Chapter Ninety: I Will Be Waiting for You in Hell

Gu Cheng laid down two thick moisture-absorbing blankets on the ground, set Quan Baoya down, and checked her breathing. Then he rolled her over, patted her back several times to force out all the water he could, and, no longer caring who might be watching, began mouth-to-mouth resuscitation while performing chest compressions.

Only three minutes later did the production crew members, who had come down around the back of the hill, finally arrive.

Quan Baoya coughed up a little blood-tinged seawater, then let out a faint moan and slowly opened her eyes.

Everyone except Gu Cheng let out a breath of relief: nobody would be fired by President Li, and S-M would not go under. Only then did they notice Gu Cheng, and a wave of fear swept through them.

“What were you thinking? How could something like this happen?” Gu Cheng snapped, his forehead veins bulging.

The music video director, pale-faced, offered a stiff explanation. “We... we were only trying to get the shot we wanted. Maybe after too many takes, Miss Quan was exhausted and lost her footing for a moment...”

Gu Cheng forced down his anger. He did not want to berate people who were simply doing their jobs, even if they had caused an accident. After a long while, he asked in a low but imposing voice, “And now? Do you have enough footage?”

The director hurriedly pleaded, “Enough, enough! We shot plenty. With a little editing, it’ll be perfect.”

As for the few damaged final shots after Quan Baoya fell into the sea, at worst they could be replaced in the cut with less-than-perfect material from earlier takes. After an incident this dangerous, even the director no longer dared to be stubborn.

There was no hospital on the island, so the music video director could only place an emergency overseas call to report back to headquarters. After a hectic scramble, the company executives ordered most of the crew to return home early, with the remaining location work to be completed back in the country. The rest of the trip was canceled.

Gu Cheng left the speedboat he had rented to the crew. He and Pan Jieying, together with Miss An, Quan Baoya’s assistant, squeezed onto the helicopter, and ordered the pilot to take Quan Baoya straight to Queen Victoria Hospital in Brisbane.

There was a clinic in the Sunshine Coast town as well, but it was too shabby; Gu Cheng was afraid it would cause delays and firmly refused to send her there.

Australia was vast and sparsely populated. The helicopter flew nearly half an hour before finally reaching the Brisbane city center.

Only after Quan Baoya had been taken into the examination room did the siblings and Miss An finally manage to sit down and catch their breath.

In casual conversation, Pan Jieying learned that this “Queen Victoria Hospital” was private, and her surprise and concern were plain on her face. “Private hospitals are all trash, aren’t they? Why didn’t they take her to a good public hospital?”

Gu Cheng bought three cans of tea from a vending machine while schooling her. “Australia isn’t like back home. Here, the public ones are the trash. Welfare is heavy here, and public treatment is fully covered by insurance, so the queues are terrible. Private hospitals take anyone with money at any time, so the best doctors and equipment are all in private ones.”

Pan Jieying listened, sipping her tea and thinking it over.

Quan Baoya’s preliminary examination results came back quickly. There were abrasions on her back and legs, but because her thin linen dress had been tightly wrapped around her at the moment she hit the water, the wounds were fairly clean and were soon disinfected and bandaged. The blood she had coughed up was merely bronchial bleeding caused by the violent impact. The doctor prescribed some astringent injections and instructed that she be put on an IV and kept at rest for several days.

Finally, after Gu Cheng repeatedly pressed the issue, the attending physician added a lung-enhanced scan and checked her trachea and lungs, discovering that there were indeed a few tiny shadows. He then used a medical suction catheter several times and extracted the small amount of coral sand she had accidentally inhaled when she sank beneath the sea.

When a person is conscious and has a suction tube inserted into the trachea, the sensation of suffocation is excruciating. Even as strong a girl as Quan Baoya had tears spurting from her eyes as she struggled to endure it.

“Don’t be afraid. Be good. It’ll be over soon.” Gu Cheng sat beside her the whole time, holding her hand and feeling the girl’s spasms and tremors.

After the suctioning was done, they repeated the CT scan, and every faint particle-like shadow was gone. Only then was it considered finished. Having been tormented so badly, Quan Baoya could no longer hold on and fell into a deep sleep on the hospital bed.

Gu Cheng and Pan Jieying found a hotel in Brisbane city to stay nearby, leaving Miss An to keep watch. Soon enough, other staff members who had not returned home would come to take turns.

With something so serious having happened to Quan Baoya, Gu Cheng had no mind left for plotting and scheming.

But when the trees wish for calm, the wind refuses to rest; some flies and mosquitoes insist on coming to buzz around.

News of the accident reached East Asia that very day. At first there were only brief written descriptions and scans of the diagnosis records. Only later did the group remember that there was first-hand material as well: the music video cameraman had been filming Quan Baoya the entire time from behind her. From the instant she was blown off balance, to the fall into the sea, to being rescued, there was video of the entire sequence.

That footage was naturally sent back to the country at once.

Lee Soo-man watched it, sighed for a long while, and said little else. As for Gu Cheng’s somewhat improper actions while rescuing her, he completely understood.

But in the eyes of those with ulterior motives, it was a very different matter.

Kim Young-min also saw the video. It included scenes of Gu Cheng carrying a girl while swimming, along with all sorts of suggestive gestures that looked like kissing and groping...

After some struggle, he called in two trusted confidants. One knew a bit about photography and acting; the other knew image editing and cutting.

Kim Young-min instructed them privately, “Cut out the parts where Gu Cheng’s face appears, and then...”

...

The next day, three East Asians hurried to Brisbane and found the place where the exterior shoot had taken place. The island was already deserted, with the beach empty.

Two of the three were precisely Kim Young-min’s trusted men, the ones who had received his instructions the day before. The third was an unsuspecting young girl, a trainee at S-M for a year and a half, fourteen by Korean age, named Jung Soo-yeon.

Jung Soo-yeon had been told that Director Kim was giving her a chance to shoot an overseas commercial. If she behaved herself, she would be given more opportunities. The little girl suspected nothing and obediently went along with the arrangement.

Once they arrived, the image editor took out several key scenes he had been told to cut out the day before and compared them, then had Jung Soo-yeon stand in the corresponding positions, change into the prepared soaked “Athena-style” long dress, and strike all kinds of poses as if being pressed down by a man, even bizarre ones.

Kim Young-min was not stupid. He knew Quan Baoya’s commercial value to S-M now. He also had no intention of leaking images of her being molested by a man.

But in yesterday’s footage, he had seen Gu Cheng in frame, wearing only swim trunks, in an attitude that looked highly intimate with a petite girl. Those materials could easily be altered and grafted through image editing.

So his plan was simple: have his trusted men coerce and tempt Jung Soo-yeon into posing in the same positions Quan Baoya had been in when she was injured yesterday, matching the angle and clothing as closely as possible. Then take a set of photos, and later use image editing to paste Jung Soo-yeon’s face onto Quan Baoya’s body. In this way, they could smear Gu Cheng while avoiding harm to Quan Baoya and S-M’s commercial interests.

He could have chosen another female trainee, but he feared older girls would be harder to control, and their body proportions would not match Quan Baoya’s. Jung Soo-yeon, however, was precocious. Though she was more than two years younger than Quan Baoya, she was already close to five feet three in height, which was fairly close.

More importantly, if they used an adult trainee instead, then even if a scandal broke, at most it would look like Gu Cheng had used his influence to take advantage of a woman, or else it could be spun as the two of them simply dating. The damage would not be nearly as severe.

Only by finding someone like Jung Soo-yeon, just a few months past her twelfth birthday, could the attack be fierce enough. Only then could Gu Cheng be denounced as a beast who preyed on children.

As for what happened afterward, of course Kim Young-min himself could not be the one to leak it. At worst, they could claim that Park Young-gwan of We Made had secretly bribed an S-M mole to steal the original images and then used editing to frame them.

On the beach of the Great Barrier Reef, Jung Soo-yeon was forcibly arranged into several odd and humiliating poses and photographed repeatedly. By this point, even if she were still naive, she knew she was being used, and that this was absolutely not a normal commercial shoot.

Regrettably, the news of Quan Baoya’s accident from yesterday was known only to S-M’s highest executives. As the lowest-ranking trainee in the company, Jung Soo-yeon had no idea what had happened. Otherwise, she might have been able to guess what those people were up to.

“What do I do? What are they really plotting? Somebody, please save me...” Wearing the wet Athena dress, Jung Soo-yeon forced out a bright smile and played along, while in her heart she was already thinking of how to slip away.

At that moment, the image editor had already decided to make his final move: using the posture of mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to seize the girl’s first kiss.

Jung Soo-yeon panicked and struggled in refusal.

“Just finish these moves properly, and Director Kim will not treat you badly!” the image editor said, holding Jung Soo-yeon down in a final attempt to persuade her.

Right then, they heard the sound of rotor blades, and a helicopter came around from behind the cliff. Inside were not only strong men, but also a mounted camera.

...

That night, in Hanseong, several prosecutors’ office officers suddenly stormed into Kim Young-min’s office.

Then Lee Soo-man and several other major shareholders followed them in, their disappointment and anger written all over their faces.

“Mr. Kim, you are suspected of ordering others to forcibly molest a minor. Please come with us to assist in the investigation.”

The officer leading the group then explained and reassured Lee Soo-man and the other S-M shareholders. “Don’t worry, this is a case involving privacy. We will handle it confidentially, and we will not allow the victim’s reputation to suffer a second injury. Even if there are issues, the trial will not be public.”

Kim Young-min was briefly dumbfounded. How could this happen? Had those two idiots been caught in the act? Otherwise, how could something so secretive have been traced back to...

He swallowed hard. “Officer, could you step outside for a moment and give me two minutes to prepare?”

The officer looked at the others, and seeing no objection, went out to wait. After all, Kim Young-min was still a man of some standing.

“Lee Soo-man! You traitor! To think you would collude with foreigners to scheme against me! You will die a miserable death!”

Lee Soo-man shot back, “This is your own doing! Fellow shareholders, you all saw it. Kim Young-min values his personal face and prestige above the company’s commercial interests. Do you still intend to support him?”

Kim Young-min roared with manic hysteria. “Don’t listen to this old fox stirring things up! The prestige of management is, of course, the greatest guarantee of the company’s continued profitability. The internet has rendered the distribution advantages of traditional record companies obsolete. Compared with five years ago, singers today leave once their contracts expire and they become popular, and who bears the company’s losses?

If we cannot intimidate those who would not submit, cannot enslave them until they fear us, cannot enslave them until all their fame and honor belong to the company’s own groups, then how is the company supposed to make the real money? I do value prestige, yes, but all of this is for the company! It is to resist this flattened age!

Today you have fallen into Lee Soo-man’s trap, but sooner or later you will discover that even if you have money, you will still be unable to seize the richest share of profit in the entertainment world! By then all you will be able to do is add luster to the talented ones, while they earn the lion’s share and you take only the scraps!”

One of the major shareholders could no longer stand it and snapped, “Have you said enough? I never thought you were so stubbornly irrational! Hurry up and let the police take him away.”

“Spare me your hypocrisy! If it weren’t for me holding things together, do you think this industry would still be ruled by capital? The talented and gifted would have long ago soared to the heavens! Before long, you’ll all end up just like me!”

The shareholders remained expressionless. They did not understand what was meant by “the arrival of a flattened age.” So watching Kim Young-min being led away, they felt little at all.

Still, several of the shareholders, seeing the company embroiled in such a scandal, had grown rather disheartened and wondered whether it might be time to pull out. Otherwise, the company’s valuation might even fall...