The One Who Finds Me

I bit down hard on my lip. My throat had been burning since a while ago.

Something surged up in my chest, and I swallowed it down with a hard gulp. Then I called for Boksun once more.

"Boksun…!"

I could feel the tip of my nose turning red. A teardrop slid down along my lashes, tracing a line down my cheek.

I have to find her. I have to. That was the only thought left in my head. Director So's voice faded further and further away.

"Cut…."

The same scene was shot again and again from several different angles. The check shirt I wore had long since been soaked through. Jeong Yeon-doo, who had even taken a fall in the meantime, was a sight beyond repair.

Even while Dokgo Gyeol worked the wound makeup onto my cheek, my mind kept circling back to Boksun, that little dog who'd trailed after me everywhere.

Everything Jeong Yeon-doo had seen, heard, and felt filled my head to bursting.

The dog dealer. Boksun. A wedding invitation from a classmate who never once called, the little plums, the basket of corn, the village chief's hat, the phone call with my mother. Everything I wanted to take responsibility for—

"Yeo-reum, careful—!"

I climbed down a ladder into a pit that had been dug out in advance. My waterlogged hands made the rungs slick and treacherous.

I took a breath in that place where nothing but dirt pressed in from every side. The damp, earthy smell clung wetly to the tip of my nose. There was no way out in any direction I looked.

I closed my eyes for a moment. I knew how the rest of the script went, but in this instant, at the very bottom, it felt as though no one on earth would reach a hand down to me.

In this place, dark and sodden and suffocating, the useless Han Yeo-reum—no, Jeong Yeon-doo—was left utterly alone.

Clack—!

The sound of the slate struck from somewhere impossibly far away. My mind registered it, but my ears felt muffled and dull. I heard the take number being called, the scene number. Director So's action cue as well. But I simply drew in one slow breath.

And then.

"…"

Slowly, I opened my eyes.

Water burst from the water tanker's hose and came hammering down like a torrential downpour. In no time at all, a puddle had pooled at the bottom of the pit.

My whole body was trembling with the effort. Straining to solve the situation somehow, I pushed myself upright.

I was covered head to toe in mud. I picked up the flashlight that had fallen in with me.

"…"

But no matter how many times I flicked the switch, it refused to turn on. In that pitch-black pit, I was utterly, hopelessly stranded.

Nothing, not one single thing, was going my way.

"…Why…."

My voice came out shaking. Only now did the tears begin to fall, impossible to stop.

"Why is it that for me, it's always… always like this…."

My jaw muscles ached. The price of clenching down so I wouldn't stutter over my lines. I could feel my tears, gone lukewarm where they mixed with the cold rain.

"No matter how hard I ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠try, why is it always… why am I always alone."

The tips of my rain-soaked fingers had gone soft and swollen. My voice echoed faintly off the walls of the pit.

"Why… I never, I never asked anyone to care…!"

The end of the sentence cracked in an ugly way, grievances smeared thick through every syllable. I wanted to hurl my resentment at anything, at everything, blindly.

"It was never even my business, but I treated it all— all of it!— like it was mine! Why is it that for all of you, it's always your business first!!! No one, not one of you, ever cared about me— no one…."

At last, the words I had been holding back poured out. The things I'd wanted to scream, just once, at every single person who had ever leaned on Jeong Yeon-doo and walked away.

Even now, the compulsion to hold the emotion in check pressed down on the back of my neck. I couldn't let my anger run free.

"Then what am I supposed to…."

I lifted my head and looked up out of the pit. My vision had blurred into a haze.

The lights on the crane blazed above me. They hung there, dazzling, like a world entirely separate from the place where Jeong Yeon-doo lay buried.

I bit my lip hard. Hard enough to draw blood.

And then—

Woof!

Like a lie, from beyond the edge of the pit came the sound I had been aching to hear.

"…Boksun?"

Up there above me, Boksun was looking down at my face.

Panting, soaked into a sodden little ball of fur, she gazed at me as though she couldn't be happier—as though I were the only one she had been searching for, the only one she had been waiting for all along.

Before I knew it, I was smiling through ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠my tear-drenched face.

Woof! Woof!

Boksun barked at me in that high, bright voice, as if trying to strike up a conversation. And from somewhere in the distance, a small voice drifted down.

"Village chief—! Is she down there?"

"That Boksun's something else, I swear…."

They had come looking for Jeong Yeon-doo. I stood there blankly for a moment, and only then could I finally burst into great, heaving sobs.

"Th-that's, huk, I'm not going to be chief…! I said I won't do it…! Waaah…!!!"

"Aigoo. Elder here opened his mouth wrong and now look, you've gone and made her cry."

"Who knew she'd hate being chief that much…."

Maybe it was the situation that did it. Those voices I'd been flinching away from only days ago somehow felt like comfort now.

Now, even when I cried, there were people to soothe me. The relief that rose out of that simple fact.

I wept as I scrubbed roughly at my face with both hands, wiping away the rain.

The status window had appeared, announcing that every single person on set was now focused on me.

Only now did my senses come drifting back, one by one. The focus that had let me plunge so madly into Jeong Yeon-doo's emotions slowly went dim.

"Yeo-reum! Grab the line and climb up!"

"Doesn't someone need to brace her from below?"

Above the rim of the pit, Director So, PD Hwang, Dokgo Gyeol and Dokgo Min—every last one of the extras, too—were all looking down at me.

"Jeong Yeon-doo… that was incredible…."

Director So smiled and reached his hand down to me. Freezing cold, dead white, my hand clasped his—and warmth spread into it.

That's right. I am Jeong Yeon-doo.

The protagonist of this drama.

‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠

When today's shoot ended, I could shoot again tomorrow. That ordinary, obvious truth made me happy all over again.

And in the very moment I climbed free of the pit—

Status windows flashed up one after another without pause, praising my performance. Wrapped in an enormous towel, I grinned as brightly as I could.

The cries of insects in the grass filled the night.

I can't sleep.

Dokgo Min couldn't fall asleep. Looking down at Yeo-reum slumbering obliviously in the next bed, she found herself seized by a strange feeling.

How does she do it?

The performance Yeo-reum had shown earlier just would not leave her eyes. That heartbroken face, sobbing that no one ever came looking for her. Even through the water the tanker had drenched her with, the tracks of those tears had been unmistakable. Dokgo Min had stepped out of the lodging.

"…Couldn't sleep either?"

"Guess you couldn't either, Director."

Outside the lodging, Dokgo Min found Director So smoking a cigarette. He apparently hadn't been able to sleep either; the ashtray at his feet was heaped with butts.

"Sleep just… won't come."

"Same here."

"Right? And that's exactly why… I can't drift off. You know how it is. I want to see the result—soon, even a little sooner…."

The adrenaline unique to people who create seemed to rule her whole body. Again and again, the spliced-together scenes sharpened in her mind toward the moment they would become a finished whole.

"When we shoot in Seoul… come watch then too."

"…"

"That way, when I work on the stills later… I'll be able to keep exactly what I felt today. Not just pretty pictures—something you can know, beyond the frame…."

Director So had shrewdly rearranged the shooting schedule. He had flipped the order of the drama, resetting the timeline so that the dry, gray city scenes would be filmed after the location shoot.

Jeong Yeon-doo was to appear in that gray city just a little more worn down by the outdoor shoot, a little subtly thinner.

"Let's do this right, all of us…."

Grounding out his cigarette in the ashtray, Director So spoke like a man making a vow.

"Everything we felt today… let's make the audience feel every last bit of it…."

Left alone, Dokgo Min turned that afternoon's Han Yeo-reum over in her mind once more.

Jeong Yeon-doo, forcing down her emotions alone with a strangled sort of violence, unable to let them properly burst free, swallowing them back down again. And yet the sobs that leaked out through the cracks had been achingly vivid.

Two status windows had bloomed into being at the same instant, shimmering brightly as they lit over the sleeping Yeo-reum.