Scene #001 — The Entertainer
D-Day.
The grand hall of Eaton Biotech, a biomedical corporation, looked like a year-end banquet for the National Press Federation. Journalists wearing press badges crowded the space regardless of outlet or medium — broadcast, print, magazine, and more specifically, society, economics, culture, and entertainment desks alike. A scattering of foreign correspondents could be spotted among them.
Nearly a hundred security personnel were doing everything in their power to maintain order, but the scene was chaotic. And it wasn’t solely because of the shouting from a handful of reporters who’d been pushed back into the lobby due to a shortage of seats.
Outside the building, protests directed at Eaton Biotech had been ongoing for roughly ten days.
The day before yesterday, there had been a minor physical altercation. An enraged protestor had hurled raw eggs at the CEO. The first egg hit him dead-on. The second one veered slightly off course and struck his secretary square in the face — the secretary, who had been standing blankly at his side. The secretary promptly fainted. It was such an absurd turn of events — for the one who threw it, for the bystanders and reporters who witnessed it, for the viewers watching the footage, and even for the one who’d been hit and collapsed — that the whole incident had been quietly swept under the rug.
And now, the very person who had thrown those eggs was walking into the grand hall. Reporters who recognized her shot furtive glances her way.
“This is supposed to be an engagement announcement? And they’re letting in the protestors too…… Good grief. I just can’t figure out what Park Sijin is thinking.”
Reporter Kim, a veteran with over twenty years in the field, muttered under his breath. Today’s press conference was the venue for the engagement announcement of Eaton Biotech’s CEO, Park Sijin.
Not only had an engagement announcement dropped in the middle of an ongoing protest, but they’d also let in someone who didn’t have so much as a crumb of goodwill to offer. It wasn’t like they were trying to rile people up or anything. It was plain as day that this was going to turn into a commotion.
“You’re telling me. If they’d at least put out a press release, we’d have had something to dig into. Hey, Reporter Choi — haven’t you heard anything? Didn’t you say your wife’s junior from college is on the PR team here? Who on earth is the fiancé?”
Reporter Choi let the corners of his mouth droop and shook his head. The colleagues who’d caught wind of the connection poked him in the side. He pulled an even more aggrieved face and snapped back irritably.
“I asked around too, you know. I did ask — and they said they don’t even know themselves. Apparently Sijin’s been broadcasting his pheromones all over the place like he’s absolutely smitten, and yet he hasn’t shown so much as a glimpse of this person to anyone else. Secretary General Hwangbo Myeong apparently threw his hands up over how obsessively doting he was. That’s all I got.”
The reporters let out a collective groan at the useless information.
“That Park Sijin — the one they say intelligence and personality are inversely proportional in…… Fine, fine. Just tell me this one thing. What family does the other party come from?”
What an idiot. Reporter Lee from the economics desk, who had been watching quietly on the sidelines, cut in with a rebuttal.
“If it were a family worth boasting about, they’d have leaked it themselves by now. You think Eaton is just some ordinary company? The only people on earth who haven’t taken their medicine or gotten their injections are the ones who died before the company was even founded.”
“Fair point. Reporter Choi, we’re all friends here — quit holding back and spill it. Are they someone he was sponsoring? Which bar did they come from?”
“Only someone from a tabloid rag would say something like that, tsk tsk. What’s so great about someone who does nothing but handle germs in the president’s office or the lab all day? Everyone thinks it’s gross and keeps their distance. It’d have to be a political marriage, otherwise there’s no way.”
The reporters’ greatest point of interest was the CEO Park Sijin’s fiancé. This was entirely because of the man known as Park Sijin.
Four years ago, a new virus designated AP-4 — a subvariant of the adenovirus — emerged somewhere on Earth. It was a period when the nightmare of the Umbra Virus, which had swept across the entire globe in the early 2030s, seemed to be repeating itself all over again. And then a scientist appeared, like a comet streaking across the sky.
A genius scientist who had earned three doctoral degrees in his early twenties produced a treatment and a vaccine for the infectious disease seemingly from thin air. It was the first — and to this day, the only — solution in existence. That genius was Park Sijin, and Eaton Biotech was the pharmaceutical company he had founded together with a business partner.
In a world that had collapsed and been rebuilt in the wake of a pandemic, the pharmaceutical industry was a shortcut to seizing both power and wealth simultaneously. Sijin, who had amassed an enormous fortune backed by various privileges, patents, and exclusive rights, was now a mere thirty-two years old.
In other words, the wealth he had accumulated thus far was a drop in the bucket compared to what he stood to earn going forward. And depending on whose hand he chose to take, the scale and field in which the jackpot would hit would differ. Whether it was politics, finance, or entertainment — whoever he chose, the shockwave that would ripple through the market was going to be massive. Stock prices had been blazing since the moment the exchange opened at nine o’clock.
―We will now begin the press conference.
At nine-thirty in the morning, the announcement came over the PA system. Without anyone needing to call for silence, the hall fell still in an instant. The sound of the air conditioning unit — nothing more than white noise — grated faintly on the nerves, and the hands of every journalist rose to rest atop their respective tools of the trade.
Those seated in the audience drew a collective breath. The moment of revelation was nearly at hand.
Tap-tap-tap-tap. Click-click-click. Ten fingers began racing across keyboards, and shutters opened and closed faster than the blink of an eye. Amid the dazzling bursts of flash, the first to make his appearance was Park Sijin.
“Terrifying as ever today……”
A reporter summed him up in a few short words.
Park Sijin — hero who had subdued a virus — looked like the embodiment of death. His deep navy suit, thrown into contrast against the bright lighting, gleamed like mourning clothes. The deep-set eyes and prominent nose cast heavy shadows across a face so fair it verged on pallid. Perhaps because of the statement he’d made three days prior in front of the protestors — “In the end, everyone dies” — his expression carried an even deeper air of gloom.
Sijin walked out escorting a man alongside him. Every pair of eyes in the grand hall — reporters, security personnel, PR staff, all of them — fixed on the man. Viewers watching the live broadcast on television and online leaned in close to their screens, eyes bright with curiosity.
The man was slightly under a head shorter than Sijin, but still considerably tall. He only appeared slight in comparison to Sijin; taken on his own, he had upright posture and a lean build. And yet there was something distinctly odd about his air.
Veteran Reporter Kim, who had been studying the two of them, twitched her nose. The man had a pair of thick horn-rimmed glasses perched on his nose and was keeping his head quietly bowed, but being escorted by someone else looked thoroughly unnatural on him. He looked more like the type who was used to doing the escorting.
Sharpening her veteran’s instincts, Reporter Kim fixed her gaze on Park Sijin. A similar energy seemed to emanate from him as well. Were these two really a couple? The reporter’s head tilted to one side in uncertainty. But when she saw Sijin wrap an arm around the man’s shoulders like an affectionate lover and murmur something close to his ear, the doubt quickly dissolved.
“I’ve never seen that face before.”
The reporters murmured among themselves. Their gazes shifted toward the PR staff standing in a row along the wall of the hall — but the staff members were shaking their heads as well.
“Hello. I’m Park Sijin.”
Just as the whispers were reaching a peak, a cool, composed voice dominated the room. A flash went off. The man seated beside him scrunched the corners of his eyes and ducked his head.
“Before we begin, would it be possible to refrain from using flash? My fiancé is an ordinary person and isn’t accustomed to situations like this. I ask for your consideration.”
Sijin spoke while looking straight ahead. As if staking a claim of ownership, he covered the back of the man’s hand with his own. The two men’s hands were roughly the same size — it wasn’t that Sijin’s were small, but rather that his fiancé’s were abnormally large. When a man in possession of information spoke the word “ask,” the reporters had little recourse. The flashes gradually diminished.
“Thank you. In return, I’ll answer your questions as candidly as I can. Let’s begin.”
He gave a light nod to the moderator. Reporters competed noisily, shouting the names of their outlets and raising their hands. The question called out the loudest, and the most often, was without question the identity of the fiancé.
Sijin, who had taken hold of the microphone and was about to respond, suddenly twisted his upper body to the side. His fiancé, who had been silent ever since they’d walked out, lifted his gaze toward him. Their eyes met.
A smile flashed across Sijin’s face — his expression, which had been nothing but impassive until now. If it could be rendered in color, it would have been a peach blossom petal just unfurling in the spring breeze. That smiling face of his had never once been exposed to the press in all the years prior.
Sijin leaned toward his fiancé, who had bowed his head under the pretense of adjusting his glasses, and whispered into his ear. But his whisper carried through the microphone and rang out through the grand hall as if meant to be heard.
“What would you like to do? I can answer if you’d like, but since it’s a question about Gangwoo, I’ll do whatever Gangwoo wants.”
His voice melted away like a peach soaked in sugar syrup. Secretary General Hwangbo Myeong, standing below the stage, stuck a finger in his ear and worked his lips in silent complaint. Even the reporters who frequented Eaton Biotech on a regular basis couldn’t believe their ears.
A wave of secondhand embarrassment and bashfulness washed over the faces of everyone in the grand hall — and the viewers watching them from beyond the screen. It felt as though they had unwittingly stumbled upon someone else’s private rendezvous.
“I’ll — answer.”
The man responded in a low, hesitant tone, his anxiety plain to hear. Pop! Someone set off a flash. Sijin shot a lethal glare in the direction the light had come from, conveying his intentions without a single sound. Flash off. Even the shape of his lips alone was menacing.
“Ah — hello. My name is Jeh Gangwoo. I’m an employee in the secretarial department at Eaton Biotech.”
The fiancé’s identity defied everyone’s expectations. He was neither the scion of a powerful family nor a bar employee. The man pushed his glasses up and added a few more words. More precisely — I’m a contract employee.
No wonder the atmosphere had seemed strange. He was clean-cut, unpretentious, without ambition — the kind of person who considered whatever he’d bought most recently to be his finest possession. An ordinary city-dweller of the middle class.
The kind of person who believed that living each ordinary day to its fullest was the whole of what happiness meant.
How had someone from that kind of background ended up as the fiancé of a major corporation’s CEO? As everyone wondered and questions and answers continued to pass back and forth, someone let out a sharp “oh!” and stood up from their seat. It was the representative who had come in on behalf of the protestors.
Was the inevitable commotion finally breaking out? Was someone about to throw cold water on the happiness? The gazes of reporters and cameras alike converged on her. The security staff, who had been given prior instructions, made no move to stop her. She shouted:
“The egg!”
“……The egg?”
It was a non-sequitur. A brief silence fell over the grand hall. Sijin, no longer in frame, curled one corner of his mouth up in a sly arch. Egg! She cried out again, pointing at Gangwoo. Sijin looked at her and handled the situation with smooth composure.
“As you may already be aware, there was a small incident in front of the company two days ago. This individual here threw eggs at me in protest over the discontinuation of a rare disease treatment. The first egg hit me, and the second egg, in my place, was——”
He folded his eyes into a smile and gazed steadily at his fiancé. The words left unspoken seemed to say it all without needing to be said.
The secretary who’d been hit by an egg and fainted dead away in the most ridiculous fashion.
That was the fiancé’s true identity.
“Hold on — are you saying the two of you promised to marry each other within the span of just two days?”
Surely not……. They must have already been dating in-house. Reporter Kim asked the question on the off chance she was right. Sijin answered with his fingers laced through Gangwoo’s.
“Yes. Gangwoo is the only person who has ever stepped forward in my place. The instant the egg hit Gangwoo — I fell for him at first sight. Once you’ve fallen, what else is there to wait for? What a waste of time that would be.”
