WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Potter

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

◈ Why Do My Dramas Keep Becoming Hits!? ◈

Chapter 31: The Writer Who Wrote This Is Your Brother (6)

──────

Yoon Dong-woo invited his college friends over to celebrate his long-awaited, sweet vacation.

The four old buddies had not gathered in a while.

Delivery food and green soju bottles cluttered the living room table as their loud drinking session carried on.

"Ah! The drinks are going down well today."

"Hey, your glass is empty. Fill it up already."

They moved from pointless old stories to complaints about their bosses, constantly finding new topics to drink over. As he knocked back a shot of soju, Lee Min-ho casually mentioned one friend's name.

"But isn't Yeon-woo coming? We're all together for once. We should see him too."

Park Su-ho, who was picking up a piece of pork belly, answered indifferently.

"Don't know. His phone was off, so maybe he's busy."

"Busy? What's a guy who quit his job so busy with?"

"That unemployed bastard is really pretending to be busy. Heh."

The news of Ji Yeon-woo's resignation.

As soon as it came back to mind, the friends began offering sympathetic comments as if they had planned it.

"Seriously, what was he thinking? He acted without considering the consequences."

"He got screwed over too. He worked himself to the bone for years, then the higher-ups just took it from him. Who wouldn't be pissed off enough to flip the table and quit?"

"Still, he knows how small the broadcasting world is. He shouldn't have blown up and left like that. It won't be easy for him to find another job right away."

Everyone added a word or two, worrying about Ji Yeon-woo's future.

Then Park Su-ho, who had been clicking his tongue bitterly, took it a step further.

"Hey. What if the shock of quitting turned him into a shut-in?"

"What the hell are you talking about all of a sudden?"

"No, think about it. He barely answers our calls these days, and he doesn't even show up in the group chat."

"That's true. Last time, he said he was busy and avoided us too. Looks like he just stays holed up at home."

"Well, after going through all that hell only to get tossed aside, how could he be mentally fine? Poor bastard. We should drag him out soon and buy him some serious consolation drinks."

Their pity for Ji Yeon-woo was reaching its peak.

Throughout all of it, one person had silently listened while sipping soju. An innocent smile that he could not hide rested on Yoon Dong-woo's lips.

'Heh. What am I supposed to do with these ignorant idiots?'

Yoon Dong-woo took another drink and looked at the TV.

Did they know?

That the drama on the screen was the work of the unemployed shut-in bastard they were pitying.

'My lips are itching to tell them.'

Yoon Dong-woo, who knew the whole story, wanted to fire off the truth like a machine gun, but he held it in and only snickered.

He was looking forward to seeing their faces when they learned the truth.

"Anyway, I do feel bad for Yeon-woo. His debut was right around the corner... Huh?"

That was when it happened.

Park Su-ho, who had been talking without pause, suddenly stopped.

His chopsticks, which had been pointing into the air, were now aimed at a man on the TV.

"W-What the fuck?! Hey! Isn't that Yeon-woo?!"

"What? Yeon-woo?"

At Park Su-ho's sudden shout, the other friends reflexively turned toward the TV.

And after seeing the man's face in the drama, their reactions were no different from Park Su-ho's.

"What? Where's Yeon... Huh?!"

"...!"

A man standing across from a glamorous actress on the screen.

The man whose collar the actress had grabbed, whose cheek she was giving a satisfyingly hard slap!

It was unmistakably their old friend, Ji Yeon-woo.

"C-Crazy! Why the hell is Ji Yeon-woo there?!"

"W-Why is he getting slapped on TV?!"

The living room instantly descended into chaos.

As if their drunkenness had vanished at once, the friends jumped up and rushed to the TV monitor, staring at the screen as though they could not believe it.

"Hey, I'm not seeing things, right?! That's Ji Yeon-woo, isn't it?!"

"Y-Yeah! It is! That clueless face! It's obviously Yeon-woo!"

"What the fuck! Did he suddenly debut as an actor?! With that face?!"

Cries of shock, confusion, and cognitive dissonance poured out.

At the center of that complete disaster was Yoon Dong-woo, who had barely been holding back his laughter.

In the end, he could not contain it and rolled around on the sofa in a fit of laughter.

"Pwahahaha! Heh, hahahahaha!"

"Why the hell are you laughing, you crazy bastard?!"

"Hey, Yoon Dong-woo! Look! Ji Yeon-woo is on TV! And on Living with My Ex-Boyfriend Somehow, of all things?!"

The friends stood there with their mouths hanging open, while Ji Yeon-woo teared up after being slapped by the actress.

Yoon Dong-woo looked back and forth between them and burst out laughing again.

#

tvM's main control room.

Right after the broadcast of episode three of <Living with My Ex-Boyfriend Somehow> ended, the room was silent as a grave.

But the silence did not come from calmness. It was the collective cognitive dissonance caused by the bizarre numbers on the monitors.

"I-Is this... are these numbers correct?"

The staff member checking the data broke the silence in a dazed voice.

His voice trembled slightly.

"Why? What is it this time?"

Department Head Ha Do-woon frowned and walked over to the monitor.

The staff member pointed at the screen as though unable to believe it.

"T-The retention rate..."

"Yeah, what about it?"

"It hit 120%."

"...What?"

Ha Do-woon's expression went blank for a moment.

120%?

Retention was a metric showing how consistently viewers stayed on the channel from the beginning of a broadcast to the end.

For it to exceed 100% meant not only that hardly any existing viewers had left, but that new viewers from outside had poured in like mad during the broadcast.

"And if you look again, the graph never dipped even once. It only rose. The viewers stayed glued to the channel."

"Hey, you bastard. Does that even make sense? What is this, a black hole? Are you saying they didn't leave even during the commercial breaks?"

"Y-Yes. I thought it was an error too, but I checked against the ratings drops on other channels. It's accurate."

This was beyond absurd. It was ridiculous.

Ha Do-woon hurriedly moved his hanging jaw and asked.

"T-Then what about the ratings? What are the ratings?"

"The real-time ratings... are 19.4%."

"...!"

Everyone in the main control room sucked in a breath.

Ha Do-woon let out a hollow laugh in disbelief.

'19.4% in real time?'

There was an unwritten rule in broadcasting.

Real-time ratings indexes like ATAM were usually lower than the official ratings announced at seven the next morning.

In other words, the real report card coming tomorrow morning would definitely begin with a 2.

Which meant...

'It's nearing 20% after only three episodes?'

It was an era when even major terrestrial network productions struggled to exceed 10%.

Yet a cable drama, and the debut work of an unproven rookie writer at that, was drawing such an insane upward curve?

In all of Ha Do-woon's years in broadcasting, Ha Do-woon had never seen such a phenomenon.

"Just how high is this going to go?"

As Ha Do-woon kept staring in shock, Woo Young-taek let out a hollow laugh and muttered from beside him.

"Huh. So the long shot really came through..."

Surprise and a strange thrill crossed his face as well.

"What? What long shot? What the hell are you talking about?"

When Ha Do-woon asked in confusion, Woo Young-taek shrugged as though it were nothing.

"Department Head, didn't you see the whiteboard in the hallway?"

"The whiteboard? You mean the one with the ratings bets?"

"Yes. Until recently, everyone laughed at the writer for being overconfident and betting on 30%."

Woo Young-taek stared at the 19.4% on the monitor and smirked.

"But at this rate... the writer is going to sweep the entire pot alone."

Ha Do-woon fell silent at Woo Young-taek's words.

Ha Do-woon's thoughts became tangled.

Thirty percent.

Ha Do-woon had thought it was only the baseless confidence of a rookie writer who had just debuted, or an arrogant boast tossed out in high spirits.

But now, after only three episodes had climbed right to the edge of 20%, that number was no longer an absurd act of bravado.

The script's insane pull, the unconventional lead casting, and the explosive buzz that had erupted despite the controversy.

What if none of it was a coincidence, but all part of the writer's carefully calculated game plan?

Once Ha Do-woon reached that thought, a cold shiver ran down Ha Do-woon's spine.

"...Then."

Ha Do-woon stared blankly into space before moving trembling lips.

"That writer had 30% ratings in mind from the very beginning...?"

#

These days, MBS's drama department was practically a funeral home.

No, to be precise, it was closer to a shipwreck about to sink.

In an already harsh broadcasting environment where the ratings pie kept shrinking, <The Snare> had received truly disastrous results.

They had expected to lose to SBC's competing drama, <Suspect X>, to some extent. But the present reality, where tvM's monster cable drama <Living with My Ex-Boyfriend Somehow> had twice their ratings, was unbearable.

They desperately needed the next batter in their lineup to hit a home run, but...

"D-Bureau Chief. What did you just say? Baek Min-hee and Hong Eun-seo too?!"

"That's right. KBC put writer Baek Min-hee in its main lineup for the second half of next year. Writer Hong has already signed a broadcast slot contract with SBC."

"...."

Baek Min-hee and Hong Eun-seo.

They were absolute giants of the Korean broadcasting world, the kind whose names alone made passing viewers stop changing channels.

The news that those two tigers would both return on the same days in the third quarter of next year was practically a disaster for every other broadcaster.

That alone would have been enough to shake the industry, but the real tragedy lay elsewhere.

"...Bureau Chief. Then the broadcast dates are...?"

"Baek Min-hee will air Saturdays and Sundays starting the first week of July next year. Writer Hong will air three episodes a week, Friday through Sunday, starting the third week of June. And the broadcast times are, well..."

They overlapped.

By an unfortunate coincidence, the broadcast dates and times of the two star writers overlapped with the new drama by writer Kim Hee-su, which MBS had planned to push as its flagship production for the third quarter next year.

"Ha... This is driving me crazy. So what did writer Kim say?"

As Gong Myeong-ho loosened his tie and asked, Bureau Chief Bae Seong-hwan held his forehead as though he had a headache.

"What else? They're throwing a tantrum, demanding that we either move the broadcast slot up or push it back entirely. They said that if we refuse, they'll pay the penalty and hand the script over to a general programming channel or cable network."

"...So you reached an agreement."

"Yes. We decided to postpone writer Kim's drama by a year."

It was regrettable, but it could not be helped.

Gong Myeong-ho understood writer Kim's position, and Bureau Chief Bae likely had no better option.

'Nothing is going right...'

But because of that, the broadcast slot for the project they had anticipated most had vanished entirely.

Gong Myeong-ho asked with concern.

"Then... how are we filling the empty slot in the third quarter next year? It's already time to build sets and begin pre-production..."

"That's the problem. You know how small this industry is. Word must have already spread among the writers, because everyone's trying every possible way to avoid that particular slot."

At Bureau Chief Bae's words, Gong Myeong-ho sighed in despair and rubbed his dry face.

"Hmm... CP Gong, you don't have a writer in mind, do you? Even an established writer past their prime would be fine. I just want to fill that empty slot somehow."

"...."

Gong Myeong-ho had no choice but to remain silent at the department head's question.

There was no way he had a writer in mind.

Not one star writer, but two, standing firm as the twin peaks in that hellish broadcast slot.

In other words, it was a throwaway hand where they could not expect ratings at all. A slot no different from a sacrifice.

Who would volunteer to offer up a script they treasured like a child in a place like that?

Even writer Kim Hee-su, who was currently in good form, was desperately trying to avoid competing with those two.

'...Unless they're a lunatic who could laugh off their own drama failing.'

Without showing his troubled feelings, Gong Myeong-ho merely swallowed a deep sigh.

Join our discord at https://dsc.gg/wetried