Become a Star

Become a Star

As expected, the moment Woo-Jin and Woo-Hee checked their security cameras’ footage, they were at a loss for words.

The trespasser clearly knew the locations and positions of each camera and hid her face from each of them.

It would be understandable if she did it with the cameras installed outdoors, but she also knew the positions of the cameras indoors. As the housekeeper had guessed, it probably wasn’t the woman’s first time inside the house.

“How did she get inside last time?” Woo-Hee asked.

“She must’ve mixed in with other people like she did this time. I assume the first time she came, it was just to scout around the house. After a few months, the footage will get erased, and unless she does something that stands out, we wouldn’t be checking the footage like today.” Woo-Jin replied.

They had invited many people to the house on several separate occasions over the last two years, such as their parents’ birthdays or work-related parties.

Back then, the number of invitees was large every time, so they had to hire more housekeepers and party helpers during the event.

This lady-thief in question could’ve been one of the extra helpers, or she could’ve secretly infiltrated alongside the invitees like what she did this time.

Woo-Jin and the others had only been careful and wary of fans who came in front of the house to see him. But they didn’t imagine one of them would barge inside in such a manner.

At this stage, it was highly likely that the woman was already known as a crazy fan inside the agency, and Woo-Jin had probably seen her face before.

However, it was difficult to accurately identify the women with the security camera footage. Moreover, this was only their assumption; there was no solid evidence incriminating the woman.

“I wish I could at least see her face… Ah!”

Woo-Jin suddenly remembered another security camera that they had.

Technically, it wasn’t a camera they had willingly installed, but it was a camera that was basically fulfilling the same work as a security camera.

The camera in question was installed on the roof of the house across the street.

Looking at the photos and videos that had been taken from that camera in the past, the image quality was very sharp even when zoomed in from far. The quality of the security cameras couldn’t hold a candle to it.

As soon as he remembered, Woo-Jin was about to head to the house across the street, but he refrained from doing so as it was already late in the afternoon.

Thus, their investigations ended the following day when he went to visit Kim Gwang-Sik and checked his camera’s footage in the late morning.

Funnily enough, when Woo-Jin went to the house after putting on a hat and told the tenant that he had come to meet the reporter on the roof, they opened the door for him immediately.

The person who answered through the intercom opened the door while grumbling in annoyance, saying that Woo-Jin shouldn’t have forgotten the keys to the house.

Perhaps they had mistaken Woo-Jin for another reporter who worked in the same company as Kim Gwang-Sik.

When the person opened the door without properly checking the visitor’s identity, Woo-Jin couldn’t help but chuckle. It appeared as though every house in the neighborhood, including his, didn’t check their visitors properly.

Oftentimes in movies and shows, the villains broke into the protagonist’s house and made a mess. Thus Woo-Jin often wondered why the people inside the house kept opening the door to let the villains inside. But it appeared as though reality wasn’t that different from fiction.

Although Woo-Jin wasn’t a villain who had come to make a mess, it appeared as though generally, security guards tended to slack off since several people worked in the homes of wealthy people.

In the footage he got from the reporter on the roof, Woo-Jin saw the woman in question and laughed out loud.

He had found a familiar face among the people from the cleaning company who entered his house.

Furthermore, the woman frequently appeared in the footage on other days.

She came to Woo-Jin’s house more often than anyone else and was recorded wandering around the area for hours.

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But she wasn’t the only one. After viewing the footage, Woo-Jin realized that while it was to a smaller degree, many people were wasting their time in front of his house.

Woo-Jin’s address had spread online and his neighborhood was easy to access since there were only houses. Thus, his fans kept coming here, hoping for an opportunity to meet Woo-Jin by chance.

“Should I really move out and live alone?”

Any tree can be chopped down after ten swings[1]. But when the subject changes from a tree to a person, then one’s actions can turn into a crime.

Moreover, in reality, one can be fined if they chop down the wrong tree or damage the surroundings in the process.

***

“Hey, Yeo-Rin! Did you hear the news about Chae Woo-Jin moving out?”

Hearing the words of a friend who also worked part-time at a cosmetics store, Lee Yeo-Rin replied that she already knew with an expressionless face.

As she changed her clothes after the end of her shift, her friend was stunned by Lee Yeo-Rin’s answer.

“The article just came out, so I thought that even you wouldn’t know.”

“He moved out three days ago. The article was simply released late.” Lee Yeo-Rin said.

“Wow~! Is there anything you don’t know when it comes to Chae Woo-Jin?”

Even though they were both fans of Chae Woo-Jin and were members of Wish Baragi, Lee Yeo-Rin’s intel on the actor was truly on a different level.

She got information on the actor before anyone else, and she sometimes knew very personal news that wasn't public, which often surprised her friend.

“But why are you quitting? Didn’t you say you needed the money?”

“I’ve got more than enough now.” Lee Yeo-Rin replied.

“Already?”

“I didn’t need a lot to begin with. I only needed a bit to become independent because I hate living with my older sister.”

Considering that she was a student who had taken a year off to try to become independent and had been working part-time, Lee Yeo-Rin sounded strangely confident.

Suddenly, the t-shirt that Lee Yeo-Rin changed into caught her friend’s attention. The white t-shirt was clean but seemed old and the neck area was stretched which made it look unsightly.

In addition, the sleeves were stained with navy blue paint. But most of all, the shirt looked baggy on Lee Yeo-Rin as though it was a man’s shirt.

“What’s with that shirt?” she asked.

“It’s my boyfriend’s. He was going to throw it away, so I took it instead. It’s really comfortable to wear.”

“You have a boyfriend?”

The friend was surprised at Lee Yeo-Rin’s words. She had known Lee Yeo-Rin for two years, and it was her first time hearing about a boyfriend.

Lee Yeo-Rin grinned, exuding a sense of comfort and relaxation that she only started displaying recently.

She used to be short-tempered and irritable, but had become more easygoing over the past few days and started to laugh more often. Perhaps it was the influence of her boyfriend.

“Yep.”

Lee Yeo-Rin answered confidently as she wore her cardigan over the shirt.

She moved quickly as though she was late for a date with her boyfriend. She hurried and grabbed her bag out of the locker, and a book fell out of it.

“Oh my god! How did you get that?”

The book that fell out of Lee Yeo-Rin’s bag was ‘Life Together’, the limited edition photobook that Chae Woo-Jin had made with his friend.

“Weren’t you super upset because you hadn’t gotten one back then?”

Compared to the high demand, the photobooks were produced in very small quantities. Thus, when people put them up for sale, the photobooks would be sold immediately even with a premium price tag. In other words, it was extremely difficult to obtain one without an insane amount of luck.

At that time, Lee Yeo-Rin was at her parents’ house in the countryside, so she missed Chae Woo-Jin’s photobook sale just like her friend.

“And isn’t this Chae Woo-Jin’s autograph?”

Although there were Chae Woo-Jin’s autographs inside the photobooks, it was only a print of his signature.

However, this one had a large hand-signed autograph on the cover that was signed with a thick pen. It was like the photobook that the designer from Gaon posted on Wish Baragi, saying that she received it from Chae Woo-Jin’s mother.

It was quite obvious that these versions were printed separately and given only to Chae Woo-Jin’s relatives and friends.

Lee Yeo-Rin’s friend quickly opened the cover and checked the first page. As she expected, the front page said ‘second edition’.

“This isn’t even sold on the internet regardless of how much people offered. How on earth did you get this?”

Normally speaking, the second prints of a product should be less valuable than the first. However, for this photobook, Chae Woo-Jin had printed a second edition to distribute only to the people close to him. In other words, the second editions had a special meaning behind them which greatly increased their value. Moreover, his autograph was engraved directly and personally on the cover.

The friend couldn’t understand how Lee Yeo-Rin had obtained this when she couldn’t even get the first edition.

Then, she suddenly came up with the thought that Lee Yeo-Rin might be close with one of Chae Woo-Jin’s friends or relatives.

Maybe that was why she was so quick to get information on Chae Woo-Jin.

However, Lee Yeo-Rin gave an unexpected answer.

“My boyfriend gave it to me.”

“He gave you this?”

In a matter of minutes, the friend heard about Lee Yeo-Rin’s boyfriend twice, even though this was the first time she had heard of him in years.

Out of curiosity, she wanted to ask more about this mysterious boyfriend, but Lee Yeo-Rin snatched the photobook back from her friend and put it away in her bag, claiming that she was busy.

“Are you going to see your boyfriend now?”

“Isn’t it obvious?”

With a profound look on her face, Lee Yeo-Rin left the break room with a particularly imposing posture. She left her friend behind, who grumbled about also wanting a boyfriend.

“Wait! I feel like I’ve seen that shirt somewhere before…” the friend suddenly exclaimed to herself.

She had definitely seen the navy blue stain on the left sleeve before.

“Ah, the Slipper Young Man!”

There was no way any member of Wish Baragi wouldn’t know about the t-shirt Woo-Jin was seen wearing when he was the Slipper Young Man.

He was even photographed while wearing it in Los Angeles recently, which caused his fashion coordinator Hwang Yi-Young to be criticized.

Chae Woo-Jin deserved to wear only the best clothes in the world for the rest of his life, so why was she making him wear that old and dirty shirt?

“I heard he threw it away for sure this time around… Geez, there’s no way.”

She shook her head and assumed that Lee Yeo-Rin had taken her boyfriend’s shirt and made the exact same stains on it.

Even the friend remembered the stain’s pattern and could draw it from memory, so of course Lee Yeo-Rin would be able to recreate the shirt.

The friend shook her head as pointless thoughts crossed her mind.

Even if the circumstances seemed to align a little too perfectly, having too much imagination could be considered delusional.

***

Although he complained that the studio apartment was far too big for someone who was going to live alone, Woo-Jin moved into a flat prepared by CEO Jang Soo-Hwan at everyone’s behest.

Woo-Jin’s parents initially voiced their objection when he said he wanted to live alone. However, they had no choice but to allow it after hearing his explanation.

Fortunately, the car accident Lee Yeon had caused in the past and the recent trespassing issue had not caused any major incidents. But that didn’t mean that similar issues would not happen again.

The biggest problem was that they couldn’t always prevent similar issues from happening in the future. There were too many family events organized at home, and many people could come and go during those occasions.

Since people could see Chae Woo-Jin’s face just by getting past a single fence wall, many fans loitered around the house with the hopes of meeting him. Thus, Woo-Jin’s parents couldn’t stop him since he wanted to escape to a secure place for a while to discourage such fans.

The atmosphere in the living room turned cold when Woo-Jin’s parents heard that the problematic woman in question had also entered Woo-Hee’s room, and their faces turned grim.

As this couldn’t be allowed to continue, the family decided to reinforce their home security while Woo-Jin was away since this was still Woo-Jin’s main home. They were able to reach this agreement without any disagreements.

But the topic of where Woo-Jin would live ended up being a problem.

His parents were of the opinion that this was the perfect opportunity for Woo-Jin to buy a house.

To this day, Woo-Jin saved the earnings he got from starring in movies, shows and commercials without spending them. Thus, the opinion of buying a house on this occasion prevailed.

But then, Woo-Hee intervened and claimed that buying an entire building would be a better investment.

And now, their parents were searching for buildings with good security and a great view that was worth investing in even if they were a bit too pricey. The actions of his family puzzled Woo-Jin.

His plan was to find a place to escape to for a while, not to find a place to own and live in for the rest of his life.

Once this situation was somewhat sorted out, Woo-Jin wanted to return to his parents’ home or to take his time to search for a house to purchase.

Right now, it was most important to leave this house as soon as possible, so Woo-Jin couldn’t afford to take his time to carefully select a house to buy.

His parents had to regretfully give up on the idea of buying at this point, but they started looking for places to rent while carefully considering the rent and deposit fees.

Woo-Hee was on the side, punching numbers in the calculator while saying that paying a monthly rent was far too much of a waste.

Since everyone in the family had different opinions, CEO Jang Soo-Hwan came up with an alternative solution: to have Woo-Jin live in a studio apartment owned by the company.

It was located in a building owned by the company where they rented the studios to their affiliated celebrities. In fact, the members of an idol group had been living there just recently. Now that the studio apartment was vacant, CEO Jang lent it to Woo-Jin.

The studio’s security was already proven to be good enough for idols to live in.

Without a security card, one could not use the elevator, and a security guard was always on standby in the parking lot to thoroughly manage the incoming and outgoing vehicles.

The building was known for preventing any trespassers, even the infamous sasaeng fans.

Depending on the size of the apartment, the furniture available inside was different from floor to floor. But there were only two apartments on the top floor—the penthouses—and Woo-Jin now lived in one of them.

And most of all, there was a special elevator for the penthouses that was exclusively for its residents.

“No one will be able to trespass here, right?”

Woo-Jin spoke solemnly as he gave a penthouse-exclusive elevator security card to Kang Ho-Soo.

1. An idiom in Korean that means anything is possible, that one shouldn’t give up when confronted with failure and persist until they succeed. ☜