Chapter 618: Jiri Mountain Premier (3)

"There will be no joint project with Hwayeon."

"Pardon me?"

'

Such a swift severance!

'

Shin Jong-Ki smiled at my surprised expression. "Why are you so shocked? No matter how tempting Ryu Shin's offer is, I have no intention of pursuing it at the cost of being at odds with you."

Since the 2000s, the conglomerates became fed up with the outdated ways of Chungmuro and the three major broadcasters. Hence they began jumping directly into content businesses like entertainment, theaters, film, and drama production.

However, they only appointed professional managers and didn't get deeply involved. For conglomerates, content was still a minor industry compared to construction or chemicals. Yet, Shin Jong-Ki said bold investment in content was essential for the future.

With that conviction, Shin Jong-Ki turned LT Entertainment into one of the company's core affiliates. And with that vision, he chose me over Ryu Shin when all I had done was mention that Ryu Shin and I were on bad terms.

"The content business I pursue isn't about investing in tangible goods, but in potential. And to my eyes, you're the most promising blue-chip out there. Do you think I'd throw you away for some petty cash?"

Shin Jong-Ki dismissed a hundred billion won as mere petty cash and chose me over money.

"Thank you, Mr. President."

There's no need to thank me."

After briefly bowing my head, I asked about Ryu Shin, who was approaching us. "Then, um... What will you do about Ryu Shin?"

"It's not exactly polite to call someone here only to send them away, but I'll have to. On a day like this, there's no room for enemies in the premiere hall."

Shin Jong-Ki declared he would throw Ryu Shin and his entourage out. Thanks to that, I didn't need to suggest not letting Ryu Shin into the premiere hall.

At that moment, Shin Jong-Ki looked at Team Lead Lee Eun-Joo beside him. "Team Lead Lee, don't you have anything to say?"

But Lee Eun-Joo, usually friendly with me, looked displeased. "Well, I'll do whatever you decide, Mr. Shin. It's not like I have any power."

Shin Jong-Ki looked puzzled. "

Ahem

... Looks like you have some complaints. You seemed to like Chief Jung a lot. Was the hundred-billion-won project hard to let go of?"

Lee Eun-Joo shook her head. "No, it's not that. If you're going to give up a hundred-billion-won project, you could've at least played hard to get with Mr. Jung and squeezed out a

Jiri Mountain

-level project in return...

Sigh~

you missed such a golden opportunity..."

At Lee Eun-Joo's words, Shin Jong-Ki made a startled face. "Oh dear, I completely forgot about that.

Hahaha

."

Apparently pleased with Lee Eun-Joo's point, Shin Jong-Ki laughed.

Then, Ryu Shin, who had come close without us noticing, asked, "What's got you in such a good mood?"

Shin Jong-Ki looked at Ryu Shin's arms in casts. "

Ah

, Team Lead Lee Eun-Joo here sharply pointed out something I had briefly forgotten. I think I'll have to promote her to director soon."

"Is that so? Congratulations, Ms. Lee."

Lee Eun-Joo nodded reluctantly. "

Ah,

well, thank you."

Looking puzzled, Ryu Shin tried to greet Shin Jong-Ki. At that moment, Shin Jong-Ki raised his hand.

"Chief Ryu."

"Yes, sir."

"I'm sorry for calling you all the way here only to say this, but let's call off the joint project."

"Excuse me?"

"I heard you and Chief Jung here have a history?"

The smile on Ryu Shin's face, despite both hands being in casts, disappeared. "A history... is that what you heard?"

"That's right. So I'll have to ask you to leave today. There's barely enough room for the people here to celebrate."

Ryu Shin's face showed signs of confusion. He clearly hadn't expected such an open display of hostility toward him and Hwayeon Media Inc.

At that moment, Ryu Shin clenched his jaw and glared at Shin Jong-Ki. "Are you really going to make an enemy of Hwayeon over just Chief Jung?"

Shin Jong-Ki issued his dismissal. "If I have to choose between the two, then I have no other option. From what I see, Chief Jung will earn me far more money than your Hwayeon ever could. So go on now."

Ryu Shin stared at him, trembling with anger. "This insult to Hwayeon... I'll never forget it."

Then Shin Jong-Ki let out a laugh, finally revealing the arrogance of someone born into a chaebol family. "

Oh

come on, Chief Ryu. Do I look that easy to you?"

Shin Jong-Ki, the son of the founder of LT Inc.—one of Korea's top five conglomerates—was still considered the leading successor of the company. A chief secretary of a media company like Hwayeon wasn't even qualified to bare his teeth at him, unless it was Chairman Jiang Wei himself, of course.

Ryu Shin realized this too late but clenched his teeth, unwilling to back down. "You'll regret what happened today."

"We'll see about that."

Ryu Shin stared at Shin Jong-Ki for a moment before he turned his head and shot me a glare. "Jung Yoon-Ho. Let's see how well this premiere goes tonight."

With that, Ryu Shin walked off the way he came, followed by the bodyguards who had come with him.

I immediately checked Everyday. I was certain the schedule entry would disappear once Ryu Shin was gone.

However, the schedule entry still remained.

[Everyday V12.2]

[Date: February 7, 2021]

-8:30 p.m. [NEW. Lee Tae-Poong]

Jiri Mountain

premiere suspended. (Emergency meeting: Check the attendance list, send apology texts to reporters, and send apology gifts to VIP guests.)

That meant Ryu Shin and his entourage weren't going to cause trouble inside the premiere hall directly. Still, I couldn't think of anyone else who could be behind this. Even just from the words he said before leaving, it was obvious he was involved.

I wanted to run after Ryu Shin immediately, but I couldn't just apprehend him with so many reporters and guests present. If I caused a scene here, I might end up being the one blamed for ruining the premiere.

In the end, I decided to investigate the cause myself. It was now 7:55 p.m., time to head into the premiere hall.

"Everyone attending the VIP premiere of

Jiri Mountain

, please enter Theater 1."

The staff pointed toward the entrance, and the VIP guests and reporters began moving in slowly while murmuring among themselves.

At that moment, Shin Jong-Ki spoke. "Chief Jung, let's head in too."

The premiere, scheduled to start at 8 p.m., would begin with a Q&A between the director, the actors, and the fans inside the screening room. The actual screening of

Jiri Mountain

was set to start around 8:30 p.m.

I wasted no time checking for the possibility that Ryu Shin had sent someone else in to sabotage the premiere from the inside.

"Mr. Shin, how many security personnel are stationed inside the venue tonight?"

"Hmm... tonight, we've placed four uniformed guards at each side of the theater, and six plainclothes agents disguised as guests."

Ordinary guests wouldn't know this, but VIP premieres with many celebrities often used plainclothes security. They would pose as guests but sit near the aisles to intervene in case a fan rushed the stage.

Usually there were two to four plainclothes guards, but tonight there were six. That meant the chances of any incident happening inside the theater were extremely low.

'

So what was the problem?

'

It wasn't an actor getting sick, or a disturbance inside the hall, or a natural disaster. That only left one possibility: a mechanical issue.

Then it hit me.

'

The projector.

'

If Ryu Shin had tampered with the projector, tonight's premiere would have no choice but to be canceled.

I immediately turned to Lee Eun-Joo. "Ms. Lee Eun-Joo, would it be possible to inspect the projector?"

"That's not difficult, but why?"

I hesitated before saying something absurd. "I had a really bad dream last night."

"A bad dream?"

"I dreamt that the premiere got canceled."

Knowing that I had a reputation in the industry as Star Jung the Fortuneteller, I leaned into it with a touch of boldness.

Lee Eun-Joo looked as if she didn't believe in dreams, but her expression tensed slightly when I said premiere cancellation.

Shin Jong-Ki, standing beside us, gave the order. "Dreams are said to be the opposite of reality... but still, it's best to eliminate any source of unease. It's no big deal to check something like that. Tell Mr. Choi I'd appreciate his help, Team Lead Lee."

"Understood, sir."

Lee Eun-Joo turned sharply and strode off with a determined posture.

"Follow me."

I followed her to the projection booth.

***

We opened the door to the projection booth for Theater 1, where tonight's screening would take place.

A man in his fifties sat with his shirt unbuttoned, his feet propped up on the desk, leaning back in his chair.

Upon seeing us, he quickly lowered his legs and sat upright. "Team Lead Lee? What brings you here?"

Lee Eun-Joo frowned and spoke. "Mr. Choi, I asked you to pay extra attention today since it's a VIP premiere."

The projectionist scratched his head and buttoned up his disheveled shirt. "

Ahem

. Well, what's different? It's the same routine as always."

Lee Eun-Joo shook her head and turned to introduce him to me. "This is the technician, Mr. Choi Hyun-Taek. He's a veteran who's been with LT Cinema's Samsung branch since it opened."

Choi Hyun-Taek held out his hand. "Hello, I'm Choi Hyun-Taek."

"Nice to meet you, sir. I'm Jung Yoon-Ho, a chief from Hoop Entertainment."

After the introduction, Choi Hyun-Taek looked at Lee Eun-Joo with a displeased expression.

"So, what brings you here? You usually don't care what I do."

"We're here to let Mr. Jung take a look at the projector."

Choi Hyun-Taek's tone was grumbling and irritable.

In the past, film projectors used 35mm reels, and projectionists were treated as skilled technicians. But with everything now replaced by digital projectors playing from digital files, their status had declined, which explained his frustration.

Regardless of his unfortunate situation, tonight's premiere had to succeed for the sake of Lee Tae-Poong and Go Jae-Soo who had filmed in freezing Jiri Mountain all winter. And of course, for Director Park Sun-Jae's debut film.

Choi Hyun-Taek asked, "You want to see the projector?"

"Yes."

Choi Hyun-Taek raised his voice. "Who the hell is he to be inspecting my projector, huh?"

"Mr. Choi, the president himself asked us to cooperate fully with Chief Jung."

"Even if the president said so, this is my domain. If he wants to boss me around, he should come say it himself!"

"Come on, please cooperate. I'll speak to him again about that raise you asked for last time."

"Forget it! You're just going to bump it up a little and act like you're doing me a huge favor!"

"Still, a small raise is better than none."

Choi Hyun-Taek reluctantly backed down. "Fine... whatever."

Lee Eun-Joo sighed in relief and quickly urged me. "Mr. Jung, go ahead and check it now."

With arms crossed and a sour expression, Choi Hyun-Taek muttered under his breath. "Young folks these days... Do you even know what a projector is? Don't touch anything and just look from a distance!"

I smiled and began inspecting the projector. While I didn't know how to operate a film projector, I had experience with digital ones.

"Christie CP42LH_X, huh? This is a quality machine."

Choi Hyun-Taek twitched. "You know a bit about projectors?"

"A little."

I brushed off his wary glare and continued checking the machine. The network cables were properly connected, and the connections between the devices were well maintained too. That meant there was one last thing to check.

"Are you receiving the file via network today? Or are you playing it directly from a hard drive?"

The video files used in digital projectors were in a format called DCP, which usually came in massive sizes around 100GB.

There were typically two ways to play them: One was to plug in a hard drive or USB and play directly, and the other was to stream it using a dedicated network line. The safer method was obviously using a hard drive, but for convenience, the network method was much more efficient.

Then Choi Hyun-Taek replied, "We're using the network. This isn't some tiny little theater, you know. Why would we bother with hard drives?"

But on a day like today, we needed to be fully prepared.

I turned to Lee Eun-Joo. "Ms. Lee. Just in case, how about getting a backup on a hard drive?"

Even if something went wrong while downloading via the network, we could quickly recover if we had a secondary hard drive copy.

At that moment, Choi Hyun-Taek suddenly blew up. "What the hell is this? Huh? Who are you to talk like that about my setup?"

Lee Eun-Joo tried to calm Choi Hyun-Taek, but he wasn't having it.

"Mr. Choi, just a second—"

"Just a second my ass! Why are you taking some outsider's side?"

Even if this was technically his domain, his level of anger was way out of line. That's when my suspicion shifted from the projector to the projectionist himself. And it looked like Lee Eun-Joo sensed something was off too.

She pretended to soothe him, then quietly whispered to me.

-Mr. Jung, you seem to know your way around projectors... is that right?

If the projectionist refused to operate the machine, the VIP premiere could fall apart.

I whispered back.

-If I had to take over the projection booth, I could do it.

In other words, I was saying I could replace Choi Hyun-Taek altogether.

Lee Eun-Joo's eyes widened.

-Really?

-Yes. I happened to work part-time as a projectionist. Especially with Christie models, I know them inside and out.

After we exchanged whispers, Lee Eun-Joo's expression finally brightened.

"Alright. Then we should prepare a backup plan."

Lee Eun-Joo immediately made a call.

"This is LT Cinema Samsung branch. Send over the VIP premiere copy on USB and please rush delivery. Make it in 20 minutes. It must be in Theater 1's projection booth by 8:25 p.m. Yes. Thank you."

As Lee Eun-Joo hung up and was about to instruct the next steps, Choi Hyun-Taek exploded again. "Team Lead Lee, are you looking down on me?"

"I'm not looking down on you."

"Bullshit! You are! You totally are! Fine, if that's how it's gonna be, I'm not running the projector tonight! Let's see how you manage without me!"

Choi Hyun-Taek suddenly declared a strike. But the more he resisted, the more it became clear he was the one trying to sabotage the premiere. He must have wanted us to give up and leave the booth, but there was no way that was happening. I had a way to confirm if he was the reason the premiere would be canceled.

I opened the Everyday app. If Choi Hyun-Taek really was the culprit, the cancellation notice for Jiri Mountain would have disappeared from the planner.

'

Mr. Choi, if you're the one behind this-then you'd better be ready for the consequences.

'