LOVE YOU RIGHT | ONEW - LEE JINKI

10: Solace

A week later, the peaceful atmosphere around Hwa Restaurant began to change. With Jinki's recent visit, the restaurant's popularity surged, and so did the attention from the media. SM started overclaiming the impact of their artist's visit, suggesting that Jinki's presence was the primary driver of the restaurant's success. It annoyed Hwayoung that SM did that, her popularity in social media was not enough to prove to people that was not the case. Han Jiwoo and Seo Hajin as their communication consultants were also feeling a bit upset when it was brought up in the emergency meeting they called in. Yet everyone agreed, it was beyond their control.

The bigger reason for the emergency meeting was that a picture of Hwayoung and Jinki had been released. They were laughing in front of the restaurant. It was not from a big site, however they assume it was one of the customers that posted it. Hwayoung's face was blurred, so she couldn't take legal actions immediately. There were diverse comments about the picture in a forum. Some found out that Hwayoung worked with Jinki at the same reality show project. Some jealous fans even accuse her of flirting with Jinki deliberately. The chaos even brought them to Hwayoung's account, it seems like some depth of the web has released her face or name somewhere. Many demanded her to explain herself and her relationship with Jinki. That morning, Hwayoung too, had to turn off her social media notifications.

In the meeting, Hajin showed Hwayoung and Jinhwan the netizens' reactions. Not too long after they sat in the meeting, Jinki's agency checked with them to verify the image if it was her or not. Hwayoung confirmed that it was her, she explained the moment it was taken. The agency advised her to lay low while they discuss and decide on a course of action. They opted to wait a week to see how things unfolded.

"I think you need to take a break." Jinhwan suggested in the meeting.

"I agree." Hajin said, "I have been checking your account, it doesn't look good."

"But I didn't do anything wrong. I was just talking and it could be anyone. Like any friends that came by." Hwayoung spoke out her mind, she was frustrated and felt unfair. Why would she hide when she didn't do anything?

"Yeah, for now some jealous fans didn't want to hear that." Jiwoo cleared her throat, she looked a little bit more calm than Hajin, "Actually Onew's agency gave a hint for their proposal." Everyone was looking at her, eyes prying, demanding her to spill it, "They want to push the appointment for Onew to become the ambassador for the restaurant and release the statement that you were talking about that project."

Hwayoung and Jinhwan looked at each other, then Jinhwan spoke up, "That was earlier than the plan. They were so adamant the first time Hwayoung met them. Why now?" He got a bit tense.

"Also, we were thinking about saving the budget since the priority changed to fix the operations due to the high demand of customers these days." Hwayoung's voice fades, because she knew that as she talked, she might have no other solutions than SM's proposal, to protect Jinki.

"The plan was to make it as if Hwayoung and Onew were talking about the plan for the restaurant promotion." Jiwoo added.

"So what if we weren't? Am I having a romantic scandal now?" Hwayoung scoffed in disbelief.

"Based on the netizens' comments, there was a possibility of being led in that direction." Hajin confirmed. "Worst to worst, they will accuse you for being a freeloader and dismiss all our hard work."

Everyone stayed silent after listening to Hajin, busy with their own thoughts. Mostly thinking what they could do.

Hwayoung was the most anxious among all, she didn't stop squeezing her hands. Then she calmly shared her thought, "Instead of engaging him with something big, can we just do a quick promotion, like a Youtube show? It was just a one day shot and it might be effective."