The Eve of the Finale

"The time has come."

Grand Prince Seonghwi was dressed in black military garb. His stride as he crossed the great palace courtyard dripped with arrogance, and the footsteps of the guards trailing behind him fell in steady, disciplined rhythm — relentless, as if declaring that this ground would soon be his.

Beginning with Seonghwi at the head, the guards kept multiplying as they advanced. Three, six, twelve… a horde of men too numerous to count swept across the palace grounds.

"Halt."

It was a guard of Crown Prince Yunhwi who stopped him. With a composed, practiced motion, the man's hand settled on the sheath at his hip, and with a sharp ring of steel a well-honed blade slid free.

"Hah…. So it's you who stands here."

Seonghwi looked at him with an expression of pure mockery. All around, the guards who had drifted to his side had already drawn their swords, every one of them.

"You will not take another step."

At Yunhwi's guard's gesture, soldiers who had been quietly encircling the intruders closed in around them.

"Hahahaha…!"

Seonghwi covered his mouth with one hand and let out a laugh of sheer delight, a laugh that erupted and echoed through the silent palace as though it were the only sound in the world.

"By whose decree?"

"By the King's order."

"From this day forward, you answer to my orders instead."

Seonghwi gave a careless tilt of his chin, and the guards with eyes cold as drawn steel split to either side. The kingdom's soldiers and the rebels' blades met without mercy.

"Hear me! From this day forward, the man who rules Yeomhoguk is me!"

Seonghwi's greedy madness came flooding into the palace like a storm surge. The gates swung open, and the rebels lying in wait came pouring through.

Yunhwi had barely reached the palace when the scene of utter chaos before him stole the words from his mouth. The royal army was losing.

As blades lunged at them from every direction, Yunhwi and his guards could do nothing but put their honored swordsmanship to the test — parrying the ceaseless thrusts, twisting their bodies aside, sweeping their blades out laterally to bring their attackers down, all while struggling to grasp the shape of the disaster unfolding around them.

"What in the world…!"

The army protecting Yeomhoguk was composed of men hand-picked from among the very finest. In sword or spear, they were second to no one.

And yet the rebels were seizing the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠upper hand.

Looking closer, though, something was wrong. There were soldiers in the military garb of Yeomhoguk, rebels in black — and moving among them, figures in ragged, wretched clothes. Something that was neither.

"Your Highness, you must fall back…."

The one who came wriggling forward and collapsed at Yunhwi's feet was the guard he had once sent to the King. Bloodied all over his armor, he coughed with a wet rattle.

"What is happening? Tell me."

"The enemy… they do not die."

The figures in ragged clothes were swinging their swords even with half a dozen arrows jutting from their bodies. Like puppets.

Only then did Yunhwi understand. Wicked things were not meant to be raised only at night.

"It's dangerous. Far too…. *cough*, dangerous…."

Just as the guard was struggling to force out the rest of his words, the wicked things came pouring into the palace grounds in the far distance.

"If this goes on…."

He could see it — it would not take long before the horde punched a path straight through to the King. The dread came flooding back in a fresh wave.

Just as Yunhwi was beginning to despair, hoofbeats sounded in the distance. Someone was galloping closer, nearer with every pounding stride.

"Make way!"

The rebels swarmed toward the rider. But the man holding the reins in one hand and a sword in the other carved through everything that came at him with movements stripped of every wasted motion, cutting his way through to Yunhwi.

The man who dismounted from the black stallion was none other than Myeong-do.

Myeong-do swept his blade through the air in one great arc. The blood clinging to it scattered in a fine spray.

"I will open the way. Go, Your Highness."

He had come racing breathless, lungs heaving — yet his gaze alone was straight and unwavering. There was nothing scattered in it. He walked forward as though his destination were already certain.

"…Those things will never die. Do you still mean to go?"

At Yunhwi's question, Myeong-do stopped for a moment where he stood.

"I do. Even so, I go."

Myeong-do answered without turning back. He was a man with somewhere he had to be.

Yunhwi drew a long, deep breath. Amid the hellish chaos of spraying blood and torn screams, he gathered his trembling resolve once more.

"Then we go together."

Yunhwi and his guards fell in behind Myeong-do. Cutting down what came swarming from every side, being torn and pierced here and there, staking their lives on every step.

Myeong-do looked as though a sword demon had taken possession of his body.

A lateral sweep flowed into a flexible downward strike. At the edge of his blade the rebels crumpled and fell away. His long jangpo robe billowing behind him, he kept cutting the road open, again and again.

As if death did not frighten him. As if what frightened him more than his own death was leaving Seo-ryeong alone.

The camera caught him from a god's-eye view, looking down from the heavens. Myeong-do wielded a sword skill that no one on earth would dare approach.

The frame slid into slow motion.

Myeong-do's desperate face filled the screen.

As he cut a rebel's throat, dark crimson blood burst outward beside him.

And on the wrist of the hand lowering his sword, the Five Blessings String that Seo-ryeong had tied there with her own fingers hung carefully, preciously in place.

The clash of gongs, the ring of chimes, the wail of reed pipes, the thunder of the janggu drum — everything swelled together into a sound so vast it pulled the mind clean out of the body. Like a signal that the final act had arrived.

And so Gimyo-dam's fifteenth episode came to an end.

"AAAAGH! This show is insane!"

Seo I-deun rolled across the dormitory floor. Somewhere along the way, the members who had been forced into watching it had become one heart, all of them in tears.

They had fallen to the level of guarding the live broadcast of episode 15 like true devotees. Just like every other fan out there, their weeks had split in two: days with Gimyo-dam, and days without.

"It's just… so sad…."

These were the same men who had once held a full debate over the most satisfying way to kill the old men from the Virgin Ghost episode of episode 3 — and now all they wanted in the world was for Seo-ryeong and Myeong-do to be happy.

The photo one of the members uploaded came full circle through the communities as a sympathy meme.

Passion for the TVM fusion historical drama Gimyo-dam was burning white-hot. Episode 15, which aired today, was the stretch where every secret planted across the series finally paid off — the long-awaited payoff zone. Netizens responded with a lively storm of takes: 'The big picture is insane', 'Is the director secretly a sadist?'Gimyo-dam, now just one day from its finale….

Tap-tap-tap-tap-tap.

Reporter Wi uploaded her articles at blistering speed. Beyond the pieces she'd written in advance, she churned out several more on the spot, folding in the live reactions as they poured in.

The public's response was blazing hot, proof positive that everyone, everywhere, was talking about Gimyo-dam.

Jegal Rok and Manager Ma combed through each article as it went live, preparing the next move.

"Check the servers, and have ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠them raise the maximum concurrent connections."

"Yes, sir! Aaah— this is going to be SO, SO, SO good. Tossing Dokgo Min onto that set was absolutely the right call."

On the screen sat the detail page they had labored over for weeks.

IP 85.152 stared blankly at the flood of posts surging down the screen.

"…And how, exactly, am I supposed to moderate this."

The scene of Seo-ryeong revealing her name for the very first time — fifteen episodes in — turned even the most hardened drama addicts into a weeping mess at the slightest touch.

The villainous Director Jjang had driven the viewers of Gimyo-dam to the edge of madness. Twenty-four hours had never felt so long.

"But this kind of trope doesn't exactly require deep analysis to predict the ending, does it?"

IP 85.152 let out a small snort as she scrolled through the gallery. A veteran of the drama-fan scene who had dissected every single work she'd ever touched, she held an unshakable conviction that Gimyo-dam would end happy.

"It's obvious if you think about it for two seconds. They're all just crying because they want the concept-post slot."

Her eyes, though, were glistening as she clicked the upvote button.

This was JC ENM's gleaming new headquarters, its lights still burning. The PR team sipped their caffeine on autopilot, eyes glued to the monitors.

Since episode 15 ended, every last reaction had to be monitored — they were pouring in like a rising tide.

"Rookie Shin—."

"The major community issue boards are plastered with Gimyo-dam from page one through page three, and the drama boards have just been flat-out swallowed whole. The clips uploaded after broadcast have already passed 310,000 views. The comments begging us to post the name-reveal scene are sitting in Best."

Rookie Shin was burning with the passion of a man who had never once known fatigue. Nothing like the guy who used to live with a clock-out fantasy tucked permanently in the corner of his heart.

A new wave. He could feel it — that abstract sense that something was surging in. Gimyo-dam had unambiguously chosen a road no one had walked before.

The rights would go straight to Taiwan and Southeast Asia the moment the drama ended, and the overseas push would lead with just how explosive the response inside Korea had been.

Then they'd carry those overseas reactions back home to fuel the domestic conversation, and begin Blu-ray production at a pace no one had ever seen.

Beyond that: Han Yeo-reum's Creamy Soda would relaunch as the fall-season 'Apple Creamy Soda' once Gimyo-dam wrapped, and the tourist destinations being promoted as the drama's filming locations would soon have the hanbok Yeo-reum wore laid out on display at local rental shops.

A project prepared hand in hand with the local district offices, the Korea Tourism Organization, and JC ENM.

"Upload it now."

Team Leader Hong closed his eyes and smiled. At his command, someone's mouse gave a crisp click.

They uploaded the clip the entire internet had been screaming at them to release. Before anyone could even finish a refresh, the crowd came flooding in.

The viewers of Gimyo-dam sacrificed their sleep to watch the clip on endless loop. View counts climbed in a steep, relentless line. Less than five minutes after upload, it broke 30,000.

The communities, and all of social media besides, had nothing on them but Gimyo-dam. A taut tension hung in the air inside JC ENM's PR team.

Tomorrow, at last. Tomorrow was the day. The destined moment when everything would end — and begin all over again.

The next day, Faster Than the Law pushed through the ten-million mark at long last. Like a medal pinned to Han Yeo-reum, who would once again face the world as Seo-ryeong in theaters.

Episode 15 of Gimyo-dam: 20.2% in the ratings.

A number unprecedented in the entire history of cable television.

The status window unfolded before my eyes. My hands kept trembling. Strange. Everything had succeeded, and still my heart wouldn't stop hammering.

'And yet, somehow… it feels like this isn't where it ends.'

Right. This wasn't nerves — it was anticipation. The anticipation born of certainty that things ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠would climb even higher once the final episode of Gimyo-dam met the light of day.

My mouth had gone so dry it made me dizzy. I would be standing on the photo wall soon. A different weight pressed down on me than it had last time, at Faster Than the Law — heavier, denser.

"Don't be so tense."

Director Jjang, who'd been watching me, came over to my side.

"We did well. All that's left now is to receive the applause. Isn't that right, Mr. Jun-hyeok?"

"That's right…. The ritual scene. Once that hits the screen, it's going to be something else entirely."

This was Yongsan GCV — and the hour when the finale of Gimyo-dam would light up the screen was drawing near.