A Cat Who Walks Alone
The shoot began with Seo-ryeong's very first scene.
"That bastard's shoes wouldn't be thrown away even if you ordered it. This is exactly why merchants are hopeless. What do you mean, 'owning nothing'?"
Muttering to herself as she kicked a pebble out of her path, Seo-ryeong gave away at a glance how often she'd disguised herself as a man. Even her gait was different.
Shuffling along at a lazy amble, Seo-ryeong glanced down at her straw sandals and clicked her tongue softly.
"Might as well swap these out while I'm at it. Even if the road takes me to the underworld, I'm dying in silk slippers."
She gave a small nod, then a faint smile spread across her face — the look of someone indulging in a little greed simply because the thought of it made her happy.
Seo-ryeong quickened her pace. An impatience clung to her, the urgency of someone who wanted new shoes on her feet as soon as possible.
"Ugh, seriously — these mountain valleys go on forever!"
Having loosened up her body for a moment, Seo-ryeong sprinted up the mountain path as if the run itself were a delight.
The disguise made her running look far lighter than it was. Even in straw sandals, her speed was impressive.
Whirrr—.
The camera glided along the track that had been laid in advance, following Seo-ryeong.
"Cut!"
Laughter rippled through the crew at Director Jjang's call. Yeo-reum, who had slipped away to check the monitor, stared at the screen with serious eyes.
It was not the face of the mischievous Seo-ryeong who had been trudging toward the village mere moments ago.
Among those watching Seo-ryeong were Noh Jeong-yeon and Geum Bit-gang.
It was the first day of filming. Noh Jeong-yeon had come down to set even though it wasn't her shooting day — she'd simply been curious to see Yeo-reum's acting.
"Bit-gang-ie~ if you've come all the way down here, at least relax that face, hm? You've got coffee to enjoy too, all thanks to my little chick."
"Do you know how much this flimsy thing costs?! I'd never pay for it myself!"
"Hmmmmm~ enough with the nasty talk."
And so Noh Jeong-yeon had personally dragged Geum Bit-gang down to the set — the woman who, if left alone, would have been three times more curious about it than anyone. Because she knew perfectly well that Geum would never come on her own.
For all her grumbling, Geum Bit-gang's gaze had been fixed on Yeo-reum for quite some time now.
"What do you think? She's good, right? Remarkable, isn't she?"
"Her running's passable. I suppose she must have been on a track team at some point."
"She learned sprinting at the action academy Jun-hyuk attends."
Noh Jeong-yeon smiled as though Han Yeo-reum were her own personal protégée. Geum Bit-gang scrunched her brow at the sight — she did not like it one bit.
"Professor! When did you get here?"
Yeo-reum, who had been holding her script and talking with Director Jjang, sprinted over the moment she spotted Geum Bit-gang.
To Geum Bit-gang, not to Noh Jeong-yeon.
To hide the feeling that welled up in her, Geum Bit-gang creased her brow even deeper. The corners of her mouth, already pressed down hard, sank further still.
"Do you drink a lot of coffee? Should I ask them to make yours sweet? As you can see, this is my coffee truck, so feel free to take a nice photo-op in front of it. You're sharing my very first coffee truck, Professor. You can pretend not to be all you want, but I know you're secretly touched."
"Enough. And who said anything about being touched?"
"You did come to cheer me on, after all."
"I came to monitor how many takes you burn before you land a single usable cut. So stay sharp."
While Geum Bit-gang grumbled on, the crew finished setting up the equipment.
"Yeo-reum-ssi~! Let's run through your blocking once more!"
"On it!"
Watching Yeo-reum dash off at Director Jjang's call, Geum Bit-gang's grip tightened around her coffee cup.
A set is a place where you can be laughing one moment and rolling on the ground sobbing the next.
Scenes never flow in order. The script slices time into fragments, one cut at a time.
She has to film meeting someone for the first time, parting with them, and meeting them again — all in a single day, all in the same place.
Within each frame, the actors must gaze at one another with unfamiliar expressions, then with the most heartbreaking expressions of their lives, then once more with expressions brimming over with joy.
Well then, let's see how much our little chick can actually do.
Geum Bit-gang carefully slid the coffee sleeve printed with Han Yeo-reum's face out of the cup, taking care not to crease it.
Then she tucked it inside her padded coat. Yeo-reum's beaming face settled snugly against Geum Bit-gang's chest.
The moment Seo-ryeong descended into the village, she set out in search of her next mark. She and her companion had been wandering from place to place, living on the run to escape Yeom-ga.
Watching Jeong-an scrape together travel money by foraging wild greens or twisting straw rope, Seo-ryeong clicked her tongue.
"Is this some kind of joke? My lifespan is short, in case you haven't noticed! Fill my belly with weeds and I'll come back as a starving ghost even after I die!"
Seo-ryeong threw fits and did exactly as she pleased. She was dying soon anyway. She behaved as though there were no tomorrow — because for her, there wasn't.
Sometimes she made money reading faces for passersby; sometimes she ran confidence scams among gamblers; sometimes she wormed her way into the household of some wealthy family in trouble and lived off them like a benefactor.
Since she'd never see any of those people again, Seo-ryeong lived without restraint.
As if to prove she would never forget that her life existed for one purpose — revenge on Yeom-ga. As if to carve into her bones that it was a life she would one day lose.
"Aaand — arrived!"
Reaching the village, Seo-ryeong leaned her head forward ever so slightly, like a cat. She looked like a predator that had just spotted very interesting prey.
Perfect. That's the one.
Watching Yeo-reum on his monitor, Director Jjang kept having to smooth down the corners of his mouth, which kept trying to climb upward.
Seo-ryeong's character came through crystal clear in just a few of Yeo-reum's movements.
"I want her like a wild animal that's never been properly tamed. Feline."
"A cat?"
"Yes. Utterly devoted to her own desires, no manners to speak of because she assumes she'll never meet the same person twice, and… her socialization was never completed, so…"
Yeo-reum built Seo-ryeong into a creature with fierce likes and dislikes — selfish, lazy, yet capable of vanishing into whatever sparked her curiosity; a walking bundle of trouble whom no one could bring herself to hate.
Director Jjang sank into the monitor where Seo-ryeong lived.
On the screen, alongside Seo-ryeong, another woman came into view.
A nobleman's wife, sweat streaming down her as if anemia were about to take her, pressed a handkerchief firmly against her forehead. Unlike Seo-ryeong, her soft silk garments seemed to announce her station to the world.
Just as she was about to brush past Seo-ryeong in her worn-out clothes — the two of them so clearly fated never to tangle —
the moment their shoulders grazed.
"Growing tired of all that pious praying yet, are we?"
Seo-ryeong tossed the words at her the way one flicks a pebble.
The lady bit her lip once, softly. As if refusing to dignify such talk with an answer.
Instead, the lady's maidservant exploded in outrage.
"You there! What manner of peasant dares speak so!"
"That's enough. Shouldn't we show a generous heart even to folk like her…"
As if she lacked even the strength to be angry, the lady spoke without turning to look at Seo-ryeong.
"How could devoting myself to the Buddha, morning and night, ever grow tedious? Save your pointless words and be on your way."
But Seo-ryeong did not retreat.
"Pray all you like. No child is coming."
This time she dug in her claws ever so gently. But perhaps because they raked across a wound already festering, the eyes of the lady who yearned and yearned yet could not continue her family's line flooded with fury in an instant.
"You there! My lady, don't stop me. Even if I strike her down, the Buddha will understand."
"Why are there so many yappy little dogs around here? So noisy… anyway, you. Think carefully."
Seo-ryeong paid no mind to the maids seething around her. It was the posture of someone who had, beyond any argument, seized the high ground.
Seo-ryeong spoke as if she had nothing whatsoever to lose.
"Consider it a small swindle, and take me with you—"
Without turning her body, Seo-ryeong took a half step backward. Close enough for the words to land squarely beside the lady's ear.
"—and I'll save your life."
At the voice that slipped out like a whisper, the lady whirled her head around before she could stop herself. They were of a similar height, and so she saw Seo-ryeong's face in full.
Seo-ryeong narrowed her mischief-filled eyes into a sliver of a smile. As if to say, let's have some fun.
The shoot moved straight on to the moment the two women parted. Once again, Seo-ryeong had gone to the lady's father-in-law and lived off the household like a blessing sent from heaven.
It was the hour of dusk, the sun slipping behind the mountain's ridge.
The sunset, sinking in warm hues, settled over Seo-ryeong's clothes. The silk hanbok she'd torn from the lady's father-in-law gleamed richer than ever in the dying light.
"W-well then, my lord. Thank you, truly."
That wasn't all. Seo-ryeong had somehow come into a bundle of luggage that hadn't existed before, stuffed to bursting with things stripped from the lady's house.
"Meeting you, my lord, is the greatest fortune of my life."
At some point, the lady had begun speaking to Seo-ryeong as though she were the savior of her very existence. And no wonder — for a woman who, despite every effort, could not conceive, Seo-ryeong was nothing less than a lifeline.
"There's nothing to thank me for."
Seo-ryeong answered with her hands clasped behind her back.
"I beg your pardon? But still…"
Slowly, lazily, Seo-ryeong turned her body. Her profile washed over with sunset, the color of her eyes changed.
Her light brown eyes glinting, Seo-ryeong lifted her chin high. The effect was subtle but unmistakable: she now seemed to look down at the lady, though they stood eye to eye.
"That you will bear a child — that is a lie."
"…I'm sorry?"
"Just like your husband, your fate carries no children. It isn't his failing alone — the misfortune lies with both of you."
"H-how could you possibly…"
The lady collapsed to the ground. Without a thought for her fine skirt dragging through the dirt, she simply crumpled where she stood.
"A lie… it's all a lie…"
Even the last thing she had believed to be hope now shattered into pieces, and the lady buried her face in her dirt-stained palms.
Her sobs leaked mournfully through the gaps between her fingers.
"Not everything was a lie."
Seo-ryeong bent her legs and lowered herself to sit beside the fallen woman.
"I said I would save your life, and I kept that promise."
She brought her face slowly closer to the lady's as she spoke.
"You just crossed a threshold you weren't meant to survive. Do you still not understand that?"
At Seo-ryeong's whispered voice, the lady's weeping stopped. As her hands lowered slowly, she found Seo-ryeong's expressionless face mere inches from her own.
The one who had grinned so playfully just moments ago now behaved as if none of it had ever happened.
"Listen carefully to what I say from this moment. Convert everything in that household into things that are easy to carry and worth a fortune. Sell the silks and buy gold rings. That's what I mean."
Resting one hand on her knee, Seo-ryeong straightened herself once more.
The lady followed her movement, lifting her gaze upward.
"That house has used up its allotted fortune. Soon there will be nothing left of it."
In the last instant before the sun vanished, when it burns brightest of all, Seo-ryeong blazed — the wildfire of the spreading sunset blazing at her back.
She looked like a god descended to save the lady's life.
"You may have no luck with children, but your luck with people is more than generous, so you will live well. When you leave that house, take good care of the maids who attended you — the ones who were at your side earlier. Treat them as your own flesh and blood."
At those words, as though something had finally clicked, life began to return, slowly, to the eyes of the lady who had been drowning in despair.
It was the gaze of someone who had found a single slender thread of hope at the very bottom of the pit.
To a woman cornered into a dead end — slighted by a husband who shunned her for bearing no child, harried by a father-in-law who blamed her for it — Seo-ryeong had opened a new road.