Don't Say to My Writer What You Won't Say to Me
“Should you trust what this sly snake says—or shouldn't you?”
Watching Lee Gun flash an enigmatic smile, Myung-jin found everything about him insufferable.
Serin, on the other hand, had caught the unusual look in Lee Gun's eyes, and her face was glowing with excitement.
“You had a woman you were serious enough about to accept a proposal from?”
“I'll tell you another time. Please excuse me.”
That's what I thought. Tsk, tsk.
Leaving Myung-jin behind, clicking his tongue about being fooled yet again by that sly fox, Lee Gun stepped out of the dining room.
But before he'd gotten far, Lee Hyuk caught up with him and dragged him out to the outdoor terrace.
“What were you thinking, blowing the story up like that?”
“You thought it was a bluff too?”
“A woman doesn't just drop out of the sky, out of nowhere.”
“A proposal drops out of the sky just fine, apparently? I was so stunned I stood there like an idiot and couldn't say a word.”
“There's really a woman?”
“Yeah.”
“Who is she? What's her name? What does she do?”
Watching his brother—who had been feigning indifference this whole time—suddenly interrogate him with gleaming eyes, Lee Gun let out a short laugh.
“The second I tell you, you'll have someone digging into her background. You really think I'd hand that over willingly?”
“She's not some weirdo, is she? You've only been seeing each other a little while—why rush into marriage?”
“Ah... good point. I should've asked her that. Why she doesn't need a boyfriend but needs a husband.”
“What?”
Lee Hyuk's perfectly smooth brow crumpled like a sheet of paper.
“I want to take it slow and date first, and she's saying let's start with marriage... I really should have asked her why.”
“What were her exact words?”
“She said... she doesn't need a boyfriend. She needs a husband. Something like that.”
Lee Hyuk tilted his head with a look of sheer disbelief.
“And you took that as a proposal?”
“That's her asking me to be her husband, isn't it?”
“Has it occurred to you it might have been a polite rejection?”
When Lee Gun just stared at him as if he'd spouted complete nonsense, a thin smile played at the corner of Lee Hyuk's mouth.
To him, his little brother—twelve years his junior—simply looked naive.
“A polite rejection?”
Meanwhile, as Lee Gun murmured the words low, the humor was slowly draining from his face.
It seemed he would have to confirm it for himself. Precisely.
Hansan Media, Creator's Room.
Today, the atmosphere inside was buzzing more than usual.
The director to helm the drama had been decided, and it was the day he would attend the script reading for the very first time.
Writer-nim. You're going to be blown away when you see who it is. Trust me, you can look forward to it.
Thanks to PD Kim Sol-ji's grand pronouncements—teasing the reveal while refusing to the very end to break security—Yun-seul couldn't contain her fluttering excitement the entire walk to the conference room.
By the original timeline, the production of Insomnia wasn't supposed to be discussed for another two years.
Whether it was the elevated polish of the screenplay, or the fact that she'd won Hansan Media's competition rather than a broadcaster's, everything was moving at a pace that made her past life seem glacial by comparison.
For a moment, Director Kim Jin-yul—who had directed it back then—flitted through Yun-seul's mind.
Unfortunately, he was still a rookie without a single commercial film to his name.
She had waited a good while longer when it happened.
“I'm Bi Yeon-tae. I'll be directing.”
At the man's introduction—thirty minutes later than promised—Yun-seul's shoulders flinched.
Not because she recognized the famous ten-million-ticket director.
But because in a few years, this man would be buried under the wreckage of the MeToo movement.
It would come out that he had repeatedly sexually harassed the youngest staff on his directing team and rookie actresses.
“Hello. I'm Min Yun-seul, the writer.”
Yun-seul forced down the revulsion churning in her gut and bowed in greeting.
He plopped himself down into the head seat with a stiff, entitled posture.
“You're a lot younger than I imagined, Writer.”
“You think so too, Director? And yet the experience that comes through in the script is incredible, isn't it? We're amazed every single time we read it.”
Sol-ji gave a thumbs-up, lifting the mood.
“With a ten-million-ticket director shooting a script this good, the ratings might as well be guaranteed.”
In high spirits, Yeon-tae sank deep into his chair and tilted his chin up with arrogance.
“The script's decent enough. But let's change the protagonist to a man. Who on earth watches a one-woman show carried by a female lead?”
Insomnia was a thriller about a prosecutor whose severe insomnia blurred the line between dream and reality, until she becomes the prime suspect in a string of serial murders committed while she sleeps—and must hunt down the true culprit herself.
Yeon-tae was saying that Yu-ju, the protagonist, should be rewritten as a man.
“Actually, I believe that's exactly what will set us apart from the existing genre titles.”
Yun-seul laid out the justification for the female lead in a calm but resolute tone.
Yeon-tae scowled with displeasure.
Whatever power a writer might wield on a drama as opposed to a film, none of that applied to a ten-million-ticket director like him.
Yeon-tae decided that early on, he would properly crush the spirit of this insolent rookie writer.
He snorted as if the whole thing were absurd, then pulled out a cigarette and lit it.
No smoking indoors, in a conference room no less, went without saying—yet no one dared stop him.
That was the kind of position he held.
Whoosh— Yeon-tae deliberately blew his smoke straight toward Yun-seul's face.
“Is it because you're a rookie? You don't know the industry—no, you really, really don't. Or maybe since this is going up on an OTT platform too, you wanted to try some fresh, edgy little experiment?”
In the domestic market of this era, genre titles with female leads were virtually nonexistent.
Actresses were relegated to supporting the male protagonist or consumed as sexual objects.
“As an OTT production targeting the global market, I believe a one-woman lead is exactly right. Women's stories are already being embraced as a trend overseas.”
Yeon-tae had expected Yun-seul to cower and tuck her tail by now. When she fired back point after point without so much as blinking, his lid blew clean off.
“Trend? Is it because you're young? Your English pronunciation slides out so damn smoothly. Is that why your tongue's so soft?”
At the naked mockery, the air in the conference room froze in an instant.
Anyone would have been rattled, but Yun-seul's expression didn't change a shade as she glared at him with eyes gone cold.
It was Yeon-tae—reading the undisguised contempt in that gaze—whose face contorted, flushing red and blotchy.
“And what are you going to do about it, huh?”
Yeon-tae bared his teeth and roared.
“You scribble a few lines, and suddenly PDs are falling over themselves calling you Writer-nim, and now you've got no fear left? A mere writer daring to nitpick a director—yes here, no there? Huh?”
“D-Director, please calm down—”
Sol-ji tried desperately to intervene, her face drained white, but she couldn't hold him back.
“Do you know who I am! I'm Bi Yeon-tae! Ten-million-ticket director Bi Yeon-tae! Who do you think you're being insolent to, you little brat! Insolent, I said!”
Bang.
Just then, the conference room door swung open with a heavy thud.
Standing where every gaze in the room snapped at once was Lee Gun, a coffee carrier in each hand.
He walked in quietly and set the coffee down on the table.
Then, with eyes gone cool and still, he swept the room in a slow survey.
Without uttering a single word, the pressure radiating off him clamped Yeon-tae's mouth shut like a clam—the same mouth that had been baring its fangs moments ago.
“Your voice was ringing all the way down the hall, Director Bi. What could you have been discussing with such passion?”
Lee Gun strode forward and planted himself directly in front of Yeon-tae.
The murderous intensity he'd been unleashing at Yun-seul had vanished without a trace, and now a servile smile crept across Yeon-tae's face.
“N-no, that is... I was just giving our writer here a few words of encouragement about doing well on the project, and I suppose I got a bit loud.”
“Oh, is that right?”
Lee Gun's deadpan gaze dropped to the cigarette wedged between Yeon-tae's fingers.
Yeon-tae hurriedly ground it out against the script on the table in front of him, and Lee Gun's brow twitched upward in irritation.
Lee Gun gripped the shoulder of Yeon-tae—a head shorter than himself—and tilted his head to the side.
“I'm dying to know. What exactly was this encouragement?”
“Huh? No, it's just... I was explaining how things work in this business...”
He had obviously heard everything from the hallway, and the question was a formality—there was no coming up with a different story now, and spitting out the truth would burn his face red. So Yeon-tae let his words trail off.
His stomach was in knots.
If Lee Gun were just another creator, he could have blustered his way through. But the man standing before him was the CEO of Diflix Korea.
Yeon-tae was currently in negotiations with Diflix over a 30-billion-won blockbuster series.
That was why, no matter how much his insides boiled, he kept his mouth shut.
“Director Bi.”
Lee Gun's voice sliced through the heavy silence.
His hand tightened ever so slightly on Yeon-tae's shoulder as he spoke, each word edged like a blade.
“Whatever you can't say in front of me—don't say it in front of my writer, either.”