Chapter 206: Agitation and Fabrication (3)

Choi Hwang-Cheol lived like he had given up on life after graduating from high school. He drank and indulged in the pleasures of life with his friends whenever he wanted. He had never been interested in studying, nor could he be further from being an earnest person. Hence, he had been wasting away his university tuition all this time.

Hwang-Cheol had once again gone drinking with his friends. As he was downing a soju bomb in a good mood, the radiant smile of a woman lit up the large TV screen installed in the bar.

[I, Kang Ra-Eun, use this all the time. You can also become beautiful as long as you have this.]

Kang Ra-Eun had modeled for a famous cosmetics brand that was popular among women lately. Hwang-Cheol’s friends couldn’t take their eyes off of the commercial while they were drinking.

“Wow... She’s so damn hot.”

“Fuck, I wouldn’t want anything more in life if I had a girlfriend like Kang Ra-Eun.”

“Hah! Crazy son of a bitch, you think women like Kang Ra-Eun are common? And even if they were, why the hell would they go out with you when they’re so well off?”

Everyone was guilty of dreaming about having a celebrity as their significant other at least once. However, Ra-Eun felt too high up for them to even have such dreams about her. Hwang-Cheol clicked his tongue as he was staring at Ra-Eun on the TV screen.

“She used to be my girlfriend,” he mentioned.

Not a single one of his friends believed him.

“Are you drunk already, Hwang-Cheol?”

“Kang Ra-Eun used to be his girlfriend, he says! There has to be a limit to your insanity!”

“You only barely managed to convince us that you went to the same high school as Kang Ra-Eun by showing us your yearbook, but you expect us to believe she was your girlfriend now? It’d be more believable if you’d said you’re the president’s son.”

In the first place, Hwang-Cheol had blackmailed Ra-Eun into being his girlfriend; even if he were to tell the truth, they had never actually dated. It had simply been all in his head.

When he had first blackmailed her, Ra-Eun had meekly obeyed him despite having a face of disapproval. However, she had become a completely different person overnight. Hwang-Cheol had tried to make Ra-Eun submit through physical force with his high school friends at the time, but they had been the ones to get beaten up instead. Just thinking about her, he could feel his nether region hurting from her kick at the time.

‘Kang Ra-Eun...!’

Hwang-Cheol felt like he needed to do something. He pondered over what he could do to get a good one in on Ra-Eun and his friends that were blatantly ignoring him. And just then...

“Yes, that’s it...!”

Having thought of something, Hwang-Cheol smiled meaningfully. Seeing that, his friends stared at him in wonder.

“This son of a bitch really is drunk.”

***

.

“You call this a scoop?”

Smack!

A man flinched as his team leader threw down a file folder hard on top of his desk. His name was Hong Ju-Tae, a reporter. Being scolded by his superior had practically become a daily routine.

“Go get me a hot topic like a proper reporter! What the hell are you doing when your colleagues are living high off of their scoops? Huh?!”

“...I’m sorry.”

Ju-Tae could only apologize, but that was not enough to quell his superior’s anger.

“Get the hell out of my sight!”

Ju-Tae bowed, went back to his desk and collapsed on his seat.

“Fucking hell. It’s not like I’m avoiding scoops on purpose. Things like that don’t just come as I want them to.”

He wanted nothing more than to hand in his resignation letter, but endured it since he couldn’t think of anything else he could do to earn a living.

‘If a scoop doesn’t exist...’

Ju-Tae’s gaze fixed itself on the file folders to his right. They were materials of various celebrities that he had organized.

‘Should I just make something up?’

If it was revealed to be fake news, then he simply needed to pretend like he had no idea. He had agitated the public with fabricated news like this several times, although he had been ostracized by everyone in his news agency as a result.

‘Well, at least I can grab some attention with it.’

Words like morals and conscience did not exist in Ju-Tae’s dictionary. After all, people would forget that it had ever happened in a flash.

‘Let’s see. Who should I target this time...?’

If he were to choose the most popular celebrity as of late, it would be...

‘Kang Ra-Eun, I guess.’

She could be considered the star that every single reporter had been keeping their eyes on lately. Ju-Tae also had some information on her, and the most interesting among them definitely had to be those regarding her high school days. It just so happened that he knew someone who was very knowledgeable about it.

‘It’s been a while since I’ve called Hwang-Cheol.’

Ju-Tae recalled Hwang-Cheol saying that he had graduated from the same high school as Ra-Eun. Once the call got through, Hwang-Cheol sounded rather happy to be getting a call from Ju-Tae.

- Sunbae! I was just about to call you. Perfect timing!

“Call me? Why?”

Ju-Tae was the one who had business with Hwang-Cheol, but the situation had reversed out of the blue.

- It’s about Ra-Eun. I have a decent scoop for you. Would you like to have a listen?

Ju-Tae’s eyes flashed.

***

Hwang-Cheol revealed to Ju-Tae the fact that he and his friends had been assaulted by Ra-Eun in the past. It had been a one-time bout of self-defense from Ra-Eun’s perspective, but there was no way that Hwang-Cheol would tell the truth when his objective was revenge.

- So... Miss Kang had regularly inflicted violence upon you and your friends, is that it?

“Yes! We’ve taken a few pictures of our swollen faces after she had beaten us up, so you’ll see that we’re telling the truth.”

Such pictures were far too weak as evidence to prove that Ra-Eun had been a perpetrator of school violence, since they could have been assaulted by someone other than Ra-Eun. However, Ju-Tae did not concern himself with such trivial things; he was an expert at agitation and fabrication.

- Got it. For now, email me those photos. Oh, and why don’t we have an interview soon?

“But sunbae. If I do that interview... Will my identity also be revealed with it?”

- You don’t have to worry about that. It’ll be completely anonymous.

Ra-Eun would immediately realize that the informant was Hwang-Cheol, but he had no choice but to take that risk into account. The corners of Hwang-Cheol’s mouth curled up after hanging up.

He had thought of this plan over the past two days; he would damage her image by exposing her as a perpetrator of school violence, and then he would once again make her his after dropping her into the pits of hell.

‘I’ll pretend like I’m yielding to her and save her from the situation as she’s bawling and begging me to make this stop.’

And of course, he would once again set the condition that she needed to go out with him. He would make a famous celebrity his girlfriend and redeem himself from the humiliation that he had suffered back in high school at the same time.

‘This is what you call killing two birds with one stone!’

Hwang-Cheol had not fully come to his senses yet.

***

Ra-Eun returned to her office and sat on the couch with Ma Yeong-Jun, her chauffeur Lim Seok-Jun, and her newly-appointed close associate So Ha-Jin. She explained to the three of them what she had gone through with Choi Hwang-Cheol.

Ha-Jin scowled in disbelief.

“What an absolute loser of a man. He’s pushing all of his past mistakes on you. I honestly don’t know what to say.”

“He’s not even a man. He’s just an underdeveloped bully.”

Ra-Eun considered Hwang-Cheol to be something less than human. There were many different ways to win the heart of someone that they liked, and Ra-Eun considered blackmail to be the absolute worst of them all. Ra-Eun was already pissed enough that Hwang-Cheol had attempted to force a romantic relationship on her in this way, but he had gone one step further and had pulled this nonsense. She couldn’t comprehend how bad of a joke this situation was.

Seok Jun blatantly asked Ra-Eun, “Should we just bury the bastard, Chairwoman?”

They were ready to act immediately once she gave the order, but Yeong-Jun intervened.

“I’m sure our Chairwoman has something else in mind.”

“How’d you know?” Ra-Eun remarked in surprise.

She had expected Yeong-Jun to be thinking about burying Hwang-Cheol as well, like Seok-Jun was. It was the most simple and surefire of methods, as well as the one that Yeong-Jun had been using until now. However, he had changed as he had watched Ra-Eun all this time.

“Because it’s obvious that the situation will only get worse if we bury Choi Hwang-Cheol now. The public’s view has broadened a lot lately. If the only person that can clarify the situation vanishes, our chairwoman would be the first person to be suspected. They would wonder if Kang Ra-Eun had hired someone to deal with him.”

“Wow, you’ve grown, Misma. You’ve learned to think for yourself.”

Yeong-Jun softly smiled as Ra-Eun praised him.

“I guess this must be what you call observational learning. Good boy, Misma.”

“...I’m not a dog.”

Her final compliment had spoiled the one before it.

“Anyway, Misma is right. We need to use something other than fists to solve this problem.”

“What do we use, then?”

Ha-Jin answered Seok-Jun’s question, “We’ll also use public opinion. Fight fire with fire.”

She had immediately come up with the answer as expected of someone who had been a bodyguard for celebrities. Ra-Eun had been thinking the exact same thing as Ha-Jin.

“Letting the public know which side is lying comes first. We’ll tell them exactly what happened, and then we can take corrective measures.”

It just so happened that Hwang-Cheol had uploaded photos of his swollen face today and was claiming that Ra-Eun had done them in her high school days. Ra-Eun was not planning on taking this lying down.

“I asked Chief Jung to schedule another press conference. Until then, Misma, Mr. Lim and Team Leader So, gather and organize the evidence that I ask you to collect, and send them to me and GNF.”

“Understood.”

The three replied in a tone expressing that Ra-Eun did not need to worry.

‘You must think of me as some pushover because I’m not doing anything.’

Ra-Eun’s eyes sharpened.

‘You’ve messed with the wrong person, punk.’

Hwang-Cheol likely didn’t know that Ra-Eun’s specialty was revenge.