Become a Star

“Also, more importantly, I’ve kept my promise, so should you.”

When Woo-Jin was shooting the action scene at the buildings, he had yielded a lot to the production director’s demands. Of course, it was still within his means, and he had negotiated with the production director while making it seem as though he was making a concession. But, he had no intention of doing that without getting anything in return, nor did he have much trust in Park Jong-Hyuk. Woo-Jin simply left the dumbfounded Production Director Park Jong-Hyuk alone and got up from his seat.

It was now Monday, past midnight. In other words, he would be taking a five-day break from shooting starting now. Over the next five days, Woo-Jin forgot about the drama and solely focused on his studies. The first episode had premiered on Wednesday, but he didn’t even have time to watch it. Occasionally, people he didn’t know would walk up to him in the hallways and say good things about the drama, but it still felt very surreal to him.

The rating on the first day was 8.7%, which was definitely not a bad start when compared to Yoo Soo-Min’s previous productions. And the second episode that was aired on Thursday had a 10.3% rating. The results were very encouraging as it meant that not only had they retained their viewers from the first episode, but they had also gained new viewers.

Their competitor, The Blue Castle’s Master, continued maintaining a rating of 18%, and MBS’ drama ranked last among the three broadcasting companies with a rating of 5%. Since both the MBS drama and the highly-anticipated The Blue Castle’s Master were unable to hit 20% once again, they ended up getting mocked by amateurs. In particular, The Blue Castle’s Master became a laughing stock on the internet with people saying that the drama was all hype and no substance and that the episodes looked like a compilation of edited footage of the male and female leads’ terrible acting.

Compared to his previous performances, the male lead, Park Min, had improved a lot, but it didn’t mean that he had turned into an outstanding actor. So, the negative comments were unsurprising since people had already given up on Park Min to a certain extent, but this time around, their target was unexpectedly the female lead.

Until now, her reputation as an actress had been generally good. Her acting skills weren’t poor to the extent of suddenly becoming the center of a debate. But for some reason, both she and Park Min had performed terribly this time around. The crux of the issue was that her current role as an innocent and pitiful woman was on the opposite end of the spectrum compared to all her previous roles where she played a tough and strong-willed woman with a bright personality.

Perhaps, she wanted to diversify her role types, but judging from the results, it turned out to be a failure. The inability of the two actors in the drama to act from start to finish created a negative synergy. Nonetheless, they took comfort in the fact that the ratings hadn’t dropped, and they were still the highest viewed Wednesday-Thursday drama by a large margin.

More importantly, the rights to the drama had been sold overseas at a high price because of Park Min’s popularity, so the producers didn’t express any dissatisfaction or complaints about him. Although the drama hadn\'t drawn as much attention and there was a bit of issue with the acting, it was still considered a success.

Chae Woo-Jin returned to the set on Friday afternoon, the day after the second episode was aired. Some people had regarded it as the appearance of the main lead, while others saw it as the return of the prodigal son. Regardless of what they called his return, Woo-Jin had a brutal filming schedule ahead of him.

“Did the shooting of Choi Kang’s scenes go well?” At dinner, Woo-Jin acted like nothing was wrong and asked Kang Min-Ho about Lee Min-Soo.

“Yeah! He shot them with his best effort up until this morning. He had as many bad takes as you and Yeon-Ah, and there was a lot of swearing and cursing on set. I’ve never seen Production Director Park so angry before. But starting last night, he got a lot better. Frankly speaking, he’s very good at adapting to circumstances.” Woo-Jin nodded absently in response to Kang Min-Ho’s reply.

“Weren’t you in TM before?” asked Kang Min-Ho.

“Yes, how did you know?”

It was a piece of information that could easily be found on the internet, but Kang Min-Ho was not interested in digging up Chae Woo-Jin’s past.

“I heard it from Lee Min-Soo when he mentioned that both of you used to be idol trainees. He’s very amiable and good-natured. Even though Production Director Park kept cursing at him, he continued to work hard without even a frown. He was also friendly towards Yeon-Ah and me and called us ‘noona’ and ‘hyung,’ making me reflect on my past prejudices against idols.” Woo-Jin nodded once more after hearing Kang Min-Ho sing Lee Min-Soo’s praises. Since he had already been in a similar situation before, he wasn’t surprised.

“I’ve known what kind of person Lee Min-Soo is since a long time ago.” Woo-Jin smiled brightly, saying nothing seemed to have changed, and Lee Min-Soo was still the same as back then. He truly had to hand it to him for being consistent.

***

Louie and Choi Kang would be meeting each other for the first time in episode 10 – they didn’t have any scenes together before that. Although Choi Kang would be consistently appearing in the drama from episode 5 up until the finale, they only had a total of three scenes together. Hence, Woo-Jin didn’t expect to see Lee Min-Soo’s face anytime soon. However, their reunion happened much faster than he had assumed.

Monday morning saw Lee Min-Soo arrive at an amusement park, that day’s outdoor filming site. Park Yeon-Ah and Woo-Jin had already begun preparing for the shoot. The filming had commenced very early as they had to finish shooting the child actor’s parts before the amusement park opened to the public. Louie and Lee Yoo-Ra’s scenes would be filmed after the park opened at 10 a.m. Given the early hour of the shoot, the standby staff had been famished. Lee Min-Soo went around the set, followed closely by his manager, and greeted everyone present with a bow. To the staff members’ delight, he also handed out small paper bags containing a bottle of Dutch coffee and a sandwich each to show his appreciation. This was not an unfamiliar scene as previously, Kang Ho-Soo had given out snacks to the staff on Woo-Jin’s behalf.

However, the staff could not understand why Lee Min-Soo specially made a trip down to the amusement park for such a small thing, even though he didn’t have any filming scheduled for the day. If they were shooting downtown, he could easily brush it off by saying that he happened to be in the area. But that was not the case here, so Woo-Jin was rather curious about his intentions.

After greeting the staff, Lee Min-Soo walked towards Woo-Jin and Park Yeon-Ah as they went through their lines together. When he saw Woo-Jin, he smiled brightly and approached him with his arms wide open as though he had seen his best friend. Given the danger of being hugged by Lee Min-Soo if he stayed still, Woo-Jin forced himself to cough as hard as he could. His bent-over posture from the “coughing fit” looked severe enough to shock Park Yeon-Ah, and she patted Woo-Jin on the back to comfort him. Lee Min-Soo had no choice but to lower his arms.

“It’s really been a while, huh?” Lee Min-Soo said with a bright smile when Woo-Jin pretended that his cough had subsided to some extent.

“Yeah, it’s been a while.”

“I’m guessing you guys were close to each other back when you were in TM?” Park Yeon-Ah asked Woo-Jin. It was a casual question given Lee Min-Soo’s super friendly attitude towards Woo-Jin, but she received a response that was beyond her expectations.

“Of course. We were very close.”

“No, we weren’t exactly close.”

Their answers were completely different from one another. Lee Min-Soo looked hurt after hearing Woo-Jin’s reply, as though he was about to cry, but nodded shortly after. His expression seemed to suggest that he understood the reason behind Woo-Jin’s reply.

“Are you still mad that I was the one to join Blue Fit instead of you? The decision wasn’t in my hands but the management. It’s unfair for you to be mad at me,” Lee Min-Soo responded, looking aggrieved and hurt. Park Yeon-Ah widened her eyes after hearing what he had said.

Although Lee Min-Soo and Woo-Jin were acting very casually, what Park Yeon-Ah just heard was by no means insignificant gossip in the entertainment industry. Lee Min-Soo’s ambiguous tone seemed to have subtly painted Woo-Jin as a narrow-minded person and himself as the victim, almost as if he was trying to insinuate that Woo-Jin wasn’t good enough to debut as one of Blue Fit’s members. So, what right did he have to be mad at the wrong person?

“When have I ever been mad at you?”

“Huh?”

“Have I?” Woo-Jin asked as he looked at Lee Min-Soo with an innocent face. Since Lee Min-Soo’s back was facing the sun, Woo-Jin was blinded by the bright sun, but still smiled brightly.

“Umm…”

“Let’s get this straight. I’ve never lashed at you in anger or have been mad at you. As you’ve said earlier, it had nothing to do with you. I merely stated the fact that we were never close. Frankly, have we ever been close with one another?” Woo-Jin asked with genuine curiosity.

Lee Min-Soo frowned when Woo-Jin looked at him as if he was truly curious. It was normal for people to pretend they were close, even if it was just out of courtesy. However, that wasn’t the case here at all. It would have been great for Woo-Jin to say that he was close with Lee Min-Soo of Blue Fit. However, he was too stubborn to grab this perfect opportunity that had landed in his lap to gain more fame and publicity. And such action was something that Lee Min-Soo could never understand.

“If you say so. I thought we were close, but I guess I must have misunderstood.”

“If we were close, we wouldn’t have spent the last three years without any contact. I thought we were just acquaintances, but I guess we have differing views. Well, you’ve always been very generous when it comes to your definition of a ‘friend.’”

In the past, Woo-Jin had been deceived by Lee Min-Soo and had once thought of him as a good-natured person who was nice to everyone, so Woo-Jin was nice to him in return. Even though they weren’t close, Lee Min-Soo’s kind and polite attitude towards Woo-Jin was very different from what he said behind his back. He would act very friendly in front of people, weaving white lies of things that “Woo-Jin had allowed him to do” then pretending to be a victim while questioning Woo-Jin about his intentions with his change of stance. Woo-Jin had even heard him grumbling at times about how friendship didn’t mean anything to Woo-Jin, and how Lee Min-Soo wasn’t sure why Woo-Jin would throw his “friend” under the bus.

“Unnie!” Park Yeon-Ah’s fashion coordinator called out to her as they were in this tense and awkward atmosphere. The moment Park Yeon-Ah left to change for her shoot, Lee Min-Soo’s constant smile suddenly vanished.

“F*cking bastard! Couldn’t you have played it nice? You’re so condescending now that you’re a little famous, huh?” [1]

“I can’t see anything because I’m not famous. If I were famous, my field of vision would be wider, letting me look at a bigger picture. It must be nice that you have a lot to look at, huh?” While Woo-Jin’s expression remained the same, Lee Min-Soo’s face turned red instantly. Lee Min-Soo was not confident in controlling his expressions, so he covered it up by pretending to stroke his face with his palm.

Paying him no attention, Woo-Jin politely asked as he read the script, “By the way, you don’t have any scenes to shoot today, so why are you here?”

“Is there a reason why I should tell you?”

“Nope. You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to,” Woo-Jin answered in a nonchalant tone. At that moment, Hwang Yi-Young went to call him.

“Woo-Jin, makeup.”

Louie was always decked in a simple T-shirt and jeans. It was fine for him to look a little unkempt, so he didn’t have to change into a separate set of clothes even though he had been wearing his clothes for quite some time. Hwang Yi-Young approached Woo-Jin’s sitting area and greeted Lee Min-Soo briefly before fixing Woo-Jin’s makeup.

1. The direct translation of the phrase is ‘You can’t see anything just because you’re a little famous.’ ☜