A True Genius Shows Itself From the Very First Sprout (1)

I had always adapted to sudden, unforeseen situations faster than most people. It was the only kind of life where adaptation meant survival — and since I was the one who lived through all of it, I figured no further proof was needed.

But this? This I could not understand at all.

“……What on earth is this? Huh?”

Confronted with an absurdity that had slammed into me out of nowhere, I stared at the mirror for a long, long while.

It wasn't my voice. It wasn't my face.

“……Did I get plastic surgery while I was passed out?”

No. Even granting a hundred concessions, that hypothesis was impossible.

Because I'd grown up in hardship, I had always been on the short side. It's hard to grow tall when you can barely remember the last time you ate a proper meal.

Yet the figure reflected in the mirror now was unmistakably, undeniably tall — the kind of height anyone would describe as impressive, carried on a well-proportioned frame.

The face aside, there was no such thing as a surgery that could completely erase your natural bone structure and lengthen your body ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠by twenty centimeters without a single trace.

And besides — wasn't I a ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠terminal pancreatic cancer patient? If I'd had the strength left to survive an operation that massive, I would never have spent my final days whimpering about whether I was going to die or not.

“This definitely isn't a dream……”

My senses were alive. The situation defied all reason, but every nerve in my body was so vividly, unbearably awake that I couldn't refuse to accept this occult, possession-like phenomenon.

Smack!

Breaking off my dazed staring at the mirror, I slapped both of my cheeks lightly.

I had become someone else. Someone else entirely — a handsome young man, and a tall one at that.

Catching hold of my senses was late in coming, but I couldn't afford to stand around gaping forever. The longer my response was delayed, the more unpredictable the variables would become, so the right move was to find out what I could ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠actually do right now.

“First things first.”

The awkwardness of my suddenly elevated line of sight lasted only a moment before I set my body in motion and began surveying my surroundings.

A small pill bottle on the desk caught my eye. And the moment my gaze landed on the paper lying right beside it, I carefully picked up the neatly arranged sheet.

The A4 sheet was covered in words blurred and smeared with ink. So much of it had been destroyed that deciphering it would clearly take real effort — but the important thing wasn't the content of the writing. It was the letter itself.

“I can't tell what the story behind it was, but…”

No matter how many times I looked, the letter read as nothing other than a suicide note. And no wonder — there was no other explanation I could think of for why the pill bottle sitting next to the paper would be completely empty.

“Sleeping pills, huh……”

I set down the emptied bottle of sleeping pills and gently pulled open the desk drawer that had been left jutting out.

That was how I found the wallet and the smartphone.

“Han Seol…”

Everything this freshly minted adult possessed amounted to an ID card in a worn-out wallet and a little pocket cash. That was all.

As for the smartphone — perhaps he'd meant to erase every record of himself before turning his back on the world — there wasn't a shred of meaningful information left on it.

I checked the contact list too; every single entry had already been deleted. The only things remaining were two text messages, both already read.

Tap.

With a flicker of hope, I tapped the screen where the protective film had begun to peel away, and one short message and one long message appeared.

That was the first, the short one.

And that was the second, the long one.

Only now did it become clear that the man I had possessed, one Han Seol, had apparently been an aspiring actor. Granted, the "supporting extra" role he'd passed for was closer to a one-day gig than actual acting, but still.

“Hmm…”

I hummed low in my throat for a moment, studying the message glowing on the smartphone screen.

What had caught my eye was, of all things, the word drama.

Right up until the moment I lost my life, I had wanted to be an actor. Even if it was only as an extra — with that long-craved dream finally within arm's reach, how could my heart not stir?

“……Should I go?”

I knew nothing about Han Seol. Which meant that, for the sake of gathering information on the guy, I had every justification to go find the filming set.

Right. This was not some petty personal desire gripping me by the collar.

It was a necessary step in the intelligence-gathering process. Obviously.

So going was the correct decision. Yep, absolutely.

For all that KSM's special drama The Spy and I wore the label "special," the reality was that a pile of circumstances had stacked up and shoved it into the schedule as a last-minute stopgap.

A debut writer offering up a drama script for the very first time in her life.

A PD whose filmography technically existed, but consisted entirely of middling works and outright flops.

And two idols cast in a desperate bid to avoid the worst-case scenario.

The drama department's backing meant the budget wasn't exactly starving, but the harsh shooting conditions were simply an unavoidable fact of life.

“Are all the actors here?”

“The extras are on standby, and the two idols have pretty much all arrived.”

“Okay. Then go bring me the writer. It's our first day of shooting, so stay sharp too, Eun-bi. You know the drill, right?”

“Understood, PD-nim!”

But passion was something this team had never lacked.

To whoever sat upstairs with their hands behind their back, waiting on results, this might have been just another stopgap production — but to the people who threw themselves onto the set, this was their livelihood, and a line on their résumé in the making.

At PD Min Byung-dae's words, Cho Eun-bi, the assistant director, quickened her pace.

By the very nature of her job — handling the hundred — no, scratch that. Handling the hundred scattered tasks that kept a set running, controlling the onlookers was also her responsibility, so swift movement was non-negotiable.

But then.

“Excuse me.”

As Eun-bi darted around the set, a smooth, melting male voice drifted over from somewhere not far away.

“Is this the filming location for The Spy and I, by any chance?”

“Yes, that's right… huh?”

The moment Eun-bi turned her head toward the voice, she very nearly stopped breathing.

A strikingly handsome face, still young. His voice had cracked slightly, perhaps because he wasn't in the best condition, but his features were so well-defined that even that came off as a charm point. And that man was looking right at her.

For one short instant, Eun-bi went fully groggy. The man, watching her, offered an apologetic smile and dipped his head in a small bow.

“Ah, my apologies. I assumed you were staff.”

“Ah…? Ahh! I think so! No, wait — yes! You're in the right place! But, um, what can I do for you?”

At his question, Eun-bi fumbled for her phone.

He was an extra, so he had to be on the list of people expected at today's shoot. She was the one who'd sent the extras their messages, after all — and so, belting out a mental chorus of works for me, she opened her mouth toward him.

“May I have your name?”

“It's Han Seol.”

“Han Seol… Han Seol… Ah, here you are! Okay, if you head over there inside first—”

Eun-bi gave him the most thorough directions she was capable of.

In truth, the ironclad rule of this industry was that a late extra got cut without mercy and without exception.

But to Eun-bi, whose eyes had already rolled clean back into her head, such rules had long since sailed out of the park and over the stands.

“Thank you.”

“Ah.”

Han Seol bowed his head once more, then turned toward the set.

And Eun-bi, having completely forgotten that she was supposed to be finding the drama's writer, stood staring blankly at his retreating back for a good long while.

The moment when Han Seol — who hadn't yet acted a single scene — gained his very first fan.

It was summer.

“—We are beginning the shoot! Extras, please gather over here!”

At the assistant director's cry through the megaphone, the extras, who had each been resting in their own way around the set, stirred and rose to their feet.

Among them was me — who had been enjoying the tour of the set more than anyone else present.

This is fun.

Merely standing on a filming set made my heart pound.

Unlike my days as an agent, I didn't have to perform under the threat of death. That alone was a joy — and the fact that this was pure acting, no con jobs, no operations designed to deceive anyone, set me burning even hotter.

Admittedly, my role as an extra amounted to something like "Passerby No. 7."

The glare was harsh enough to roast skin off, and the heat shimmered up from the asphalt in slow, lazy curls. But to me, right now, the sunlight was simply a spotlight beaming down from the sky, and the asphalt nothing more than a red carpet laid across the ground.

“—The scene is the male lead and the female lead recognizing each other at the crosswalk. Kim Ji-hyuk and Nam Yoo-hee, please position yourselves at the center of the crosswalk as written in the script. The supporting extras will—”

The first scene we would shoot was a promo still of the male lead and the heroine meeting by chance on the street.

It sounded glamorous, but in the end it required nothing more than expression acting suited to a romance drama. And aside from the two idols, the rest of us were pure background — all I had to worry about was walking at a decent pace and serving as a suitably living backdrop.

Thud.

Yet the moment I took my first step, something occurred to me.

The fact that for a man who had spent half his life living as other people, "doing it halfway" had never once been possible.

Thud. Thud.

This was closer to instinct than choice.

The performances I had carried out crossing back and forth over the line where a single slip meant death were not the kind of acts that could be dressed up with words like "roughly" or "good enough."

A shoot that would last, at most, ten-odd seconds.

Even within that sliver of time, a thousand thoughts flashed through my head.

Dawn had broken. Whatever the real world was doing, by the clock of the story's world, this was hardly early morning. What would office workers in suits, moving at this hour, be thinking?

[Ugh, I don't want to go to work.]

[How long until the weekend?]

[Maybe I'll grab a coffee on the way…]

That was what most of the office workers I'd observed were usually thinking.

The coffee they'd ordered in stolen moments on the commute brought them a small, quiet happiness, and a single line of text from someone precious gave them the courage to get through the day. That was why the expressions of people waiting at the light — empty-handed, or gripping a briefcase — naturally tended toward the haggard.

Good.

Standing there, I began to sink, little by little, into this single-scene world with no script and no story.

Right now, I was just another ordinary salaryman, on a peaceful morning commute, running late.

.

.

.

But all of that immersion shattered, and I snapped back to reality, because of an accident that erupted without warning.

BANG-!!!

From the far end of the road, closed off for the shoot, a concussive blast rolled down from the hill — a sound impossible to ignore.

“Kyaa!”

“What the—?!”

Staff who couldn't grasp the situation flinched and twisted their heads toward the source of the noise.

Confusion. Tension. Fear. Paralysis. In a span of seconds, negative emotion flooded and consumed the hearts of everyone present — and yet I felt my mind go, if anything, calmer.

The first thing that entered my vision was a truck, gathering speed as it bore down on the filming set.

A terrorist attack?

The thought flickered for an instant — but no, this was nothing so sinister.

It was simply that on a sweltering summer day, the heat baking the asphalt had blown out a tire, and now a truck was rolling down the hill toward the set below it.

The problem was, first, that the grade of that hill was far steeper than it looked — and second, that there was no one at all behind the wheel.

“E-everybody, run!!!”

What made it all the crueler was that the truck was charging straight toward the very crosswalk where the scene was in full swing.

As the truck, its tires shredded to ribbons, accelerated and bore down like a raging bull, the extras — late as they were — snapped to their senses and scrambled desperately off the road.

But not everyone made it clear.

Ever since the first thunderous blast, the girl-group idol Nam Yoo-hee had been frozen stiff, her legs trembling as she fought just to peel her feet off the ground.

“The—the truck! Hurry!”

“Yoo-hee! What do we do?!”

Unlike her fellow male idol, her legs had given out completely, and in the end she never made it off the crosswalk — collapsing right there onto the pavement.

The entire crew screamed at the massacre that was seconds away.

The vehicle closing in faster and faster.

The actress frozen solid in the middle of the road.

In that do-or-die moment, there could be no one who kept their head about them.

“Uh, uh? That extra…”

“What is that guy doing?!”

“Are you insane?! STOP!!”

No one — except for me, who had finished every calculation in that same instant and begun to sprint toward the point of impact.