Life, Once Again!

because she was given an offer.”

He tilted the coffee cup into his mouth but he couldn’t taste any coffee.
When he wondered what happened and flipped the coffee cup upside down, the last drop that hung there pitifully fell down.
Changsung quickly reached out with his tongue and caught that droplet.
It was even sweeter than usual.

“Outsourcing huh.
I heard that the treatment is good there.”

“Why? You wanna go there too?”

“I haven’t even had my debut piece, where would I go? I might be a producer outside, but I’m merely an assistant director here.
I’ll first have my debut piece and then shoot a bigshot drama that hits 40% viewership and leave the company in a grand fashion.
I’ll throw my letter of resignation at the president’s face.”

Jinhyuk giggled for a while before sighing.

“Aren’t you too quick to return to reality from dreams? Why don’t you try fantasizing a little more?”

“Because of the reality that came to me when I saw myself wrestling with receipts.
Geez, it’s hurting my eyes.”

“You’re in your first year, and you already feel that way.
Why don’t you think about how I feel?”

Changsung put the paper cup he just drank from on the tower of other paper cups.
Perhaps it would be as high as the 63 building[1] one day.

“Don’t you want to go to one as well, senior?”

“To an outsourcing company? Hm, not really.”

“Why? I heard that it’s really good.
You get a lot of free time and the pay is good.”

“If you have the skill, you’ll get a lot of free time and pay no matter where you go.”

“You’re at that level, aren’t you? You made the historical drama 2 years ago a huge hit.”

“Is 20% a huge hit? It must be at least 40% to be called a huge hit.
Also, I was lucky back then.
All the other dramas that aired at the same time were shit.
It was instead strange to not go over 20% back then.”

“Why do you sound so humble today?”

“Why don’t you find out for yourself when you reach my age? The only thing that increases is your humility.
Also, not all outsourcing companies are good.
The producer that’s right above us, he left the company and created his own outsourcing company and ended up being in a lot of debt.”

“That’s why you need to join someone else’s.
Creating your own is just risky.”

“Wow, what a splendid laborer you are.”

“I do a fair share of labor, huh.”

He stretched his arms out and sat up straight.
Tomorrow was the day of the audition for the minor roles.
He felt a headache coming just thinking about how he would have to watch little kids acting for the entire day.

“Rather than that, a self-produced drama, huh.
I wonder what happened.”

Jinhyuk offered him a piece of melon bread and spoke.
Changsung stuffed his mouth with the bread and spoke.

“How would I know? Either they have the desire to make a proper one, or they have money left over.”

“Isn’t it good anyway? Since we’re outsourcing everything these days, there’s a lot of talk about us not getting any work.”

“It’s bound to be outsourced anyway, except for KBS, which is operated by the country itself.
They don’t need to care about the viewership.
Also, they should have a lot higher budget than us.”

“If we outsource everything, what becomes of us?”

“You’re worried about your job?”

“I am.
If we give everything away to outsourcing companies, I’ll no longer have any work to do.”

“Why would you no longer have any work to do? You will probably work with an outsourcing company for your debut piece.
Although the production is done by the outsourced company, we’ll have to send a member of our own to act as the control tower.”

“I don’t want there to be two producers though.
That’s just not cool.”

“Why would there be two? The production company will literally just provide the production environment, and your name will be on the producer line.”

“Oh, really?”

Changsung sighed and stood up.
Jinhyuk followed him.
They left the first meeting room and walked around the office.
Although it was past 8 in the evening, the drama department was still as busy as though it was 10 in the morning.
As the results of the Wednesday-Thursday drama weren’t that good, the producer and the chief producer of team 1 were wrestling with work at their desks.

“Watch them closely.
We’ll be exactly like that once they leave and we go in.”

It was one year.
For the past year, he made plans, went to the president with it only to get kicked, persuaded one of the chief producers, and talked to the president once again only to get kicked again.
Like that, they barely made a plan that received a pass and created a team.
They then got together and had a drink to resolve themselves to create a good drama, but the script that came out after that wasn’t to their liking and they had to wait for a long time once again.
As they were employed, they would receive their salaries even if they spent time doing nothing at their desk, but since this industry was one where they would get thrown out if they didn’t gain career experience, they would sometimes help other teams.
Sometimes, he would get called to the editing room of a cultural education department which drove him crazy.

After a long time of waiting, the beginning part of a script was barely created.
In terms of episodes, it was only around 5 episodes worth.
They finally had the foundation to shoot a seasonal historical drama of 20 episodes.

They then spent several weeks with the completed script and the polished plans and wrestled with the president.
Finally, they received the okay to start.
Moreover, it was a self-produced one.
The prefix was ‘special content’.
On top of that, it was a 50-episode one and not a 20-episode one.
They had to fix most of the plans and script that they planned at the beginning.
Thankfully, it wasn’t that difficult.
It was hard to remove content, but adding it was easy.
The writer also became enthusiastic as well.

This was why there were now more portions for child actors.
Since they now wanted to spotlight the main character’s younger days, the weight of the story that featured his childhood to his youth became heavier.
They would first show the grown-up versions of the characters in the first episode and do a flashback to the past.
He already had a picture in mind to have the audience fix their channels since there was a great lineup of actors that were coming in the later episodes.

“The children will have to do well for that.”

“What? What’s that all of a sudden?”

“I mean tomorrow.
We’re picking the child actors that will be leading the beginning parts, right? I hope we get some decent kids.”

“When I think about it, I think it’s better to skip it as much as possible.
I’ve never seen the views rise with the addition of kids.”

Changsung smacked the complaining Jinyuk on the forehead.

“You’re the assistant producer and you’re praying that it will fail?”

“That’s not what I mean.”

“Shut up.
If the kids here tomorrow are awkward, I’ll blame it all on you.”

“You know what I mean, senior~.”

Changsung ignored Jinhyuk who tried to suck up to him and walked towards the bathroom.

[1] A popular landmark in Seoul that has 63 floors (60 above ground, and 3 underground).
Apparently, it used to be the highest building in the world for around a year after it was built.