I'm Just Ant Number One
"Ms. Yeon-doo! Got a charger? USB-C~."
Jeong Yeon-doo sat where she was, face perfectly blank, while—
"Ms. Yeon-doo~."
—the people around her harangued her all day long, and—
"Ms. Yeon-doo!"
—harangued her some more.
"Ms. Yeon-doo. You know that file from last time? No, not that one. Not that one either. The… the-the-the… what was it called again? The one I sent you. No! The one I sent you! Try to remember, please!"
It had reached the point where even things a person could easily do herself were all being dumped into Yeon-doo's lap.
Ah. I know that feeling. That exact situation….
The office worker watching the screen felt an odd, involuntary flash of sympathy. Yeon-doo simply worked on, saying nothing. The only sound she made was the steady rhythm of her typing.
Clack-clack— clack-clack— clack-clack—.
Having spent the whole day at the company doing far more than her fair share of grunt work, Yeon-doo dragged herself onto the evening subway home. Because she'd also had to clean up a mess one of her teammates had made, she'd missed clocking out on time, and for a moment she just sat and closed her eyes.
Bzzz— bzzz—.
Barely a second after she tried to rest, the phone started shrieking. A college classmate she wasn't even close to. Yeon-doo hesitated — the call cut off, then immediately rang again — and with the second buzz she had no choice but to press accept.
"Oh, Seong-yoon. It's been a while."
"Yeon-doo~~~! I honestly thought you'd died! Why do you never contact meee? What are you even up to these days!"
On the other end of the line, the owner of that perky voice poured out her own words without the slightest interest in anything Yeon-doo might say back.
"Oh, oh, wait — did you see my SNS? You never read my stories! I'm genuinely hurt…."
"Work's just been busy. I made the account and barely ever log in."
"Then you don't know I'm getting married, right? Hm?"
Here it comes, the office worker thought, unwittingly knitting her brows.
"So anyway, Yeon-doo yah! I need you to host my bridal shower~."
The ominous premonition had been dead on. Before Yeon-doo could utter a single word of refusal, the voice on the other end flooded the line with her plans.
"You'll do the shower with the girls, and I'll hand out the invitations that day! You're so good at organizing these get-togethers, Yeon-doo, I'm already so excited! My other friends all say ugh, why do we have to arrange everything, and honestly they just burst into tears saying they're too busy to help — and I'm already dying of busyness as it is."
"…When was the last time we actually saw each other?"
"Ages ago! You graduated a whole term off from us, remember, so our timing never matched. Anyway, between bridal prep and the trousseau my head is in a hundred pieces right now. Yeon-doo yah, help me out. You know my taste, right?"
"It's been over three years since we last saw each other… and you want me to throw your bridal shower?"
"Mmhm! You're dying to see the wedding shoot, aren't you, Yeon-doo? I'll text you a few pics! The shower cake could have my wedding-photo lettering on it, that'd be so cute~. Fresh flowers on the cake would be lovely too! Oh — hold on, another call. I'll text you later~."
Is she out of her mind — the words rose up on their own. In the space of a single breath, the office worker had transferred her entire soul into Jeong Yeon-doo.
"Oh, and for the studio — nothing in a basement, please! I want a place with huge windows and tons of sunlight!"
Click.
And just like that, the call ended. Yeon-doo sat frozen, clutching her phone. Even so, the subway glided on, unhurried, across the Han River bridge, and for a moment the beautiful night skyline of Seoul unfolded outside the window.
As if Yeon-doo were nothing more than Ant No. 1 in the colony that made up this society.
Riding the red bus home, the office worker realized she had, at some point, become completely glued to the screen.
"This is the one!"
Ae-ta-mi's eyes sparkled as she flicked back and forth between her tablet and her phone. It stung a little that Yeo-reum's first-ever terrestrial broadcast role was a single-episode drama, but that regret dissolved almost as fast as it had come.
After the web drama, now even a one-off gets its own live thread….
Live threads — the real-time comment arenas where drama addicts gathered to react and commiserate together as a show aired — were usually reserved for long-running series. You generally needed at least twelve episodes before anyone bothered spinning one up.
And this thing is a single episode!
And yet, following hard on the heels of Pachehi, Not Interested At All had planted its flag on the drama boards without a hint of shame. That was entirely thanks to the historic shockwave Pachehi had sent through the community. Not a single soul argued that starting a live thread for a one-episode drama was going too far.
"I was just channel-surfing and stumbled on Pi Chae-won and got SO excited lolol but everyone was already packed in here T_T T_T who's directing this??"
Ae-ta-mi refreshed the page over and over, watching the comments pile up in real time. Having watched thousands of dramas, thousands of actors, and thousands of directors in her day, she could draw an exact, statistically airtight conclusion.
"This one, for real, at this rate…!"
She had in fact predicted early cancellation for the drama that aired before this one, based on the first episode alone.
"Is our Yeo-reum about to become a trust-and-watch actress for the whole nation?"
At that very moment, Yeo-reum's irritated shriek rang out from beyond the screen.
"What the — why won't the water come out?"
On a hot, muggy summer night, Yeon-doo had come home longing for a cold shower, only to rattle the shower lever again and again with nothing to show for it. The landlord didn't pick up when she called; a half-hearted text did the explaining instead.
They say that when a person is ridiculous enough, you don't even get angry. Jeong Yeon-doo's situation was exactly that. And then the messages just kept coming.
Through the thin, soundproofing-free windows of the villa drifted the drunken snickering of people out on the street, undiluted. From the apartment above came the pounding of a hammer to round out the symphony. Yeon-doo simply turned her phone off. Hollow music drifted through the empty apartment.
"Seoul housing. Eighty million won for the deposit, six hundred fifty a month in rent, fifty thousand in maintenance fees. Not a small sum of money, by any measure."
Yeo-reum's voice settled over the slow, dragging melody. It was a voice with emotion pressed down and packed away at the bottom, and beneath the effort of clawing back some composure, a faint irritation bled through, impossible to hide.
"By now, I've surely earned the right to a little kindness and warmth of my own. So why is it always…."
The screen faded to black over the calm narration. A small sigh could be heard. When the picture brightened again, Yeon-doo's day flowed on, exactly the same as before.
"Ms. Yeon-doo!"
"Ms. Yeon-doo~."
"Ms. Yeon-doo."
From every direction people came hunting for her, determined to foist some wretched chore or other onto her, and—
The landlord was no different. Each time it happened, the clatter of Yeon-doo's keys grew faster. And in the corner of her monitor, a window like this one sat open:
Settlement Amount: ₩437,000,000
On one half of her dual monitor sat the web novel's royalty statement, displaying a figure that positively defied belief.
"HOLY— AAAAAH hahahahaha what even IS that title T_T lmaooooo"
"That grind energy was honestly next-level,, she works like THAT and she's running a whole second job on top lolololololol"
"How many zeroes is that in her account,, Ma! Yeon-doo, quit your job already!!!"
Somewhere along the way, nobody was thinking about Pi Chae-won anymore. On the other side of the screen, Yeo-reum had become Jeong Yeon-doo, body and soul. Yeon-doo, who had just finished sending off the story of an acacia-tree noble lady who was praised for merely breathing and achieved absolutely everything she set out to do, clicked the next file.
Resignation Letter — Template
Download this file?
Excited, anticipatory music began to swell — music that made you crave the next scene. Ae-ta-mi felt it in her bones.
"This one… for a single episode, it's going to be something."
For a mere pinch-hit gig, the production quality was high to the point of absurdity.
The office worker watched Jeong Yeon-doo's retreat to the countryside — which was, quite literally, the dream of every office worker in the country. In that red bus full of exhausted people, she alone had eyes that glowed.
Still, Yeon-doo's name was being called from every corner. And still, Yeon-doo packed her boxes, neat and methodical.
"That's quite a lot of stuff. Shall we put any of it in storage for you?"
"No, it's fine. I'm throwing all of it away."
Yeon-doo's next stop after leaving the company was the hair salon. The Jeong Yeon-doo reflected in the mirror still wore her fatigue, and yet something about her seemed a little different.
"Looks like you're off somewhere nice."
"Yes. I like it."
Her once-plain black hair had been transformed into a color so bright and blooming she could barely remember it, and for the first time, Yeon-doo smiled.
Upbeat music rang out. A xylophone chimed, light and bright, spreading through the room — as if the heavy, gray murk in her chest had been replaced entirely.
"Here I go. To a place where no~body has any interest in me, and I have no interest in any~body at all."
The narration played, and with it, Jeong Yeon-doo's destination changed — from Unit 201 of the rose-brick villa tucked into a corner of the villa village, to the inside of a train.
Hauling her heavy suitcase over the train's iron threshold, Yeon-doo staggered and half-collapsed onto the sofa. It was just as empty as her old apartment — but the sunlight streaming in through the window was radiant.
"…"
For a moment, Yeon-doo took that sunlight in with quiet eyes, as if savoring it.
BA-BA-BAAM—!
And then it came. The sound of a fist pounding on a door.
"…Who is it?"