was a hallway inside a building.
"They're in an uproar looking for Chief Jung!"
My ears pricked.
Chief Jung? So that Chief had been me?
"Why? Again?"
I—the future me—answered as if it were nothing.
The unfamiliar young man hesitated, then dropped his voice.
"I ran out like I was dodging lightning, so I don't really know the details... Last time the team leader told me that if the mood turns bad, I am absolutely not to try handling it alone. Just hand it straight to Chief Jung, no matter what."
"For crying out loud. What am I, a babysitter?"
"I'm sorry. I was honestly shaking too hard. The others say that after working with you, she's at least become a lot more... of a person. No—that she's changed a lot. Which would mean that before, she was even worse than she is now..."
"A person, my ass. You'll be hard-pressed to find anyone as consistent as her."
Something about this conversation smelled rotten.
Future me grumbled and still ate up the ground in long strides.
The young man came trotting after, singing Chief, Chief the whole way. The more I heard it, the stranger it felt. So I had peeled off the rookie-manager label and taken the title of chief. A day like this really did arrive.
Of course, so long as I didn't quit, it was a future I was bound to meet eventually. It had still felt vague. Taking one step closer to the place I dreamed of honestly lifted my mood.
When was this?
If I could move my mouth, I would have asked the year first thing. I fixed on everything in sight, hoping for even a scrap of a hint.
We arrived at a playroom. Completely out of nowhere, but there was no mistaking it. A colorful ball pit and a gentle slide—things I had seen often enough, thanks to the quadruplets, to be sick of them.
And a woman.
I could see her from behind, long hair loosely braided. A child was crying, and she was holding a toddler in nothing but a diaper, rocking the kid in an awkward grip.
Who?
The moment I wondered, she turned.
"Why are you so late! Take this kid. The kid's crying!"
"I thought the world was ending. Babies cry. That's what they do."
"The kid wasn't crying when you were holding them!"
"You and I are not the same. Do you have any idea how many kids I've raised on my back? And this one has eyes. You stare with a face like that and expect no tears? The fact this kid hasn't gone into convulsions already means general material. Big things ahead."
"Hey!"
My thoughts jammed. I was definitely at the moment to be shocked, but I couldn't tell where the shock was supposed to begin.
Because the woman holding a baby who had only just stopped being a newborn was demanding to know why I was so late—and that woman was Son Chae-young.
Son Chae-young.
It felt like someone had set a stake against the back of my skull and started hammering.
Whether my soul was thrashing in a pit of confusion or not, future me sighed and took the baby from Son Chae-young. Then, soothing the drooling, fussing infant, he said:
"If the baby's crying, you look for the baby's mother. Why are you looking for me?"
So there was a mother, separately. Even in the middle of this, I was relieved. I had nearly gone somewhere much worse. The kind of horrible imagining that might actually stop a heart.
"I don't know. She dumped the kid on the set and vanished, and I haven't seen her since a while ago. I hate it. You watch what these so-called parents do, and the future is obvious—"
Mid-complaint, Son Chae-young suddenly shrieked.
"And so what, you can't even look a little?! You're my manager!"
"Hello?!"
My mind snapped back, as if I had been shoved underwater and then yanked out. Team Leader Park sat in front of me with a puzzled face, and through the phone at my ear the voice kept firing without a pause for breath. The same voice as a moment ago.
"The call isn't going through! Don't just stand there—check the number again. Either your eyes are crooked, or this man has gone deaf. One or the other!"
Every hair on my body stood up. Before I knew it, my finger had hit end.
I dropped the phone onto the table as if throwing it.
"Jagi, that was Son Chae-young's voice, wasn't it? It was, right?"
I nodded slowly. Team Leader Park looked incredulous.
"Why would she call you... and you just hung up?"
"I was too shocked."
"Yeah, I get it. Breathe. Breathe. God, how vile does she have to be for one phone call to turn your face the color of someone fresh out of a nightmare?"
It had been something like a nightmare. No—worse. This was the future.
God. The future.
First, calm down. Yes, it was the future, but depending on how I acted from here, I could still change it. This was a moment for quick judgment and a rational response, not flailing.
I tried Lamaze breathing a few times and gave up. Damn it. Even a monk with a bucket of sacred relics in his gut couldn't stay calm in this!
I shot the coffee and groped back through the memory.
I didn't know how far ahead it was, but I had clearly been promoted to chief. And I was handling Son Chae-young.
It was too fragmentary to tell whether it was only her, or her plus several others. Either way, it was shock and horror.
Why—how on earth—had I become Son Chae-young's manager?
How badly did a life have to tangle before a future like that showed up?!
Then the phone buzzed again. The same number as before.
This time I swallowed and answered.
"Jung Sunwoo speaking."
"What, you can hear me now? How is a manager this hard to get on the phone? I hate that. Your phone is garbage, so replace it. And talk to me."
"...Talk?"
Not to swear at me?
"Do we have anything to talk about?"
"We do now."
Son Chae-young said it at once.
"I asked the CEO to attach you to me."
She did what?!
Appalled, I raced straight back to the company.
Word had already spread; a few employees greeted me as if they knew. People who knew Son Chae-young's true nature looked at me with pity. People who didn't spouted nonsense about how my luck with people had finally burst wide open.
Luck with people? More like my guts were about to burst.
I faced Son Chae-young in a sealed conference room with the lights off.
What was this woman suddenly scheming?
Was that terrifying future I had just seen because of this?
Whether it was or it wasn't, I couldn't understand it at all. I would sooner quit this damned company than manage that woman. Short of heaven and earth turning over.
I set the tail-chasing questions aside for a moment and asked.
"You asked the CEO to attach what, and where?"
"You. To me."
As if the situation pleased her immensely, Son Chae-young looked at me with a smile tucked at the corner of her mouth. If there had been a cake in front of me, I might have been the one causing an incident this time.
"Why, exactly?"
"Why does the reason matter? What matters is that I said I want to work with you. A few months with a rookie, and you ought to know by now how dirty and petty this business is."
Arms folded, Son Chae-young leaned toward me.
"Back when you were a complete amateur—well, you still are—you apparently blew off Sung Do-won. Be honest. You regretted it, didn't you? A momentary feeling, and you kicked away a windfall like that. The regret must have been enormous. So grab the chance this time. Work with me, and no matter where you go or who you meet, no one will look down on you."
Instead of not being slighted outside, I'd wither and die at your side.
I stayed quiet and listened, and she went right on beating her own drum and gong, a one-woman show.
Thinking about it, Son Chae-young's motive was obvious. Unless she had suddenly developed a bizarre taste for sharing weal and woe with her enemy, she wanted me stuck at her side so she could nitpick every little thing and make my life miserable.
There was a good chance it was something splendidly childish: Lee Songha stole my commercial, so let's see you lose something too.
Damn it. The more I thought about it, the more absurd it got.
Why all this fuss over me? What was I, Chunhyang—some prize she had to claim?
"So what did the CEO say..."
"Oh, he said he'd transfer you."
My heart dropped. Before I could fall into respiratory failure, Son Chae-young added:
"If you agree."
The neck that had gone rigid loosened.
Not the worst case, then. Right. There had been a conversation between CEO Baek Han-sung and me. Surely he wouldn't stick me on someone else—least of all Son Chae-young. That really wouldn't be human.
That aside, leaving the choice to me—did that mean I was allowed to tear into Son Chae-young to her face?
"So hurry up and agree."
"...Why would I?"
I asked because I genuinely wanted to know.
What kind of confidence made her think I would agree?
"What do you mean, why? I'm telling you I'll raise you. Me."
The eyes fixed straight on me shone with arrogance. Son Chae-young pointed back and forth between us with one finger.
"Shall I say it again? I will raise you. So stop playing house with a child, and come when I tell you to come."
Well, well.
The attitude was so much like she was doing me a favor that a laugh escaped before I could stop it.
"I'll see to my own growth."
"Honestly. Songha's been on a roll lately, so you're confused, but the bubble off a drama pops in a second. Do you think it's easy to climb as high as where I am? Can't you even judge which coattail to grab if you want to succeed fast? You've got a lot to learn."
One thing I knew for certain.
Son Chae-young believed this was simply how things were supposed to be.
Whatever she read in my face, she frowned.
"What? Are you worried my drama is going to flop? The drama isn't over yet. And I'm Son Chae-young. You think I'd so much as blink because one drama wobbles and one commercial falls off?"
She had already done considerably more than blink.
I was just opening my mouth, done listening, when the conference room door burst open and a freezing north wind came in with the snow.
I turned and flinched. Through the wide-open door, a familiar face. Lee Songha. Crumbled snowflakes clung in the hair spilling down her back, and every inch of bare skin had frozen solid.
God. She had come out in such a rush she didn't even have a coat—just indoor clothes. On her feet, instead of shoes, rabbit-shaped fur slippers.
"Songha, you came all the way from the dorm like that?!"
I was pulling off my coat to at least put it on her when Lee Songha, breathing hard, swept her eyes over me from head to toe, as if checking that nothing was wrong. Then she strode straight up to Son Chae-young.
Her eyes were cold steel. She looked one breath away from shouting that the secret royal inspector had arrived and hurling the badge to prove it.
But what Lee Songha held was not a badge.
A snowball the size of a fist. Two small herb leaves pressed into it like flecks of snow.
Someone had made a tiny snowman by the terrace window. She had clearly ripped its head off. Recalling the tiramisu cake incident, I didn't need to see the rest to know why she had procured that snowman's head, or what it was for.
Son Chae-young, rising with both eyes blazing, faltered.
"Hey! You—you just try throwing that! If you throw that—!"
Before the sentence could finish, Lee Songha hurled the snowball.