A Drama for the Ages, in Every Sense (5)
"……!"
A savage smack rang out.
She seemed to have made some attempt to dodge, but the snowman's head struck Son Chae-young's head dead-on.
A perfect hit. With four kids of about the same size at home, I was long past being impressed by a snowball fight, and even so I had never seen a piece of work like that.
Crushed snow clung to Son Chae-young's forehead. Every time her lashes shivered and the muscles of her face twisted, crumbs of snow pattered off.
"I told you not to throw it. Am I a joke to you?"
Son Chae-young wiped her forehead, taking her time.
It was the second time, and she was quicker than before, when she hadn't even managed a scream and had simply locked up for a long while. The air, though, was far uglier than it had been then.
"……Songha. Come here."
My head was already swimming with thoughts of the cleanup, but I was not about to stand there and watch Son Chae-young grab Lee Songha by the hair. I caught Songha's hand and pulled her in. She had been clenching the snow so hard her hand was a sheet of ice.
Son Chae-young looked at Lee Songha again.
"Last time, fine. That person wasn't even hit, but I'll grant that I raised a hand first. And now what is this? You just haul off and throw a snowball in the face of a senior miles above you? Are you testing my patience?"
Your patience doesn't need a test.
I wanted to say it so badly I could taste it, but Songha had already taken the blow that should have been mine, so the cleanup was on me. A glance showed meltwater trickling down Son Chae-young's chin.
I didn't want to, but I drew a handkerchief from my pocket. The moment she saw it, Lee Songha shot her hand out—the same hand, wet from gripping the snow. Her eyes said it plain. Me. Me. Give it to me.
In the end the handkerchief went into Songha's hand.
Son Chae-young's lips warped.
"One word from me to the division head or the CEO, and this getting big is only a matter of time—!"
"Go ahead. Then I will too."
Lee Songha answered.
"What?"
"I might go around telling people exactly what you did to me."
It wasn't only Son Chae-young who had lost it. Songha had gone one further.
Son Chae-young, who had faltered for a second, fixed her with a truly frightening glare.
"Are you saying you want to roll in the mud and have a dogfight with me?"
"Last time, and this time, you started it."
"Going around talking? Try it. I'll say I don't know a thing about it. If this turns into an incident, do you think the company writes the press release on my side, or on yours?"
"We'll have to wait and see. I still have plenty of time left on my contract."
"This is—you have an answer for every single word!"
I couldn't see them, but they had already pelted each other with a dozen snowballs. The ground was mud.
Thinking of what came after, I should have stopped Songha early. In a case like this, losing was winning. Dirty and cheap as it was, that was the right call.
So why, in the middle of all this, did I find Songha admirable?
She wasn't yielding a single word to Son Chae-young herself. If it struck me as a great leap forward, was that strange of me?
Whether the words had landed or not, Son Chae-young bit her lip. Then she changed tack, and her tone grew a shade more at ease.
"But why the scene? Afraid I'll take your manager? Use your head. Working with you, or working with me. Which one is actually good for that person's future?"
"That's……."
Lee Songha glanced at me sideways. I had missed the moment to let go, and inside the hand I was still holding, her small hand moved. The other way around—Songha gripped mine tight.
"Look at the two of you, putting on a show."
Son Chae-young tossed the sneer and turned to me.
"Answer me now. Transferring. You agree, don't you?"
"No."
I answered without taking a breath.
There was nothing to consider. Not unless the twist was that Son Chae-young turned out to be the little sister I had lost twenty-eight years ago.
Damn it. That would be too trashy a reveal. A walking disaster like that.
At my instant answer, Lee Songha's face and Son Chae-young's changed at the same time.
What killed me was that Songha looked more shocked than Son Chae-young. Had she actually thought I might agree to that nonsense?
Son Chae-young asked, blank with disbelief.
"……You don't want to?"
"That's right."
"Why wouldn't you?! Are you serious? Have you lost your mind?"
"I'm serious. And my mind is exactly where it should be."
"Then think it over again. I'll wait one more time."
"I'm all right. I have no interest in moving to your team. I'm satisfied enough where I am, and I'm enjoying the work a great deal. As far as I'm concerned, the road ahead of me is already a path of flowers."
More precisely, it was a road where I had only scattered the seeds so far, and along it sat a traitor, or Son Chae-young, or Son Chae-young, and Son Chae-young again, great clods of shit. So what. I only had to step around them.
Son Chae-young wore a bizarre expression and only worked her lips. Then she shot me a frigid look. Whatever else was unclear, her stiff pride had been badly crumpled.
"I do wonder how long that little game of house will last."
She sneered in a loaded tone, flung the door open with a bang, and walked out.
I let out the sigh I had been holding and put my head to work. The storm had passed. Now came the aftermath.
Last time, when she had thrown the cake, there hadn't been much of a backlash either. This time the one with the most to say, Lee Songha, had gone in as if she had no intention of dying alone, so Son Chae-young probably wouldn't come at us in the open.
Still, just in case, I would have to brief Kim Hyunjo and Team Leader 3. It wasn't just anyone. It was Son Chae-young.
That aside.
"Songha, let go of this now. My hand's going to cramp."
Even with the joke folded in, Lee Songha was still gripping my hand. Her face had gone dark as a thundercloud, and I no longer needed to look to guess what was drifting around inside that small head.
Her bloodless lips moved.
"I'll get that successful, too. Soon."
"What?"
"……If you don't have power, you get taken."
Her voice, usually nothing but calm, now carried anxiety and a clumsy edge of venom. With my free hand I patted her narrow shoulder.
"Taken—what am I, an object? I'll fight it out myself and decide where I belong, so don't worry. And it's good if something like this motivates you, but don't get anxious, and don't get impatient. There's no need."
The line itched a little on the way out, but I was glad I had said it.
The venom in Lee Songha's face melted off like snow. I didn't miss the opening. I cleared my throat and turned the subject.
"Oh, right. That snowman's head earlier……."
"I found it on the way. Throwing the cake last time was such a waste."
"Yeah. It was a good choice, but next time you get the urge to throw something, talk to me first."
"Okay."
Lee Songha nodded the way she always did. The strength holding my hand loosened.
With my freed hand I held out the coat I had taken off earlier.
"Put this on first. You're frozen solid. A pollock on a slab looks livelier. Who told you what, that you came running like this? The others didn't even try to stop you?"
"I snuck out. When I go back I'm going to get lectured to death."
"You should. Still, I'll be right there making the excuses with you."
Lee Songha's eyes widened a fraction, then curved, soft.
A sleek express van ran along the snowy road.
The road manager at the wheel and Chief Jo kept stealing glances at Son Chae-young in the back seat. These days her mood was always rain, snow, or overcast, but today a storm advisory had gone up.
"Oppa."
"Uh—uh? What?"
"What if I left the company?"
At the words she tossed out, indifferent, Chief Jo whipped around.
"What?! What do you mean—you're going independent? Or has somewhere come to you about an exclusive contract? Where?!"
"If I leave, will you come with me, oppa?"
"……Huh?"
The questions pouring out stopped short. Chief Jo's eyes moved, busy. At last, watching her face, he said carefully,
"That's—I mean…… you know that isn't something you decide easily, right? This industry is small. You'd be fine, Chae-young, but if I'm not careful, the picture could look bad for me. You know that too. Get on the wrong side of people and it's hard to grow in this business. Once I've gotten a little bigger here……."
"Forget it. I was just saying."
Son Chae-young smiled, the corner of her mouth lifting. The conversation had broken off, but Chief Jo kept glancing back with uneasy eyes. Nothing seemed off. If anything, her expression had cleared past the gloom of a moment ago.
Just as he relaxed, Son Chae-young said, as if it were nothing,
"That manager of Lee Songha's."
"Jung Sunwoo? What about that bastard."
"I want to take him. Find me a way."
I took Lee Songha back to the dorm.
The Neptune members, who had been waiting on pins and needles, welcomed her with eyes like axes. Surrounded, she took a full round of scolding, and even after Songha was released, my turn was not over.
The kids—Lim Seoyoung most of all—kept looking at me as if I might vanish, so I had to say the same thing over and over.
"I told you nothing's going to happen. Believe me already."
"Of course I believe you, oppa, but a new hire at a company is an earthworm! If the people above step on you, you die!"
Lim Seoyoung shouted, miming a stomp on her fuzzy slipper.
The concern was appreciated. The earthworm was a bit much.
"You've never even worked at a company. Where did you pick that up?"
"Do I have to have worked there to know? It's all on the internet."
"First thing, cut that internet of yours off."
Then, all at once, a piece of news I had forgotten clean came back—buried under one shock after another.
"Oh, right. We landed a network variety show."
The noise cut out completely.
Lim Seoyoung. Lee Songha, drinking the ginger tea she had poured to head off a cold. LJ, deep in grim thought over how to make Son Chae-young suffer, and Lee Taehee beside her, tossing in advice. Every one of them stopped cold and stared at me.
"It's an IBC Lunar New Year special. Team Leader Park said it's locked."
"R-really?! IBC? A real network? All of us are going on?!"
"Yeah. All of you. It's a paired appearance with the manager, so I'm going on too."
Starting with Lim Seoyoung's scream, the dorm turned upside down.
In the space of a single week—and even inside that week—the change was unmistakable.
Search Cat Guardian Spirit on a portal now, and it was no rare thing to hit a headline calling it a drama for the ages.
It was, in its way. The peak rating had cleared fifteen percent.
Set beside the new GTBN drama in the same time slot—the one that had been floated as our competition from the start, and still couldn't break one percent—calling it legendary was not excessive at all.
Ah. There was one more drama for the ages.
The Little Mermaid Who Came Ashore. It had earned the fury of the original's fans, and its ratings had dropped into the single digits, so that, too, was legendary in its own right. People on the inside were starting to murmur. That one was going to be an all-time bomb.
Anyway, the only drama running anywhere near as hot as Cat Guardian Spirit was IBC's Time Slip. The ratings were trading places back and forth. Other people seemed eaten up with worry, but me?
Over there, the fuse ought to be burning down nicely right about now.
Once that bomb went off as well, there wouldn't even be a rival left.
The best work of the first quarter this year was, without a doubt, Cat Guardian Spirit.
And so, on a day when that heated mood had carried on without a break, the recording day arrived for IBC's Lunar New Year variety special, Star Manager.
IBC, Basement Studio A.
With three hours to go before the opening, dozens of staff were rushing about. The camera team checked a mountain of equipment. The floor crew, coats flung off, hauled gear. Inside the studio the sweat and heat were enough to make you forget the season, but outside, at that same hour, a cold snap had slammed in.
Crew strapped into intercoms swarmed and shouted like a hive.
"Sunbae, I think we have to move that outdoor location indoors! They're saying it's minus fourteen out there right now! It's not one or two celebrities, it's a whole crowd—once the cameras cut, how are we supposed to handle that shitshow?!"
"Today's going to blow the gates of hell wide open. Rebook the location, fast, and the sponsor vehicles still aren't here?!"
"They say they'll definitely arrive before the opening!"
"If the departure slips, everything behind it blows up in a chain. If you're confident you can take the blame, tell them they can be late! You're checking on the cast?"
"Yes, we're calling every thirty minutes and riding them!"
In one corner of the frantic studio, a few writers from the specials team flipped through the shooting rundown and talked.
"……And Neptune. Neptune—Eunseo's assigned to them, right?"
"Yes."
"They're rookies, so they'll be easy to handle."
At the head writer's words, Deputy Chief Shin, who had been craning around to read the mood on set, cut in.
"The problem isn't handling. It's airtime. I signed off because I heard their manager has a usable character, but I'm nothing but worried. If those kids freeze solid and can't get a word out, it's all that effort for a total edit-out."
"I don't think they'll be cut out entirely, though. There's killer material."
At that, Deputy Chief Shin tilted his head.
"Killer material?"
"Lee Songha from Neptune is huge right now."
"True. Her acting was unreal."
"It's proven now, but before the drama aired it was a whole mess—the acting controversy, the package-deal talk, all of it. She's agreed to come on today and unpack some of the story behind it."
"Yeah? Is it good?"
"It is. It fits our show's concept, too."
The head writer said it, satisfied.
"The stories about that team's manager were the best part."