After Kim Iwol submitted his proposal to the Planning Team, the frequency of his visits to the Management Division dropped sharply.
Naturally, Min Jugyeong of the Management Division also had almost no reason to see Kim Iwol.
At least, not until Kim Iwol requested a meeting through Im Chanyeong, the manager in charge of the trainees.
A meeting with the team that handles people management is usually same old, same old.
At most, the biggest “issue” tends to be asking to switch managers.
When Kim Iwol came into the conference room looking worn out, Min Jugyeong figured he must’ve just been busy lately or that his mind had gotten complicated with debut approaching.
But the problem this young trainee carefully brought up was something UA had never dealt with before.
“PD Yu hit you?”
On a topic she hadn’t even dared to imagine, Min Jugyeong straightened up and asked again.
It wasn’t because she doubted Kim Iwol. It was because she couldn’t believe something that should never happen had happened.
Hesitating, struggling to get the words out, Kim Iwol gave a small nod.
“When?”
“...A few days ago.”
He was a kid who always made eye contact and spoke clearly in conversation. But today, Kim Iwol could hardly lift his head.
Could he possibly think it happened because he did something wrong?
Min Jugyeong’s heart dropped.
No matter what someone does, you don’t hit people—but even setting that aside, Kim Iwol wasn’t the type to go out of his way to get on anyone’s bad side.
Everyone at UA knew how polite and diligent Kim Iwol was.
Min Jugyeong asked as evenly as possible so he wouldn’t tense up more.
“What happened with the PD?”
“...To be honest, I’m not sure.”
He gave an awkward smile. That blank little smile only made Min Jugyeong worry more.
Something flashed through her mind.
A conversation from a recent lunch with a colleague in Planning.
“Jugyeong, be honest with me. Isn’t PD Yu seriously a parachute hire?”
“Why PD Yu?”
“That guy is absolute dead weight. Can’t do the job, talks like crap, and has zero sense. How the hell has word not gotten around the industry?”
It was no secret that the Planning Team hadn’t had a day of relief since PD Yu arrived.
Even Min Jugyeong’s colleague, who’d never been so complainy before, had started sounding like a different person.
And all the complaints had the same source: Yu Hansu.
“The team lead won’t say it out loud, but that man Yu Hansu seems to have a complex about Iwol.”
“A complex?”
“Yeah. He nitpicks Iwol for everything. And when you ask him for the history on the piles of crap he brings in? It’s a circus.”
“Come on, how big is the age gap between Iwol and PD Yu.”
“I’m serious. At the last meeting, all of PD Yu’s ideas got shot down and Iwol’s got picked. You should’ve seen PD Yu’s face then.”
Her colleague had been clear: Kim Iwol’s suggestion was chosen over Yu Hansu’s.
It wasn’t the first time either—she’d heard that much before. But news that a producer’s entire slate of opinions got rejected outright was big enough to spread across the whole company.
“Iwol, when would you say the PD laid hands on you?”
Min Jugyeong asked carefully—hoping to God a grown adult hadn’t hit a twenty-year-old out of some ugly inferiority complex.
But the answer didn’t defy her expectations.
“A few days ago. Does the date matter?”
“Not necessarily. I just wondered if you remembered.”
“If I look at my calendar, I can get the date. It was about three days after the meeting with Planning, and I put all the meeting dates on my calendar.”
Watching him try so hard to speak calmly was heartbreaking.
While Min Jugyeong was struggling to decide what to say, Kim Iwol hesitated and took something from his pocket.
“I... thought you might not believe me...”
Without a word, she took the bundle he offered.
When she unfolded the stack of paper, small metal fragments spilled into view.
She wasn’t foolish enough not to know why he was giving her this, not at this point.
Nor was she foolish enough to think electronics in our country would break like this from being lightly stepped on.
Min Jugyeong exhaled under her breath. This clearly wasn’t something to end with a counseling session at her level.
After a moment’s thought, Ms. Min asked my pardon and brought in the head of the Artist Management Team.
The team lead walked in with a bright face and, within three minutes, his expression turned ashen.
If the company folks had reacted lukewarmly, I was prepared to make a scene about how Yu Hansu had scared the other trainees too. Thankfully, no such mess was needed.
Thanks to that, all I had to do was explain, with the look of someone crushed by the world, how grueling my days under Yu Hansu had been.
I was happy to vent in a way I’d never managed even at Hanpyeong Industries, but the staffers just kept looking worse and worse.
When I told them how he called me until four in the morning, I could visibly see the faces of the team lead and Ms. Min go pale.
The team lead raked his hair and said:
“He’s making these kids see every filthy thing.”
Don’t worry about me. I’m a working adult black as coal on the inside; I’ll live.
Beside him, Ms. Min let out a long sigh and asked:
“We should talk to Planning and separate PD Yu from Spark, right?”
“That’s a given. We’ll have to hear him out too, but we need to inform the CEO.”
It was astonishing. The company staff were trying to protect me.
No matter how hard I’d practiced for this day, who would’ve thought they’d listen so earnestly to someone at the bottom. They were even believing me.
Even if it was all for show, it wouldn’t change the fact that I’d never # Nоvеlight # seen a sight like this at Hanpyeong Industries. Live long enough and you see everything.
For them to care this much about me. Honestly...
This is a problem. I still have more to say!
“Also...”
I took the printouts I’d prepared from my bag and held them out—heart fucking urgent, while doing my best to look hesitant on the outside.
“I don’t know if it’s okay to show you this like this... but I think I should tell you.”
“What is this?”
A dossier of suspected corruption by Yu Hansu, painstakingly compiled by a former HR staffer and current trainee.
To explain how I ended up stripping Yu Hansu to the bone, we have to go back a few weeks.
Back when he was dumping every kind of task on me day and night.
Among my tasks was getting quotes from vendors PD Yu told me to contact.
And in that process, I found it.
“The numbers are weird.”
Evidence suggesting PD Yu was trying to embezzle.
To make the most of the budget allocated to Spark, we had to save everywhere we could.
So I pounded the pavement and sold everything I could sell. I requested quotes all over, knocked on the same doors two or three times, and organized every estimate.
That’s when I noticed a singular pattern.
For companies that overlapped across three scenarios—when I asked alone, when I negotiated prices under UA’s name with permission, and when I connected under vendors PD Yu “knew”—their unit prices were strangely off.
I’d always understood that personal inquiries are the most expensive by default, but for some reason, the more I dropped PD Yu’s name, the higher the price went.
At first I wondered if PD Yu had landed on some vendor’s blacklist, but that wasn’t it. A number of vendors were showing the same pattern.
No way, right? He barely just transferred in.
Just in case—and hoping he wasn’t that hopeless as a human being—I asked a vendor:
“How should we handle payment?”
The answer was disappointing.
“Tell him we’ll put the difference into the personal account like last time.”
This was beyond “personality.”
As it turned out, no embezzlement occurred inside UA. A completely different vendor was selected in the end.
I nearly died finding an option with decent terms untouched by PD Yu’s influence.
Blowing the whistle right then would have been great, but too many things were in the way.
If Planning blew up over the Yu case and Spark’s debut got delayed—that, and if I made a wrong move and lost my own head before taking his—that was a problem.
Considering all that, all I could do at the time was make sure he had no angle to siphon money off.
But I did keep records of the whole series of events.
In case it happened again—or in case I hit my KPIs and left UA—I planned to report him openly then.
And the day after he hit me.
I went to the Production Team to cut off his air.
I took a unit-price sheet listing only the quotes I’d gotten under his name, planning to compare them to the standard ranges the pros would know and get cross-verification...
“Well, if PD Yu already picked the vendor, we don’t need to look. That means it’s all been decided.”
Huh.
The Production Team practically reeked of something fishy.
An employee colluded with vendors to skim budget.
And the relevant department pretends not to see?
What else do you call that but partners in crime.
Only then did my old questions click into place. If they had someone to share kickbacks with, how much of an eyesore would I have been, getting in the way every time.
We weren’t exactly working hand-in-glove, so it would’ve been easy to put on a front on the surface.
While we’re at it, I’d like the lot of them to get disciplined and stay out of Spark’s business.
With that in mind, I stayed up all night until my eyes were bloodshot, transcribing recordings and attaching quotes.
It didn’t look like the only people with ties to Yu Hansu were in Production, but first I decided to cut the main tendon. If you try to catch two rabbits and miss both, that’s worse.
And that report I made while sobbing in my heart has now ended up in UA hands.
My heart pounded. How would UA treat an internal whistleblower?
“At Hanpyeong Industries, a whistleblower was a dead man.”
Just then, I heard a chair leg scrape harshly across the floor. Someone had shot to their feet.
