WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Potter
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ The Genius Writer Who Will Never Fall Again ◈
Chapter 30: Act Two (2)
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These days, Young-chan’s life had been heading in quite...
...No, an extraordinarily wonderful direction.
The reason was, needless to say, Geomgye Ilgun.
A massive hit with 40% ratings.
What did it mean for his career that he had overseen the entire production?
Even the highest rating Young-chan had recorded in his days on set had been 35%.
That alone would have been enough to make him the most senior chief producer, yet this had surpassed it by 5%, reaching 40%.
The ratings were record-breaking even for the network, so Young-chan could not help but hold his head high.
Of course, people were ultimately selfish creatures.
Beyond the joy of contributing to the company and satisfying his ambition, there was another reason he was especially happy.
“Honey, it’s nothing much. I bought it with the incentive bonus I got this time.”
“Oh my! A wallet?”
“Ahem! It’s nothing much. You know your husband’s capable.”
Go Young-chan, age forty-three, had upheld the dignity of the family provider.
Ah, how long had it been since he had seen that admiring look?
When he was still working on set, he had been scolded for constantly being out day and night due to filming schedules.
Even after stepping away from the field to become a chief producer, he was often criticized for doing little more than sleep at home.
But Go Young-chan, executive producer of a drama with 40% ratings, was different.
Not only had he received an unprecedented incentive bonus from the network, but the project had originally been an emergency replacement for a previous production whose schedule had completely fallen apart. His internal evaluation had soared as well.
He could afford to buy his wife a shiny luxury wallet.
It meant he had achieved the great feat of preserving both the dignity of the family provider and peace in the household.
‘Yes. This is life.’
He spent a thoroughly satisfying day like that.
“Oh, you did something so sweet! All right, I’m going to wash up, so wait for me, okay?”
“Huh?”
“Ohoho!”
“?????”
...He spent a thoroughly satisfying day!!!
It happened the next day.
On a morning when even hot soup had been placed on Young-chan’s table, despite breakfast normally being beyond his wildest dreams, he happily went to work and was summoned to the bureau chief’s office first thing.
‘Did I do something wrong?’
It was an unavoidable thought whenever a superior suddenly called for him at work.
Fortunately, he had not done anything wrong. He had merely been asked to evaluate a script someone had brought in.
[The People of Star Village Island]
There was no further explanation.
Not even the writer’s name was listed.
The title suggested a slice-of-life human drama.
But considering it was a script Tae-jin had handed him, it could not be ordinary.
He needed to enter work mode.
“I’ll read it first.”
With that, Young-chan turned the page.
The moment he did, even his eyes changed.
The opening scene went like this.
A city center.
Busy office workers passed back and forth, while the bustle of the streets quietly filled the scene.
Then the camera zoomed in further, revealing a shabby company office.
[Bang!]
A middle-aged man slammed his fist onto a desk.
A company president wore a vicious expression while a female employee bowed her head deeply.
The president was shouting at her, and his choice of words made something clear.
[“Overtime pay? Hey! How many people do you think actually work while collecting every last bit of that? Huh?!”]
A boss who did not follow labor regulations.
An employee being ground down beneath him.
The woman was probably the protagonist, and before long, the situation reached its breaking point.
[“If that’s how you’re going to be, get out! Do you think we don’t hire people because we can’t find any? Do you think this company will fall apart without you?!”]
[“Yes, I’ll leave. Is that what you want?”]
[“...What?”]
[“I said I’m leaving. This company.”]
The woman left the company like that.
The president shouted something after her, but she did not listen.
She retraced her steps home.
The script directed her expression to be blank and hollow.
Not liberated, but as though she were sinking.
Then she arrived home.
The script gave instructions for the camera.
Certificates, plaques, photographs on the wall.
They showed the path the woman had taken through life.
Then came the monologue.
[‘Was this all I worked so hard for?’]
The woman’s expression twisted.
It was not anger.
[‘If this is all there is to my life, then why did I work so hard?’]
Sadness, bitterness, despair.
[‘I want to give up on everything.’]
The woman collapsed to her knees and cried.
She was a remarkably realistic character, the sort of young office worker one might find in modern society.
She had finally reached the goal of getting a job, only to realize that it was consuming her.
And on top of that came the self-loathing of believing that everyone else endured it, while she alone could not.
Young-chan felt as though the composition and details of the scene were vividly forming in his mind.
Only then did he let out a long breath at the woman’s decision.
[‘I want to leave. I want to disappear somewhere.’]
The scene was structured to draw viewers in at once.
The woman laughed emptily.
She was smiling, yet it was a smile that could never look happy.
Then the scene changed.
The woman went to the harbor and boarded a fishing boat.
[“Miss, what are you going all the way to an island like that for?”]
[“...To rest. That’s all.”]
[“You’re a strange young lady. Did you tell your family you were going?”]
[“...No. I’m an adult. I can travel on my own.”]
The woman answered the captain with an awkward smile.
The captain spoke with the rough, informal manner particular to a rural fisherman.
A sea breeze blew.
It brushed through her hair.
Could she heal the wounds society had left her with?
Brief moments after arriving on the island passed by as she thought about it.
There was a plain but understated sense of healing.
Young-chan felt that from the writing.
‘Ah, so it really is a human drama? A rural healing story. The premise gives it a pretty high floor, too.’
With melodrama woven into it, it could be pushed to a moderate success. It was also a genre with a loyal audience.
Then came the moment to make an assessment.
[“Thank you for everything today. I’m sorry to have troubled you so much.”]
[“Oh, we’re the grateful ones.”]
[“Pardon?”]
Suddenly.
[“We’re grateful family came all this way to see us.”]
The tone changed.
[Crack!]
A wooden club smashed into the back of the woman’s head.
“...Huh?”
The woman lost consciousness.
The middle-aged woman she had been speaking with looked down at her without emotion.
Then she asked her husband, the captain who had brought the woman here.
[“You sure she’s clean?”]
[“She didn’t tell anyone. Looks like the young lady just wanted to go somewhere and get some proper rest.”]
[“Ah, poor thing.”]
Young-chan was dumbfounded.
The development had overturned every expectation he had held until then.
When the woman was struck in the back of the head with that club, he felt as though he had been struck along with her.
Then the scene changed again.
The screen showed some conference room.
A detective with a public servant ID hanging from his neck spoke.
[“That concludes the briefing on the disappearances of travelers near the West Sea.”]
“All right, I heard you.”
Then his superior, a female inspector, smiled sweetly.
[“Hmm. I understand that people have gone missing, but this feels like you’re forcing the pieces together. You’re going on circumstances without evidence, aren’t you?”]
[“If we investigate a little further...”]
[“Detective Park. We can’t just overturn everything like that.”]
The male detective.
He was probably the protagonist.
He pressed his lips together tightly, his frustration obvious.
The inspector only smiled as though she were troubled.
The narrative that had unfolded from the woman’s perspective was, from the outside, an incident.
And the detective was a character assigned to solve that incident.
No, it did not end there.
From then on, Young-chan read as though possessed, fully immersed in every line.
He rapidly pictured the scenes in his mind and followed the story.
The detective’s daily life, the uneasy feeling the disappearances gave him.
The ways he tried to uncover the truth, building his character in the process.
And at the end of it.
The inspector sat at her desk, smiling sweetly as she spoke into the receiver.
[“Yes, Village Head.”]
That one word.
The female inspector, who had seemed somewhat frustrating and suspicious until then, came into focus.
[“Nothing unusual here, thanks to you, Village Head.”]
She smiled as she traced her index finger across the top of her cup.
That was the end of episode one.
Young-chan raised his head in a daze.
Setting aside every other question, the first thing that came to mind was simple.
“...Is this Writer Han?”
“You recognized it right away?”
“No active writer besides Writer Han can keep this quality while driving the pace this fast. And the genre choice...”
“It’s complex. Complex, but not unfamiliar.”
The structure divided the genres by character.
The female protagonist began as though she were in a human drama, only for it to be confirmed as suspense.
The male protagonist was a detective in the tradition of classic investigative dramas.
Finally, the female inspector was the central villain of a picaresque story.
Three characters, three stories.
Yet they converged into a single incident with perfect cohesion.
As the case progressed, the distance between them narrowed until they were bound to collide at the end. It offered a pleasure both unfamiliar and deeply familiar.
It made one imagine countless possible developments.
Young-chan got goosebumps in the best way.
He could not believe something like this had already emerged before even a quarter had passed since Geomgye Ilgun ended.
“There are clear selling points. No, it’s definitely mainstream.”
“Right. Whether it’s suspense or investigation, they’re genres that have proven their performance in the drama market. Maybe that’s Writer Han’s trait. Choosing genres that don’t become barriers based on age or gender.”
“More than anything, it’s the picaresque-style villain. An enemy who must be defeated, but is so enormous it feels hopeless. The fact that the villain will share investigative information from a place where she can’t be recognized keeps the tension from letting up.”
How would it unfold?
It maximized that question.
For a sixteen-episode drama, it was the finest raw material, capable of shaping every element it needed in every possible form.
It was Jae-kyung, all right.
The structure was so cleanly executed that the thought naturally arose.
Still, it was not without concerns.
“...I think casting will be important for this.”
“I know. Especially the inspector role. Just anyone won’t do.”
“Yes. The required level of acting is extremely high to make that character convincing.”
“But that won’t be a problem.”
Young-chan was surprised.
Tae-jin rarely spoke so definitively.
Why?
That was the moment the question arose.
“It looks like my wife wants the inspector role. Almost certainly.”
“...!”
Young-chan went stiff.
At first, he could not understand the words.
No, even after understanding them, he could not believe them.
“...You mean actress Joo Young-wol?”
“That’s right. She looked like she absolutely didn’t want anyone to take it from her.”
Young-chan covered his mouth with one hand and rubbed at his lips.
The corners of his mouth were rising.
Naturally.
‘Joo Young-wol for initial viewer pull?’
Throughout Geomgye Ilgun’s run, every time they shattered its ceiling for success, the entire production team had agreed on one thing.
If only it had had stronger initial viewer pull, the ratings could have gone even higher.
It was an unavoidable regret.
An actor’s name recognition had that great an impact on a drama.
And was Joo Young-wol merely an actress with fame?
No.
She was, from the beginning, a genuine monster who had overcome every unfavorable risk through acting ability alone and risen to the top.
A mutant people said would never appear again in Korean history.
Joo Young-wol as the inspector.
Then?
‘This...’
Could it fail?
A proven actress and a writer who had just proven himself.
The actress had selected a script with ample potential, and she would make it explode more brilliantly than anyone else.
For a drama, where every factor affected its ability to draw ratings, these were the best possible conditions.
Young-chan felt goosebumps race up his spine.
“So, Chief Go. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
How could he not?
“...Yes. An all-star cast. A high-budget in-house production. Is that right?”
His emotions surged.
It was unquestionably the network’s main project.
“Take your time and aim for the third quarter of 2016. Set the budget at the highest level. With Geomgye Ilgun airing overseas too, our potential funding is quite high. Put it all back into this. Don’t think of it as a moneymaker.”
Tae-jin said that, then added one more thing.
“We’re making this a 50% drama. It has to go down in history.”
It was impossible.
A 50% rating, half the nation, was not something you could achieve simply because you wanted it.
That number was something metaphysical, created when luck, people, and timing came together.
But did that mean they should give up on the challenge?
“We’ll make it.”
It was not even a ridiculous thing to say.
Luck ultimately favored those who were prepared.
Throughout history, human effort had always been what drew luck in and made it its own.
A project that would mobilize all of WBS’s strength.
Had it been six years since the network’s last 50% drama?
It was a challenge to reach a number they had not seen again since the work Joo Young-wol had left behind back then.
They would use Joo Young-wol again, and shape the versatile rough gem WBS had discovered.
“We’ll make it happen somehow.”
Young-chan smiled fiercely.
Forget the dignity of being a family provider. As a man, he could not help but burn with excitement for this challenge.
That was how the work began.
Its progress was so quick that less than a week passed before the contract reached Jae-kyung.
At the negotiating table, Young-chan held out the contract and spoke.
“Writer Han, you know what this means.”
To make the point clear, WBS had offered Jae-kyung the following.
“Casting actress Joo Young-wol as the inspector, a writing fee of eighty million won per episode, and priority in casting the lead roles. Those are the terms we’re offering.”
Never before in the history of broadcasting had anyone writing only their second work received conditions like these.
“WBS’s main project for 2016. Let’s do this together.”
That was how unprecedented the offer Jae-kyung received was.
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