Chapter 89: This Isn’t It (1)
Seo Yi-Seo was immersed in writing her report when she heard the ringing of the intercom. She quickly walked to the living room.
“Who is it?”
- I have a delivery for Miss Kang Ra-Eun.
“A delivery? Just a second.”
She opened the front door and saw a delivery man who she’d never met before with a cart full of large cardboard boxes.
‘He’s not the usual delivery man,’ Yi-Seo thought.
He could be someone new.
“Is all this for Ra-Eun?” she asked.
“Yes.”
She wondered if they were gifts from Ra-Eun’s fans, but she rejected the thought since that couldn’t be. Fan gifts and letters were made so that they would be sent to the GNF Entertainment office. Yi-Seo checked the invoice to see who had sent them.
‘Oh, they’re from Han-Seok.’
She was curious what exactly Han-Seok had sent to Ra-Eun for there to be so much of it.
Meanwhile, the delivery man asked, “Should I bring them inside?”
“Oh, yes please. Let me help you.”
“No, no! It’s alright. They’re heavier than you think. I’ll take care of it since you might get hurt.”
The delivery man skillfully moved the boxes into the house, likely due to his experience in carrying heavy loads. Yi-Seo felt it was wrong to send him on his way after all the trouble, so she decided to offer him a cold beverage since Ra-Eun’s father also worked as a delivery man.
“Please have this.”
“Thank you very much, ma’am.”
Yi-Seo stared at the boxes while tilting her head even after the delivery man had left. She pondered over what they could be, but she couldn’t just open them since they were for Ra-Eun.
‘I guess I have no choice but to wait until Ra-Eun comes back.’
***
Thirty minutes later, the front door unlocked and Ra-Eun entered.
“I’m back.”
“Ra-Eun, a ton of packages came for you. What’s all this?”
“Are they from Han-Seok sunbae?”
“Yeah.”
“They’re topping yogurt.”
“Topping yogurt?”
Yi-Seo wondered why Han-Seok would send so much of such a thing to Ra-Eun. Ra-Eun explained to her housemate the circumstances while opening the boxes. She would help in advertising a Do-Dam Group product on her social media account since Han-Seok had helped advertise her company’s sportswear. Han-Seok offered to pay her for her services, but Ra-Eun had refused since it would no longer be returning a favor if she was paid for it.
“...So he said he would at least send me the product,” Ra-Eun said.
“Aha, I see.”
But... There was just one problem.
“That aside, isn’t there way too much?”
Topping yogurt did not have a long shelf life. It was realistically impossible for Ra-Eun and Yi-Seo to get through every single one.
Ra-Eun reassured Yi-Seo while tapping on one of the boxes, “I can just share them with people.”
“With your drama staff members?”
“No.” She had many more mouths to feed aside from her drama staff members. “I’m gonna hand them out to my company staff members.”
It was time for her to do something chairwoman-like.
***
Ra-Eun posted a picture of herself eating topping yogurt on her social media account. The number of likes and comments that said she was a work of art exploded. Any pictures that Ra-Eun took of her daily life became a work of art.
Shin Yu-Bin, who had taken the picture, witnessed the fervent responses from Ra-Eun’s fans with her own eyes and tried asking Ra-Eun something.
“How about you post selfies more often?”
“Why?”
“Because your fans look forward to your posts a lot. Just look at this. They’re still on a commenting spree.”
Ra-Eun was not very active on her social media account despite making one. Three pictures a week was a massive amount from her perspective, but there was no way that her fans would be satisfied with that.
“One selfie a day, excluding weekends. What do you think?” Yu-Bin posed.
Five selfies a week. Ra-Eun did not seem to like her proposal very much.
“Isn’t that too many?” she asked.
“You have more than enough material to post just from taking photos of your daily life. I’m not asking you to write an essay. All you would have to do is to post a picture with a caption about what you did on that day. How does that sound?”
“Hmm...”
It certainly was not hard to do, but there was only one reason why Ra-Eun was not very active on social media.
Because it was a hassle.
However, it did not seem like a bad idea to post more often if it meant she could satisfy her fans.
“Okay, I’ll try.”
“Alright. I hear ‘interactive celebrities’ are the trend lately. Let’s do our best as well.”
Interactions. They were important indeed, but...
‘It’s not really my style.’
***
Ra-Eun had come to the studio like always for the filming of the 27th episode of Waitress. Han-Seok approached Ra-Eun as soon as she arrived.
“Ra-Eun!”
“Good morning, sunbae.”
Han-Seok looked ecstatic. She wondered if something good had happened.
“The sales for the product that you posted on your account rose so much that we had trouble keeping up with the demand as soon as you posted it. Thanks, Ra-Eun. Grandpa is also extremely happy.”
“Really? I’m glad it worked out as well as I’d hoped it to.”
Celebrities were public figures, so they had a considerable amount of influence on the public. Ra-Eun could experience first-hand how far-reaching the influence of celebrities was.
“Grandpa said he wanted to treat you to a delicious dinner soon.”
“That sounds good to me.”
It was perfect to meet Chairman Ji after so long and to find out how the relationship between him and Kim Han-Gyo had been faring.
‘I’m sure cracks haven’t formed in their friendship just yet.’
However, she was sure that she’d be able to see a few signs of such cracks that would form. She only had one goal: to sever the relationship between Chairman Ji and Kim Han-Gyo earlier than it would naturally. Only then could she eliminate the benefits that Kim Han-Gyo would reap from Chairman Ji’s cooperation. That alone would deal a devastating enough blow to Kim Han-Gyo. This was the only reason why Ra-Eun had been forming a close connection with Chairman Ji, and she desperately needed Han-Seok’s help to do that.
“And our marketing team had been talking about leaving the model for our next snack product to you. What do you think about that? And of course, the contract conditions will be much better than the one before.”
There was no way Ra-Eun would pass up a two-birds-with-one-stone opportunity to earn money while consolidating her connection with Do-Dam Group.
“Of course I’ll do anything you ask, sunbae,” Ra-Eun replied.
“You’re doing it... because I’m the one who’s asking you?”
“Yes.”
“R-Really?”
Ra-Eun’s words had added yet another stack to Han-Seok’s tower of misunderstandings. Screenwriter Yeo Yu-Min entered the waiting room while Han-Seok was flustered.
“Ra-Eun... Oh, you’re here as well, Han-Seok,” Yu-Min said.
“Oh, yes. I had something to talk about with Ra-Eun.”
“Really? What luck. I just happened to have something to tell you both.”
“What is it?”
Program Director Hwang Yun-Seong had still not spoiled them on a certain secret until today, the filming of episode 27.
“Today, we’re going to be handing out the script with the reason why Kang Seon-Hye came to Seoul.”
It was finally time for the cast to be enlightened on the biggest spoiler of the drama Waitress. Han-Seok’s eyes sparkled as if he had been waiting for the day, but the same couldn’t be said for Ra-Eun. The reason why Seon-Hye, the female lead of Waitress, had come to Seoul happened to be the same as Ra-Eun’s reason for returning to the past.
‘It’s for revenge.’
Seon-Hye had a younger brother and sister. Their mother had been raising all three of them by herself, but she abandoned them and disappeared one day. Because of that, Seon-Hye was separated from her younger siblings, and had been secretly growing her feelings of revenge toward her mother. She had heard news that her mother was in Seoul, and had blindly come to find her. At least, that was how Ra-Eun remembered it.
Ra-Eun got up from her seat and smiled at Han-Seok.
“Let’s go check the script, sunbae.”
“Shall we?”
‘Let’s see if it’s how I remember it.’
***
The actors gathered in one place. The leads Han-Seok and Ra-Eun, plus the senior and rookie actors all stopped what they had been doing and had come here after Director Hwang had told them of the news.
Yeo Song-Won, a veteran actress playing a friend of the male lead’s mother as well as her business partner, asked Director Hwang, “Director, you said you’d be telling us the reason why Seon-Hye came to Seoul, right?”
“Yes, sunbae. Min-Tae went to grab the scripts, so please wait a little longer.”
The actors had been enthusiastically discussing what the reason could be for a while, and the hypothesis that Seon-Hye came to Seoul to find her younger sister had received the most votes.
‘But that’s the wrong answer.’
Ra-Eun knew the right answer. There were countless times when she was tempted to just blurt it out, but just barely managed to hold it in each time because one wrong move could ruin all the hard work that the director and the writers had put into the production.
“I’ve brought the scripts, sunbae!”
“Good job.”
An assistant director handed the scripts containing the synopsis of later episodes to Director Hwang, which he then handed to each of the actors.
“We have plenty of time until we start filming, so take your time reading through it. I ask the fast readers to please keep the surprise to yourself for the slower readers, okay?” Director Hwang said while boasting an expression of confidence that the cast would be shocked.
Ra-Eun was confident that she wouldn’t be very shocked since she already knew what would happen.
‘But I should still check, just in case.’
She was planning on skimming through the script to check only the part where the spoiler was. However, as she read through the script...
‘...Huh?’
There was a problem.
‘What the hell? This is different from the story that I know.’
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