Life, Once Again!

Chapter 747

“There really is one.”

Aram giggled and clicked on the ‘sign up’ button. Just as she had found out from the text message she received from Jiyoon ten minutes ago, she indeed found a Han Maru fan café. There were a whopping 40 members here. When she had a look at the date it was made, she saw that it was made just yesterday. Forty people had found this café and signed up for it in just one day.

Unlike the looks of the café, which looked very crude, the entry questions made her puzzled. She only managed to sign up after looking up the answers on the internet before she could sign up. While she was signing up, the number of members increased by 10. While 50 people might look like a small number, it felt like a lot to her when she thought of a classroom full of students.

There were three noticeboards: Announcements, greetings, and a free bulletin board. When she entered the greetings section, she saw a whole page filled with greetings. The first post was posted by an account with the ID ‘Han Maru’, which was kinda funny. Was Han Maru the creator of this café?

She clicked on it and read what it was about.

“Wait, this seems like the real Maru-seonbae.”

He didn’t make it right? She tried imagining Maru being the one to create this café and writing the first post. She laughed exactly one second later. That was impossible.

She rested her chin on her hands and had a look at the greetings. Although their IDs were all different, there were some posts where she could guess who wrote them. Jiyoon said she heard about it from Daemyung, so the entirety of the acting club probably knew about it. The people other than them who had also heard about this café should have joined as well. It was a Han Maru fan café after all. Aram looked forward to what kind of face Maru would make when she talked to him about it tomorrow. The people who joined this café must probably feel the same. While he looked like someone who would stay calm even if he fell into a pit of snakes, he was someone who got embarrassed easily when it came to things about himself.

Aram also left a simple greeting post. She filled half of her post with ‘lol’s and ‘lmao’s. She wanted to call Maru to check his reaction immediately, but she decided to hold back since it would be funnier to talk to him about it in person.

There were also about 30 posts on the free bulletin board. She clicked on the first post. There was a photo of him from the acting competition. Was it someone from the acting club? She clicked on the post and read it.

“Wow, who’s this?”

The contents of the post made her feel embarrassed when it wasn’t even about herself. ‘Handsome actor’, ‘Great actor’, ‘Charisma of the play’, etc. A queasy feeling like one she would get if she had bitten a chunk of raw butter spread around to her bones. This was clearly aimed as a prank on Maru. Aram decided that this person was not someone from the acting club. Even Dowook-seonbae had never played a serious prank on Maru-seonbae. She wondered who had the guts to post something like this.

She had a look at the ID. It was ‘TTO Love Bada’. Bada; only after she said the name with her mouth did she realize the identity of the poster. It was his sister. Aram thought about Maru’s sister who she saw on the day of the CSAT. She was a prankster girl, similar to herself.

Perhaps thanks to the influence of the first post, the following posts were all things that would make Maru embarrassed. Photos that were taken when he was on stage, photos taken during shoots, and even ones that were taken during personal occasions.

A competitive spirit surged within Aram. Although she found Maru scary when he got seriously angry, she couldn’t miss this opportunity. She scrolled through all the photos she took of the acting club that was saved on her blog and picked some photos where Maru had a funny look. She picked a photo after much effort as though she was picking clothes. It was a photo of him curled up into a ball under a blanket in the corner of the hall.

“Our cute Han Maru seonbae-nim. No, wait, that will make it obvious that I’m a junior, so….”

Aram tried to calm down her curling lips as she typed.

* * *

“It’s cold. Come in quickly.”

Ahn Joohyun turned on the heater as soon as she entered the room. As expected of December, it was getting cold by the day. The weather forecast said that it was going to snow tonight, so she shivered just thinking about how she had to do a shoot outside.

“I’ll get dinner ready. You can get washed first.”

Her brother, Bangjoo, stood in front of the sink. Joohyun sat in a chair, with the backrest in front of her.

“Are you not going to wash up? You must be tired.”

“I’ll just look around for a while before washing.”

“There’s nothing to look around at. Should we go with kimchi-jjigae or doenjang-jjigae?”

“We got some ham a while back. How about budae-jjigae?”

“Alright.”

Bangjoo opened the cabinet above the sink and took out some ham. Joohyun opened the refrigerator and brought Bangjoo some sausages that they bought a few days ago. Bangjoo washed the cutting board and started chopping up the ham. Joohyun watched him from behind.

“I think being a cook suits you better than an actor.”

“I don’t find cooking that fun.”

“Don’t say that and try learning. I’m sure it’s much more rewarding than being an actor.”

“Do you think that will work on me when you’re an actress yourself? If you’re gonna say nonsense, then just go get washed up and lie down for a bit. I’ll call you once it’s ready.”

Joohyun pretended to zip up her lips. While her little brother looked like a reckless kid who was unstoppable, she knew that he had a delicate side to him. Once, she mistook him for an adult and was unable to look after him. If not for Maru’s help, Joohyun would have only looked at his mature side and would not have been able to discover his hidden wounds.

“Should I help you?”

“You don’t even know how to handle a knife. Just keep watching.”

“This noona needs to learn cooking to marry someone, you know?”

“You? Get married? I feel bad for the man.”

“Hey, Ahn Bangjoo. It seems like you forgot who your sister is; I’m titled the goddess on the streets, you know? You saw back at the mall, right? Girls your age all rushed towards me screaming ‘unni, you’re so pretty’.”

“A goddess can have such a foul mouth? Also, that’s because they don’t know the true you. I still don’t get what people like about such a weird freak.”

“Just know that my popularity will never decline no matter what you do.”

Bangjoo chopped up the sausages into large chunks and put them into some boiling water before asking,

“So, you have a boyfriend?”

“What if I do?”

“So you don’t.”

“My little brother. What makes you think that your sister doesn’t have a man? It’s all because I’m busy looking after you. Do you now understand my feelings a little?”

“Stop spouting nonsense and get some rest. I thought you were leaving early in the morning again.”

Bangjoo looked at her worriedly. Joohyun smiled and nodded. The reason that their mother, who was on Jeju island, stayed there without too much worry was probably thanks to this reliable son. If her tomboy daughter said that she wanted to live alone at such an age, she would probably have stopped her at all costs.

Just as she was about to stand up, Bangjoo’s phone vibrated.

“I think you got a text.”

“You can have a look. My hands are covered in oil right now.”

Joohyun opened his phone. It was a text from a person called Aram. After reading it, she brought a laptop to the table.

“I told you to get some sleep. Why did you bring a laptop?”

“Apparently, there’s a Han Maru fan café.”

“Fan café?”

Joohyun searched for Han Maru. There were quite a lot of news articles. After scanning the article titles and the internet news agencies that posted them, Joohyun immediately realized that this was the work of president Lee Junmin. So this boy was getting his name known little by little. It seemed that JA was planning to put wings on Maru. If Junmin started working on it, Maru would definitely get his name known, slowly but steadily. Among the actors affiliated with JA, there weren’t any stars who became big in an instant. They were all people who rose up the ranks little by little. This was especially the case with Hong Geunsoo and Yang Ganghwan, who she presumed would become his masterpieces. Now, she could hear their names quite frequently in the industry. Joohyun believed that their reputations would spread out across the whole country quite soon.

She clicked on the ‘cafés’ tab. Indeed, there was a Han Maru fan café. There were 100 members. Joohyun thought back to the day when she first got her fan club. It was back when PC to PC communication was done through landlines, so the only thing they could do was chat with people in a private chat room, but that was quite fun. Things like fan cafés only started forming after the 2000s. She distanced herself from the internet for a long time as she took a break from work after ‘Spring Calendar’, and she found out that a fan café had formed. She thought that there wouldn’t be that many members just like the landline communication days, so when she realized that there were nearly 5,000 members, she was given a lot of encouragement. Right now, there were about 40,000 people.

“Should I post?”

“What post?”

Bangjoo approached after washing his hands.

“For now, I can be considered a fan of Maru, so it’s fine if I leave behind a post. Bangjoo, do you have that photo you took when you played a minor actor in a film?”

“Yes, it’s in my room.”

“Bring one where we took a photo together with Maru.”

After scanning the café once, Bangjoo left and brought a photo without saying much. Joohyun put her face next to the photo.

“Come here.”

“Me too?”

“He’s your senior, so you should cheer for him.”

“That’s true.”

Bangjoo listened quite well when it came to matters related to Maru. It probably meant that he trusted and relied on him that much. After taking a photo with her phone, she transferred it over to the laptop. Joohyun posted the photo immediately and wrote a post.

“He’s a junior I cherish. Please look after him and cheer for him a lot.”

She read what she wrote out loud and put a period at the end before clicking on the ‘post’ button. A moment later, a new post was posted in the café.

* * *

Dongwook deleted 10 text messages without even reading them. They were all from Miyeon. Although he had vowed not to help her, he kept feeling uneasy. He could easily picture himself giving up in the face of this persistence and digging into the huge company that was YM.

“Absolutely not.”

He couldn’t kick away his stable livelihood. Dongwook threw his phone away from him. Only after moving away the item that gave him the witch’s whisper could he sigh in relief.

He made a cup of stick coffee and sat at the desk he put next to the window. The sunset, which he could never see in that damp, cramped semi-basement room could be seen. A stable life was much more important than journalism.

He opened the laptop and opened the messenger. As soon as he opened it, he got a text from Miyeon. He immediately changed his status to ‘away’. It was scary how quick she was to send a message.

-Hyung-nim, this is pretty interesting.

He got a message from a junior he had known for quite a long time. This guy worked for an internet news agency. The message that the junior sent had a website url. He copied the URL and pasted it into his address bar.

He was greeted by an internet news website riddle with popup ads. He mechanically clicked on the ‘x’ button in the corner to close them all. Only after removing the popup that blocked the news article could he see the content.

“What’s this?”

He saw some familiar faces. There was a photo of Han Maru and a photo of Ahn Joohyun holding a photo of Han Maru. There was someone else next to Joohyun, but they were blurred out. The content of the article was quite simple. Ahn Joohyun, cheering for the new actor Han Maru – that was it. It was a crudely written article with all sorts of clickbaity words, just like the platform it was written on.

-Isn’t he the guy you said would do well in the future?

Dongwook stroked his chin as he looked at the message from his junior. It was one of the thousands of trashy articles that only wasted internet traffic, but he found it a waste to let go of this source.

“I think it’ll have quite a good reaction if I go about it on the side of humor.”

Dongwook immediately pulled up Lee Junmin’s chat in the messenger. He always needed permission from the president when writing something about an actor belonging to JA. Lee Junmin’s direction to create an undefeated myth probably included managing little articles like these. He wrote a basic outline and sent it to the president.

A moment later, he got a reply,

-Try it out.

Dongwook notified his junior that he would buy him food tomorrow.