Aren't They the Same Thing?
'Huh?'
The director rubbed his eyes. Frowning, he wondered what on earth he had just seen.
It was because of the expression on Yeon-woo's face he'd caught through the viewfinder. As if Yeon-woo's expression had, for a single instant, become something entirely different.
But what bothered him most wasn't the changed expression. It was something else.
A fleeting apparition. For one very brief, blink-and-you-miss-it moment, a strange face had seemed to appear over the entire set — and vanish.
'An optical illusion?'
The director rubbed his eyes again. In the space of a blink, something unearthly had definitely surfaced across the set and disappeared…
He pulled his eye away from the viewfinder and swept his gaze over the set.
Nothing had changed. The crew held their breath in silence, managers standing by with water bottles and towels. Actors leaned against the wall studying their scripts, and there in the center of the camera stood Yeon-woo, calm as ever.
'Was I imagining it?'
As the director tilted his head, Screenwriter Shim Gyeong gestured at him to hurry up and move things along.
"Ah — right. Coming."
The director nodded and turned back to Yeon-woo.
"We're doing your expression before the lights go out and your expression when they come back in one take. At this brightness. Okay?"
When he heard Yeon-woo answer, "Yes," the director slowly raised his hand beside the camera. It was the signal to prepare.
He waited for Yeon-woo to settle into the emotion, then slashed his hand down through the empty air and shouted, "Action!"
The instant the signal came, Yeon-woo's head snapped toward the middle-aged couple lying collapsed on the floor.
The couple lay face-down, bound back to back.
At the sight of them, a smile like dry ice crept up onto Yeon-woo's lips.
The kind of smile that looked mystical and beautiful from a distance — but one you'd instinctively know better than to touch.
The director swallowed without realizing it.
Yeon-woo's risen expression looked like a flawlessly cut ice crystal, and somehow that made him think the camera should linger on it just a little longer.
When the lights went down, the director caught himself thinking, what a shame — and marveled out loud.
"Whew. Wow."
He let out short, repeated exclamations, shaking his head again and again.
He couldn't help it. At first he'd wondered what on earth he was supposed to do with Yeon-woo as an actor. Then the kid had improved by leaps and bounds, and now he had the director feeling this wistful ache when the scene ended. It was remarkable.
Especially knowing this was his first project with Yeon-woo, he even felt the pride of having helped nurture a genuinely gifted actor's growth.
"Okay! Good! Good!"
Having captured the perfect expression in the moment the lights fell and rose again, the director thrust his thumb skyward.
"Fantastic! Love it!"
Screenwriter Shim Gyeong murmured beside him.
"Wow. Yeon-woo is incredible. Did you see that? The second he steps dead center into frame, his whole expression just shifts."
The staffer next to her nodded along eagerly.
"Saw it."
"Right? God, I got chills watching. I've honestly never seen anyone transform their entire presence that completely just through expression."
It wasn't only the director and Shim Gyeong. By and large, everyone on set regarded Yeon-woo with awe — the way he could conjure an aura so utterly unlike his usual self with expression alone.
Unaware that the soul inside him had actually been replaced, they lavished praise on how convincingly he acted like a different person entirely.
Only one person among them was anxious: Jong-woo.
Is that little bastard seriously a different person now?
Granted, it might be odd for a swapped personality to carry on acting mid-scene — but hadn't the 'original Yeon-woo' once kept singing straight through a stage performance too?
The problem then was that he couldn't sing, mind you.
And Jong-woo's unease wasn't just about the personality question.
"Alright, everyone — we'll shoot the action scenes separately later. First we're doing the part where Im Seo kills them."
That exact part. The part where Im Seo, in the couple's place, does the killing for them.
What made Jong-woo nervous was this: Yeon-woo had said, point-blank, that he didn't want to film any scene where he killed someone — and nobody knew how he would handle this one.
He's not going to throw his hands up and yell 'I'm not shooting this!' out of nowhere… right?
His heart wouldn't stop pounding.
In the meantime, the director went over to Yeon-woo's side and personally demonstrated the blocking and hand movements.
"This happens in a situation where there's no real weapon to speak of. But don't go making faces like 'oh no, what do I do without a weapon?' Stay relaxed about it. Like it's just another step in a process you've walked a hundred times. Got it?"
The director slashed his hand through the air — whap, whap, whap — like some grandmaster of martial arts, then made a motion of sliding his palm along the floor, closing in on a throat.
"Think you can manage?"
"Of course."
Yeon-woo answered crisply. Contrary to all of Jong-woo's worries, there wasn't the slightest trace of hesitation.
"I believe I can do it well."
Not even the first letter of the word no could be found anywhere in that murmured reply.
"Good."
The director nodded, returned to his position, and raised his hand as he buried his face in the viewfinder. Then he called out, short and sharp:
"Go!"
For the love of God, don't cause a scene.
Jong-woo swallowed dryly and clasped his hands together.
The lighting dimmed further. Unlike before, the set was now littered with fallen bodies.
The battle scenes hadn't been shot yet, but this sequence was filmed on the premise that the fight had already ended.
People lay sprawled like dead fish, more than enough to catch the eye —
And Im Seo paid them no attention at all. With a light, unhurried gait, he approached the middle-aged couple.
The couple shook their heads, gags stuffed in their mouths.
It seemed that only now, watching the thugs they'd hired prove no match at all for Im Seo — the priest who had merely looked quiet and gloomy — did true terror surge up in them.
Im Seo drew close with a placid smile, and bent down.
Without the slightest hesitation, he brought one hand to each of the couple's necks at the same time.
A short gasp of admiration escaped the director.
What he had demonstrated was killing one person at a time — but Yeon-woo had simply pressed both hands to the pair's throats simultaneously.
And in that position, Im Seo pressed down on both their necks at once — a slow, deliberate squeeze.
"Cut!"
In that instant, even though it wasn't the actual take, the director shouted reflexively.
He didn't think even Yeon-woo — for all that he was a lunatic — would actually kill someone in front of the camera, but a sudden terror had seized him: end this scene, now.
But unlike the director's fear, Im Seo — no, Yeon-woo — released his grip at once and straightened up.
"Wow, that looked completely real?"
The director, pushing down the creepy aftertaste from earlier, went so far as to clap his hands together as he praised him.
Shim Gyeong nodded quickly.
"I've got goosebumps up my arms."
The middle-aged couple picked themselves up, faces a little pale, and gave their up-close assessment of Yeon-woo.
"Yeon-woo, you could honestly do this for real."
"It is real acting, though?"
"Oh, of course it is, but this was next-level. Wow, when you pressed right here on my throat — esophagus? windpipe? whatever it is — for a second in there I genuinely thought I was about to die."
Listening to the crew murmur around him, Jong-woo gazed with complicated eyes at Rembrary, who still stood dead center in frame.
That punk… 'I can't act out killing anyone,' he said. And that was doable?
Or was it that he couldn't do it because he'd be too convincing?
Should I call that a relief, or just absurd?
And he couldn't relax yet, either.
The next scene was Yeon-woo bending down to brush the dirt off Maeng Woo-shin's shoes.
Yeon-woo had refused this part too. Very firmly.
Fine — so he'd pleaded inability when it came to fighting and killing scenes. But Yeon-woo had declared, time and again since long ago, that he would never bend his knees. That was what worried Jong-woo far more.
"Still, it's acting, for crying out loud. He could just squeeze his eyes shut and get it over with…"
A staffer nearby must have caught Jong-woo muttering to himself, because he turned around with a "Sorry, what?"
"Oh — nothing, nothing."
Jong-woo waved his hands quickly, forcing a smile.
In the meantime, Yeon-woo was shooting the scene in question.
But contrary to Jong-woo's fears, Yeon-woo showed no sign of displeasure whatsoever.
He bent his knee with perfect naturalness, utterly unbothered —
He even lowered one knee all the way to the floor, and lightly flicked the white powder from the back of Maeng Woo-shin's shoe.
Thank goodness. No disaster.
At that untroubled performance, Jong-woo finally exhaled in relief.
The director and the rest of the staff, for their part, didn't make a fuss about how amazing it was this time.
Maeng Woo-shin, on the other hand, was genuinely startled for the first time that day.
He'd been in the waiting room during the battle and murder scenes, so he hadn't known what kind of praise Yeon-woo had been drawing —
But just now, when Yeon-woo brushed the white powder from his shoe and looked up at him, that gaze was inexplicably unsettling.
Hair-raising. If any phrase fit, it was that one. This was not a look the expressionally limited Yeon-woo should have been capable of producing.
But on the whole, filming proceeded smoothly from start to finish, and at last every scene of Im Seo's appearance in Dear God was in the can.
The director offered a few words of praise — good work, everyone — and Jong-woo relaxed at last.
He's this good, and here I was worrying over nothing.
Too busy being anxious and then relieved all on his own, Jong-woo failed to notice one thing.
That Sa Gam-jae, normally so placid, had been staring at Yeon-woo with a darkened face the entire day.
When Rembrary came to his senses, he was sitting side by side with Sa Gam-jae in the back of a car.
Jong-woo was at the wheel today, and nineties-style jazz drifted through the cabin.
Jong-woo was in the middle of an excited, glowing review of Rembrary's acting that day.
Rembrary listened quietly for a while, then asked Sa Gam-jae in a low voice:
"Have I changed again?"
Sa Gam-jae, who for once was not touching his phone, nodded and asked in return:
"Have you returned?"
"It would appear so."
"You caused no particular trouble today. You may rest at ease."
"And what did I do?"
"You simply acted, and departed."
"Merely acted?"
"The way it vanished the instant it laid eyes on me before — and the way today it obediently did nothing but act and then withdrew — and 'that thing' you brought back from your original world likewise showed no intention of revealing itself just yet."
"That is some small mercy."
"It may be no mercy at all."
"Wherefore?"
"If it came from another world, 'that thing' should know nothing of how things work here. And yet it acts with such caution, and avoids me — which means that, unlike you, 'that thing' may be able to hear every word we speak. It may be listening right now."
"!"
"Which would suggest it can think, and calculate what is harmful to it."
"I have no memory of the times 'that thing' has come to the fore."
"And that is precisely the problem."
With a soft chime, Sa Gam-jae's phone buzzed briefly. He lowered his gaze to the screen and murmured in a low voice:
"If you cannot bring that unknown thing under control, then you, sir, may truly find yourself confined to the Underworld for good."
Late at night. The members had all fallen asleep, but Rembrary, unable to drift off, stood out on the balcony letting the cool night wind wash over him.
Everything that had happened that day, and everything Sa Gam-jae had said, weighed on his mind and kept sleep at bay.
As he stood there, his phone chimed with an incoming text. He checked it — a message from Sunwoo Sil.
A promo. Now, of all times… Rembrary wearily typed out a reply.
Huh?
Rembrary knitted his brows.
Convinced, Rembrary opened the SNS app, uploaded the album cover photo Sunwoo Sil had sent him, and typed out a caption beneath it.
Less than thirty seconds after it went up, his phone rang. It was Sunwoo Sil.
"Senior, did you see it?"
The moment Rembrary answered brightly, a stream of profanity came blasting out of the receiver.
The End of Chapter 149: "Aren't They the Same Thing?"