Like Yeon-doo
Summer was starting to look like she'd grown used to the rural life. Her sneakers, worn bent sideways, said it all.
"Now I'll walk through the blocking. Rehearsal starting—!"
Yeo-reum came into the village hall dressed in a white t-shirt, a loose plaid overshirt, and jeans, her hair tossed up into a careless ponytail. She looked exactly like Jeong Yeon-doo, worn down by a mountain of odd jobs.
"You're SO cute!"
So this was why they called it pet therapy. Director So had a gift for this sort of thing. The puppy—a creature tailor-made for a countryside shoot—bounced on his toes before her, tail whipping back and forth.
"That's Boksun… the puppy the village chief's dog had last month…."
I gathered Boksun into a hug. A wave of that unmistakable puppy smell washed over me. She licked at my face eagerly, as delighted to see me as I was her.
"What am I supposed to do? I'm supposed to yell at her. Director, what if Boksun hates me?"
Her role was to be the dog that trailed stubbornly after Jeong Yeon-doo as she stormed out of the village hall in a huff.
"You'll be fine… Yeo-reum-ssi. Just do it the way Yeon-doo would."
Do it like Yeon-doo. A wonderfully vague instruction.
Boksun was palm-sized, squishy and soft and warm. Ever since I'd come to this village, she seemed like the only living thing that had granted me anything resembling a moment of rest.
Like Yeon-doo would….
I stepped into the village hall as the rehearsal had it, gripped the door handle, and waited for the action cue.
Then came the clap of the slate.
"Action!"
I pushed open the village hall door and stepped out. The instant she heard me, Boksun came running, tail wagging furiously. Then she clung to my leg, whimpering, demanding to be petted.
"…."
Han Yeo-reum would have petted her on the spot. But right now, I was Jeong Yeon-doo.
First things first—fix my expression.
No matter how much that round little ball of white fluff rolled around at my feet, right now I was a woman for whom everything in the world was a chore. Only moments ago I'd finished helping a grandmother set up her mobile digital certificate.
I am not adding more work to my plate.
If I so much as played with this puppy for a few minutes, the grandmothers might catch wind of it again. Which meant another long lecture about how I should become the village chief.
Everything's a hassle. I'm out of here.
Without a trace of regret, I turned on my heel and left the village hall behind me.
I could see the cameras tracking me. I kept my eyes forward and walked on without meeting their gaze.
Something like… half-aware.
And then something very small snagged at my attention.
Nothing major—just a tiny flaw in the perfection of the moment.
I could feel Boksun whimpering behind me, following my trail.
I hadn't petted her once. I hadn't said a single word to her. And still she'd come bounding up, asking to play.
Ah. Now I get it.
Something Jeong Yeon-doo would actually do occurred to me.
"Director, one moment. Would it be alright if I adjusted the blocking?"
Director So readjusted the camera positions and marveled all over again.
…This, this wasn't in my head at all.
What he'd imagined was a Yeon-doo who, however indifferent she looked at Boksun, couldn't quite help a faint smile—the kind of resigned amusement that says there's nothing to be done about it. He hadn't expected her to dig this deeply into what Jeong Yeon-doo was actually feeling.
"I want to run ahead and leave Boksun behind."
"Why…? Why would you…?"
"Because I want her to follow me anyway. Yeon-doo, I mean."
Han Yeo-reum's interpretation had touched something even Director So hadn't grasped.
"Yeon-doo is crushed under her sense of responsibility, but I think she feels her own reason for existing through helping others. Otherwise… there's no way she'd oblige every single request from strangers she'd never met before."
The camera reset was complete. Yeo-reum went back inside the hall, and Boksun was held for a moment by one of the staff. The frame was set a little wider than before, capturing the countryside scenery in one clean, sweeping composition.
"…Action!"
Director So called for Yeo-reum again. The closed door of the village hall swung open without a moment's hesitation.
"Woof!"
The instant the staff loosened their grip, Boksun bolted.
Just as before, she wagged her tail as though she couldn't contain her joy at seeing me. She clung to my leg and bounced up and down, rolled over to beg for pets, belly up.
"Even with nothing offered to her, I think Yeon-doo would be helpless against someone who gives her affection from the very start. And I think she runs because a being like that is instinctively unfamiliar to her."
A creature that had never existed in Jeong Yeon-doo's life. A puppy who welcomed her with no conditions whatsoever.
Yeon-doo watched Boksun for a brief moment, then turned her back. Her steps quickened.
"Get out of here."
Yeo-reum, walking away with cold detachment, and Boksun, trailing after her with everything she had, were caught in a single frame. Beyond the unpaved dirt road, green leaves swayed in the wind. The fierce summer sun poured down on the two of them, fresh and bright.
"I said GO!"
Yeo-reum's brisk walk broke into a run. But thanks to her bent-out-of-shape sneakers, she couldn't build up any speed.
Boksun caught up to her in no time. And when Yeo-reum paused her flight, the puppy flopped belly-up before her yet again.
"…What a nuisance. Honestly."
Only then did Yeo-reum bend down and extend a hand toward Boksun.
Her movements were awkward, as if she hadn't handled dogs often—miles away from the hands that gripped a screwdriver, turned screws, and tapped through a banking app. Hopelessly clumsy.
"Why are you licking my hand so much?"
Boksun lapped at Yeo-reum's fingers with abandon.
The old Yeo-reum would have yanked her hand back, calling it filthy. Instead, she looked down at the puppy and murmured,
"Hungry?"
As if on cue, Boksun let out a soft whimper.
"…Okay."
Director So quietly signaled the end of the scene.
"Director! Should we set up for another take?"
asked the camera operator, who had sprinted the whole shot handheld.
But the question was moot. Director So shook his head.
"No need for another take…."
Approved in one. It was, in a word, perfect.
"We'll now begin the presentation."
At that very moment, a presentation for JC ENM's second-half performance was underway. The newly launched Web Content team had achieved a success unlike anything before it, and so the board had been redrawn from scratch.
"If you look at the final episode of Pachehi, you'll see the view count climbing steadily—past six million and into the seven millions. And after checking inside the InTube Studio, the average initial watch time in the opening segment sits at around five minutes and thirty-five seconds—"
They lived in an era where viewers who watched a video all the way through had become a rarity. Nothing like television, where the screen played on while you did something else entirely.
On a phone, there are simply too many choices.
If a video didn't hold your interest, you could scroll over to another social feed, reply to your backlog of messages, shop, or fire up a mobile game.
Easy access meant easy abandonment. It was the same coin, two sides.
And yet an average watch time of over five minutes.
Audiences sitting through a web drama—a pure snack-culture product—for that long meant exactly one thing.
"The metrics are telling us that we've outgrown 'snack culture' and need to produce a new kind of content. Accordingly, our Web Content division plans to produce web dramas back-to-back across the third and fourth quarters—"
The current of the times was shifting. Viewers would only grow more accustomed to the new content being made for InTube. Jegal Rok gave a slow nod.
"Subscribers demanding a Pachehi spin-off keep multiplying as well. Looking at the social media response, the fan-content creators with large followings are dissecting Pachehi's meaning and—"
No one rewatches a ten-minute video over and over to analyze it. It made more sense to spend that time moving on to the next thing.
And yet the viewers stayed even after the drama ended. Some went so far as to dissect and obsess over it the way they would a network-produced prestige drama.
What if there were a second and third Pachehi—and web dramas drew as much attention as cable-produced dramas?
Jegal Rok drummed on his calculator. If they could move faster into a wider world, without even needing to negotiate overseas distribution rights.
"Among the web drama scripts that have come in—the ones Team Leader Seong thought were promising. Can you show them now?"
"Yes. At the moment we're prioritizing school-life pieces with a similar tone to Pachehi. We have Fragments of Seventeen, The Sunday Library, and Graduation Day on the shortlist."
The projector clicked over to the PPT slides prepared for the second-half production push.
Jegal Rok thought of Han Yeo-reum once more. He couldn't pin down a clear reason. Only that his instinct kept circling back to her.
"What happened with the in-house production content we discussed last time?"
At Jegal Rok's question, Team Leader Seong pressed the remote. The projector screen changed.