Cola and Despair
The cafe near the seaside road filled up quickly, so we had to move in the afternoon. We settled into a shabby little pizza place tucked inside an alley and ordered a margherita to share. As the afternoon stretched into a time when the moon and stars began to rise, my parents called. When I turned down their invitation to eat together, Cha Jun-jae’s phone started ringing next.
The adults didn’t know where we were staying. They had grown tired of circling the fancy resort pool and its interchangeable restaurants and were now hunting for us. We set both phones to reject calls.
I’ve never been the mature, sentimental type. The thing I heard most often growing up was that Eun-dam has a strong mentality. People also called me childish but rational. Because of that, I was confident I wouldn’t shed a single tear even if Cha Jun-jae spent three straight hours gushing about his impressions of Record. This wasn’t even my first time meeting a self-proclaimed film fanatic. I’d once received a long, heartfelt email about it, too.
Still, there were moments when Cha Jun-jae’s flat, almost monotonous words struck me square in the chest.
Most of what he said revolved around his personal impressions of Record. I found it hard to believe when he claimed he liked it because I wrote the screenplay, or that he had watched it more than five times. I had made a few short films as school projects, but I doubted Cha Jun-jae even knew their titles. As an acting major, he must have received countless offers to appear in his classmates’ shorts. And if he had, he would know how many talented filmmakers there were in this country. Besides, Cha Jun-jae was famous for having an unusually short period of obscurity. Even in high school and college he had been busy—cast in beverage commercials and chosen as a regular-person model. Would he really have had time to watch some mediocre college student’s screenplay?
I had accepted that acting wasn’t my path, but I had always envied Cha Jun-jae’s smooth, golden life. I envied the way he monopolized unconditional love and recognition at such a young, beautiful age.
That was why I had brushed off his words—that Record made him want to live—without much thought. Compared to Cha Jun-jae, who seemed to possess ninety-nine islands, my one-island soul had poured itself into a work full of holes. One hole from the ratings, another from the box office, and yet another from the sigh of a respected senior. Our film, riddled with holes, had used up its lifespan before winter even arrived. The day the view count on the introduction video surpassed the actual number of theatergoers, Eun-i sunbae opened five bottles of soju. We were sailors on a ship that had briefly crested a wave only to taste the bitter reality of the sea and sink.
From that day on, Eun-i sunbae went around snapping at her juniors not to even think about making films. Her transformation shocked everyone; she had always been so meticulous, so planned, the most promising talent in our department. One junior who had acted like an expert after shooting a couple of shorts started worrying about his own future and began looking for a regular job. Even that market, they said, was in the middle of a recession. It had been that way ever since the IMF crisis.
These days, just getting a theatrical release is a big deal. Even if it’s only for a few days, that’s something, right? At least it was one of the more noticeable films this year. Empty compliments like those brought no comfort to Eun-i sunbae. The same went for me, the good-for-nothing daughter who had earned the title of unemployed failure.
“How old?”
“Seventeen.”
Cha Jun-jae stirred his cola with a straw and answered indifferently. We were playing a dull quiz game over a table covered with cola, beer, and pizza. I had half-insisted on staying out until late even though he had said he didn’t want to drink tonight.
There’s no way you watched my film five times.
With the single-minded goal of exposing the truth about Cha Jun-jae, I fired questions about the movie’s content. He answered every one correctly. I couldn’t understand it. And because I couldn’t understand it, I kept testing him even though I should have been delivering a breakup notice. I had no idea what prize to give him for passing the Record golden bell quiz.
“There are days like that.”
“…What kind of days?”
He recited not only the age and lines of a passing supporting character, but every single syllable without error. There hadn’t been that many supporting roles due to the budget, yet remembering the details of a film released quite some time ago couldn’t have been easy.
My gaze shifted from disbelief to bewilderment, then from bewilderment to admiration, finally settling on his lips. Maybe it was the shadow of the baseball cap pulled low, but the usually blank-faced Cha Jun-jae looked cold and sharp.
“Days when thoughts never stop coming.”
“Thoughts?”
“Words I heard yesterday without much attention suddenly hurt. When I look back, it feels like that person hates me. When I look even further back, it feels like my entire life is creaking at the seams.”
I realized I had heard it before. It was a line I had written in Record. Cha Jun-jae must have benefited greatly from his convincingly persuasive voice during his acting career. Lines delivered with that damp, sorrowful face and resonant tone sank straight into the ear.
“I was so exhausted I canceled my schedule, lay down alone, and slept. When I woke up, I watched your film. On a tiny phone screen.”
Because of his low tone, the scene painted itself in my mind as clearly as if I were watching it. I had once seen a photo of the apartment where he lived alone. His mother had shown it to me proudly. It was spacious, with clean basic interiors. Strangely, though, it was almost empty. I had sneered at the bedroom that held nothing but a lone bed. He’s keeping it easy to sell the place and move out, I’d thought.
I imagined him with a tired expression, turning on his phone. Cha Jun-jae lying on that wide bed, quietly watching the film.
“After I finished, I got hungry.”
“…What?”
“I was hungry. I figured I should eat something. So I boiled ramen, ate it, and watched the film again on my tablet. Sitting at the dining table.”
I was sorry to say there was no scene of anyone eating ramen in the movie. Though the staff had boiled it so often during filming that we got sick of it. Cha Jun-jae, straw still in his mouth, quietly looked outside.
“The next day I bought a TV and watched it again. After that, I actually felt like doing all those schedules I had hated.”
“……”
“It’s my favorite film. Even now, whenever I feel like I’m sinking endlessly, I put it on. Then I feel like boiling some ramen, at least.”
I’ll make a shameful confession. Unlike Eun-i sunbae, who said there was no need to read film criticism or audience reviews, I read every single one. I believed other people’s evaluations would tell me what kind of film it was. Being human, the bad comments stayed with me far more than the good ones.
Cha Jun-jae’s review filled some of the holes in my heart that had been hoarding those bad words. I saw him in a new light. I had sneered at him, laughed at him, looked down on him as a blank idiot—but that had probably been because I was secretly afraid of the opposite situation.
I had barked first, preemptively, terrified that he would be the one to sneer, laugh, and look down on me. Seeing Cha Jun-jae acknowledge my work exactly as it was felt cool. In the pizza place where we were the only customers, only the clink of ice and the scent of cooling pizza drifted through the air.
Cha Jun-jae grew quieter. He hadn’t been like this when we were in school. I grew desperate to pry open his resting lips. I wanted so badly to ask him to tell me more about that story.
“Cha Jun-jae.”
“Yeah.”
He wouldn’t look at me directly. He had been that way ever since we arrived at the pizza place—staring out the window with a blank face or looking at his cola.
“Why do you look so down?”
“Because I don’t like it.”
“…What? The pizza?”
There was a reason the place had no customers. Even walking past, I had wondered how bad it must taste if it was this empty. But the pizza we ordered today was magnificent. The dough, tomato sauce, toppings, and cheese fought grandly on the plate.
“Then shall we go back to the room? The room-service pizza there is better than this. I don’t have much money, but I have enough for pizza. I’ll buy it.”
It was my way of saying sorry for bringing him to a place like this, but Cha Jun-jae only poked at the melting ice with his straw, looking exactly like a sulking child. I only got an answer after he tapped that ice three or four more times.
“Eun-dam.”
“Yeah. Let’s change seats.”
“I guess I can’t treat you as politely as I used to.”
What was he talking about now? My throat closed up, my nose felt blocked. Only then did Cha Jun-jae finally look at me. When he lifted his sunken gaze, he looked like a melancholy pierrot.
“I thought I wouldn’t regret it. No—I thought it would be better. Once both you and I became honest.”
I swallowed the words I had been about to say. If I followed his indifferent eyes as they swept across the table, I could read his current emotions.
“The more I talk, the more I wonder. Whether that was really a good thing.”
It was despair.