Star Manager (3)
That was what I'd thought. No such luck. The very first question clamped my mouth shut.
"Manager Jung Sunwoo — of Neptune's four members, who do you like best?"
Who I liked best?
My eyes flicked over on reflex, toward the Neptune kids sitting across from me. A moment ago they'd been throwing themselves into reactions for the other celebrities' bits. Now they were staring at me without so much as a blink.
The other guests tossed out laughing remarks — that it was a difficult question, that I'd better answer carefully. There had been mischievous questions earlier, but nothing like this. Right. We were the only ones who'd come on as a group.
"Lost for words, huh. Yeah, this one's sensitive!"
"Once you've got four members, any human being is bound to play favorites."
"Shall we ask the members first? Who do you think the manager's going to name?"
Hong Seok-woo turned to Lim Seoyoung with a bright, circling smile. Those two were all in, eyes full of the determination to wring every last laugh out of the moment.
Seoyoung's lips worked as if she were still deciding, and then she burst out.
"Meeeee! Me! One vote for me! Because the calming pill I gave Oppa probably hasn't even finished digesting!"
"Close enough that she packs him a nerve-settling pill in case he gets nervous. Now that's loyalty!"
"Then what about you, Songha? Who do you think he'll pick?"
Asked second, Lee Songha answered at once.
"Me too. Me."
"Then me too. Me."
LJ tacked it on, looking thoroughly entertained. And last of all, even Lee Taehee scratched her cheek and fell in with the current. I had a strong suspicion the MCs had egged them on with a look.
"Man, the manager's really going to have to sweat this one."
Sweat it? This was the one question I absolutely could not think about.
"I like all four of them."
I answered as if it were nothing.
Hong Seok-woo smiled like a crafty old snake and looked down at my hand.
"All four, exactly the same?"
"Yes."
"Really?"
"Unconditionally really."
I stole a glance of my own at the hand I'd set on the lie detector. As far as I knew, the thing measured sweat and pulse and gave a rough read on how tense the subject was. For some reason I couldn't pin down — I genuinely had no idea why — something in my body must have shifted.
It felt like petting a hedgehog.
Sharper than I'd expected, this.
"This guy's the type to cheat mid-hand. I saw that flinch with my own eyes!"
Park Tae-pyung closed in on the front of my seat like a hyena that had found a meal. Hong Seok-woo's eyes flashed too.
"Life was never fair to begin with. Quit lying and tell us the truth."
"Honestly, isn't it Lee Songha? I saw those photos from a while back."
I wet my lower lip and said,
"I am not the kind of person who goes on television and lies. You're not pressing this thing with a remote from somewhere, are you?"
"This guy's got nerve. That has to sting pretty bad, doesn't it?"
I side-eyed the kids again. Packed tight into the narrow seats, all four of them were still watching me like meerkats.
I cleared my throat and dropped my voice.
"......The pain is a moment. The aftermath lasts."
Hong Seok-woo snickered and flicked a look toward the production crew. The writer was holding a sketchbook. In letters the size of a front door, it read:
I'd already warned my brother and the kids that it might come up on air, but right out of the gate? Character-building, or something like that?
"Well, I've gotten this kind of question quite a lot."
"This kind of question?"
Playing dumb, Hong Seok-woo picked it up with an easy, theatrical air.
"I have quadruplet nephews. It's a question I heard all the time even while I was raising them, and I have never once singled a single one out. Which is why I'm still alive."
Hong Seok-woo laughed loud. Whether it was actually funny or just the broadcast atmosphere, I couldn't tell.
"What kind of fate is this? The guy who used to look after quadruplet nephews is now in charge of a four-member girl group?"
"How did it feel when you were first put in charge of Neptune?"
Honestly, I'd thought I was finished.
"Like I could fly...... Ah. It's broken again."
Damn it. The thing looked like a kids' toy, and it still worked too well.
"Broken, my foot. Anyone listening can tell that's a line straight out of the manual!"
"What do the Neptune members think? That was a lie just now, wasn't it?"
At Hong Seok-woo's question, Lim Seoyoung swallowed and answered, clear and careful.
"Manager Oppa has only been working for four months, and we're his first assignment."
Reactions burst out from all over — only four months? Being misread from my face was familiar enough by now that it didn't even register. Either way, once the reaction landed, Seoyoung seemed to find her confidence and kept going.
"He originally wanted to manage actors, not singers. So at first he might not have been thrilled, but not anymore. He even had a chance to go manage other top actors, and he didn't take it. He stayed."
"Oh, top actors? A few faces come to mind when you say W&U's top actors."
"People are gunning for him from every direction, so I worry about him day and night. And it's not like I can tell him to stop working."
Seoyoung shook her head hard. Beside her, Lee Songha was nodding along with everything she had.
Park Tae-pyung said,
"If you wanted to manage actors, looks like your wish came true. Songha's blowing up in a drama these days. They're saying a rookie like a sudden downpour showed up in the middle of a leading-lady drought — praise pouring in, I heard?"
The talk slid naturally over to Lee Songha.
This part had already been cleared with the production team, so Seoyoung opened it.
"But actually, that was Manager Oppa's doing too. Up until a few months ago, Songha wasn't even thinking about acting, let alone a drama. If Oppa hadn't chased her down every time she ran and told her to act, I don't know where she'd be now."
The guests stirred.
"You weren't planning to act at all? Why not?"
"I watched the drama too. Your acting was incredible."
Today's broadcast was Neptune's first memorable step onto terrestrial television, and at the same time a stage built so this fact could slip out naturally.
My eyes met Songha's.
I smiled and nodded. If the camera hadn't been on my face just then, the same sinister smile I'd worn in front of Kim Hyunjo earlier would have surfaced.
Under all those eyes, Lee Songha began to speak. The words we'd vented among ourselves and never once let out into the open.
"I took acting lessons once, and the teacher told me I couldn't do it. He said a kid like me shouldn't act, that I shouldn't even come near it, so I thought I was terrible at acting."
"Is that a man or a donkey? How does someone like that even exist?"
"Aigoo, you got stuck with a complete quack!"
The reactions rose like a swarm of bees.
Figuring a story this strong would never be cut, the guests grabbed the sharpest, most negative words terrestrial TV would allow and hurled them out. I wanted to rip the name Shim Kyung-taek wide open too... but just having it mentioned on a public broadcast took some of the old anger down. The last time I'd gone to see Teacher Shim, threats were all I'd had.
Still, if we were going to feed him dirt, we might as well stuff him until he burst.
I tossed the indignant guests one more scrap to tear into.
"Songha isn't the kind of kid who acts badly enough to deserve talk like that, so I looked into why he'd said it, and it seemed that lesson teacher had some kind of grudge against her."
"Seriously? Wow, what a piece of trash!"
"There are always people who can't stand to see someone else do well. And this is a man people call teacher. Tsk. Whoever he is, he's pathetic. Pathetic."
I watched the uproar with a smile I kept to myself. It was as good as a public flogging. If the title lesson teacher had had a body attached, he'd be rolling in tatters in the middle of the set by now.
After a long round of cursing, the guests offered Songha words of encouragement. Once this aired, it would be a topic for certain. That was why we were leaking it before the Cat Guardian Spirit fever cooled.
It would clearly do good things for Lee Songha's image.
And it would smear Teacher Shim's face in filth.
I wasn't entirely sure why the company had told us to leak this on air. They might already have laid a move so Shim Kyung-taek couldn't drag Son Chae-young down with him, or CEO Baek Han-sung might have had something else in mind.
What was certain was this: even if the press never spelled Teacher Shim's name out in the open, anyone who knew the business would know. Once that happened, he wouldn't be able to preen around being called Professor the way he had. And the more famous Lee Songha became, the more anxious he'd get. Every time her name hit the news, he'd be sick with worry that his own past might surface along with it.
"Then it's no exaggeration to say the manager changed Songha's life."
Deciding that was enough, Hong Seok-woo wrapped the moment and asked.
Songha's eyes shone as she nodded.
"Yes. That's right. If Oppa hadn't been there, I couldn't have done the drama, and I never would have known acting could be this much fun."
Even after the commotion passed, the recording went on.
The MCs hit me with several more mischievous questions. Park Tae-pyung in particular kept coming over to my seat to talk, like a bird that wouldn't quit scratching around for bugs. I didn't mind, of course. That was airtime, so it was good — except my palm had already become a pincushion.
At last I was free of that miserable lie detector.
Out of nowhere, Hong Seok-woo looked toward the celebrities' seats and called out,
"All right — I know my manager's birthday! Hands up if you do!"
Nearly half the room raised a hand.
And so did Lee Songha.
She shot hers up so fast that Lim Seoyoung, sitting beside her, startled.
"Songha, you were the fastest! You know his birthday?"
"Yes. July twenty-second."
She answered without a moment's hesitation.
"Manager Jung Sunwoo, is that right?"
"......Yes. It is."
At that, Songha broke into a thoroughly pleased smile.
But how did she know my birthday? When had I ever told her?
I was tilting my head when Hong Seok-woo took answers from the other celebrities with their hands up. Then Park Tae-pyung grinned and said,
"I'm sure some of you prepared general-knowledge quizzes because we said there'd be a quiz corner. Capitals, common sense, all of that — you've already done plenty of it elsewhere. So we're not doing it."
Aigoo.
Protesting noise broke out all over, but before anything else I checked on Lim Seoyoung. She looked like a citizen whose country had fallen. Beside her, Lee Taehee was patting her shoulder, soothing her.
"We're going with something different: a personal quiz about your managers. Of course a manager knows a lot about their celebrity. What we want to find out is how much the celebrities know about their managers!"
"Ten points per question, and the team with the highest score wins! This result might even turn into a premium hanwoo beef set later!"
The guests' eyes lit up — like goldfish racing one another up toward the surface for food. And among those goldfish were Neptune's goldfish. The one most visibly overflowing with the will to win was, of course, the Lee Songha goldfish.
The MCs glanced at their cue cards and threw out the questions.
"I know my manager's hobbies!"
Once again, Songha's hand shot straight up.
"Watching movies and dramas."
"I know my manager's nickname from his school days!"
"Jung-jumma."
The Songha goldfish didn't stop after that, either. It got to the point where Park Tae-pyung, looking fed up, told her she might as well just keep her hand raised until it was over.
"I know which of the twelve zodiac animals my manager was born under!"
All four of the kids got that one right together.
Our team's score was already running in first. Good. It meant the kids had taken an interest in me, so that part was good — but blowing past people who'd worked together for years left me a little unsettled.
The other guests looked dumbfounded too. Kim Dong-ho in the next seat especially had been shooting me looks that weren't exactly warm.
"Hey, Neptune's way too strong."
"It's Songha who's strong. At this point she's practically family, isn't she?"
"Last chance for a comeback! One fifty-point bonus question. This one goes to the strongest team. I know my manager's embarrassing story — his dark history!"
What?
Among the people raising their hands and clamoring, I found Songha fast.
Thank god. Her hands were behaving. Her face said dark history? I don't have one of those, and I was just relaxing when—
Out of nowhere, LJ lifted a hand, casual as anything, and said,
"The other day I saw him practicing his smile alone in the mirror."
......When had she seen that?
My face burned. The guests — even the production staff — all seemed to be looking at me. Out of the corner of my eye, the corners of Kim Hyunjo's mouth were hooked all the way to his ears. If we hadn't been on set, he would have been doubled over, clutching his stomach.
Fortunately the other guests reeled off far worse dark histories, and my little story was buried in no time. I was watching like a hawk in case someone else raised a hand when Seoyoung kept checking my expression.
And in the end she avoided my eyes and slowly, sneakily, put her hand up.
What. What was this? What did she know?
"Aaaah, Oppa, for the score I have no choice! Th-there are things in this world you just can't help!"
"No, Seoyoung. There is nothing in this world you can't help."
I tried to calm her down.
Park Tae-pyung and Hong Seok-woo had been cackling in front of me the whole time, and the guests and staff were laughing at our scuffle, but none of that mattered as much as shutting Seoyoung's mouth. There was no telling what bomb might come out of it.
"We're going to lose!"
"I'll buy you that stupid beef myself! I don't know what it is, but don't say a word."
My family was going to see this!
Up through the early stretch, the production team had the air of a house in mourning.
Watching managers who couldn't find the feel of the show and flailed in every direction, Producer Yoon aged in real time.
The title was Star Manager, and most of the managers were either mute with honey in their mouths or reading aloud from a language textbook. At that rate it was a hundred percent going to fail. Among the Lunar New Year specials each network was rolling out with such ambition, this one was on track to be voted the most miserable program of the lot.
But now?
Producer Yoon and Writer Park looked over the set with faces split into grins.
"Aigoo, I thought we were going to have to throw this whole section out, and it came back from the dead."
"Right? When we go outside, we should stick one more VJ on that team."
"I wasn't expecting anything but the Songha material, and I had no idea those kids had chemistry like that. I was thinking if we couldn't secure them enough screen time, we'd at least load in reaction inserts. Once this airs, don't you think they're going to get booked on a lot of variety shows?"
At Producer Yoon's words, Writer Park stroked his chin and answered.
"Though I think a lot of that is the manager's influence?"