Terminus
"Alright, everyone, let's loosen up and give it one more fight before we go in!"
Director Jjang stretched out his hand. One by one, the others stacked theirs on top of it.
Jeong-an, Yunhwi, Seonghwi, Myeong-do, and even Yeomga. On the backs of the hands of everyone who had built Gimyodam together, I placed mine.
"On the count of three, we shout: Gimyodam, it's a smash hit! Here we go!"
One, two, three! Everyone shouted in unison, sweeping their hands down as if pressing every ounce of pride they had into their own palms.
"Gimyodam!"
"It's a smash hit!"
Our hands shot up toward the sky.
Let's go. The moment he said it, Director Jjang charged ahead of everyone else. Someone gave me a push from behind. The lead should go right after the director! Dazed, I moved forward.
Shutters exploded from the photo wall in dazzling bursts, the crowd was all calling my name—Seoryeong—and every eye in the place was fixed on me. And then, in the distance, I spotted my fans. Without thinking, I waved.
It didn't feel real. Not even a little.
Making her way toward the theater, Ae-ta-mi felt as if her whole body had gone rigid. It wasn't just nerves.
She had spent the entire night churning out reaction images, posting appreciation threads, and watching the name "Seoryeong" and the title Gimyodam climb the trending charts in real time.
Anyone who had followed the drama from episode one to the finale understood the feeling. That particular joy when a show you love ends up, against all odds, a complete and total success. The strange, inexplicable pride of having been there from the very beginning, alongside something great. That delicate ache of savoring a perfect ending while mourning that it's over.
"Whoa, it actually broke twenty percent in ratings."
"Everyone called Jegal Rok insane at the start. At this point, you'd have to say the madman was onto something all along."
Listening to the reporters who'd arrived early chatter among themselves, Ae-ta-mi couldn't keep the corners of her mouth from curling up. A low murmur rippled through the considerable crowd gathered to await the Gimyodam team.
"Seriously though, Han Yeo-reum is unreal. Did you see the clip view counts yesterday?"
"Over another million. Can't even say it's surprising anymore—she's earned it."
Ae-ta-mi wore a proud smile on her face.
Our Yeo-reum doesn't just act well—she's even more stunning in person.
She itched to squeeze into their conversation and say exactly that, and had to press her rising smile firmly back down.
From every direction came the same refrain: she had been the perfect Seoryeong. And no one here could argue with that.
Seoryeong was Han Yeo-reum, and Han Yeo-reum was Seoryeong.
"There!"
"She's coming out!"
The crowd erupted in an instant. Yeo-reum was stepping onto the photo wall.
Photographers hammered away at their shutters without pause, flashbulbs blooming in brilliant succession. People pressed forward, desperate to catch even a closer glimpse, and Yeo-reum kept slipping in and out of Ae-ta-mi's line of sight.
Then it happened.
In the instant their eyes seemed to meet—perhaps only a trick of her imagination—Yeo-reum smiled and waved in her direction.
...Did she actually see me?
Ae-ta-mi stared blankly after her. Already, Yeo-reum was being escorted inside the screening hall.
It was fine, even if the wave hadn't been meant for her.
Some day, Yeo-reum would walk an awards red carpet so far away that Ae-ta-mi couldn't dream of following—a place impossibly distant. And she felt certain, absolutely certain, that Han Yeo-reum would get there.
At last, the doors to the Gimyodam screening opened.
Episode 16
Terminus (Destination)
Before long, the corrupted ones and Seonghwi stood before the King's audience chamber. Throwing both hands against the doors and wrenching them open with a resounding crash, Seonghwi panted with excitement.
"I trust Your Majesty has enjoyed the spectacle?"
But the King did not so much as glance at him. He merely continued reading the document in his hand, as though Seonghwi's very existence were invisible.
"Your days of looking down on me from that throne are over now."
Seonghwi laughed under his breath as he shuffled forward, step by heavy step. He chuckled to himself, as if recalling the day he had knelt beneath the King, begging for his birthright to be returned. The King silently picked up the next document with a soft rustle of paper.
"Do not presume to be so haughty! You are no king! The highest seat in this realm belongs to me now!"
At Seonghwi's words, the King finally raised his head. Gazing down at him, he thundered:
"You wretched fool!"
The tiger embroidered along the hem of his robes seemed to rear up and roar.
"The highest seat is the people's seat—not the seat of any single man! One who cannot grasp that has no right to sit upon it!"
Seonghwi gritted his teeth, his face drained of all color. Then came the sound of hurrying footsteps. Yunhwi and the royal guards had arrived.
"Brother. Let it end here."
"You…."
Seonghwi's eyes shook violently.
The King, whom he'd believed felled, stood hale and whole. The brother he'd believed driven mad stood before him, sound of mind.
From beginning to end, Seonghwi had been the only one deceived.
"Hahahaha! Hahahahaha! So that's how it was. From the very start… from the very beginning, I was nothing but this! A useless, sickly firstborn—your puppet on a string!"
Seething with fury, Seonghwi leveled his sword at Yunhwi.
"All of you—kill them where they stand!"
With that, he commanded the corrupted ones. Yunhwi's blade collided violently with Seonghwi's, and the guards were forced into ceaseless battle against the corrupted things—creatures that no cut could wound and no killing could destroy.
"Your Highness! There is a way to break the curse!"
Myeong-do shouted across the fray, cutting down corrupted ones again and again as Yunhwi held Seonghwi at bay. At the mention of a countermeasure, Seonghwi faltered for a heartbeat.
"What is it, then!"
"I do not know it yet! But I swear, I will find it!"
Beheading a corrupted thing that had clamped its teeth toward the back of his neck, Myeong-do managed to free a single surviving guard pinned beneath the swarm. The guard rose shakily to his feet. Yunhwi spared Myeong-do only a glance.
"Your focus should be on me. Yes?"
In that instant, Seonghwi's blade grazed Yunhwi's cheek. Blood welled crimson. With a sneer threaded through his voice, Seonghwi taunted him and swung his arm again. Yunhwi deflected the sword that hurtled toward his throat.
"The shaman Yeomga stands behind all of this!"
"I know it! Is there nothing else you can tell me!"
Before either realized it, Myeong-do and Yunhwi stood back to back, facing down the enemies arrayed before them.
Beings human—yet no longer human.
Seonghwi was no different. He had abandoned his brother, abandoned his father, abandoned his people—having thrown it all away, he still breathed, yet could hardly be called among the living.
"That name—Yeomga! It was never that shaman's name at all!"
Yunhwi met Seonghwi's blade once more and drove him back. The sword had skimmed perilously close across his abdomen, and Seonghwi clenched his jaw against the pain.
"It is the name of the child she never bore!"
A child never born.
Myeong-do faltered at the unfamiliar intelligence. But there was no room for composure—the immortal corpse he had just felled rose again and hurled itself at him.
"Grrrk…!"
With its milky eyes rolled back and blood streaming from its mouth, the undead thing was threatening by its very existence.
One of the corrupted ones lunged to sink its teeth into his wrist. Myeong-do hastily severed it.
Then his eyes darted to his own wrist, afraid the Five Blessings String Seoryeong had tied there might have come loose.
A shaman who takes the name of her unborn child. The Five Blessings String. Seoryeong, who once sheltered under Yeomga's roof. And then Jeong-an. His thoughts a tangle, he recalled something from long ago.
Seoryeong had stood staring at the Five Blessings Strings laid out across the market stalls.
"Do you wish to buy a new one?"
"No… what would I need one for?"
"You cannot take your eyes off them."
"It's just… they remind me of old times."
Seoryeong had a hopeless weakness for anything expensive. Myeong-do had heard her maxim—that the shinier and prettier a thing was, the more it cost—so often it was practically nailed into his ears.
And yet why, he had always wondered, did she wear that cheap, unadorned Five Blessings String on her wrist for so very long?
"Jeong-an never used to buy me things like this. She was a firm believer that money must be earned honestly, always. So of course there was never any spare. And whatever we did manage to set aside, she'd go and give to beggars again. Every single time."
Fingering the strings spread across the market, Seoryeong had smiled faintly, as if remembering her days with Jeong-an.
The strings came in endless variety: a turtle for longevity, a yellow butterfly for wealth, a tiger for peace and health, a water lily for virtue, and a white chrysanthemum for a peaceful death.
"Me, well… I never had one. There was no one to buy it for me. Truth be told, I could have afforded it with what I scraped together wandering from place to place. I just didn't want to spend my own money on it. Although… once, before, I did ask someone to buy it for me…."
Seoryeong's voice had trailed off. It wasn't hard to guess whom she had begged. It would have been Yeomga.
Nearby, people deliberated at length over the richly embroidered strings, for in Yeomhoguk it was custom to tie at least one to every child before they came of age.
"Anyway. Jeong-an and I went to market one day, and it happened to be the spring festival again. A merchant asked me whether I fancied the turtle, and I told him I'd die young anyway, so what use was that—give me the yellow butterfly instead."
A thread of loneliness had bled through Seoryeong's eyes.
"And you know what Jeong-an said? She just told me to come along for now. So I threw a tantrum, right then and there. Who do you think you are, refusing to buy me one lousy string? I carried on until she finally took my hand and pulled me up. I was still crying for it on the walk back to the hut, and Jeong-an just held my hand quietly the whole way…."
That was why, despite owning a fortune in priceless treasures, Seoryeong had worn a cheap Five Blessings String on her wrist.
"But then, would you believe it—I woke up the next morning, and there it was, right in front of me. At the time I couldn't understand it. Why refuse at first if you were going to buy it anyway?"
Because Jeong-an had truly loved her. And because even without a word, Seoryeong had known it all along.
"I found out later. That back then, she didn't have enough money for even a single string. So while I slept, Jeong-an wandered the mountains all night digging up wild herbs, and at dawn she traded every last one of them at market… for just that one string…."
It was the tail end of spring, before the last cold snap had lifted. Jeong-an must have dug through that whole freezing dawn, her hands numb from churning up the frozen earth, barely feeling the pain—wrestling the whole while with which blessing she ought to give Seoryeong first.
That was the string that poor, humble Jeong-an had strained herself to buy.
And why, then—why had Yeomga, drowning in wealth, refused to buy the single string that Seoryeong begged for, over and over? That cheap little thing?
Feed her the finest food, dress her in the finest cloth, let her taste every happiness to its fullest—and only then turn her into Yeommae. That would make the spell all the more potent.
Then it happened.
Something caught Myeong-do's eye.
Something that flashed into view, again and again, with every swing of the corrupted one's arm—unmistakably—
"The Five Blessings String!"
Myeong-do swept his arm in a great arc.
A single stroke of his blade sent three of them flying. He carved through the corrupted ones clawing at him like a whirlwind, scattering them in every direction.
Myeong-do seized the wrist of the corrupted one wearing the Five Blessings String around it. Sensing its annihilation on instinct, the corrupted ones surged toward him in a ravening tide.