Chapter 13

Chapter 13

“You did additional filming too?!”

Park Songhu sprang up from the sofa.

Louis rolled off his stomach with an indignant “Mraaak!” but he had no time to care.

Park Songmin, halfway through taking off his shoes by the front door, nodded weakly.

After spending the entire afternoon repeatedly slipping in and out of Kang Yunho, he felt like his soul had left his body.

“Ah, yes... the writer added some lines...”

“What?! Writer Seo Hayoung did?”

Park Songhu’s expression twisted.

Seo Hayoung was notorious in the industry for being demanding.

And someone like her had added lines on set?

“Writer Seo Hayoung, on set, personally? Seriously?”

“Y-Yes. Seriously.”

Park Songhu let out a disbelieving laugh and stared blankly at the ceiling.

“Haa...”

What did that sigh mean?

Just as Park Songmin swallowed nervously.

“...I think you might actually have talent for acting.”

“E-Eek! What are you talking about?! I’m a novelist! A web novel author!”

“Yeah, I know.”

Park Songhu walked into the kitchen, took out some water from the refrigerator, and spoke with his back turned.

“But honestly, your novel is boring as hell.”

“...”

Park Songmin clenched his fists.

That genuinely got under his skin.

But he quickly loosened them before Park Songhu noticed.

“I’ll give you the characters. You’re seriously good at those. But the plot is so frustrating that I started scrolling without even realizing it.”

“Th-That’s...”

“Ah, right. Speaking of novels.”

Park Songhu jerked his chin toward the laptop on the table.

“Have you checked your NovelJoA page?”

“...No. Why?”

“Go look.”

He had a bad feeling.

Park Songmin opened the laptop and logged into NovelJoA.

Then went to MiniSong’s author page.

There were... two ongoing works?

“...Huh?”

<​The Dungeon That Never Sleeps> was the one he already knew.

But there was another one beneath it.

And the title was...

<​The Youngest Son of a Chaebol Family Doesn’t Hide His Power>

“...W-What is this? And what’s with this painfully cliché title?”

Park Songhu calmly mixed lemon powder into his water.

“I wrote it.”

“...”

“I was bored.”

Park Songmin stared at the screen.

Chapter 1.

The serialization start date was this afternoon.

Apparently he had uploaded it while Park Songmin was filming today.

“...You wrote a web novel?”

“Yeah.”

“On my account?”

“You forgot to log out. When I tried making my own, it said I had to write tens of thousands of characters over a week before they’d upgrade me to official serialization.”

“...”

A laugh slipped out.

Not figuratively. An actual laugh.

“Pfft...”

“...? You seriously wanna die?”

His brother wrote a web novel?

Did he even know what web novels were?

What about genre conventions?

Foreshadowing and payoff?

Cliffhangers?

Where to place the big dopamine hits?

“Hey.”

“...Yes?”

“You laughed because you think I can’t write, right?”

“N-No! Not at all! I mean, I haven’t read it yet, so I don’t really know!”

“Whatever. I’m taking a shower.”

“Yes!”

The bathroom door closed.

Park Songmin quietly snickered.

Then imitated what Park Songhu had said earlier.

“I wrothe it. I wash bored.”

The door flew open.

“Hey.”

“...”

“Knock it off. Seriously.”

“...Ah, yes.”

Soon.

Shwaaaa—

The sound of running water came from the bathroom.

Whenever Park Songhu showered, it took at least an hour.

The water kept running without pause, and Park Songmin grew increasingly anxious as he listened from outside.

Because of the water bill.

“Can’t you take shorter showers?”

He shouted through the bathroom door.

“I’m already keeping it pretty short.”

“I’m done in five minutes!”

“So what.”

Of course, Park Songhu paid the entire water bill, but to Park Songmin, who had frugality ingrained in his bones, that wasn’t the point.

Shwaaaa—

The water continued running.

Park Songmin sighed and sat on the sofa.

“Sho whaaat.”

He muttered even more quietly than before, and Louis climbed onto his lap.

The traitor had returned.

“Meow.”

“Forget it. Go away.”

“Meooow?”

Louis stared up at him with crystal-clear eyes.

...So cute!

After grinning like an idiot while petting Louis for a while, Park Songmin belatedly opened the laptop.

‘It’s probably just some generic mass-produced fantasy. No, can he even write one of those?’

Honestly, he was so tired he didn’t want to read it at all, but if Park Songhu came out later and asked about the content, he’d be in trouble.

‘I’ll just skim it and play along.’

Did he think this market was easy?

‘Tsk tsk, foolish aspiring writer.’

A little later.

Park Songhu came into the living room with a towel draped over his wet hair.

“Read it?”

“...”

No answer came back.

Park Songmin was staring blankly at the laptop screen.

Completely immersed.

Park Songhu snorted.

“You’re awfully absorbed.”

“...Wh-Who’s absorbed?!”

Honestly... unlike his own work, the pacing really was fast.

Within the first chapter, the protagonist’s position, the conflict structure, and the antagonistic relationships had all been established.

“This pacing... is pretty fast. Not that I’m complimenting it. It just means the depth is shallow—”

“Obviously. Plot progression is everything in web novels. The most common complaint in your comments was that yours is too slow.”

“!”

Park Songmin took another critical hit.

As the senior writer with more experience, he had to find something to criticize.

“The protagonist is a third-generation chaebol, so sure, he should be confident and charismatic. But like this, he’s just a cliché rich guy. There’s nothing for readers to connect with.”

“...”

“I can’t see what makes him uniquely him. Why does it have to be this guy? What separates him from any other chaebol protagonist?”

Park Songhu rubbed his hair with the towel and muttered.

“Maybe your results look like that because you cram all that shit into chapter one. Dopamine comes first in web novels, kid. Got it?”

...Hey!

“Anyway, getting back to what we were talking about earlier... you should seriously try acting.”

“...What?”

“Acting. Become an actor. Give it a shot.”

“...”

“I’m telling you, you have talent.”

Park Songhu tilted his head back and started drying his hair.

His long neck stretched out, revealing the clean white line of his jaw.

Whirrrrr—

“No, logically speaking—”

“Yep, can’t hear you.”

“...”

He turned off the hair dryer for a moment.

“Just do it when I tell you to.”

“Are you seriously out of your—”

Whirrrrr—

He turned it back on.

“You lunatic...”

“What?”

He heard that.

Feeling the sting of Park Songhu’s gaze, Park Songmin pretended to count Louis’s fur.

Only after Park Songhu finished drying his hair could they have a normal conversation again.

“When I heard about today’s filming, that confirmed it for me. Seo Hayoung herself said she wanted to add lines because of your acting. Seo Hayoung, the woman famous for being ridiculously demanding in this industry.”

“Th-That was just luck...”

“That shitty luck never showed up for me.”

“...”

‘Yeah, objectively.’

Park Songhu thought.

When it came to acting, his younger brother was better than him.

He hated admitting it, but it was true.

And on another level, he was a little tired too.

The entertainment industry.

Image management.

His entire career, tangled up after the scandal.

He had made his comeback, but he had lost all sense of where to go from here.

Every ad deal was gone, no lead roles were coming in, and now cameo appearances were his level.

And in the middle of all that, he saw talent in his younger brother.

The ability to understand characters.

The ability to make emotions feel alive.

‘...It’d be a waste to let him stay shut in a room writing novels with talent like that.’

Not like he was particularly good at writing novels anyway.

“No, logically, that makes no...”

Park Songmin was dumbfounded.

He knew exactly what his brother was saying.

Become an actor.

Stand in front of cameras.

Go out in front of people.

And do all of it in his place!

What kind of trashy melodrama was this?

“Meow?”

Louis perked his ears on Park Songmin’s lap.

Apparently he had sensed the shift in the atmosphere.

“I’m not doing it.”

For once, Park Songmin answered firmly.

“No, actually, it’s not even that I won’t...”

“It’s not?”

“I seriously can’t anymore!”

***

NovelJoA platform.

<​The Youngest Son of a Chaebol Family Doesn’t Hide His Power> appeared on a quiet afternoon.

Chapter 1 subtitle: When I Opened My Eyes, I Was the Youngest Son of a Chaebol Family.

It was an incredibly common possession story.

At first, no one paid it any attention.

The pen name MiniSong was practically unknown on NovelJoA.

An author whose existing series, <​The Dungeon That Never Sleeps>, had only around three hundred subscribers.

There was no reason people would flock to a new work.

And so began the once-a-day serialization.

The first day Chapter 1 was released, 27 views.

0 comments.

Second day, 49 views.

1 comment.

-I clicked because I like chaebol stories. Fast pacing, pretty good

Third day.

Views suddenly jumped to 330.

Because it had squeezed into the very bottom of the free rankings.

5 comments.

-The pacing is seriously solid ㄷㄷ set up the foreshadowing in ch 1 and already paid it off in ch 3

-Aren’t all this author’s previous works slow as hell? I dropped The Dungeon That Never Sleeps after like 2 chapters

└Read this and you’ll be shocked

└Is this seriously the same person?

└He finally figured it out!

-Damn the dopamine in this chapter is insaneㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ

Fourth day.

880 views.

14 comments.

It was a chapter where Park Songhu had carefully hammered in maximum impact.

The protagonist was about to get screwed over by his uncle at the board meeting, but armed with knowledge of the future, he perfectly counterattacked and delivered a satisfying payoff.

Even the card he revealed as the twist completely overturned readers’ expectations.

A structure designed to leave mouths hanging open automatically after the last sentence.

-Insane

-Is this seriously the same author who wrote <​The Dungeon That Never Sleeps>? Same person?

-The pacing style is completely different

-The previous one had good characters but frustrating pacing. This one moves like an express train

-You awakened, MiniSong!

-Why didn’t you write like this from the start

-I’ll trust you one more time

The next chapter was uploaded.

It landed on the first page of the free rankings and crossed 7,000 views.

Following up on the twist, the youngest-son protagonist earned deep favor and recognition from the chairman.

-Keugh, Chairman Choi is so badass ㄷㄷ

-Chairman Choi shows up here?

-What is this charisma?

When the next chapter, lightly incorporating the entertainment industry, was released, comments started breaking one hundred.

-I only read modern stories but this is the first god-tier work I’ve seen in the past year

-Please mass release

-Best hidden gem of the year

-Just keep going like this

-And look at this plausibility. How does the author know the entertainment industry this well?

-Must have researched the hell out of it

Then, one week later.

Not only did it break onto the first page of Today’s Best, it finally reached number one.

It passed 20,000 views in a single day.

Comments exceeded 300.

Subscriber numbers began skyrocketing in real time.

-I’ve followed the author since the previous work and the style itself is completely different. Feels like they got consulting from another author or something

-Ah shit I stayed up all night reading thisㅠㅠㅠ

-I came to my senses and I was already on the latest chapter

-Mass release. Please mass release!

-Author, do you like fried dumplings?

-I want to lock the author in a room and make them write all day

-Author, serialization always comes before your health

Its name even started circulating in web novel communities.

-Anyone read MiniSong’s new novel?

-Saw the title and thought it’d be generic trash but it’s actually pretty fun ㅇㅇ

-Try it try it

-I was sick of chaebol stories and ignored it, but then it hit #1 on best so I tried it and it’s delicious fr

-Please adapt this

-Oh, this really would be fun as a drama. Modern setting too

And three days later.

A message arrived on MiniSong’s NovelJoA account.

[Hello, Author MiniSong. We are Aces Media, a web novel management company.]

Aces Media.

A management company considered top-tier in the web novel industry.

IP commercialization, adaptation consulting, overseas rights management.

Their roster was packed with authors earning more than one billion won in annual sales.

‘...No way.’

In fact, Park Songmin had submitted manuscripts to Aces several times before.

What came back each time was a mechanical rejection email.

He had cursed at the insincere response and slammed his laptop shut...

“...”

And now Aces Media.

Was contacting him first.

[There are matters we would like to discuss regarding <​The Youngest Son of a Chaebol Family Doesn’t Hide His Power>. Please contact us at your convenience.]

‘...Seriously?’

Park Songmin creakily turned his head.

And there.

“What are you so surprised about?”

“...”

Park Songhu was grinning.

The Genius Actor Is Hiding Twins