On Being a Working Professional
Rembrary pulled the phone away from his ear and stared at it. The call had already ended.
So apparently, when he said someone had stolen his emotions, people simply took it as a joke.
Clicking his tongue, Rembrary dialed Sunwoo Sil again. Thankfully, the man seemed to have been waiting, because he picked up right away.
"I only said my emotions for the sake of privacy, sunbae. They're actually someone else's emotions."
"You scared me half to death! Just say that kind of thing anonymously. Go around being considerate in places like that and you're the one who ends up getting misunderstood."
"Whoever misunderstands is the one at fault."
"So I'm at fault?"
"That's not what I meant."
A short burst of wind hissed through the line, like static from a broken radio.
"Anyway, kid — I can't even manage my own love life. Do I look like someone who's about to start playing matchmaker for other people?"
Rembrary resolved, then and there, never to use the phrases 'looking for my emotions' or 'I lost my emotions' again. Even if what he'd lost was someone else's emotions rather than his own, people apparently had a hard time wrapping their heads around that.
"I misspoke. What I lost isn't an emotion — it's an object. Not my object, though. Someone else's."
"Well then of course I'll help. What kind of object?"
"I can't say exactly what it is."
"Come on, at least give me a rough idea. How am I supposed to know what to ask around for?"
"It's long and soft."
"That's way too abstract."
Since Daeju had said the brush had the effect of sweeping away negative emotions…
"When you use it, bad thoughts vanish and it puts you in a good mood."
"……"
Silence again.
Did he hang up on me again?
Rembrary stared down at his phone in bewilderment, but this time the call hadn't been cut — the timer was ticking steadily upward. It was a long while before Sunwoo Sil finally spoke, his voice distinctly disgruntled. "Yeon-woo."
"Yes?"
"Are you on drugs?"
What?
"I'm strong, though?"
"Huh?"
"What?"
"Ki Seung-min's asking whether you stole someone else's drugs."
"No? I haven't stolen any drugs?"
After another long pause, Sunwoo Sil said, "I'll ask around for now," and hung up.
The moment the call ended, Sunwoo Sil felt an inexplicable pang of unease. The kid's a weirdo, sure, but he's a good kid. He's not actually on drugs or anything, right?
Forcing the anxiety down, he called Ki Seung-min first.
"Oh, hyung. What's up?"
"Seung-min. Have you ever taken someone else's drugs?"
Bewildered as he was by the blunt question, Seung-min answered obediently. "What are you even talking about? Who said that? I've been beating my withdrawal symptoms with religion these days. I'm not even taking anything."
"Good."
He hung up and called Yeon-woo back.
Listening to Sunwoo Sil's account, Rembrary realized that the religion Ki Seung-min spoke of was the cult where Daeju resided. His brow furrowed.
Judging by how openly Seung-min talked about his religion, he probably wasn't the culprit…
In that case, I suppose I'll have to wait for Song Seo-young to return to Korea first.
It was the day of the final shoot for Dear God.
While reading through his script, Rembrary went around asking the staff he ran into and the other actors what came to mind when they heard the word 'scorpion.' He did, after all, still have to write the lyrics for that solo special album CEO Im had mentioned — and he hadn't the faintest idea how to build lyrics around a scorpion and a flashy image.
"Scorpions mean desert."
"Aren't they really cool-looking?"
"I hear some places eat scorpion as a dish."
"I heard a lot of people keep them as pets, too."
Then at last, Lim Yu-han came up with an idea Rembrary could actually sink his teeth into.
"They hide and watch their prey, then strike just once with deadly venom. Isn't that their signature?"
"Hiding, watching… then striking all at once. Deadly venom… Thank you!"
Rembrary hurried back to the waiting room and jotted the ideas down on his phone. The lyrics would tell a story where the first verse seemed to depict a one-sided crush, only for the chorus to drop the twist — it was never love, but hatred. Once he'd roughed out the concepts, he decided to polish them later while in transit and picked the script back up. The plot of this episode went roughly like this.
Deungbaek succeeds in locking away the enemy couple from his past life — but with them neither dead nor alive, he falls into agonized deliberation.
Yangheung hears the story that Deungbaek was her lover in a past life, but she doesn't believe it. Even so, she knows Deungbaek suffers with her at his side, and unwilling to torment him, she quietly leaves for somewhere else. If Deungbaek clings to his love for her, he will have to give up the other love he has chased all his life. When Deungbaek learns of this, he chases after Yangheung and catches her.
"That past-life lovers meet again in this life — this time, it must mean we're meant to love each other to the very end."
Yangheung comes to understand that even if she leaves, Deungbaek cannot return to how things once were, and at last she accepts him. So that he will not remain enslaved by the past and become the same trash as his enemies, Deungbaek resolves to forget the enemy couple of his past life.
At that very moment. Imseo murders the past-life enemy couple.
Some time later, Deungbaek seeks out Imseo, whom he has always looked after. His heart is heavy, for he knows that once he marries Yangheung, he will no longer be able to care for Imseo. He can look after him like a dear younger brother, but he cannot keep him at his side, doting on him as he does now. Then, when he returns — Imseo is sitting in a chair, blood staining his priest's robes. Thinking Imseo is hurt, Deungbaek rushes over in alarm, then spots the corpses of the past-life enemy couple behind the chair and freezes. As Deungbaek rages, demanding whether he has lost his mind, Imseo smiles, bends down, and brushes the white powder from Deungbaek's shoe, murmuring —
"There's a hell inside your heart too, sunbae. Just like mine."
Rembrary flipped through the fluttering pages, slapped the script shut, and scowled. At the sound, Jong-woo and Sa Gam-jae turned around at the same time.
"What's the matter?"
"What's wrong? Is there a problem?"
Rembrary's face had hardened noticeably. He gave a nod.
"The content from roughly the middle onward has changed somewhat."
"Oh, yeah?"
Jong-woo came over for a look and picked up Rembrary's script. He usually went into the Dear God fan cafe in Rembrary's stead to download the scripts, so while he could never have memorized them, he always kept track of the contents. Scanning through quickly, he nodded at a few parts. Then, looking entirely unbothered, he asked:
"The stage directions changed a bit, and there's a new line at the end. But it's mostly just the actions, right? The main storyline and the dialogue are almost untouched. I don't think you need to re-memorize anything."
For all that Rembrary acted like a lunatic, Jong-woo knew he had a good memory. Memorizing one extra line was nothing. The blocking involved no complicated movement either — a quick glance at the script now and then before shooting would be enough. An action scene had been added, but the new Imseo fight sequence took place in darkness and was set to be handled entirely by a stunt double. As far as Jong-woo could see, there wasn't a single thing to worry about.
But Rembrary's expression did not clear.
"Those changes are exactly the problem."
"Huh? Which part?"
Rembrary pointed at several places with his finger. The scene where Imseo bends down to brush the dirt from Deungbaek's shoe. The scene where he murders the enemy couple. The line about there being a hell in his heart. Three places in all.
"What is this? Aren't they all key moments?"
Jong-woo asked back, incredulous.
The scene where Imseo kills the enemy couple in Deungbaek's stead was the moment the bond shattered between Imseo — who, unable to feel emotion, could easily slide into psycho-criminal territory at the slightest misstep — and Deungbaek, who reined him in and kept him walking forward. Imseo brushing the white powder from Deungbaek's shoe, and the line about sharing the same hell, likewise signaled that the relationship between the two men had broken.
Keeping control of Imseo, who might become a psychopathic criminal, and becoming a priest to walk the path of faith — for Deungbaek, these two things were a single road bound together. But Imseo ultimately committed the crime just as Deungbaek had feared, and Deungbaek abandoned the path of faith and chose Yangheung. It was the device showing that both pillars of early Deungbaek had failed, and that he must now walk toward a new world.
Personally, Jong-woo had been delighted that Rembrary — whom he'd assumed was nothing more than a folding screen — was carrying such a major role. And now this was the complaint?
"Hey, this time the main focus is completely you! Your part's on par with the two leads — what is there to complain about?"
"Did I not just say I have three complaints?"
"Why, though?"
"First. I kneel to no one."
"What?"
"Second. I do not murder people."
"……"
"Third. There is no hell in my heart."
At Rembrary's resolute declaration, Jong-woo's mouth fell open and his eyes blinked rapidly. His face said, What is this punk saying right now?
But Rembrary was entirely serious. Those three things were elements that he, as a High Priest in active service, found difficult to accept.
Even if he gritted his teeth and conceded against his will, he could perhaps wave off the murder scene and the no-hell line as mere fiction. But kneeling down to brush something off a shoe — that he truly could not stomach.
"Come on, you did that other scene just fine — the one where you crawl along on your knees?"
"Is that the same as this?"
"How is it any different?"
"That one was akin to sitting. This is different, is it not?"
"It's all the same! Kneeling is kneeling!"
Jong-woo tried to talk him around, utterly flabbergasted, but before he could, a staff member came over first to announce that there would be an on-site read-through, and then filming would begin.
Rembrary headed outside, and Jong-woo, gathering the water bottles, blankets, and other odds and ends, hurried after him — only to whisper anxiously to Sa Gam-jae as he went.
"He's not going to refuse to do it once we're on set or anything, right?"
"He seems more than capable of it."
"Yeah… that's what worries me……"
Jong-woo's face went pale. The more a celebrity was just beginning to rise, the more careful they had to be about how they carried themselves. Let their image slip even a little at this stage, and the industry insiders would start whispering that 'that kid's personality is genuinely terrible.'
In other words, the moment Rembrary said to the director or the writer, 'I don't like this scene. Please cut it,' the rumor would already be spreading far and wide. No — at worst, one of the staff might post about it online, and the general public would start calling him arrogant, too. Not that he wasn't already being called that.
While Jong-woo fidgeted in mounting anxiety, the director — script in hand and visibly in high spirits — called Rembrary over the moment he arrived on set.
"Over here, come here."
This scene featured only Rembrary and the middle-aged enemy couple, so Maeng Woo-shin and Lim Yu-han were nowhere to be seen. The set had been dressed to feel like the interior of a gloomy warehouse.
"We're filming the scene where Imseo kills Deungbaek's enemies here, you see? Before the killing, the thugs this couple hired a while back come bursting in and there's a fight. The martial arts director over there will handle the combat, so Yeon-woo, all you need to do is nail your expressions before and after."
"……Understood."
"And we'll be cutting every light from there to there. That all right with you?"
At the director's signal, the lighting staff killed every light inside the set at once. The warehouse-like set, stripped down to a faint afterglow, went pitch black.
In that instant, Rembrary saw the evil spirit steeped in the shadows swell larger within the space of his domain, and it looked utterly delighted. Will this be all right?
The next moment.
The staff brought the lights back up, and the interior of the set flooded with brightness.
"So, all right with that?"
the director asked. The man wearing Woo Yeon-woo's face curved into a chilling eye-smile.
"Of course."
— End of Chapter 148 —