Chapter 78

The reason PD Kwon and the production company weren't moving was obvious.

—Looks like CP Yoon's side is pulling all kinds of tricks under the excuse of the edit.

—Since Miro's the main investor for now, PD Kwon seems to be trying to argue that our direction matters most…. But the production company's CEO sees it differently.

Sure, these days something like eighty percent of the programs that air on broadcasters get made through outside production companies. Even so, a production company was a production company. In the end, the broadcaster handing out the work had to be the one holding the whip.

'And on top of that, they're new and haven't fully found their feet — if they had to weigh an agency against a broadcaster, they'd tilt toward the broadcaster.'

So Hajin was planning to put another weight on that scale, to make the production company's math a little easier.

'Should be about time he showed up….'

Right around when he tapped his phone screen to check the time and glanced toward the café entrance, someone came up beside him and spoke.

"Kang Hajin-ssi, right?"

A good-looking man in a sharp classic suit, warm-faced.

But recognizing those somehow-familiar features, Hajin quickly stood up from his seat.

"Yes, hello. I'm Kang Hajin."

Then, with a clean smile of the kind anyone would trust, he offered his hand to the man who was going to be his added weight on the scale.

"Thank you for meeting me on such short notice."

"Ah, I was a little surprised… but since it was about the maknae, I couldn't not come out."

The man clasped Hajin's hand with a practiced motion and asked,

"Is our Eunchan in some kind of trouble?"

The grip behind that small shake was formidable.

Ha ha — Hajin let out a small laugh and slid his hand back out.

---

While Eunchan's older brother, Eunseok, was up ordering drinks, Hajin looked over the business card he'd just been handed.

〈Judiz Furniture, PM Ju Eunseok〉

Judiz Furniture — that was one of the top three domestic furniture companies. Their main line was high-end pieces of the kind that would land in a chairman's study.

But recently, according to what he'd read, they'd successfully launched a soft line targeting the 20s-and-30s single-household market too.

'And the man leading that shift is that fellow over there.'

…he'd gotten that from the article too.

'What did they call it — gentle leadership plus a bulldozer's drive, something like that….'

The article was pitched to sell Judiz Furniture's young, aggressive rebrand, but Hajin easily saw through the fact that it wasn't only about the brand.

Dozens of press articles built around similar keywords were all, in unison, singing the praises of that man — Ju Eunseok himself.

In other words, image-making for the heir who, in the not-so-distant future, would probably take over as Judiz Furniture's next owner.

'This kid Eunchan — turns out he's no ordinary silver spoon.'

Being the maknae son of a family like that — no wonder both the Department Head and Han Seongwoo had been so hell-bent on painting Eunchan as the parachute hire.

As Hajin sat there thinking, arms folded, Eunseok came back to the table with a tray holding hot coffee and a thick, rich chocolate cake. Then, easy as anything, he turned the fork toward Hajin.

"……?"

"Ah, the maknae mentioned. Said his roommate hyung likes sweet things."

"Yes, I do, but…."

"You've been looking out for the maknae, so this is a thank-you. Go on, have some."

"In that case, I'll gladly dig in."

For the record, the word "decline" had never existed in Kang Hajin's dictionary.

Hajin took the fork without hesitation and bit into a big piece of the thick mousse cake. The sweetness took the edge off a mood he hadn't quite realized was on edge.

"So — is our maknae in some kind of trouble?"

They really did have a big age gap between them, then — the way Eunseok raised the topic with such practiced ease, he might as well have been the boy's parent.

'Right, Ju Eunchan's eighteen, and this guy's mid-thirties. Makes sense if he feels like a son.'

Not a stranger himself to the feeling of watching over a kid you cared about, Hajin got straight to the point.

"There are people out there trying to smear Eunchan."

"…could you say that again?"

As Eunseok stared at him wide-eyed, Hajin — thud! — brought his hand down hard on the table.

"A PD over at the broadcaster is teaming up with one of the trainees to go after Eunchan, hyungnim! Ah — is it all right if I call you hyungnim? I see Eunchan's face every day, and a whole flood of closeness for you is welling up right along with it."

And then, with the fastest, cleanest diction anyone was going to hear that day, he laid out Han Seongwoo and CP Yoon's whole racket!

Shake-shake…. (meaning: no clue what kind of crazy shit he's about to try to pull.)

Thirteen — long since a veteran of Hajin's madness — could put up its faint-smile emoticon or not; Hajin was already showing the dazedly nodding Eunseok the screenshots on his phone.

"This is…?"

"Posts that have been going up on anonymous communities the last few days."

title: [feels like these days even trainees need money...] my friend used to be a trainee then quit, i heard about it from her ㅎ... sigh what a world where money's what lets you dream, kinda sucks title: [if a trainee's a silver spoon would the company push them harder?] with a rich family + that-elite-world image, wouldn't it just be more of a selling point? - more of a push i dunno, but selling point yeah probably? - these days for sureㅋㅋㅋㅋ selling idol misery is a thing of the past - silver spoon but no skill no charm = X skill + charisma AND silver spoon on top of that? that = O > 22 that's itㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ > yep teens are obsessed with that-elite-world + posh-money image title: [honestly if it's the son or daughter of a well-off family] it's a win for the agency tooㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ kids like that don't have chips on their shoulders family's got their back so training life's easy ㅇㅇ later when it comes to filming ads and stuff they've got more of an edge easier to image-make them into someone who can pull high-rate deals these days agencies push kids like that firstㅋㅋㅋ

Several screens' worth of posts, all built around the same keywords. With the expression and posture of someone reviewing a report at the office, Eunseok flicked seriously through Hajin's budget-model smartphone screen.

The finger swiping quickly through the gallery — and his eyes with it — stopped on the last screen, which had a noticeably different feel from the rest.

handle: @alfhapdlwm name: MiroWakeUp MRMZ JEC got in as a trainee on his family's clout, then got the special treatment, and now they're openly pushing him ㅎ

The moment he saw that last one, a cool light rippled through Eunseok's round, gentle eyes. The flow of the earlier screenshots — which hadn't quite made sense — suddenly clicked into place all at once.

"The last one you saw — the account itself was deleted about three hours after it went up. Because it didn't get any traction."

"……."

"And SNS posts with similar content have been going up and disappearing over the past few days. Like someone's hoping to be spotted."

Eunseok looked at Hajin. Then, in a very careful voice, he asked back:

"…this — does the maknae know?"

"No, of course not. You'd know as well as I do, hyungnim — Eunchan isn't the type to worry about this kind of thing."

"But this isn't true. Eunchan…."

"Your family's opposed, right? To Eunchan doing the idol thing."

At Hajin's words — as if he already knew everything — Eunseok gave a start and closed his mouth.

"Did Eunchan tell you about that too?"

"No, Chan didn't say it directly…. It's just, the kid talks about you a lot, hyungnim, but he doesn't really talk about your parents. And when I checked, his guardian listed at the agency is you, not your parents."

"……."

"And that's probably why Chan became the target."

Hajin didn't go so far as to mention that, thanks to Seongwoo's scheming, Eunchan had been on the receiving end of something close to bullying for quite a while.

'If it were something that could be shared, Chan would've told this guy long ago.'

Watching from the sidelines, Hajin had figured Eunchan had two reasons for not passing this on to his brother, even under pressure from the Department Head.

Either he couldn't, or he'd decided he didn't need to.

'If he said he was getting bullied on top of pushing through his parents' objections to train, he'd hear "quit right now." Chan probably didn't think it was serious enough to risk that.'

So Hajin softened Eunchan's side of things where it made sense, and shared with Eunseok only the external factors going after Eunchan.

The point, with Eunseok, was to hammer home that his little brother needed protecting — and, at the same time, to show him this wasn't just his brother's problem; there was a risk to the company here, too.

"How can you be so sure this is the broadcaster's doing?"

"When the broadcaster's CP came around courting investors, they attached a condition. That the dorm be furnished with Judiz Furniture wherever possible."

"……!"

This was something Hajin had heard directly from Suho at their last meeting. Today's meeting itself was one Hajin had asked Suho to set up, after hearing it.

Hajin tapped a light, habitual rhythm on the table with his fingers as he went on.

"And naturally, that dorm all ends up on air. Since it's not a PPL — they've just bought the pieces and installed them on their own dime — you probably had no way to know."

But once it airs, Judiz'll get a pretty nice bump out of it anyway, won't it?

Hajin shrugged and met Eunseok's eyes with a sly gleam. The expression said 'I've laid it out this well, of course you got it, right?' — and Eunseok cleared his throat with a short cough.

"Kang Hajin… -ssi—,"

"Just call me Hajin, hyungnim. And drop the polite speech while you're at it. I'm your brother's friend, after all."

"…all right, Hajin — how did you find all this out? And why are you telling me?"

There was a faint note of suspicion aimed at him, but Hajin didn't take offense at all. Pushing to verify the source at this stage meant the tip itself had credibility.

And Hajin had come prepared with an answer for this one too.

"I overheard them, by chance. That trainee and the CP, talking."

Fibbing….

Right. A lie.

If he'd actually heard a conversation like that, he'd have recorded it on the spot and scattered it far and wide.

'But how the hell is Ju Eunseok going to know whether it's bull or not?'

What mattered was making him believe I was fully on his little brother's side.

"I haven't been training at Miro long, but I was a trainee at another company before this. So I know. Just how dirty, how petty the competition in this industry can get."

In an instant, Hajin's bright, sharp eyes clouded over with backstory and went misty. His clear voice softened, past soft into something almost hushed.

…just left wondering who the hell gave this bastard a C in Expression.

'Ah, quit getting in the way, man.'

Fed up with Thirteen chattering on, Hajin gave a small wink and shut the system alerts off. (When the hell did this featur—!) Then, wistful and lonely, he carried the act on.

"When I first came into Miro and was still finding my feet, Chan was the first person I got close to. And even now, as roommates, he's been a huge help to me…."

Of course, Hajin had never once been unsettled in his time at Miro. The line his roommate Eunchan used most often these days was 'Doha-hyung, please, please switch rooms with me.'

'But hey, who cares?'

Hajin doused his mouth with iced tea and let his eyes shine.

"So when I found out something like this was happening to Chan, I felt like I couldn't just stand by. That's why I asked Suho-Team-Lead to pass along that I wanted to meet you, hyungnim."

Finishing off his 'kindhearted friend with a backstory' act with a full-shine finish in his eyes, Hajin looked at Eunseok.

Eunseok, seemingly a little moved by Hajin's sincere-looking (but not really) manner, let the tension between his brows slide away and offered a warm smile.

"…our maknae really lucked out with a roommate."

Nailed it.

Watching Eunseok's warm gaze on him, Hajin clenched a fist inside his head and cheered.

"Thanks. It's a bit weird to say this to somebody else, but between family and the company I've been all over the place, and I haven't been able to focus on Eunchan's stuff nearly enough."

"Not at all. Ah — I heard you got married not too long ago too. Belated congratulations, hyungnim."

"Haha. It really is strange — feels like I'm meeting my brother's friend. He's never introduced anyone as a friend before."

Okay. Title of Maknae's Friend No. 1 — obtained.

"Hmm. But it is tricky, though. They've set the board too cleverly — for the company to officially clarify would just look ridiculous… and this can't reach my father's ears either."

Eunseok, looking pained, handed the phone back. Truly, whatever they did about it, cleanly shaking off the whole suspicion tag would be tough.

And then — Hajin, who a moment ago had been playing 'bright and cheerful, but with a painful past behind him that keeps him from just walking past a little brother caught in similar trouble — Kindhearted Little Brother's Friend No. 1' — threw off the mask in an instant and leaned in with a predator's eyes.

"So — about that, hyungnim."

"…u-uh?"

"Since we're already here — how about just throwing some money around? Big-time."

That bastard's lost it again. (Quit peddling snake oil….)

Eunseok's pupils quivered.