BEHIND THE SCENES

chapter 134: keeping secrets

<OST: Start - Gaho>

"Ya!" Namjoon clamoured out of his office later that evening, his hair in a complete mess and his eyes all groggy. "How long have I been asleep for? Why didn't anyone wake me up?"

Everyone in the office looked up.

"Bujang-nim-" Chungha scrambled to her feet, trying her best to explain the situation. "We couldn't wake you up because you looked way too exhausted... Hyejin-ssi said that you've been working overtime for the past few days so-"

"Still!" Namjoon tugged at his hair anxiously with his hands. "You guys should have woken me up! How can I rest at this time while all of you are working here? Any new updates? What happened while I was asleep? Someone please update me, I'm literally-"

"Hi, yes-" Hyejin walked out of the coffee room, a cup of coffee in hand, a stack of papers in her other and her phone clamped between her shoulder and cheek. Her eyes lit up when she spotted Namjoon, and she immediately walked over and handed him the coffee. "Yes, yes, don't worry about it. We got it under control, yes. Let's talk again tomorrow, yes. Thank you, goodnight."

Beep.

"Hyejin-ssi-" Namjoon's breath hitched. "Who was that?"

"Bujang-nim, you're awake!" Hyejin gestured towards the cup. "Have some coffee first."

And for some reason, Namjoon took a sip in spite of how stressed he was.

"Everything's under control, bujang-" Hoseok related as he walked over. "While you were gone for around two hours... we were working on the article about Jennie Kim's contract termination from BG Entertainment. But halfway through, JK uploaded an Instagram story as well and we amended the article to include what he mentioned in his post too."

"What?!" Namjoon's eyes widened and his jaws dropped. "And no one woke me up?! What on earth- What did you even do?"

"I knew you'd ask," Hoseok said with a grin as he glanced at Hyejin. "Since Hyejin-ssi was still brushing up the article on Jennie Kim, she decided to halt the publishing and edit information about JK into the article."

"What?!" Namjoon shrieked as he looked at Hyejin in disbelief. "But- don't you know that it's always more important to get the articles out ASAP so that people can read it as soon as they search up the topic. Didn't you know that clicks are the most important? What were you thinking, keeping the article and editing other information in? Long articles don't draw so much attention, people have short attention spans-"

"That's in the usual case, bujang-nim," Hyejin said quietly, not wanting to talk over Namjoon. "But in this case, we were already lagging behind. Ten other media companies had already published their article about Jennie Kim before us - without even fact-checking. Their articles were gaining views at exponential rates, so if we were to publish our article at the same time, no one would pay attention to us. And that's why... I had to differentiate our article."

"Where's the article? Let me see!"

"It's been up for an hour now," Hyejin said with a little grin as she turned her computer screen to face Namjoon. "I titled it 'Timeline of events from the JKJK Couple Conference to JK's Exit from The Media Industry' because... I think people would wanna know the full story from head-to-tail. That's something that other articles don't talk about, you see - and that's how I wanted to differentiate us."

Namjoon leaned forward quickly, his eyes sweeping across the screen as he scrolled through the article. Hoseok, Chungha and Hyejin watched on nervously, before Namjoon finally stood up straight with his hands on his hips.