However, the suspicions did not last long, thanks to the refuting statements posted in real-time along with the supporting evidence. Firstly, Do You Know Us? was aired on MBS, while Chae Woo-Jin’s drama would be aired on SBC. As MBS would be airing the first two episodes of their new drama on Wednesday and Thursday, the same days as City of Shadows, it didn’t make any sense for MBS to promote Chae Woo-Jin’s drama before their own. This logical argument put an end to the doubts regarding the publicity stunt.

Additionally, there was only one supermarket and convenience store in the studio’s vicinity that was used as the drama set. However, the supermarket had closed at midnight, leaving the convenience store as their only option. Hence, people argued it wasn’t unusual for Chae Woo-Jin to go to the convenience store at that time.

And most importantly, DS’ CEO Jang felt very strongly against the idea of his artistes appearing in variety TV programs and prevented it from happening as much as possible. Nobody could deny the absurdity of him agreeing to let Chae Woo-Jin appear in a pilot episode of a TV program for the sake of promoting his drama.

The fans of DS’ celebrities were well-aware of CEO Jang’s aversion to variety TV programs. If Woo-Jin hadn’t run into the old man, who had spilled the truth about the Slipper Young Man, they clearly wouldn’t have been permitted to air the portion with Chae Woo-Jin in it, and the entire thing would have been edited out.

However, many people in this world tend to nitpick on every tiny detail. When claims that it was to create publicity for the drama were quashed, people started spreading rumors about the agency fabricating the Slipper Young Man incident to promote Chae Woo-Jin. This time, the photographer of the photo in question personally stepped forward and refuted the rumors. At that time, he hadn’t even known who Chae Woo-Jin was. And he professed that such speculations about a photo that had been clearly taken with good intentions left him displeased.

Under the circumstances where things had been a little overheated, a post that had been uploaded to the Chae Woo-Jin’s Fancafe a while ago started trending belatedly. Posts dedicated to the process of finding similarities between the Slipper Young Man and Chae Woo-Jin, along with the evidence supporting the claims, provided a different kind of entertainment to people.

A photo where someone had superimposed pictures of the rear-views of the Slipper Young Man and Chae Woo-Jin also surfaced. The T-Shirt Chae Woo-Jin had worn on his way to the filming site of the movie was the same as the one he had worn to the post-production get-together at Busan, which incidentally, had also been the same T-shirt that the Slipper Young Man had worn. The dark blue paint stain at the end of the left sleeve looked exactly the same in all the photos.

Chae Woo-Jin’s fans had also found photos of his hairstyle at that time, which matched the young man’s hairstyle in the photo. Additionally, photos of him wearing the same sneakers he had given the old man were also found. Also, there was plenty of evidence to prove that the drawing of the cat on the suitcase was very similar to the cat that Woo-Jin had recently been reunited with.

This overwhelming evidence that did not miss a single detail had only been kept within the community before this incident happened. Also, if the fans had voluntarily collected all the evidence on their own accord, the prevailing opinion was that both Chae Woo-Jin and the agency had no intention of making it public. It was obvious that if they truly wanted to use all the information to create publicity for Chae Woo-Jin, they would have revealed everything back when the Slipper Young Man was the talk of the town. In fact, it would have been more natural if they had revealed it back then, as the number of coincidences this time made it seem even more unnatural.

It might sound ridiculous to argue that something so unnatural had served as evidence to prove Woo-Jin’s innocence, but if this had been a script written by someone, it would be too contrived and ridiculously childish. He hadn’t done anything terrible, and being the protagonist in a moving tale that had once stirred the public was definitely a good thing for Chae Woo-Jin. They could do nothing about the people who insisted on twisting it into something horrible, but most people rejoiced after learning about the coincidental story.

“But how can he not know Berry Rose?”

“It’s possible. Does Chae Woo-Jin need to know who they are?” The college students who gathered on the campus in small groups had different reactions based on their gender. The boys, who knew the face of each Berry Rose member despite not being ardent fans of them, could not understand Chae Woo-Jin.

“I guess they look worse in real life?”

“No, they don’t! Ara, in particular, is much prettier in real life; what do you mean!?”

“Ara wasn’t there, though. Why are you getting so worked up? It’s possible for people not to recognize members of girl idol groups.”

“So people might not recognize members of Blue Fit, too, then?” The girl who heard that became worked up and got angry.

“Hey! How can anybody not recognize Blue Fit? It’s been three years since they’ve debuted. How can you compare them to rookie idols who have only debuted three months ago!”

Just because they were friends didn’t mean they all had the same thoughts and feelings. They might have shared the same sentiment in the beginning, but as soon as they talked about Blue Fit, one of the female students started frowning. Perhaps, she didn’t want her friends to continue talking about Blue Fit any longer, but she showed them something she had just searched for online.

“What’s this?” She only played the video after getting all of her friends’ attention. It was a video of Chae Woo-Jin singing a song by a girl idol group while doing their dance routine. The Glooming Day staff who uploaded the video had also included a description.

“It says that from Chae Woo-Jin’s perspective, girl groups are divided into pre-discharge and post-discharge from the military. Apparently, he doesn’t know anything about the girl groups that debuted after he was discharged.”

“Oh? Chae Woo-Jin has already completed his military service?” The female student nodded indifferently to the male student, whose attention was focused on the part where Woo-Jin had gone to the military rather than the other things they had talked about.

“I didn’t know that. I’m suddenly starting to like him,” the male student responded.

“Hey, he’s still a celebrity after all. He must have been in the unit that’s responsible for events and sang a couple of songs, having an easy life in there before getting discharged,” another male student chimed in.

“He went into the military before he debuted. He was in one of the front-line units,” replied the female student softly. After hearing what she said, the male students ultimately nodded and acknowledged Chae Woo-Jin unanimously.

“Yeah, so what if he doesn’t know who Berry Rose is! He’s someone who served in the military.” The female students burst out laughing at how ridiculous the male students were for having the notion that going to the military absolved one of everything.

“But didn’t Chae Woo-Jin feed ice cream to the other actor who was with him? What was his name again?”

“Lee Dan-Woo.” The girl, who had been sharing the information about Chae Woo-Jin with her friends the entire time, answered indifferently this time as well.

“Ah, that’s right! Didn’t your imagination run wild after watching that? Someone’s going to write a fanfiction because of that scene alone.”

“The fanfiction’s already out. The serialized fanfiction is at its peak right now, so you should check it out! Chae Woo-Jin is a protagonist who’s kind and affectionate. It’s really fun to read!”

After hearing what her two friends said, the girl who had been providing them with the information pricked up her ears and asked, “Where is it published?” She wrote down the link to the site that her friend provided in her notebook, though her friends didn’t realize the cold gaze that flashed in her eyes for a split second.

And a few days later, the author of the aforementioned fanfiction wrote a very long apology and uploaded it to the site. People were free to fantasize, but any secondary creations that would damage Chae Woo-Jin’s image were prohibited and against the rules of Wish Baragi. This meant that they couldn’t let other people outside of Wish Baragi do that either. Woo-Jin’s fans were always quick and ruthless when it came to these things.

***

The shooting of City of Shadows went smoothly. Externally speaking, after the episode of Do You Know Us? had been aired, more and more articles were written about Chae Woo-Jin, as their exposure to the media increased. Internally speaking, the number of bad takes gradually reduced as time went by, and thanks to Woo-Jin’s perfect acting out the action scenes without accident, they were able to proceed with the shooting without any delay.

Apart from the fact that he had been exhausted from Production Director Park Jong-Hyuk’s constant rejection and bad takes in the beginning, the situation was better than he had expected. Woo-Jin’s action scenes might have felt like an extreme task to others, but it was the complete opposite for him that he even began questioning why something so easy was regarded as something extreme to begin with.

Instead, it was something else that made life difficult for the actors. That was because Production Director Park Jong-Hyuk had demanded the burning cruelty created by cold rationality from Kang Min-Ho, the selfishness hidden within Park Yeon-Ah’s tenacious innocence, and last but not least, the image of a baby bird that had escaped from the empty grave of emotions from Woo-Jin himself.

Kang Min-Ho had directly asked Production Director Park Jong-Hyuk exactly what kind of image it was, but the answer he had gotten in return was concise, “That’s something the actor has to figure out.”

That was an insincere reply as expected of the drama’s production director who had been criticized for putting actors through hell. So, Woo-Jin ended up asking the writer, Yoo Soo-Min. Initially, she was puzzled because that was the first time she heard about it, but shortly after, she praised Production Director Park Jong-Hyuk in admiration.

“As expected, the production director understands me well. If you follow what he says, you’ll be fine.” When Woo-Jin asked once again what she meant by that, Yoo Soo-Min shrugged casually.

“You just have to do exactly as you’re told. Why are you reading too much into it?”

And so, the three of them had given up on getting a clear answer after concluding that both the production director and the writer couldn’t give them the answers they sought. To put it more precisely, even though both the production director and the writer knew the answer, they didn’t know how to put it into acting. The teachers knew the answer but not the method of solving it - it was the actors’ job to figure out the solution to the problem posed to them.

“Hey, baby bird!” Woo-Jin might have been a little happier if ‘baby bird’ hadn’t become his nickname.

“Oh my, look at him staring at us. How cute!”

“It’s fun teasing him.” Kang Min-Ho and Park Yeon-Ah, who had suddenly formed a duo, were thoroughly enjoying themselves as they took turns making fun of Woo-Jin.

“You guys have such great chemistry. You should take this opportunity to date one another.”

“Did you not know? We’re going out with each other, as friends!”

“Peas of a pod. Uhh, stop complementing each other so perfectly.”

Woo-Jin, who had been studying for his tests and completing his class reports along with shooting the drama, could not laugh along with them. Woo-Jin’s physical condition was not good these days, and he even had dark circles under his eyes, to the point that Hwang Yi-Young joked about how convenient it was since she didn’t need any makeup to create the dark circles under his eyes for his character.

As the drama progressed, Louie gradually became more and more exhausted and skinnier, and Woo-Jin’s reality and circumstances were perfect for it.

“Did you hear? We’re going to appear on Huntsman.”

“No, why? We’re already busy shooting the drama; why do we have to be on a variety show!” As soon as Kang Min-Ho, who was always up to date with new information, asked about it, Woo-Jin couldn’t control his emotions and cried out loud. His schedule was very hectic at the moment, and if they were to go on Huntsman, Woo-Jin felt like he was going to turn everything upside down.

“Our drama will be airing soon. Huntsman is SBC’s show as well, so we should use it to promote our drama.”

The Blue Castle’s Master had started airing their first episode this Wednesday, in other words, yesterday. As everybody expected, their first episode had received an 18% rating, and their drama was going smoothly. Even though the episode had focused on the characters’ backstory, it was pretty well-received.

However, the reporters, who had initially praised the production with high anticipation, strangely began to mention the negative aspects at some point.

“They said it was so pathetic that it was almost like a live show.”

“Didn’t they start shooting a month before us?”

“Their cast is made up of the most famous actors who are in high demand. Since they’re not as free as we are, their schedules must be very hectic and tight, so it must have thrown a wrench into the shooting schedule, causing delays and creating a big mess.”

After hearing what Park Yeon-Ah said, Woo-Jin sighed depressingly. “Why am I so busy for an actor who’s not in high demand?”

“Our dear baby bird has been struggling, huh. Let me give you a hug.”

“I’m good!” Woo-Jin lost his temper and pushed Kang Min-Ho and Park Yeon-Ah aside before walking off into the distance.

“Our dear baby bird has become irritable.”

“He’s now at a rebellious age of 23.”