The Muse of a Genius Photographer
Dokgo Min stared at the subject before her, unblinking. An unfamiliar color had seeped into a space she thought she knew by heart.
A hazy cloud of dust drifted out from between the blue lights she'd shoved into a corner ages ago, back when she'd had no use for them.
"Blue…."
Something was being pulled loose in Dokgo Min's mind, which until moments ago had been spinning without direction. Han Yeo-reum was drawing it out.
"I think this kind of lighting could work. Something new, instead of the usual. You're so gifted with color, sunbae—your instincts are always spot-on."
Dokgo Min had been suffering through a long slump, and she had tried everything to claw her way out of it.
That's it…. Why had this never occurred to me before?
She'd changed her studio, changed her camera, cycled through models without rest—but nowhere was there a single being capable of inspiring her.
"If I move the light like this—."
Yeo-reum adjusted the angle of the lamps, which hadn't yet warmed up. As the lights shifted, the glow wrapping her summer-bright face rippled and swayed.
That brief movement delivered a flood of sensation to Dokgo Min—cool, clear, vivid, and fresh, all at once.
"Han Yeo-reum…."
"This angle, right now."
In that instant, her murky inspiration took shape, crystallized in a breath.
"Good."
From the mouth of Dokgo Min, who never stopped chattering, came words stripped down to their essence.
There it is.
Yeo-reum smiled slyly, recalling an interview Dokgo Min had given before the regression.
"Inspiration? Hmm~… I'm honestly a bit scatterbrained. Before I start a shoot, my thoughts just won't organize themselves. But once something clicks? From that moment on, everything gets clean. My head, my mouth, all of it."
As if to prove Yeo-reum's memory right, the corners of Dokgo Min's mouth curled slowly upward.
Those catlike eyes swept over Yeo-reum without missing a flicker, as if to say they wouldn't let her out of their sight for even a second. It was the fierce, hungry gaze of someone agonizing over how to capture her perfectly inside the lens.
"Hmm~ Let me correct myself."
She drew close, tilting her head, studying Yeo-reum from every angle.
"It's not just that I like it…."
Dokgo Min poured longing into her eyes as she looked at Yeo-reum. Then she blinked hard, rhythmically.
Click, click. As if she were pressing a shutter against the air.
"I really like it."
Yeo-reum beamed at the verdict, a smile that suited the blue lighting to perfection.
In a flash, Dokgo Min's eyes lit up with joy.
"What am I doing standing here! Right now! This moment!"
She shouted and sprang into motion.
Clack, clack, clack.
She cranked the tripod high, readjusted the angle of the monitor beside her, yanked the battery out of the charging camera, and slammed it back in with rough, practiced hands.
The blue light of the lamps wrapped around her as she pushed her glasses up her nose.
"What are you doing? Don't just stand there in a daze—get over here!"
As she turned her head to call for Yeo-reum, confidence fell across her profile like a deep shadow.
"Because I'm about to show you a face you've never seen before."
Click—!
The sound of the shutter rang through the studio, filling it to the rafters.
It was the moment a muse was born for one of the nation's most celebrated photographers.
After hooking her camera up to the computer, Dokgo Min set about weeding out the keepers from the rest.
Grab a handful of A-cuts, delete everything else.
That had always been her method. Nothing below an A-cut would ever see the light of day again, and in the meantime it did nothing but hog storage.
"Hmm~ We've got a problem."
But as she scrolled rapidly through the shots, she found herself mired in an entirely different dilemma.
"What is it?"
"They're all A-cuts. Every single one of this many! My genius really does refuse to rust."
And it was true—every last one was an A-cut. No, a fair number of them went beyond that; you could have called them S-cuts and gotten away with it.
"So I thought I was in a slump—but it turns out that was just one step back to launch myself higher…. This talent of mine is honestly a little terrifying."
Dokgo Min tagged the files with little hearts, one by one, sorting them into folders.
Tak, tak, tak.
The click of the mouse never paused. She'd slipped into a trance so deep she couldn't even hear Yeo-reum calling to her from across the room.
Where did this kid even come from?
Acting major, wasn't it?
The model who'd come to her today was, quite literally, performing in front of the lens.
Every cut met the camera with a different gaze entirely.
There isn't a single frame worth throwing away, is there?
Han Yeo-reum had not been awkward in front of the lens for even one moment. Not one.
Where did she….
Even a professional model was expected to burn through her first few cuts warming up—that much was simply a given. A single photograph held a hundred variables: the way expression muscles moved, the precise angle of a face turned to catch the light, and on and on.
But what is she?
They say an actor speaks with the eyes—must speak every emotion through them, tell the story hidden inside them.
How can someone….
More than that, a true actor had to stir the viewer's curiosity with nothing but a gaze. Han Yeo-reum fulfilled every single condition.
She'll go far, won't she?
Every shot seemed to say: look at me. As though no amount of staring would ever be enough.
Tak, tak, tak.
Dokgo Min stroked through Han Yeo-reum's photographs and stayed up the whole night with them.
By the time dawn came, she had finished retouching every image without deleting a single one.
Something tells me I'm going to be pulling Han Yeo-reum's photos out again someday….
No—not someday. She was certain of it.
⚠ DEBUFF CLEARED: [Slump]
The user's locked skill [The Moment's Click] has been unlocked!
[Dokgo Min] has gained inspiration from you!
Your [First Title] has been granted!
"Finally!!!"
Several shimmering status windows had popped up at once, each with a soft humming chime, and I had received my very first title. When I pulled up my status window, the newly acquired title was glittering like a fresh prize.
Okay, this is actually pretty satisfying.
The second window held my reward for breaking Dokgo Min's debuff.
[Lucky Point] +300p
"Lucky Points?"
When I tapped the blinking arrow, a helpful explanation appeared.
Lucky Points: Currency used in the Item Shop. The Item Shop unlocks once you reach a certain level.
"So it's basically a video game system."
First, I'd need to grind my level up. That much was clear.
"In that case, let's knock out the rest of the mission."
Jiiing—.
Right on cue, my phone went off. It was Dokgo Min, sending over the photos.
"Perfect timing. Time to get uploading."
I clicked on the files she'd sent—and the scroll bar just kept going.
"How many photos… does she think I need?"
Anyone with a reputation like Dokgo Min's would have been generous just to hand over three or four shots, but she'd gone so far as to compress a gigantic file just to send me the whole thing.
"First things first—time to join an SNS."
I was still deliberating over which photos to post when I opened the app instead. I had deleted my Youstagram account going into my senior year of high school and never reactivated it, which meant my follower count sat at zero, my following count at zero.
"And I'll make a separate burner account, of course."
The entertainment industry was politics by another name.
If even one wrong person showed up in my follower list, a backlash was all but guaranteed.
Let's take a look at the connections of the actor who recently drank his way off a cliff!
"And even just counting the people at my school right now…."
As far as I knew, at least three of them would be gone—erased by scandal—in the not-so-distant future.
"No point getting tangled up with them for nothing."
And then there were all the people I had yet to meet. There was nothing to lose by being careful.
"I have exactly one goal."
To build a network solid enough to stand against Do Gyeo-ul's connections.
"Well then—shall we really get started?"
Because this was the shortest road to success.