When the Puzzle Pieces Are Missing (2)
Was this what paranoia felt like?
The knowledge that something was coming—an incident in which I would end up threatening someone—had coiled in my head and sunk its weight there, and ever since, I had been watching the people around me with suspicion in my eyes.
Son Chae-young and Mr. Shim Kyung-taek were the sort who would happily hack Lee Songha and me to pieces if you so much as put an axe in their hands. There was a traitor, too, so foul he had gone past unsettling and started to rot. PD Go Joon-tae, with whom I had shaken hands and parted ways, and yet who could grab me by the collar tomorrow without it seeming strange in the least. Sugar Cat, itching to watch Neptune and Lim Seoyoung crash and burn. That Punchline bastard, needling and grating on me every time he came into view. And beyond them, the people who had laughed themselves sick mocking Lee Songha during the controversy, only to grumble that she had gotten lucky once things started going well...
Suspects, and then more suspects. Far too many of them.
I had gone looking for a bomb and found myself standing in a minefield. Out of every mine buried in that field, which one was the bomb that would actually go off?
"Hey. You got some kind of trouble at home these days?"
The moment I sat down in the conference room, Kim Hyunjo asked out of nowhere.
"No. Everything's perfectly peaceful."
"Then a relationship problem? No, wait. No way you've got a woman."
"Come on. What do you mean, no way. I could."
"If a relationship fits into that schedule of yours, then you're my senior."
Team Leader 3 piled on to Kim Hyunjo's snickering. They'd been single for years, they said; this right here was my future. They were flinging a handful of jinx over the wide-open road ahead of me.
I got dragged in while I was busy, and this is what these gentlemen are doing.
I stared at them with a rotten look on my face, and Kim Hyunjo propped his chin on his hand and grinned.
"You're walking around grim all by yourself in a stretch when any normal person would be grinning like an idiot, that's why. The Next K-Star finale wrapped without a hitch. Cat Guardian Spirit ended as one of the biggest dramas in years, and word is the second run in China is a madhouse right now. You're sailing with the wind dead at your back."
"Right. Every team-leader meeting, that bastard of a Team 2 leader had to get his little dig in—saying we'd poured every won Blackout earned straight into Neptune and eaten it all up, one project after another. These days we walk into meetings with our shoulders back."
He wasn't wrong. This was the smoothest stretch I had had since taking Neptune on.
Contrary to what I had feared, the Next K-Star finale had closed on a warm note, and Cat Guardian Spirit had ended yesterday under a downpour of rave reviews.
A string of dramas once tipped as the ones to watch—The Mermaid Who Came Ashore, Timeslip, and the rest—had flopped one after another, and we had swept up their viewers along with everyone else, finishing in the middle of a full-blown craze.
Spring hadn't even arrived, and already the press was naming Cat Guardian Spirit the drama that would define the year. Viewers were petitioning to hand over their bankbooks if it meant a director's-cut DVD.
Lee Songha's own image could not have been better.
The verdict was nearly unanimous: had it aired on a terrestrial network instead of cable, this year's Grand Prize would have been Seo Ji-joon's, and Best New Actress would have been Lee Songha's.
No wonder Kim Hyunjo's dark circles had faded enough to notice. No wonder Team Leader 3 was going around with a festive face.
I would have been the same. If only I hadn't seen a future that put thrillers to shame.
"There are a few things on my mind. That's probably why."
I was about to fudge my way past it when Kim Hyunjo spoke as if he already knew.
"Son Chae-young and Mr. Shim Kyung-taek?"
"Well. That's part of it."
Not exactly a lie.
Team Leader 3 hooked one ankle over the opposite thigh and clicked his tongue.
"That Lucky Charm, I swear. Sometimes I look at you and you're out buying worries. What's there to chew on? This is the kind of thing where a hundred-year-old brick of shit finally lets go. From what I hear, give Mr. Shim a proper shake and the dirt comes down like hail, so he won't be in any position to take a bite out of us."
"Didn't they say he's quitting the school where he was a professor? Some rag of a rumor went around among the students."
That, I hadn't known.
"The gossip spread so juicy his private lessons with rookies have probably dried up cold. Truth is, the only reason that man got to gorge himself on lessons this long is that he was selling Son Chae-young's name. Without that, he wouldn't have had a prayer. And now that he's split with her, even that's finished."
"This is why they say life comes down to one shot. What's he going to live on from here?"
"In this business, he's done."
The smiles on Team Leader 3 and Kim Hyunjo fizzed like soda.
"That's just the appetizer. The news that'll really clear your chest is separate."
Kim Hyunjo smiled with meaning and picked up a document envelope from one side of the table. Whatever was in it, the thing was thick enough that a corner looked ready to split.
He drew out a sheaf of papers and slid them toward me.
"Here. A jeans-brand commercial. Came in for Songha."
"That used to be Son Chae-young's."
Team Leader 3 tossed it in like a backbeat.
This time Kim Hyunjo produced a much thicker stack. A screenplay.
"This is Director Chae Moon-ho's new film. Says he'd like Songha to come in for an audition."
"This one originally came to Son Chae-young first, too."
After that they kept tumbling out: ad proposals, film scripts, drama synopses. The fields were all over the place, but they shared exactly one thing.
Every last one was something Son Chae-young had been shooting, or something that had been under discussion for her to shoot.
I shoved the mines and the bomb into a corner of my head and stared at the papers in front of me as if bewitched. God. To anyone who didn't know, they were scraps of paper. To my eyes, they hit harder than diamonds.
Team Leader 3 scratched the bridge of his nose and laughed.
"You'll see it yourself, but next to what's been coming in for Songha until now, the roles and the scale of the money are night and day. Dramas and films will still need internal meetings and auditions, of course, but offers like these—normally someone at Songha's level wouldn't even get a shot at auditioning."
I had received scripts and synopses from a few directors myself, but nothing with roles this substantial. Work like that went to actors who had been proven, beyond doubt, across project after project.
Actors like Son Chae-young.
"You're telling me all of this really crossed over to Songha? That's possible?"
"Normally, no. She tanked Mermaid Ashore in spectacular fashion, but someone of Son Chae-young's caliber doesn't lose her ads and her projects just because one drama flopped. For this many to move—and to Songha, of all people..."
"You've got to read it as the CEO stepping in and pulling the strings."
Team Leader 3 and Kim Hyunjo answered in turn.
Then Team Leader 3 looked at me with a peculiar glint.
"The division head was saying you landed these?"
"...I landed them?"
"Well, I don't know if it was a joke or the truth, but apparently the CEO said so. That Jung Sunwoo landed them."
All at once I remembered a phone call with CEO Baek Han-sung from a while back.
I had told him I didn't want some tidy apology that only sounded right—that I wanted there to be a price for Son Chae-young. And he had answered.
He would think about the price.
Kim Hyunjo said it through a grin.
"For Son Chae-young, this has to be the worst nightmare in the world."
A wrap party is where you finish a drama and finally let out everything you have been holding in, so the mood rises and falls with the show's success. In Mermaid Ashore's case, articles had gone up saying they hadn't held a wrap party at all.
Cat Guardian Spirit's, by contrast, was a cauldron of frenzy.
The crew, who had been sprinting through a breathless schedule, shoved boilermakers down their throats as if venting every last grievance. Staff from the production and from TVL, and the celebrities too, loosened their belts and poured and drank. At every table people talked, drunk on alcohol and drunk on the high.
"Sunwoo! Over here, over here! Come have a drink!"
I hadn't been back in the seat beside Lee Songha for ten minutes.
Had the whole room agreed that tonight's drunken nagging would consist entirely of shouting my name? They had been hollering for me from every direction. I turned, and this time it was a table ringed with managers.
"Jung Sunwoo's a busy man today."
Across from me, Chief Lee Bong-joon snickered. His round frame rocked from side to side. Seo Ji-joon, beside him, couldn't hold his liquor, so the chief had been emptying stand-in glasses for a while now; the drink was catching up, and Chief Lee's face had gone ruddy.
"Tell me about it. Feels like people are looking for me more than the waitstaff."
"That's a good thing. A good thing. This business runs on connections, and it's proof that how people see you has changed. From one manager in an overflowing crowd to someone worth knowing. The variety-show image probably made you easier to walk up to, too."
He snickered again, claiming that these days my face alone was enough to set him off.
I clicked my tongue and looked to the side. Lee Songha was nodding along to someone else's talk, chopsticks moving. She had put away a fair amount with every toast, and still her color hadn't changed a shade.
Her chopsticks stopped when a buzz rose from under the table. The screen read Home, so it was probably family. She stared at it for a long moment, and when the call dropped she slipped the phone into her pocket.
"If it's too loud in here, step outside and take it."
"It's all right. Better if I don't pick up right now. I've been drinking."
She tipped her head toward me and murmured it.
I was wondering whether her parents ran a strict house when my name burst out of the managers' table again.
"Songha, I've got to go sit at that table for a bit."
"Okay. Just a second."
She began gathering, with solemn thoroughness, the glass, the chopsticks, and the plate set in front of her. She had every intention of coming with me, so I set a hand on her shoulder at once.
"A second for what. Don't you see them over there dumping beer, soju, and cola into a bowl and drinking it by the bowlful? Just stay with Chief Lee."
Songha sat back down and looked at Chief Lee Bong-joon. I patted her narrow shoulder twice and headed for the table chanting my name like a chorus, and behind me I caught him muttering.
"Hey, Lee Songha. The face you make at your manager and the face you make at me are not even in the same country. Sobered me right up."
Curious what expression he meant, I looked back and got nothing but the back of her head.
"Oh, oh, Sunwoo, sit here. Sit."
"I had no idea you were that funny until I saw the broadcast!"
The moment I took the empty seat, Star Manager came up. For a while yet, it seemed, that show would be standing in for my business card. The rating had clearly been twelve percent, but it felt as if the entire nation had watched. Whichever table I went to, there wasn't a person who didn't know it.
Only after we had been through the dreaded black-history stories, and the flattery about how I had seemed hard to approach but looked like a decent person on television, did the subject finally turn.
"Now that the drama's over, all that's left is for Ms. Lee Songha to sweep up the commercials. She's going to film a ton, isn't she? She's exactly the type advertisers love."
"I hope a lot of different things come in."
I answered with a smile, and someone mixed a sigh into it.
"Man, put footage of that up and even barbecue-joint commercials would come knocking. How does anyone eat meat that elegantly? A waste of the picture. A complete waste."
"...Elegant?"
The boilermaker nearly came back up.
I looked over. Songha was still buried among the celebrities, chopsticks flying at storm speed. The room had sunk so deep into eating that she made a picture no matter what she did. Even so, watch her with any real attention and the word elegant would pack its bags. Hearty, maybe. If you were being generous.
The boilermakers went around a few more times.
We were all managers, so the talk slid naturally into work. What their talents were eyeing for a follow-up. How this one had hit so big that synopses were pouring in and the problem was choosing among them.
Someone from Pan Production had gone around saying I had picked Cat Guardian Spirit off the synopsis alone, and because of it quite a few people probed, casually, whether I already had a next project in mind.
Chief Ju, thin as a rail, smacked his lips.
"Sunwoo, raise Lee Songha right. The acting's there, the timing landed—who knows, grow her steady and she might turn into a walking one-woman company. Then the day this place is being a complete bastard, you take her with you and just open an agency. Clean and simple."
"Easier said than done. W&U isn't some corner shop, and the talents you're assigned are going to rotate a few times while you're building a career anyway."
Chief Kim cut in, shaking his head.
Around us, the other managers started adding on, one and then another.
"That part depends. If the fit is good, you can keep going together. Even inside W&U you've got Seo Ji-joon and Chief Lee Bong-joon. If Chief Lee said he was leaving, Seo Ji-joon would follow, don't you think?"
"But Ms. Lee Songha looks like she'd follow even if Sunwoo said he was leaving right now. You two get along. I saw it—every time he changed tables, she watched him. And whenever his name came up loud, she'd glance over."
"She did?"
At my question, Chief Ju answered with an expression gone soft and sloppy.
"You know how a kid at the playground is playing just fine, then turns around every so often to check Mom's still there? Kind of like that. Look. Even now."
I turned my head and met Lee Songha's eyes dead on.
We each blinked once and smiled at the same time. Chief Lee Bong-joon caught it, tapped her arm, and said something. I couldn't tell what, but she was listening hard. Please don't let it be something weird again.
I was just starting to watch for a moment to drift back to that table.
Chief Kim set an empty glass down and gave my back a light tap.
"Sunwoo, there's something I'd like to talk about on the side. Got a minute?"
"With me?"
We weren't particularly close, so I looked at him in puzzlement, and behind the glasses Chief Kim's eyes folded into a grin.
Figuring I might as well walk the drink off, I stepped clean outside the restaurant.
A damp night wind pushed my hair back. It was the tail end of February, and the cold had loosened some; instead of snow, sleet was needling down.
Chief Kim let a beat pass, then spoke.
"Sunwoo, this came down from upstairs. I'm only passing it along."
"All right. Go ahead."
"Any chance you'd think about moving to our company?"
"...What?"
It was so far out of nowhere that the question jumped out of me.
I wondered if the alcohol had bent what I'd heard. Chief Kim said it again.
"Better terms than what you've got now. Guaranteed. And you'd come in as a chief. What do you say?"