— No, I’m saying I miss you.
Because he was someone who could unhesitatingly say he missed him even in such a situation, it seemed like it would be okay. No, it was okay. Even if they both experienced uncomfortable and awkward things right now, he had at least a weak confidence that they could endure well.
“…Me too. I’ll contact you later.”
Even as he hung up after greeting him like a whisper, he heard Dowon’s laughter, so his face heated up for no reason. Only after dragging out time for a while, holding onto the disconnected phone and just flipping through screens here and there, could he return to the office.
* * *
Dowon’s eyes, moving busily, went back and forth over the tablet for quite a while. Until Min Jeongryul, who had been waiting beside him, brought other materials, his posture didn’t even falter. It would be right to say he couldn’t. If he missed even one thing carelessly, matters that couldn’t be cleaned up would be revealed one after another, giving him a headache. It wasn’t that he hadn’t anticipated it, but it was quite distasteful even as he proceeded because it was work caused by someone who had caused quite a grand accident.
“How did the other articles go out?”
“We didn’t deliberately catch even the internet media. For now, it seems we’ve concentrated attention this way.”
“Make a separate list of the third-rate speculative article outlets. I think it’ll be useful later. What about the Chairman?”
“He entered the headquarters 30 minutes ago. He probably only found out this morning.”
Han Giseong, the chairman of Jaeyoung Group, was someone who had occupied the chairman’s position for a long time without a shred of wavering. Of course, with his upright image, the trait of being a dominant alpha, and the publicity direction of uncompromising media added, the appearance revealed to the outside was the head of a fairly sound media group. The problem, if it was a problem, was that he was a chairman-like person even to his family.
Dowon’s gaze, who had been putting down the tablet and tapping on it with his finger, turned to Min Jeongryul. His sharply honed gaze flashed briefly. Soon he composed his expression and turned his gaze to the materials being handed over. The documents describing various circumstances were checked with his eyes then passed back to Min Jeongryul and immediately went into the shredder.
Soon Dowon took out the phone he’d put in his pocket and looked at a few articles. The most recently uploaded article was a photo of Muyoung taken in front of the building where the wrap party was. Muyoung’s appearance with a hardened expression, seemingly surprised as he hadn’t anticipated the situation, looked more youthful than usual. Though Muyoung had a look where it was hard to gauge his age, dressed in a knit and black jeans, he looked young enough to seem like a student at a glance.
After a few photos, the photo of Dowon and Muyoung standing together in front of the hospital appeared consecutively in related articles.
Although it wasn’t late at night, because of the somewhat dimly taken photo, it really felt like tracking and photographing people hiding some great secret. On the other hand, Muyoung, smiling beside Dowon with his head slightly bowed, looked like a handsome man who suited the profession of actor in many ways, and he himself, standing beside him naturally escorting him, was subtly giving off an extremely intimate relationship. It was a photo that could make anyone who saw it curious about what kind of relationship they had.
“What happened with the wrap party today?”
“It’s proceeding normally for now. After the article came out, he went back to the office with his manager, and before that, it seems he carefully asked for understanding only from the director, main writer, and production team.”
“We need to make sure there’s no talk internally. No, talk coming out wouldn’t matter either. What about Seo Kyungju?”
At Dowon’s question, Min Jeongryul took out the phone he had and, after completing a few operations, placed it on the desk. Several photos, messenger screens, and bank transaction records passed by in order.
“We obtained the materials. Circumstantially, it seems he had several meetings with someone who’s a planning PD. But he couldn’t get up to the director or CP and seems to have been blocked in the middle. Because of that, the relationship with his agency rather fell apart, so the story leaked out.”
“With such lack of caution even on set, it would be strange if it didn’t leak…”
On the screen were scenes of Seo Kyungju talking with other people in a room, scenes of money and goods exchanging, and lists of deposited amounts.
The messenger content was a spectacle. Making it seem like he could grasp everything he wanted at first to make Seo Kyungju cling on, then making excuses to raise the amount or make him comply with other demands—that was what brokers did, not real planning PDs. Celebrities who contacted such people and did under-the-table work to influence casting without others knowing either went completely with the agency or did it completely without the agency’s knowledge—one of the two.
“This person was with NM, right?”
“Yes, the CEO was confirmed to have no involvement in what Seo Kyungju was doing. Seo Kyungju seems to have asked the NM CEO to somehow let him do the work he wanted, but NM seems to have thought differently from Seo Kyungju’s opinion. It hasn’t been long since they signed the contract anyway.”
“It seems like he’ll self-destruct even if left alone…”
In Seo Kyungju’s case, his greed was excessive. They’d just attached a broker briefly to dig into the circumstances or source of spreading the tabloid. It was work to use someone to check and eliminate possible variables, so they hadn’t put that much effort into it.
To think that just to put Muyoung in a lead role, they would exclude a person like Seo Kyungju—his self-awareness could only be seen as tremendous. When he confirmed during the call that he’d even touched Muyoung while being caught up in his inferiority complex alone and speculating here and there, he was even fed up with Seo Kyungju’s stupidity. Should he say that something that would have worked out well on its own if he’d just stayed still was brought to ruin by greed?
Moreover, now they’d even obtained evidence of Seo Kyungju directly lobbying to get into a proper production to the broker who had approached him disguised as a planning PD. His guts to not care about means and methods were impressive. If he’d worked hard at auditions with those guts instead, the results might have been different.
“Those who should get caught don’t, and innocent people get exposed because of their greed. Pointlessly.”
When it came to Muyoung, whose confidence had dropped considerably, he would have been grateful if they’d just fanned a small competitive spirit, but now Seo Kyungju was clinging to that broker instead. From Dowon’s perspective, it was like he’d paid money to feed prey to them.
Of course, since they’d approached wearing the veneer of being a veteran in this industry, it was naturally tempting, but it was unexpected that even Seo Kyungju, who had quite established his career and recognition, was desperate for a role that didn’t seem that way to Muyoung alone. At this point, he wasn’t particularly curious about the reason.
“What do they say?”
“Since we already handed over the evidence to our side, they said they’ll handle cleaning it up themselves from now on.”
“It’ll be completely finished then.”
Anyway, the broker they’d attached was a more vicious person than he looked, so Seo Kyungju couldn’t easily pull out his foot. By the time he sensed danger, it would be after he’d already fallen into a quagmire to the point he couldn’t do anything, and he would no longer be entangled with Dowon or of course Muyoung either. Dowon’s gaze, lightly agreeing with Min Jeongryul’s words, turned to the next material.
“When you told him to clean it up, he made an even bigger mess, so the Chairman must be very angry. What about Director Han? Does he seem to know about the situation here?”
“He doesn’t seem to know about this matter yet. Moreover, the Chairman moved toward that side faster than expected.”
“No matter how clueless Director Han is, he should stay quiet just for today. We’re handling the cleanup here.”
Perhaps because he’d looked through a large amount of materials all at once, Dowon, hiding his strained eyes beneath his eyelids, leaned back deeply in his chair. Though it was a brief moment of silence, Min Jeongryul waited nearby with a familiar attitude, as if that alone was enough, near Dowon who didn’t even move while keeping his eyes closed.
It was fortunate the article had broken at an appropriate time. Director Han—Han Cheolwon, the managing director of Jaeyoung Ilbo—was Dowon’s older brother. Though the age gap wasn’t large, they were in a relationship that couldn’t become close. Chairman Han Giseong’s conservative and power-oriented educational philosophy had made the brothers that way. From childhood, the two had been nothing more or less than chess pieces to solidify the group’s power and properly succeed it, rather than brothers.
Jaeyoung Group was already like Han Giseong’s grand cathedral, and the power of the media company grown to its limit exceeded the scope that ordinary people could infer. Chairman Han’s ability to never stop aggressive investment that didn’t miss timing and business expansion, while having extremely cautious and cold judgment, had made Jaeyoung what it was today. And it was no exaggeration to say that Han Cheolwon was sitting in a position laying the groundwork to succeed Chairman Han’s group.
“I don’t know how far someone who only relies on his position can go, but…”
Conservative Chairman Han, separate from being a dominant alpha himself, was extremely wary of trait-bearers’ impulses. Even if they possessed outstanding intelligence and ability, he had a firm stubbornness that he couldn’t entrust group management to trait-bearers. It was a kind of trait discrimination, but no one could oppose Chairman Han’s way of thinking.
The outdated mindset that the eldest son must unconditionally carry on the family line also played a part. According to Chairman Han, he believed that a position with responsibility in any adversity starts from birth. Because of his belief that what he’d built with his own hands should be carried on responsibly by those he’d created himself, from childhood when memories were even hazy, no behavior that would become a stumbling block in Han Cheolwon’s path was permitted at all. The reason Dowon remained in the ambiguous position of CEO of J Ent., which was hard to even call a Jaeyoung Group subsidiary, was because of that. Of course, such circumstances weren’t known to the outside.
“Then that’s settled, what do they say in Seocho-dong?”
“Actually, contact came just a bit ago saying thanks. He said he’d handle talking to Director Han himself, so we don’t need to worry anymore.”
It wasn’t once or twice that Han Cheolwon had done foolish things from his position, but this matter was a bit different. If he was going to feed money, he should have at least done it without leaving traces. If he did moronic things like pinning what he’d messed up on someone wearing a judge’s robe, the things already being covered up would obviously get flipped over even more. From small violence incidents to tremendous lobbying. They say there’s no one without dust when you shake them out, but to this extent, Han Cheolwon was more like creating dust as he went.
“Tell him it would be better for his son to go far away too. If he gets entangled, there could be reporters digging into the whole family.”
