Chapter 55: Star Maker (1)
“Thank you.”
“Haha… enjoy your meal.”
The female part-timer was clearly looking at him as if he were a strange person, and Kim Si-woo knew exactly why.
Well… even I’d think someone ordering all this is kind of weird.
A pile of sandwiches and cakes next to his laptop, plus a lemon tea.
The scene looked like he should definitely have company.
“Let’s eat some sandwiches.”
Since he had skipped a meal and was hungry, Kim Si-woo finished three sandwiches in one go.
While he typed casually on his laptop, many customers came and went from the café—most of them giving off a vibe that they were there just to see the part-timer girl.
Well… with a face like that, it makes sense she’s popular.
One hour… two hours… three hours passed, and as evening came, Kim Si-woo’s smartphone vibrated.
Bzzz.
[Lee Yoo-jin]
Seeing the caller, Kim Si-woo picked up.
“Hello?”
—Yes, Writer-nim. We’re about to go eat dinner. Would you like to join us?
“Ah… I’m full right now, so I’m okay.”
—Huh? You already ate?
“Yes. I ate a lot of sandwiches at a nearby café, so I’m stuffed.”
—Ah… I see. And about drinks later… everyone seems to want you to come…
“Let me know when you finish dinner and head to the bar.”
As soon as he agreed to join the drinking party, Lee Yoo-jin’s voice brightened.
—Yes! Then I’ll see you later, Writer-nim!
After ending the call, Kim Si-woo closed his laptop, put it in his bag, and watched the part-timer closely.
Feeling his gaze, the flustered part-timer kept glancing nervously at him.
At 8 p.m., he received a text with the pub address. He stood up.
Time to go.
In the end, he left without saying a single word to the part-timer who resembled Jung Se-yeon.
When he arrived at the pub, what he saw was a bunch of people already half-collapsed, looking like their tongues had been sliced in half from drinking.
“What… is this?”
“Oh? Writer-nim!”
A drunk male staff member staggered over and hugged him, and Kim Si-woo dragged him along as he sat across from the relatively sober-looking Lee Yoo-jin.
“So… why are they already like this, Yoo-jin-ssi?”
“Eiit! Why do you always use formal speech with me!”
“Huh?”
Even though she looked sober, Lee Yoo-jin was actually… no, she was quite drunk.
“You use casual speech with everyone else… but with me…”
“Well, you’re the director and also the CP, so isn’t it right to use honorifics…?”
“Then I won’t do it anymore.”
“What?”
“I’ll just be the director. I don’t wanna be the CP.”
Hearing Yoo-jin wanting to quit being CP just because of informal speech, Kim Si-woo misunderstood and assumed she was simply overworked.
He had thought anyway that once the channel grew, it would be too much for Yoo-jin to handle alone.
“Alright. Yoo-jin, you’ve had too much work, right? Then let’s leave you as just the director. I’ll find someone else to be the CP.”
“No, that’s not it. I want you to use casual speech with me too…”
She kept obsessing over casual speech, so Kim Si-woo decided to just accept it.
“Haa… fine. Starting today, I’ll use casual speech.”
“Okay!”
Yoo-jin looked at him with an expectant, almost burdensome gaze—as if telling him to hurry up and say something.
But despite agreeing, Si-woo found it hard to actually speak casually.
“Aish.”
He grabbed the shot glass that had somehow been filled next to him and downed it in one go.
“Haah… so why are you so obsessed with me using casual speech?”
“Be…because it makes us look close.”
“Eh?”
“Everyone but me seems close with you…”
“Me? With these guys?”
Si-woo pointed at the team members shouting and drinking loudly across the table, genuinely baffled.
He believed Yoo-jin was the one he was closest to.
She was the one he took care of the most.
The one he talked to the most.
The one he trusted the most.
But she didn’t see it that way…? I should clear up this misunderstanding.
Trying to resolve things, Si-woo opened his mouth to speak.
“Looks like there’s a misunderstanding. I—”
“Writer-nim! When did you get here?”
Just as he was about to explain things to Yoo-jin, the drunk Revenge Film team members interrupted.
“Here! Drink, drink! Eat and die! Entry shot! Entry shot! How long are you gonna make my shoulders dance?! Look at my shoulders! They’re dislocated!”
Gulp gulp.
Si-woo emptied the drink one of the members handed him in one go and glared at them.
No matter how well you guys drink… you think you can outdrink that monster?
Exactly.
After being trained—tortured, basically—by Park Woong-deok, Si-woo was no longer afraid of alcohol.
If he survived that man, he trusted in his mental fortitude.
“Alright! I drank, so who’s next?”
Two hours later.
Most of the team members drinking with Si-woo were completely wasted, and Si-woo was the only one left standing.
That level of drinking won’t let you survive that monster. Heh.
In his slightly tipsy, victorious mood, one of the remaining team members approached with concern.
“Writer-nim, are you okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine.”
“Should we… end it here now?”
He looked around the room—more people were drunk than sober.
Just imagining having to take all of them back to the hotel sobered him up instantly.
“Damn… I didn’t think this far ahead…”
“Let’s have the sober ones take them back first, then come back…”
“There’s no good solution.”
“We’ll take them, Writer-nim. You can rest.”
“No, it’s fine. I’ll get some fresh air and help.”
Si-woo stepped outside to clear his head, breathing in the cool night air.
“Feels refreshing at least.”
Maybe because it had been a while since he drank and had fun without stress—despite being drunk, his head felt clear.
“But… no phone call yet…”
He was waiting for someone’s call.
The café part-timer who looked like Jung Se-yeon.
He hadn’t been able to talk to her directly, but he’d left his business card and a note asking her to call him.
“Did she just throw it away?”
While he pondered that, the sober team members moved the drunk ones to the hotel, and soon the pub was almost empty.
“Haah… I should take care of the rest too.”
Si-woo went back into the pub, gathered the remaining men, escorted them to the hotel, and returned again.
“What the…”
The last remaining person was Yoo-jin, quietly sleeping in a corner.
Si-woo hesitated.
Is it okay if I take her? No, if someone misunderstands… better to leave her to another woman staff member…
Brrring—
He tried calling the female staff members, but none answered.
Feeling the pub owner’s stare, Si-woo had no choice but to carry Yoo-jin out.
He then hailed a taxi and headed to the hotel.
While riding, they stopped at a red light. Si-woo stared out the window—and saw a familiar figure running down the street.
“Huh?”
It was the café part-timer.
But her face was twisted in panic and distress, and she was running somewhere desperately. A bad feeling rose in him.
“Driver! U-turn! Please turn the car around.”
“Sorry?”
“Hurry!”
“Ah… yes.”
The driver turned the car, and Si-woo kept scanning outside until he spotted her familiar silhouette. She ran into a hospital emergency room.
“There she is. Driver, please drop me in front of the hospital.”
The taxi stopped at the entrance. Si-woo got out, still carrying Yoo-jin on his back, and hurried inside.
There he saw the part-timer holding an elderly man’s hand on the emergency bed, crying anxiously.
While Si-woo watched quietly from afar, a doctor and nurse approached the girl and explained the patient’s condition.
The doctor said the elderly man had collapsed from a myocardial infarction, and his grandson—who was with him—called for help. The blockage was severe, and they needed to perform coronary bypass surgery.
But the part-timer couldn’t answer right away.
“Could you… give me a little time to think?”
“Alright. Then please take care of the emergency room payment first.”
“…Okay.”
As she moved toward the counter to pay, Si-woo tried to follow—but a nurse stopped him, mistaking Yoo-jin for a patient.
“Um… the person you’re carrying, please bring her over here.”
“Huh?”
The nurse’s urgent tone made Si-woo flinch.
“Ah… no, no. She’s not a patient.”
“Oh… I see.”
“Sorry.”
When the nurse realized Yoo-jin wasn’t a patient, she shot Si-woo a look full of disgust. Embarrassed, he apologized quickly and stepped outside.
He gently set Yoo-jin down on a chair and shook her awake.
“Lee Yoo-jin. Yoo-jin?”
“Wha… Writer-nim?”
“Next time, drink less. How can you sleep even while I’m carrying you around?”
“Where are we?”
“A hospital.”
“Huh? A hospital? Did someone get hurt?”
Hearing “hospital,” Yoo-jin immediately sobered up and shot to her feet.
“No, I just had something to check.”
“Writer-nim, are you hurt?”
“No, it’s not that. Don’t worry. Just wait here.”
“O-okay…”
Leaving her in the hallway, Si-woo followed after the café part-timer standing at the billing counter.
She was trembling as she pulled out her card.
He guessed the hospital bill was far higher than she expected.
“Please put it on this.”
Si-woo slipped in front of her and handed over his card.
“Wh-who are…? Oh?”
She looked up and recognized him.
“You’re the ajusshi from the café earlier…”
The word ‘ajusshi’ (middle-aged man) made Si-woo mentally freeze.
“Ah… a… ajusshi…”
“Um, anyway—just give me your bank account number. I’ll reimburse you later.”
“N-no, it’s fine. But could you spare me a little time? Just ten minutes.”
Her grandmother was in critical condition; she couldn’t be away for long.
“Alright.”
She led him to a quiet corner of the hospital, bowed gratefully, and introduced herself.
“Thank you for paying the hospital bill. My name is Hong Soo-yeon.”
“I’m Kim Si-woo.”
“I looked you up after seeing the business card you left. You’re pretty famous…”
“I just got lucky. More importantly, Soo-yeon… can you tell me what’s going on?”
“Huh?”
“You don’t have to if you don’t want to. I just want to hear it—and help if I can.”
Hong Soo-yeon hesitated.
She’d always been ashamed of her poverty. She had never once shared her past or family situation with anyone.
But this time, the situation had overwhelmed her, and she felt like she was drowning. She decided to cling to this one floating straw—maybe someone successful and well-known might help her.
“Actually… I live with my grandmother and my younger brother.”
Her mother abandoned the siblings long ago, and her father died after falling from a height at a construction site. Since then, Soo-yeon had lived with her little brother—still an elementary schooler—and her elderly, sick grandmother. Poverty was inevitable.
She started delivering flyers and doing part-time jobs from age 15.
Despite living in an environment where it would’ve been easy to go down the wrong path, she worked herself to the bone for her grandmother and brother. And just when she finally became an adult, planned to increase her part-time jobs, and prepare for real employment—her grandmother collapsed today from a myocardial infarction.
And the surgery alone would cost at least 10 million won.
After hearing everything, Si-woo didn’t mince words.
“You need money… right?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll lend it to you. No interest, no collateral. But… would you come to me?”
“Huh?”
She froze at his wording, and Si-woo realized instantly how weird it sounded.
He quickly corrected himself.
“N-no! I mean—would you appear in my project?”
“How much would you lend me if I did that?”
“I’ll cover your grandmother’s treatment costs, and any money you need while preparing to appear in my work. And of course, you’ll be paid separately for the role.”
“…Alright. I’ll do it. And you can speak informally to me.”
“Uh… okay.”
Hearing her immediate acceptance made Si-woo’s guilt lessen—just a little.
Still, he felt uncomfortable, as if he were using her sick grandmother to pressure her with money.
And that was how Si-woo gained a new follower.