WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Potter
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ The Genius Writer Who Will Never Fall Again ◈
Chapter 24: To You, Who Will Be Sunny and Blue Tomorrow (3)
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The explosive growth of Sword Pact, One Lord was not the result of corporate viral marketing. It was growth chosen by the public.
That was why the actors, the faces of Sword Pact, One Lord, could not help receiving support from the public that far exceeded its 17.6% viewership rating.
Still, the drama had only just begun to succeed, and its stars were all but complete newcomers.
Variety-show and talk-show appearances were being arranged one by one, but at this stage, the actors remained something that existed only beyond a veil.
They had unintentionally adopted a strategy of mystery.
It happened around that time.
[Human Rights Commission: “Child abuse that shackled a young girl’s entire life.” Statement released.]
[Ryu Cheong-a’s former homeroom teacher: “She seemed deeply neglected by her parents.”]
[The Ugly Face of Greed: What Will Ryu Cheong-a Do Next?]
The ball Hyuk-jae had thrown was irresistible bait for media outlets starving for a hot story.
The emergence of a shocking new star.
An intriguing scandal surrounding that star.
Depending on how it was packaged, it was information that could make money.
The details had not yet come to light, but that also meant it was information that could be packaged however one pleased.
Entertainment media had always ignored facts to pour out irresponsible, sensational articles. That tendency was particularly severe in this era.
The air of mystery that had formed around Cheong-a because she was still a newcomer was, overnight, turned into a tool of brainwashing used by the Ryu couple to isolate her from the world.
Cheong-a’s life was packaged as something lonely and pitiful, while the Ryu couple became criminals whose very existence on this earth seemed unforgivable.
The public was handed stones.
Sadly, human beings were among the most sadistic animals on the planet.
Protecting Cheong-a, who had captivated them, was only a pretext.
The moral superiority of believing they were delivering justice, along with the righteousness of the act itself, gave them every reason to hurl those stones with all their strength.
[Are they insane? This kind of thing can still happen in twenty-first-century Korea???]
[Getting my daily dose of hatred for humanity... Cheong-a is so pitiful, what are we supposed to do T_T]
[That couple needs to be expelled from society. The system has to be fixed to prevent this from happening again.]
[Let’s see what that bastard judge does. Just try handing down another pathetic sentence -_-]
Amid the public’s fury, the Ryu couple remained silent.
They had not yet done anything in earnest, so they reassured themselves that they would be fine.
Cheong-a, however, did not.
Now that they had to cast the couple off, they acted immediately.
They bowed their head.
They needed to become the tragic, pitiable heroine.
“I apologize for causing concern.”
Her statement was clear.
She still could not believe the truth. But she had learned that the couple had used her to offer slave contracts to her fellow newcomers. Deeply aware that ignorance, too, carried responsibility, she bowed her head in apology.
She apologized once more.
Her complexion was so haggard that it needed no further adjustment.
Her cracking voice, her unfocused eyes, and the way she struggled to state her position clearly all drew sympathy from anyone watching.
People enjoyed defining good and evil with certainty. They also believed goodness had to be beautiful.
Beauty, therefore, was power.
Cheong-a looked as though she might collapse at any moment, and even that became something that captivated the public.
Without further doubt, they threw their stones with even greater force.
Pa-ran Entertainment.
The giant company that had grown into one of the industry’s greatest blights in another timeline began to fall before it could even raise its head.
Once things had progressed that far, the Ryu couple made one final desperate struggle.
No, it was closer to a death rattle.
“How do you think we raised you?!”
“You don’t even appreciate everything we fed you and the roof we gave you!”
The Ryu couple, cornered beyond measure, went to Cheong-a and caused a scene. But it only made the established narrative firmer.
Just as the public wanted, they were eventually dragged before the bar of judgment by those who needed that public support.
The anger of a crowd held terrifying power in this society.
What followed was what finally turned the whole affair into justice.
[Sword Pact, One Lord closes its fourth week with a 26.8% rating amid the headline-making scandal.]
[May Only Flower-Lined Roads Lie Ahead: Netizens Continue Supporting Actor Ryu Cheong-a.]
The name Ryu Cheong-a became a source of curiosity about Sword Pact, One Lord.
Within the justice that had been achieved, Cheong-a’s tears and laughter as she carried the story forward beyond the screen shone as a symbol in herself.
A fall, followed by success built atop that fall.
It was all so simple and easy.
For someone who understood how it worked.
[We’ll cut it off here for the first phase.]
“Okay. What’s the next move?”
[It’ll probably happen soon. Keep following them. Poke at them little by little.]
“Heh-heh-heh. Life has gotten so much more fun since I met Writer Han.”
[...I’m hanging up.]
Hyuk-jae snickered as the call abruptly disconnected.
Hyuk-jae raised his head.
A patch of blue sky was beginning to show through the dark clouds, and it was immensely satisfying.
“Ahh...”
A pleasant shiver ran down Hyuk-jae’s spine.
It was a pleasure mechanism worthy of human trash.
* * *
Human beings are extraordinarily complex creatures.
That makes it difficult to understand people one has never truly reached.
And because that is difficult, people turn others into characters to lower the difficulty of understanding them.
A tragic victim.
A vicious perpetrator.
The public’s tendency to accept Cheong-a and the Ryu couple through those frames was simply an extension of that habit.
They felt no need for deeper understanding.
I was confident that few people understood that better than I did.
Really, how many people had clung to this entertainment industry as desperately as I had?
‘Anyway...’
That was as far as it had gone.
Sword Pact, One Lord had aired eight episodes, reaching the halfway point, and after its explosive increase in ratings, had proudly climbed to first place for the quarter.
The rise would probably slow from here.
It had reached the drama market’s first ceiling.
‘It can’t be helped. The start was too bad.’
The project consisted entirely of newcomers and nobodies.
Its initial pull was weak, so naturally it took longer to build momentum.
Its growth would not stop even during this slower half-life, but I was still skeptical about the final numbers.
Still, the results were meaningful. That was enough.
I looked back over the situation.
Since that day, Cheong-a had become a little haggard.
She had not completely fallen apart, though, and her complexion was quickly recovering.
There was not much to worry about, really.
‘I had contacted an agency for her, and there was probably nowhere better than that for management at this point.’
Where had she gone?
Well.
The answer was Seong-hun hyung’s mother, and Seong-hun hyung was sitting right in front of me.
“Jae-kyung, Mother says she wants to have a meal with you sometime.”
“I should. I owe her one.”
“Man, I’ve never seen Mother like a rookie actor this much before. She keeps saying she found the real thing, then got so ambitious about work that Father says she barely comes home anymore...”
Seong-hun hyung spoke excitedly.
He cared deeply about his parents, so of course he was this happy about his mother’s affairs.
‘Baekro Entertainment.’
The place where Cheong-a had made her nest was one of Korea’s top entertainment agencies. Joo Young-wol, an actor said to be unlike any Korea would ever see again, had founded it personally, and it housed stars who had dominated their era.
An admission bar?
It was laughable to even ask.
Even before my regression, Cheong-a had been called the post-Joo Young-wol.
Leaving aside my personal connection to her, how high could Cheong-a’s market value possibly be?
Cheong-a was the versatile rising star that would not appear again for at least another ten years.
There was no way Mother would fail to recognize that value. The instant she received the news, she packed up a contract and a legal team and went to pick Cheong-a up herself.
‘Her life of hopping from hotel to hotel ended pretty quickly.’
Cheong-a, an adult runaway, was now being personally produced by Joo Young-wol in every respect as she prepared to become a true star.
There was no longer anything for me to do.
‘Her spirits...’
She was recovering quickly.
There were moments when she still looked uneasy, but those moments did not last long. It also seemed she had begun to find something to think through on her own.
“...I’ll try. I think I can do it now.”
That was as far as I let myself think before raising my glass.
“Thanks. For helping.”
“If it’s your business, it’s mine. And this time, I should be the one thanking you.”
“Why? Going to cast her in a movie?”
“Not yet. The Ryu Cheong-a you discovered is too extraordinary. We’re not in the same league.”
Fair enough.
Hyung was still establishing himself in the independent-film world.
If he secured a top-tier cast before even entering commercial cinema, people would definitely talk. And with his personality, the monster of craving recognition that he was, he would rather die than hear people say he rose to success through actors and the power of personal connections.
I snorted and clinked my glass against his.
That was when it happened.
“So, Jae-kyung, what exactly is your relationship with Ryu Cheong-a?”
“Here you go again. Stop watching all that cringey anime, hyung. You think every man and woman standing together must be dating.”
“Why are you taking this in that direction? And I don’t even watch that stuff these days...”
“What are you talking about? You went all the way to the theater last month to watch that magical-girl movie.”
“...What? How do you know that?”
He had told me himself.
It would be four years from now, when he got drunk and blabbed about it.
‘He’d probably run away if I told him he cried while watching it.’
I decided to spare him today.
As I swallowed a shot of soju, Seong-hun hyung glanced at me with trembling eyes before awkwardly changing the subject.
“W-Well, come to think of it, I’m a little worried about Ryu Cheong-a...”
“About what?”
“The scandal was pretty huge. Even with all the public support, won’t she suffer emotionally?”
I had no concerns about that.
“When has this industry ever stayed quiet long enough for that to matter? Another scandal will break and bury it.”
“Will it?”
“One hundred percent.”
I knew better than anyone that support built on hatred would stain one’s image if it lasted too long.
If a new issue did not break, I would make one break.
There was a card I had kept in reserve for that very reason.
Glug, glug, glug.
As I poured the soju, I thought of it.
‘At last, I’m sending you off.’
An angry, poisonous-toad face came to mind.
I had never been involved with that bastard through anything but bad feelings, but still.
‘Right. I’ll make sure to squeeze every last drop out of you before you go.’
Willingly, I dedicated this glass to him.
* * *
Success inevitably drew someone’s envy.
As if to prove that statement true, there was someone watching Sword Pact, One Lord’s road to success with tears of blood in their heart.
‘Fuck... Fucking hell!’
Bang!
The person slamming a fist down on the table in fury was Jo Du-ho, once a fairly prominent producer-director in WBS’s drama department.
A bloated body. A red, ugly face.
There had once been an authority about Du-ho great enough to make all of that seem unimportant.
Where had it all gone wrong?
Thinking back, there was only one point.
‘Han Jae-kyung, you fucking bastard! You miserable piece of shit!’
Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!
Unable to contain his rage, Du-ho kept hammering the table.
After being thrown out of the drama department, the heart of WBS, and demoted to an insignificant post, every moment since had felt like hell.
And yet Han Jae-kyung, the one who had done this, was about to break through the ceiling and soar into the sky.
It twisted Du-ho’s stomach so badly that he felt like vomiting.
Du-ho did not care if they died like this. They only wanted to drag Han Jae-kyung down into the abyss.
Even after falling this far, there were still people Du-ho could use.
‘Those bastards who took everything I gave them!’
Du-ho laughed like someone gone mad.
They shared fatal weaknesses. They would have no choice but to grant one request.
‘I’ll never forgive you. Never...!’
Driven mad by that thought, Du-ho had spent the past half year searching for a way.
If he could find even one weakness, he would force it open and make Han Jae-kyung cough blood.
Cheong-a’s scandal was the opportunity that came during that search.
Du-ho contacted the Ryu couple.
“You must have been treated terribly. That bastard has done this to all of us!”
Du-ho spoke passionately before them.
Everything was a conspiracy Han Jae-kyung had devised to bring them down. They were innocent people. That was the implication behind every word.
The facts did not matter.
People always believed what they wanted to believe.
The Ryu couple did.
So did Du-ho.
“R-Right! If it hadn’t been for that bastard...!”
Moved to tears by the thought that someone shared their feelings, the Ryu couple eagerly agreed.
Why did this have to happen to them?
It was the result of being unable to let go of that pathetic sense of injustice.
“This needs to be a long fight. We can’t just leave those bastards laughing and carrying on! Absolutely!”
When it came to dirty public-opinion campaigns, Du-ho had more confidence than anyone.
No matter how low Du-ho had fallen, Du-ho had spent more than twenty years in broadcasting.
This was not about surviving.
It was about making sure they did not fall alone.
And so, Du-ho acquired the card called the Ryu couple and prepared to act.
There were several deeply unfortunate things about Du-ho’s situation.
First, several people knew about it.
Second, those people held considerable personal grudges against Du-ho.
Third, those people were the sort whose viciousness was second to none.
And finally, fourth.
“Pfft...”
A certain piece of human trash, who felt orgasmic pleasure at the sight of others at their lowest, knew every detail of that meeting as well.
Before Du-ho could even begin the public-opinion campaign.
[Famous Broadcasting Executive Accused of Demanding Sexual Favors From Rookie Actor, Shockwaves Expected]
[Sexual-Favors Gate Rocks Broadcasting Industry: Prominent Drama Producer-Director Implicated in Entertainment Scandal]
[“What Was Bound to Explode Has Exploded”: Full Story of the Broadcasting Producer-Director Sexual-Favors Scandal That Has the Entertainment Industry Reeling]
“...What?”
The whistle of the train to hell sounded.
It was a massive scandal that would erase Cheong-a’s affair completely from the public’s mind.
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