Life, Once Again!

Junmin handed his club to the caddie and said, “I won this coffee bet.”

“You should’ve gone easier on me. You have a lot of money, but you always do your hardest whenever there’s money in a bet, so I can never win,” said the chief of the economy, putting his club between his arm and his body.

“Have you forgotten that you won the coffee bet last time?”

“Did I?”

A suitable distance ahead of the caddie, he walked the fairway with the chief of the economy.

“Seeing the weather, it seems like it truly has become spring.”

“It’s the best weather to go on rounds these days. Next time, let’s call hospital director Kang with us and play together.”

“Hospital director Kang, that fellow, isn’t that good at golf. Only someone on our level should play together, don’t you think?”

“No wonder hospital director Kang has been gnashing his teeth. You teased him too much last time. I heard he got a new set of clubs and is raring to go.”

“Then I must call him once again and put him down again.”

“Please go easy on him. Also, chief of economy, I heard that your grandson is undergoing heart surgery soon.”

The chief of economy gave Junmin a glance before laughing.

“Where did you hear something like that?”

“I have a lot of ears in many places.”

“Sounds like hospital director Kang is interested in something other than coffee bets?”

“There are many skilled doctors under him. They’ll look after your grandson with great care. I was told they brought in some good medical devices from overseas this time, so the chances of the surgery going well have become a lot higher.”

“I can’t really pretend to have not heard that when it’s you saying it, president Lee.”

“You should try approaching hospital director Kang with generosity.”

“If that fellow does well on the surgery, I’ll be indebted to him then?” The chief of economy twitched his nose.

“Hospital director Kang isn’t a greedy person. He’s someone who would be satisfied with achieving something to boast about, something along the lines of ‘I got to treat the grandson of the chief of economy because he asked me.’ If you can inflate his pride slightly, you should be able to remain good friends with him.”

“And what do you have to gain from this, president Lee?”

“Well, I… will be able to get a slight discount on my next regular health checkup.”

“That’s important too.”

The chief of economy laughed heartily and waved his hand in the air. The caddie, who was walking from some distance behind, approached and got the chief of economy’s club.

“President Lee.”

“Yes.”

“Then the coffee’s on you, right?”

“I have learned that requests and bets are separate.”

“How frugal of you. Let’s go, I’ll buy you some good coffee.”

Returning to the hotel, Junmin drank some coffee with the chief of economy.

While they were talking about personal affairs, the chief of economy picked up a call. He gave a hint to his attendant as though something came up.

“President Lee. Thank you for today. I’d love to go with you to the sauna if there’s a chance, but matters of the country are quite hectic.”

“I’m glad that you took the time to come to the field with me today.”

“Next time, come over to my house. My daughter-in-law brought some good wine when she came back to Korea this time, but it’s been collecting dust on the shelf because there’s no one to enjoy it with.”

“I’ll contact you soon. I’ll prepare the side dishes to go with it.”

“Alright, see you next time.”

After seeing the chief of economy out, Junmin returned to the hotel café. As the café only accepted VVIP members this week, it was rather empty. All the visitors were familiar faces.

Junmin waved his hand at the IT company CEO that greeted him.

“President.” Head manager Choi sat opposite him.

“I’m sure you’ve played around enough, so it’s time to check up on the current state of the actors.”

“It looks like I’m playing around to you, huh?”

“Chatting while playing golf is playing around.”

“Then you play around in my stead next time. I’ll do your work.”

Head manager Choi shook his head and gave him a file. He read down the contents of the A4 print slowly.

“These days, there are a lot of great tablet PCs, so why don’t you use one for the cool factor, president? How long are you going to keep holding papers? Let’s keep up with the trend.”

“Be trendy all you want. I like this better.”

He read the month\'s schedule for Yang Ganghwan and Hong Geunsoo. Both of them had a shoot for the commercial that was renewed every year. One of them promoted a bank while the other, coffee.

Ever since the two of them started the promotion of those two businesses, both of them had not changed their advertisement models for the past 7 years.

At this point, everyone would think of Hong Geunsoo when they think of Woosung Bank and Yang Ganghwan for Leo Coffee.

“You’re the type of person behind destroying precious forests. You should use a tablet to protect the environment.”

“You’re still on about that? Also, it’s not to protect the environment. It’s because you simply can’t be bothered to print it out every time.”

“You know me.”

“So let me bother you for a long time from now. I’ll talk about using a tablet when I’m past 70.”

“You’re going to keep being the CEO until then? You’re fifty-five this year, so you’ll be running for another fifteen years, huh? Then I guess I won’t have to worry about my salary for the next 15 years as well.”

Junmin asked head manager Choi, who was drinking coffee,

“Woosung Bank shouldn’t be a problem. How’s Leo Coffee these days?”

“Jinsung, the company manufacturing Leo Coffee, doesn’t have a good image these days. After the bacillus detection in their products, they ran into a dispute with a consumer while cleaning up the aftermath. The consumer requested compensation after experiencing indigestion, but the employee answering that person used bad language.”

“From the perspective of the business, they’ll have to compensate every single person if they relented, so that’s why they probably endured. But from how this became big, it mustn\'t just be on the level of ‘bad language’ is it?”

“It was assistant manager personnel that apparently got frustrated because a superior snapped out. The upper echelons are all angry and the consumer is angry as well, so it just exploded in the middle. This was something fixable, but an internal company notice to ignore all consumer requests was leaked.”

Junmin rested his chin on his hand and spoke, “How bad has their image become?”

“We’ll have to see their quarterly sales report to be sure, but the anti-sales movement is slowly starting, so I think they’ll fall down. Their stocks wavered yesterday too.”

“Let’s reconsider extending the contract. As for the stocks we have in Jinsung, sell some of them off according to the ex-dividend. We can’t ruin Ganghwan’s image.”

“I’ll proceed with the investment case after talking to president Kim.”

“Okay.”

Junmin had a look at the schedules of other actors as well.

“Are the preparations finished for Suyeon’s fan meetup in Japan?”

“Yes. All the preparations for the procession including getting a venue have been finished.”

“How’s Suyeon?”

“Depressed. It seems like singing and dancing is coming off as quite a bit of pressure to her.”

“I did tell her that she could do it in a talk show fashion.”

“She started it herself saying that she wanted to show the fans who show up something special, but it looks like she’s embarrassed now that she actually has to do it. Her practice is going well, but it’s unknown whether she’ll do well on stage on the day itself.”

“It shouldn’t matter even if she makes a mistake. In fact, many of her fans might want that to happen. But would she make a mistake?”

“She might look precarious right now, but she’ll probably do it perfectly once she does it. Her face changes completely when the camera starts rolling.”

Junmin nodded. After checking her major schedules, he flipped the page.

“How’s Maru?”

The last page was about Maru. After participating in a documentary as a narrator about a month ago, there was no further schedule. It was a gap that all new actors went through. They would have no work for weeks at the shortest, or even half a year at the longest.

“Before we talk about Maru, please have a look at this first.” Head manager Choi gave him a tablet PC.

Junmin put down the report and grabbed the tablet. There was a series of articles on the screen. They were talking about the founding anniversary special documentary for YBS. What was of note here was the sheer number of them.

They weren’t talking about politics or entertainment, but there were so many?

“You haven’t watched any TV for the past month, have you?”

“I didn’t have the time to. I only watched a few dramas and movies on the plane.”

As his overseas schedule was crammed in May, he spent at least ten days in an airplane. He barely managed to catch up with the news because of his busy schedule.

“First, have a look at the viewing rate of the documentary. It’s a three-part documentary, and part two has aired.”

Junmin slid his finger up the screen. He saw the viewing rate of the documentary below. The first episode, which aired two weeks ago, had a 7% viewing rate.

“7% viewing rate for an 11 p.m. documentary is pretty good. This was producer Nam Jaehyun’s work, right?”

“Yes. He received an award for the documentary he made on bees in 2006, and he single-handedly increased the viewing rate of documentaries as a whole. This is the reason I scheduled things myself without consulting you when he contacted me saying that he wanted to try working with Maru.”

Junmin scrolled a little more. He saw the viewing rate of last week’s episode. It was 15%, an outlier in terms of viewing rates. A documentary has probably never hit such a viewing rate in the history of YBS. Now he knew why the internet was overflowing with articles about the documentary.

“Just what’s it about that the response is so good?”

“It’s about young people. It talks about people who are pushed to the edge, people who walk for low wages, and the like. It handled youth unemployment rates that were only considered numbers until now in a raw fashion. It attracted people’s attention by handling an uncomfortable topic. Even the opposing party is attacking the ruling party with this documentary as the basis. It just goes to show that many people are sympathizing with it.”

“What a big one.”

“The thing is, many people are saying that Maru is the one who made the documentary big. The narration was just that good. I also planned to watch for a little bit for monitoring purposes, but I ended up watching all of it. It surprised me. I didn’t know this kid’s voice had so much power to provoke emotions.”

Head manager Choi gave him a pair of earbuds. Junmin connected the earbuds to the tablet and played back a video file. He watched the video for about ten-something minutes. The structuring of the topic was good, but the voice that went along with the video was above everything else. There was a clear distinction in his voice when he was representing the emotions of the interviewer and when he was using the voice of Han Maru. It didn’t feel forced. Even in moments when a slight change might make it feel boring, he managed to invoke interest.

“Did Maru say he had experience recording before?”

“No, he says this is his first time.”

“This is his first time?”

“Isn’t he absurdly good?”

It was just as head manager Choi said: absurd.

There was a hint of veteran experience from his techniques of loosening and tightening his voice and then lowering and heightening it. It was definitely not something he had done a couple times. Maru was recreating the most accurate voice required by the video.

He saw a man and a woman heading home with exhausted bodies. The shadow of the two people elongated under the streetlamp.

At the same time, the narration began.

-Today came to an end. Today was no different from any other day. Tomorrow, we’ll repeat what happened today. The day after tomorrow, the day after that, and perhaps even a few months later. We endure today in hopes of a different tomorrow, but what awaits us is the same today. Miss Nayoung has completed the last day of her internship today. There was no change to regular employment. Mr. Taehwan has been notified that he was fired. His last salary is 2.1 million won. The company he had commuted to for the past year has put out a new employment notice yesterday. The salary is 1.9 million won. Today is ending. How different will tomorrow be? I hope it’s different. Even if it’s a little, just a little.

The voice that dug into his ears pressed down on his heart, went through his stomach, and left through his feet.

Junmin rubbed his fingertips and took out the earbuds.

“It managed to put me in a daze, so people in their twenties must be thinking about a lot of things.”

“Tonight’s the last episode of the documentary. I think there will be quite a response from many places.”

“Maru managed to grab a great opportunity. He’s doing well by himself.”

“He’s doing so well that it’s a pity. There’s nothing we can do to support him as a company. I said I’d give him a manager, but he says he’s okay for the moment.”

“He might still feel uncomfortable with that. Does Maru have a car?”

“To my knowledge, he doesn’t.”

“Then give him one. If the broadcast industry listened to this voice properly, he’ll definitely get some work his way.”

“Speaking of that, we got a commercial under his name.”

“Really? What commercial is it?”

Head manager Choi smiled. “Throat candy. Radio-exclusive, three months for now.”

“Get a plan from them and talk to Maru about it.”

“Understood.”

Junmin gave back the tablet PC.