A Board Tilted From the Start
It was time to release the articles alongside the pre-distributed press materials. The visual quality was stunning enough to justify the overseas location shoot, and comment reactions rolled in fast.
“Who looks at this and calls it a drama?”
“It's like a movie. How much was the production budget?”
“Thirty billion won for this one…”
It wasn't fully pre-produced, only partially.
“And that's just barely half of it made so far. Thirty billion means—”
“—at minimum fifty billion by the finale.”
Brand sponsorships from countless companies, production support, cooperation from connected overseas tourism boards, and above all else—
“SBC's really going all out for their 30th anniversary, huh…”
The founding-anniversary drama. That alone carried enormous impact.
Each broadcaster celebrated its founding anniversary in grand fashion every ten years, and that celebration was almost always expressed through sheer scale. Either a stately historical epic showcasing history and tradition, or a blockbuster drama funded by staggering capital. It was always one of the two, and this time Top Class had taken on the latter role.
It was, in effect, a declaration of exactly how much SBC's brand was worth.
Clackety-clack— clack-clackety—.
The fingers of the Daily Media reporters picked up speed. They drove their keystrokes across the keyboard like a drumroll.
“When's the production press conference for that thing? Find out, fast!”
“A Top Class minor gallery just popped up, sir. Sending you the link—”
“Check every single one of Ki Joo-ye's sponsor brands, and Joo Jun-seo's too!”
“People are going to start asking about the filming locations soon, so should we do a special feature on Macau?”
Amid the frantic bustle, only one person in the room was thinking about something else entirely.
…What about Yeo-reum?
Top Class would premiere four episodes ahead of Gimyo-dam. It was a perfect setup for grabbing early viewers and holding them.
When is the Gimyo-dam teaser trailer coming out?!'
This was a game tilted from the very start. Top Class held all the advantages.
As GIFs and screen captures from the Top Class teaser trailer flooded the minor gallery, the drama addicts' attention began converging on a single point.
The Gimyo-dam shoot pressed on without a moment's rest. This time it was Yeom-ga's turn.
Thanks to the B-team of Gimyo-dam working diligently on the other scenes, the teaser trailer would be complete with just a few more cuts of Yeom-ga's footage.
The set, steeped in the aura of a sinister shaman, was drenched in black from wall to wall. From the jet-black lacquered floor to the deep indigo silk bedding, to the folding screens painted with dark mountains and waterfalls—simply looking at it made your eyes sting.
Yeom-ga, dressed in black shaman's robes, pinned her hair up with a violet amethyst binyeo pin and strode onto the set.
“The teacher is here!”
“Geum Bit-gang has arrived on set—!”
The moment Geum Bit-gang stepped onto the set, the staff cried out in unison. Today was Yeom-ga's first day of filming. They had to shoot the scene of her controlling Grand Prince Seonghwi, along with the ritual that would appear in the teaser trailer.
“The set is excellent.”
“Thank you!”
Geum Bit-gang bestowed her highest praise on Director Jjang. Coming from someone as stingy with compliments as her, an assessment like that meant he had earned genuine recognition.
Director Jjang had poured enormous care into the camera direction.
Myeong-do and Seoryeong were framed through forward-moving compositions, the camera chasing after them along the tracks as it raced alongside.
Yeom-ga, by contrast, symbolized stillness. As though observing her with sinister patience, the camera moved sluggishly along a circular track that orbited around her.
“Yeom-ga has become a human who cannot smile… is that the read.”
“That's right. She's a character who sacrificed her entire humanity as an offering to her vengeance.”
“Then she should wear a smile without ever laughing. Is that it?”
Every single time, Director Jjang got chills from Geum Bit-gang's interpretations. When a person reached a certain mastery, they could pinpoint things ordinary people struggled even to imagine.
“Your Highness must steel your heart.”
Breaking even the convention that people of high rank take the seat of honor, this space belonged to Yeom-ga alone. The two actors spoke across a folding screen placed between them.
Yeom-ga sat on the inner side, Grand Prince Seonghwi on the outer—a deliberate staging that laid their hierarchy bare.
“All of these affairs shall become the light that illuminates Your Highness's path ahead…”
Behind the folding screen, Yeom-ga was smiling. Her voice carried dignity and weight, yet the hidden smile was visible to everyone in the room—everyone except Grand Prince Seonghwi.
To wear a smile without laughing.
Director Jjang could feel exactly what that meant. Goosebumps crawled up his arms.
“Then go to Crown Prince Yunhwi and tell him so.”
Geum Bit-gang brought her own interpretation of Yeom-ga into the world. She layered onto the character the face of a victim—someone bearing the trauma of a wound in life that could never be erased.
As if something deep in her brain had broken, her eyes flew wide open, her jaw drew sharply inward, her gaze gathered to a single point—then, reversing, her chin lifted and her mouth fell open. Her expression shifted again and again, every few seconds.
The camera prowled around Yeom-ga, catching her from one angle after another.
“Go to Cheonmaekji.”
As though she couldn't hold her body properly in place, Yeom-ga wrenched her face to one side, a fine tremor running along her jaw.
Her facial muscles never stopped moving, yet her voice never wavered once, and her enunciation was flawless.
That was precisely what made her feel like something beyond human understanding.
It felt as if the pure joy of a person standing at the threshold of the high ground that would fulfill a long-held yearning, and a reason remote and glacially cold, were commanding her body at the same time.
“Indeed it shall. And the talisman you gave me—I am to place it in that shrine once the moon rises tonight, yes?”
Beyond the folding screen, Grand Prince Seonghwi asked again, unease creeping into his voice. The lines carried an unmistakable undercurrent of danger, yet the Grand Prince was still nothing more than human.
He was nothing like Yeom-ga, who had become something that was human, and yet no longer human at all.
Nothing about Grand Prince Seonghwi radiated the crushing fear that would overwhelm an onlooker.
“That is correct. Soon, all the world shall fall into Your Highness's embrace…”
Creeeak—. Yeom-ga's face groaned as it twisted into something grotesque and strange. Her head cocked at a crooked angle, but her gaze alone remained fixed, blazing straight through the Grand Prince.
Beyond the folding screen, Grand Prince Seonghwi, noticing nothing, simply smiled.
Then, past the shadowed folds of the screen, Yeom-ga's face appeared again. Contempt glittered in her eyes.
In this game, the folding screen was not Yeom-ga—she of the lowly blood.
It was the man on the other side. The Grand Prince of noble blood, who knew nothing at all, was her puppet.
“…Cut…”
Director Jjang said it in a daze.
Deciding they could build an entire teaser out of that one short exchange was closer to an impulse than a judgment—but when the editing team received the file, they too had no choice but to nod.
Yeom-ga's mere existence made people tense.
“Ugh, I don't care about Top Class.”
Muttering as he refreshed his phone screen for the umpteenth time was IP 85.152.
No matter how he searched for drama crumbs, all that came up was Top Class.
Ever since that performance of Romeo and Juliet, IP 85.152 had been suffering from a chronic, incurable craving to see Han Yeo-reum act again. There was no cure for this.
“Ah, seriously, I'm going insane…”
For those who attended plays and musicals nonstop, this was a familiar diagnosis—and for audiences afflicted with the show me that moment one more time condition, there was an expensive remedy known as the “revolving door” of repeat ticket purchases.
But what IP 85.152 suffered from was that day's Romeo and Juliet specifically. The revolving door was simply not an option.
He'd replayed it so many times he could now recite every line from memory.
“If there were even a single Gimyo-dam crumb, I'd take that at this point…”
Drama fandom wasn't his thing, but IP 85.152 searched out of habit. And that was when the words Gimyo-dam appeared on his feed.
The teaser trailer was finally up.
“Ah! It's up!”
IP 85.152 clicked the trailer instantly. Against a pitch-dark screen, only a voice could be heard.
Your Highness must steel your heart.
And then—footage of a natural landscape, shot from atop a towering cliff. A man came walking out, leaving an abandoned hermitage behind him.
“Han Yeo-reum?”
It was Yeo-reum, disguised as a man.
Expressionless, she drew a talisman from her robe and thrust her hand outward with force, casting her spell. A moment later, scarlet flames wrapped around her.
The firelight flickered like a hungry red tongue, greedily swallowing everything around it.
CRASH—.
A colossal tree, engulfed in flame, toppled to the ground. The look in Yeo-reum's eyes as she felled it was as cold as ice.
Before anyone knew it, the fire had spread like madness and was racing toward the village.
All of these affairs shall—
Though the flames swallowed it whole, the village remained utterly silent.
As though no one had ever lived there at all.
As though not a single person had ever existed.
Whoooosh—.
The sound of a dry wind came through. And as though that had been the starting signal, sound flooded in all at once, and the screen cut away.
A wall hung with rotting, crumbling ropes—the scratch of a cockroach skittering across it—a thud— a maiden collapsing to the floor—voices singing a funeral dirge, if we leave now, when will we return?—a man thrashing, his limbs bound and mouth gagged—the blade pressed against his palm—the sound of it slicing wickedly through soft flesh—tears of agony welling in bloodshot, crimson eyes—and blood pooling in his palm too.
—the light that illuminates Your Highness's path ahead…
Contrary to the narration, the footage only grew darker.
A moldering old crate with a child's withered hand sticking out of it—a clown locked in a cell, unable to drink a single drop of water—the ceaseless, bass-heavy skittering of crawling insects, and over it, layered, the spine-chilling laughter of a child—men abandoning a comrade caught in a tiger's jaws and fleeing, hurling their torch to the ground—Madam Ma-na hesitating, hand clasped around a rope hanging from the ceiling.
And then, as though watching over every one of these scenes, someone's face slowly emerged from behind the folding screen painted with a black waterfall.
In that instant, a single light pluck of a gayageum string sounded—and everything fell silent. So silent you couldn't even hear a breath.
Gimyo-dam.
Geum Bit-gang, wearing a smile without laughing, delivered the announcement.
June 17th. The first episode.
“Insane…”
Without even realizing it, IP 85.152 replayed the video.
A mere thirty seconds—and the teaser trailer alone had every muscle in his body tingling with tension.