"What's the matter?"
"Nothing. I'd heard he died suddenly, that's all......"
Eun Tae-il and Kim Seung-chan had no particular point of contact.
The owner tilted his head and went on.
"I'd been watching that one since he said he was starting a company with two friends. Then he went, just like that."
"I was surprised too."
"Everyone was. That friend of mine, honestly...... Yul absolutely has to have this concept, tilt Seung-ah 41 degrees to the left, a little...... good grief, my ears grew scabs."
Tae-il watched the owner give a playful shudder and smiled bitterly.
To pull even a slightly better profile photo out of him, he had worked this man half to death.
'The profile photos we shot back then turned into a free pass.'
Looking over the results beside Tae-il, the owner put a hand to his chin.
"Looking at this, the profile this time isn't far behind that one."
"Is that so?"
"One look and I know."
The shoot wrapped with a word about editing taking a few days.
Tae-il's face was complicated as he stepped out of the studio.
'That's right. I'm Eun Tae-il.'
Meeting someone who remembered him was both a kindness and a bitterness, and it lasted only a moment.
He was walking through new time now.
***
A few days later.
Tae-il received the profile files from the studio owner.
'This is what an actor's profile should be.'
From a black-and-white profile with a faint smile, to a man in a suit with a fierce look in his eye, to an innocent image in pink.
Tae-il went through the range of concepts and smiled.
'Now I can apply to auditions.'
Tae-il opened ActorNet, the app where audition notices went up.
An app for performers, used by working actors and hopefuls alike.
'Finding anything decent is hard, but there's nowhere better for building a name.'
From the day he started out as an actor, and on through his years as an agency CEO, he had been in and out of this place every day.
Which notices were worth using and where not to apply, he knew better than anyone.
After a few days of quiet digging, Tae-il turned up a notice worth having.
-Audition for the drama Welcome to Flower Boy House
-CP Seong Yun-jae
-Writer Shin Se-ri
Tae-il checked the notice over several times, and his eyes lit.
'Writer Shin Se-ri would be that Writer Shin. The one who can't stand a single line coming out wrong.'
Even before her debut there had been talk that her ability was out of the ordinary.
Sure enough, after her debut she proved it with high ratings.
Unlike Writer Lee, who allowed an actor wide room to ad-lib, she was the exacting sort who set out every character's personality and styling herself.
'If it's a Writer Shin production, it's a must. It'll clear an average day at the very least.'
He would have to pass the audition first.
He was scrolling down to apply when something odd caught his eye.
-Submission method: in person
The method belonged to another age, and Tae-il tilted his head.
'That'll be CP Seong. The man likes his analogue.'
They said he did not even use a smartphone in this day and age......
Tae-il gathered up his profile photos and headed for the production company, TN Production.
[Submissions: Welcome to Flower Boy House Audition]
He stepped into the production company's lobby, and a table in the corner caught his eye.
When Tae-il stood in front of it, the staff member looked up at him without interest and jerked his chin at a box.
"Put the profile in there and you're done."
The box was full of profile photos other actors had left behind.
With a curt staff member in front of him, Tae-il submitted his profile calmly.
'Isn't that Eun Tae-il?'
'Heard he was thrown out of his agency. Tsk...... the state of him is pitiful now.'
He was filling in the necessary forms to go in with the photos when he heard the staff muttering.
When his eyes met theirs, they looked away as if nothing had happened.
"See you on set soon."
At Tae-il's smile, they made coughing sounds like people who had swallowed wrong.
He had submitted the forms and was turning to go when an unfamiliar voice came from behind.
"By any chance, Eun Tae-il?"
Tae-il turned, and a man was standing there with his eyes gone round.
Two sets of memories turned at once, and Tae-il's mouth moved.
"Chief Jeong Tae-ung?"
"I had my doubts, but it really is you, Tae-il. It's been a while."
Chief Jeong had stopped short at first, and now he put out a hand with a clean smile.
Tae-il's arm did not move an inch.
'The nerve of him. The man who had Eun Tae-il thrown out of the company.'
Into Tae-il's head came something he had heard quietly, in the past, when agency heads met.
At his old company, Namu Ent, Eun Tae-il's contract had been terminated one-sidedly.
'Namu Ent never ended well with anyone. Eun Tae-il was no exception.'
Before the contract with Namu Ent was cut, every little thing Eun Tae-il did had become an article.
Even dropping litter in the street became an article and got him cursed at.
But the moment the contract was terminated, articles about Eun Tae-il stopped dead, as if by a lie.
'They said it was Chief Jeong who ran that campaign.'
Conversations that had passed quietly between industry bosses went through Tae-il's head.
Chief Jeong saw Tae-il refusing to so much as look at his hand, and withdrew it awkwardly.
"Leaving a man's hand out there. Here to submit a profile?"
"That's right. Why?"
"Just glad to see you. Did you come alone?"
The way he was looking about, he was searching for someone who should be behind him.
The Eun Tae-il he knew would sooner die than be the kind of man who submitted his own profile.
'Look at him checking.'
Namu Ent does not stand by and watch a departed performer get back up.
They take the success of someone who left the company as proof of their own mistake.
And lately Eun Tae-il's name had been coming up here and there as Face Senior, which would make him more curious still.
"Alone."
"Hm? You haven't signed anywhere yet?"
"Chief. I don't think you and I are on terms where we exchange news."
Tae-il drew a line, and Chief Jeong scratched his forehead with the face of a decent sort of man.
It was the face Eun Tae-il had been taken in by.
"Don't embarrass a man. Don't be so stiff with me. You hurt your big brother's feelings."
"......"
"Well, now. And here I was going to introduce you to something good soon."
"Something good? Why?"
"We were family, weren't we. That's loyalty."
The word family was absurd, and Tae-il raised a hand as though nothing were wrong.
"I'll hear it, at least. What is it?"
"PD Jin is shooting an independent film. You know who PD Jin is, don't you?"
PD Jin was a well-known PD who had survived a long time in drama.
A PD shooting an independent film was a thing that happened in the industry now and then.
"I'll connect you with PD Jin. A connection with PD Jin would help you get back up. What do you say?"
"......"
Tae-il had to force down the snort that wanted to come.
'Help, nothing. He's telling me to do free labour and slog myself raw.'
Well-known crew and famous actors did sometimes take a low fee to shoot an independent film for a PD.
For crew and actors it was a good chance to build a connection with a PD.
But PD Jin was notorious for almost never calling the people who shot his independent films onto a drama set.
"PD Jin? Really? I've got nothing to offer you right now, though......"
"Come on, what's all this between us. The only shame is that it clashes with the audition schedule......"
The corner of Tae-il's mouth went up a little, and came back down.
The intention was plain enough: do free labour instead of the audition.
With Face Senior pushing his stock up, wasting time on free labour would put a comeback well out of reach.
'Eun Tae-il might have fallen for it. Still filthy as ever.'
Even if he ignored this and walked away, Chief Jeong and Namu Ent would go on being a stumbling block in his acting life.
The smile on Tae-il's mouth deepened.
"Let me finish the audition first, and then I'll think about it."
"What is there to think about? Tae-il, you don't know what kind of man PD Jin......"
"More to the point, do you know about this? It's about Seo Jin-su."
Tae-il's tone dropped lower, and the skin around Chief Jeong's eyes moved.
"I happened to run into someone who used to work at Lime Ent, and I heard it from them. They say Seo Jin-su met the CEO over there, just the two of them."
At the name coming out of nowhere, Chief Jeong's pupils widened and shrank again.
Seo Jin-su was the rookie actor Namu Ent was currently pouring its care into.
"Isn't that a floating rumor? It's been ages since that Lime CEO passed."
"That's...... true. What reason would a different agency's CEO and a performer have to meet alone? They're not a man and a woman, and neither of them has unusual tastes."
"You're lying, aren't you? Eun Tae-il, don't play games with a dead man. However far down you are, that's not on."
Chief Jeong glared at Tae-il, and his mouth was trembling faintly.
Seo Jin-su was a rookie actor Namu Ent had found themselves and raised like something precious.
Everyone doted on him and said the atmosphere about him promised more to come.
-I think you and I would get along very well.
-Don't you have a long time left on your Namu contract?
-Oh, that's the kind of thing you'd sort out for me. This is a chance to work with an actor of my level.
Remembering the time Seo Jin-su had come to see him, Tae-il shook his head.
Seo Jin-su had just started drawing attention, and he had thrown a fit about wanting to break his contract with Namu Ent and come to Lime Ent.
When told they would discuss it after the contract ended, he had thrown another fit about whether they were trying to cut his price.
Sending him off with a suitable amount of soothing was as vivid as something from a few days ago.
He had no intention of working with a performer who would crack his agency's trust over the back of the head.
"Go and check who's really at the bottom."
The reason Chief Jeong was here would be Seo Jin-su.
To make a place for a Seo Jin-su who had flashed at the start and then failed to climb.
And now he had heard something like this......
"I've got another appointment."
Tae-il walked past Chief Jeong, whose mouth was shut so tight the lips had gone white.
His head seemed to be in a tangle; Chief Jeong did not hold him back.
If anything, the moment Tae-il passed, he pulled out his phone and ran off in the opposite direction.
'Is this what they mean by blowing your nose without using your hands?'
Tae-il looked back at Chief Jeong hurrying away, and the corner of his mouth went up.
***
"CP. Looking at profiles again?"
Eating in the broadcaster's staff canteen, CP Seong raised a hand lightly at the woman sitting down across from him.
"Writer Shin. You said you were coming in the evening."
"I came to help."
Facing each other, the two of them worked their chopsticks and turned pages hard.
The trays emptied and the canteen thinned out, and neither of them moved.
"Do they all send whatever they like when the part looks light? Writer Shin, how are yours?"
"Nothing much here either."
Writer Shin's face screwed up as well, and she pushed the file of gathered profiles aside.
"Should we just take the kid Namu Ent's been pushing? So we can claim a little credit."
"Better than a bunch of half-made ones, wouldn't you say, Writer Shin?"
"I'll go with your judgment, CP...... hm?"
Writer Shin picked up the file CP Seong had spread out.
Looking between a profile with an easy, unassuming air and horn-rimmed glasses and one with a sharp, cutting air, Writer Shin ran a hand down her chin.
"This one. I'm torn."
"Writer Shin. He's that one."
"Hm? It really is him?! He must have got into a good company. The profile came out well."
Watching Writer Shin take the profile from him, CP Seong shook his head.
"Writer Shin. Not him. Do you want to see what he's like on set?"
"Hmm......"
"Writer Shin. Rather than use him, better to use the kid Namu Ent is pushing."
Despite CP Seong holding her back, Writer Shin pulled the profile out of the clear file anyway.
"Let's at least give him a camera test. That visual of his is the real thing."
"Writer Shin, that stubbornness of yours is really......"
"If the acting isn't there it's over anyway. Let's compare him with the Namu kid."
CP Seong watched Writer Shin staring hard at the profile, and folded his arms.
'Letting him have an audition won't hurt. Eun Tae-il isn't a kid who can act.'