“No roots, no standout talent, no connections — the only things going for him are that his body’s in one piece and his face is passable enough for an alpha. There’s someone willing to take in someone like him, so I’ll set it up, and he just needs to play nice with that person. That’s what they said.”
He laid it out plainly — the fact that someone had calmly disregarded his dignity and pressured him into what amounted to selling himself. He said it like it was nothing, but it clearly wasn’t sitting well with him either, because he drained his glass with a bitter edge.
“They’re not wrong, though. It hasn’t been a short time, and I think I did what I could — but there are no results to show for it. Twenty-three is objectively young, but not in the entertainment industry.”
He gave an awkward smile and moved to refill his own glass, so Yong Cheonha quickly reached over and filled it for him.
“Apparently that’s just how this industry works. You come in at an impossibly young age, and by the time you’re around my age at the latest, you’re supposed to have broken through — at the very minimum, you should have landed a substantial supporting role by now, but I haven’t. Nobody knows who I am, even now.”
The dejection soaking through his voice was almost unbearable to hear. The soju had gone down long ago, yet the taste in Cheonha’s mouth had turned bitter.
“I don’t have the acting chops to steamroll my way through on skill alone, and above me there are already established veterans and powerhouse performers who’ve firmly carved out their place. Below me, much younger and prettier faces are coming up fast. And when they ask what someone like me does well enough to put forward — I had nothing to say.”
The most salvageable thing about him is his face, and even that has an expiration date.
The calm way he said it all left Cheonha feeling stifled, at a loss for words, and quietly seething inside.
Whether he’d just sat there and taken that without a word — how he’d come to be able to say something like that without any emotion, without stumbling, without even flinching — Cheonha tried to estimate how long it must have taken to reach that kind of detachment, but gave up midway because the anger was getting to him.
“What kind of place is staffed entirely by absolute pieces of trash. The nerve of what they said — what the absolute hell.”
A beauty like this — my ideal, the light and salt of the world — had been ground down by those kinds of people for so long that he’s fallen into despair? He’s disillusioned with his own career and burnt out? He’s giving up?
“Hyung. Really — just trust me and stick it out a little longer. My eye for these things is seriously exceptional, you know? I’m telling you, my gut says you’re going to make it, no question.”
For now, he searched Songhwa’s name on an internet portal. He figured he should check the filmography.
It’s not that he lacks talent. He just hasn’t had the luck.
He typed Chae Songhwa into the search bar, and all that came up was an entry about a type of annual plant in the purslane family.
“What works have you been in so far? I searched your name and no profile is coming up.”
If there was an official acting credit, the agency would have registered a profile on the portal — but there was no trace of anyone called Chae Songhwa anywhere.
And the agency couldn’t even be bothered to upload their own actor’s profile? This is a complete dereliction of duty……
“Ah. They said my name wasn’t great and pushed for a stage name, so I’m registered under that.”
“What’s the stage name?”
“Go Yunseong.”
“Talentless hacks. How are you supposed to run an entertainment company with taste like that. Unbelievable.”
To leave behind a name as unique and beautiful as Chae Songhwa, and come up with — what?
His face is a flower, his name is a flower. There’s so much to market here, and they went and killed it. If you have no taste, quit. Honestly.
He was born with a name that is a homophone capturing both a flower and a beauty at once — someone whose very existence screams entertainer — and these people with absolutely zero sense had gone and buried that name under something meaningless and uninspired just to make a quick buck off the entertainment industry. Laughable.
To think I could despise the head of a stranger’s agency this much, without even knowing the face or the name. He was a remarkable person, truly.
He searched the unattractive stage name again to check the filmography.
At last, a profile came up — one belonging to a person, not to a colorful flowering plant.
“……Huh?”
Is this really the same person?
He hadn’t drunk so much on an empty stomach that he couldn’t tell people apart, but no matter how many times he looked, the profile photo and the person sitting right in front of him looked nothing alike.
“Wait——?”
If he studied the features closely, they matched, but was it just because the photo was so small? He tried to zoom in, but the file size was apparently tiny to begin with — zooming in only resulted in the image pixelating into nothing.
“Was this profile photo taken at a studio?”
“No. I was doing a part-time job as a fitting model, and someone said the outfit looked good, so they took it quickly on a phone before I changed. “
“Why?”
It’s a profile photo…… Do you know what a profile is even for? You’re not a comedian or a narrator — you’re an actor. An actor’s profile. And you’re sitting here with a low-resolution profile photo that shows off none of your strengths as an actor.
“They told me I was a non-profit entertainer and I should be grateful they even registered me on the portal. I tried submitting a correction request to the portal, but apparently even if you’re the person in question, you can’t make changes to anything that’s been filed with the agency’s official seal.”
“Dereliction of duty on top of dereliction of duty, and then on top of that — sleep your way up, what the actual hell.”
Ugh. My blood pressure. I want to drag all of them into a basement right now. Uncles, I just need you to grab one person for me…… He mentally put a lid on that thought. Damn it.
“Hoo……”
Setting aside the anger, Chae Songhwa just looked so pitiable and heartbreaking to him.
A fight between a corporation and an individual — the individual had done everything they could, and the other side had shut their ears and ignored it with unreasonable logic and power. Of course you’d get exhausted.
How hard must it have been, all alone. His body and mind must both have been in pieces, and yet here he was, quietly keeping to his convictions and pushing through.
For Yong Cheonha now, Chae Songhwa was no longer simply someone with a pretty face. He was someone pretty — and someone Cheonha wanted to protect, someone he wanted to side with unconditionally.
“But I don’t really have any lingering attachment at this point, so it’s fine. Genuinely. The contract is running out, so it’ll sort itself out naturally.”
Unlike Yong Cheonha’s worry, Chae Songhwa really was fine.
His feelings had long since been settled — and Yong Cheonha, who had downed two bottles of soju at the table before the bar snacks had even arrived, was somehow getting more upset about Songhwa’s situation than Songhwa himself was.
It was just strange and a little dizzying. Whether it was the alcohol, his chest felt warm and his mood was quietly lifted.
For all that his face radiated cold air, he was a genuinely warm and entertaining person. His way of speaking was a bit rough, but he seemed like a good person.
What would it have been like if I’d met Yong Cheonha at eighteen, or nineteen, or maybe twenty or twenty-one — instead of at twenty-three.
Maybe with his encouragement and support, I wouldn’t have been able to let go of acting.
In the wider world his looks might be considered something, but in the entertainment industry, they weren’t remarkable.
He didn’t have the charisma to command a room, the stage presence to own a performance, or the acting ability to completely absorb an audience.
He had no connections to open doors for him, and more than anything — he had never had a burning, desperate desire to be in the entertainment industry. At the time, it had simply been the choice that seemed like the best option available to him.
And so, even through years of gaslighting and being worn down by the agency, Chae Songhwa’s self-worth had never been diminished, and his mental state had never wavered.
He had simply extracted the objective data and moved into clear-eyed self-assessment.
His looks, his talent, his social network — all middling. Evaluated by industry professionals as having limited growth potential, and objectively lacking in career credits.
Therefore: unable to sustain a livelihood as a performer. He was already earning less than he did from part-time work……
Then — change direction.
From the moment the agency began pushing the sponsorship in earnest, Chae Songhwa had started preparing for the civil service police exam.
The agency, and any industry or company for that matter, would not take responsibility for any individual. He had understood long ago that society was every person for themselves.
For all his delicate appearance, Chae Songhwa was a coldly rational and thoroughly reasonable person. The fact that he hadn’t succeeded as an actor didn’t diminish his worth. It simply meant it hadn’t been the right path.
In an era where lifelong careers no longer really exist, crossing off one job that wasn’t a good fit for him didn’t feel like much of a loss at all.
Of course, a considerable amount of time had gone into it, and the sunk cost stung — but feeling sorry about it wouldn’t bring the time or money back.
“Haaa…… hss. Hmm……”
But Yong Cheonha, who had no way of knowing Chae Songhwa’s situation and true feelings, was finding it harder and harder to keep the rising anger under control.
Because he didn’t know Chae Songhwa the way Chae Songhwa knew himself, the bitterness in his chest was beyond words.
“I’m going to use the restroom for a minute.”
“Go ahead.”
Yong Cheonha put a cigarette between his lips and lit it. The tip glowed red, then gradually faded to grey.
It doesn’t particularly bother me. I did what I could, and it’s nothing new.
Then why do his eyes look so sad when he says that?
He was simply born with a melancholy face. There was nothing particularly sad about it, no particular story behind it — but Yong Cheonha, with no way of knowing that, let his imagination run wherever it wanted.
What do you mean it doesn’t bother you. Five years of your life went into this. Even just for the sake of those years not feeling wasted, you shouldn’t be able to give up so easily.
For someone like Yong Cheonha — who was more prone than most to being swayed by sunk costs and emotions, often to the point of making the wrong choice — it was something he couldn’t even fathom.
The years from late adolescence into his early twenties — enduring without even going to university, juggling part-time jobs on top of everything. He’d put in the effort and hadn’t been rewarded for it. Nobody had recognized it. And that was supposed to be reality.
It wasn’t that he had chosen to give up — he had been given up on.
Even though it wasn’t his own situation, the injustice of it all made Cheonha feel like he might cry. His capacity for empathy, which went into overdrive exclusively for beautiful people, had him experiencing a kind of anguish he’d never felt before — and he just kept smoking, drag after drag.
He wanted to chain-smoke, honestly, but there was nothing to gain from coming across as a heavy smoker — so he kept it short, aired himself out thoroughly, and went back.
In the meantime the snacks had arrived, and on the table a pot of fish cake soup was bubbling away. In front of Yong Cheonha’s seat, a portion had already been served up.
Good lord.
While he’d been away, Songhwa had served up his share of the food for him. Unlike the ones who couldn’t even be bothered to set down a spoon!
Having only ever met garbage before him, Yong Cheonha’s baseline expectations for alphas he encountered personally had hit rock bottom — so even this basic display of consideration moved him enormously.
Fish cake, konjac, tofu pouches, various kinds of fishcake pieces all neatly arranged in the bowl — he was so moved he nearly took a photo of it, his hand trembling slightly.
Look at how it’s arranged. It’s neat. He has an aesthetic sense. I think we’re a good match.
Ha…… What am I going to do. He really might be my destiny.
