True Geniuses Show Their Promise Early (2)
The KSM special project (a "special project" written in ink, but "stopgap scheduling" read between the lines) drama The Spy and I was, at its core, a weekend drama built on the genre of romantic comedy.
The weekend viewership of a terrestrial broadcast drama—what we call the family living room audience—was overwhelmingly dominated by housewives.
Which meant that shows people could watch after work and unwind to with a light laugh were the ones that sold, and unless some lunatic existed in the network who was willing to bet everything on a stopgap production, there was no reason for The Spy and I's genre to change.
A broadcasting station that had gone so far as to draw the double-edged sword of an idol in order to defend its ratings with minimal quality.
And so, no one could have predicted that their fate was about to be completely upended by a single extra.
Screeeech—!!!
The car wheel, its rubber stripped away entirely until only the bare rim remained, raked raw against the pavement and spat out a spray of sparks.
With no driver at the wheel, there was no question that it would slam straight into the crosswalk.
And as if things weren't bad enough, the brakes seemed to have failed as well—the truck barreling toward the film set was picking up speed with every second.
In that case.
The only way to resolve this situation was to pull Nam Yoo-hee out of the crosswalk.
Three seconds, give or take.
The distance gave the oncoming truck only a split second before it swallowed the set—but my judgment was that with that much time, it didn't seem impossible.
Whoosh!
Running at full sprint, I threw my arms around Nam Yoo-hee without slowing down. Then, without a single heartbeat of hesitation, I hurled our bodies out of the truck's path.
How scorching hot the midsummer asphalt had become didn't matter in the slightest.
Only one thought surfaced: the duty to save this kid who was barely twenty.
Skreee—
CRASH!!!
Fortunately, my math held.
The truck that had come roaring in as if to swallow people whole just barely missed us and plowed headlong into a tree planted along the corner.
It bounced away with a thunderous roar.
It was all so dramatic that the scene of the crash seemed to play out in slow motion—but that is exactly what everyone who witnessed that moment believed.
And so the sudden accident came to a close.
Whether by misfortune or sheer luck, the only person injured in that spot was me.
"Are you all right?!"
Everyone on set—including PD Min Byung-dae, who was directing today's shoot—began sprinting toward the two people sprawled on the ground.
He saved a life. Just when everyone had closed their eyes tight, convinced it was already too late, Han Seol had staked his own life to pull Nam Yoo-hee out of harm's way.
It was like watching a superhero in a movie—though unfortunately, Han Seol was not a superhero gifted with superpowers.
"B-blood! There's blood!"
"Call 119 first! Hurry!"
Han Seol's suit, which had wrapped around Nam Yoo-hee as they rolled across the ground, was half torn to rags.
He'd done his best to fall properly, but there was no way clothes survived being rolled bare across rough asphalt.
This time, he'd almost died not of illness but of accident.
And yet what surfaced in Han Seol's mind was a feeling far removed from that of a man whose life had just hung in the balance.
Ah, and I was getting into the immersion so well, too.
Anyone who overheard him would have recoiled and called him a madman, but Han Seol was genuinely lamenting the broken immersion.
This was a historic moment—the first real step toward the "actor" he had dreamed of becoming his entire life.
True, he had been nothing more than a lineless extra, a human backdrop. But for Han Seol, screen time had never been the point.
What mattered was that he could finally become someone else with a clear conscience. Genuine acting that could be both a "hobby" and a "profession"—one where he didn't have to stake his life, where no grave mission or crushing responsibility weighed him down.
"Are you okay?!"
"We've called an ambulance, so don't move yet!"
"No, wait—! Someone bring a chair! The ground's hot, let's get him sitting up first!"
Whether or not they understood his heart, the people around him were focused entirely on asking after Han Seol's condition.
And Min Byung-dae, the man who bore the greatest responsibility for this situation, barely managed to calm his startled heart as he gulped down the breath he'd been holding.
Thank god…! Thank god…!
Of course, it was hardly a good situation. He was relieved only that nothing worse had happened—the failure to check the safety of the area around the set was entirely his own responsibility.
What if the extra actor now getting to his feet with a furrowed brow hadn't been there? What would have happened then…
But just as that thought crossed Min Byung-dae's mind, someone's hand lightly tapped his shoulder.
Tap, tap.
"Excuse me… PD Min?"
"Ah, Director Jung."
When Min Byung-dae turned his head, Camera Director Jung Deok-jin was staring at him with a dazed expression and opened his mouth.
"PD, do you happen to have a moment?"
"What is it? As you can see, things are a bit chaotic, so I need to handle the situation first—"
"It'll only take a second. You need to see this."
"……?"
A second? Right now? Out of nowhere, he wanted me to look at what, exactly?
Min Byung-dae deliberated for a moment, then decided to follow Jung Deok-jin's lead.
He was, after all, one of the veterans who had put in his years in this industry.
He knew perfectly well that a man wouldn't call the person in charge over for no reason when a major accident had nearly occurred mid-shoot.
"A second is fine, but… what exactly do you want me to look at?"
"I know—I really, truly know this sounds insane—but that. Just now."
"That?"
"Yes. That."
At Jung Deok-jin's words, Min Byung-dae tilted his head.
Short of the truck with the failed brakes barreling into the filming set a moment ago, what else could "that" possibly refer to?
And what about it?
"We caught it on camera."
"I'm sorry?"
"The scene where that kid saved Nam Yoo-hee just now—it was filmed."
"……"
So what?
Min Byung-dae stared at Jung Deok-jin with an expression that said, are you kidding me?
So the accident scene had been caught on camera—what was he supposed to do about it? They were employees of the drama department who filmed dramas, not gossip-column reporters manufacturing tabloid fodder.
But as if he understood the other man's expression perfectly, Jung Deok-jin gave a small nod and gestured for the PD to follow him.
"I'll say it again—I know it sounds insane. But look at this first."
"……Fine."
Jung Deok-jin led Min Byung-dae to the main camera. And there, he played back for him the footage of the "truck incident" that had been captured moments before.
[BOOOOM—!!!]
An explosion of sound, sudden and deafening. Every face on screen froze in an instant.
"Hmm…"
"Keep watching."
People screamed and scattered in all directions.
The truck was closing in, gathering speed. Though in truth, it wasn't moving quite as fast as it had felt in the moment.
But panic had made their bodies cower on instinct.
Pupils blown wide, they stared blankly at the oncoming vehicle, and only those who came to their senses fastest began shouting warnings and bolting for safety.
[The—the truck! Move, now!]
[Yoo-hee! What do we do, Yoo-hee!]
Most of the people had escaped the truck's path, retreating to relatively safe ground.
But as both Min Byung-dae and Camera Director Jung remembered all too well, the female idol and lead actress Nam Yoo-hee had been unable to move from her spot.
The truck was bearing down on Nam Yoo-hee. Left alone, their lead actress, their idol, was seconds away from being run down—a catastrophic accident in the making.
But at the very moment when everyone, paralyzed by terror, could do nothing but scream, a single figure appeared from beyond the camera's frame like a comet.
"This…?"
In that instant, a jolt of electricity shot up Min Byung-dae's spine.
The truck was already at full acceleration, and to anyone watching, flinging yourself into that spot was nothing short of suicide.
Yet the man threw himself toward Nam Yoo-hee without a flicker of hesitation.
He wrapped his arms around her even as the truck bore down inches away, and without slowing, he twisted his body in midair.
And the result—
Wham— CRASH!
"……Unbelievable."
Han Seol, clutching Nam Yoo-hee tight, had dodged the truck by the narrowest of margins—and the camera had caught every second of it.
Only now did the truth become clear: the midair twist hadn't been for show. He'd contorted his body so that he alone would absorb the full shock and friction of hitting the asphalt.
"Staging technique… Don't tell me you deliberately shot this like a drama scene?"
"Would I be insane enough to film an actual accident like a drama shoot? It's a genuine coincidence."
The extra actor dramatically rescuing Nam Yoo-hee was captured on the camera in crystal-clear detail.
Shot in a single long take, the sense of immediacy was overwhelming—and since this had been a real event, the actor's expression and the emotional lines of everyone around him went without saying.
The composition with the truck sent flying was, quite simply, transcendent.
Through accident piled upon accident, a masterpiece of a shot—the kind of scene you could never capture even if you tried—had been burned into that footage.
"……"
"Do you understand now why I called you over, PD?"
"Tch."
"Are you going to throw it away?"
"……Why do You do this to me."
Min Byung-dae had fallen into a dilemma.
Honestly speaking, the footage was closer to a bonus clip than anything—there was no obvious place in the drama to slot it in.
A suspense-driven stunt action sequence, in a romantic comedy that had been thrown together as stopgap programming? Where did that even come from?
But no matter how he thought about it, throwing away the scene now recorded on that camera…
"This is driving me crazy."
The thrill in that footage refused to fade from his mind.
To exaggerate slightly, he had the feeling that if he threw together a story around this one scene alone, its premiere ratings would absolutely crush The Spy and I.
No, "crush" doesn't cover it. This is a guaranteed monster hit.
And the devil's whisper, fanning the flames at his side—how sweetly it sang.
"PD, you can afford to sit on this a little longer. Scene quality like this is rare even in Hollywood."
I'll grant you that.
"I've put in my years in this industry and seen plenty, but that scene we just filmed is completely beyond my ability."
That tracks.
"It won't happen twice."
I know.
At Camera Director Jung Deok-jin's words, Min Byung-dae looked at him with the face of a man on the verge of tears.
Out of his last shred of conscience he said nothing aloud, but in his heart, the conclusion had already been drawn.
The problem was finding someone who would back his lunacy.
An icy certainty kept circling his mind: if he reported this upstairs the wrong way, he'd get scolded—are you out of your mind?—and a disciplinary suspension would arrive gift-wrapped as his Chuseok present.
But.
"Well… I doubt we can film any more today, so let's consult with the writer first."
"Excellent."
The banquet already laid out on a trap too obvious to escape was, in truth, a full twelve-course royal feast.
He'd never been a PD on the rise to begin with—these days, people inside KSM's drama department were even whispering the word has-been about Min Byung-dae.
He had already been weighing retirement once The Spy and I wrapped.
He'd planned to quit the business sooner or later anyway, and the thought that he might as well go gloriously, magnificently insane at least once chomped right through his worries about disciplinary action.
"Writer, a moment please…"
The two men went to find Ryu Soo-min, the staff writer of The Spy and I, and showed her the astonishing long-take footage.
Naturally, Writer Ryu Soo-min's reaction was not much different from the two men's before her.
"Inspiration…! Inspiration is striking!!!"
No—she was even crazier about it.
Her delight was so boundless that the thought is this really right? flickered through their minds, but in the end their goals were aligned, so they decided to let it go.
"So… that leaves two problems."
"Two problems?"
At Min Byung-dae's words, Writer Ryu Soo-min tilted her head.
The first problem was getting the green light from the higher-ups to use a real-life event in the drama. And the second problem was…
"I'll need to get that extra's contact information. No matter how much we want to add a new character, it's meaningless if the person himself has no interest in appearing."
"Right. And this is a problem for later, but we should probably prepare for the possibility that the kid has no talent for acting, either."
If Han Seol refused to appear, or turned out to be incapable of acting, the footage would be unusable no matter how much they wanted it.
With any other video, they could have used the magic of editing to obscure a face here or there—but for this footage alone, they coveted the option of using it untouched.
No, "coveted" isn't the word. We'd sooner die.
The more he thought about it, the more he felt that editing a face out of this footage would be like dipping a three-star Michelin steak into mass-produced pork-cutlet sauce.
"Please, please let him be someone who can actually act."
"You're telling me."
He'd been an extra applicant, after all—overwhelming acting skill wasn't something they dared hope for.
They could only pray, fervently, that he would be flawless enough to justify using this near-perfect footage.
But there was one thing they did not know.
They did not know that inside the body of the very actor they worried over lived a lunatic secret agent for whom method acting was simply a way of life.