Jeong Ho-min is Lee Yu-chan's manager.
Lately Jeong Ho-min has been under a certain pressure from above.
[Ho-min.]
"Yes, boss."
[Yu-chan's face is in a shocking state these days.]
"Sorry?"
[The spots, the spots. All I can see on screen is Yu-chan's spots.]
"......I'm sorry. I have been sending him to a dermatologist, but there's no improvement."
[Tell them to lay the powder on thicker. Have they not got a stronger lens filter?]
"I'll speak to them."
[And another thing. Yu-chan's lower jaw isn't in good shape. The jaw is more urgent than the skin, man. Doesn't it look like it's sticking out more than before? Are you keeping up the talk about surgery?]
"Yes. I'm pushing it constantly."
Surgery. Jeong Ho-min is under instruction to urge surgery on the celebrity in his charge.
The CEO asked.
[And is it working?]
"Yes. He seems to be considering it himself."
[Bring it up gently. Fixing your face is the person's own choice in the end. Once this sitcom finishes let's start on him a little at a time. Double-jaw work is still too early, so let's go step by step starting with the nose.]
Lee Yu-chan is passing through the cursed sixteenth year.
The period when looks change violently; for a child actor it is the stretch that decides whether there is a career ahead.
Regrettably, Lee Yu-chan falls below the standard.
Not every celebrity has to be handsome or beautiful, but the ones who sell well generally have looks above the average.
The CEO was a man who wanted that above-average.
But it is not that there is no way to satisfy him.
Surgery. There are no ugly people in the world. There are only people who have not yet met their surgeon-god.
The CEO asked.
[That's right. What happened with that boy.]
"Do you mean Seo Gang-woo?"
[Yes, Seo Gang-woo.]
Seo Gang-woo, by contrast, needs no small adjustments from an agency.
The CEO put it like this about him.
"That one is a protagonist from birth. What's that thing, the film a while back where a kid goes to his grandmother's house in the country and snivels."
"?"
[Yes, yes, that. You know it multiplied its production budget twenty times with a child actor carrying it alone? They say scripts with a child lead are doing the rounds in Chungmuro these days. All of that will be because they have Seo Gang-woo in mind.]
"......Is that so?"
[And there's no guarantee the boy will only act, is there? Turn him over to our label and put him to singing and he'd be perfect. So......]
Bring him in. So we can sign him.
The CEO said it carelessly, as if picking up a bundle that had lost its owner.
Seo Gang-woo is an actor who plainly already has an agency. Jeong Ho-min asked in a reluctant voice.
"......Boss. But isn't this against the rules of the trade?"
[Ho-min, where are the rules of the trade in the business of trading people? Whoever gives the most money wins, full stop.]
"......"
[We can't wait for the contract to end. Seo Gang-woo will come charging out frighteningly in a year or two. What could be settled by paying a transfer fee if we're lucky might turn into having to buy the whole company. Ho-min, let's do this properly. Yes? Understood?]
To summarise the CEO's words, it came to this.
Go after Seo Gang-woo.
That was exactly one week ago.
Jeong Ho-min had meant to lure a child actor who had worked with Lee Yu-chan and use her to call Seo Gang-woo out.
He had not expected the man's own agency head to catch the scent of it straight away.
'What of it? Suffering for lack of money is the ecosystem of this business.'
Kwon Do-gyeong is the head of a small agency.
All he can do is meet the approaching disaster with an indignant face.
'......Curse having no backing.'
Jeong Ho-min fiddled with the business card in his pocket. The hour of Seo Gang-woo's visit was not far off.
***
Kwon Do-gyeong asked me in a hollow voice.
"......Gang-woo, did we really have to come here."
I accepted Lee Yu-chan's suspect invitation.
The place I came to with Min Ji-yun and Kwon Do-gyeong is the set of . I said.
"I was curious how a sitcom gets shot. You said there was a sitcom among the scripts that came in."
"......Yes. That was the follow-up to . Good of you to come, then. Perfect, we can see the PD's face too."
Leaving Kwon Do-gyeong to sigh and sigh behind us, Min Ji-yun and I roamed the set.
'Everyone's so busy. It's more chaotic than the set?'
is a sitcom a little over a month from its final episode. Airing five days a week, it has broadcast over one hundred and seventy episodes in a year.
Roughly thirty-five minutes each; five days makes one hundred and seventy-five minutes, which is to say three hours.
To fill that murderous quantity every week, staff and actors alike will have been ground down without mercy.
As if to prove it, the scenery of the set did not look particularly good.
Everyone passing has dark circles laid thick under their eyes. The way they trudge along, they all look like zombies.
'......It's pitiful.'
Min Ji-yun whispered.
"Mom says absolutely never do a sitcom."
"Because it's too hard?"
"Yes. She said do it if you want to have a really, really, extremely hard experience."
To be saying that sort of thing to a child.
I used to enjoy when I was young, so I had thought about appearing in the follow-up.
That feeling has vanished clean away.
I asked Min Ji-yun.
"So what did you shoot with sunbae-nim Lee Yu-chan?"
"A daily drama. We were both bit parts."
"Ah, so that's how you knew him?"
"Yes. He's really kind. He used to give me gummy bears every time he saw me."
Min Ji-yun grinned, then watched my face and said.
"Are you all right?"
"With what."
"You're competing with sunbae-nim for a role."
"What's there to take badly? I like . I wanted to come here."
"......Hee hee."
"Why are you laughing?"
"Because the grown-ups are staring at you. Look at their faces. Funny, isn't it?"
Min Ji-yun gestured with her eyes at the people around us. I turned my head the way her eyes pointed.
The staff who had looked like zombies have noticed we exist and are wearing smiles like people about to ascend to heaven.
'......Ugh. Is that actually all right?'
It is a relief that they seem to have the strength to smile, but the state of them worries me.
When I smiled at them, one of them lost the strength in their legs and dropped into a chair.
I said to Kwon Do-gyeong.
"......Boss. Let's go quickly."
"Without seeing the PD? We should talk about the sitcom."
"I don't want to be in a sitcom."
"Right. Well, comes first anyway. We should go, we're going, we're going."
Kwon Do-gyeong dragged his heavy feet along.
And so we arrived at the dressing room.
Lee Yu-chan had apparently only just got to the set, because he was examining the mirror without having taken his coat off.
He is looking at himself in the mirror and screwing his face up.
He raises his nose with a finger, and covers either side of his square jaw.
He studies a spot closely and lets out a heavy sigh.
Kwon Do-gyeong took hold of Min Ji-yun's hand as she was about to greet him cheerfully. Min Ji-yun asked in a whisper.
'Why?'
'......I think we've come a bit too early.'
Feeling inferior about one's looks is the sort of thing boys in puberty commonly show.
But an actor making gestures like that while looking at his own face carries a slightly special meaning.
Just as we were about to pretend we had not seen and step outside, Lee Yu-chan's manager came in.
He looked at me and said.
"So you're Gang-woo?"
A bright smile hung on his face.
***
Some twenty minutes must have gone by. We parted from Lee Yu-chan and got into the van.
The meeting amounted to nothing. Looking around the set and greeting people was the whole of it.
Partway through the sitcom's PD made me an offer to appear, and I simply turned it down.
Going by the fact that we even exchanged numbers, I doubt he will offer more than a few more times.
At any rate, Kwon Do-gyeong has his head buried in the steering wheel. He muttered.
"......Just as I expected. The bastards."
It was as expected. I too heard the manager's voice on the call with Lee Yu-chan.
That instruction to Min Ji-yun to pick me out specifically and bring me along — in the end the one who wanted to see me was not Lee Yu-chan but his manager.
Jeong Ho-min gave me a business card. I fiddled with it and thought.
'With the agency head standing right there, handing an actor a business card isn't normal, is it?'
It is not a thing to do to a ten-year-old child actor. Even I can see it is rude. Shouldn't an approach like this at least be careful?
I understood Kwon Do-gyeong swallowing his anger like that.
He will be worrying that I might move across just as I am.
The benefits a major agency can offer me are not to be dismissed.
But my mind is already made up.
'I have no thought of going anywhere else.'
Kwon Do-gyeong is giving me the maximum support he can within his means.
More than anything, he respects my opinion entirely.
'Just look at how he helped without a word of complaint when I said I wanted to try the mute role.'
I need a business partner. What matters to me is not money but the person.
I looked at Kwon Do-gyeong. As it happened he was stealing looks at me in the rearview mirror as I turned the card over.
"Boss."
"Y-yes?"
"I don't need this. Would you like it?"
At that his colour brightened. Kwon Do-gyeong grinned wide, showing white teeth.
"No! Throw it away, throw it away! Shall your boss tear it up for you?"
***
A week later, nine in the evening. Choi Do-hyun arrived in front of a building in Yongsan-gu.
'......So this is Gang-woo's practice room.'
It was the practice room Kwon Do-gyeong had arranged for Seo Gang-woo.
A practice room for a child actor; the treatment is extraordinary. Choi Do-hyun let out a sound of admiration and muttered.
"Looks like CEO Kwon means to lay down proper covering fire. Well, of course you raise him properly. Look who dug him up."
The reason he had come here is that Seo Gang-woo asked him for help filming an acting video.
'Assisting with a video shoot is nothing difficult.'
But he had another purpose.
Recently a variety PD proposed an appearance to Choi Do-hyun.
has entered its middle stretch and is riding a wave of popularity.
And if he goes on together with Seo Gang-woo, who pulled the early ratings?
The later ratings would jump, no question.
'The real purpose is assisting the shoot anyway, so I'll bring it up as the situation allows.'
; the reception staff looked at the masked and sunglassed Choi Do-hyun with suspicion, but showed him to the room.
A private practice room separated from the teaching studios, and he went down the corridor and knocked lightly.
"Yes! Come in!"
He opened the door and a practice room of about five pyeong revealed itself.
One entire wall is mirrored, and the floor is wooden, so a slight spring comes back at every step.
Seo Gang-woo, who had been sitting on a two-seater sofa, welcomed Choi Do-hyun.
"You're here?"
"It's been a while, Gang-woo."
Choi Do-hyun stroked Seo Gang-woo's head. And then his eyes went round. The equipment was quite serious.
On one side a high-grade DSLR camera and a tripod were already set up. There was even lighting equipment.
"What is all this? CEO Kwon has set you up properly."
"Good, isn't it?"
"It's excellent. Do you know how to handle all this, Gang-woo?"
"Yes. The boss taught me."
Letting out a sound of admiration, Choi Do-hyun looked at the script Seo Gang-woo was holding.
Sure enough, his script had gone ragged.
"That's , isn't it? The one sunbae-nim Im A-rin is going to be in."
"They say it isn't confirmed yet. Do you want to have a look?"
Choi Do-hyun nodded and took the script.
'What's got into him? The boy who said he didn't want to show me his script.'
Whatever the case, isn't this a chance to open up Seo Gang-woo's script?
Privately he had felt some regret about not getting a proper look at Seo Gang-woo's script the other time.
Choi Do-hyun smiled and opened it.
And what met him was
'......What is this?'
A script censored for a ten-year-old child actor, and Seo Gang-woo's obsession, which had torn its way through that black fog.
Characters written in a straight, upright hand covered the script in dense ranks.