Pen and Paper Translations

A few days later.

Kim Seunghun invited me and Junseong to the upscale bar where we had previously met with Yeonji.

This time we headed to where Kim Seunghun and Lee Jeongu were, full of worry about how much we were going to have to drink again.

“Sigh… let’s at least chug a can of hangover cure before we go in.”

In front of the bar, at the convenience store, Junseong handed me a 3,000 won hangover drink.

As if making a pact, we clinked our cans with determined faces and downed them in one go.

“Whew… we win tonight. You feel confident?”

Smiling, I answered his words.

“Win what? Those guys are not human. They are alcohol-guzzling hippos.”

“Hey. You cannot go in with that mindset!”

“Let’s go. We will be late.”

When we entered the bar, a staffer guided us to the room where Kim Seunghun was waiting, and there he and Lee Jeongu glared at us with their arms folded, not yet pouring drinks.

“Uh… good to see you, sirs. Haha…”

“Good to see us? Yeah? That is what you say?”

“Right, and you didn’t even bother to contact us!”

In response to what Junseong said, the two of them spoke in perfect acting unison.

“Sit down first. Let’s give our stomachs a signal and begin. Being offended is being offended, and drinking is drinking.”

Smiling, Kim Seunghun performed a trick.

He filled the glass to the brim. It looked like he had overpoured, yet thanks to surface tension it did not spill, a miracle worthy of the god of surface tension.

With our mouths hanging open at the miracle, we watched as Kim Seunghun, satisfied by our reaction, lifted his glass with a pleased smile.

We also lifted our glasses carefully so as not to spill.

“Cheers! Congratulations to Chanhyeon, and to you too, Junseong.”

Clink.

A clear sound as the glasses struck. And inevitably, liquor ran onto the table.

“Oh, look at that, you spilled. This is why kids cannot handle this. Right?”

By some unknown method, they emptied their glasses cleanly.

We then kept knocking back glasses without a pause, and the first to speak was Kim Seunghun.

“Chanhyeon. You made Sangwoo, I mean, Jinhun the president, right?”

“Yes.”

Fixing me with an intrigued expression, he asked:

“Jinhun. He is a bit different, right?”

“Pardon?”

“You saw that and raised a second-year to that position, did you not? Right?”

“Haha… something like that? Even Junseong agreed, you know.”

Chewing his sashimi beside me, Junseong nodded.

“He is quite something.”

“Pardon?”

“You can feel it just from his inaugural address. You know how dirty this field is, right? My current agency is actually…”

With a sigh, he let his words trail off. Then he took another drink and forced himself to continue.

“The boss is a thug. Sigh… so I want to leave as soon as possible. Anywhere. And before my contract ran out, I heard your news.”

If Seunghun came to our agency, it would be good for us. No reason to refuse. It was simply good.

Yet his expression was not bright.

If anything, when he spoke about the boss, he looked scared.

“But at the same time, I am afraid. I do not know what that boss might do. He has a wide network in the industry. Do you know who wrote the petitions when that boss got arrested for assault?”

“Who?”

“Starting with Choi Baehyeon and Jo Cheol…”

He listed twelve names.

They were top stars whose names every Korean would recognize.

Being connected to them meant he was a guy seasoned in the industry.

If such a guy marked you, unless you were a superstar you would not be able to work properly.

Still, since it was Seunghun, he was already near star level. I wondered if he really needed to be this afraid.

“If I run away from there, will I be all right…? Those guys are vicious. And they are not stupid punks who only swing fists like in the movies.”

Just talking about the boss had him nervous enough to sweat a little, and he spoke carefully.

“Hyung.”

Quietly listening, Junseong cautiously opened his mouth.

We had come thinking it would be a light drinking session, a pleasant entertainment-industry interview of sorts, but the mood was much heavier than expected.

Maybe that was why even a single sentence from him felt weighty.

“Huh?”

“Do they have any leverage on you, or anything like that?”

Seunghun’s face grew darker.

As far as I knew, there was nothing.

On the contrary, by the time I returned, up through 2022, he and Lee Jeongu were known as the entertainment industry’s leading makers of good deeds.

Regular volunteer work and donations. Their good deeds were widely known.

I did not think he had done anything wrong.

“Well…”

But seeing him hesitant, unable to continue, made me uneasy.

So many weird scandals had erupted in the industry that I wondered if some news about him had been buried, when Jeongu patted his shoulder and spoke.

“Just say it. It is not like you did anything wrong.”

“…”

Rolling his eyes, he cautiously spoke.

“I… when I was in school… I was bullied. Haha… ridiculous, right?”

What came out of his mouth was absurd.

The total opposite of his current image.

You might expect he led the bullying. I had never imagined he might have been bullied.

Gazing into his glass with a gloomy expression, as if recalling the past, he spoke carefully.

“There was a manager at my agency who I thought I had gotten pretty close to. I told him a bit of my story over drinks. That came out, and it turns out he was in league with the boss.”

His story reached the boss’s ears the very next day.

From that day on, the boss called him “the kind of guy who gets bullied” and subtly looked down on him.

“That is the leverage they have?”

At my question, he blinked in confusion.

“Huh…?”

“No, how could that kind of…”

Under the table, Junseong pinched my thigh.

“Ow!”

“Shut it for a second.”

He looked like he was thinking something through.

Then, as if reaching a certain answer, he spoke to Seunghun.

“It does seem like it could do a lot of damage to your actor image. You have a strong, taciturn image. That is what you are worried about, right?”

“Right… if this gets out, who knows what will happen. I cannot help worrying.”

I could not understand their conversation at all.

“Ah…”

Then it suddenly hit me that it was 2003.

A world where being a victim could actually be a stain for public figures.

So it made sense that he was scared, and I realized how thoughtless my words had just been.

“Hyung. I am sorry for what I said. I was too…”

“No, it is fine. Really, it is nothing. Haha.”

He waved his hand with a smile, and Jeongu refilled the glasses and said:

“When the mood is awkward, you drink.”

Clink.

We emptied our glasses in one go.

Feeling sorry, he could only give an awkward smile.

“It did not get weird because of me, did it?”

“It is fine. We are actually glad you told us. It means you are that comfortable with us, right?”

At Junseong’s easygoing words, he smiled.

“So you are deciding what to do next? Renew the contract or switch agencies?”

He nodded at my question.

“I have a little time left on my contract, so I have not told the company… but they assume I will renew.”

“Hm…”

He stared at me.

Seeing his eyes moisten, my heart panged.

But this was entirely his decision.

It was not my place to say anything rash.

I was not the one living an actor’s life. He was.

Still, it was too painful to just sit idly by.

He was too good an actor. The fact that such an actor was being toyed with by gangsters was enough to make me angry.

“If you want to hide your past, it will be better to stay with your current agency. But… if you remain there, the vicious circle will just repeat.”

“…”

He let out a long sigh at my words.

“If our agency brings you and hyung-nim over, of course that is good for us. In fact, we want to bring you in. Like you said, you do very well in Japan. And that supposed leverage your agency claims to have. That kind of thing will not be any problem when we bring you over.”

“What…?”

He looked at me with a bewildered expression.

“Being a victim is not something to be ashamed of. How can being a victim be a stain? That does not make sense. Before you even told us what the leverage was, I was worried you might have been the aggressor or a criminal.”

His problem was not something I could take responsibility for.

But in my memory, there were no actors whose image worsened after confessing that they had been bullied.

On the contrary, I had seen praise that they had given courage to victims.

However, back now, likely no public figure had confessed such a thing, so I fully understood that he could not easily act.

“I think I can help. One way or another.”

At my words he gave a bright smile.

It seemed the brightest smile I had seen from him today.

“If it is what Chanhyeon says, we should probably trust it, do you not think? He is exceptional with things like this.”

Smiling at me, then turning to him, Junseong spoke.

“I appreciate that… but what about the image I have built up till now…”

“Even if you reveal that you were a victim of bullying, it will not damage your image as much as you fear.”

“Huh…?”

“Setting aside the human trash who think victims deserve it, people will feel compassion for victims.”

He leaned back against the wall, looking unsure.

“Many people will actually see your confession as courageous.”

“Courage…”

“What you suffered is a wound that has not yet healed. It is not a stain.”

Nodding, both Junseong and Jeongu listened to what I said, while he, still leaning against the wall, hung his head.

“But it is your wound, so I cannot speak casually.”

“…”

“Even so, I do not want to sit by and watch while scum use that wound to exploit you.”

Giving me a thumbs-up, Jeongu said:

“Yeah, I think Chanhyeon is right. Do you want those guys to hold something over you for life? You cannot live being used by those punks forever.”

At his words, Seunghun lifted the face he had buried so deeply.

He seemed to have been crying silently.

Tears that had gathered in his eyes rolled down his cheeks.

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T/N: Previously Jeongwoo and Seunghoon (now renamed Jeongu and Seonghun to be more accurate) were the first actors that worked with Junseong and Chanhyeon; their photo cards became a huge hit!