The Next Project (2)
Writer 927.
The vaguely suspicious figure who had, in a single stroke, pulled her daughter onto the path of acting. The screenwriter whose name Soyoung lit up over every time she visited the hospital room lately, chattering away like a girl in the throes of first love—and who, the more Lee Hwayang thought about him, seemed to have far too many things that didn't add up.
Age, face, gender—not a single detail about him was properly known. And this mystery of a person was adamantly insisting that Soyoung appear in the work he had written.
That alone was strange enough. Stranger still was that Soyoung trusted and followed this dubious figure with something close to fanatic devotion.
This was a thoroughly objective assessment: Soyoung was not a naive or easily managed child. For someone to have earned her trust to that degree meant he was no ordinary person.
As a parent, Lee Hwayang felt half worry for her daughter and half pure curiosity about just who Writer 927 really was.
"Ugh—!"
A sudden, searing pain tore through her abdomen, and a low, agonized sound escaped her throat.
"M-Mom!"
Seol Soyoung, who had been standing right in front of her, saw her mother's face contort in pain and threw her arms around her at once.
"A-Are you all right?"
The way Soyoung's words tangled was proof of how badly she was rattled.
Even so—
"…I'm fine, Soyoung. Still, just in case—would you go call the attending physician for me?"
Lee Hwayang managed a faint smile, speaking only so her daughter wouldn't worry any further.
Soyoung hurried out to fetch the doctor, following her mother's request.
Left alone in the room, Lee Hwayang turned a lonely gaze toward the view beyond the window, then slowly closed her eyes.
Stage two gastric cancer.
But I've been getting regular checkups all this time—how…
It can lie dormant and then suddenly grow. Looking at the size and location of the malignant tumor, it's in a position we could remove surgically—however…
According to the attending physician, her body was too weak. The odds of a successful operation were very low.
Roughly forty percent, he had said.
Far too cruel a number to stake a life on without hesitation.
"Soyoung… Mom's sorry."
If she imagined the worst—if the surgery did not go as planned—the thought of her still-young daughter was almost unbearable.
Back home, Seol Soyoung lay thinking of her mother in the hospital room, turning the same thoughts over and over.
Whether it was thanks to Welcome to Cafe Violet or not, she couldn't say for certain—but her mother's expression had clearly grown brighter of late. That, at least, was a mercy. The problem was that her body was deteriorating just as rapidly.
Honestly, she had already heard how serious things were through her father.
The window for surgery: roughly nine months remaining. If that passed, surgery would no longer be an option at all.
…In other words, a death sentence on a timer.
She wanted to tell her mother to have the operation immediately—but even that wasn't simple. A success rate of about forty percent. Less than half. Betting a life on those odds.
And yet—
In the middle of that hopeless situation, her mother seemed to have already chosen what she believed was best.
From the attending physician, Soyoung had heard that her mother had suddenly started looking into discharge procedures. Why would someone who ought to stay in the hospital be arranging to leave?
The answer was simple.
Because she wanted to spend even a little more time with her father and with Soyoung. Because she wanted to make more memories with them before her body stopped moving.
…Because she was so worried about her still-young daughter.
Seol Soyoung clenched her fists tight.
Yes. That was the kind of person her mother had always been. Rather than gamble her life on uncertain odds, she would want to fulfill her role as a mother with whatever time she had left. Pain wouldn't even register for her. And she was stubborn enough that once she had made that decision inside herself, she wouldn't listen to a word from Soyoung or her father.
"So I'm the chain holding her down…"
Lying on her bed in complete disarray, Soyoung murmured the words under her breath.
It hurt—knowing her mother had made such an extreme choice because of her. And earlier today, watching her mother suffer in that hospital room, her heart had nearly stopped.
If her mother left the hospital, how many more times would something like today happen?
"Then I…"
Would just have to keep watching her suffer?
That was—
"No."
Yes. She refused. For her mother and for herself, that was far too cruel.
So she had to find a way. Somehow. No matter what.
Seol Soyoung sat bolt upright on the bed and let out a long, steadying breath. If she was going to think of a solution, she needed to cool her overheated head first.
"Huh?"
As she exhaled and tried to settle her breathing, it struck her that she had been in a situation like this not long ago.
Definitely…
She looked around, searching for something. What her hands found in a rush was her smartphone.
"Right. I'll ask for advice."
Hope kindled in her eyes. Her amber irises began to shine, clear and bright.
Ordinarily, Seol Soyoung was not someone who laid her heart bare easily; "asking for advice" had always been a foreign concept to her.
But—
The moment that name entered the picture, everything changed.
He would take her worries seriously. And of course he would—just like last time—
—become her hope.
"Hmm… the next project, huh…"
After talking with Director Yoo Yeonjung, it really did feel like the time had come to start thinking about the next work in earnest.
But it was genuinely hard to pin anything down.
Couldn't a nice bolt of inspiration just drop out of the sky already?
Well… lying around on the bed like a grasshopper and hoping for that was a little selfish, admittedly…
Looking back, Welcome to Cafe Violet had been a special case. The impact of seeing Seol Soyoung in person for the first time had been that overwhelming.
Anyway.
Bzzzt—
My phone suddenly buzzed.
Hmm. Lately it felt like an awful lot of people were looking for me.
And since it was the Studio NMIX corporate phone vibrating, the odds were highest that it was Seol Soyoung.
Huh?
Reading that text, my brain briefly flatlined.
Seol Soyoung? Asking me? For advice?
Was this a hidden-camera prank?
At first I'd thought she was joking—but the moment I heard what the advice was about, I understood immediately that it wasn't.
Seol Soyoung's worry concerned her mother, Lee Hwayang.
According to the original story, Lee Hwayang ultimately forgoes surgery and meets her death. It was one of the cruel misfortunes that befell Seol Soyoung.
So—was I supposed to do something about an event that was destined to happen no matter what?
Honestly, I wasn't sure. Things had already diverged quite a bit from the original as it was.
What mattered was that Seol Soyoung had come to me, seriously, for advice. She was probably clutching her head over it right now—whether to simply accept the choice Lee Hwayang had made for herself, or to push hard for surgery on a forty-percent chance.
…Those were nothing but brutal options for the Soyoung of right now.
Which was why she had set her pride aside, just for a moment, and asked me for help. I could feel the desperation in it clearly enough.
So—
As the person who had pulled her onto the path of acting in the first place, the only choice available to me was—
—to help her.
"Tch. So now I've basically doubled my problems."
I'd told Seol Soyoung with full confidence that I'd help—but just like with the next project, nothing useful was coming to mind.
I let out a long sigh, headed to the kitchen, and opened the fridge. The only thing staring back at me was a stack of chicken-breast packs Yongseok hyung had gifted me.
Ssshhp…
When your head hurts, protein really is the answer.
—The song feels like it's floating—like it's lifting off the ground.
Just then, the sound of the television drifted over from the living room, where my sister was sitting.
"Noona, what are you watching?"
"This? Choice 30—the music show that's trending right now. It's probably the second-hottest thing on air after your drama."
Choice 30.
A currently popular girl-group survival audition program that gathered un-debuted girl groups from some thirty agencies, domestic and abroad, and set them competing against one another.
"And why do people watch it so much? Well—because it's packed with the stories and emotions of idols?"
The fun of watching the idols you root for grow in their singing and dancing. The conflicts and fights inside a group, the eliminations and goodbyes, the way they mature through all of it—apparently that was what made it so gripping.
—When you sing, it has to be half air, half sound—no exceptions!
Huh?
That was definitely the same voice I'd heard at the start. The person sitting in the judges' seats said it in a thoroughly worked-up tone, and one of the idols on stage had tears starting to well in her eyes.
"Wow. Baek Junyeong made another kid cry."
"…Baek Junyeong?"
"CEO of JYB Entertainment—one of the top five agencies in Korean entertainment. He shows up as a judge on music shows like this a lot, and he's famous for being a harsh critic. But since he can actually sing and dance himself, people don't really give him grief for it."
"Hmm. Looking at the face he's making right now, though, he's pure softie material."
Watching him get completely lost in the next girl group's performance, I couldn't help laughing.
"When the contestants do well, he makes that signature sobbing face—just like now. The funny part is, the group he's judging right now is from JYB."
"What, so he's just rooting for his own kids?"
"Probably not. The group's called Hongryeon—they're one of the frontrunners for the win. Real talent."
Even to someone like me who didn't know much about music, their clean vocals and razor-sharp choreography were obvious.
And more than anything, what caught my eye was—
"Noona, that girl who just got caught on camera… do you know her name?"