The Queens Return
Professor Noh Jeong-yeon picked up a copy of the Strange Tales script.
“Hmmmmm. No, that won't do. Episode 1 alone won't make enough of an impact. With episode 16! Both is the way to go.”
There was no way she couldn't know who Yeomga—the one Je-ha had spoken of—was. It had to be the very person sitting in Noh's mind right now.
The reason for her recent check-in call was obvious enough.
“Honestly, this is why teaching rookies is so much fun…”
After flashing her gentlest smile, Noh Jeong-yeon went straight for her phone, fully intending to set an old colleague's heart ablaze once more.
“Bit-gang, it's me. How about we get a meal together?”
The new year had dawned, but not a single page of the calendar had turned in Geum Bit-gang's heart. The calendar hanging in her home had gathered dust in place for who knew how long.
The life of an old actress with no expectations left for tomorrow was dreary beyond measure.
“Honestly, why on earth did you come all the way to my house?”
“I've gotten old—staying out too long kills me. Here, take this!”
“You never did have any shame, showing up empty-handed or not.”
Noh Jeong-yeon beamed as she held out a gift wrapped in golden cloth. Grumbling all the while, Geum Bit-gang still let her in.
Idle pleasantries carried them through the meal, and it was only when it came time for tea that Noh finally said what she'd come to say.
“So. Are you really quitting your professorship this year?”
“Well…”
Geum Bit-gang's thoughts drifted, unbidden, to the end-of-term play. To Team B's Romeo and Juliet, which that student had dissected down to the finest stitch.
She knew exactly how to play it, and still….
There were things only someone who had spent long years on the stage could see.
The way her blocking flowed across the stage like running water. The way her voice carried all the way to the spectators seated in the farthest rows. The way she left room for interpretation, tailored to each person who took her in.
And every last bit of it….
Why, in the world….
…had been the work of a single person.
If only because of her curiosity about Han Yeo-reum, she found herself unable to easily sign away her resignation. She wanted to watch up close as that rookie grew—perhaps into a great actress who would one day succeed her and carry the nation's name.
“By the way, that Han Yeo-reum student of yours. She's taking a leave of absence this year.”
“What!”
At that one line, tossed out so casually over her tea, Geum Bit-gang shot to her feet like a struck match. Noh Jeong-yeon giggled, as if she'd known perfectly well it would come to this.
“Aigoo, honestly. Pretending you don't care, are we?”
“Why would she take a leave? What does she think she's learned! A mere little chick, and she dares!”
To Geum Bit-gang's thundering voice, Noh Jeong-yeon shook her head.
“Once spring comes, there'll be photo calls, press screenings, the whole film promotion circuit, won't there? Variety shows are a given, and interviews on top of that. Photoshoots… oh right, and the drama's supposed to shoot on location in the provinces, too.”
“Tch. All that matters is whether the work is good. What's all this fanfare for?”
“Bit-gang. The world has changed. You can't think in terms of our era anymore.”
Noh Jeong-yeon recited the girl's remaining schedule as though Han Yeo-reum were her own personal protégée.
“She has to join the drama, do a music program on top of it, and when the movie opens she'll have to do stage greetings besides. Forget school—she won't even have time to sleep.”
Geum Bit-gang's brow furrowed. Across the table, Noh teased her.
“Oh, right. And I'm joining a project with Han Yeo-reum too.”
“You? In what?”
“You know. That thing Jegal Rok is putting together.”
“…Strange Tales?”
Noh arched a single eyebrow and needled her friend.
“Hmmmmm? You know it right off the top of your head? So much for not caring—you've clearly been looking it up on the sly.”
“Oh, looking it up, my foot! It's simply that I keep hearing about it from everywhere.”
Noh Jeong-yeon smiled as she watched her friend, still so incapable of honesty.
“I can't wait. My heart races just looking at the script. It's that entertaining.”
Unlike Geum Bit-gang, she had kept up occasional acting work over the years—and still, even now, her eyes lit up the moment acting came up. Just like they had back in those days when she was young.
“My role's a short one—it's a shame I only appear in episode one….”
Geum Bit-gang burned to ask what that role could possibly be. Her lips parted and closed several times before she forced herself to swallow the question.
“Well, I should be off. The meal was lovely!”
“Yes, yes. Get out already.”
“Oh, right. Make sure you open my gift. And don't just shove it in a corner and forget about it again.”
“What is it, anyway? Something useless again, I bet.”
At the gruff reply, Noh Jeong-yeon covered her mouth with her hand and chuckled.
“No, no. It spoils if you don't open it soon. Ignore what I said, and time will pass and you'll regret it. You might even end up sobbing your eyes out.”
After ushering her tiresome friend out the door, Geum Bit-gang sank onto the sofa. Her movements were more than a little irritable.
“…Han Yeo-reum.”
A chick of a girl, who had learned nothing worth mentioning, a green rookie barely out of the cradle—taking a leave of absence already? Unforgivable.
The mere thought of Han Yeo-reum growing somewhere beyond her sight made her insides twist.
“Of course! It's not as though I'll be acting anymore myself, but…!”
Geum Bit-gang was a veteran among veterans. Which meant she was more than capable of performing a role that even fooled herself.
“As if anyone could still be hung up on acting.”
At some point, the only roles that came her way anymore had been somebody's mother, or somebody's grandmother. That was the world she lived in now.
The lead of a play or a drama had, without her noticing, ceased to be a position granted to Geum Bit-gang.
A corrupt prosecutor. A chaebol chairman. A retired war hero. A groveling salaryman. A hitman or a dealer. A merchant sweeping in fistfuls of money.
Not a single one of those roles was a woman of her years deemed qualified for.
“Oh dear. Look at my head.”
It was then, as she sat blankly on the sofa, that the golden cloth bundle Noh had left behind caught her eye. Geum Bit-gang shuffled over and undid the cloth with careless, half-hearted fingers.
Click-
Inside the wooden box sat a jar of bellflower root syrup.
“Spoil? As if this could spoil.”
[Actors have to take good care of their throats~ ^^]
A note Noh Jeong-yeon had left with the syrup. But there was something else beneath the glass jar—something that looked, of all things, like a book.
STRANGE TALES
The Strange Tales script.
Geum Bit-gang reached for it without thinking, and a card tucked inside dropped free with a soft tap.
[For Yeomga]
It was—an invitation addressed to her.
“….”
With trembling hands, Geum Bit-gang unfolded the script.
Rustle-
And she began reading through the Strange Tales script—the one starring that very Han Yeo-reum.
Rustle-. Rustle-
Gradually, her fingers turned the pages faster and faster.
By the time she realized it, she had devoured all of episode one and snatched up episode sixteen immediately after.
Rustle-. Rustle-. Rustle-. Rustle-
Geum Bit-gang's eyes raced across the lines. Her breath grew ragged.
A sensation she had forgotten for a very, very long time came back to life. Her heart surged violently in her chest.
Buzz-. Buzz-.
Beside her, her phone vibrated. The caller was Noh Jeong-yeon.
“Well? How's my gift? Did you get it safely?”
“….”
“It spoils if you don't eat it soon. What will you do?”
“Damn it….”
Geum Bit-gang let out a hollow, booming laugh. The day she had sworn she would abandon first the acting world that no longer needed her was still vivid in her memory—and yet here she was, tumbling right back in.
“Send me the rest of the scripts. Right away.”
Yes. This is simply me worrying the chick might tarnish the good name of K-Arts.
It was purely….
“She's a girl who's never been properly taught, after all.”
…the heart of a teacher who simply could not stand by and watch her student twiddle her thumbs alone on set. Nothing more, nothing less.
It did not take long for Strange Tales' new casting news to take over the front pages of the portal sites.
“Whoa! Amazing, amazing! Did you see that article?”
This was the production center in Ilsan, where Music N's live broadcast was taped. Seo I-deun—who had been extra chummy ever since the Ki Joo-ye incident—was fussing up a storm.
“How many years has it been since Geum Bit-gang's last role? And she has a student she absolutely adores, right? That's the story, right? So you went and got down on your knees like, 'Please help me,' and then it was all, 'But only this once'?”
What on earth has this kid been watching….
“Or maybe, 'I wish to know how I might grow further.' 'Ahh—so in the end, the answer lies on the set where this body's Geum Bit-gang resides.' Something like that? The drama is unreal, seriously.”
The nation really ought to pass a law cutting down on idol downtime. If lawmakers saw Seo I-deun—more consumed by clichés than any character in Pathetic—even the government would certify it.
“I guess it's because she's good at acting. When you think about it, Geum Bit-gang is a sunbae too, right? Seniors' hearts just naturally swell when they see a junior who's good-looking and kills it at their actual job.”
Watching him on set had taught me this much: the kid had sense. Sharp instincts, you could call it. Being an idol, perhaps, he also knew exactly which styling worked.
“It's about time you did something shamelessly cutesy. Like an amusement park part-timer—stickers on your face, a headband. It's just good fan service, I'm telling you. This is intuition. Intuition.”
“The suit cycle has come back around. Wait, how do you spell 'cycle'? You know it, right? The one that… starts with S. Anyway. Don't wear a skirt with the shirt—go with pants. I don't know, it just gets a better response that way? This has been Seo I-deun's cold, hard analysis.”
On top of all that, he'd more or less thrown every cute challenge my way, which had sent my own buzz numbers climbing. I owed Seo I-deun a great deal.
My follower count is up to 410,000 now, too!
Anyway, the kid was useful in any number of ways. Absolutely not because he showered me with compliments.
Just as I was savoring the taste of being a rising star beside Seo I-deun, the human compliment bomber, the topic took a turn I didn't want to hear.
“The K-Arts professors must be so happy. All their students turning out like this! Right, right! And that Do Gyeo-ul is absolutely huge in Japan and China right now. It's total chaos over there, apparently. As expected, do geniuses only go to K-Arts? …And that's why I never made it to college, huh….”
Yes. It was no exaggeration to say Do Gyeo-ul was igniting a brand-new craze in Japan at that very moment.
I didn't even have to go looking—every portal site's main page was talking about her.
Mind control. Mind control….
Don't think about it. Overseas expansion. I can do that too.
I pictured the great actress Han Yeo-reum, about to take Japan by storm.
Good. Recovered.
That's right. This was no time for that. I turned to Seo I-deun with the question I'd been meaning to ask.
“By the way—Kwon Jun-hyeok. What kind of person is he?”
I needed intel on the man who would be co-starring with me as the leads of Strange Tales. At my question, Seo I-deun paused his compliment barrage for a moment and let his gaze drift into the distance.
“Hyung is… hmm… well, first of all, he's a good person….”
…Is he, though? Is he actually a good person?
“What am I supposed to do….”
A man murmured quietly as he stared at his phone screen, pressing his lips firmly inward again and again in his anxiety.
This was the You Can Do It Academy in Jangchung-dong.
True to the gutsy spirit of its name, it was a school that taught mainly martial arts and action performance.
“Geum Bit-gang… and even Noh Jeong-yeon…. Hnggh….”
On his phone screen hung the Strange Tales article. Despite his sharp, fierce monolid eyes, transparent tears were welling up in them.
“What am I going to do….”
Curling his huge hands into fists and pressing hard at the corners of his eyes—this man's name was Kwon Jun-hyeok. A member of the idol group VYBE, and the actor cast as Myeong-do in Strange Tales.