The Tail
The plane from LA touched down at Incheon Airport. Unlike the crowded departure, the terminal was quiet.
Their arrival schedule had been set for the early hours of the morning, and the company had kept the return itinerary private so that exhausted cast and crew would not be swarmed by reporters after days of overseas work.
Jet-lagged members and staff collected their luggage and climbed into the cars waiting for them.
"Yeon-woo, head on in!"
"Oppa! Please make sure So-hyun unnie gets my autograph and letter!"
"Got it. My little sister will love them."
Yeon-woo exchanged goodbyes with the others, then climbed into the car already waiting in the parking lot with Kim Min-su and Lee Ye-eun.
"Whew, it's freezing."
Ye-eun blew out a breath and watched the white cloud form in the air.
"It really is. After a few days of mild weather, coming back to Korea already feels like the depths of winter."
At Yeon-woo's words, Min-su quickly started the engine and turned on the heater.
The flight that had left LA late at night had flown for thirteen hours; with the time difference, it was five in the morning Korean time.
"You must be exhausted. We'll head out right away."
Min-su pulled away from Incheon Airport and drove the quiet roads toward Yeon-woo's house at a steady clip.
When they arrived, Yeon-woo got out and Min-su followed, helping him lift the luggage from the trunk.
"You worked hard, Actor. Thanks to you I got an American trip out of it."
"Hard work? Min-su hyung, you're the one who had to drive at this hour. Go home and get some proper rest."
"Yes, sir! Heading in now!"
Min-su bowed, climbed back into the car, and drove off.
Yeon-woo turned toward the house, then pulled his phone from his pocket and pressed it to his ear.
"Hae-un. Let's begin."
"Yes. Understood."
Han Hae-un's voice came through the already-open line.
Yeon-woo went inside, propped the phone on the table, and opened his laptop.
At that same moment, Hae-un was already tailing the staff vehicles from Incheon Airport.
They had planned the surveillance on James Choi the instant they returned to Korea.
"Looks like they're all getting off at LN Entertainment headquarters first, then heading home separately."
"Yes. Just entered Gangnam. Direction matches the LN building."
Meanwhile Yeon-woo powered on the laptop and began working the program.
"Ready. Switch to video."
"Understood."
The sound of Hae-un tapping buttons came through, and a four-way split feed appeared on Yeon-woo's screen: Hae-un's rear phone camera, the dual-channel dashcam front and rear, and the tiny camera nestled beside the handkerchief in his jacket pocket.
"Good. Clear picture."
"This is the reverse of how we used to do it."
Yeon-woo gave a short laugh at Hae-un's observation.
"Now that you mention it, yeah."
In their previous life, when Hae-un had been Baek Yu-hyeon, they had mostly operated together in the Middle East. Yeon-woo had been the one in the field; Hae-un had stayed in the office feeding him intel and support.
Today the roles were flipped.
On the monitor, Hae-un's car kept a careful distance behind the bus LN Entertainment had provided.
"Better overtake and wait ahead at the LN building. I know every staff vehicle. The one I don't recognize will be James's."
"Understood."
Hae-un accelerated, passed the bus, and raced toward the LN headquarters. After a long wait, employees began filing out of the bus, climbing into their own cars, and leaving the parking garage one by one.
That one's the external makeup team's car. The black van is production.
Yeon-woo checked each vehicle as it emerged.
Then an unfamiliar car rolled out of the garage entrance.
The only ones still unaccounted for are Team Leader Yoon Mi-yeon and James Choi.
Yoon Mi-yeon drove a black SUV. The car that had just appeared was a deep-blue sports sedan he had never seen at the company.
"That's the one. Stick to it."
"Confirmed."
Hae-un's car pulled out and settled into a trailing distance.
"His current residence is Nonhyeon-ro in Gangnam, right?"
"Yes. Yeoksam-dong."
Yet the car that had left the Sinsa-dong headquarters was already crossing Dongho Bridge.
After days of overseas work he should have been exhausted, yet he was heading somewhere other than home at this hour. That was anything but ordinary.
Hae-un seemed to share the thought as he kept pace with the target.
"Heading straight there without even stopping home first. Must be something important."
"Could be that the real residence is different from what we found. We'll know once we follow."
While they spoke, the car continued on and eventually stopped near Seodaemun Station, slipping into the parking garage of an officetel.
"Team Leader, should I follow him in?"
Yeon-woo rubbed his chin, then shook his head.
"No. Hold position. No need to rush. No point taking unnecessary risk by going in after him."
"Then do we pull out?"
Yeon-woo studied the officetel on the screen, then something seemed to click.
"Swing around to the back of the building. Fast."
Hae-un immediately drove into the alley behind the structure.
"Look up. Can you see the elevator shaft line in the center of the building?"
"Hard to tell. Everything above the first floor is dark."
As he spoke, Hae-un raised his phone so the rear camera showed Yeon-woo the view.
"Just keep watching. See if any floor lights up through the windows."
"Understood."
Most high-rises cut power to unused common areas after midnight to save on standby electricity.
Yeon-woo watched Hae-un's feed while opening a browser window beside it and beginning a search.
Then Hae-un's voice came through.
"Just now—lights came on in the center section of the seventh floor."
"Keep watching. Note when they go out."
Exactly ten minutes later the lights went dark again. No further movement had tripped the sensors, so the system had automatically shut them off.
"From the moment he entered until we reached the rear of the building was less than ten minutes. When we arrived no floors were lit, which means he hadn't gone up from the garage yet."
Hae-un picked up the thread at once.
"So the odds are high he got off on the seventh floor."
"No other floors lit while the seventh-floor lights were on long enough to auto-shutoff."
Unless the man had simply sat in the underground garage for dozens of minutes, he had definitely exited on seven.
Yeon-woo stared at the monitor.
Only one company occupied the seventh floor of the building where Hae-un now waited.
"I just checked. A company called Skullcap Corporation is on the seventh floor. Unlisted. Almost no public data. So far I've only found one useful fact."
"What is it?"
Yeon-woo smiled with quiet interest.
"Skullcap is the English name of the wildflower Hwang-geum—Scutellaria baicalensis."
"…Hwang-geum. That was the codename of the agent who handed the drugs to Jeon Gi-hun."
Jeon Gi-hun—the actor originally cast in the Dipangdal role, later used by Baeksol as a planted trap in the drug scandal meant to sabotage White Blood. He was currently under arrest and investigation. The man believed to have supplied him the drugs and orchestrated the scheme had used the codename Hwang-geum.
When Yeon-woo first heard that codename he had immediately thought of a former NIS agent who had covered northwest China—an agent known for the peculiar habit of choosing wildflower names as codenames.
"I was ready to start hunting in the Uyghur region. Turns out he was hiding right here in Seoul."
"We'll have to open the investigation centered on this place."
"That's enough for today. Pull out. Good work."
"At least we got results. That's something."
Yeon-woo kept his eyes on the screen, then added as if something had just occurred to him.
"Oh, right. We should buy some proper gear. Professional equipment. I've started making real money now."
A quiet laugh came through the line.
"Haha. I've seen the articles. You're doing well. Is the video quality that bad?"
"At night identification gets difficult. And there are other things we need to prepare for."
Money that had already passed through multiple layers would reach Baek No-ya through Hae-un, then be laundered again through even more complex channels until it became untraceable operating funds. By the time it reached Baek No-ya it had already been cleaned once through Hae-un; there was no way to link it back to Yeon-woo. Both of them were experts in that field—not quite at Baek No-ya's level, but more than competent.
"If you want, I can run part of it as donations. You'll be paying a lot of tax. Might as well save some."
"No need. If you earn a lot, you pay a lot. That's only natural. I keep my taxes meticulously clean."
"In the end this money is all being spent for the country anyway."
Yeon-woo snorted at Hae-un's joke.
"We have to stay completely clean—not a single speck of dust. Especially in this country, anything involving taxes has to be handled with almost excessive thoroughness."
"Being a celebrity is rough."
Because he had signed White Blood on a running-guarantee contract, the earnings would be on an entirely different scale from anything he had made before.
Public attention will naturally fixate on the money, so the financial side has to be managed even more tightly.
Money could always be earned again. Once an image was lost, it could never be recovered. Yeon-woo understood that better than anyone; there would be no problems on that front.
"Anyway, what about the gear? Want me to introduce a supplier?"
"Come on. I knocked around this world quite a bit before I died. Compared to you, Team Leader, it's like showing off wrinkles in front of a pupa, but I can still handle a few things myself."
"Look at you. Fine. Call me if you hit a wall."
"Yes, sir!"
Yeon-woo ended the call and stretched.
"Huu… I need sleep too. The sun's already coming up."
Yeon-woo fell asleep watching the morning sun rise and did not wake until the afternoon.
"Ugh… my head feels like it's splitting."
Jet lag left him dizzy and disoriented.
He picked up his phone to check the messages that had arrived while he slept, then stopped at one of them.
Attachment: Mirror (Working Title) Script_Complete_2ndRevision_Final1a_Final.txt
"What kind of file name is that…"
It was a filename that radiated the pure, desperate agony of an aspiring playwright.
Yeon-woo opened the group chat for Theater Group Saebyeol and typed.
Yeon-woo smiled at the rapid replies from his friends.
The Baeksol matter was important, of course—but the main stage of his life was still Ryu Yeon-woo's.
He had returned to Korea and worked through the night without sleep. Surely he was allowed a little work-life balance.
Anyone watching might have trouble telling which part was the work and which was the life, but that was beside the point.
One thing was certain: he had never once thought of acting as work.
To Yeon-woo, acting was life.
Replies arrived almost instantly.
Yeon-woo set the phone down, got out of bed, and headed for the shower.
"Wash up and head out. It's finally starting. Theater Group Saebyeol."