Rookie Talent Agent Knows It All

Lee Yung-Sook, an intern at Burger Queen’s publicity department, had originally dreamt of becoming a drama writer. However, the path to becoming a drama writer was challenging.

She managed to become a junior writer thanks to her connections but gave up after enduring three years of drawing a 600,000 won salary per month. It wasn’t just about the money, but also about the stiff competition that she faced from university graduate writers since she was only a high school graduate.

Although many had complimented her for being naturally talented at writing, the reality was harsh.

She eventually left her job as a writer and plunged into the battlefield of society. Currently, Lee Yung-Sook was interning at the publicity department of Burger Queen, which was ranked third in the burger industry.

“What should I do…?”

Lee Yung-Sook shut her eyes tightly and gathered courage. She had to make her presence known as an intern if she wanted to get a contract position.

Pulling out her phone, Lee Yung-Sook approached Team Lead Kim Yung-Jin, who had been frowning all morning.

“M-Mr. Kim. Could you please take a look at this?”

“What is it? Did you come up with a good ad copy or something?”

Lee Yung-Sook felt as if her heart sank at Kim Yung-Jin’s irritated tone.

However, she couldn’t back down now.

She showed Kim Yung-Jin the live search rankings on Nave on her phone.

[1st: Morning Takes Off]

[3rd: Morning Takes Off Viewership Rating]

[7th: Burger Queen’s Burger Maiden Jung Yoo-Jin]

[9th: Burger Queen Jung Yoo-Jin]

[10th: Morning Takes Off Jung Yoo-Jin]

“What is this? Wait a second. Jung Yoo-Jin…? Is this that Jung Yoo-Jin?”

Jung Yoo-Jin’s name was undeniably known to all at the Burger Queen’s publicity department. After all, she was the legendary part-timer responsible for a 500% increase in sales at the Cheonho-dong branch.

“Did she debut already?”

“Yes. She made her first appearance on TV yesterday. She’s trending online and everyone’s talking about her.”

“I was wondering what she was up to after disappearing for a year. She must’ve been preparing to become an actress during that time, huh?”

“Yes, sir. Moreover, her first appearance was in a drama written by Lee Ji-Yeon. The viewership ratings yesterday were no joke.”

“How high were the ratings?”

Being someone who wasn’t particularly fond of dramas, Kim Yung-Jin asked without much anticipation.

In response, Lee Yung-Sook zoomed in on the rating chart on her phone and showed it to Kim Yung-Jin.

At that moment, Kim Yung-Jin’s eyes widened in surprise.

“Listener is at 20.1% and TNK at 20.2%? That’s huge!”

Even if he didn’t care much for dramas, he was, after all, the head of the publicity department. He knew better than anyone that a drama exceeding 20% in viewership ratings was a big deal.

“It’s a work by the renowned writer, Lee Ji-Yeon. And take a look at this. These are the hourly statistics.”

Lee Yung-Sook continued to explain excitedly.

The rating chart she showed displayed an interesting trend. The ratings remained at 19.1% until 10:50 PM but suddenly began to rise dramatically about five minutes before the episode ended.

“The ratings soared out of nowhere five minutes before the drama ended. Why did the graph shoot up like this?”

“Because that was when Jung Yoo-Jin made her appearance. Her acting was just amazing and…”

Kim Yung-Jin cut off Lee Yung-Sook and questioned.

“Hold on. How’s the traffic on our website? If Burger Queen’s name has reached this ranking on the live search, there must be a reaction from people, right?”

Lee Yung-Sook scratched the back of her head in response to Kim Yung-Jin’s question.

“Isn’t that managed by Deputy Chief Choi?”

“Oh, right. I’m sorry.”

Kim Yung-Jin momentarily forgot that Lee Yung-Sook in front of him was just an intern. He quickly sought out Deputy Chief Choi Moo-Sung and asked about the data.

“Well? How does it look?”

“It’s increased.”

“By how much?”

“By 5%.”

“What? 5%? Why are you only telling me now?”

“Y-you had me do something else earlier…”

A 5% increase in overall website traffic was not a small number.

“Could it be because of our discount event?”

Choi Moo-Sung shook his head.

“No. We’ve been running the discount event since the beginning of the month, remember? You said it was a failure since we didn’t see any changes in the graph.”

“R-right. I remember that.”

“And do you remember saying that our current ad model, Park Eun-Bin, isn’t worth the money?”

Kim Yung-Jin awkwardly scratched the back of his head at Choi Moo-Sung’s consecutive questions.

“Alright, alright. I remember. I’m sorry, okay? Are you satisfied after hearing me apologize?”

“Yes. I feel so much better.”

Watching Choi Moo-Sung's refreshing bright smile, Kim Yung-Jin clenched his fist tightly.

At that moment, Chief Ahn Ji-Yoon of the publicity department stormed in with a frown. With the fourth quarter’s sales dropping and the imminent threat of dropping a rank in the burger industry, Burger Queen was in a critical situation.

“What’s with all the fuss? I told you not to let your guard down just because it’s the end of the year.”

“Ms. Ahn! Come here. Take a look at this. Miss Yung-Sook, update her about what you told me earlier.”

Prompted by Kim Yung-Jin who sat Ahn Ji-Yoon down, Lee Yung-Sook tried her best to calm her racing heart and repeated what she had said earlier.

After being updated on the situation, Ahn Ji-Yoon gave clear directions on the next steps.

“Look into changing our ad model. Jung Yoo-Jin’s price might be cheap since she’s only a rookie, right?”

“But what about Park Eun-Bin? Are you going to cancel our contract with her?”

“We might need to wait a bit and see people’s reactions, but it seems like we should for now. How much did our sales increase compared to before and after we hired Park Eun-Bin as our ad model?”

“They didn’t go up. They went down…by 7%.”

“Oh, good. So you are well aware. That means it's even worse to continue using Park Eun-Bin as our ad model than having no model. I thought our sales might increase since she’s in Lee Ji-Yeon’s drama, but her acting is terrible. People are saying that she acts like an AI robot. You know that, right?”

“B-but she’s still popular among her fandom…”

“Fandom? Oh, it’s not like there’s a ton of them anyway. Even if each of them buys ten burgers a day, it won’t be good enough to impact our sales.”

“Okay, I understand.”

“Um, Ms. Ahn, Mr. Kim.”

“Yes, Mr. Choi?”

“I just checked and the number of people accessing our webpage through the app increased by 10% and order volume has also increased by 12%. There are even comments on the webpage asking if there’s some kind of event happening.”

For a moment, Ahn Ji-Yoon yelled at the top of her lungs.

“Call the company right now! My goodness. Everyone will be fired if we lose Jung Yoo-Jin to another company!”

Suddenly, everyone in Burger Queen’s publicity department started to scramble.

“Miss Yung-Sook. What are you doing? We have to report what you mentioned earlier to the president. Can you prepare the data please?”

Ahn Ji-Yoon stared intently at Lee Yung-Sook.

“M-me?”

“If not, who else? Didn’t you say you have experience with scriptwriting? You should be the person most familiar with dramas among us, aren’t you? Sort out the statistics and everything else, and make a report right now. We’ll present it to the president as soon as it’s ready.”

“Oh, okay. I’ll prepare it right away.”

Lee Yung-Sook returned to her desk with anticipation and began to draft the report. Her dropping shoulders straightened at the thought of finally shaking off the label of an intern and the possibility of becoming a full-time employee.

***

“This is incredible.”

Yoo-Jin’s name had been on the live search rankings from last night till this morning. The search term ‘Burger Queen’s Burger Maiden Jung Yoo-Jin,’ as mentioned by Miso, briefly reached 5th place and was currently maintaining its 7th place.

This made Yoo-Jin excited all morning and she sent me a message on KkTalk.

[Lovely♡Yoo-Jin]: Oh my goodness. It’s just like you said, oppa. I made a splash in one go!]

[Talent Agent Jung Yoon-Ho]: I told you so. I knew you could do it! But…I think you can achieve more fame.]

[Lovely♡Yoo-Jin]: Ugh. Isn’t this good enough? I get it. This is nothing more than just a fleeting fame, right?]

‘Yes…for now.’

However, if this continued a few more times, she could become a well-known celebrity.

To be frank, I didn’t expect such a swift reaction. If the response to episode 21, which featured only a small amount of screen time for Yoo-Jin, was already going viral, I couldn't even imagine what would occur after episode 22, where Yoo-Jin had significantly more screen time.

While I was reveling in my thoughts, Yoo-Jin broached a cheeky topic.

[Lovely♡Yoo-Jin]: Then how about some bindaetteok[1]for encouragement today?♥♥♥]

[Talent Agent Jung Yoon-Ho: Miss actress. Don’t even think about it.]

[Lovely♡Yoo-Jin]: I’ll only eat three. Miso has been asking for bindaetteok since morning, so she’s making the batter right now. Look at this. (picture: Miso is the chef for today!_JPEG)]

The recently taken photo showed Miso’s tiny hands making bindaetteok batter.

Then, another KkTalk message arrived.

[Miso Angel♥: Uncle Yoon-Ho. I want to make lots of bindaetteok for auntie.]

[Talent Agent Jung Yoon-Ho: Yoo-Jin. I know this is you.]

[Miso Angel♥: Uh…uh. No? I’m Miso, Uncle Yoon-Ho.]

‘Hah, nice try.’

There was no way Miso could send a KkTalk message while making bindaetteok batter.

[Talent Agent Jung Yoon-Ho: You have no plans today, so double the workout. I’ll bring a scale to check your weight before going to the set, so be prepared. Okay, Miss actress?]

After that, there was no response.

“This girl. She’s always so sneaky.”

I rested my chin on the steering wheel of the minivan and muttered to myself as I looked at the entrance to the underground parking lot elevator.

“I wonder when they’ll come down…”

Last night at 11 PM, I received an urgent call from Gu Seong-Cheol who shared that the talent agent of the girl group Cherry Blossom had to return to her hometown urgently for her grandfather’s funeral, so they needed immediate assistance.

Apparently, I was the only one available.

‘I remember coming to help them under Kim Dong-Soo’s orders in my past life.’

Although the person giving me orders had changed, my planner’s schedule remained the same.

According to my planner, there was a significant issue that would occur today.

[Everyday V10]

[Date: December 24th, 2019]

-11:00 PM: Notification of budget cuts for Cherry Blossom’s 3rd album production.

This was the notice I would receive from Lee Ki-Chul upon returning to the company with Han Myung-Ho after completing the shoot of Idol Battle at KBC. The reason was the complete failure of all the tracks in Cherry Blossom's second edition mini-album, which had been released two months ago.

“Hmm. Is there any way to prevent this…?”

Although the cost to produce a track wasn’t too high, getting a cut in the promotional budget was a significant blow—because even if the songs were good, they could go unnoticed by the audience.

‘I have to somehow help Cherry Blossom gain popularity so they can be placed within the top 10 live search rankings.’

I thought Lee Ki-Chul wouldn’t recklessly mention cutting the album production budget as long as Cherry Blossom made it to live search rankings.

While I was checking my planner for a way to boost Cherry Blossom’s popularity today, a particular schedule caught my eye.

[Everyday V10]

[Date: December 24th, 2019]

-09:30 PM Opening spot for Petite More’s backstage performance collaboration.

“Maybe there is a way.”

In today’s Idol Daejun shoot, there would be an opening spot for a collaboration performance with Petite More and three other girl groups. I remembered that every girl group that performed with Petite More would make it in the top 10 in the live search rankings, given how popular Petite More was.

‘What if I slot Cherry Blossom into that open spot?’

I was certain it would be a given for Cherry Blossom to make the live search rankings.

‘Alright. Let’s get the girls into that spot somehow.’

At that moment, the elevator in the underground parking lot opened and the disheveled Han Myung-Ho of Idol Division waved at me.

“Hello, Star Jung~.”

His dark circles reached his chin, and his unkempt beard made him look utterly worn out.

“Mr. Han. You don’t look so good. Are you okay?”

“Ah, that’s because I only had two hours of sleep. We had an event in Haenam yesterday.”

Until an idol group became famous, they would travel nationwide for events, trying to recoup their massive investments. Looking at Cherry Blossom’s Starlex minivan that had racked up an impressive 230,000 km, I could roughly estimate how many events they had attended.

There was a saying in the idol industry that even used car dealers don’t buy cars from talent agents of idols, since it was no different from acquiring an aged artifact.

“I’ll drive. Please give me the keys.”

“Oh, really? I was going to ask you if you could drive. Thanks. I’ll take a short nap while you drive if that’s okay.”

With his eyes already half-closed, Han Myung-Ho handed me the keys.

“Don’t wake me up until we arrive.”

After fastening his seatbelt and resting his head on the headrest, Han Myung-Ho immediately fell asleep.

Snore~

“Wait, Mr. Han. You need to tell me the location of the accommodation before you…”

Han Myung-Ho fell asleep without even telling me the location of Cherry Blossom’s accommodation.

‘Well, good thing I traveled back in time.’

***

Cherry Blossom’s accommodation was a three-bedroom apartment about 1 km away from Hoop Entertainment near Apgujeong. The smallest room was used by the dedicated female talent agent, Lee Ju-Yung, while the remaining two rooms were shared among the members.

An elderly housekeeper, Mrs. Lee Mi-Ja, was responsible for their daily needs such as preparing meals and doing their laundry. She would report to work at the apartment every day, but today was her day off.

Squeak.

I parked the van near the Apgujeong accommodation and woke Han Myung-Ho up.

“Mr. Han, we are here.”

“Huh? Already?”

Han Myung-Ho quickly sat up and looked around.

“Wait. Did I tell you the location of this place?”

‘Nope. Not at all.’

“Hmm. I must have told you seeing that we got here just fine. Let’s get out.”

My heart started to race.

I let Han Myung-Ho alight first before parking the van.

As I was about to follow Han Myung-Ho to the front door, a KkTalk message from Gu Seong-Cheol popped up on my phone.

[Chief Gu Seong-Cheol: Yoon-Ho! Come straight to the company after your schedule! There’s an advertisement offer for Yoo-Jin!]

‘An advertisement offer? Already?’

But that wasn’t the only good news.

1. A kind of korean pancakes ☜