What's Stuck On You
"Sunbae, did you doze off?"
At Rembrary's perfectly flat question, Oh Jung-shin could only let out a dazed, "Huh?"
"How exactly would I appear out of thin air? There's no magic here, you know."
"Ah, you— but, I definitely—"
Oh Jung-shin's lips flapped uselessly, but rationally, Rembrary's words made sense.
He really had popped out of nowhere—one moment empty ground, no trees, no brush, and the next the man was simply there.
But now that the man was so shamelessly insisting you saw wrong, Oh Jung-shin only felt flustered.
He spun around and frantically sought out the cameraman.
"You saw it too, right?"
"Sorry? See what?"
"Him!"
"...What?"
The cameraman, who had been busy flicking bugs off his lens, blinked at Oh Jung-shin with a thoroughly bewildered face.
Suffocating, frustrated, Oh Jung-shin stammered, "No, he definitely—"
But the mood was already settling into place: anyone insisting he appeared out of thin air! was about to become the crazy one.
It was unjust, but he was the only one who had witnessed that bizarre moment.
Watching him squirm, Rembrary smiled with perfect serenity.
Rembrary got hauled in front of the PD and lectured for vanishing without warning; Oh Jung-shin got praised for hunting down the vanished Rembrary.
Oh Jung-shin was not pleased in the slightest.
It gnawed at him. The image of Rembrary appearing out of thin air gnawed at him so badly he thought he'd die. He was still absolutely certain he had not seen wrong.
Naturally, Oh Jung-shin's gaze kept trailing after Rembrary.
He scrutinized the man with meticulous attention, straining to find some crack, some deviation from ordinary humanity.
Alien, psychic, demon—every scrap of imagination was thrown into the effort.
But viewed from the outside, Rembrary just looked like a garden-variety ill-tempered lunatic.
His personality was odd, certainly, but nothing special set him apart—nothing alien, nothing supernatural.
And so, despite all his observing, Oh Jung-shin achieved nothing of note.
The filming crew, on the other hand, achieved plenty.
"Jung-shin keeps tiptoeing around Yeon-woo, huh?"
"That's not tiptoeing, that's outright spying."
"Spying? He's staring right at him in broad daylight."
"You think they had a fight?"
"Way too peaceful for people who fought."
"If they'd fought they'd be glaring at each other. This looks like Jung-shin just won't stop staring on his own."
"Whatever it is, someone think of a caption. 'Papa bird fussing over his chick'? Would that work?"
"Why not just put 'a guy who can't help worrying'? Like, turns out he's a big softie underneath, so he cares."
Over the span of a single day, the crew spun endless theories about the sudden ceasefire between Oh Jung-shin and Rembrary.
The most popular theory was that 'Oh Jung-shin must have been worried when Rembrary vanished and reappeared,' though the rival theory—'they settled it with a one-on-one brawl'—had plenty of supporters too.
Either way, the director was delighted: connecting the shift in Oh Jung-shin and Woo Yeon-woo's relationship to the temple stay would give the episode a healing angle. And that was exactly how it aired.
But what actually set the viewers on fire wasn't the sudden friendship between two idols who had gone from feuding to cozy overnight.
What truly seized everyone's attention was a 'creepy story about Woo Yeon-woo' that a cameraman had posted to an anonymous community.
It was a filming day for Dear God.
Maeng Woo-shin read through the anecdotes about Woo Yeon-woo circulating on the community while keeping a wary eye on Woo Yeon-woo, who was waiting nearby.
Unlike that staff member or Woo Yeon-woo's fans, he'd never made his experience public—but the truth was, he too had had a spine-chilling encounter involving Woo Yeon-woo.
The scene where Woo Yeon-woo held an umbrella over him. Woo Yeon-woo had clearly been looking at him, yet the camera director swore Woo Yeon-woo had been looking at the camera.
When he'd watched that recording, his heart had lurched so violently he hadn't been able to sleep a wink that night.
Still, the kid seemed like such an incorrigible weirdo that the fear had eventually drained away, replaced bit by bit with simmering fury...
But now, reading the staff member's post along with the freshly resurfaced Woo Yeon-woo stories, he found himself oddly unsettled.
'Maybe he's not your average lunatic after all.'
He remembered Rembrary showing up, wanting to join the pseudo-religious circle he belonged to, and squeezed his grip strengthener in anxious repetition—squeeze, release, squeeze.
He'd written the man off as simply deranged, but perhaps he ought to tell Daeju about all this.
If Rembrary really did possess some strange power...
'Could he be the same breed as Daeju?'
"Maeng Woo-shin! Woo Yeon-woo! To your marks, please!"
At the FD's shout, Maeng Woo-shin's brooding shattered.
He handed the grip strengthener to his manager and stepped onto the set, where the cameras were already training their barrage of lenses.
Deung Baek, who through every episode until now had wavered between the grudges of his past life and the life he lived in the present, finally makes his decision in episode five.
He decides the memories of his former life were a trial sent by God, that all of it should be buried; that the vengeance of his past life belongs to God, who will judge it in the end—not to him. He is only an assistant priest, after all. If he endures a little longer, a transfer to another parish is surely coming. He only has to hold out until then.
But when Deung Baek returns to the dental clinic to finish his treatment and witnesses Yang throwing a birthday celebration with the dental hygienists, he is struck dumb.
Deung Baek's birthday is tomorrow. The two men's birthdays are a single day apart.
And in his past life, Deung Baek killed himself the day after Yang Heung died. Yang Heung died a day early—and had been born a day early... Was that supposed to be coincidence? With faces that look like that?
Deung Baek becomes certain: Yang is his past-life lover.
What's more, even knowing the man is a priest, Yang Heung is likewise fixated on Deung Baek to an unnatural degree.
The two are being pulled toward each other across lifetimes, past life straight into this one.
With the emotions he'd barely suppressed in his past life surging back to life, Deung Baek is left tormented, sinking back into his dilemma—still agonizing in episode five.
The scene being filmed now—where Im Seo's lines come in—was Deung Baek's birthday scene, one that seemed to veer slightly off the main storyline.
Im Seo learns to bake a cake in order to celebrate Deung Baek's birthday and gives it to him as a present—but Deung Baek, who despises sweets, re-gifts the cake to Yang Hong.
When Im Seo finds out, he bakes the very same cake again and forces Deung Baek to eat it—and that was the scene being shot at this very moment.
As the cameras began to roll, Maeng Woo-shin eyed the fresh-cream cake Rembrary had, according to the script, just made—though in truth it was sponsored product from a bakery—and grumbled.
"You know I hate sweet things."
"Eat it."
"You got one this afternoon. Why bake another? What a bother."
"It's for you to eat, sunbae."
"I'm fine. You have it."
"I made it to feed you, sunbae. Eat. It."
"Ugh... seriously."
Maeng Woo-shin let out a small huff of irritation, took a single bite of the cake, and wrinkled his whole face.
"God, I hate sweets. Happy now?"
"Does it taste bad?"
"I said I hate sweet things."
"Irrelevant. Eat more."
Scowling, Maeng Woo-shin ate more cake.
And after doing so roughly fifteen more times, he was genuinely so aggravated he felt the impulse to hurl the thing across the set.
The fault lay in what Shim Gyeong had demanded while watching Rembrary offer the cake—keep smiling, but give off the air that you'll force-feed him if he doesn't eat—a note Rembrary had failed to follow.
Shim Gyeong had wanted this scene to expose Im Seo's psychopathic streak alongside the sponsor's cake, but the Rembrary offering cake came across as nothing but pure, gentle-hearted kindness.
"No, Yeon-woo. Im Seo wants to feed Deung Baek the cake. He knows Deung Baek hates cake, but he couldn't care less. He just wants him to eat it. And since Deung Baek won't eat, he gets angry. Gifting the cake is an act of care for Deung Baek—but Deung Baek's hating cake doesn't factor into it at all. Why? Because Im Seo can't empathize with other people's feelings! That's the nuance you have to capture! When people watch this scene, they shouldn't be thinking 'Oh, that's a Robeto Bakery cake!' They should be thinking 'God, Im Seo is creepy'!"
By the time he'd been made to eat cake twice more after that, Maeng Woo-shin finally exploded. Pretending it was a joke, he scooped a fingerful of cream from the cake Rembrary was holding and slapped it squarely across Rembrary's face.
"...Sunbae. If this airs the way you're playing it, you'll get torn apart a hundred times over."
"Yes! That expression! That's exactly the face, Yeon-woo! That's the emotion!"
'One must speak words that are proper and fair.'
Back in the waiting room, Rembrary reproached himself for the crude language that had burst out of him in the heat of the moment.
No matter how insufferably Maeng Woo-shin behaved, he should have answered with composure.
He was, by nature, a great soul—yet every now and then he found himself dragged down to the level of petty ones.
Still, somehow or other they had captured the right emotion for the scene and finished the shoot, so all was well...
Just as he was telling himself this, he heard a knock at the door.
Jong-woo, back from buying sandwiches? Rembrary promptly opened the waiting room door.
The person standing there was Lim Yu-han, holding two coffees.
She grinned and held one out to him.
"Do I smell like a dog again today?"
"No. Today it's a scent I've never smelled before. But it's a nice one."
Fearing that inviting Lim Yu-han into the waiting room would earn him Jong-woo's wrath, Rembrary instead leaned against the hallway wall beside her, and they drank their coffee together.
"I saw the broadcast—they say you're going to enter the priesthood later on. Is that true?"
"Yes. Though less a matter of taking orders, and more a journey to return to the place I came from."
"Wow... you're already radiating monk energy."
"Even once I return, I will not forget the coffee you gave me."
"Haha. You know, everyone's so surprised to hear Woo Yeon-woo's becoming a monk. Honestly, I wasn't surprised at all."
Lim Yu-han chuckled as she recalled the several occasions on which she had tried to seduce Rembrary.
Every one of those attempts had scattered harmlessly, like ink dropped into clear water.
He was the most unworldly person she had ever met.
She had no desire to seduce him now, anyway.
Just this—close colleagues, standing shoulder to shoulder—suited her best.
Having drained her coffee, Lim Yu-han waved and headed back to her own waiting room.
Rembrary watched her retreating figure for a moment—then, quite suddenly, furrowed his brow.
'What is that stuck to her?'
— End of Chapter 76: What's Stuck On You —