Chapter 15

Team Play (1)

The day of Dobin and Doye’s drama filming had arrived.

In reality, the girls probably would not have to stand in front of the camera today.

Even so, there was only one reason I was going to the filming set.

It was their first filming day.

Whenever possible, it was a good idea to visit the set on the first day and get a feel for the atmosphere and how things worked.

That way, when their own turn came later, they could adapt to the set much faster.

“Girls. Are you both ready?”

Dobin answered first.

“I’m all ready, but…”

My first daughter let out a small sigh and pointed toward the dressing room.

“Doye still has a long way to go.”

Unlike my first daughter, my second daughter took a very long time to get ready whenever she went out.

Choosing clothes, doing her makeup, and so on.

She spent a lot of time and effort on her appearance.

That side of her was exactly like Siyoon.

Dobin, on the other hand, was not the type to spend that much time dressing up.

If Doye took after her mother, then Dobin seemed to have inherited more of my genes.

Though when it came to looks, her mother’s genes had clearly won.

“Should we go wait in the car first?”

“Yes.”

Just as I was about to leave the house with Dobin, I suddenly received a text.

“Wait a second.”

It was from Siyoon.

The message itself was simple.

She said she had been taking new profile pictures since early morning for the company website.

It was not just text.

She had also attached a selfie.

She was looking upward while making a V sign with her left hand.

No matter what angle she took a picture from, Siyoon was beautiful.

If anything, the picture failed to properly capture the model’s beauty.

I let out a small laugh without realizing it.

Dobin, who had secretly peeked at my smartphone screen from beside me, asked,

“Is it Mom?”

“Hm? Oh… She says she’s taking profile pictures.”

At the word Mom, my second daughter, who had just come out into the living room, became excited.

“Mom contacted you? Dad?”

The girls seemed strangely interested whenever Siyoon and I contacted each other.

They had been like that before, too.

But lately, it felt like they were even more interested than before.

“Dad. Actually, Mom said…”

“Mm!”

Dobin quickly reached out and covered Doye’s mouth.

“Ah, it’s nothing. Doye was just saying something silly, Dad. Don’t worry about it, okay?”

“What did I say that was silly?! Mom definitely said that to Dad! She said she still…”

“Why are you really like this?!”

Suddenly, a fierce struggle broke out between my first and second daughters.

It seemed that while Siyoon had been sleeping at her house with the girls, she had talked about me with them.

I was curious about what she had said.

But judging by Dobin’s reaction, I probably was not supposed to know yet.

I would naturally find out when the time came anyway.

“Both of you, stop. Let’s leave before we get any later.”

For now, I decided to make getting the girls to their filming set my first priority.

If I dropped the girls off right next to the outdoor filming set, the staff might realize that Dobin and Doye were my daughters.

So I dropped them off a little farther away from the set and immediately headed to work.

Besides, I could not keep acting as Dobin and Doye’s road manager forever.

Right now, I had plenty of free time because I was not working on a production, so I could drive them around like this.

But I could not guarantee that things would stay this way.

‘It would be nice if they had an agency.’

If they had a manager who could support them, I would feel more at ease too.

But the problem was…

‘Which agency would be good?’

I needed an agency that would not leak the fact that Dobin, Doye, and I were family, even if they found out about it.

And, of course, it had to be an agency that would properly support the girls.

Even though there were only two requirements, I could not immediately think of a place that came to mind as the one.

‘This is harder than I thought.’

I prided myself on knowing quite a lot about entertainment agencies.

But among all those agencies, it was not easy to think of one that could satisfy both conditions at the same time.

The agency with the highest chance was the one Siyoon belonged to.

But according to the future knowledge I had, Siyoon would move to another agency as soon as her current contract expired one year from now.

‘If I leave Dobin and Doye there, they might end up staying there without me. It would be better to avoid that for now.’

But I could not leave the girls without proper support for an entire year either.

Just as my thoughts were becoming complicated, the broadcasting station was getting closer.

I got out of the car and climbed the station stairs while looking at my smartphone.

I happened to have a message from Team Leader Han Seongguk.

He asked if I had some time today and wanted to have a cup of coffee together.

Whenever this older brother of mine said something like that, it usually meant…

‘He must have something to tell me privately.’

Back when I still smoked, he would ask me to go out for a cigarette with him.

After I quit smoking, that had changed to coffee.

I figured I could just leave my bag at the office and go meet him.

But before that…

Something caught my attention.

“Hello.”

“Huh? PD Oh Sooyoung! What brings you here?”

PD Oh Sooyoung, who should have been at the filming set, seemed to have happened to run into an acquaintance who worked at this broadcasting station.

She was smiling as she greeted him.

PD Oh Sooyoung quickly emphasized to the man, who seemed to be someone she knew, that she had not come for anything particularly important.

“I just have something to take care of. I’ll be going now.”

She walked quite quickly.

Why had she come all the way here?

This was not even her workplace.

‘That’s suspicious.’

For a moment, I considered quietly following PD Oh Sooyoung.

But because Team Leader Han Seongguk had called me, I could not bring myself to do it.

‘Well, it’s probably nothing.’

Maybe she had simply stopped by for a short while.

I decided not to worry about it.

I went to Team Leader Han Seongguk’s office.

He seemed to have been waiting for me because the moment he saw me, he stood up and walked toward the coffee machine.

“What do you want to drink? This one also has a milk foam function, so you can make more kinds of coffee.”

“You bought a new one?”

“Yeah. I finally decided to splurge this time. It cost more than one million won. I should use it for at least five years.”

“Don’t tell me you called me here just to show off your coffee machine.”

“Come on. Of course not.”

Team Leader Han Seongguk told me to sit down.

I first took a sip of the coffee he had just made.

“Maybe because it’s expensive, but it tastes good.”

“Right?”

“But why did you call me?”

Could it be good news?

Or maybe it was bad news.

To be honest, I felt it was more likely to be bad news.

The previous drama had not performed very well.

I was beginning to think that I should prepare myself for the worst.

But the first words that came out of Team Leader Han’s mouth completely destroyed my negative thoughts.

“The bureau chief praised you a lot.”

“Me?”

The unexpected praise left me more stunned than happy.

I wanted to know why.

“I haven’t really done anything recently that would make the bureau chief think highly of me…”

“Why not? You have.”

Team Leader Han told me the truth.

“Kim Teacher, Who Appears Here and There. The ratings were good when it ended, weren’t they? They kept recovering as the episodes went on. The bureau chief said that getting a failed drama back on track is dozens of times harder than making a successful drama even more successful.”

The moment when the ratings started rising again matched exactly with the moment I returned to the past.

Because I had returned knowing what I had done wrong and which choices had been mistakes, I had been able to make this happen.

Team Leader Han and the bureau chief seemed to value that very highly.

“The bureau chief said he wants to trust you one more time. This time, even if you can’t make something as successful as The Age of Lawbreaking, show everyone through your next project that you’re not finished yet. I’ll support you as much as I can, too.”

There were many things that mattered when planning a production.

Creativity. Drive. Time. The ability to cast actors, and so on.

But to do all those things, the most basic thing was money.

The production budget.

I had survived because Team Leader Han had worked hard to persuade the bureau chief.

But I could not simply accept this with happiness.

‘Maybe this is my last chance.’

They were trusting me and pushing me forward like this.

If the results were below expectations again this time, I might really have to leave the industry.

At the thought that this could be my last chance, I slowly took a breath.

“I’ll do my best to prepare.”

Whether my next project would become a stepping stone toward success or the end of my career depended entirely on me.

It was an afternoon filled with deep thoughts.

To be honest, I had sometimes thought that maybe I could take future successful projects I knew about and make them as if they were my own.

But there was no guarantee that simply making those projects would lead to success.

If I copied them poorly, I might only end up failing again and again.

If that was the case, it would be much easier to make my own work while fixing the things I had lacked before.

A production that could only be made by Yoon Seongjun.

A production that could only be made successful by Yoon Seongjun.

That was what I needed right now.

Maybe that was why.

For the first time in a long while, the pain of creation came rushing back.

I stuffed the notebooks containing my knowledge of the future into my bag and stood up.

“Huh? Senior. Where are you going?”

Yeonju asked where I was headed.

I grabbed my wallet and smartphone and pointed toward the lower floor of the broadcasting station.

“I’m going to the café on the first floor.”

“You’re not going home?”

“No. I just want to clear my head for a while.”

Sometimes, working in a new environment helped refresh my mind.

I left a note telling them to contact me right away if anything happened, then headed down to the first floor.

I took a seat by the café window and properly picked up my pen.

‘Let’s see…’

I went through my notes one by one and brought back everything I knew about the future.

Subjects and scenarios that would work at this point in time.

Directing techniques.

I kept writing notes at a rapid speed, almost as if I were possessed.

Maybe I had been too focused.

I did not even notice that the drink I had ordered had arrived.

In the end, a café employee personally brought the drink over to me.

“Here is the iced Americano you ordered.”

“Oh, I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay. You’re preparing for your next project, right? I personally like the dramas you’ve made, PD-nim. I’m looking forward to your next one too.”

The kind employee’s encouragement warmed my heart.

That’s right.

There might not be many of them, but there were definitely viewers who were looking forward to my work.

I straightened my posture and focused again.

But then PD Oh Sooyoung caught my attention once more.

This time, she was not alone.

She was walking down the broadcasting station stairs while talking warmly with someone.

The man looked familiar.

‘Wait. That person…?’