"I'm sorry, hyung. I'll be there in a mo...... urk."
Kang Seong-jin moved to get out of the car, then suddenly clutched his stomach and ran off toward a nearby building.
The manager, who had got out of the driver's seat with him, watched Kang Seong-jin run and dragged a hand down his face.
"I'm sorry, Tae-il hyung. Something Seong-jin hyung ate earlier must have disagreed with him. So......"
"It's flared up."
"F-flared up?"
The manager's eyes curved in an exaggerated arc.
But the mouth that had been moving so easily went stiff.
Tae-il looked toward the building where Kang Seong-jin had disappeared and drove the wedge in.
"Irritable bowel syndrome. Seong-jin, honestly......"
"Oh, no, it isn't that, Tae-il hyung!"
Along with a voice gone too loud, the manager's eyes shook hard.
'How does Eun Tae-il know that? Hardly anybody knows......?'
For an actor, whose image is his living, it was a fairly awkward problem.
Normally he was fine, and the moment something blew up or his routine broke, Kang Seong-jin's gut would heave as though on cue.
A schedule that had been running peacefully had had an unforeseeable disaster like a drink-driving charge shoved into it......
So he was holding his own private event even after arriving on location.
'The lead has to answer for the result.'
The ones who answer for the ratings are the PD, the writer, and the lead actors.
There are any number of reasons ratings go up and down, and the public has no interest in reasons like that.
'People only look at the result.'
Whoever's drink-driving wrecked the production's image, a drop in the ratings is, in the end, on them.
Kang Seong-jin would be feeling a great deal of pressure.
Tae-il moved toward the building, and the startled manager caught hold of him.
"S-Seong-jin hyung will come as soon as he's done. There's no need for you to go as well, Tae-il hyu......"
"I'm going to the toilet."
"Sorry? Ah......"
Tae-il gave the fumbling manager a look that said do not follow, and headed for the building.
The building was quiet.
He waited a moment in front of the ground-floor toilet, and a man came out shaking his wet hands.
"I said there was no need to come...... Tae-il hyung?"
Meeting a face he had not expected, Kang Seong-jin flinched.
Tae-il pointed a finger outside at him.
"Let's walk a minute."
Kang Seong-jin hesitated and then followed quietly after Tae-il, who went ahead.
Nothing could be heard in the corridor but the two men's footsteps.
It was Kang Seong-jin who broke the short silence first.
"I'm sorry, hyung. I know everyone's waiting......"
"......"
Kang Seong-jin's eyes trembled faintly and his head dropped without strength.
Walking a step ahead, Tae-il tossed it out as though it were nothing.
"Seong-jin. Shall we go bowling soon?"
"I'm sor...... sorry? B-bowling?"
Was it that unexpected.
Kang Seong-jin's expression turned idiotic.
Whatever he made of it, Tae-il calmly put both hands behind his head.
"I hear your average is quite good."
"Well...... it is, yes."
The moment bowling came up, Kang Seong-jin's chest went out.
When he had no work he all but lived at the bowling alley, so of course the average was high.
He had not been able to dream of bowling during a production, though.
"Hyung, honestly, I never know where I am with you. Bowling, out of nowhere."
"Deal?"
"Bowling is always a deal. But I don't play for nothing, you know?"
"Dinner on it. Hanwoo omakase."
"Deal! Hyung, you're confident about that average!"
Tae-il looked at Kang Seong-jin's shining eyes and shrugged.
"Just give me a hundred points. I'll flatten you."
Kang Seong-jin blinked at Tae-il, and then......
"Bwahahahaha!"
He held his stomach.
"What is this hyung saying? A hundred points is far too big a gap."
"I'm saying it to save your face. A dignified death, that sort of thing."
"Hahaha! What do you mean. That makes no sense."
Kang Seong-jin ended up bending at the waist.
"You only had to encourage me...... Heh heh. Of all the fine things you could have said, you ask for a hundred points."
"Fine things like what?"
"'Don't worry.' 'I'll carry half your load, so loosen up and let's do it well.' Lines like that, there are plenty of them."
"......Are we filming a teen drama? Why would I carry your load?"
Kang Seong-jin's laughter broke out into the corridor again.
He laughed so hard that tears came to the corners of his eyes.
"I laughed too much, my stomach's pulling. Oh dear......"
"The toilet?"
"......Huh?"
Getting the laugh under control at last, Kang Seong-jin felt his stomach again.
The lower belly that had been aching softly was perfectly fine, and his abdominal muscles were pulling instead.
'At times like this, laughing is the answer.'
For symptoms like that, there was no medicine like laughter.
There are rookies who, the moment a camera is pointed at them, produce all sorts of strange conditions as though it were a lie.
Plenty of rookies clutch their lower belly, the way Kang Seong-jin does.
'You only have to loosen the nerves. And if the cause were something else, there's a method for that too.'
At first he could not respond properly and was thrown out as often as not, and as time went on he picked up the knack and could handle it, a little at a time.
Turning away from Kang Seong-jin, Tae-il raised a hand.
"You look better."
"Thanks to you. This weekend, then?"
"All right."
"I'll give you the hundred points like you said, so don't worry. I'll bring my friends too! Keep this weekend free, yes?"
Tae-il snorted, agreed and went on ahead.
'The Star Frame lot will come too. Vicious little group.'
The bowling club Kang Seong-jin belongs to, Star Frame.
A gathering formed by three celebrities who are mad about bowling.
There are plenty of celebrities who meet socially and cause trouble; these ones bowled, relentlessly, and nothing else.
'This will do to start with.'
After returning to the location, Tae-il stepped into the frame.
He was checking his path with the script in one hand when Yu Hye-in, standing with him, worked her mouth.
"Ah, I absolutely hate this."
"What's wrong?"
"Look over there."
Yu Hye-in pointed at a man and a woman hovering beyond the monitor.
"What about them?"
"They're the ones, aren't they. The ones who gave Senior Do Jeong-min that protein......"
"Ah, the PPL agency people."
There was a pair of them, a man and a woman with big bags on their shoulders, wandering back and forth.
With protein drinks in their hands, they were the PPL agency people.
Tae-il tilted his head.
"Have they decided what to do about that PPL?"
"No. You saw it today. Investors barging onto the location, the mood a total mess...... Well, as long as it isn't me."
As though she genuinely hated it, Yu Hye-in screwed her face up as far as it would go.
The agency people had felt the actors' mood too, and could not keep still.
'Shooting a PPL often wrecks the immersion. Hm?'
While he was looking at the agency staff, he felt a sharp gaze from behind.
He turned, and a man standing with Writer Shin was staring hard this way.
'Why is he looking at me? Hm? That man is......'
"......I'm sorry, CP."
Just then, along with the sound of running, came people murmuring.
CP Seong looked at the two of them gasping for breath and answered with a sour expression.
"You're very late, Seong-jin."
"I'm sorry, CP."
Kang Seong-jin, holding heavy paper carriers in both hands, could not lift his head.
CP Seong glared at him and then, with a sigh, shook his head.
"Don't be late again."
"Thank you, CP."
With another actor a sharp word would have gone around the location, and CP Seong doted on Kang Seong-jin.
The matter finished with a short telling-off.
Kang Seong-jin and his manager handed out the coffee they had bought, one by one, to the crew.
"Director. I'm sorry I was late."
"Seong-jin. Don't do it again. Just today, yes?"
Grumbling as they went, the crew took the coffee Kang Seong-jin handed over.
Kang Seong-jin's manager handed Tae-il a coffee himself and bent at the waist.
"Tae-il hyung. Thank you for earlier."
"Not at all. It isn't worth thanking me for......"
Tae-il snorted softly.
"As a manager...... it's given me a lot to think about. What you did, Tae-il hyung, is something I should have been doing."
"It's all right. Do it well from now on."
He answered lightly, and the look in Tae-il's eyes as he watched the manager whose name he did not know glinted slightly.
So did Team Leader Ong's, watching from over here.
The manager bent at the waist to Tae-il.
"Please look after our Seong-jin hyung from here too."
"I will. What's your name?"
"Me?"
The manager blinked, straightened his posture and answered strongly.
"Kim Yong-chun, Tae-il hyung!"
Having bowed at the waist like that, the manager headed off to keep handing out coffee.
"An interesting one. It's been a while since I saw that."
At the words of Team Leader Ong, holding his coffee, Tae-il nodded too.
"You see it too, Team Leader Ong?"
"Boys like that usually go one of two ways. Either you know them a very long time, or......"
"They vanish fast."
Tae-il thought the same.
Before long Kang Seong-jin and the other actors stepped into the frame.
"Right, right. A lot of time has gone. Let's hurry."
At CP Seong's urging the actors quickly took their places.
Tae-il caught hold of a Kang Seong-jin who had gone slightly stiff.
'Nobody's paying attention, so take it easy.'
'I'm all right now.'
'Good.'
Looking at Tae-il, Kang Seong-jin felt strange.
Leading the mood on a location is the lead actor's job.
And Eun Tae-il was doing it......
But even while he felt that, Kang Seong-jin followed Tae-il's lead easily.
'Kang Seong-jin is an actor who follows well, too. If he'd tried to seize the initiative the shabby way Kim Yul does, I'd have had to use another method.'
Every actor has his characteristics at work.
Kang Seong-jin is not the strong-willed sort.
If he had had to work with a man like Kim Yul, Tae-il would have come at it differently.
When Kang Seong-jin breathed slowly and took hold of the feeling, Tae-il, at a suitable distance, cooled his expression too.
'......'
Watching the monitor, CP Seong swallowed dry.
He could not help being conscious of the investors standing behind him.
Through the unsettled air, CP Seong's voice spread out.
"Ready......!"
CLACK—!
With the sound of the slate, Do-hwan (Eun Tae-il)'s cold voice flowed into CP Seong's headset.
"Cha Ju-hwan?"
"D-Do-hwan hyung?"
"I believe I told you I have no brother like you."
"......"
It was a wide, so the boom was up quite far from the actors, and the voices came through clearly.
Feeling that the air was strange, Yu-na (Yu Hye-in) opened her eyes wide.
"Ju-hwan. Who is...... oh? CEO?"
"Seon Yu-na."
As though reacting to the cold in Tae-il's voice, Ju-hwan (Kang Seong-jin) trembled faintly at the lips and cheek.
'Hoo.'
'There's nothing to worry about with Seong-jin. The problem is......'
The investors watching the monitor behind CP Seong whispered quietly.
Looking down at a younger brother, Ju-hwan (Kang Seong-jin), who could not even raise his eyes, Do-hwan (Eun Tae-il) laid the look in his own eyes down cold.
"You two, surely......? It suits you, though."
"No no no no no."
Yu-na (Yu Hye-in) waved her hands hard several times over, and Do-hwan (Eun Tae-il), who had firmly misunderstood, reacted differently.
"The two of you suit each other. Dregs are better off pooled together."
"Hold on, CEO. What is that supposed to mean?"
"Cut."
As the corner of Yu-na (Yu Hye-in)'s eye went up, CP Seong raised a hand.
"The wide is okay. Hye-in, we're moving on now, and I'd like a bit more edge on the voice."
"Yes, CP."
"And Eun Tae-il......"
CP Seong glanced behind him and then snorted.
"Never mind. Just do it like that."
"Yes, CP."
CP Seong looked at Eun Tae-il a moment and turned his head away.
There was strangely nothing to correct in the man.
He was acting with the tone watched, neither too much nor too little for the situation.
'He seems even more wound up than usual. Eun Tae-il, you're doing well.'
Writer Shin, listening to the actors' voices with him, could tell as well.
That Eun Tae-il was putting a great deal of care into the delivery of his lines.
"Do-hwan (Eun Tae-il) looks a little conspicuous."
"The protagonist is Kang Seong-jin, and strangely Eun Tae-il seems to stand out more. Hmm......"
But there were others with a different view.
The investors watching the monitor with him, behind CP Seong.
"Was Eun Tae-il's share always this large?"
"Now that you mention it, Eun Tae-il's weight does seem higher than the other supporting actors'."
"Even taking Do Jeong-min's cut from the edit into account......"
Watching the investors' foreheads move, Writer Shin worked her mouth.
However she looked at them, those people did not seem friendly toward Eun Tae-il.
However absolute a writer's power is on a production, ignoring the investors' opinion is difficult.
Writer Shin was carefully about to turn to the investors when it happened.
"It's impertinent of me, but may I say a word?"
"Eun Tae-il?"
Seeing the one who had stepped up before Writer Shin, the investors nodded with curiosity in their eyes.
"My share looking large is in order to put more weight behind Ju-hwan (Kang Seong-jin)'s story."
"And so?"
"If Do-hwan (Eun Tae-il) presses Ju-hwan (Kang Seong-jin) down hard now, the catharsis when it reverses later will be greater. This story was originally going to come later, but......"
Tae-il smiled bitterly.
"You both know it. That business that blew up a few days ago. There's nothing like an interesting story for settling it."
To hold the viewers who would leave out of distaste, it is better to pull forward the story they want to see.
Because there is no better means of holding a viewer than a good story.
Curiosity gathered, little by little, in the investors' eyes as they looked at Tae-il.
'That Eun Tae-il...... what is he?'
Writer Shin, who had meant to step up in his place, froze where she stood.
Because Eun Tae-il had seen through her intention exactly.
Tae-il glanced at a Writer Shin whose eyes had gone round, and turned his gaze back to the investors.