Daegu-haeng Filming Begins
The set was chaos.
With more than a hundred people packed into a single location, maybe the chaos was only to be expected. I made my way over to the director.
"Ah. You're here."
Director Hong Jun-seok looked thoroughly exhausted.
"Are you all right?"
"I'm fine. Pulling all-nighters is just part of making a movie."
"Then at least drink this while you work."
Mom held out a bottle of Bacchus.
"I'll enjoy it. Thank you."
Of course she hadn't brought one just for the director. The staff were grinding just as hard as he was, so she'd packed enough for all of them.
"Whew. I'm nervous."
"Yeah."
For the record, Park Ha-jun had come along to the set as well. He wasn't here to spectate. He'd passed the Daegu-haeng audition too.
What's he thinking?
I'd looked over Ha-jun's script, and he actually had a decent amount of screen time.
Wasn't there only one kid with a real role in Daegu-haeng?
I remembered it clearly. In Daegu-haeng, the only child with any real presence was the protagonist's daughter.
Hmm. So they changed it.
Maybe the storyline had been tweaked a little. In the end, the story was the director's call. If he'd decided to change it, he could change it.
And I'm probably the reason.
Obviously this was a change that existed because of me — someone who hadn't been around in my previous life.
Well, it shouldn't be a problem.
The director had his own vision, and a child actress like me had no authority to meddle with the story. No point worrying about it.
Even a director wouldn't completely overhaul the storyline right before filming.
The broad strokes would be the same as in my past life. That was my guess.
Director Hong Jun-seok was thinking.
The rewrite is so much better.
He had his reasons. Take the scene that served as Daegu-haeng's true beginning — the appearance of the first infected.
Originally, a civil servant was supposed to be patient zero. But that had no punch.
A government worker turning into a zombie is just too played out.
Even knowing it was stale, he hadn't been able to come up with anything better, so he'd been ready to push ahead with it anyway. Then he saw Park Ha-jun, and it clicked.
That kid is the first infected.
A twist nobody sees coming is what pulls an audience under.
Have him board the train with his mother to visit his father, who's working in Daegu.
And if the mother gets bitten by her own son? Right from the opening, you have a world where a mother and child both turn into zombies. The whole thing snaps into place.
Give him a conversation with the protagonist's daughter, too.
He intended to give the boy enough presence that no one would ever suspect he was patient zero.
More than anything, that face is the justification.
Park Ha-jun's face was genuinely something else. He came up short next to Lee Yena, sure — but that was only because Lee Yena had a face that ranked among the finest on the planet. On his own terms, Ha-jun was stunning.
Audiences unconsciously assume that if someone is beautiful, they must have a bigger role.
There's no other child actor who can even stand next to Lee Yena.
He'd seen plenty of child performers over the years, and he had never encountered one whose looks surpassed Park Ha-jun's.
Lee Yena has to be set aside in her own category.
Asking anyone to go toe-to-toe with her face was just cruel.
Haaah~
Hong Jun-seok was buzzing with anticipation. If the film played out the way he'd rewritten it, he couldn't wait to see what kind of reaction it would set off. He could barely stand the wait.
I'll have to hold out for a year, though.
Daegu-haeng was a zombie picture, which meant a long shoot and a mountain of CG work. A year until release was simply the reality.
Well. We'll just have to push the quality high enough to match.
It was the kind of thought that would have made the cast and crew faint on the spot. Hong Jun-seok shifted his gaze forward.
Lee Yena and Park Ha-jun were about to begin.
Am I the only one who's nervous?
Now that we were actually rolling, Park Ha-jun didn't look tense at all. Which, honestly, was fine by me.
That just means I only have to worry about my own performance.
This shoot had the two of us talking, so both of us needed to be good.
Okay. Focus.
The role I'd been given was the protagonist's daughter. She was in the film from start to finish, which meant a considerable amount of screen time.
I have to go all the way under.
To do this properly, I needed to become Lee Ha-neul completely. I started by calling up who she was.
She's mature.
Unusually so for a child. She understood her father, at least to a point, and she had the kind of mental fortitude that let her stay calm even after the zombies appeared.
And she's pure.
You could call her the sole conscience in Daegu-haeng and it wouldn't be an exaggeration. She was a genuinely good kid.
In my last life, I never could have played her.
My previous life had been buried in darkness. When Dad — one of the only two lights I had — died, and Mom, my last remaining hope, was laid out by cancer, I lost every reason to keep going. I only forced myself to stay alive because she was still breathing.
I had already started coming apart from the moment she collapsed. So when she finally died of that cancer, I lost all hope and ended it.
But this life was different.
Dad was alive. He was going to stay alive. And Mom would be healthy. The overwork that had caused her cancer in the last life was something she would never have to do in this one.
That's why I make money.
That was the reason. I'd been tormented by money in my previous life. I never wanted to suffer for it again.
I'm not unhappy anymore.
My family was living a happy life, and I was living a happy life too. That was why I would be able to play a character as pure as Lee Ha-neul.
Unlike the last one, this life had been lived in the light.
"Where are you going?"
The acting had begun.
I'd learned that movies and dramas don't actually shoot in order. A scene from the opening might be the last thing you film. A scene from the ending might be the first.
The part I was shooting first wasn't from the finale, but it wasn't from the very beginning either. It was early — just not that early.
I turned to the boy I'd only just met on the train and asked him a question.
"Where are you going?"
"Daegu."
"You too? I'm going to Daegu. How come you're going there?"
"To see my dad."
For a second I froze. Did this kid have the same situation I did? The next thing he said cleared up the misunderstanding.
"My dad's living in Daegu for work! He's coming back next year, but I wanted to see his face, so I decided to go find him myself!"
"Oh."
Good. It wasn't the same as mine. Not the divorced-parents kind of situation.
"Where are you going?"
"I'm going to Daegu too."
"How come you're going to Daegu?"
"To see my mom."
"Is your mom in Daegu for work, like my dad?"
The words stuck in my throat.
No. She's not.
My mom wasn't in Daegu for work. She was living there because she and Dad had gotten divorced. But explaining that to a boy I'd just met felt like too much, so I just lied.
"Yeah. My mom's living in Daegu for work too."
I felt Dad flinch in the seat beside me. I didn't take it back.
"You're so lucky! You get to see your mom after so long!"
"Mm. Of course."
I was passing the time talking to a boy I'd only just met when I saw someone collapse onto the floor, body twitching.
"What's wrong with that person?"
"Is he sick?"
Voices rose around us. Lee Seo-yul, who couldn't just sit there and watch, stood up and reached the fallen man faster than anyone else.
"Are you okay?"
He'd bolted before anyone could stop him, so I just watched from behind.
I don't like this.
Something felt wrong. I couldn't tell where the feeling was coming from.
"Ghhhk!"
"Sorry? What did you say?"
"Kraaaaagh!"
The unease hit its peak — and then it happened.
The man on the floor bit the boy I'd been talking to just a moment ago.
He bit him...?
Something was wrong. Why would he bite him? There was no reason on earth for a human being to bite another human being.
Then I understood.
"Ghhhk!"
The boy who had been smiling and talking about going to see his dad let out a sound that could not, by any stretch, be called human language.
A zombie...?
It looked exactly like a zombie had appeared. Except zombies didn't exist in this world.
"Ha-neul!"
"Huh.... Dad?"
"We have to run!"
Dad scooped me up and started moving — toward the rear cars, where there were no zombies. Even as we fled, the infection kept spreading.
The boy I'd been talking to a moment ago bit his own mother.
"Seo-yul? What's gotten into you? Are you sick? Stop playing around..."
"Kieeeek!"
"Aaaaagh!"
A scream tore through the car.
In the chaos, people began shoving toward the rear cars in a mindless crush. Luckily, Dad's instincts had been fast. I made it out alive.
I asked him,
"Dad, are we going to make it to Mom? Alive?"
Dad answered.
"Of course we are....!"
His voice was shaking.
In that moment, I understood. Making it to Mom alive was going to be hard.
Hong Jun-seok called it with a look of pure exhilaration on his face.
It had been that perfect. The performance he'd just watched matched the scene in his head down to the last frame. A smile spread across his face before he even realized it.
He couldn't help it. He had a feeling this movie was going to work.
It was starting to seem as though he had discovered the one and only moon on Earth.