The Ending of the Play "Mirror"
"What? What are you talking about?"
"No, we never even bought tickets, and there's no CCTV on the boat, so no one except us knows the criminal ever boarded."
The gangster immediately jumped in to agree.
"Th-then let's just throw this bastard into the sea. We can say he stabbed the captain and jumped overboard to kill himself!"
Kim Se-yeong, who had been listening in silence, covered her face with both hands.
"I heard self-defense almost never holds up in our country. If the police show up like this, the detective who was only trying to protect us might end up in prison. He's such a good person…"
"Not just the detective—we'll all be under investigation too, you know?"
"So what do we do? Does that mean we're all in agreement?"
At the fisherman's words, everyone nodded heavily.
"Then let's get it over with quick."
Ha Jae-hun and the fisherman hoisted Jin Yu-han's limp body and disappeared off the side of the stage.
The lights then illuminated the interior of Cabin 4.
Ryu Yeon-woo was unbuttoning his blood-soaked shirt one button at a time.
The unexpected upper-body reveal drew soft screams of surprise from the audience.
Bathed in the dim light, he stepped into the space beside the bed and made the motion of turning on a shower.
Watching Yeon-woo's turned back, the audience swallowed hard.
Slowly, Ryu Yeon-woo peeled off the shirt and tossed it toward the bed.
"Hah!"
A collective gasp swept through the seats.
It wasn't because of the muscles on his back.
Long, crimson nail marks were carved into Ryu Yeon-woo's back—marks that looked as if the soul of a sacrificial victim had clawed them there in a final, desperate thrash before the breath left its body.
Whistling, Yeon-woo faced the mirror and mimed washing himself, then slowly turned toward the audience behind him.
The corners of his mouth stretched wide into a long, upward slash, and he beamed with an expression that was pure malevolence—as if he were having the time of his life.
The stage went black. Through the same speakers that had carried the earlier announcements, Ryu Yeon-woo's voice drifted out.
"The regret of falling petals is more beautiful than the freshness of budding sprouts; the rapture of the setting sun is more beautiful than the awe of the rising one—because we know our own finitude. And I am happiest when I taste that finitude with my own hands."
Immediately afterward came the most harrowing scream that had been heard all night.
Kyaaak—!
Every heart in the audience plummeted with that sound.
The light on Yeon-woo snuffed out. The illumination shifted back to the people outside who were still carrying Jin Yu-han's body.
"Jun-su! Go to Cabin 5 and bring out everything that passenger had on him. Clothes, personal effects—all of it!"
"Got it!"
Kim Jun-su entered the cabin Jin Yu-han had used.
There was hardly anything that could be called luggage. After searching here and there, Kim Jun-su found Jin Yu-han's wallet.
When he opened it, a strange expression crossed his face.
"…Detective Jin Yu-han?"
A low murmur rose among the audience at Jun-su's words.
From the darkness on the right side of the stage, Ha Jae-hun's voice rang out.
"Kim Jun-su! What are you doing! Get over here!"
"Y-yes, coming!"
The moment Kim Jun-su dashed out of Jin Yu-han's room, the stage darkened again and the light fell on Ha Jae-hun.
But Ha Jae-hun was not carrying a corpse. He was looking toward the pier, checking whether any passengers had yet to board.
"The boat is departing now. Anyone still not aboard?"
Beside him, the supposedly dead Jin Yu-han appeared perfectly fine, having changed clothes.
The audience realized at once that this was a scene from before the ship had left.
"Gangdong Police Station, Detective Division 1—Ryu Yeon-woo. The suspicious points I uncovered while investigating in secret aren't just one or two. If that bastard is committing murders while hiding behind a detective's badge, I have to catch solid evidence and tip off my colleagues."
Jin Yu-han waved his hand.
"I haven't boarded yet!"
The stage went dark once more, then brightened to reveal Jin Yu-han inside Cabin 5, pistol in one hand, pressed against the wall and listening to the sounds outside.
"I need hard physical evidence. With nothing but circumstantial suspicion, he'll just slip away like an eel again."
Watching the stage, Yu Ho-cheol—Jeong Cheol-min's contemporary and the owner of this theater—felt goosebumps rise along his arms.
Come to think of it… the spotlight has been shining on Ryu Yeon-woo's head the entire time.
Throughout the play, the intensity of the spotlight had been used again and again as a device to signal who was most likely the culprit. The stronger the light, the higher the probability.
Yet even though the spotlight had never left Ryu Yeon-woo, no one had noticed.
Reporter Song Ju-a had just reached the same realization.
She recalled Kim Jun-su nodding when Yeon-woo stamped his foot and asked whether the sound matched.
Someone wearing dress shoes. Someone taller than the captain.
And on the night Yeon-woo went looking for alcohol in the dining area, he had mentioned seeing a passenger lingering near the kitchen and another with a hood pulled low. That meant Yeon-woo himself had also been in the kitchen that night.
Someone who could reach the kitchen knives.
Every single condition pointed to Ryu Yeon-woo.
Once that thought landed, every piece of the play fell into place.
When the stage brightened again, Kim Jun-su was holding Jin Yu-han's wallet.
"Kim Jun-su! Hurry up!"
At Ha Jae-hun's voice from the right, Kim Jun-su glanced back and forth between the wallet and Cabin 4—where Ryu Yeon-woo would be—then shook his head.
"Eh, everyone says this is the right call, so it must be."
Kim Jun-su ran over and tossed the wallet offstage.
Then Ryu Yeon-woo's narration flowed once more through the speakers.
"Why do people so easily delude themselves into believing they know something for certain, fall into lockstep, and then, armed with nothing but their own imagination, brand someone evil and hound them?
The second character in the word for imagination—sang—contains the character for elephant.
Chinese merchants who had traveled to ancient India spoke of the 'strange long-nosed animal' they had seen, but no one believed them. So on their next journey they gathered the bones of a dead elephant and brought them home.
They assembled those bones this way and that, and people who had never seen an elephant began to imagine what one must look like—each conjuring up his own grotesque monster or demon.
A human imagining an elephant.
The story goes that those two characters combined to form the character for image, for form.
People accept their private imaginings as fact and aim their guns at one another.
On this small boat upon the sea.
And on the silent battlefield of the wider ocean as well.
They brand one another witches; by gender, by political color, by ideology they condemn one another and drive one another to the edge of the cliff.
Refuse to ride the current and the barrels swing toward you at once—you are declared the enemy.
This little boat is a Mirror that reflects us all."
When the narration ended, every actor walked out onto the stage.
And Song Ju-a instinctively understood what the narration had meant by "the silent battlefield of the wider ocean."
It's the internet.
The hatred and witch-hunts that saturate society. The minority opinions crushed the moment they refuse to ride the majority wave. All of modern society's ills had been poured into the sealed space of a tiny boat adrift on the open sea.
Looking at the stage again with that thought in mind, the partitions she had taken for cramped cabins, and the rooms of Ryu Yeon-woo and Jin Yu-han placed in front of them, suddenly resembled the keys of a keyboard.
The actors linked hands and stepped forward to the edge of the stage. The audience erupted in applause, pouring praise on the performers who had given everything.
Jeong Cheol-min rose from his seat and let out a piercing whistle.
That was the signal. Every spectator behind him stood as one and began to clap.
"Ugh… I'm getting so choked up I might cry."
Woo Seong-sik's eyes glistened; Yeon-woo patted his back.
"Captain. Sorry for killing you."
"My back's killing me from lying there so long."
The actors nearby laughed at the exchange between Yeon-woo and Woo Seong-sik.
Kim Jun-su snorted and playfully punched Woo Seong-sik's shoulder.
"You had the fewest lines—why are you the one crying?"
"Hey. Do you have any idea how busy I was changing clothes and running around? I crossed the line between life and death."
He had alternated between the dead captain and the living gangster, so in a way he really had performed a life-and-death act.
Even though the play was over, the audience still wore dazed expressions as they applauded, staring at Ryu Yeon-woo and Jin Yu-han on stage.
Without realizing it they had been so immersed that they had seen only "Detective Ryu Yeon-woo"; now the man before them was once again the star they had known only from screens.
At that moment the seasoned Kim Se-yeong, veteran of countless performances, raised her voice.
"Everyone, thank you so much for watching our play! At this point, shall we hear a few words from the leader of our troupe, actor Ryu Yeon-woo?"
The audience clapped and cheered.
Receiving Kim Se-yeong's cue, Yeon-woo smiled and spoke.
"Hello. This was Theater Group Saebyeol's first play, Mirror. And I thank every one of you who came to see this first stage."
Yeon-woo pointed toward Lighting Director Im Seong-su, who was looking down at the stage from the elevated console at the rear of the house.
"Please also give a round of applause to Lighting Director Im Seong-su, who worked so hard for the stage from up there."
Suddenly finding every gaze turned on him, Director Im Seong-su grew bashful, scratched the back of his head, and offered an awkward smile.
In the audience, his daughter Im Yu-jin felt her chest swell.
That's my dad.
The friend sitting beside her nudged her shoulder.
"Ooh, Im Yu-jin. Your dad is seriously cool."
Thanks to the meticulous adjustments and arrangements Director Im had made, the stage composition had gained far greater structure and every detail had come alive. He was unmistakably the hidden MVP.
Yeon-woo faced the audience again.
"If anyone would like to take a photo with the cast of tonight's performance before you leave, please form a line in order."
Who in their right mind would pass up a photo with this lineup? Naturally every single spectator stood.
"Crazy. If I don't take a picture, no one will ever believe this. I just wandered into some random little theater and Ryu Yeon-woo and Jin Yu-han are standing there."
"We absolutely have to get a shot."
While the lined-up audience chattered with their companions about the astonishing experience, others discussed the play itself.
"But the story was really good too, right?"
"When Ryu Yeon-woo turned around in the shower at the end, I thought my heart stopped. He looked straight into my eyes."
"What are you talking about? He looked at me."
As the spectators filed forward for photos, Kim Jun-su spotted a familiar figure.
He nudged Woo Seong-sik.
"What?"
"Hey. Look at those guys at the end of the line."
"Huh?"
It was the same man who, a few hours before the performance, had thrown away the flyers outside and walked off snickering.
Woo Seong-sik whispered to Kim Jun-su.
"That's the yellow-haired guy from earlier, right?"
"Yeah. I remembered his face clearly."
Woo Seong-sik scurried over to Yeon-woo, who was standing nearby.
"Yeon-woo."
"Yeah?"
Woo Seong-sik leaned in and whispered into Yeon-woo's ear like a child tattling to his father.
"Earlier we…"
After listening to Woo Seong-sik's story, Yeon-woo smiled with genuine interest.
"Hmm. So that happened, did it."
Meanwhile, the moment the play ended, Reporter Song Ju-a abandoned the photo line entirely and bolted for the restroom, already dialing her company.
"Director!"
"—Hey, hey, my eardrums are about to burst. What was that message you sent earlier? I did draft something based on it."
"So, I came to Daehangno for a date today…"
While nodding along to the call, Director Lee finished writing the article and published it at once.
With the exclusive report as the opening shot, the Korean internet erupted into a frenzy over this utterly unexpected news.