The hand that was inputting the address into the navigation slowed down.
His long fingers, a little rougher than before, slowly retracted.
Lighting a cigarette, Yoon Jooho drove out of the parking lot.
Passing by the spot near where he used to drop off Song Hyunsoo along the Gangbyeonbuk-ro, his phone rang.
The caller ID read ‘Sangho hyung.’
“Just finished working out. Heading in now.”
Assuming it was a routine check-in call, Yoon Jooho answered mechanically in an annoyed tone as soon as he connected.
[Oh, okay. Good job… but Jooho, you don’t have any appointments after this, right?]
From Director Bang’s hesitant voice, Yoon Jooho sensed instinctively that something bad had happened.
Frowning, he tapped ash into the ashtray.
“What is it now? Just spit it out.”
[I think you should stop by Attorney Moon’s office first.]
“Why there at this hour?”
[Well… the CEOs came looking for you.]
A crack formed on Yoon Jooho’s face.
The CEOs. The two Co-CEOs of Look Planning. His parents.
■
“Jooho!”
His mother, seated on the sofa, sprang up and immediately approached him. His father followed suit, watching Yoon Jooho with a wistful expression.
Stopping in front of him, his mother wrapped both hands around Yoon Jooho’s cheeks.
Despite the tense standoff after everything that had happened, she showed no hesitation in touching his face.
She was confident, as if handling her own possession.
“What’s with your face? That beautiful skin of yours is all ruined.”
She turned to scold Director Bang with a reproachful glare.
“Director Bang, aren’t you sending Actor Yoon to the aesthetician? How could you leave him looking like this?”
Her tone was like scolding a housekeeper who had scratched an expensive piece of artwork.
Yoon Jooho sighed and pulled his mother’s wrist away from his cheek.
“I’m playing an 8-year convict from a seaside town. Does it make sense to have a face managed by an aesthetician?”
“This is why you can’t do it alone.”
You can’t do it alone. You can’t do anything by yourself. You just have to act. — Words he had heard his entire life.
Barely three minutes after stepping into the law firm’s meeting room, the urge to run out was already swelling inside him.
His mother, with a frustrated face, touched various parts of his face as if inspecting, then added,
“That’s just a movie character setting. In the end, people come to see you looking pretty on screen. Look at how dry your skin is now. Why do you insist on doing movies…”
“Director Hwang, Jooho, let’s just sit down and talk. Both of you, come over here.”
His father, standing by the sofa, gestured and sat down first along with the accompanying lawyer.
Yoon Jooho’s lawyer, who had been waiting, approached with a grave expression and quickly spoke in a low voice.
“They’ll probably try to record this, and so will we. It’d be best if you say as little as possible and just listen to what they have to say.”
Director Bang, standing nearby, nodded.
“Right, Jooho. You know how it is — those CEOs will try to provoke you one way or another. Don’t lose your temper and start talking nonsense over there.”
“I’m not a kid. Got it.”
“Yoon Jooho.”
Director Bang urgently grabbed Yoon Jooho’s arm as he started walking toward the sofa.
“Let’s resolve this as smoothly as possible, okay?”
Ignoring Director Bang’s desperate face, Yoon Jooho slipped out of his grip and moved forward.
On the coffee table in front of the sofa, there was a bottle of water placed before each person. Yoon Jooho twisted open his bottle and brought it to his lips as soon as he sat down.
“Like Director Hwang said, your face is a mess. Having your own parents as enemies must be tough for you, too, huh?”
His father spoke with a serious expression, and Yoon Jooho almost choked on the water he was drinking.
If it’s me who’s a mess inside, and my face is wrecked, it’s because of some stray cat I recently got tangled up with, not because of you. He wanted to retort that but couldn’t bring himself to say it.
“And what’s with those clothes?”
His mother frowned as she eyed Yoon Jooho’s black padded jumper and comfortable sweatpants.
“He just came back from working out.”
Director Bang, stepping up to defend him, shot his mother a glance.
“Whether it’s after working out or just a walk around the neighborhood, I taught you to always present yourself perfectly in front of people as a professional. What if some weird photos get taken?”
His mother’s obsession with Yoon Jooho’s appearance was intense.
Because of that, Yoon Jooho had to maintain a flawless appearance even for light pre-meetings or script readings, and even at private appointments. If he ever missed perfect clothes, hair, or skin, he felt worthless.
“No one thinks that’s weird. The strange one is the guy who puts wax in his hair and wears a coat and dress shoes just to go to the gym.”
“Still, that kind of slack, thug-like…”
“Director Hwang, let’s put that topic aside for now.”
His father interrupted his mother, setting the tone with a serious expression and voice as he opened the discussion.
“I heard about Manager Cha. We immediately terminated him. The company is unstable, so these things happen. For the sake of Look Planning, let’s drop our stubbornness, Jooho.”
“Stubbornness?”
Yoon Jooho raised an eyebrow while closing his water bottle’s cap.
“You’re not seriously thinking about going all the way against your parents, are you? I understand your intentions to a degree, but it’s time to compromise and get the company back on track.”
Yoon Jooho shrugged and scoffed.
“If I wasn’t serious about going all the way, would I have sent a certified letter while being cursed out by the entire nation?”
He twisted the water bottle in his hand like squeezing it.
“Whether it’s company money or my personal income, just take whatever you embezzled so far. As long as you leave the company alone, I’ll turn a blind eye. So who’s being stubborn?”
His father slammed his hand on the table and stood up abruptly.
“Why should we leave the company? Do you think that company belongs to you? For a bastard like you, I’ve spent my entire life… you unfilial brat…”
“Director Yoon, please don’t get so worked up.”
His mother pulled him down by the arm and gave Yoon Jooho a cold look.
“You were just a clueless kid, but we coaxed and pampered you into becoming a respectable actor. Your father even quit his acknowledged PD job to dedicate himself to Look Planning.”
“Coaxed and pampered… Why do I have no memories like that? All I remember is the threats, punishments, and turning your backs on me whenever I disappointed you.”
“You don’t know what it’s like to work with a child.”
“Maybe not. But I do know that a child shouldn’t live in fear of being abandoned by their parents.”
Young Yoon Jooho struggled just to be accepted and loved by parents who smiled and hugged only when praised on set.
If I do well, Mom and Dad get along, and there are no loud fights. If I just act well, our family can be happy.
But soon that thought twisted into the belief that if our family became unhappy, it was my fault.
Though just a child, he thought he had to work hard for the family’s happiness and peace.
“And I don’t understand why you say my father moving to Look Planning was a sacrifice.”
“What?”
“By then, Look Planning had already stabilized. Just as you always said, it was after ‘our Yoon Jooho became a superstar.’ The company runs itself, and he gets money incomparable to his PD salary. How is that a sacrifice?”
Though Yoon Jooho had been popular since childhood, he only began to receive genuine top star treatment as an adult.
While his early acting career brought considerable wealth to the family, the sums he earned as an adult actor were on another level.
It was around then that his parents, who had already been controlling and dominating him, became even more obsessively attached to money and fame.
As if anticipating Yoon Jooho’s reaction, his father crossed his arms with a resolute expression.
“If you’re really going to turn your back on your parents, then we won’t consider you our child anymore.”
“Stop beating around the bush and just flip the table already.”
“You held an event for some supporting actor at your birthday party? Everyone came to us and talked about it. Seems like you really care about that friend.”
“He’s not a supporting actor. He’s a junior who will act alongside me in . Why?”
“Are you two involved in something special?”
“Special… relationship?”
Frowning at the phrase, Yoon Jooho wrinkled his brows and scrunched his nose.
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