Chapter 4: The Banner

On Thursday morning Soo-ah pushed her phone into Yeo-reum's face before Yeo-reum had opened both eyes.

"Look," Soo-ah said. "Look, look, look."

Baek Soo-ah was twenty-five, tiny, and her two brown buns were bouncing with rage.

Yeo-reum took the phone.

It was the Dalbit homepage, and across the top ran a huge banner in Blue Hour blue.

"CHAPTER 59: THE FACE OF DOWON REVEALED."

Under the words was a man's face.

He was pretty, with smooth skin, perfect hair and wide empty eyes.

Yeo-reum sat up in her sleeping bag on the studio floor.

"That is not Dowon," she said.

"It's an AI face," Soo-ah said. "Somebody typed 'Blue Hour male lead' into a machine."

"I haven't drawn his face."

"Apparently Gong has."

Soo-ah scrolled down, and the comment count under the banner was already thirty-one thousand.

"Who is this?" "Where is the real Dowon?" "This is a scam." "Writer Reum, did you sell out?"

Yeo-reum read the last one twice.

Then she climbed out of the sleeping bag, put on her glasses, and pulled a hoodie over her pajamas.

"Where are you going?" Soo-ah said.

"To my job."

"You don't have a shower."

"I'll shower in anger."

They reached the seventh floor of the Sangam tower at nine, in the middle of the morning meeting.

Twenty staff sat around the long table, and Director Gong stood at the head of it with a laser pointer.

He saw Yeo-reum in the doorway and did not look surprised.

"Writer Reum," he said smoothly. "I was going to call you."

"Take it down."

"The banner is a marketing decision. The traffic is up eleven percent."

"It's a fake face on a man I haven't drawn. Take it down."

"The transition is a delicate time for the platform, and the new owner wants numbers."

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