The Han of Yeom-ga
"Alright! This side is mine. Yeom-ga and Seoryeong, you two play nice and start analyzing each other."
No Jeong-yeon herded Kwon Jun-hyuk and Director Jjang off toward the second floor. Worried about Yeo-reum, the director kept glancing back over his shoulder even across that short stretch of distance.
"Will you be all right without me there?"
"Yes, yes, of course. Don't worry about it. Besides, mapping out this little chick comes first, doesn't it?"
"Ahh… I'm sorry…. She's so good at it, and I…."
"No, no, no, Jun-hyuk! You have nothing to apologize for. So, shall we start by checking where exactly you're struggling? Yeo-reum, forget her for a while!"
Only at the top of the stairs did No Jeong-yeon look back down.
The two of them, scripts in hand, sat facing each other without a word.
Han Yeo-reum was pretty impressive for a rookie earlier. No, no… she was almost excessively good.
Merely being aware that she was being drawn along already placed her among the gifted.
During a script reading, it's hard to hear your own voice objectively, after all.
And despite being asked to deliver a long monologue with nothing given to her at all, she had carried it off properly.
That alone put Han Yeo-reum far beyond the limits of an ordinary rookie.
Bit-gang knows that too, yet she just had to be petulant about it.
No Jeong-yeon let out a small sigh.
First things first — this chick.
Patting the back of a sulking, sniffling Kwon Jun-hyuk, No Jeong-yeon set to work correcting his vocal technique — all while looking forward to the Yeom-ga and Seoryeong those two would create.
"I'd like to hear your interpretation of Yeom-ga, Professor."
"…Did you forget the score I just gave you?"
"I remember it. Still, I'm more curious about your interpretation than about the reason. Because without Yeom-ga, Seoryeong in the final scene is a character who can never be complete."
It was different from what she'd shown Director Jjang. She'd rehearsed it over and over. This was after calculating with precision down to where and how Seoryeong should breathe.
And yet Geum Bit-gang gave it ninety points….
That meant the odds were high that somewhere, her Yeom-ga and Geum Bit-gang's Yeom-ga had come apart.
Geum Bit-gang gave an incredulous little laugh, then turned to her.
"What kind of person is Yeom-ga?"
"Someone ambitious and ruthless."
"On what basis?"
"She plots to kill even the king in order to devour the nation, and she has no hesitation about taking human lives."
"No hesitation, hm. And what's the basis for that?"
"Because she killed her own child."
The edge of Geum Bit-gang's voice hung at her throat like a whetted blade.
"The script never describes what Yeom-ga felt when she killed her child. So how do you know?"
Yeo-reum barely managed to deflect the blade.
"Because even after killing her own child, she went on sacrificing young children without the slightest hesitation."
"Someone with Yeom-ga's abilities would surely have revenge burning inside her, plenty of it. Isn't it more that, because she was forced to kill her own child, the sight of other people's children still living was something she couldn't tolerate?"
The finely honed blade came at her again.
"And if Yeom-ga had a child to begin with — where was the father? What was he doing when the child was killed?"
Her breath caught in her throat.
"That's… not in the script…."
"Right. It's not in the script. But 'according to the script,' this is an era where not just science but even proper transportation hasn't developed, no? The shamanic rituals were intensely political. Money, power, and public sentiment were woven tightly together."
A part she had never thought to consider slammed into her back. From here on, it was a dead end.
"Or they simply couldn't afford to call a shaman at all. A penniless pauper could do no more than bow his head to a village totem or a wayside stone — but the powerful were different."
Geum Bit-gang studied her silent face and went on.
"When a catastrophic natural disaster strikes an isolated village, who do the people blame? Hmm?"
A wretched little village came to mind. People pointing fingers at Yeom-ga. Voices lashing out at her as she did nothing more than pass along the road — even the snarled order to get lost, we won't sell to you.
"A Yeom-ga like that would have been desperately lonely. She'd have yearned for just one person to stay by her side. Do you think Yeom-ga wouldn't understand recognition and love? That's how the child came to be. She wouldn't have dared to force the shaman's role onto it."
A man appearing in the life of a Yeom-ga who had always been alone — and the small, fragile hope that maybe she, too, could build the modest sort of home that others had.
"Watching a pregnant Yeom-ga, wouldn't the villagers have grown even more afraid? Because another being like Yeom-ga was about to be born."
Yeom-ga and the man laying their hands together on her swelling belly, feeling the quickening. Yeom-ga smiling as she sewed the baby's first clothes. The two of them walking hand in hand.
"And you know what people are like… they feel terror when someone they believed fundamentally different from themselves starts behaving in eerily similar ways."
The villagers staring at such a Yeom-ga with bloodshot eyes. A scene of them plotting something dangerous by torchlight.
"If a beast could speak human words — wouldn't you want to kill it?"
She could see the blades glinting in the villagers' hands. Sickles and hoes, knives and scissors.
"So which would be the easier kill — the pregnant shaman Yeom-ga, or her husband, who occasionally came down into the village for his wife's sake?"
A single line.
Ground down by cruelty and contempt, Yeom-ga resolves to seize the royal authority of Yeomhoguk in her hands.
It had been only one line — yet Geum Bit-gang was an actress who could unravel an entire lifetime from that alone.
"Would you want to bring a child into a world like that? Especially if that child's divine power was stronger than your own? She would have to live enduring many times over the humiliations she herself had suffered."
"…."
"And after her husband's death — was Yeom-ga in her right mind at all? Hallucinations, phantom voices, self-loathing, depression, insomnia, panic disorder, the wasting grief that consumes the body… She very likely couldn't make a sound judgment for a time."
"…."
The life of Yeom-ga that Geum Bit-gang was laying bare struck her with a physical ache.
"Perhaps Yeom-ga didn't regret killing her own child? The odds are high that it wasn't a decision made in her right mind."
Her heart beat with a restless dread. The figure of Yeom-ga, which had seemed so flat before, became almost unbearably comprehensible.
"That's why she wanted revenge. Even if only to atone to her child, she couldn't allow such a rotten world to go on turning in peace."
The persecution Yeom-ga endured simply for being a shaman. That one light phrase pressed down on Yeo-reum so heavily she couldn't breathe. Geum Bit-gang's Yeom-ga was growing in size before her eyes.
"The size of the han Yeom-ga carries — only Seoryeong, a fellow shaman, would be able to feel it. I don't know every detail of her circumstances, but imagine how vast, how heavy, how hard to overcome that cause must be."
Compared to that, her Seoryeong was far too small and shabby….
"You're the one standing against such an opponent. That's why you fall short. Do you understand?"
Yeo-reum had no choice but to accept the score Geum Bit-gang had given her.
"So find her."
"…."
"Not by the first day of filming — that would be fine, but by the time we shoot that scene, no matter what it takes, find her. Understood?"
Something hot ignited in her chest.
I can do this. I can. Let's find the Seoryeong who can stand against Yeom-ga.
"…Yes. I'll find her."
She made the promise to the Yeom-ga seated across from her — that she would fight her properly, as her true self.
Time flew by. In the meantime, the storyline of Gimyodam gradually took on an increasingly polished shape.
"We're going the direction of cutting the original lines, and we'll adjust Myeong-do's character a little. Body before words! I trust our Yeo-reum will carry the dialogue beautifully. Let's expand Seoryeong's side."
"Won't that create screen-time issues, though? If my part grows to fill it, Jun-hyuk's agency won't be happy…."
No Jeong-yeon's carrots and Geum Bit-gang's relentless whip arrived in a flawless 2:8 ratio. Kwon Jun-hyuk, who had grown noticeably gaunt in just a few days, raised a thumbs-up with a smile.
"It's fine! My agency scammed me first, after all! Time I did a little conning of my own! What good is a big part when I can't even act?"
The eyes of a somehow-changed Kwon Jun-hyuk were still glistening wet.
Be that as it may, the characters have genuinely taken shape.
Jeong-an, Yeom-ga, Myeong-do…. All of them had gained the depth of living, breathing people.
Except my Seoryeong.
Why ninety points? Where exactly was the empty space? No matter how she turned it over, no answer came.
Unable to sleep, she slipped on her shoes and stepped outside in the small hours of the morning. Gazing up at the dim sky, she drew in a deep breath of air beaded with the first dew of dawn.
Perhaps because it had rained the day before, the temperature was cold enough to bite.
Where Seoryeong might have lived….
Looking up at this same sky, what had Seoryeong thought about? In that isolated place, the only one beside her would have been Jeong-an — so what kind of expression must Seoryeong wear, who couldn't even fully let her guard down with Jeong-an herself?
"If you don't go back and sleep now, the climb up will be a rough one."
A voice drifted from behind her. A clear, unhurried voice, untouched by sleep despite the early hour.
"…Professor."
It was Geum Bit-gang.