The Soul You Sell Cheap
After the greetings were over, I returned to my room and, without giving anything a second thought, went straight to sleep. My personal philosophy had always been that the more there was to think about, the more important it was to sleep first and decide after. A tired mind simply cannot make a levelheaded judgment.
This time, though, was a little different. I needed a firm basis to make my decision. So I slept soundly until daybreak, then rose, showered, and headed straight for the hotel restaurant.
My plan was to fill my stomach before asking The Pock more about business matters — but by pure coincidence, he happened to be eating breakfast. Salad and eggs, no less.
"Oh, Sin. Morning."
"Please, take your time."
It was early, so the restaurant was nearly empty. I sat across from Pock and ordered a modest meal. A five-star hotel really does live up to the name. Most places served a breakfast buffet, but here each dish was ordered individually and brought to your table.
They even had kimchi stew on the menu. Not that I could order it.
Around then, Pock swallowed the mouthful of egg he'd been chewing and began to speak.
"Mmm, good morning."
"Thank you for yesterday."
"Hahaha, what for! You seized that opportunity with your own two hands, my friend."
"Which is exactly why I'm going to make an insolent request, even knowing how rude it is."
"Sure. What is it?"
"Would it be possible to get some information on the three directors I met yesterday?"
"Yeah, fine."
...What a genuinely pure human being. He'd agreed to a somewhat impertinent request with a simple sure, no problem.
"Oh, right. No info on the project they're working on, though. You understand that, right?"
"Of course. Just having their careers laid out for me would be more than enough."
With that smile, I settled in and ate alongside him. Our menus were a little different. I loaded up on carbohydrates to secure my morning energy, while Pock seemed to be planning an espresso after his meal. He looked at me and smiled.
"So, where to next?"
"I need to rejoin the road crew."
"Oooh, the road crew. Nice ring to it. Back in my day, I used to travel the whole world with that circus troupe myself."
...
"Ah, sorry. It's rude of me — a retired man — to call it a circus."
"Not at all. You're a source of constant inspiration to us juniors, Senior."
"Much obliged."
"I was just a little surprised. Most players who leave the industry and find success try to forget this part of their lives."
"They're idiots. This business taught me more than I can say."
"Did it help?"
"No."
He said it flatly. A stark contrast to what he'd told Big Joe. His own form of consideration, perhaps — sparing the illusion of someone who still had a career ahead of him.
"Acting, I retrained from scratch. The bulk, I got yelled at endlessly to cut. Hollywood these days is trying to move past that old macho-man formula."
"Any particular reason you haven't?"
"Because this is who I am. No matter what anyone says, you can't throw away your own soul."
"Your soul?"
"The combined whole of everything inside a person — their emotions, their knowledge, their convictions. And the result of it all."
"You mean that impressive body of yours."
"You get it. I knew you would."
He looked down at the plate of eggs and salad set before him, as if to say: this was his way. "I can't throw this away."
"I feel the same way."
"Which is why, honestly, when you made that request just now, I thought it was pretty admirable."
"Why is that?"
"Because it's a different path from mine. And saying that to my face must have taken real courage."
...
"Which means it was your soul that made you do it. If you do end up making a movie, keep being like you were today."
"I'll remember that."
"Put simply — never sell your soul cheap. Junho Kim."
...?
"Underestimating my intel network? I have a magnificent team, you know."
"Oh really."
"Hahaha, that's a lie. Truth is, I asked Simmons. He didn't know either, so he strong-armed one of his staff into finding out."
"Is... that so."
"A hard name to pronounce. You're second-generation Korean, so why didn't you pick something easy like John Kim?"
"Would you like to call my mother about that?"
"BWAHAHAHA! No, sorry. That crossed a line. But it did give me a little taste of your personality."
Pock studied me for a moment.
"You must have had a rough, ugly road. Well, I had it a bit easier than you — back in the WWF, at least, the company pushed me without question."
"...Meaning Hollywood wasn't the same?"
"You think those pigs would've shown up at my hotel from day one like they did yesterday?"
At those words, Pock's face hardened like a bull moments before it charges. I could guess the rest.
"So that's why you made the offer?"
"That's right. I wanted to give some kind of a hand to a promising junior."
He nodded, finished his coffee, and rose from his seat. Then, passing by me, he rested his hand on my shoulder like a chin propped on a corner post.
"Hollywood rewards strength."
It seemed I needed to revise one item of my assessment of Dwayne Johnson. Just as Tiffany McMahon had said, he wasn't a man without thoughts. If anything, he was closer to enlightened.
I sent the materials I'd gotten from The Pock straight to Tiffany. While waiting for her reply, I found myself with some time to spare and decided to take a walk through Central Park. I needed to untangle the knot of thoughts in my head.
Central Park. A historic park squatting dead center on the island of Manhattan. It was so vast that safety in the north and the south might as well have belonged to different cities — and understandably so, since the park's northern edge connected to Harlem.
Personally, I never thought Harlem was as dangerous as its reputation suggested.
But bad prejudices are always with us, and shaking them off is hard. I knew that better than anyone, because I'd been a victim of it myself. I, too, had been cast out on the basis of racial prejudice — and I'd failed once because of it.
Still, I couldn't exactly blame anyone for holding those prejudices. What if someone trusted my word, moved to Harlem, and ended up entangled in a crime? What if an Asian wrestler debuted and the reaction turned out lukewarm at best? Who would bear that responsibility?
People say, ditch your prejudices! America, in particular, is always hypersensitive about matters of race. But this was different. In the first case, a person's life hung in the balance; in the second, a giant corporation's revenue did. For them, choosing the safer option within their options was simply the rational move.
That was why, ever since returning to this moment in time, I had always done my absolute best within the limits allowed me — so that they could come to trust the person I was. And at the same time, every single day felt like walking on thin ice. You never know the result until you open the box. The reason I always carried myself with a confidence that left people flabbergasted was, in truth, to hide exactly this.
It's not exactly an emotion you want to put on display. Especially if you're someone who's doubted at every turn, like me.
In other words, I was constantly going all in, whether I willed it or not. If I lost, I lost everything. The opportunity would never come again. And yet I had chosen this path.
Because it was my dream.
My ultimate goal was to become an Icon — a WWF World Champion who defined an entire era. A dream anyone might have. I simply had one too. Seen in that light, the movie was the biggest bet I could place, because it demanded the most of that precious time I'd sworn never to waste since my regression.
It's a completely different challenge, so at least failure carries no risk to what I've built.
But there was one truth I'd felt when Pock introduced me to those three directors. They never once thought of me as a leading man. To them, I was probably just a little pickle to be tucked between the buns of a hamburger. And in the actual films, that was exactly what I'd been. The protagonist was a white man.
Of course, that formula sold. With budgets that large, choosing the safest possible route was the most rational choice. The Pock, however, had gone beyond it — carved out his own genre and delivered results. He was, so to speak, the Icon of Hollywood. ...Not that he'd been one then.
What a man.
I admitted it honestly. Hollywood is more conservative than the WWF — laughably, given how loudly it proclaims itself the home of progress. Its own awards ceremony, the Oscars, got sneered at every year as the White Oscars, an award show for white people. Somewhere around 2020 a single Korean film would sweep four categories, but that was still a very, very distant story.
People prefer the white face. Or do they? Pro wrestling audiences were mostly conservative — plenty of them were wary of other races. And yet they had responded to the persuasiveness of my story.
Yes. I had shattered prejudice. I became champion in GCW, became a wrestler people loved in the main events, and performed there night after night. Not some Asian kung-fu man doing a passable imitation of broken Japanese — a real pro wrestler. A man, in other words.
That was why, looking at those directors, I'd honestly wanted to smash that pathetic pride of theirs to pieces. I wanted to shatter the prejudice they carried and prove that I could become the hottest man in the world. The way The Pock would in the future. The way Shawn Cena would become an Icon.
Of course, even as a wrestler, I still had so much left to accomplish. The prejudices held by the high and mighty — Bart Maxen chief among them — weren't fully broken yet, either. They looked at me through the bars of a cage built inside their own heads, a cage I had never belonged in. I had something far more magnificent, far bigger and far stronger than whatever those fools imagined. That was me.
That's right.
Confidence was beginning to build. People had looked at me — an Asian man with a muscular, masculine presence none of them had ever seen. I peeled off my jacket, held it in one hand, and started running in my tank top. It was cold, but my body heated up fast. Burning with fighting spirit, I picked up the pace.
Alright, let's see what you've got.
Making a name in the film world would feed back into my wrestling career too. If I committed to it, there was nothing I couldn't do. I had staked everything on pro wrestling so far, and been paid back dozens of times over what I'd wagered.
I wanted to smash through. As much as they looked down on me, I wanted to prove it with skill. As much as they judged me.
"AAAARGH!!"
I let out a great shout. I could feel motivation I hadn't even known I carried come spilling out of me. And then someone spoke to me. Right beside me.
"Geez, you scared me......"
She was Asian like me, and looked quite young — mid-teens, maybe. She'd apparently been jogging too, dressed in light workout clothes, and she quickly went on.
"You're — you're Sin, right?"
"Ah, yes. That's me."
"Oh, I'm sorry. Interrupting your jog like this. It's just, I'm a really big fan."
"No problem at all. Did you want an autograph?"
"Oh — no, I don't have anything to write on, sorry. Actually, there's something I'd really like to tell you. Is that okay?"
"Of course. What is it?"
I flashed her a smile. A fan had cut in at an important moment, but it didn't bother me in the slightest. A fan was living proof that everything I had worked for had been right.
After a brief pause, the girl broke into a wide, beaming smile and told me.
"Thank you, Sin. Because of you, I got my head back on straight."
"From...?"
"Sports."
"Ah — are you an athlete?"
"Yes, I play golf. Until recently I'd been using my injury as an excuse and holed up inside the house, but......"
The girl who'd stumbled across me while flipping channels had become a fan of pro wrestling.
"I've watched all my footage of your GCW days too. And then, watching you fight so hard up in that ring, I found myself wanting to work hard again......"
"I'm glad to hear it."
"If things go well and I turn pro someday, I'll come watch your matches, I promise."
"I'll be looking forward to it."
I nodded. The girl gave me one more bright smile and ran off down the road. An unbelievable speed — from that slender frame came strength I could scarcely believe.
Come to think of it.
I tilted my head, watching her back recede into the distance. The moment I thought I'd seen her face somewhere before, the name surfaced.
Michelle Lee!
Second-generation Korean, prodigy professional golfer. She'd debuted at a young age and turned the LPGA on its head with a string of spectacular performances. I'd come across her during my failed life, while looking up other Asian-American athletes in a moment of idle searching.
It was funny that I'd remembered that at all. But — she's my fan?
I stood rooted in place, dazed, and then slowly smiled. I had no idea how things had gone in my past life. How Michelle had picked herself up from that same injury-induced despair would probably remain unknown forever.
Why? Because this time, she'd gotten back up after watching the God of Pro Wrestling.
To think that the results of my shattering prejudice could ripple out and affect others so positively. It felt incredible.
"Haah, dammit."
I lifted my head and looked out at the endless New York sky, thinking. My dream had grown a little bigger. As I'd grown as a wrestler and learned how people responded to me, I had come to want to climb as high as the ceiling of my potential would allow.