Chapter 152. Do Jun-hyeok of the Baker Family
There were so many things happening at once that my head was spinning.
But future spam had no concern whatsoever for my circumstances.
Another message arrived while the broadcast was still in progress.
[Title: 8/10]
[Hyung. It's me, Dae-hun. Something huge happened at the company. My phone broke, so I'm contacting you from this number. Please come back to the company right away! I'm attaching the materials, so make sure you check them!]
[https://golessness.org/Z1j]
What an ominous spam message.
Since it told me to make sure I checked the attachment, I graciously did so.
I immediately examined the thumbnails.
The first showed Jamie Hager, who was sitting right over there, moving a cart piled with all kinds of workbooks.
The second showed Major Shehada Hager arguing with someone in front of a street stall.
The third showed a document written in English being exchanged.
It was a waiver of parental rights.
Every thumbnail featured the married couple sitting right in front of me.
A kindergarten teacher moving or even throwing away workbooks wasn't particularly unusual.
But all the books seemed to have the same name written on them.
That felt suspicious.
As for the second thumbnail...
I wasn't sure.
Why was a major sitting in front of a street stall?
And what was he arguing with a passerby about?
The third thumbnail seemed to imply that this broadcast would ultimately lead to the couple getting divorced.
I'd watched several previous episodes before coming here.
This program was no joke.
Affairs.
Double lives.
Paternity deception.
If there was an ugly side to human relationships, this show had probably covered it.
The only reason I'd chosen this over 〈The Arthur Doyle Show〉 was because Arthur Doyle dominated his own program from beginning to end.
But this kind of show wasn't exactly suitable for Serin either.
I chose the mysterious second video.
I put on my earphones and focused.
"Hey! Aren't you the bastard who got caught scamming the whole country? It's people like you who give soldiers a bad name!"
Caught scamming the entire country?
Wait.
Military background.
Something was almost coming back to me.
A former soldier?
Shehada Hager?
I didn't have time to sit and think about it, so I kept watching.
"How does it feel? You were doing great as a major, then you got caught by Trueman Burbank and your whole life went to hell!"
"If you're done mocking me, go on your way."
"Look at this bastard! A scammer telling an innocent citizen to move along? Is America a country where honest people have to obey scammers now? You still think you're some big-shot soldier!"
Shehada Hager suddenly lashed out at the passerby.
The man fled into the distance.
"Damn loser. I was about to kill him."
Shehada Hager swallowed his anger, then picked up his phone.
An illegal sports-betting site was displayed on the screen.
The video ended there.
There had been a lot more useful information than the tragic ending of illegal gambling.
First.
Shehada Hager had been caught lying.
And the person who caught him was none other than the main MC sitting over there.
Trueman Burbank.
Maybe I'd made my decision too quickly.
The information was slightly tangled.
They said there would be a break halfway through the show.
That was thirty minutes from now.
Meaning I had thirty minutes to think calmly.
What kind of lie had he told?
Was it even possible to ruin your life by lying when you were literally hooked up to a lie detector?
"Um... Mr. Shehada Hager, have you ever dated another person while married?"
"Oh, here we go! Hahaha! Miss Serin is finally warming up!"
"I have never cheated."
[Truth]
The word appeared on the screen.
Come to think of it, this was supposed to be the time when Serin asked the Hagers questions.
I opened the sketchbook and wrote another free question for her.
[Ask whether he has ever lied to the 〈Trueman Show〉 production staff!]
Serin carefully searched through the English words in her head, then asked,
"Mr. Shehada Hager, have you ever deceived the production staff until now?"
"Oh, that has to be no, right? There's a lie detector involved. Still, let's hear it."
"Y-Yes. I have."
[Truth]
The moment the word Truth appeared, the entire studio went quiet.
I could roughly guess what kind of lie he'd told.
On this program, lies were always exposed.
And yet every answer so far had been marked Truth.
That meant he'd lied before filming ever began.
During the appearance contract.
What lie could that have been?
His occupation?
No.
As I'd seen in the future footage, Shehada really was a soldier, and Jamie really was a kindergarten teacher.
Age?
There was no real reason to lie about that.
There was only one thing they had a motive to fake.
They weren't actually married.
Of course, if they weren't really married, then the third thumbnail no longer made sense.
The parental-rights waiver.
If they weren't a couple, this broadcast couldn't exactly cause a divorce.
I wrote another question on the sketchbook and raised it.
Serin saw it and asked,
"Mrs. Jamie Hager. How many sons or daughters do you have?"
"Two... Ah, no. I have one."
[Truth]
She had a child?
No.
Still, the chance that these two were genuinely married was basically zero.
So what had they lied about?
Jamie Hager must have had a family of her own.
Should I just ask directly?
Are the two of you really married?
If they weren't, the whole situation would end immediately.
But there was another problem.
Each participant on this show was allowed one pass.
Meaning each of them could skip one difficult question.
Serin glanced toward me from the studio, clearly asking for the next question.
Apparently, Shehada Hager noticed the movement too and looked in my direction.
That was the first time I saw his face clearly from the front.
And the moment I did...
The hazy memory from earlier became perfectly clear.
Shehada Hager.
The white man.
He was the criminal who would murder Tom Manning in the future.
During the break, Serin had a long, serious conversation with Do Jun-hyeok before returning to the studio.
He told her that if she asked the questions in exactly the order he'd written, it would create a huge buzz.
She didn't know what his intention was.
Still, listening to Do Jun-hyeok had rarely ever caused serious trouble.
So Serin trusted him completely.
Besides, coming up with questions herself had already been stressful.
"All right, Miss Serin! Please begin Round Two with your first question!"
Serin looked at the sheet Do Jun-hyeok had written.
The first question was:
How many children does Mr. Shehada Hager have?
But hadn't she already asked Jamie Hager the same thing?
"Mr. Shehada Hager, how many children do you have?"
"Uh..."
Shehada Hager couldn't answer immediately.
The main MC had initially looked disappointed by Serin's question.
But once he saw Shehada's reaction, he became interested and fell silent.
"I'll use my pass."
"Ah! What is this?! You shouldn't waste your pass on something like this! Mr. and Mrs. Hager must be extremely confident in the rest of their truths."
Serin had wondered whether Do Jun-hyeok had simply made a mistake and whether she should smoothly move past it.
But Shehada had actually used his pass.
Good thing she'd trusted him and asked.
"Then, Mrs. Jamie Hager. Have you ever discussed plans for children with Mr. Shehada Hager?"
"No. Never."
[Truth]
They were supposedly married, yet they'd never once discussed children.
Well...
That was technically possible.
Serin asked the next question.
"Mrs. Jamie Hager. Have you ever caused your child severe pain?"
Jamie's eyes shook violently.
She was clearly disturbed.
"Yes."
Again, it was the truth.
Their prize money increased with each Truth result.
But their suspicion was increasing right alongside it.
The next line on Do Jun-hyeok's sheet had a condition written beside it:
[Only ask this if the previous answer was "yes."]
Since she'd received a Truth, this question was valid.
"Mrs. Jamie Hager. Has anyone ever criticized you for being too extreme about your child's education?"
"Oooh! What kind of question is this~?"
The audience enjoyed the drama.
Jamie Hager's expression, however, had become extremely serious.
"I-I'll use my pass."
The atmosphere grew even colder.
Now both of them had used their only pass.
There was only one question left on Do Jun-hyeok's sheet.
Had he deliberately stopped there because he wanted both passes exhausted before delivering one final blow?
Had that been the plan all along?
But what if the last question also got a Truth result?
Serin felt nervous.
Still, she read the question.
"You may discuss it and decide which one of you answers. Mr. Shehada Hager, Mrs. Jamie Hager, the two of you..."
Wait.
Was this really the right question?
Had Serin misunderstood because her English wasn't good enough?
"Are the two of you really married?"
The Hagers simply lowered their heads.
From now on, I'd like everyone to call me Do-rlok Holmes.
Shehada Hager used his pass when asked whether he had children.
Jamie Hager had done something similar.
Meaning the number of children they had didn't match.
That was impossible whether this was their first marriage or a remarriage.
The remaining problem was the parental-rights waiver from the third future thumbnail.
So I'd prepared two additional questions.
Usually, someone gave up parental rights because of divorce, abuse, or financial hardship.
But neither a major nor a kindergarten teacher should be destitute.
And they weren't actually married.
That left one possibility.
One of them had abused a child.
That was my hypothesis.
Since the future spam had shown this on a variety show rather than some explicit criminal scene, I assumed it probably wasn't serious enough to send anyone to prison.
The next question was designed to test that theory.
If Jamie Hager answered that she'd never caused her child pain, I'd prepared the same question for Shehada.
Once I established the abuse angle, everything else would fall into place.
This was my reconstruction.
Shehada Hager and Jamie Hager had noticed that they shared the same last name.
They used that coincidence to devise a plan and appear on this show pretending to be married.
I didn't know what kind of circumstances Shehada Hager had gone through.
But considering that he was destined to murder someone in the future, he wasn't exactly a normal human being.
As for Jamie Hager, who was actually married, I guessed that the reason behind her future divorce was excessive obsession with her child's education.
I inferred that from the thumbnail of her throwing away the workbooks.
It was a gamble.
Of course, the parental-rights waiver I'd received was from the future.
Maybe she had raised her child perfectly well in the past.
But when Serin asked how many children she had, Jamie had almost answered two before correcting herself to one.
She had once had two.
Now she had one.
[This is insane. Did she learn interrogation while filming 〈Good Pro〉?!]
[Wow. How do you go on TV and lie like that? I heard the penalty is crazy.]
[I heard America has its own version of 〈War and Love〉. Is that true?]
[┗ Yeah. Except this one is real.]
There had never been such a massive deception on 〈The Trueman Show〉 before.
An investigation began almost immediately after the episode aired.
My deductions had been almost completely correct.
There was only one thing I'd gotten wrong.
Shehada Hager had been addicted to gambling from the very beginning.
He hadn't fallen into it afterward.
Once I knew that, the motive behind the scam also made sense.
He'd blown his savings gambling and came up with this scheme to make money.
Anna was reading a news article praising Serin when she spoke.
"Unni's performance got us onto Billboard too. We're barely around the 200 mark, but judging by the momentum, I think you should start writing lyrics for 〈Let's Go Play on the Moon〉."
"Absolutely not. Even if we go play on the moon someday, how are we supposed to sell albums for 500 won?"
The clip of Serin asking,
"Are the two of you really married?"
became an enormous sensation.
It blew far past the buzz from Episode 1 of 〈Good Pro〉, when she'd asked,
"Do you have proof that I killed someone?"
That had been a drama.
This was reality.
We uploaded countless clips to social media.
[Blue Moon Serin's Amazing Performance! 〈Trueman Show〉 Highlight Compilation]
And naturally, we added promotions like:
[〈Hippie〉 Cross-Edit by Blue Moon, the Group of 〈Trueman Show〉's Viral Idol Serin]
Now I understood why parents hung banners around their neighborhoods whenever their children succeeded.
Do Jun-hyeok's Eldest Daughter, Do Serin, Passes the Bar Exam!
That sort of thing.
Some of the cross-edited videos climbed as high as sixteen million views.
People also discovered that Blue Moon was Dessault's senior sister group, allowing us to absorb some of Dessault's popularity as well.
Old Korean memes like "Anna, eeeing~" began spreading in America too.
Blue Moon's entire past was being dug up and circulated.
Lately, I was indirectly experiencing everything Moon Hee-jung must have gone through when Dessault first succeeded.
There wasn't a single day when my phone stayed quiet.
"It won't happen... They absolutely won't reach number one on Billboard..."
Whether Anna understood my desperate thoughts or not, she suddenly raised her phone and shouted.
"Yes! Jared Big got selected! Jared Big beat Tom Manning! He's the All-Star running back!"
"You really like Jared Big that much?"
"Of course."
While Anna grinned happily, Serin received a phone call.
"Ca-Captain? Our manager? Ah, Jun-hyeok Do? O-Okay..."
Serin talked to someone for a moment, then handed me the phone.
"Who is it?"
"I don't know. They said you weren't answering your phone, so they asked me to put you on."
I accepted the phone.
With calls coming in constantly, I'd temporarily put my own phone in Do Not Touch mode.
"Yes, this is Do Jun-hyeok."
"Mr. Do Jun-hyeok! This is Jared Big. We met recently!"
You count as a tiger too, Jared Big.
"Ah, yes. I heard the news. Congratulations on making the All-Star team!"
"No, thank you! The post on my account getting the biggest response is the photo I took with Anna! I think that helped me get selected. The vote difference between me and Tom Manning was really small."
That was fortunate.
Especially since Tom Manning had just been saved from being murdered by Shehada Hager.
"So, I wanted to ask... I'd like to recommend Anna as a Red Hog ambassador. Would that be okay?"
Anna.
An official Red Hog ambassador?
I'd already planned to flaunt our connection with Jared as much as possible.
Getting appointed as a gatekeeper to the tiger's den itself didn't sound like a bad strategy either.
"Of course."
