I Spent a Night with a Top Star Actress Chapter 19 - Give Me All of Them.

Division Head Park Yu-hyeon trailed off.

“Hm, Chief Kwon is….”

“Interesting, isn’t he?”

“Yes, well. One thing’s certain, you can’t get a read on his character.”

CEO Baek crossed her legs and said,

“How far do you think it’ll go?”

“Twenty, you mean?”

“Both.”

The corner of CEO Baek Ji-won’s mouth moved in the faintest twitch.

“”Queen of Joseon”, Twenty. The projects Chief Kwon is holding right now.”

“That’s a difficult question.”

“Then shall I change the question?”

CEO Baek Ji-won’s body leaned slowly forward.

“If I put weight behind Chief Kwon, how far do you think he’d go?”

Division Head Park Yu-hyeon scratched his cheek, at a loss.

“Isn’t it too early to let the reins off?’

“If he’s a stud, letting them off early is better.”

“Is Chief Kwon really a stud?”

“At least so far.”

CEO Baek spoke with conviction.

“He scatters seed here and there and brings back results, doesn’t he? Then he’s a stud. Ones like that have to be raised loose.”

Division Head Park Yu-hyeon thought it over carefully and answered.

“How about handing Twenty’s scheduling over to Chief Kwon entirely this time?”

CEO Baek smiled a slanted smile.

“I like it. Make it happen.”

---

It’s a good day.

Because the work of the last few weeks bore good fruit.

On a day like this you have to eat something good.

I took the Twenty kids to a pork belly place with a reputation for good food.

“How long has it been since I ate meat…!”

“Korean samgyeopsal is so goood!”

“The trainer isn’t going to yell at us tomorrow, right?”

“Even if she yells we have to eat, unnie. We have to eat if it kills us!”

The moment we walked in, the girls’ eyes changed.

Going by those blazing eyes alone, they were beasts that hadn’t eaten in days.

But it wasn’t only the girls’ eyes that changed.

The eyes of the customers already eating changed too.

“Wow, that’s insane.”

“What is this, are they celebrities?”

“Why are they so pretty?”

“That’s a girl group, one hundred percent….”

“Should I ask what group they’re from and get an autograph?”

The muttering coming to my ears had my shoulders lifting for no reason.

Our girls are pretty, it’s true.

Especially today!

Full of myself, I headed for the room I’d reserved.

I sat the Twenty kids down in a row and took the seat across from them with Lee Ye-ji and Director Choi Jeong-eun.

I passed the menu to the Twenty kids on the other side and said,

“Order everything you want to eat.”

Nova said, tongue flapping,

“Really, Chief?”

“I don’t lie about food.”

“Hehe. Then, first, belly and neck mixed, fifteen portions!”

“?”

“Girls, what sides do you want!”

At Nova’s words the Twenty kids shouted, excited.

“Doenjang stew for me!”

“Naengmyeoon!”

“Hm…. I’ll take bibim-naeng. Ah, I want rice too.”

“Let’s get a plate of yukhoe as well!”

“I could go for pajeon too…should we send it?”

…. What is this.

Seven people and fifteen portions of meat alone.

And they’re ordering this many sides on top of it??

‘Hold on, does all of that fit in their stomachs?’

I don’t mind leftovers, I’m worried they’ll overeat.

But it seems the worry was pointless.

“At the company dinner last time, four of them ate twelve portions of meat.”

“….”

“And packed the sides in on top of it…. It felt like watching a feats-and-wonders show.”

I shut my mouth at Lee Ye-ji-ssi’s words from beside me.

Let’s see…

Did I bring the corporate card?

Meanwhile the meat we’d ordered came out and the real eating show began.

“Hey! Seol Chae-i! That isn’t even cooked!”

“Meat’s fine underdone.”

“What are you talking about! That’s beef! Give it here!”

“Ga-eul unniee…just one bite of your bibim-naeng.”

The meat and the side dishes, stacked like a mountain, vanished at speed.

I put in another order and said,

“Eat slowly. You’ll give yourselves indigestion.”

“We’re fiine…!”

“Nova-ssi. Swallow what’s in your mouth before you talk.”

“Hehe…!”

Oh-ho.

Smiling that cutely doesn’t get you everything, you know?

You’re supposed to be in a girl group, so why do you eat like that?

With my right hand I flipped the meat, and with my left I dropped a few well-done pieces onto Director Choi Jeong-eun’s and Lee Ye-ji-ssi’s plates.

“Director Choi and Ye-ji-ssi, hurry up and eat too.”

Director Choi picked at the meat and said,

“That feeling where you’re really hungry but the food won’t go in…. Do you know it, Chief?”

Lee Ye-ji beside her tore into a wrap and said,

“Oh! I know that feeling, Director! You want to eat but your body’s too tired to open your mouth, right?”

“Exactly…. that’s precisely how I feel right now.”

“At times like this you should have a bit of soju…. heh heh.”

“…. Shall we have a glass, Ye-ji-ssi?”

By now I’d become a meat-grilling machine, and I answered.

“You know that isn’t allowed, Ye-ji-ssi?”

“O, of course! I have to drive the girls home!”

“Director Choi, if you feel like it, have a glass.”

“Drink you pour for yourself doesn’t taste good~ I’ll just eat meat.”

Director Choi’s picking turned into serious work with the chopsticks.

Sweat beaded on my forehead along with it.

Really, these women….

Is there a hungry ghost living in their stomachs?

However much meat I grill, there’s no end to it.

Before I was a road manager I even worked part-time at a meat restaurant, and in front of this eating show I couldn’t hand over a business card.

And then, with me not having eaten a single piece and doing nothing but grilling,

a thick wrap appeared.

“Chief, eat while you work.”

It was a surprise gift from Rei, who’d been filming the hardest eating show of anyone, and I said, startled,

“You’re giving that to me?”

“Yees! Because you were only grilling….”

I felt a little dazed.

Reasonably so, since I’d thought Rei was uncomfortable around me.

Is the awkwardness with Rei finally ending too?

I swallowed the wrap in front of my face in one bite.

“How is it, Chief?”

“…. It’s good.”

At my praise Rei smiled shyly.

At that childlike smile I burst out laughing along with her, and then,

another wrap appeared.

“Chief. Eat mine too.”

“?”

It was a wrap Ga-eul was holding out.

…. But I haven’t even swallowed the meat yet.

Still, looking at Ga-eul’s blazing eyes, there was no way I could decline.

In the end I gulped down the half-chewed meat and took Ga-eul’s wrap too.

And for whatever reason, a competition suddenly broke out.

“Oh, oh!”

“I want to make a wrap too!”

Nova and Seol Chae-i started making wraps, and Lee Ye-ji-ssi beside me held out a wrap with grilled garlic, mushroom and kimchi all packed in.

“Chief, in one bite, aah~”

Lee Ye-ji-ssi, are you in your right mind?

How am I supposed to fit a wrap that big in one bite!

“You’re so cruel! So the wrap I made isn’t even a wrap, is that it!”

“…. That isn’t the issue, it’s the size.”

“It’s a wrap for you, Chief, who’s been working so hard. It can’t be small!”

“….”

In the end I put Lee Ye-ji-ssi’s wrap in my mouth too.

Holding back a mouth about to burst, I chewed the meat down bit by bit, and the Twenty kids died of delight.

“The Chief’s face, amazing!”

“I have to take a photo of this….”

“Chief! Look over here! I’m taking a picture!”

It felt like it would become dark history, so I turned my head fast.

The Twenty kids shrieked with laughter and kept shoving the shutter at me to the end.

Going by their behavior alone they’re pure devils, so why is the corner of my mouth grinning like this.

Looking at it this way, I’m hopeless too.

If I get married later and have a daughter, it’s confirmed I’ll be a doting fool.

We ate and drank and talked like that, and all that meat and all those sides vanished in no time.

In the end Director Choi Jeong-eun, who’d ordered a bottle of soju and poured for herself, got thoroughly drunk and shouted,

“Let’s go to a second round! On a day like today it’s got to be a second rouund!”

I put Director Choi Jeong-eun in a taxi first, then sent the Twenty kids, soaked in the smell of grilled meat, off with Lee Ye-ji-ssi.

In that moment the nerve line I hadn’t known was pulled taut snapped, and my body melted.

“…Ah, I’m dying.”

If I go home I’m confident I’ll collapse straight into sleep.

Luckily tomorrow is the weekend.

I worked hard, so if I rest well I’ll come back around.

And once my condition recovers, I have to run again.

The uphill is over, so all that’s left is to sprint across a wide open plain.

‘Until we take number one on the charts.’

Thinking about that future pushed back a little of the tiredness coming over me.

A laugh slipped out of me.

“This is good.”

Living is enjoyable these days.

I hope tomorrow comes fast.

---

I rested well over the weekend.

Maybe that’s why.

Monday morning felt so fresh.

I opened the window and bright sunlight poured in.

“Good weather.”

It’s really summer now.

The excessively clear sky lifted my mood on its own.

With a good heart and a good mood, I went in to Baekhak’s head office.

Lately I’d been missing the Monday morning meeting because of Twenty.

The urgent fires are out now, so it’s time to attend again.

I smoked a cigarette at my leisure and opened the meeting room door with a light heart.

The low, sunken air of the meeting room hit me like a wave.

“….”

Hmm…

What’s this.

Was the air in our Team 5 meeting room always like this?

I turned my head and saw Seok-du hyung with his face screwed up.

“…You’re here, Chief Kwon?”

“Yes, I’m in, Team Leader.”

“Whew! Then everyone’s here except Road Jeon Hyeong-woo?”

Team Leader Ma Seok-du let out sigh after heavy sigh and muttered.

“All right, let’s start the meeting. Nothing…. nothing big for now.”

What’s he saying.

Going by his face, there’s something big.

Thanks to Seok-du hyung, who looked out of sorts to anyone, the morning meeting ended in heavy air.

Team 5’s roads filed out of the meeting room with bewildered faces, muttering.

“Why is the Team Leader such a low front today?”

“Looks like something happened.”

“Did he get chewed out by the Division Head again?”

I let my team members’ muttering go in one ear and opened my mouth.

“All right, out with it, Team Leader of Team 5.”

“…Out with what?”

“The reason our Team 5 team leader has been heaving sighs since a fresh Monday morning.”

Seok-du hyung trailed off and muttered.

“When did I sigh at all….”

“Don’t dodge, hurry up and say it.”

“Hm…. it’s nothing much.”

“Then tell me the nothing much.”

“It really is nothing much…. Hm. The thing is, at the team leaders’ meeting…”

Seok-du hyung explained the whole story.

I listened closely and my brow drew together.

‘Management Team 1, Team Leader Kim Seong-hun?’

A familiar name.

Reasonably so, since Team Leader Kim Seong-hun is one of the people who’ve been glaring at me these last few days.

“Queen of Joseon” hitting at a record level put a few such people around, but Team Leader Kim Seong-hun was special even among them.

‘I think Team Leader Kim Seong-hun was glaring at me before “Queen of Joseon” was even a hit.’

It was probably from when I started going in and out of the Division Head’s office and the CEO’s office.

The moment our eyes met he’d snipe at me and pick a fight.

But hearing Seok-du hyung’s story, it seems I wasn’t the only one he picked a fight with.

“…. So Team Leader Kim Seong-hun tried to take Seo Tae-jun?”

Seok-du hyung shook his head.

“If he’d just tried to take him, I wouldn’t be this angry.”

“?”

“That bastard worked it from behind.”

The corner of my mouth went crooked.

Team Leader Kim Seong-hun played office politics?

“What’s there to play politics over in a department the size of a rat’s tail?”

“I couldn’t believe it either when I heard.”

“What did he do, exactly?”

“He cut a deal directly with the Division Head to take Seo Tae-jun.”

“!”

Look at this.

Seo Tae-jun is our slot, and he cut a deal for him out in the open?

Then Seok-du hyung’s story started.

“Kim Seong-hun…as much as I hate the sight of that bastard, he’s good at the job.”

“He pushed Team 1’s numbers and worked Division Head Park Yu-hyeon to take Seo Tae-jun.”

“I was already fed up hearing that…. and then this bastard said this at last week’s meeting.”

Seok-du hyung spoke in a voice with the anger pressed down hard into it.

“That rather than give Seo Tae-jun to Team 5 with its bad numbers, they should give him to Team 1.”

“!”

“Wow…. hearing that in a meeting with no filter on it, my mind went blank for a second.”

Three lines drew themselves between my brows.

“So you just took it?”

“Am I that kind of guy? Thanks to our Chief Kwon, ‘Queen of Joseon’ blew up, so I shouted him down that we are not in a slump!”

“….”

“And then he had nothing to say, and his lips came out like a duck’s? A guy past thirty, acting like a brat! Watching him, it was unbelievable, unbelievable!”

Seok-du hyung shook his lips out in a long sputter, as if to cool the anger.

Watching him, I thought,

‘Right, it is unbelievable.’

And that’s what bothered me.

Management Team 1’s leader, Kim Seong-hun.

Why on earth is he so desperate to catch my eye.

We’re all wage earners in the end.

Can’t we just give a little ground and each do our own work and get along nicely?

My head couldn’t understand Kim Seong-hun, but my chest said something different.

That company life can’t go that way.

Especially in a management department, where performance pay and bonuses matter.

In that moment my heart went crooked.

‘Should I just clear him out?’

But in what way?

Unlike Kim Seong-hun, I don’t enjoy office politics.

And I have no intention of it.

But if I set my mind to doing it, I’m not the type who can’t.

The weight in my heart kept crossing the line and coming back, and then

Seok-du hyung started complaining again.

At that moment.

“Argh! The anger still isn’t out of me. And that bastard is really vicious….”

Lightning cracked in my head.

“He went and snatched up Choi Su-hyeon, who came in as a free agent.”

Choi Su-hyeon?

The Choi Su-hyeon I know?

‘The one going around picking up married women in an affair…. that Choi Su-hyeon?’

My eyes went as big as a bullfrog’s.

‘Look at this.’

If I play this right….

I might be able to handle both bombs at once.