When the Puzzle Pieces Are Missing (3)
The alcohol burned off in a flash.
Details about the company Chief Kim belonged to clicked into place, one after another. Taeum Management. Set beside W&U it was smaller, but solid enough in its own right. Actor-centered. I had a vague sense they kept a few broadcasters on the roster too, though anything finer than that escaped me.
Why make an offer like this to a manager five months into the job?
I turned it over a few times, then asked him outright.
"Is this because of Songha?"
Chief Kim laughed out loud.
"Everyone knows Songha's in a girl group with plenty of contract left. You think we'd pick a lawsuit? It's not that."
"Then why are you bringing me an offer like that?"
When I asked again, he let out a breath as murky as cigarette smoke.
"Well. They say they've heard a lot of good things. About you, Sunwoo."
"From who?"
"That far, I wouldn't know. Anyway, the company says if you're even a little interested, they'd like to sit down. You know we aren't some fly-by-night shop. This is a good offer."
Which only made it stranger.
The thoughts of the future I'd been holding under crawled back up, slow and damp. On the chance this had something to do with the accident waiting down the line, I added another line to my list of suspicions.
I hadn't been weighing a move in the first place. The terms were good, but not good enough to walk away from what I'd built at W&U, or from Neptune. No point letting them take my measure. I shook my head.
"I appreciate you saying so, but I have no intention of leaving the company right now."
"Then... if you change your mind, call me."
He backed off without pressing and drew a business card from his wallet.
I took it and tucked it away without much care. Chief Kim smiled.
"Someone's about to stare a hole straight through you. I'll head in first."
"Sorry?"
He brushed past me with a jerk of his chin. I turned. Beyond the glass door, Lee Songha stood looking as if someone had upended a bucket of shock over her head. The moment our eyes met she flustered and started jabbing, hard, at the blameless buttons of the coffee machine.
"Did you hear that?"
I stepped over and asked. Her small head creaked from side to side.
"No."
"Sounded like you did."
"A little, actually. I wasn't trying to eavesdrop. I was getting coffee, and it just carried."
Insisting on her innocence, Lee Songha touched the tip of her tongue to her lip.
"But, oppa..."
"Yeah. I'm not transferring. Not even thinking about it."
I answered before the question could finish leaving her mouth.
Songha laughed without a sound and lifted the paper cup, coffee trembling nearly to the rim. Then she knocked it back in a single shot, the way you'd empty a glass of liquor. It was so natural that a full two seconds passed before the surprise caught up with me.
"That isn't hot?"
"...It's hot."
Her face went scarlet in an instant. Steam looked ready to spill from between her lips.
I hurried to pour her cold water, and she drained that in gulps too, all in one go. Something was off. Look closer and her expression was perfectly composed, but her eyes were soaked through and wavering, a moon afloat on water.
"I think you're drunk. Did you have more?"
"Chief Lee gave it to me."
That man.
I looked over at Chief Lee Bong-joon. His eyes were already half-unfocused. Seo Ji-joon would look after that side. I made my excuses to the people grabbing at us and asking why we were leaving so early, and Songha and I slipped out of the restaurant.
I turned the wheel over to a designated driver and sat in the back of the minivan with her. As the heater warmed the cabin through, the alcohol seemed to drag sleep up with it, and Songha's head swayed on the slender stem of her neck.
I fitted a neck pillow around her. The small, rustling sound of her breath tickled, so I turned and watched the window. Sleet clung to the glass, melted, and ran down in streaks.
I couldn't have said how long we went on like that. I was on the edge of nodding off myself, and I had just stretched my back the way you do before sleep takes you when it happened.
A vibration buzzed from the pocket of Songha's coat.
I left it. It stopped, then started again. On the third time I shook her shoulder.
"Songha. Wake up. This looks urgent."
She showed no sign of waking, so I took the phone out myself.
Home again.
Afraid something serious had happened to her family, I shook her with one hand and answered with the other. The buzzing had barely died when a middle-aged woman's voice came through, threaded with a sigh.
"Why on earth won't you pick up the—"
"I'm answering for her. This is Songha's manager."
"Her manager?"
"Yes. Jung Sunwoo. Songha was tired and fell asleep. I thought it might be urgent, so I took it."
"Jung Sunwoo... Oh, you were on the Lunar New Year broadcast, weren't you? The one who told Songha she ought to try acting. I'm Songha's mother."
The voice that had been winding up to scold went soft in an instant.
"I'd been thinking, after I saw that broadcast, that I wanted to meet you in person. This works out. Could we sit down and talk?"
"Meet? May I ask what this is about..."
"I really think it would be better if Songha quit that girl group and only acted. All the time she'd waste there—"
A hand shot across from beside me and took the phone.
Dark as it was, Lee Songha's scowl was perfectly clear.
"I'll call you back."
That was all she left before she cut the line. We had just reached the Neptune dorm, so I asked the driver for a minute. He said he'd step out for a cigarette, and the moment he was gone Songha spoke.
"You don't have to meet her. Please don't. I'll talk to her properly."
"Is this why you weren't picking up calls from home?"
She nodded. After a brief silence, a low voice spilled out.
"We've been fighting about this since the Lunar New Year holiday. All of a sudden it feels like there are so many things she can't stand. I looked it up. They say this happens to celebrities all the time. It isn't only our family."
"You should have told me. If she keeps on like this, the chief or I—"
"I'll handle it. It's a family matter."
All kinds of thoughts cut through my head.
A girl group that had only just stopped crawling and found its feet, and one member suddenly pinned under the spotlight of a career-making drama. Solo schedules. How the money would be split.
I had been genuinely relieved there was no bad blood inside the team. So the trouble had been waiting at home.
Neptune was riding a very good current. Contract or not, if anything like team discord attached itself to Lee Songha now, it would do her image no good at all.
Surely that incident from the future had nothing to do with Songha's family.
The old sickness of suspicion was flaring again when she murmured, almost to herself.
"Actually, I was so frustrated... All through the holiday I wanted to call you."
"Then call. You know my number."
"You were finally off. If I called about work, I'd be bothering you."
"That isn't work. Next time, you can call."
At that she stared straight at me. She seemed to be asking whether I meant it, so I nodded. And across the face that had been so flat, slowly, a smile opened.
As if the night that had flung sleet at the glass had been a lie, morning came bright and clear.
But behind the heavy curtains, last night's bleak air still hung in the room. Shattered flowerpots, appliances, and books lay strewn from one end of it to the other. The only thing left intact was the mirror on the vanity.
Son Chaeyoung stood in the middle of the wreckage.
She looked ready to detonate. A twitch ran through her badly twisted face, and something savage poured from her eyes. She glared at the wall with a look that said if anyone had been standing there, she could have torn them apart with her bare hands and still had rage to spare.
A moment later she snatched up her phone and dialed.
The ringtone filled the dark room.
"I'm going to lose my mind at this rate, Team Leader."
Chief Jo, eyes and cheeks both hollowed in, stole a glance at his phone as he spoke. On the screen, vibrating without rest, the name Son Chaeyoung glowed. Clutching his head, he appealed to the Team 2 Leader sitting across from him.
"She's only going to get worse from here, and I can't breathe. I mean it. I can't breathe."
"What's Chaeyoung doing right now?"
"Smashing the place up again, I'd guess. I don't even have the nerve to go look."
Chief Jo muttered it, thoroughly sick of the whole thing.
The Team 2 Leader clicked his tongue.
"With that temper, of course she is. She'll take from anybody, but when has that girl ever let someone take from her? And this wasn't one thing. It was a whole pile, and she lost every bit of it to Lee Songha — the very person she tried to bury with her own dirty tricks. That's what you get. You should have kept her on a shorter leash from the start, you idiot!"
At the irritated shout, Chief Jo flinched and flattened.
"But even like this, is Chaeyoung really renewing?"
"You know what the CEO is like. Of course he's already got a collar on her. That's why she's sitting there breaking the furniture. If he hadn't, she'd have torn up the contract and walked out by now. What I don't understand is why the CEO would push it this far in the first place..."
As if none of it made sense, the Team 2 Leader creased his brow.
"Anyway. Ever since that Jung Sunwoo bastard walked in, there hasn't been a single quiet day."
He spat the words, then suddenly stroked his beard. A moment later his mouth opened again.
"Chaeyoung's in no state to take work for a while anyway. How about you take Songha on, while you're at it?"
"Lee Songha?"
Chief Jo, who had been wilting by degrees, opened his eyes round.
"I was going to bring it up with the division head regardless. We can't keep leaving Songha in that Jung Sunwoo kid's hands forever. His eye isn't bad, I'll give him that, but at the actual work he's a hatchling who doesn't know the first thing about this business."
"That's true."
"The more you look at Songha, the more she's the real thing. We need a proper manager on her before she gets as hard to handle as Chaeyoung. A veteran would be better for Songha herself, too."
"I'm fine with that."
Chief Jo nodded and nodded.
The one who might have served the rice cakes had no thought of doing any such thing. The two of them kept talking for a long while anyway.
Loud.
I cracked my eyes open. The room was still dark. The noise was the phone I'd left on the desk.
The sun wasn't up, so it was early. Had I set the alarm wrong?
I fumbled the charger free, brought the phone over, and saw it wasn't an alarm at all. It was a call. Reporter Park Woo-jung. A little past one in the morning.
Wrong number?
I answered through a jaw-cracking yawn.
"Hello? Reporter Park?"
"Ah, Sunwoo! I'm sorry for the hour, but I think I need to tell you this right away!"
The urgency snapped my eyes open on its own.
"What's going on?"
"Do you know a Lee Joohwan? From Punchline..."
"The one who raps. Yeah, I know him."
I was on my feet at once, the light switched on. Park Woo-jung kept going.
"A post just went up on his socials, and the way I see it, he's taking a shot at Songha."
"Hold on. I'll check right now."
Phone still pressed to my ear, I hurried online.
And I opened Lee Joohwan of Punchline's social media. Just as she'd said, a new post was up.
The moment I saw it, I doubted my own eyes. Absolute garbage.
"What kind of insane bastard—!"
I was too dumbfounded for anything else. The curse came out first.
Months of meeting on set. Success. A drama. The name was the only thing missing. Anyone would read it as Lee Songha. I glanced at the comment window floating beside the post. Punchline's fans were already stirring.
Her name was coming up under every single comment.
Park Woo-jung asked, careful now.
"Was there really something between Songha and Lee Joohwan? Even if there was..."
"No. It's nonsense."
"Then we need to contain this as fast as we can. When an idol scandal breaks, the woman always takes the hit, and this might as well be him telling her, in public, to choke on it. It's the middle of the night so it's still quiet, but this is going to blow up any minute!"
"Thank you, Reporter. I'll call you back."
I hung up and called Team Leader Park. The line was busy. Kim Hyunjo was on a call too. Had word already reached them? Just in case, I sent each of them a message and drew a long breath.
Is this it?
The incident I'd seen in the future. Was this bastard the bomb?
In that future I had demanded an interview and a public explanation, right away. The situation fit too cleanly.
I paced the room with the phone in my hand, then stopped dead.
In the future I had definitely been threatening the other side. Not asking. Telling them that if they didn't want to roll around in the mud with me, they would fix it. And the whole time, the other person hadn't managed so much as a word.
If this was that incident, what had I been holding over this guy's head?