Chapter 78: 78

Maybe it was because of that, but recently, Lee Min-Soo only had a venomous gaze. Irrespective of his internal thoughts, previously he had at least pretended to be friends with Woo-Jin and was polite to others. However, after the article was released, he stopped with his pretenses altogether.

Surprisingly, the directors actually understood this side of Lee Min-Soo, almost as if it was expected. Since he was a famous idol, it would be pretty strange for him to not act like this even after appearing kind to people around him. However, given his striking resemblance to Choi Kang’s haggard and anxious self after the character had gotten a death threat, everyone put up with the sudden change in his behavior.

Thanks to that, Woo-Jin had a much easier time filming than before once their true emotional distance was revealed, not needing him to force any interaction with Lee Min-Soo. Before this, Woo-Jin had to put up with Lee Min-Soo’s various attempts of buddying up with him even when he tried his best to ignore Min-Soo. But now, there was no need for that, and in its own way, everything was going peacefully.

The bothersome article was removed from the news portal a few hours later due to the combined efforts of both TM and DS. It was, however, too late as it had already spread to many internet communities at that point.

Like Kang Min-ho had said, no side was slandering the other, and people were simply curious about the reason for Woo-Jin’s dismissal from TM. There was only a sense of mocking, and some insults hurled toward CEO Kim Seok-Hyung.

With City of Shadows achieving a steady 20% TV viewership, the number of viewers of the drama increased, and more people began to recognize Chae Woo-Jin. Of course, that meant more people were talking about him as they went about their lives. If one were to look around in any randomly chosen restaurant, all the different tables would be found discussing Chae Woo-Jin in many different ways.

“I’ll be honest; I thought he looked like a dandy, but after watching some of the behind-the-scenes videos, even as another man, I thought he looked really cool.” A male student commented on Chae Woo-Jin’s action scenes and behind-the-scenes videos and gave him high praise, saying that he would have never been able to do it if it were him.

“If an actor gives that much effort, it’s really not a waste of money. But look at Park Min; he has a salary of 100 million won per episode. He literally took two billion won’s worth of the budget. The man has no morals, especially when you look at his acting.”

“Every time there’s an action scene, he uses a stunt double. Is he one of the female leads? Why is he acting like a pretty boy?”

Chae Woo-Jin’s acting and Park Min’s salary were often mentioned among a group of guys. Simultaneously, a girl sitting at an adjoining table was feverishly looking up information on Chae Woo-Jin while ignoring everything, to the point of angering her boyfriend.

“You’re not going to eat? You said you wanted to eat tteok-galbi!” [1]

“Yeah, yeah, I’m eating. You should eat too, honey.”

Without raising her head, the girl raised her spoon haphazardly and ate just the rice with no care in the world. She was so busy looking at the fanmade gifs of Chae Woo-Jin that she didn’t have the time to even pay attention to the tteok-galbi.

“Ugh, seriously?!”

In the end, the boy slammed his utensils down on the table with a bang, making the girl finally lift her head. Then, she looked back down at the gifs before smiling broadly and speaking to her boyfriend, “I must really like you, honey.”

“What?”

“When I look at you after looking at Chae Woo-Jin for so long, you don’t look ugly; instead, you look lovable.”

It seemed like a compliment, but the guy really wasn’t left feeling all that great. At a loss, he could only look at her with a dubious look on his face. Was he supposed to be happy that he wasn’t called ugly, or should he be happy to be called lovable? As he pondered, he glimpsed at her phone and saw Chae Woo-Jin moving around.

“Oh, so that is a compliment.”

The words that naturally came out of his mouth made the couple laugh. A family was sitting behind the couple whose relationship had fortunately gotten stronger.

The parents looked lovingly at their elementary school-aged son as they served him some side dishes while urging him to eat, “Eat a lot, okay? That way, you’ll grow tall and strong like Chae Woo-Jin.”

“That phrase again! Does it mean he’ll grow tall if he eats a lot? What if he grows fat?”

A while ago, the hospital’s projections had predicted their son’s height to be much shorter than their expectations due to the parents’ short stature, thus affecting the child’s height.

However, the wife decided they couldn’t dismiss environmental factors and had continuously tried to feed their son something or the other. The husband worried slightly after looking at his wife’s plump body because genetics didn’t just affect height.

“It’s still better than not eating and not growing at all. Who knows? Maybe Chae Woo-Jin’s parents are also small and stout.”

Looking at his slightly downcast wife, the husband glanced at the sky briefly. Yeah, it was probably better to try anything than living without any hope.

“Yeah, you’re right. Who cares if he gets fat! Our son will be smarter and more handsome than Chae Woo-Jin.”

As the husband cut the tteok-galbi into smaller pieces so his son could eat it easily, he empathized with his wife. The couple had been obsessed with the new drama recently, and if their son grew up to be like Chae Woo-Jin, they would be happy. However much they looked at it though, their son was slightly better than Woo-Jin, so there was no need to worry.

As one passed by the heart-touching scenes, less cordial scenes were also present among the people.

“Why are your grades so terrible, huh? That actor you like so much, Chae Woo-Jin or whatever his name is, was an idol trainee while attending high school. He went to Korea University with full marks on the CSAT [2]! You’re literally sitting in your room with all you’ll ever need, so why are your scores still like that, huh?”

People were comparing their childrens’ scores with Chae Woo-Jin’s scores, and couples were fighting by comparing their or their partner’s looks and skills to Chae Woo-Jin’s. But, whatever the conversation, the basis of it was Chae Woo-Jin, which meant that to some degree, they acknowledged him as an actor.

Chae Woo-Jin was no longer an unknown celebrity. Beyond likes and dislikes, he had cemented his position as a well-known actor, and the drama’s success had helped make this possible. Now, no matter where anyone went, no one would claim they didn’t know the name “Chae Woo-Jin.”

***

As filming went into its final stages, everyone was on edge. With the final episode’s script distributed, the actors correspondingly prepared their mindsets for the ending. No one expected a happy ending, and there were no contrary predictions regarding the plot. The only issue was how well the viewers would take a sad ending, though admittedly, the viewers seemed to have mostly given up on a good end as well. Although it seemed like the viewers simply wanted the characters to live the rest of their lives happily, even if separately, it seemed like there would still be some trauma for the viewers after the last episode. Woo-Jin thought that the lessening of that emotional trauma was up to the actors.

The actors’ acting brought emotional depth to scenes, including an understanding of the scene and its conclusion. Thus, Woo-Jin had already transformed into Louie while reading the script. To have a successful conclusion, Woo-Jin needed to focus on acting without any mistakes.

However, a shadow covered the script, and Louie’s cold, empty eyes flashed with annoyance. He had purposely found an empty room to read the script alone, so he looked up, wondering who had tactlessly followed him in. It was Lee Min-Soo, someone who had avoided Woo-Jin on his own.

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“What do you want?”

Today was the last day of filming with him, so Woo-Jin wondered if there was a problem.

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“You think you’ve won, don’t you?”

With Lee Min-Soo’s question, Woo-Jin lowered his script and looked up at him. He knew the purpose behind the question but honestly found it quite droll.

Lee Min-Soo continued, “I’ve never really competed with anyone, but you think you’ve truly won with just this?”

A derisive chuckle slipped out of Woo-Jin’s mouth. His movies had succeeded, but he had played a side character in all of them. They weren’t movies with the name “Chae Woo-Jin” attached to them. However famous they got, he couldn’t go around bragging about them as if they were his movies.

Thankfully, the drama topped the viewership rating and got good reviews, so he was slightly pleased with that. But it wasn’t over with just one successful TV drama; it was just the beginning for him. And because Woo-Jin knew that it was the beginning, he couldn’t help but find Lee Min-Soo’s words amusing.

“I know where your arrogance comes from, but we’re not what we were before, either!”

“And?”

The conversation was already tiring. Woo-Jin rubbed his temples before pointing to a clock on the wall. Since there wasn’t much time, he wanted Lee Min-Soo to get to the point.

“It’s not like we’ve just been enjoying popularity and living comfortably. We went through hardships and struggled much more than you!”

“Really? Alright.”

With that insincere reply, Woo-Jin picked up his script again. While he thought the conversation was over, Lee Min-Soo remained standing in his original position.

“You think you’re the top of the world, the absolute, the greatest right now, don’t you? Well, you aren’t! No one can touch us now. No one doubts our skills now. Do you know how much blood, sweat, and tears we’ve shed to become the Blue Fit we are now? So you have absolutely no right to be arrogant, even completely disregard us, just because of your slight singing skill.”

Woo-Jin had never understood the words, “This is absurd,” as much as he did now. He had never disregarded them, but as someone previously regarding their musical skill in contempt, he didn’t deny Lee Min-Soo’s words.

“If you really think you’ve put in enough efforts, then you shouldn’t have made an album with songs someone else sang, right? On top of that, the first time you ever went on a TV program, you didn’t sing live but lip-synced to songs I recorded. From what I know, you’ve done that at least three times, isn’t that right?”

Lee Min-Soo should be thankful that he had remained calm until now. This was really a case of the one at fault insulting an innocent. [3]

“That’s because Director Seol made us do it! We’re not at fault! Do you think Si-Hoo hyung lip-synced to your singing because he thought it was good? Hyung isn’t lacking in any aspect. We won’t lose out to you now!”

Lee Min-Soo’s venomous eyes were roiling with the desire to hurt Woo-Jin in any way possible, but to Woo-Jin, it all seemed like an impassioned diatribe. He understood the desire for Blue Fit to deny Chae Woo-Jin’s singing or any involvement from him at all in their own success.

Woo-Jin never had any plans to deny Blue Fit’s efforts in creating their own success, either. Blue Fit would likely have gone down in history as a famous, successful idol group even without his singing. He had only cut himself off because their paths had diverged; however, it seemed that Lee Min-Soo still hadn’t let go.

“You’d better watch ‘The King of Masks’ this week.”

“Oh, is ‘Commander of the Universe’ becoming the king again?”

After Woo-Jin’s ‘The Wind that Comes from You’ had been released and topped the music charts, a new king had been crowned in that week’s episode of The King of the Masked Singers. The man, christened ‘Commander of the Universe,’ had sung a rock version of Park Hyo-Shin’s ‘Wildflower’[4] to take the king’s position for himself.

'Commander of the Universe’s' version of ‘Wildflower’ had edged out Woo-Jin’s first place song at the time. Both songs had been in the top 100 rankings for the past two weeks, but the 'Commander of the Universe's' song had just edged out Woo-Jin’s song by a little bit. And everyone knew that the so-called ‘Commander of the Universe’ was really Min Si-Hoo, to the point that the mask was completely pointless.

“We will never lose to you in singing anymore.”

Lee Min-Soo continued to brag to Woo-Jin like he was the one to achieve all that.

“Are you ‘Commander of the Universe’? That’s funny. I was pretty sure he’s someone else but alright.”

Even if they were on the same team, individual accomplishments definitely did not add to another individual’s resume.

Of course, as the previously lip-syncing Min Si-Hoo slowly realized his fame, the others who participated would probably have had weights pull off their chest. However, that was their problem; there was no need to bicker about it. In simpler terms, it wasn’t like Woo-Jin had begged them to lip-sync to his singing, so he wondered why Lee Min-Soo was doing all this.

“We had no power then, so all we did was listen and follow Director Seol’s orders. We don’t owe you anything, and neither are we at fault for anything we did. You really shouldn’t think you are above us with just that. We didn’t do that because we lacked skills or anything. Whatever anyone says, we were the victims!”

Lee Min-Soo screamed desperately at him, but it had no effect on Woo-Jin at all. According to him, they were different now, but Lee Min-Soo had remained the same. Everything, then or now, had stayed the exact same.

“Even then, even now, you spout the same words again and again.”

Leaving Lee Min-Soo aside, curiosity regarding the rest of Blue Fit briefly popped into Woo-Jin’s mind then. Would they be the same as him, or was he the only one that stayed like this?

He was curious. But only very slightly.

1. tteok-galbi (떡갈비), which are minced, seasoned, and grilled beef ribs. ☜

2. CSAT (수능): stands for College Scholastic Ability Test, your college applications bank on the score you receive on this test ☜

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3. This is a Korean phrase, 적반하장도 유분수였다. It essentially means someone at fault is insulting a random passerby for their own faults. I just translated this directly as possible. ☜

4. Wildflower is a famous Korean ballad that is also famously difficult to sing due to its high register. YT link here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZtcM3KhgF-s ☜

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