I Spent a Night with a Top Star Actress Chapter 2 - An accident.

Baekhak Entertainment isn’t one of the biggest agencies in the country for nothing.

It used a twenty-story building in the middle of Gangnam as its headquarters.

The wide-open view settled my tangled head down a little.

One cigarette, two, three.

I smoked and smoked until my throat stung.

When I went to light a fourth, it went down the wrong way and made my eyes water.

I threw the barely-touched cigarette on the ground and muttered.

“What did I do?”

A week ago.

I slept with the bitch.

With Lee Ha-eun, the top star.

Two grown adults sleeping in the same bed don’t just hold hands nicely and leave it there.

‘Kissing, touching… we did pretty much everything, didn’t we?’

Right.

We did everything.

With Lee Ha-eun, that top star actress.

‘Why? Because of what? How?’

The start of it was simple.

I won the lottery and decided to quit.

But of all days, that one happened to be Lee Ha-eun’s birthday.

Lee Ha-eun is a woman whose personality is so foul she has no friends to make plans with.

There was no chance she had anyone around to wish her a happy birthday.

So on Lee Ha-eun’s birthday, Lee Ha-eun’s hysteria ran at full blast.

‘Thanks to that, we had one hell of a fight.’

The only reason Lee Ha-eun could treat me however she liked was that I was her manager.

But at that point I’d won the lottery and made up my mind to quit.

There was no reason left to sit through her abuse.

Her poison came pouring out the same as always, and this time I didn’t take it. I fired back.

‘I’d been drinking too, so I wasn’t in my right mind.’

Crazy bitch, bitch, dog of a bitch…

Everything I’d packed down inside me for a year, all the resentment and the rage, I let out of me.

‘And then what did that crazy bitch do?’

…. She didn’t blink, as I recall.

If anything, she came right back at me and grabbed me by the collar.

‘So I threw the resignation letter I was holding in her face…’

Lee Ha-eun cried.

The woman who hadn’t blinked while I swore at her cried like a child when I said I was quitting.

After that I don’t remember well.

Like something had gotten into us, we were all over each other.

Once the mood caught fire, there was no stopping it.

We went straight over the line, and I slept with the celebrity I was managing.

The world’s worst bitch, no.

A top star actress.

Done thinking it through, I muttered.

“…. You’ve properly lost it, Kwon Chan.”

My heart was hammering.

Even now the memory was so dizzying that the dopamine kept coming until my brain felt like it was melting.

I fumbled in my jacket and pulled out my bankbook.

-[1,400,000,000 won]

The moment I saw the number printed there, my breathing, which had been getting shorter, settled like a lie.

“Right… that’s right.”

I have 1.4 billion won right now.

Not a hundred million. 1.4 billion.

The confidence that comes from that kind of money makes you forget the accident you had a few days ago.

I put the bankbook away and headed for Team 5’s meeting room.

The team members who’d gotten there first said hello.

“Kwon Chan’s face is a work of art again today.”

“Ugh, this is going to kill somebody. Did Lee Ha-eun throw another fit?”

I let their teasing greetings slide.

The old me would have glared and snapped back. These days I just let it be.

Then the meeting room door opened and a man built like a gangster came in.

Ma Seok-du, leader of Management Team 5.

The most successful man I know rubbed his exhausted eyes and spoke.

“I’ve got an offsite this morning, so we’re starting right away.”

The meeting ran in a heavy mood.

Team 5’s numbers have been scraping the floor lately. At this rate we could get restructured.

The kind of concrete problems that turn any office worker’s blood cold were the items on the agenda.

Normally I’d have listened to all of it with my nerves pulled tight…. Right now nothing registered.

‘I’m quitting anyway.’

The business with Lee Ha-eun had pushed my resignation back a bit, but my mind hadn’t changed.

I’m leaving Baekhak.

Restructuring, numbers, none of it has anything to do with me anymore.

That was when Team Leader Ma Seok-du grabbed me by the shoulder.

“…. And so, with this round of personnel assignments, Kwon Chan has been promoted to chief.”

My eyes went as wide as they could go.

“What are you talking about, Team Leader?”

“What do you mean, what am I talking about? You’ve been promoted to chief.”

Team Leader Ma Seok-du curled up one corner of his mouth, sly about it.

“Five years grinding as a road manager, it’s about time you moved up. Congratulations, Chief Kwon.”

---

I had a talk with Team Leader Ma Seok-du, who supposedly had a meeting that morning.

“I made chief?”

“That’s right, you brat. I pushed hard for it this time! I told the Division Head that a kid who’s handled Lee Ha-eun for a year without breaking a sweat ought to be moving up to chief by now, and I talked him around.”

“…”

“You’d better do well, brat! You got it a full year ahead of your cohort. You know there are plenty of people out there giving you dirty looks because you and I are close, right? Making chief doesn’t mean you get to lose your edge. Same as always, keep that temper down and…”

I let our dear Team Leader Ma Seok-du’s cheerful nagging go in one ear and out the other.

Somewhere in the middle of it, my tangled head cleared all at once.

‘I’m a chief?’

So I got promoted?

A guy who slept with the celebrity he manages?

I couldn’t keep my face under control.

Maybe it showed.

Team Leader Ma Seok-du tilted his head and asked.

“Why do you look like you just chewed on a turd? You made chief and you’re not happy?”

I pulled myself together in a hurry.

“I’m happy.”

“That’s the face of a happy man?”

“What, then. Should I jump around and dance?”

“Would you listen to that attitude? I thought your mouth had gotten better lately. What’s brought this on all of a sudden?”

“This is how I always talk. But…”

I asked it like it was nothing, while my heart hammered away.

“…. Now that I’m chief, do I keep Lee Ha-eun?”

Fortunately, this time I kept my face in order.

Team Leader Ma Seok-du scratched his cheek.

“That’s the odd part…”

“Odd?”

“Lee Ha-eun called me last night. Asked me to change her manager.”

“!”

“Feels like the other shoe finally dropped…. Before she met you, the number of managers she went through was in the double digits, and she only settled once she got you, right? And now, out of nowhere, she wants a new one.”

Team Leader Ma Seok-du narrowed his eyes.

“Don’t tell me you and Lee Ha-eun went a round, Chan?”

….I had nothing to say.

I don’t know what kind of round Team Leader Ma Seok-du meant, but we did go one.

Team Leader Ma Seok-du clicked his tongue.

“Sounds like you went a round. What did she throw this time? An iPhone? A tablet? Or did she chuck a purse at your face?”

“…”

“Fine. Well, good. You’ve been promoted, so it’s about time you took your hands off Lee Ha-eun anyway.”

Team Leader Ma Seok-du handed me a few sheets of paper.

“I’m putting two of the rookie road managers who just came in under you. Put one on Lee Ha-eun and stick the other with the girl group that’s debuting this time.”

“You’re a chief now, so you focus on managing instead of running around on your own two feet. You know what I’m saying, right? You’re in your fifth year, so handle it…”

I let Team Leader Ma Seok-du’s talk go past me again.

‘Lee Ha-eun asked for a new manager?’

That isn’t strange in itself.

She slept with me, so of course being around me would be uncomfortable.

But I couldn’t shake the wrongness of it.

Out of the tens of thousands of options the world’s worst bitch could have picked, she’d picked the tamest one.

‘It’s a wonder she didn’t press charges.’

What is she thinking?

She’s an unhinged, off-the-deep-end woman, and true to that, there’s no reading her.

“…. Anyway, good work, Chief Kwon.”

“Yes. Understood, Team Leader.”

“Keep the evening free two days from now. You got promoted, so I owe you a drink.”

“Let’s do beef.”

Team Leader Ma Seok-du cackled and waved a hand.

I bowed my head roughly and went out, and then I got stuck thinking.

But there was no way a head this tangled was going to work properly.

Lee Ha-eun, the promotion to chief, the lottery win…

Every one of those loud, sticky issues clung to my brain like tar and wouldn’t come off.

In the end I got up and headed for the roof again.

And I made a call.

-….

The ringing went on a long time.

But I waited, calmly.

I don’t know how much time passed like that.

The ringing cut off, and a sharp voice pricked my ear like a needle.

-Hello?

I took a short breath and opened my mouth.

“Have you been well, Lee Ha-eun-ssi?”

---

Lee Ha-eun said it to me out of nowhere.

-Let’s call it an accident.

She really is something.

This crazy bitch always goes past what I expect.

-That thing that happened. Let’s call it an accident.

A celebrity slept with the manager assigned to her.

And now she wants to write it off as an accident.

My common sense couldn’t take it in at all.

“Does that work?”

-No, it doesn’t.

“Then you want to write it off as an accident?”

-So are you going to take responsibility?

“Responsibility?”

A laugh slipped out of me.

Why would I be the one taking responsibility?

On the other end of the line, Lee Ha-eun burst out laughing too.

-That’s why I’m saying let’s call it an accident. It’s uncomfortable for both of us, isn’t it?

I picked my words carefully.

There was no way for careful words to come out.

“Are you actually insane?”

-That’s some strong wording.

Instead of answering, I pulled out a cigarette and put it in my mouth.

Maybe she felt that brief silence.

Lee Ha-eun spoke first.

-I’ve said what I wanted to say. I have a schedule to get to, so I’m hanging up.

The call ended.

I lit the cigarette in my mouth.

Once the nicotine hit, the mind that had wandered off came back.

“…. What is she thinking?”

I really don’t know.

They say top-star celebrities, actors especially, are all missing a screw somewhere, but with this one it feels less like a screw and more like half a brain.

I let out a hard sigh and muttered.

“…. Fine. Let it go however it goes.”

I’m tired now.

Tired of letting problems like this eat away at me.

So I decided to keep it simple.

Sleeping with Lee Ha-eun was an accident.

Making chief is a shame to waste, but I’m quitting the company.

The problem is our Team Leader Ma Seok-du.

‘If I quit now, the mood in Team 5 is going to be wrecked.’

That’s not something you do to Seok-du hyung as a human being.

He’s the man who took a guy with nothing, called him his little brother, got him into an agency as big as Baekhak, and pushed his promotion to chief through.

‘I’ll still quit, but I think I need to put it off a little longer.’

I rubbed my chin and picked the timing carefully.

“The girl group…. Right. I get the girls I’ve been handed debuted, and then I quit. That could work.”

As timing goes, it isn’t bad.

Solve the problem the team is buried in, get the rookie road managers under me settled, let them build a feel for the work, then walk out.

That much covers the loyalty I owe him as a younger brother.

Decision made, I ground out my cigarette.

When I raised my head, the wide-open sprawl of Gangnam was in front of me.

This is the nice part about having 1.4 billion won of breathing room.

The forest of buildings that used to look impossibly tall now felt like it was under my feet.

“Well. Not bad.”

For the first time since I joined the company, my mind was at ease.

Right now it feels like I could do anything.