Bailonz Street 13-Chapter 220.2

The moment the PD left the editing room, Kang Yihak turned back to the group, both hands full of extra profit, grinning broadly.

“Now all we have to say is that it would normally take three days, but thanks to our skill, we finished in one!”

An outrageous trick.

“Oh.”

Watching silently, Lee Seonghae finally spoke.

“You’re really good at lying to people.”

“Lying? Not at all! It’s simply knowing how to create extra income in ways that nobody notices and nobody loses from.”

Swiftly, Kang Yihak divided the gold and cash into three portions.

Her hands split the shares by market value with practiced ease.

“Anyway, once we handle this, that guy will save money in the future, and even if it’s not the case, the money he just spent will be reimbursed by his higher-ups or someone. Isn’t that right?”

“……”

“Now, now, if we split this equally among the three of us, that’s fair, isn’t it? Between me, Dolphin here… and our splendid Mr. Employee too!”

She quickly turned toward the transport case and extended some of the gold toward it.

“Him too?”

“Yes! Of course. Well, if not cash, then gold works just as well, I guess. What do you say, Mr. Employee?”

As if he would accept that…

Tap.

“……”

“See that?!”

Indeed, an entity that understood the greatness of gold! Silently, Kang Yihak threw an invisible victory cheer into the air.

Lee Seonghae froze briefly, then lowered her head toward the case and asked seriously.

“Um… Are you in need of human money?”

……Tap.

“Shall we give you more?”

Tap.

“Pardon me, but, does the company not pay you a salary?”

Silence.

The transport case remained still. Somehow, it seemed Mr. Mascot was… confused. Best not to press too hard.

‘But… it really seems like he isn’t being paid, doesn’t it?’

After some thought, Lee Seonghae decided instead to put this kind Mr. Employee’s mind at ease.

Work talk.

“I’ll do my best!”

Tap, tap.

So, even if she didn’t work hard, it was fine? Truly a kind person!

“All right, then… shall we begin preparations for entry now?”

“Yes.”

With the brief capitalist commotion concluded, Kang Yihak quickly went to the entrance of the editing room and shut the door.

Thud.

The editing room became a sealed chamber.

“…Turning on the screen.”

The central equipment monitor lit up, and on the desktop appeared a file of a variety show mid-edit.

And immediately, the next passage came to mind.

The reason those tied to ‘The Man in the Screen’ ghost story feared the editing room most of all.

The reason they were here.

[Has anyone seen this man on a PBS broadcast program? (photos attached) –2]

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Hello. Since so many of you were curious, I hurried to write this.

In the last post, I said the ghost story about ‘the man in the screen’ faded because he was deleted during editing.

And I mentioned hearing a chilling story from a friend who’s a TV writer, right? That was this…

The truth is, saying they deleted ‘the man in the screen’ was a lie.

At first, it was possible. They could cut him out and create a clean final version.

But as time passed, as more episodes piled up, as editing went on… even after deleting and deleting again, he kept appearing more often.

And as that happened, the man’s appearance grew stranger.

Before, he was the kind you’d pass over unless you looked carefully into the crowd. But at some point, just skimming past was enough to make you hit pause at the sheer wrongness… that’s what he became.

What exactly he looked like, I don’t know. The editors couldn’t even say. They only repeated one phrase.

‘He looks angry,’ they said…

Eventually, the workload hit a breaking point.

Even after deleting, he kept appearing. And so, in a field already notorious for overnight work, the burden grew heavier. Veterans who normally wouldn’t touch this sort of task had to spend sleepless nights hunting down ‘the man in the screen’ and cutting him out.

Until finally, they devised a new method.

========================

Source prevention.

They would simply stop including large-crowd shots where ‘the man in the screen’ might appear.

========================

They wouldn’t film the audience at all, only add sound. Or else zoom in tight on one or two reacting people.

That way, lots of people wouldn’t be caught on camera at once.

It seemed like things would ease up. It seemed plausible.

========================

After this method was suggested, the mood relaxed somewhat. As though a real solution had been found.

The PD and assistant director who proposed it sighed in relief and went into the editing room to try it.

And the next day.

========================

Both were found dead in the editing room.

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“……”

========================

The PD hung from the ceiling with an electrical cord.

The assistant director sat in a chair, artery slashed with a shard of broken monitor glass.

A suicide note lay right in front of the door.

But the handwriting was a mess, and no one could even tell what it was written with…

The PD who handled the scene, who once worked with my writer friend, said it was like something scribbled by a severe schizophrenic, rambling nonsense words that made no sense. It was so shocking that he only vaguely remembered the contents.

But one night, recalling the words and trying to reconstruct them, he realized the gist of it…

Like this.

The man in the screen doesn’t want to be deleted

He is angry

Says to air him immediately

I only conveyed it as it was

I don’t want to die

I’m sorry 𝙛𝒓𝓮𝒆𝔀𝒆𝙗𝓷𝒐𝙫𝒆𝙡.𝒄𝓸𝓶

That night, he said he was too terrified to sleep.

He ended up staying at a temple for several days.

Even without that, most people in PBS’s Variety Department were so traumatized, so stricken with fear, the whole department basically shut down.

Those around my age might remember? The sudden news articles about two PBS variety staff dying, the weeks of canceled shows for mourning around 2 to 3 weeks straight…

That was actually this.

They built a new editing room, but the atmosphere never recovered. PDs quit en masse, and even writers and other production staff avoided signing new contracts.

That’s why almost everyone who worked in PBS back then wore eye masks.

Officially, PBS’s shutdown is often attributed to socio-political power struggles. But clearly, this incident dealt a fatal blow to the Variety Department’s morale.

Still, there was one relief.

When the station closed in 2008, ‘The Man in the Screen’ ghost story truly ended.

.

.

.

But you know what?

This is from a variety show that aired just yesterday.

========================

At the end of the post was a high-quality photo.

Episode 36 of ‘A Midnight’s Elegant Burst of Laughter’, timestamp 6 minutes 23 seconds.

The MC and a solo guest conversing warmly. Then, the camera panning briefly over the staff’s reactions.

And seated among the mosaic-blurred staff…

========================

Do you recognize him?

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The man in the screen is watching.

A smile with every tooth bared, pupils grotesquely dilated, eyebrows twisted in fury.

Looking beyond the camera.

At you.

========================

PBS is gone.

But there is a broadcasting station that inherited its equipment and staff almost entirely, reorganized and rebranded.

Do you know which one?

MBS.

And ‘A Midnight’s Burst of Laughter’ is an MBS variety show.

……

Don’t watch MBS variety shows live for a while.

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Something began to flicker on the editing room monitor.

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Because no one knows what might happen.

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Salt Goblin

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