Chapter 415
Right now, in this moment, Joo Seohee could hear nothing but the sound of her own heart.
Thump, thump, thump.
The sound of her heart pounding offbeat rang in her ears.
I need to calm down.
At this rate, even my smartwatch is going to warn me that I’m having a heart attack!
Buzz, buzz, buzz.
Sure enough, the smartwatch on her wrist vibrated.
Was it because HS was too handsome?
That was part of it.
But more than that, it was because a sense of fear and threat even greater than that was sweeping over her.
“Why am I dangerous?”
His lips were curved in a smile, but the question he threw out carried an enormous pressure.
As she looked at him, alarm bells rang in her head.
Yes.
Alarm bells warning her that something terrible would happen if she did not answer properly.
“I-It wasn’t about you, Representative.”
Cha Seongyu seemed to have chosen to play dumb, avoiding HS’s heavy gaze as he answered.
“Is that so?”
Hyunseung let out a low hum for a moment.
“Then what do you think?”
“Pardon?”
“No matter how I look at it, the only person here who looks like a pretty-boy escort and has a lot of money is me.”
He shifted his gaze to Joo Seohee and asked.
“Um, that’s….”
No.
“I don’t really like it when people trail off.”
That was a warning for her to answer honestly too.
“It is true that we were talking about you, Representative.”
At times like this, it was better to just be honest.
‘That way, at least I survive.’
If she really lost her job because of this board, shouldn’t she at least try to rub elbows with VINCIS?
“But the timing happened to be bad, so I think it must have sounded unpleasant to you. I apologize.”
“What kind of conversation would lead to saying I’m dangerous?”
“That the case itself in this lawsuit was something you enlarged in order to gain greater profit….”
Just then, as she was honestly but carefully adding an explanation,
poke.
Cha Seongyu, who had been anxiously watching from the side, poked her side and cut her off.
“Since that would naturally mean more work for us, I think my words got somewhat heated while I was advising my junior to be careful as her senior. I truly apologize.”
Then he bent his waist in half and apologized.
Looks like that guy wants to live too.
Feeling a little sorry for him, Joo Seohee did not add anything else and simply bowed in the same way.
Meanwhile, Lee Eun-woo, who had been watching his juniors, let out a deep sigh and shook his head.
Why pick a fight when you don’t even have guts?
“Cha Seongyu likes Attorney Joo Seohee, you see. So when he heard you were coming, Representative, I think he got needlessly wary. Could you please look at it as cute?”
Then he whispered quietly into Hyunseung’s ear.
Even if he said that, he did not know whether Hyunseung would let it pass.
On the outside, he looked indifferent and languid, but he was a person whose inner thoughts could not be read at all.
“Seohee?”
Just then, Hyunseung muttered the female attorney’s name.
“Is that woman’s name Seohee?”
“Yes, that is correct, but….”
“Didn’t you say Seohee was pretty?”
He then turned to Kim Woohyun, who was standing behind him, and asked.
“Ah….”
At that question, Kim Woohyun and Executive Director Park could only cover their faces with their hands in despair.
They chose not to answer.
“Ssseup.”
At that reaction, Hyunseung tilted his head for a moment.
Then, after glancing between the man and woman who had their heads lowered in reflection, he gave a small nod.
“You two can lift your heads now.”
Yes, he could understand a man wanting to show off a little in front of the woman he liked.
“To think I enlarged the case to gain greater profit….”
However.
“It’s true that I put personal desire into this lawsuit, but I had never thought about profit.”
He could not understand the idea that he had tried to gain profit from it.
“Now that I hear it, though, that’s a pretty practical point.”
But the more he chewed it over, the more it did seem like a fairly good idea.
“Then shall we all sit down nicely and talk more deeply about the profits I can gain?”
After all, no one disliked killing two birds with one stone.
Jamal quit his part-time job.
It had not suited him from the beginning, but the crowds who came to the store to see him were causing trouble for the other employees.
And most decisively…
it was because of his schedule, which had become impossible to handle.
He had no agency and no manager.
So Jamal had to do everything himself, which meant he was always pressed for time.
His past life had been fierce too, but it was to the point where he wondered if he had ever lived this hard in his entire life.
From all sorts of TV appearances to performances.
If a request came in, he accepted it without hesitation.
Just like the saying that you should row when the tide comes in, he went everywhere, even to distant outskirts he had to drive a long way to reach.
Thud!
Today, too, after finishing a schedule in the outskirts, Jamal climbed into the passenger seat with a body that looked ready to collapse at any moment.
“Seriously, you’re going to die at this rate.”
Before long, the friend who had volunteered to be his manager for the day climbed into the driver’s seat and started nagging.
Maybe because he had a similar build to Jamal and looked quite rough,
the word “die” did not sound like nagging, but like a threat.
“You’ve been living like this every day lately, haven’t you?”
“No, not every day.”
“Stop lying. These days, not just on TV, but at every festival out there, there’s nowhere you’re not showing up as a guest.”
Having no real rebuttal, Jamal leaned against the window and closed his eyes.
“Don’t pretend you’re asleep.”
As if annoyed by him, his friend lightly flicked the brim of his cap and started the car.
After Jamal’s car rattled for a moment,
vroom.
It struggled forward onto the road.
Rattle, rattle, rattle.
The car, which seemed like it might shut off at any moment, felt just like his own body. He had not noticed while running around, but it seemed he really had been overdoing it lately.
“Jamal.”
How long had they been driving? The friend, who had kept his mouth shut, broke the silence first.
“Of course money is good, but think about your body too.”
“I’m not doing this to earn money.”
“Then what? Why are you pushing yourself this hard?”
As he asked, his friend added, tapping the steering wheel with his thick, scarred hand as if he could not understand.
“Your song is already on the Billboard chart, so it’s probably in most people’s playlists by now.”
“’Most people’ isn’t enough.”
“No, what the hell does that mean?”
Jamal did not answer his friend’s question any further.
He felt sorry about it, but he did not think this friend could understand his feelings in the first place.
And for some reason….
if he said it out loud, it felt like the words would lose their strength.
Yes.
The reason he was living like this right now.
It was not because of things like money, honor, or popularity.
It was to repay HS,
who had given him the chance to live properly,
and who had helped him release a proper song into the world.
.
.
“I’m going to win an award with that song at this year’s Gray Awards.”
“Huh?”
“Wouldn’t it be freaking cool when they announce the award? Record of the Year! Jamal’s Godchis!”
“Go ahead and try.”
.
.
He had made that decision in front of hyung, and hyung had also given him permission to try.
So he absolutely had to keep it.
Since he did not know what to do right now, he was simply working hard in this ignorant way.
Because he had to do something.
A man should keep the words he has spoken, shouldn’t he?
But.
Lately, he had been feeling very clearly where his limits were.
Compared to people backed by huge agencies or labels, he did not even have a proper place to promote himself.
He could not even think about holding a solo concert or a world tour.
‘Ah, even if I could just promote it a little more right now….’
There were limits to personal social media and running around on foot to promote himself.
It would be really nice if he could make better use of a fast-moving promotional outlet like a network….
I should have lived a little harder.
It felt like karma for having lived such a messy life.
“Ha…!”
Jamal soon took off his cap as if frustrated and ruffled his hair.
“W-Why are you doing that? Are you having side effects from drugs or something?”
His friend, who glanced at him, flinched and asked.
“You don’t happen to know much about promotion or marketing, do you?”
Jamal asked that friend one last question.
“Ah, never mind.”
He shook his head and turned his gaze back to the window.
It was true that he felt desperate enough to grab at straws, but he had chosen the wrong person to ask.
“Promotion?”
Right. There was no way this guy would know about that.
“Isn’t SNS the best these days?”
“Who doesn’t know that?”
“What, do you need some other kind of promotion?”
“No, it’s fine.”
Just as Jamal waved his hand as if ignoring his friend,
“Hey, you had an ad up in the middle of Times Square. Our guys saw that and were so happy, saying you’d really made it.”
“W-Wait a second.”
“Isn’t that the perfect symbol of wealth and success? JS, name blazing in the middle of a billboard in New York Times Square!”
His friend added with strange interjections.
“You must have earned a lot of money. Go ahead and put it up one more time.”
Yes, just like his friend said, it was a symbol of wealth and success, and if it appeared on a central billboard in New York Times Square, it would definitely be great promotion.
The problem here was….
this was the first time in Jamal’s life that he had heard of it.
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“You didn’t do this?”
His friend, now the one who was flustered, pulled the car over and began operating his phone.
Then, saying he had found it, he showed him a photo saved in his album.
[ G. H. S
20xx.xx.xx
official release ]
Jamal slowly read the words written on the billboard in the photo.
“W-What is this?”
“You didn’t know?”
“I had absolutely no idea.”
No matter how many times he looked at it, it was clearly a phrase promoting “G.H.S,” the title track of his album.
“What is this?”
A simple fan could not have done promotion on that scale.
And if it had been someone close to him, there was no way they would not have bragged after doing something like that for him.
Which meant….
“N-No way….”
It had to be someone rich enough to do something like this and yet someone who would not take credit even once.
And a person like that…
there was only one in his circle.
Yes.
Only hyung. My own HS hyung.
Grip.
All of a sudden, Jamal gripped his thigh tightly as emotion surged over him like a wave, and his body trembled.
“Hey, are you crying?”
His friend looked at him in shock and asked.
“Huh?”
For a moment, Jamal’s eyes burned hot.
“This bastard’s really crying?”
Clear tears flowed endlessly down both his cheeks.
With this, he had gained another reason to run without rest tomorrow too.
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