Chapter 73

It was only after the full, elaborate hansik course had been laid out on the table that the two of them remembered the 'real reason' they'd met today.

"Should we eat first? 'That' talk isn't really the kind of thing to have over a meal."

"Fine by me. So — are you really going to keep talking to me like that?"

"I'll drop it gradually."

"Do what you want, then. To be honest, I'm too hungry right now to argue about it."

"Eat up."

At Suho's urging, Hajin quickly picked up his chopsticks.

The food looked expensive at a glance, and it tasted as clean and refined as it looked — plenty of variety, too.

Hajin absently thought of his family back home.

"…what is it? Food not good?"

"Ah, no. It's good."

How much does a place like this run? My appearance fee's coming in soon — let me run the numbers, and if it works out, I'll bring the folks here sometime.

Thinking that, he shoved food down a somewhat-scratchy throat. As much food as there was, with two grown men putting their minds to it, it vanished in no time.

"All right, then — let's get into 'that talk.'"

The place lived up to its price tag: even after the meal, apparently, you could take your time with dessert and use the reserved slot however you wanted.

Hajin nudged the glossy rice cakes and traditional sweets that had come out onto the table off to one side, and got to the point.

"Did you check what I asked you to?"

The night before, Hajin had given Suho a heads-up about today's conversation and asked one favor.

Specifically — to check on the status of the viewer voting that had kicked off at 6 pm the previous evening.

Suho's expression sank into something distinctly serious. He gave a small nod.

"You were right, Hajin-ssi."

"……"

"Seongwoo's vote count is climbing at a scary rate. Even though online feedback about Seongwoo isn't especially strong, he's been holding a top-tier spot the whole time."

"That kid, seriously — in his own way, he's really predictable. Never thought he'd play it this straight."

Hajin let out a small sigh and shook his head.

Suho hesitated, working his lips. He couldn't begin to guess what kind of fallout the conversation they were about to have would set off.

"Back when we first found out Seongwoo was a parachute hire riding on the Department Head's line, and that his backing is now CP Yoon."

"……"

"Did you know already, from that point? That the two of them were going to rig the viewer votes."

The last trace of playfulness dropped from Hajin's expression.

Suho thought back to his last conversation with Hajin. The one from when Hajin had uncovered that Seongwoo was a parachute hire.

—Then let's just leave it for now.

—Leave it?

—We don't have evidence right now anyway, and even if we did, there's nothing we could do with it. And it's not like he's technically done anything wrong.

For someone who could have blown Han Seongwoo's parachute status wide open on the spot and left the whole show branded as rigged, Hajin had been remarkably calm.

He hadn't said or done anything about it since. And now, out of nowhere, he'd caught them at it?

"Well, I figured that if they were going to pull anything, it'd be the viewer voting."

"Why?"

"Because — there's Seo Taeil on the mentor assessments, and there's you on the agency assessments, Team Lead. Viewer voting is comparatively easy to mess with. Do it right and it barely shows."

Online mentions of Seongwoo would probably start ticking up little by little soon, Hajin added, sounding certain. That level of promo-viral always came bundled with this kind of thing.

"Honestly, that's partly why I deliberately provoked Han Seongwoo — to push him into doing something. He's probably fuming by now."

Hajin's tone was still light, as though he was just talking about needling a classmate he didn't like. Suho couldn't understand it.

Egg someone into corruption just to catch them at it? Wasn't this literally burning the house down to catch a flea?

"What on earth are you thinking? Last time this could have ended as just one trainee's connections, but viewer voting is a different animal. If this comes out, it'll hit our survival hard too!"

His frustration pushed Suho's voice louder.

Even at this very moment, Han Seongwoo's fraudulent vote count could only be climbing.

And Hajin — who'd been picking off pieces of kkultteok even while being yelled at — smiled.

"Who said anything about exposing it?"

"What?"

"Why would I expose this? Expose it where? Blow this open and it's a disaster."

Hajin was calm about it. So calm Suho actually wondered whether Hajin had eaten something bad.

Hajin leaned forward, wrinkled his nose, and put on a cheerful expression.

"There's no way I'd let those bastards drag this show through the mud in the first place. How many people's futures are hanging on this one show?"

"……"

"Torching the whole thing into a rigging scandal just because some Han Seongwoo pissed me off? Doesn't make sense."

"So — you're just going to leave it? Even though at this rate Han Seongwoo will win on rigged votes?"

"Easy, Team Lead — you're impatient, huh."

Hajin waved him down with a whoa-whoa gesture. Then he fished a slip of memo paper out of the bag he'd brought and slid it across to Suho.

〈Shin OO 010-XXXX-XXXX〉

〈God's Choice, 1! 2! 3!〉

〈Find My Self〉

About the time Suho finished reading it, Hajin slid over a small USB stick as well. Suho looked up at Hajin over the mystery items and asked:

"What are these…?"

"The name written there is the guy who's been taking money from CP Yoon and rigging vote counts for him. The two below are shows CP Yoon similarly took payoffs to rig, previously."

"And this USB?"

"This Shin guy turns out to be a really paranoid type. He'd kept records of every call and text he'd exchanged with CP Yoon. Copied it all on the quiet."

"How on earth?"

"…trade secret. You get hurt if you know."

Hajin fudged it and coughed.

However much he'd come out as a regressor to Suho, and however much Suho had believed him, he still couldn't exactly say "I pulled the evidence out of somebody's memory."

'One crazy guy thanks to that Selreg bastard is more than enough….'

Truth was, being able to pull that evidence out of CP Yoon's memory the previous night had been nothing but sheer luck.

If CP Yoon, visiting Shin's office, hadn't so much as noticed that a USB like that existed, there was no way it would have ended up in Hajin's hands.

Back then, the moment CP Yoon found that USB, he'd destroyed and erased every file — but Hajin had the ability to safely bring an object from that moment back to reality.

'A penalty attached, of course….'

Since bringing an object out of a memory into reality was only possible with a 'companion,' the price for retrieving this one was another penalty Hajin had to take.

This would normally be absolutely impossible…. But just this once, first and last time, I'll exercise my authority! Only — as for what kind of penalty this will bring on you, even I can't predict. Even so — will you take the item?

'Big deal — cry in front of Seo Taeil one more time, whine a little in front of the kids, that'd cover it.'

Meaning: he'd already been through the worst of it, so there was nothing left to scare him.

Hajin pushed the evidence toward Suho — who was still watching him with disbelief in his eyes — one more time.

Only after Hajin swore up and down about five more times that none of it was illegal did Ji Suho finally take the memo and the USB.

"Even so, we won't be able to do anything with just this. It doesn't hold up as evidence."

"Not enough to use as evidence, sure — but enough to threaten someone into stepping down from their post."

Suho's eyes changed at that. Only now was he starting to see the picture Hajin was sketching, if only in outline.

"…don't tell me. You're planning to blackmail CP Yoon?"

"Yes. Blackmail him — into pushing Han Seongwoo to withdraw of his own accord. Before the first broadcast and the third-mission taping start."

There was no waver in that gaze. Those clear, level eyes were packed with confidence and certainty.

Hajin's earlier attitude — like he couldn't care less about Seongwoo's rigged votes — suddenly made sense.

Hajin was planning to erase Seongwoo. Completely. From this show.

'No way.'

And that, for Suho, was not a viable choice.

"This is difficult. We can't afford to make an enemy of the broadcaster. Blackmailing someone at CP Yoon's level isn't a simple thing."

Ntv itself was a cable channel focused on music programming, but the flagship channel they were pushing hardest was, of late, being rated as having more credibility and clout than even the terrestrial networks.

And then there were the festivals, all kinds of events, and award ceremonies they built up on the back of a rock-solid parent company's resources.

'With Upia — who just re-signed and got their momentum back — and Enderway, in the most critical stretch before their next contract… we can't afford to carelessly turn a broadcaster against us.'

On top of that, they'd already effectively walled off relations with one terrestrial network over an incident from Upia's early debut days. Turning any more broadcasters into enemies was out of the question.

As that calculation settled in, the color drained from Suho's face. Just as the now-pale Suho was about to open his mouth again to try to stop him, Hajin — as if he'd predicted even that — kept talking, the smile at the corner of his mouth still intact.

"Don't worry, Team Lead."

"How am I supposed to not worry when you keep showing up with bombs like this!"

"Still. Don't worry."

Hajin set the emptied water glass down on the table with a soft tak.

The posture looked like that of a baduk player placing a single stone on the board, and Suho was momentarily lost for words.

"This blade, I'll be putting into someone else's hand. You couldn't do this even if you wanted to, Team Lead. And going by the look of you, you don't strike me as someone who'd swing a blade around anyway, even if I put one in your hand."

"……"

"Instead, I've got a different role in mind for you. The role of passing the hilt to a certain someone with a real talent for blackmail."

"……"

"Now — feel like sitting back and hearing the whole picture?"

Hajin was still smiling.

Suho, as if bewitched, had no choice but to nod.

---

Meanwhile, still — at a certain outside production company, running around in chaos with the first broadcast three weeks away.

But unlike most days, inside the production company there was no noisy chatter between PDs and writers. Just a quiet, hanging silence.

"—I'm ba… ck?"

"Oh, you're back?"

"Yeah, yeah."

AD Park, who'd stepped out briefly to buy some office supplies they'd run clean out of, was so thrown by the mood in the office that she actually hiccuped.

"Wh-what's going on? Why's the office atmosphere like this?"

Quickly reading the room, she quietly asked a sunbae one year ahead of her. In response, the sunbae — organizing the props list for the next taping — leaned in and whispered.

"The higher-ups did a rough-cut screening* (*sitting together to view a rough edit before the final edit and music are locked in, and giving feedback) of episode 1… seems like Yoon threw a fit again."

'The higher-ups,' put together, meant first the CEO along with the main PD and main writer — the Voluntary-Resignation sunbaes — then the second-tier direction and writing sunbaes ranked below them, and finally CP Yoon, the show's ultimate person-in-charge.

And 'Yoon' among them, of course, meant that CP Yoon. And 'again' throwing a fit meant….

"No way, he called for revisions again? Is he actually out of his mind?"

"Right? I've lost count. Anyway, that's why the other higher-ups are in an emergency meeting right now — Yoon excluded."

"He must be losing it…. Why is he doing this?"

"No idea, the atmosphere earlier was seriously ugly. The Team Lead was yelling that if it kept going like this, she was done."

The reason most survival shows leave a long gap between first taping and first broadcast is that the further along the season goes, the more important the 'live feel' of the show becomes.

That was especially true with an idol survival. The viewers were fans and the fans were viewers, and the appeal of having their reactions and voting results feed straight back into the broadcast in real time mattered enormously.

Put simply: no matter how far ahead of the first-broadcast date the first taping happened, past a certain point the taping-editing-airing schedule ended up as a hellish rhythm that was effectively live TV.

'Which is why on a survival like this, they usually try to bank the early-episode edits as far ahead as possible!'

Miro Maze was no exception.

It was already the second week of April, more than a month since the first-mission taping had wrapped. By now, episodes 1 and 2 should have been at least roughly done, with episodes 3 and 4 starting to take shape.

'And with three weeks left to first broadcast, episode 1 is still in rough-cut revisions?! You've got to be kidding me!'

AD Park's scream echoed only inside her head.

The first teaser was set to drop in a matter of days, and the second and third teasers were already done — even the performance videos had gone up yesterday.

They should be prepping the pre-release clips for episodes 1 and 2 next, but with no end in sight for the episode-1 edit, everything after it was automatically on STOP.

Obviously. Episode 1 had to come out before anything else could be cut!

'This is all because of Yoon.'

AD Park tore CP Yoon — head-office CP, no less — to shreds inside her head. She'd long since given up counting how many rounds of revisions this made.

If he wanted something, she wished he'd just come out and say it — but Yoon's feedback was always abstract and vague, all just-that-vibe kind of stuff!

Sure, TV was a business insane enough that people revised things five minutes before airing and chopped shows into ten-minute live blocks, but come on…!

'At this rate the back-half schedule is going to be completely tangled…. Ugh, so annoying. If it weren't for Yoon, our program would honestly run so much better!'

Won't somebody just get rid of that bastard for me?

Clicking her mouse irritably, Park unleashed some rage-driven Photoshop.

Never guessing that her petulant little wish was, in fact, already blowing in.