Grab the Regressor by the Collar and Debut - Chapter 478

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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478. Confrontation (7)
“Ah, yes, yes. Director. Hello…. Oh, it’s nothing else—I just wanted to ask you about something regarding filming in January.”
“Hello? Yes, Writer. Ah, this is Kang Ha-jin from Studio A. No, I’ve left there and I’m working at a place called Effect Culture now…. Ah, well, it’s not that—I wanted to ask you for a favor….”
“Jae-hee, do you happen to know when the file for the ‘Project Five’ planning proposal you mentioned last time will come through? If you’re busy, I can do it myself, so could you just let me know?”
Is this right?
Throughout the entire workday, that single thought consumed my mind.
Even if I was just an assistant director nobody from Studio A, I could tell—unless I was an idiot—that this situation wasn’t normal.
‘How am I supposed to handle such a massive program alone?’
The one saving grace was that as I adapted to the work, the program originally planned as an eight-part television broadcast had been scaled down to a four-part OTT exclusive.
My role wasn’t as the Main PD but rather as a middle manager coordinating between various production companies and directors.
Simply put, the Broadcasting Station outsourced the work to Effect Culture, which then outsourced it to other parties, and I just had to coordinate between them as the Effect Culture representative.
‘Just coordinate.’
I knew it wasn’t as simple as it sounded, but regardless, I had no choice.
It was already too late to back out now.
‘Well… the Broadcasting Station sometimes sends young kids to do these intermediary roles too.’
Having already worked at Studio A and witnessed firsthand how even that massive Broadcasting Station operated on improvisation, I decided to accept it as it was.
In a way, I saw it as an opportunity to test my own abilities. It was an enormous task, but if I pulled it off, my resume would gain considerably more substance.
“CEO, the camera team’s quote came in—should we go ahead with the budget allocation….”
My first real obstacle came from the CEO himself.
“What is this? It’s way too much.”
“…Well, that’s true, but honestly for our scale, this is already heavily reduced….”
“This won’t work. We still have a lot of unpaid bills from the Newtopia Festival…. Hmm, or maybe ask them if we can pay later?”
“….”
“Oh, and…. Do we really need a writer? We have people in the Planning Team. Just have them do it. We’ve always had the planning people handle that kind of thing at events anyway, right? The writer just comes in to write some scripts and mess with the cue cards and prompters, don’t they?”
The CEO, who spouted grandiose ideas about changing the world whenever he opened his mouth, was essentially an idealist who knew nothing about actual operations. The problem was that he had overwhelmingly more experience with success than I did.
When I said ‘this won’t work,’ and he countered with ‘but we’ve always done it that way,’ I had nothing to say. Even though I wanted to ask ‘what broadcast makes programs without a writer or director,’ ultimately the CEO was responsible for the work.
At that moment, I was worn down by a long habit of bowing my head even to superiors I felt were incompetent, and of not rashly opposing tasks I couldn’t fully handle myself.
“…Yes. I understand for now.”
Above all, I didn’t have the confidence to say ‘this is really wrong.’
At twenty-nine, I was truly sinking deeper into my own small failures.
I hadn’t achieved the results I wanted from any of the projects I’d started with such confidence, and everything I had accomplished felt trivial and insignificant. Day after day, drowning in work I didn’t understand, I grew gradually more helpless.
“Ha-jin, could you check the shooting cue sheet?”
“Ah, yes. I’ll look at it right now.”
The second obstacle was ‘people.’
More precisely, ‘the people I worked with.’
“…? Jae-hee, is this shooting cue sheet correct?”
“Yes, why?”
“Um…. We absolutely won’t finish recording in this timeframe. This doesn’t make sense.”
With all the senior staff gone, the company was left with mostly people around my age and experience level. And most of them lacked both understanding and experience with this ‘broadcast project’ that the company had suddenly taken on.
“Is that so? But we already told the venue we’d stick to that schedule, so we absolutely have to wrap by then.”
“No… No, this absolutely won’t work.”
“Really? It shouldn’t take that long, should it? Don’t you think it’ll be fine?”
“….”
The problem was that such people were in the majority.
No matter how much I tried to explain how absurd and nonsensical the current situation was, they simply couldn’t comprehend it.
Day after day, I felt like I was talking to a wall. At first, I’d vented about the CEO, but at some point I’d stopped opening my mouth altogether. No matter how much the CEO deserved criticism, few people wanted to engage in conversation with coworkers who did nothing but complain, grumble, and curse whenever they opened their mouths.
“Ha-jin, when is our Prodigy series teaser coming out?”
“…Ah, that. I’m still sorting through the Project Phalanx materials, so I haven’t started yet.”
“What? If you haven’t even started that, how are we supposed to move forward? You should have told us about this schedule beforehand.”
“…I’m sorry. I’ll do my best to get something done by next week.”
“Project Phalanx hasn’t even begun filming yet, and because of it you’re delaying other projects… Everyone else is working overtime equally, but right now you’re not producing any output at all. This seems like a problem on your end.”
The final breaking point was the work itself.
Ever since I first stepped onto a stage as a child, I had been prepared for everything.
Not being able to leave work, not being able to go home, not earning much money, grueling and exhausting labor, having to use my body, pulling all-nighters, serving as a lackey under seniors….
‘…Ah.’
There was only one variable I had never, not once in my entire life, considered.
‘…I don’t know.’
Not knowing how to work.
“….”
With each passing day, I spent more time staring at the empty sequence in the editing software.
During morning meetings where I usually threw out ideas left and right, I was too busy checking my phone or doing something else.
Unable to bear my own helplessness and incompetence, I couldn’t focus on work, and unable to do the work properly, I denied my own lack of ability—a vicious, inescapable cycle that repeated endlessly.
‘…If I just finish this.’
If I just finish this.
Once this is over.
‘Once it ends, then what?’
Around the time I grew tired of those words I’d been chanting like a mantra.
“Yes, this is Kang Ha-jin.”
-Ah, Ha-jin. This is Lim Gun-hee, director at Wave Sound.
“Ah, yes, Director. Hello. I was actually planning to call you today—how is filming going?”
-…Sigh. You haven’t heard anything from the set?
“…What could be the matter?”
-Never mind. Can you come to the set right now?”
“Right now? Well, I’m actually on my way back from a business trip, so if you could tell me over the phone first….”
-You need to get here as soon as possible. Hurry.
The moment I heard those words, I instinctively sensed that something had gone wrong.
Actually, the fact that nothing had happened until now was the real miracle.
“Yes, I’m heading there now.”
I turned the steering wheel in that direction.
It was the end of a fierce spring in my twenty-ninth year.
* * *
Even now, after such a long time had passed, Kang Ha-jin couldn’t recall the details of that day with perfect clarity.
“What do we do? Really, is no one answering their phones?”
“Are they insane? Seriously? How can they just bail like this…?”
“They’re flipping the table, that’s what. But honestly, I saw this coming from a mile away.”
It was the final shooting day of the four-part program.
A grand-sounding program meant to discover the next generation of influencers who would lead the era—whittled down, trimmed, and cut again until it became a shabby shooting set barely feasible to realize.
“Sure, this industry runs on trust and reputation, but they say this company’s already drowning in unpaid debts to other contractors and is on the verge of bankruptcy. Maybe the real winner is the one who runs away before getting bled dry any further.”
It started with the staff’s strike.
Payment that should have arrived two months ago still hadn’t come through, so the camera team was the first to no-show on the shooting day. Once word of Effect Culture’s notorious reputation spread from the camera team, it was inevitable that other staff members would follow suit and walk out.
“But setting us aside… if even the show’s MC and the participants are openly refusing to work like this, shouldn’t we be calling it quits right now?”
“This program was cooked up by the production company rep and some bigwig at the broadcasting station to line their pockets. It’s not going to end that easily. And today’s the last shooting day anyway… Look, if we can just get through today, that’s all that matters, right?”
“The real problem is post-production. I heard the editing team has all dropped out too, saying they can’t do it. Who’s going to clean up this mess, anyway?”
Then came the MC’s declaration refusing to shoot, complaining about the pathetically inadequate shooting environment,
Then came the cast members demanding clarification after raising suspicions of ‘pushing certain participants’,
And then came the sloppy recording due to a cue sheet assembled in complete chaos…
“CEO Choi, this isn’t right, is it? Huh? We have the preview screening in three weeks! Three weeks! How are we supposed to pull this off!? How can you do work like this!? I’ve been grinding away at event venues for years, and now broadcast looks like a joke to you? Does everything in the world seem easy?”
The company had been turned upside down so many times it was impossible to count.
With outsourcing company representatives showing up every single day, the CEO had to stop coming to the office altogether for a while. Employees experiencing this for the first time were flustered and didn’t know what to do, and the hastily completed footage was pathetic in quality.
‘Yeah, I wish it would just collapse like this.’
In the midst of all this chaos, the only one who remained unmoved was Ha-jin.
Ha-jin had anticipated all of this from the beginning. In fact, it felt refreshing that things were finally falling apart now.
“…Ha-jin, what do we do?”
But at the same time, he wasn’t the kind of person who could close his eyes and pretend not to know while watching everything unfold before him.
If he were capable of that, he wouldn’t have stayed here this long in the first place.
“….”
A person foolishly kind, stubbornly burdened by a sense of responsibility.
That was who Kang Ha-jin was.
“Ha-jin…”
He simply wanted to do interesting work alongside good people.
“….”
He simply loved this work with pure sincerity.
“Yes.”
That day.
Kang Ha-jin awoke completely from his dream.
“I’ll do whatever I can to fix this. And…”
I acknowledged that my sincerity was nothing but easy prey for someone to exploit.
I crushed the hope that perhaps I was the protagonist everyone in this world envied and recognized.
I abandoned the belief that there would be a brilliantly shining ending at the conclusion of all this.
Kang Ha-jin was too exhausted to dream anymore.
“…Once this is over, I’m going to resign.”
The dark, damp puddle had completely swallowed Ha-jin’s sky.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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