“You even did an extra shoot?!”
Park Song-hu sprang up from the sofa.
Louie tumbled off his stomach with an indignant MRAOW! but he had no time to pay attention.
Park Song-min stopped halfway through taking off his shoes by the front door and nodded weakly.
After spending the whole afternoon slipping in and out of Kang Yoon-ho, he felt as though his soul had left his body.
“Ah, yes…… The writer added a few lines…….”
“What?! Writer Seo Ha-yeong did?”
Park Song-hu's face twisted.
Seo Ha-yeong was known throughout the industry for being exacting.
And she had added dialogue on set?
“Seo Ha-yeong, on set, in person? Really?”
“Y-yes. Really.”
Park Song-hu let out a disbelieving laugh and stared up at the ceiling.
“Haa…….”
What did that sigh mean?
Park Song-min gulped.
“……I think you might have a talent for acting.”
“E-eek! What are you talking about? I'm a novelist! A web novel writer!”
“Yeah, I know.”
Park Song-hu walked into the kitchen, took some water from the refrigerator, and spoke with his back turned.
“But honestly, your novel was fucking boring.”
“…….”
Park Song-min clenched his fists.
That had really gotten under his skin.
But he quickly unclenched them before Park Song-hu could notice.
“I'll give you the characters. You write those really well. But the plot moves so slowly that I caught myself scrolling past it.”
“Th-that's…….”
“Oh, right. Speaking of your novel.”
Park Song-hu jerked his chin toward the laptop on the table.
“Have you checked your Soseol Joa page?”
“……No. Why?”
“Take a look.”
Park Song-min had a strange feeling.
He opened the laptop and went to Soseol Joa.
Then he opened Mini Song's author page.
Ongoing series…… two?
“……Huh?”
<The Dungeon That Never Sleeps> had always been there.
But there was another one underneath it.
And its title was……
<The Youngest Son of a Conglomerate Family Doesn't Hide His Power>
“……W-what is this? And what's with this painfully generic title?”
Park Song-hu calmly answered as he mixed lemon powder into his water.
“I wrote it.”
“…….”
“I was bored.”
Park Song-min stared at the screen.
Chapter 1.
The serialization had started that afternoon.
Park Song-hu must have posted it while he was shooting.
“……You wrote a web novel?”
“Yep.”
“On my account?”
“You hadn't logged out. If I used my own account, apparently I'd have to write tens of thousands of characters over a week before they'd promote it to an official series.”
“…….”
He laughed.
Not figuratively. He actually laughed.
“Pfft…….”
“……? I'll kill you, seriously.”
His brother, writing a web novel?
Did he even know what a web novel was?
The conventions of the genre?
How to pay off foreshadowing?
Cliffhangers?
How to time each burst of dopamine?
“Hey.”
“……Yes?”
“You're laughing because you think I can't write one.”
“Of c—No! I-I haven't read it yet, so I don't really know!”
“Whatever. I'm going to take a shower.”
“Yes, sir!”
The bathroom door shut.
Park Song-min stifled his laughter.
Then he mimicked what Park Song-hu had just said.
“I wroooote it. I was boooored.”
The door flew open.
“Hey.”
“…….”
“Cut it out. Seriously.”
“……Ah, yes.”
And then.
SHHHHH―
Water began running in the bathroom.
Whenever Park Song-hu took a shower, it lasted at least an hour.
The water never seemed to stop, and Park Song-min grew anxious as he listened from outside.
Because of the water bill.
“Can't you take a shorter shower?”
He shouted through the bathroom door.
“Isn't this short enough already?”
“I'm done in five minutes!”
“So what?”
Of course, Park Song-hu paid the entire water bill, but that wasn't the point for Park Song-min, who had frugality ingrained in him.
SHHHHH―
The water was still running.
Park Song-min sighed and sat down on the sofa.
“……Sooo whaaat.”
He muttered it even more quietly than before, and Louie climbed onto his lap.
The traitor had returned.
“Mrow.”
“Forget it. Go away.”
“Mroooow?”
Louie gazed up at him with innocent, clear eyes.
……So cute!
He spent a while grinning and petting Louie before he finally opened the laptop.
‘It's probably some run-of-the-mill, mass-produced fantasy. No, can he even write that?’
Honestly, he was tired and didn't want to read it at all, but he would be in trouble if his brother came out and asked him about the story.
‘I'll just skim it and humor him.’
Did his brother think this market was easy?
‘Tsk, tsk. You foolish aspiring writer.’
A little later.
Park Song-hu came into the living room with a towel draped over his wet hair.
“Did you read it?”
“…….”
No answer came.
Park Song-min stared at the laptop screen with a dazed look, completely absorbed.
Park Song-hu snorted.
“You're completely hooked.”
“……Wh-who's hooked?!”
To be honest…… unlike his own work, this story's plot really did move fast.
Within the first chapter, it established the protagonist's position, the central conflict, and his enemies.
“The pacing is…… pretty fast. That's not a compliment. It just means the story has no depth—”
“Of course. Pacing is the lifeblood of a web novel. Most of the comments on yours say it's too slow.”
“!”
Park Song-min felt that sting again.
As the senior writer still waiting for his break, he had to find something to criticize.
“Sure, he's a third-generation conglomerate heir, so of course he's supposed to be confident and charismatic. But as he is now, he's just a stereotypical rich heir. There's nothing for readers to identify with.”
“…….”
“I can't see what makes this character his own person. Why does it have to be him? What makes him different from any other conglomerate heir protagonist?”
Park Song-hu rubbed his hair with the towel and muttered,
“Your results look like that because you cram all that crap into the first chapter. In a web novel, the dopamine hit comes first. Got it?”
……Hey!
“Anyway, getting back to what we were talking about…… You should seriously try acting.”
“……What?”
“Acting. Be an actor. Give it a try.”
“…….”
“I'm telling you, you have talent.”
Park Song-hu tilted his head back and started drying his hair with a hair dryer.
His neck stretched long, revealing his snow-white jawline.
WHIRRRR―
“No, think about it for a second—”
“Yep, can't hear you.”
“…….”
He switched the dryer off for a moment.
“Just do what I say.”
“Are you actually out of your mind—”
WHIRRR―
He switched it back on.
“What a fucking lunatic…….”
“What?”
He had heard that.
Feeling Park Song-hu's piercing gaze, Park Song-min pretended to count the hairs in Louie's fur.
Only after Park Song-hu had finished drying his hair could they have a proper conversation.
“When I heard about today's shoot, I knew. It wasn't just anyone asking to add lines. It was Seo Ha-yeong herself. The woman famous for being so particular.”
“Th-that was just luck…….”
“That fucking luck never came my way.”
“…….”
‘Come on. Be honest with yourself.’
Park Song-hu thought it over.
When it came to acting, his little brother was better than him.
He hated admitting it, but it was true.
And part of him was tired, too.
The entertainment industry.
Managing his image.
His career, tangled up ever since the controversy.
He had made his comeback, but he'd lost his sense of direction and didn't know what to do next.
All his advertising deals had dried up, no leading roles were being offered, and cameos were where he stood now.
Meanwhile, he could see talent in his little brother.
An ability to understand a character.
An ability to bring emotion to life.
‘……It'd be a waste for him to shut himself in his room and do nothing but write novels with that talent.’
It wasn't as though he wrote good novels, either.
“No, how does that make any sense……?”
Park Song-min was dumbfounded.
He knew exactly what his brother was saying.
Become an actor.
Stand in front of a camera.
Go out in front of people.
And do it in his brother's place!
What kind of over-the-top soap opera was this?
“Mrow?”
Louie's ears pricked up on his lap.
The cat seemed to have sensed a change in the air.
“I won't do it.”
Park Song-min spoke firmly, a rare occurrence.
“No, actually, it's not that I won't…….”
“It's not?”
“I really can't do it anymore!”
***
The Soseol Joa platform.
It was a quiet afternoon when <The Youngest Son of a Conglomerate Family Doesn't Hide His Power> appeared.
Chapter 1's subtitle was Woke Up as the Youngest Son of a Conglomerate Family.
It was a thoroughly familiar transmigration story.
At first, nobody paid it any attention.
The pen name Mini Song was virtually unknown on Soseol Joa.
The writer's existing work, <The Dungeon That Never Sleeps>, had only about three hundred subscribers.
Posting a new series was hardly going to draw a crowd.
So began the daily chapters.
On the first day, Chapter 1 received 27 views.
Zero comments.
On the second day, 49 views.
One comment.
-I clicked because I like conglomerate stories. The pace is fast. Nice.
On the third day, views jumped to 330.
It had made it onto the bottom of the Free Best list.
Five comments.
-The plot is really tight. Whoa. Sets up a plot hook in Chapter 1 and pays it off by Chapter 3.
-Wasn't the pacing of all this writer's earlier stuff like choking on dry sweet potatoes? I dropped The Dungeon That Never Sleeps after just two chapters.
└But read this one and you'll be shocked.
└Is it really the same person?
└Finally figured it out!
-Holy shit, the dopamine rush this chapter. Hahaha.
On the fourth day.
880 views.
Fourteen comments.
Park Song-hu had poured all his effort into making this chapter hit hard.
The protagonist was about to be brought down by his uncle at a board meeting, but, armed with knowledge of the future, he pulled off a perfect counterattack and delivered a burst of satisfaction as refreshing as soda.
The card he played for the reversal overturned the readers' expectations completely.
The chapter was designed to leave their mouths hanging open after its final sentence.
-Insane.
-Is this really by the same writer as <The Dungeon That Never Sleeps>?
-The pacing feels completely different.
-The old one had good characters but dragged. This one moves like an express train.
-You've awakened, Mini Song!
-See? You should've written like this from the start.
-I'll give you another chance this time.
The next chapter went up.
It landed on the first page of Free Best, and its views passed 7,000.
Following the reversal, the youngest-son protagonist won the chairman's deep favor and approval.
-Ooh, Chairman Choi is so damn cool. Whoa.
-Chairman Choi shows up here?
-What charisma!
When the next chapter, with a touch of the entertainment industry, was released, the comment count began to pass one hundred.
-I only read modern-day stories, and I haven't seen anything this good in the past year.
-Please post back-to-back chapters.
-Best work this year.
-Keep this up.
-And the logic behind it all! How does this writer know the entertainment industry so well?
-Must've done some serious research.
And so, a week later.
It not only broke onto the first page of Today's Best, but finally reached number one.
Views passed 20,000 in a single day.
Comments topped three hundred.
The subscriber count began skyrocketing in real time.
-I've followed this writer since the previous work, and the entire style has changed. It feels like someone else gave him writing advice.
-Shit, I stayed up all night reading this T_T_T
-Next thing I knew, I was at the latest chapter.
-Back-to-back chapters. Please, post more back-to-back chapters!
-Writer, do you like fried dumplings?
-I want to lock you in a room and make you write all day.
-Writer, remember: posting chapters always comes before your health.
Mini Song's name gradually began circulating in web novel communities, too.
-Anyone read Mini Song's new series?
-I thought the title sounded like mass-produced fantasy, but it's pretty good. Yeah.
-Give it a try, give it a try.
-I was tired of conglomerate stories, so I skipped it until I saw it hit number one on Best. It's fucking delicious, for real.
-Please make a screen adaptation.
-Oh, it really would be fun as a drama. It's already set in the present day.
And three days later.
A message arrived in Mini Song's Soseol Joa account.
[Hello, Writer Mini Song. We are the web novel management agency ‘Aces Media’.]
Aces Media.
A management agency considered top tier in the web novel industry.
Commercializing intellectual property, advising on screen adaptations, managing overseas rights.
Its roster was full of writers whose annual revenue exceeded one billion won.
‘……No way.’
In fact, Park Song-min had submitted his work to Aces several times before.
All he had received in return was a single, impersonal rejection email.
He had cursed at the thoughtless reply and slammed his laptop shut, and now……?
“…….”
From that same Aces Media.
Now.
An unsolicited message.
[There are matters we would like to discuss concerning <The Youngest Son of a Conglomerate Family Doesn't Hide His Power>. Please contact us at a convenient time.]
‘……Really?’
Park Song-min turned his head stiffly.
And there stood……
“Why are you so surprised?”
“…….”
Park Song-hu, grinning broadly.