A Genius Director Who Dominates OTT Platforms - Chapter 32
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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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The Genius Director Who Dominates OTT
Episode 32
* * *
Swoooosh-
The first to open his eyes to the sound of water was Yu Won-sang, who played ‘Yeong-su’ in Accomplice.
Turning his head while still lying down, he could see actors sprawled all over the living room.
A few seemed to be sleeping in Director Do’s room.
‘Am I the first one awake?’
He hesitated as he tried to get up.
If he got up first, he’d probably get teased with something like ‘As expected, you can’t sleep because of your age.’
Yu Won-sang was 36 years old, the oldest among Accomplice’s main and supporting cast.
That’s when it happened.
“Wake up! Wake up!”
Dohyeon-u burst out of the restroom dripping water and started shouting.
“Mmmmph.”
“Ugh, my back hurts…”
“What time is it?”
The actors who woke up half-asleep stared blankly at Dohyeon-u.
He was shaking his hair dry with a towel while waking up the actors, then rushed into his room and started getting dressed.
Eum Seong-hyeon and Moon Jae-won, who had been sleeping in the room, seemed to be in the way and got kicked out to the living room.
One of those sitting around dazedly spoke up.
“Do we really have to go that far to watch a drama?”
“Huh? What do you mean?”
“Do we need to dress up properly?”
“Well… Even for ancestral rites, you’re supposed to wash up and dress properly.”
“Is that so?”
“Should we at least comb our hair?”
That’s when Dohyeon-u shouted loudly.
“What nonsense are you talking about? Don’t you check your smartphones?!”
Everyone had gotten into the habit of avoiding their smartphones during filming for immersion.
Though the habit was fading since filming ended, they weren’t at the point of checking their phones right after waking up.
The smartphones they checked showed:
【AM 7:48】
They were showing the wrong time.
“…What?”
That wasn’t all.
Dozens of wrong missed calls and hundreds of wrong messages were also displayed.
But what was wrong wasn’t the smartphones, but their perception.
“…Morning?”
“Morning? Seven in the morning?”
Accomplice had already been released to the world?
While we were sleeping?
Bang!
Dohyeon-u burst out after closing the room door and hurriedly put on his shoes.
The startled actors crowded toward the entrance following Dohyeon-u.
“Why didn’t you wake us up!”
“I set the alarm for morning!”
“Morning?”
“I set it for AM, not PM!”
“How can you be so confident about that…?”
“But where are you going this early?”
“Where else would I go! I have to go to work!”
“Oh right, today’s Friday.”
That was it.
Dohyeon-u disappeared with a scream of ‘I’m late!’
“Watch the drama comfortably and go!”
He did leave one more comment though.
“…”
“…”
The actors who witnessed the stormy commute returned to the living room with dumbfounded expressions.
When they turned on Tivic on the living room TV, they could see Accomplice featured as 【This Week’s New Release】 on the main page.
“Is it not in the rankings?”
“Those update at noon.”
“Should we play it…?”
But strangely, they didn’t feel like watching the drama.
It wasn’t because of anxiety.
That had all disappeared yesterday.
It just didn’t feel real.
“Seriously, this is ridiculous. How did nobody wake up?”
“We stayed up all night drinking…”
“I think we slept for like 15 hours.”
“Look how smooth Seong Hyeon’s face is.”
“I woke up during the night, but I thought the director would wake us up, so I went back to sleep.”
“Me too, me too.”
“No wonder my back hurts.”
But they had some sense too.
“…KakaoTalk messages are coming in like crazy.”
“Missed calls too.”
“Wow, these guys who kicked me out made eight missed calls.”
“Who?”
“My previous agency.”
“My previous previous agency sent me a Korean beef set…?”
“At this hour?”
Their previously hazy eyes became clear.
“I think we did well?”
“Probably…?”
Lee Seon-jae said.
“…Should we go get some hangover soup?”
* * *
To conclude, there were no hangover soup restaurants open this early in the morning in this area.
The place they headed to was a 24-hour kimbap restaurant.
“What would you like to order?”
“Soul food.”
“Me too.”
“Let’s just order 8 ramens? And only 4 kimbaps.”
“Let’s do that.”
While asking the owner’s permission and pushing two 4-person tables together to sit, So Jeong-hun casually spoke up.
“Honestly, I imagined something like this. While watching the drama, if someone cried, the director would drop some wise words… Everyone would be moved and get teary-eyed.”
“I believed in all of you. Thank you for creating such a wonderful work. Something like that?”
“Right. So we’d get emotional and start shouting, then the neighbors would come over, and the person who came would happen to be watching Accomplice and be surprised.”
“No, isn’t your imagination a bit too detailed?”
“It’s a cliché. But what’s this situation right now?”
When So Jeong-hun looked around the kimbap restaurant and chuckled, Lee Seon-jae chimed in.
“Won-sang hyung probably cried first, right? They say people get more tearful as they age.”
“Hey! I don’t cry.”
“Seong Hyeon might have cried first.”
“I don’t cry either.”
Around that time, the ramen came out.
“I’m curious about the internet reactions… but it feels weird to check before watching the drama, right?”
“We should watch our work first. It’s our first major production.”
“If I knew this would happen, I should have attended the internal screening.”
“I’m going to watch it right when I get home. Since it seems to have turned out well, I feel at ease.”
“I knew our drama would do well.”
“You’re being ridiculous. Jae-won, don’t you remember searching for where to open a ramen restaurant when you were drunk yesterday?”
“Oh, right. Shibuya.”
While eating ramen with trivial jokes, customers gradually started entering the restaurant.
“What? Aren’t they glancing at us?”
“Why are they looking at us?”
“Because of the drama…?”
“Hey, even supporting actors from ten-million-viewer movies just walk around the streets normally.”
“That’s celebrity syndrome.”
“Did it already manifest?”
They were all actors with long careers, even if they lacked fame.
They knew how difficult it was for people to recognize them.
But there was something they hadn’t considered.
“Excuse me…”
“Yes?”
“Aren’t you the actors from Accomplice?”
“Huh?”
“That’s right! It is! It’s them!”
“Well, yes, but…”
First, all eight actors who appeared in the drama together were there.
“Really? Is it really them?”
“I told you it’s them!”
“Wow. Should we get autographs?”
“Could you take a photo with us?”
“But why do all your faces look so swollen…?”
“They probably had a company dinner to celebrate the first episode yesterday!”
Second, the drama had done much better than they thought.
“You know us?”
“Are you perhaps people from the industry?”
“All the customers in this restaurant…?”
While the actors were confused, customers started approaching them.
Once someone breaks the ice, others naturally follow the atmosphere.
In fact, many of the customers probably hadn’t watched Accomplice.
But that didn’t matter.
“I was so surprised watching the drama yesterday! It was really entertaining, wasn’t it?”
“The acting was really…!”
“Acting really isn’t something just anyone can do.”
“Could I possibly get an autograph?”
Yu Won-sang started shedding tears.
He hadn’t heard anything extraordinary.
Anyone could say those words.
But…
These few words were so desperately needed by them.
When performing in front of three audience members at a small theater in Daehangno.
When their minor role in a drama was completely edited out and they had to lie to their parents.
When someone asked about their job and they lied, saying they were preparing for civil service exams.
In all those moments.
They had desperately needed this.
Yu Won-sang’s tears made the other actors’ eyes well up too.
“Ah, damn. Because of hyung.”
“I’m really not sad at all.”
Eum Seong-hyeon, who was watching them, had slightly different thoughts.
He hadn’t cherished the dream of being an actor for as long as they had.
But…
“Accomplice is the first identity that actor Eum Seong-hyeon will achieve and realize.”
He felt like he would cherish it from now on.
Probably, until he died.
“Um, excuse me. Hyeon-tae…?”
“Yes?”
“Is Hyeon-tae really the culprit?”
At the question from a student in school uniform, Eum Seong-hyeon burst into laughter.
* * *
CEs and assistant CEs get the day off on their assigned work’s release date.
Since it opens at 10 PM anyway, rather than spending the whole day anxious at the company, they’re told to rest comfortably.
Moreover, the work after the production’s release falls under the Marketing Team and Research Team’s jurisdiction.
But this was the usual case, and yesterday wasn’t usual.
[Missed calls: Director Jeong Seon-yeong (11)]
The marketing team director had called more than ten times, with the last contact at 2:30 AM.
In such a situation, the head CE had gone AWOL on the work’s release day.
‘I’m really dead.’
Rushing into the SSK building, I saw employees huddled together in front of the elevator.
I could feel their gazes change the moment they spotted me.
Jealousy, support, denial, approval…
I saw all kinds of emotions, but there was no time.
Confirming the elevator was on the top floor, I had to rush to the emergency stairwell.
I arrived at the Marketing Team on the 4th floor at exactly 9 o’clock.
“I’m sorry!”
I went straight to Director Jeong Seon-yeong and bowed my head first.
I had explained the situation via message, but she was probably angry anyway.
However…
“Oh, Director Do. Good morning.”
She had a somewhat enlightened expression.
“I’m really sorry. Yesterday,”
“Oh, it’s fine. You had a team-building event with the actors, right? Then you were working as a CE.”
Is she really okay with this?
Did her anger circuit malfunction after exceeding the critical point?
Or is this that Kyoto-style way of speaking?
I thought of all sorts of things, but fortunately, that wasn’t the case.
“I played yesterday.”
“You played?”
“The Logistics Team has nothing to do when everything’s sold out, right? Until the Business Team purchases more products?”
“…Right?”
“The Marketing Team has nothing to do in the opposite case.”
“Opposite?”
“Explosion. To a level that can’t be handled.”
I gulped down my saliva.
I had checked public opinion while riding the subway, but public opinion is more complex than you’d think.
It’s not something you can understand from visible article numbers or comment reactions.
What was certain was that the buzz volume related to the drama had exploded after the release….
The direction of the explosion couldn’t be known until we analyzed the data.
“What kind of explosion is it?”
“Probably….”
The Marketing Team leader showed me four article titles.
【Traditional Terrestrial TV VS New Generation OTT, Who’s the Winner?】
【External Work Power ‘Star Marketing’ VS Internal Work Power ‘Unknown Actors’. What’s the Public’s Choice?】
【Accomplice, Reaches Tivic’s All-Time Opening 5th Place in Just 6 Hours After Release!】
【0% Algorithm, Renews Its Own Viewership Rating and Settles at 14.3%. Will It Break the 15% Wall?】
“South Korea has been split in half?”
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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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