I Spent a Night with a Top Star Actress Chapter 20 - Give Me All of Them.

I ran back through the conversation with Seok-du hyung and thought.

“…. So it works out like this?”

I felt a little dazed.

Choi Su-hyeon, Chungmuro’s rising star, the one having the affair.

And Team Leader Kim Seong-hun, who’d started catching my eye lately. The two of them pulled each other in.

A bomb had wrapped its arms around a bomb.

“This is blowing my nose without using my hands.”

Should things be this easy?

It unspooled so smoothly that it made me uneasy instead.

A bit of pressure came over me too, like I ought to be doing something….

but rationally, sitting still is the best move.

So I changed the subject.

When exactly did Team Leader Kim Seong-hun start bothering me?

‘Right…. it was from when I was running road for Lee Ha-eun.’

Before I became Lee Ha-eun’s new manager, the man before me was Kim Seong-hun.

He took a fracture from an iPad Lee Ha-eun threw and quit as her manager, or so the story goes.

That would have been the first time Kim Seong-hun, who was obsessed with numbers, tasted failure.

‘And I held out.’

I lasted a year with the same Lee Ha-eun who’d handed Kim Seong-hun his failure.

From around that point Kim Seong-hun started picking at me in that quiet way.

Having finished running it back, I understand.

“Bad blood.”

Kim Seong-hun and I can never get along.

The bigger problem is that the trench between us is only going to get deeper.

In that moment the unease and the pressure pushing down on my chest flew right off.

“Right….”

If one side has to disappear before either of us is comfortable.

Then dancing the knife first is the right call, isn’t it?

And I’m the type who doesn’t hesitate once my judgment is made.

I pulled the smartphone out of my inside pocket.

“Reporter Seo. Let’s blow the Choi Su-hyeon affair story next week.”

Tick, tock.

The timer on the time bomb started moving.

---

A few days passed.

They were ordinary days with no incidents worth naming, so why is it.

Lately the corner of my mouth wouldn’t stop twitching.

I thought about the cause and the answer came fast.

‘Team Leader Kim Seong-hun.’

Right.

Team Leader Kim Seong-hun’s eyes were stuck to the back of my head and wouldn’t come off, so the corner of my mouth kept twitching.

“….”

I didn’t notice while I wasn’t conscious of it, but once I was, I could definitely feel it.

Team Leader Kim Seong-hun is aware of me.

Those greed-stuffed eyes bored into the back of my head at every opening.

A laugh came out of me without meaning to.

‘Wow…. he was watching me that closely?’

More astonishing than annoying.

What could the team leader with the best numbers possibly be lacking, to act like that?

At the same time, I got curious.

The bomb called Choi Su-hyeon goes off next week. Will Team Leader Kim Seong-hun still be glaring at me then?

I couldn’t predict what gesture he’d make, but one thing was certain.

From next week the management office is going to be very loud.

Ah, centered on Team 1, where Team Leader Kim Seong-hun sits, of course.

Thinking about that future twitched the corner of my mouth again.

Ah, seriously.

I have to stop smiling!

I forced the stray thoughts off and checked the schedule table.

My eyes lifted a little.

“So today’s the day of the Seo Tae-jun meeting?”

The first meeting with Seo Tae-jun, the crown prince of romance who’d nearly become the crown prince of affairs, was set for today.

I scratched my jaw slowly and muttered.

“Seo Tae-jun, what kind of person is he?”

I pride myself on having met a fair number of celebrities, but I’ve never once met Seo Tae-jun.

Of course I’ve only never met him. I have heard the rumors about him.

‘They say he’s the proud type.’

Beyond that, a bit full of himself….

And I think I heard he has a self-centered personality.

I clicked my tongue without meaning to.

“Tsk…if that’s true, he’ll be brutal to manage.”

If the rumors are right, that’s the personality that clashes most with a manager.

A little uneasy now, I went down to the third floor where the PR team is.

“Team Leader Seo. Do you happen to know actor Seo Tae-jun?”

“Seo Tae-jun? The Seo Tae-jun we just signed as a free agent?”

“Yes. He’s been assigned to Team 5. What kind of person is he?”

Team Leader Seo twisted at a perm that looked like it came from a neighborhood salon.

“…. Hm. Well, there aren’t any bad rumors.”

“There aren’t?”

“But as a person he’s…. they say he’s the obnoxious, arrogant type?”

I let out a heavy sigh.

If this is coming out of Team Leader Seo’s mouth, it’s as good as fact.

“Still, he isn’t the type to go around causing incidents. Don’t worry too much.”

Why does someone telling me not to worry smile that infuriatingly.

I moved on and headed for the office.

The moment I sat down I searched Seo Tae-jun’s filmography.

“…. First debut work, [A Thousand Years of Love].”

After that, every drama and film he appeared in put up steady numbers.

Even the first one, “A Thousand Years of Love”, recorded a finale rating of 11.4%, so you could call it a solid average.

I nodded without meaning to.

‘With a filmography like this, of course he’d get arrogant.’

An actor with no smash hits, but no failures either.

In a climate like today’s, that much would get him good treatment anywhere.

Then a call came in from a number I didn’t know.

I cleared my voice and hit the answer button.

“Yes, this is Kwon Chan.”

[“Is this Chief Kwon Chan of Management Team 5’s number?”]

“Yes, that’s right.”

[“Ah, this is Seo Tae-jun.”]

He came faster than I expected.

I stood up as I answered.

“Hello, Seo Tae-jun-ssi. Are you at Baekhak’s head office right now?”

[“Yes. I’m on the first floor of the lobby. Should I come up to the management office?”]

“Yes, I’ll come down to meet you.”

I waited in front of the elevator with my arms folded.

Not long after, a man in his late twenties with clean-cut features appeared in a ball cap.

“Chief Kwon?”

He has a good voice.

But it was also a voice with force pushed into it.

People who get treated as the lead wherever they go have exactly this voice.

“I’m Chief Kwon Chan of Team 5. Good to meet you.”

Seo Tae-jun looked around and took off the cap he was wearing.

“The Baekhak building is really nice, isn’t it?”

“Everyone who comes for the first time says the same thing.”

“Are we talking here?”

“No. We should go to a meeting room.”

We traded this and that small talk on the way to the meeting room.

Seo Tae-jun sat down and stared straight at my face.

What’s this?

Is there something on my face?

I tilted my head, and then Seo Tae-jun’s mouth opened.

“So from now on, Chief Kwon, you’re the one handling me?”

Keeping a smile on, I answered.

“I’m in charge of you, Seo Tae-jun-ssi, but once we find a road, I won’t be running the field myself.”

Seo Tae-jun suddenly frowned.

“Ah, that’s a bit of a problem.”

“…. Sorry?”

“While I was meeting with Baekhak I told Division Head Park Yu-hyeon I wanted to work with you, Chief Kwon. You didn’t hear?”

My eyes went wide.

Seo Tae-jun wants to work with me?

Why on earth?

No, more than that, I’ve never heard any such thing from the Division Head.

It threw me, but with the mask over my face my expression didn’t move.

Acting as if I knew the whole situation, I asked,

“It’s only the field I won’t be on. I’ll be supporting you too, Tae-jun-ssi. But….”

I let the words trail and threw out the bait.

“Why do you want to work with me?”

Seo Tae-jun leaned forward.

“Actor Lee Ha-eun, ‘Queen of Joseon’.”

“!”

“I heard you’re the one who recommended that script.”

Ah, so that was the reason?

I felt the air go slightly out of me, and then Seo Tae-jun lit the fire again.

“I also heard that every actor you’ve handled has a good filmography.”

“….”

“And since I’ve come to a new company anyway, I wanted to work with a manager who has momentum and ability.”

I nodded without meaning to.

Mm.

I do have some ability, and I do read scripts, don’t I?

“My understanding is that an actor at your level normally picks his own scripts, Seo Tae-jun-ssi.”

“Ah, not me.”

“Why not?”

“Because I have no eye for scripts.”

“!”

This time I was genuinely thrown.

My voice shook a little as I asked,

“…. Uh, then. What about the work so far?”

“The company picked all of it for me.”

I swallowed a breath inside.

That respectable filmography was all work chosen by someone else?

“I tried a few times, but at my old company, ATH, the moment they saw anything I picked they’d have a fit.”

“What were the ones you picked?”

“The scripts I thought were good recently were ‘The Great Detective of 1950’ and ‘Secret Duty’?”

My face went sour.

“Both of those…. aren’t works with especially good numbers.”

“Not ‘not good’. They bombed, didn’t they?”

“….”

I can’t argue.

Just as Seo Tae-jun said, “The Great Detective of 1950” burned 30 billion won in production costs and couldn’t even hit a million admissions, never mind break even, and “Secret Duty” is a bomb that recorded ratings in the decimals.

Meanwhile Seo Tae-jun grinned and said,

“An actor only has to act well. Isn’t that right?”

It is.

An actor doesn’t have to have an eye for scripts.

But actors who pick good scripts usually act well too.

From that angle Seo Tae-jun was an irregular.

An A-grade actor with no eye for scripts and respectable acting.

In that moment I found myself thinking,

‘Seo Tae-jun…. he’s interesting.’

I’d had a lot of worries, but the Seo Tae-jun in front of me was very different from what I’d predicted.

His personality is arrogant and proud, as the rumors say, I can feel that…

but on the other side, should I call it a tremendous hunger for the work?

‘And he looks unusual in a lot of ways.’

Without pushing back the interest rising in me, I asked,

“So if we work together, you want to get scripts from me?”

“Yes.”

“Is there a genre or a character you particularly want?”

Seo Tae-jun stated it flatly.

“Everything except romance.”

…What?

What did I just hear?

“You want me to recommend scripts that aren’t romance?”

“Yes. Except romance.”

Tension started to run at the reversal I hadn’t predicted at all.

“As long as it isn’t the romance genre, anything is OK. I can do an independent film too.”

The crown prince of romance was refusing romance.

---

We moved out of the meeting room.

The conversation looked like it would run long, and it was lunchtime, so we went to an omakase place Seo Tae-jun knew well.

An omakase place where one meal per person costs a full 150,000 won.

Seo Tae-jun chewed away at the tuna belly that came out for him and said,

“Why I left my old company? Nothing much. They kept telling me to shoot romance and nothing but, so I ended the contract.”

I chewed a piece of sushi topped with flounder and answered.

“Isn’t it because you act romance well that they only recommended that kind of work, Seo Tae-jun-ssi?”

“Sure. My romance acting is spectacular.”

“….”

“But think about it, Chief. I’m going to act for another ten, twenty years, so is digging only at romance the right thing?”

My ears pricked up.

Meanwhile Seo Tae-jun poured his complaints out with no filter on them.

“Right now I’ve got no wrinkles and I’m firm, so I take romance leads. What happens exactly five years from now?”

Rookie actors coming up from below will take that seat.

The romance genre turns over faster than people think.

“If I were only thinking about one big score, I’d have kept digging at romance. But I don’t want to do that.”

For the first time, the arrogance went out of Seo Tae-jun’s voice.

“Because I want to keep acting. For a long, long time.”

I reacted to that honesty without meaning to.

“You’re serious about acting.”

“Doesn’t suit me, does it?”

“No. Why wouldn’t it suit an actor to be serious about acting?”

I’m the type who doesn’t talk about himself much to other people.

But maybe I got caught up in the way Seo Tae-jun had been laying out what was inside him without holding back.

I let something of my own out.

“You’re a hundred times better than the guys who chase nothing but money with no sense of the job, Seo Tae-jun-ssi.”

Seo Tae-jun smiled a slanted smile.

“I think the two of us fit pretty well, Chief Kwon.”

Do we fit well?

I thought it over for a moment.

‘No, forget fitting well, going by personality alone we’re opposites.’

But…. right.

His one merit cancelled out every other flaw.

‘He has passion for his work.’

That merit appealed to me enough to smash the other flaws.

In that moment I thought.

This person, Seo Tae-jun.

He’s better than I expected.

I suppose you really do have to meet someone in person before you judge them.

“I’ll pay.”

“I’ve got the corporate card, so why bother?”

“An actor has his pride. Put the corporate card away.”

…Mm.

Seeing this, maybe I should watch him a bit longer.

Everything else is fine, but can’t something be done about the showing off?

“I’m planning to wait patiently, so contact me any time you see a good script, Chief Kwon.”

And so the meeting with Seo Tae-jun, the one I’d had so many worries about, wrapped up.

I got back to the company and took hold of the keyboard and mouse for the paperwork.

But I couldn’t concentrate at all.

Seo Tae-jun, in my head…

The man wouldn’t leave.

I let go of the mouse and keyboard I was holding and muttered.

“…. But a romance specialist actor doesn’t want to shoot romance?”

Let’s think about it from a manager’s position.

How should a manager take the opinion that a romance specialist doesn’t want to do romance?

‘You stop him, no question.’

But I’d heard Seo Tae-jun’s honest reason.

The background behind kicking his way out of his old agency and deciding on a new challenge, because he wants to change his acting style.

And I…

I’m drawn to people like that.

People who come at their work with pride in it.

In that moment one script rose in my head.

‘The 5 million occult film.’

The crown prince of romance, Seo Tae-jun.

What kind of picture would an occult film starring that Seo Tae-jun make?

‘That would be interesting.’

Whatever else, one thing was certain.

The crown prince of romance, Seo Tae-jun, shooting an occult film.

Just imagining that scene had my interest boiling.

I stroked my jaw and muttered.

“Since it came to mind, should I go looking for that 5 million occult script?”

I fixed my posture.

Chin on my hand, I started weighing the possibilities one by one.

A 5 million occult script that hasn’t even come to Baekhak.

Could I find it at this point in time?

The nerve line that had gone slack pulled taut, and my head started turning.

Inside it I muttered without meaning to.

“It’s worth a try.”

Right.

Literally, it was worth a try.

Of course there’s a chance the 5 million occult script doesn’t exist yet, but this was in no way a waste of time.

In that moment the corner of my mouth twitched.

“Right…well.”

If it’s work I have to do anyway, doing it while the resolve is there is the right call, isn’t it?

And I’m the type who doesn’t hesitate once my judgment is made.

I took hold of the keyboard and mouse again and started looking for the script for the 5 million occult film.