100 Keywords (1)
Rembrary picked up his phone, slipped quietly up to the rooftop, shut the door behind him, and called Sa Gam-jae.
Once before, he had taken a call out in the hallway with Woo Sung-woo's superior, and Jong-woo had come trailing after him. Having learned his lesson from that experience, this time he had gone all the way up to the roof.
After several rings, Sa Gam-jae picked up.
"What is it?" The moment Rembrary asked, Sa Gam-jae's voice came through the receiver accompanied by a low, rumbling noise.
"The site we located is the Threshold of the Underworld."
"Is he dead?"
"He is alive. The evil spirit steeped into the song was dragging him off, but because his vitality proved so abundant, it appears to have hung him on one of the trees at the Threshold of the Underworld for a time, waiting for him to drain dry."
Rembrary clicked his tongue as he recalled the entrance to the underworld, dark and dreary enough that no one in his right mind would care to visit.
So that was why those grotesque trees had been jutting up all over the place. He had been hanging from one of them.
"Was he hurt?"
"No one was hurt. Draining the vitality of the living is difficult; filling it back up is easy. Now that he has returned from the underworld, his vitality will recover on its own."
"How fortunate that even you prove of some use. Bring him back at once."
"…"
"Why are you not hanging up?"
"Ah… no. My apologies."
Sa Gam-jae ended the call, but Rembrary could not go straight back downstairs. He was worried.
Evil spirits could latch onto things that existed yet were difficult to give form to — songs, dances, and the like. Such spirits were far weaker than those with distinct shapes, but precisely because they had no form, even the most accomplished priest found them devilishly hard to root out. No wonder the summer track Hye-gyeol had been given had felt off to him. An evil spirit must have seeped into it…
Is he all right?
The trouble was that since the evil spirit lived inside the song itself, whoever sang it — Hye-gyeol or anyone else — it would simply do the same thing again. Ideally the song would be scrapped altogether, but would the office people really discard a song so good it had drawn gasps of admiration from every last one of them, on the grounds that an evil spirit had gotten into it? The mere mention of an evil spirit would have them gaping with wide, flat fish-eyes at the sheer absurdity.
Perhaps thinking along the same lines, fifteen minutes later Sa Gam-jae sent a text asking.
Rembrary clicked his tongue and sent back his reply.
Hye-gyeol has been found. Not a scratch on him — completely safe. Thanks to that, everyone at the company has finally relaxed, and Mr. Sa Gam-jae, who brought him back, has become a hero. Perhaps now people will stop whispering that Hye-gyeol ran away because of me?
Everyone had been beside themselves over Hye-gyeol's disappearance, and then suddenly the sparks flew my way, so Jong-woo hyung and Jungseo worried themselves sick. People are strange. They claim Hye-gyeol, alive and perfectly well, killed himself; they spin all manner of bizarre theories about the cause… Hold on. Shin Jo-woon is calling.
Three in the afternoon.
I just hung up the phone. Shin Jo-woon, for once, sounded worried, and kept asking whether I was all right. I told him I was beyond fine and that Hye-gyeol was fine, at which point he said he'd seen the news that Hye-gyeol was all right — and then asked me again whether I was all right. His attitude was so suspicious that I asked, "Do you, by any chance, feel guilty toward me about something?" and he hung right up, saying, "Well, since you're clearly fine." People really are strange.
I will be appearing on a variety program as a guest alongside Shin Jo-woon. The show is called 100 Keywords. The staff prepare one hundred word cards, pick out five keywords that match the guest, and the studio audience has to guess who the guest is from those keywords. If more than half the audience guesses correctly, the show moves on to a ten-minute talk centered on the keywords; if they fail, the guest simply bows, says goodbye, and leaves… Jong-woo hyung stressed this point: no matter how enormous a star shows up, if the audience can't guess, they really do get sent home. Guests sometimes appear as a team when promoting a drama, film, or album, and in that case the audience is told it's a team.
I have no idea why I'm paired with Shin Jo-woon instead of Jang Tae-ri, but so be it. In my estimation, the variety producers deliberately arranged this schedule to settle the rumor that had drifted around after Hye-gyeol's disappearance. …A text has just arrived from the PD.
Wait — PD? Are you watching this happen in real time?
Five in the afternoon.
Shin Jo-woon called and said this:
"You know you're going on the show with me, right?"
When I said I did, he said next:
"Our keywords are easy, so we'll definitely make it to the talk segment. Which means we should practice getting our rhythm in sync beforehand."
Just say whatever comes out of your mouth — why on earth would one need to rehearse? But when I voiced this opinion, Shin Jo-woon declared that practice was necessary precisely because one must not simply say whatever comes out. I asked whether he was afraid of misspeaking, and he replied that while the subject differed, yes, he was indeed afraid. He snickered as he said it, which made it sound suspiciously like an insult. I don't know what he meant. But I am wise, clever, and gentle of temperament, so I did not ask what he meant by that. In any case, out of consideration for Shin Jo-woon, I agreed, and asked exactly what it was he wanted to do.
And Shin Jo-woon, without hesitating for even a second, said this:
"Don't call me whale anchovy. In return, I won't call you a pig."
He had kept a perfectly straight face every time I called him whale anchovy, so apparently it had bothered him after all. In any case, I also despise being called a pig, so we struck that bargain.
I truly do hate being called a pig. Ever since Shin Jo-woon took to calling me one, the fans keep leaving comments under my SNS photos with little hearts stuck to pigs. Everyone, please stop doing that.
And Jong-woo hyung uses it as an excuse to insist I've gained weight and should cut down on my meals.
PD, please be sure to snip this part in. If you absolutely must call me a pig, call me a scrawny pig.
Ah — back to Shin Jo-woon. He said that was his condition, and told me to state my demands as well. So I gave it some thought, and remembered the recent episode of 100 Keywords that Jong-woo hyung had shown me. One of the MCs there had asked a group of guests, in to promote a film, what they were like in their day-to-day lives. With this in mind, I made my request of Shin Jo-woon:
"If the MC asks what I'm like ordinarily, tell them I am truly wise and simply overflowing with sexual energy."
People keep calling me a blockhead, and I looked the word up, and it is a very bad word indeed. No. I am a most wise person. There are merely… circumstances that make me appear unwise — in truth, my head is filled to the brim with wisdom. But since I cannot show this wise side for the time being, I sought Shin Jo-woon's help. After all, the assessment of someone who knows you is the most accurate there is.
But Shin Jo-woon, in a display of utter pettiness, answered "No" on the spot. When I asked why not, he said that saying such a thing would make him out to be a strange man. When I asked, "Do I really look that much like a blockhead?" he stopped mid-sentence and started snickering. Truly wicked.
It was filming day for 100 Keywords.
Jong-woo hauled Rembrary off to the salon at the crack of dawn and begged the staff to make him look at least a hundred times more handsome than usual.
"He's already handsome enough to rank among the top five male celebrities in the country?"
"Make him look his absolute most handsome for the next twelve hours. He'll be sitting side by side with CEO Shin Jo-woon doing a talk show, and he's an idol — he has to look better than that CEO."
"Aha."
"Besides, there's been all that fuss about the ostracism rumor lately. You need to make people focus on nothing but the kid's face."
The makeup artist brushed off such worries as needless, but out of the affection built up over years together since the group's nobody days, still put genuine, painstaking care into polishing Rembrary's face.
When the makeup was finished, it felt a touch overdone, yet he looked like a truly spectacular beauty of a man. But Rembrary, firmly convinced that his original face was far more handsome still, did not so much as marvel at his reflection.
"You should thank your parents, kid. For letting you be born with a face like that."
"You mean the parents who threw me away?"
"…"
While Jong-woo, who had offered the compliment without a second thought, floundered at the turn toward such sobering reality, Rembrary climbed into the van with perfect composure.
Once Sa Gam-jae started the car, Jong-woo set his phone and tablet on his lap and began working on something. Though it was still morning, the roads were crowded, and traffic was hopelessly jammed.
Rembrary quietly studied the back of Jong-woo's head, mentally running over the lines Jong-woo had drilled into him yesterday about how to answer if questions about Hye-gyeol came up. And somewhere along the way, he grew curious.
"You're not telling me to watch my mouth today?"
This program, where no one could tell whether an interview would even materialize, was all about quick thinking and had no fixed script. To be sure, the concept was that no malicious questions would be asked precisely because there was no script — but the nature of a show that prized wit and quick reflexes meant that public reactions to its guests were extremely stark, one way or the other.
Which was why it struck him as odd that Jong-woo, who ordinarily latched on at every turn with "watch your mouth," was being so quiet.
Jong-woo answered without so much as glancing at Rembrary.
"Shin Jo-woon will be sitting right next to you. Besides, people seem to have gotten more or less used to your character by now."
"My character?"
"A mouth with no filter."
"…"
"But do watch your mouth anyway, if you can."
Some forty minutes later, Sa Gam-jae finally parked the car, and the three of them moved straight into the studio through the parking garage. When they entered the corridor at the back of the studio, a staff member came to show them to the waiting room.
"We have three teams of guests today. You and CEO Shin Jo-woon are the first team, but we hand out drinks and snacks to the audience, the MCs and our regular guests go over the rules, and we get the atmosphere warmed up in advance. Please wait in the waiting room while that's going on. You can watch everything live on the TV in the waiting room."
After explaining, the staff member gave them a quick peek inside the set. Not a single guest had arrived yet, but the audience seats were already packed full, and staff bustled busily about.
"No faces, please."
When Rembrary, finding it all fascinating, tried to keep looking, the staff member hurriedly stopped him.
After that, Rembrary waited another thirty minutes or so in the waiting room before being escorted, following the staff's guidance, into a huge box at the rear of the studio.
The box was about the size of two bathroom stalls. A thin, small monitor hung on the wall, and on it a hundred keywords floated in the air like name tags.
"Wait here, and when the door opens later, just come out."
"We simply walk out?"
No rehearsal? Rembrary — long accustomed to the endless practice sessions and rehearsals of music show stages and drama sets — asked in bewilderment, but the staff member only grinned and said, "Yes." So this was what they meant by wanting it raw and unfiltered. They were deliberately sending the guests straight out with no practice at all.
"If all the keywords get guessed, this door opens and you can go into the set. But if they get them wrong — you see the one that's open right now? — that's the door that will open instead."
After the staff member shut the door,
Is Shin Jo-woon standing in one of these boxes right now as well?
Rembrary stood blankly in the empty box, staring dazedly at the monitor brimming with keywords. And as he stood there, one gratingly familiar keyword leapt out at him at once.
Pig!
Rembrary's eyes went wide.
— End of Chapter 115: 100 Keywords (1) —