Chapter 141…
When Everyone Shouts “He’s a Beggar” (2)
“What do we do about this?”
“Hmmm.”
The cheers for the “boss” role were so overwhelming that the production company’s PR team couldn’t help but agonize over it.
Everyone was shouting “beggar,” so if they suddenly said, No, it’s Shiraso-ni!—
the reaction would obviously turn ice-cold in an instant.
“Haah… why did we have to cast such a great actor….”
“If it were you, could you really say no after seeing that?”
Someone muttered in frustration, only to be immediately scolded from the side.
That referred to the content where he had fought wearing a mask on YouTube.
At that moment, someone spoke up.
“Then… should we use that?”
“That what?”
“The mask.”
“Huh?”
“Since we hid it anyway, let’s hide it all the way to the end.”
Everyone’s eyes lit up at once.
“I’m Hong Gil-dong?”
“…Just endure it.”
Well, I can endure it if I have to.
But seriously—what is going on here?
They’re even doing the script reading in private.
I heard that usually they invite reporters and all that stuff.
“From a marketing standpoint, it’s not bad. Secrets are good—as long as you hide them well.”
Manager Park spoke seriously, but somehow it all felt a bit strange.
“Well, I guess it can’t be helped, since I was a beggar. Then… Juhwan’s a secret too?”
“They’re keeping everything secret except for the already announced roles.”
“Oh?”
Being a “secret” somehow made it feel classy.
“By the way… can you ride a motorcycle?”
“The thing with two wheels?”
“Yeah.”
“Did some kind of commercial come in?”
“No. Apparently there’s a scene like that in Yain.”
I was dumbfounded.
“What kind of 1930s setting has motorcycles?”
“They existed.”
“They did?”
“Haven’t you seen WWII movies? The ones with sidecars.”
Now that I thought about it, they really did exist.
“So then I just ride in something like a stroller attached to the side?”
“Shiraso-ni riding around in a basket—that’d be quite the look, right?”
“Sounds safe at least… but wait, I don’t remember that kind of thing in Yain Era.”
“They said they’ll use it in the China setting.”
At least I have ridden a bicycle before. When I was a kid.
Of course, it had four wheels.
“Should we try learning first?”
“…Yeah, you have a license anyway. Oh right, you don’t go on highways these days, right?”
“Going as far as the supermarket is no problem.”
“Good… that’s a relief.”
It’s true.
I’m not one of those stiff guys who only go straight anymore.
I’ve gained the flexibility to turn left or right sometimes.
Of course… very occasionally, a ten-minute trip turns into thirty, so lately I haven’t gone anywhere except right in front of my house.
“Alright, let’s do it.”
“Yes, sir!”
VROOOOM!
With a rough exhaust roar, the bike shot forward.
“Uh….”
“You said it’s your first day today?”
“Yeah, didn’t you?”
Suhan was racing down the road.
He even lifted the front wheel while riding.
“That’s strange….”
Until recently, Suhan was known as the guy you’d always find somewhere around the greater Seoul area whenever he drove.
When there was no sense of excitement, Park Yuchun would occasionally pick him up, so he knew well.
He still vividly remembered how shocked he’d been when he first saw that car.
And then—
“Maybe he’s in a good mood because the actor’s doing so well?”
“N-no, sir.”
Yuchun, who had briefly reminisced about driving that expensive car, hurriedly managed his expression.
“Did he learn that fast…?”
“No way. That’s not something you learn here. Looks like he already knew. Didn’t you check?”
At the action school, one of the staff helping out asked, and Yuchun laughed it off.
“H-ha ha ha. I didn’t know he was that good.”
“He’s a veteran. Even among our guys, that level is rare. Wow… that’s the real deal.”
SCREEECH! SKID!
“Wooaah! How was it? Pretty awesome, right?”
“Uh… let’s talk for a second.”
“Yes?”
Pulling Suhan aside, Yuchun spoke with a flushed face.
“What’s going on?”
“It just… happened.”
“What?”
“Maybe when I went to the hospital?”
“That ghost lady… rode motorcycles too?”
Recalling the incident, Yuchun asked.
“No. She didn’t possess me. It was before that, when I fell asleep.”
“So sleeping well wasn’t the ability?”
“I guess not?”
He’d thought sleeping well was the ability, since Suhan had been sleeping fine lately.
But now it seemed that wasn’t the case.
“Come to think of it, back then he did all kinds of odd jobs. He did a lot of deliveries and courier work.”
“Ah!”
Now it all made sense.
“Well then, that’s actually a relief.”
“Yeah. I’ll go for another lap.”
Watching Suhan run back toward the bike, Yuchun couldn’t hide his complicated feelings.
“When you see stuff like that… it’s helpful, but still….”
But he soon shook his head.
The memory of Momo still lingered like trauma.
People wouldn’t understand.
A grown man clinging to someone’s leg like that… that….
“Eek!”
“Why are you shivering?”
“N-no, it’s nothing.”
Asked by one of the action school staff, Yuchun simply smiled.
It was a trauma he couldn’t tell anyone about.
Assistant Manager Kang Jungho was deep in thought again today.
His dilemma: what on earth should he do with this fearless rookie employee?
“….”
Seeing the rookie watching something on his smartphone during work hours—without even noticing his superior standing behind him—made Kang sigh.
Then, instinctively, his gaze shifted to the phone.
“Huh?”
“Yes?”
Kang blurted it out without realizing.
Startled, the rookie spun around.
“Ah! S-sorry!”
“You’re always sorry. Was that Yain just now?”
“Oh, yes!”
Kang had been quite interested in the news that Yain Era, a drama he had once greatly enjoyed, was being remade.
It had been almost ten years since he last watched a drama.
But childhood memories of Yain Era had sparked his interest again.
“This is promotional stuff they uploaded for Yain. They say it’s Shiraso-ni.”
“What kind of Shiraso-ni wears a mask and does MMA?”
“No, it’s that the actor playing Shiraso-ni actually fought in a match. This is really hot right now.”
“A match? This? Isn’t it just an old movie or drama clip?”
“No. It’s bare-knuckle fighting content.”
“Let me see….”
Kang had come to scold the rookie for slacking off, but instead he got completely absorbed in the video.
“Ohhh!”
Getting hooked took only a moment.
The Yain title appeared, followed by title shots of the actors revealed so far.
Some were shown only as silhouettes.
Because of that, people were obsessively trying to identify the roles.
Everyone realized that only the actors whose roles were correctly guessed appeared in the title video.
So people were matching silhouettes like some kind of hidden-role game.
As the title video ended, the silhouette of Shiraso-ni slowly faded, and a voice rang out.
—Looks like there’s a reason, huh? I just wrote Shiraso-ni because I’m Shiraso-ni, that’s all.
“Whoa?”
“Gives you chills, right?”
That single masked line sent shivers through everyone.
A voice so powerful it could even overshadow the image of the original lead actor from the old Yain Era.
“Wow… who is that? He’s really—”
“So gooood.”
“….”
“….”
At the voice behind them, both Kang and the rookie froze and slowly turned around.
“S-senior managing director!”
“We’re screwed— mmph!”
The rookie blurted out a cry of despair, then hastily covered his mouth with both hands.
A little later.
Three office workers—spanning generations and ranks—stood muttering together while staring at a single smartphone.
“Just who on earth is Shiraso-ni?”
It had become a full-blown issue.
—Looks like there’s a reason, huh? I just wrote Shiraso-ni because I’m Shiraso-ni, that’s all… So? Is it similar?
From YouTubers desperately copying it while chasing clout under titles like Uncovering the Identity of Shiraso-ni,
to shorts turning that brief line into challenges and memes—
It was chaos.
“So this is how it turned out?”
“The anticipation is enormous.”
“Wow, it’s this big?”
“Honestly, we doubted it too. We thought maybe it was someone else since he wore a mask.”
“How can anyone guess from just that?”
“People are already sharing edits comparing Yain Era Shiraso-ni vs. Yain Shiraso-ni!”
The Yain drama PR team was basically throwing a party.
“Ah!”
“What is it? Don’t tell me a spoiler leaked?”
When someone shouted in shock, everyone tensed up again.
“Hey— the actor Jo Sang-gyu, who played Shiraso-ni in the original Yain Era—”
“What?”
The old Shiraso-ni actor had uploaded a recent video reacting to it.
—At that level, at least one of your parents has to be from the North, right?
“Whoa, that’s huge. Is it that good?”
That actor’s parents had defected from the northwestern region of North Korea, and thanks to that, he had naturally learned the dialect—one of the reasons he was cast back then.
So every word he said now was like pouring oil onto a fire.
“Even North Korean defector YouTubers are saying it. They say it’s a northwestern dialect, but not modern—more like an old style.”
“But what do we do? It’s getting too big. Don’t we need some kind of teaser?”
Everyone started getting anxious.
At first, it had just been improvisation.
Now, expectations had skyrocketed way too much.
The YouTuber who filmed the match had already passed ten million views on that single video and was apparently screaming in joy.
Screaming because he was so happy.
Riding the wave, he even released second and third parts using footage that had been cut during editing—only to get criticized for overdoing it.
“I don’t think this is something we can handle on our own anymore. Let’s report to the director. Tell him it feels serious.”
“Yes.”
The PR team had started to become afraid of the attention.
“What are you filming?”
“Character-specific shorts.”
They planned to release separate short videos for promotion.
All actors whose roles had been revealed—or quietly confirmed with permission—would participate.
There were only three unrevealed roles left.
One was Shiraso-ni.
Another was Kim Chunsam.
Juhwan was hiding that one thoroughly.
He said he wanted to protect his current image just a little longer.
The last was the role of Lee Sang-dae, the Tiger of Fengtian, Manchuria.
That role had less screen time, so it naturally drew less attention.
To keep the buzz going until the drama aired, they revealed silhouettes and held weekly votes.
Whenever the top-voted actor matched the role, it would be officially revealed.
This absolutely drove people crazy.
Comments ranged from “Are we the nation of guessing games?” to “People who are obsessed with voting.”
“So do I wear a black bodysuit or something?”
“You want to?”
“…R-really?”
“Do you think I’m serious? We’ll handle it in editing.”
Uh… yeah, bodysuits scare me too, honestly.
Thank goodness.
Foreign bodysuits often look cool, but Korean ones tend to be more embarrassing than anything.
“So take your time preparing. Think about a concept you like too.”
“Yes.”
Somehow, I’ve got a feeling—this is going to be fun.
