Cheat day

Gubigubi (1)

“Thank you for your hard work!”

The filming for Baekbanttara was wrapped up.

Since it was shot in Seoul, it ended early for a change, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that Baek Woo-jin was preoccupied.

“What’s going on with you?”

“……”

With a sulky expression, Baek Woo-jin turned around and spoke to the owner of the chicken restaurant where we were filming that evening.

“Please pack one fried and one soy sauce chicken.”

“Is it for your staff?”

Ju Ji-seung asked.

“I’m going to eat it myself.”

“What are you going to do after that?”

As Cha Ji-chan pointed out, Baek Woo-jin had already had a proper lunch and dinner today.

He had worked hard, so I thought he was treating today as a cheat day, but ordering two chickens for a late-night snack was crossing the line.

“I’m going to eat it.”

“If you keep that up, you won’t win.”

“Yeah, Woo-jin. You’ve done well so far. Just hold on a little longer.”

“Should I cancel the order?”

“No, please give it to me.”

He went ahead and paid for it.

“What’s wrong with you? Huh?”

Even when I kept asking, he just clamped his mouth shut and said nothing.

“Hey! If you don’t do it right, the program won’t survive. Are you out of your mind? Don’t you want to win?”

“Ah! I don’t know!”

When Cha Ji-chan pressed him, Baek Woo-jin finally exploded.

“What does winning even matter! What!”

He had been saying he would win and confess this morning, but now his attitude had completely changed.

There must be a reason behind it.

“Did something happen with Ji-hye?”

When I asked, Baek Woo-jin pouted his lips.

Ju Ji-seung and Cha Ji-chan seemed to catch on, exchanging glances and looking around.

Thinking no one had heard, I grabbed the chicken I ordered and took him to the car.

“I knew you would cause some trouble. What is it?”

Cha Ji-chan pressed him.

“What did I do?”

“What did you do this time?”

“I didn’t do anything!”

Having played the bad cop, it was time for the good cop to step in.

“Come on, who else can you talk to about stuff like this besides us?”

“……Ugh.”

After a moment of silence, Baek Woo-jin began to shed tears like a baby chick.

We were all taken aback.

Though he was the most emotional of us, he had rarely shown tears except in situations like watching a touching movie or when saying goodbye to kids he met on the way to the sky, or when proposing a nationwide Secret Santa.

‘……Was he always this much of a crybaby?’

Looking back, he had cried quite a bit.

“Hey, hey.”

Cha Ji-chan, flustered, didn’t know what to do and began to fidget, while Ju Ji-seung handed him tissues.

“Ugh. Sniff. Sigh! Ugh.”

“Did you get dumped?”

“Wahhhh!”

“What a loser.”

“Why are you making fun of a crying person!”

“Boohoo.”

No matter how much I thought about it, it sounded like he had been dumped, and when I asked, Cha Ji-chan and Ju Ji-seung scolded me.

Baek Woo-jin clung to Ju Ji-seung and wept.

‘This is strange.’

From the way he looked, it really seemed like he had been dumped, but according to what Muk Eun-ji had told me this morning, Ji-hye also had feelings for Baek Woo-jin.

The fact that nothing had happened between them for over 20 years was curious enough, but it made me wonder how two people who had feelings for each other could still be in this situation.

“What do you have to do to get dumped?”

“Wahhhh!”

“Hey, damn it.”

“Aren’t you going to stop crying?”

Cha Ji-chan and Ju Ji-seung scolded him again.

We needed to find out what happened to resolve this, but in this state, we were stuck.

“Hold on. You’re just crying because the older brothers are coddling you like a toddler. Stop it.”

“…….”

Maybe because of all the crying, he seemed to regain some dignity.

Baek Woo-jin fell silent.

“You were fine just this morning. What happened with Ji-hye?”

He only glared at me without answering.

“You have to speak up for us to help you.”

“I’m not going to get help from someone who knows less about dating than I do.”

“That’s not true.”

“Cha-n-young is better than you.”

Even Ju Ji-seung and Cha Ji-chan, who had been defending him, denied it, causing Baek Woo-jin to look around nervously before finally speaking.

“She came in while I was working and started yelling at me out of nowhere.”

“Ji-hye?”

Cha Ji-chan asked.

“Yeah. When I asked what was wrong, she said she didn’t know. If she’s angry, shouldn’t she at least know why?”

It seemed that both of them needed to learn how to communicate better.

“So I kept asking, and she said rumors were going around the office that I was going to confess after winning.”

“Ah.”

This was it.

He had been saying for a long time that confessions should be done publicly, but it must have felt burdensome when it came to Ji-hye.

Ju Ji-seung and Cha Ji-chan shared the same realization, looking at him sympathetically with furrowed brows.

“But.”

Baek Woo-jin’s expression turned gloomy again.

“She said, ‘Is now really the time to be dating?’”

This time, I was genuinely at a loss for words.

I never would have guessed that the issue was with the “confession” and not the “public” aspect of it.

‘This is strange.’

Muk Eun-ji had said that Ji-hye had feelings for Baek Woo-jin.

‘Or maybe not?’

However, upon further reflection, it’s also possible that Muk Eun-ji was simply mistaken about the whole thing.

“So when I asked why he couldn’t do it when Cha-n-young can, he said he’s different. He compared himself to his brother, saying that Cha-n-young manages himself well and does his job right while he doesn’t.”

Was this the reason he had been oddly hostile toward me today, or rather recently?

“And then he hit me and ran away. He called me a bad person. That little miscreant.”

“……”

It seemed like this wasn’t going to be resolved easily.

“I can’t believe you’d do this to me!”

Ji-hye said, putting her beer glass down, her voice quivering with emotion.

“Back in elementary school, I stopped you from being bullied for showing off. In middle school, I wanted to start a newspaper club but had no friends, so I asked you to join. Do you know how much I helped that guy out?”

Muk Eun-ji sat upright, and Song No-eul held Ji-hye’s hand tightly while listening to her story.

“When he went to the army, I was the only one who went to see him off. I visited him every month! When he came back to school and argued with the professor saying he was right, and got a B, I stopped him from trying to break in and demand a better grade. He was scared to do his part-time job alone, so I went with him for the interview, but I was the only one who got hired and worked while he just sat around!”

Muk Eun-ji tilted her head in confusion.

“I brought a lazy guy who had no intention of getting a job and turned him into a YouTuber, and we got this far. At first, I was supporting him with the money I earned from that part-time job that didn’t pay a dime, and now he does this to me!”

“Wow. I never saw Director Baek like that; he really crossed the line,” Ji-hye said, downing her beer.

She wanted to cool off her boiling sense of betrayal, even if just a little, with the cold beer.

But as the betrayal cooled down, sadness took its place.

“Have you talked to him?”

Writer Song No-eul asked.

“I went to see him today, and when I said everyone knew about the rumors, he pretended not to know what I was talking about.”

“Oh my. Oh my. And then?”

“When I said he should know about it, he was like, ‘So what?’”

“Wow!”

“Isn’t that just too much?”

“It’s too much! How could he do that to the team leader?”

“Exactly!”

“How did it end?”

“I was so upset that I felt like I had to say something, but my pride got in the way.”

“I get it. I get it.”

“I said it in a roundabout way, asking if it was really the right time to date with all the work he has to do. I told him it’s tough enough to manage blood sugar while working, and what is he thinking? But…”

“But?”

“He said he’d do it anyway. He’s determined to go through with it. Waaaah.”

“Oh dear.”

Song No-eul moved closer to Ji-hye and wrapped her arm around her shoulders, comforting her.

“I have a question,”

Muk Eun-ji, who had been observing the situation, finally spoke up.

“Does Ji-hye team leader like Director Baek Woo-jin?”

“Of course! It’s true love! There’s no love like this! Since we were 13, right? 21 years? 22 years? How many years has it been? Just look at Ji-hye’s age!”

“Don’t count.”

“Oh.”

Song No-eul hesitated for a moment before putting some snacks into Ji-hye’s mouth.

“Then I don’t understand. Why would Director Baek Woo-jin’s public confession make Ji-hye team leader sad?”

Ji-hye and Song No-eul looked at Muk Eun-ji strangely.

While they often found her to be peculiar, it was hard to believe she couldn’t grasp this situation.

On the other hand, Muk Eun-ji simply could not understand what was wrong when both Baek Woo-jin and Ji-hye had feelings for each other.

“Oh.”

The thought of a public confession popped into Muk Eun-ji’s mind.

She hadn’t considered the pressure that came with being publicly confessed to on a show watched by the entire nation.

“I understand.”

When Muk Eun-ji finally grasped it, Ji-hye and Song No-eul sighed in relief.

“But that must be really distressing.”

“Ugh. I’m having all sorts of thoughts. What rumors might spread at work? What might my friends say? I can’t even show my face around.”

After hearing Song No-eul’s words, Muk Eun-ji tilted her head, eventually coming to a realization.

The impact of the “Sugar Man Project” that would be released on Netflix was expected to be significant.

If a confession were to happen on such a platform, there might be people recognizing her on the street. While Baek Woo-jin was accustomed to that environment as a public figure, Ji-hye would naturally feel the pressure.

“I really want to cut ties with him.”

“……But you still like him.”

“I told you I don’t!”

“Really?”

Ji-hye pouted and shook her head slowly.

Song No-eul hugged her.

“If Director Baek Woo-jin doesn’t do a public confession, will that be okay?”

Muk Eun-ji asked.

“What good would that do now? Director Baek’s feelings won’t change.”

“Shouldn’t they stay the same?”

Ji-hye and Song No-eul were left speechless.

A shocked Ji-hye leaned over the table, while Song No-eul looked furious.

“Team leader, that’s too much! How can you say something like that when your 22-year crush likes someone else? That’s hurtful!”

“Does Director Baek Woo-jin have someone he likes?”

“……What?”

Their conversation wasn’t progressing because they couldn’t understand each other.

“Wait. Team leader, do you know who Director Baek likes?”

“Isn’t it Ji-hye team leader?”

Ji-hye, who had been leaning over, sat up.

“Oh come on. That’s not true.”

“……”

“Seriously, nothing happened. How long have I spent with him? There were no signs at all.”

“Director Baek Woo-jin heard our conversation.”

“Our conversation?”

“The talk we had while eating ramen in the break room was overheard by Director Baek, and he submitted an application for the Sugar Man that same day.”

“Why?”

“Because he was worried about Ji-hye team leader.”

“Me? What about me?”

“He thinks you don’t see him as a potential partner and decided he would definitely win and confess.”

Ji-hye furrowed her brow.

As Song No-eul began to grasp the situation, her eyes widened in surprise, and she started bouncing in her seat.

“I found this out while talking with Chan-young.”

Once Muk Eun-ji finished speaking, Ji-hye rolled her eyes, her expression growing increasingly confused.

“No, there hasn’t been anything like that until now. Huh?”

“Looks like he’s finally going to do it!”

“Re. Really? No. I don’t want to believe it. There’s no way he would do that. If he did, he would have done it a long time ago.”

“There’s a possibility that he started to like you but then developed feelings of dislike after getting punched in the gut this morning.”

“Ugh!”