Survival Island Filming (2)
"…What?"
For a moment, PD Yoon Chang-joon doubted his own ears.
"Who did you say?"
"Actor Ryu Yeon-woo. Number Seven is Ryu Yeon-woo."
"Hmm…"
Yoon swallowed his surprise at a name he had never expected. Filming had already begun, and there was far too much to do.
"Send the message out to the contestants for now."
"Yes, sir. Understood."
The managers accompanying the contestants and the various agency staff watching from the sidelines could not hide their astonishment. Of course they had known Ryu Yeon-woo would appear — and they had even felt a quiet gratitude that his presence would draw attention to the program their own talents were on. But none of them had expected the first kill to come from him. If anything, they had hoped he would not be eliminated too early, for the sake of the show's ratings — without ever truly believing he would last.
Kim Min-su was among them.
I knew he had exceptional athletic ability, but…
Watching Yeon-woo film action-heavy productions like Star Beyond the River and White Blood, Min-su had marveled more than once at how perfectly he executed those sharp movements and intricate blocking. But those had been choreographed sequences — the product of rehearsal, not reality. If he had to put a feeling to it, it was less like watching martial arts and more like watching idols hit a razor-sharp group dance. Only the blades in the choreography were real.
A man who's never even served in the military, flying around a mock combat zone like that…
What those watching from the control room still did not know was that this was only the opening beat of a far greater story.
Bzzzt—
Player 7 has eliminated Player 22. (3 hits)
Jang Ju-won felt the vibration not long after the game began and checked his smartwatch, assuming there might be additional instructions — then froze.
Someone already got a kill…?
His mind raced. As someone who still played survival games regularly after his discharge, he knew exactly what this was. An opening kill. A frag. The move of someone confident enough in their skill to abandon all thought of defense and sprint for the first point the moment the match started.
But there's no way anyone here knows this island cold…
That kind of play usually belonged to veterans who had run the same arena dozens of times and memorized every corner of the map. Among the people who had set foot on this island, not a single one should have known the terrain.
Don't tell me someone just went berserk from the start and got lucky taking out Ryu Yeon-woo.
Because Yeon-woo was the one he was hunting, his thoughts drifted naturally in that direction — though of course he still thought of Yeon-woo as prey, not predator. The idea that someone else might snatch the legendary-tier quest reward sitting on the road to victory felt almost too unfair to bear.
If that's the case… could Number Seven be Kang Hak-joon?
Kang Hak-joon, the reporter-turned-entertainer, was reasonably well known as a former Special Warfare Command NCO. On variety shows he loved to hold forth about the training he had endured during his service — stories so over-the-top that most people treated them as comedy. Still, Jang thought, they might not have been pure invention.
Hoo. Better stay sharp. I guess a career soldier really is different.
At that same moment, Yeon-woo — having just eliminated one player — was already climbing a gently sloping mountain at speed.
Realistically, the number of people I can take out on day one isn't that high. And wiping everyone out wouldn't do me any favors anyway…
The island was sizable, and long untouched by human hands, so the vegetation grew thick. Most contestants would spend the first day moving carefully, mapping the terrain, and were unlikely to venture far from their starting points. Even an amateur, properly covered and holding a solid perimeter, was difficult to eliminate.
Which was why Yeon-woo had begun climbing toward the summit.
There's no guarantee everyone will behave the same way. People are fundamentally wired to move toward a goal — so someone will definitely come up here.
The FBI sometimes tracked criminals through the unconscious patterns of their behavior, drawing on behavioral psychology. Researchers had catalogued the common, automatic actions people took in specific environments: stepping out of an elevator or entering a new space, most people turned left first; in a straight corridor, they moved forward rather than back.
And if the environment suddenly handed to you is a mountain? Of course you climb.
Instinctively, people understood that higher ground made it easier to hold a field of vision and easier to repel an attack. The answer, then, was always the same: get there first and claim the position.
He had moved faster than anyone else from the start, and having already eliminated the nearest contestant, he climbed with freer rein than the rest. The mountain at the island's center was not particularly tall.
Gagul-do's maximum elevation is around a hundred eighty meters.
As he closed rapidly on the summit, his smartwatch vibrated again.
Player 19 has eliminated Player 17. (3 hits)
Player 30 has eliminated Player 19. (1 hit)
Reading the messages on his way up, Yeon-woo nodded.
They're starting to run into each other.
They had begun barely a hundred meters apart. Even moving carefully, nearly ten minutes had passed — encounters were inevitable. Reading the alerts, it seemed likely that Number Nineteen had taken out Seventeen mid-fight after absorbing two hits himself, only for Number Thirty to ambush him from behind and finish him with the last shot.
There'll probably be about thirty minutes of heavy fighting from here, then things will go quiet again for a while.
If you thought of each hit as losing one "heart," Yeon-woo still held all three despite having already claimed a kill. But not everyone could drop an opponent in a burst of precise fire the way he had — so anyone who had scored an elimination had almost certainly lost one or two hearts in the process.
Fewer hearts left means they'll start playing it safe.
Turning these thoughts over, he reached the area near the summit and found an octagonal pavilion, long neglected, its wood rotting with age. Yeon-woo melted into the undergrowth at a spot with a clear view of the pavilion and focused on the sounds around him.
Tak—
Tada—
Gunfire rolled faintly across the quiet, gentle slopes of the island. Survival guns did not crack like real firearms, but the island was not large, and the mountain was so still that the sound carried well enough.
I came up from the northwest, so the heaviest fire is coming from the southeast.
More shots were echoing from the opposite face of the mountain. The northwestern slope Yeon-woo had climbed was steeper; the steeper the grade, the more cover a single tree provided. The gentler southeastern face offered better sight lines — which also meant opponents could see each other more easily, and the odds of contact rose.
Then, from a direction slightly offset from the path he had taken, came a rustling.
Yeon-woo immediately controlled his breathing, killed every trace of presence, and leveled his muzzle toward the sound.
A figure burst through the trees, breathing ragged from the climb, rifle pointed forward as he scanned his surroundings. He was fully on guard, eyes locked on the pavilion at the summit, using the trunks for cover as he advanced in short increments. For an amateur, it was not a bad approach.
Yeon-woo watched him from the undergrowth — and did not pull the trigger. He was in a perfect position to eliminate the man right then.
No rush. He won't climb into the pavilion anyway. Highest ground on the mountain, best sight lines — but if he fires from there and fails to finish someone, he's isolated with nowhere to run.
Yeon-woo kept watching. Soon the man moved. His choice was the same as Yeon-woo's: he slipped into the scrub where the pavilion was visible and went prone, vanishing into cover.
Yeon-woo fixed the man's position and went utterly still, becoming one with the vegetation. All the while, smartwatch alerts of further eliminations kept arriving. The man hidden in the scrub seemed to have received the same vibration; he carefully scanned his surroundings, clearly uneasy that the tiny noise of his own watch might give him away. The alerts went out to everyone simultaneously, and the sound was so faint it would only be audible at point-blank range — nothing worth worrying about.
Rustle—
Even tucked into the scrub, the man checking his smartwatch out of curiosity about who had been eliminated made more noise than the alert itself.
Whoever took out whoever doesn't matter right now. On a battlefield, curiosity gets you killed first.
"Huh?"
"Why isn't he shooting?"
In the control room, voices of confusion rose as people stared at the personal cam mounted on Player Seven's helmet. As the first contestant to score a kill — and because he was that Ryu Yeon-woo — the control room had kept his feed up on one of the monitors continuously. The direction the helmet faced was the direction Yeon-woo was looking, so he had clearly spotted Player Two climbing toward the summit. At their closest, the two men had been barely four meters apart. A rear ambush would have ended it instantly — and yet Yeon-woo had simply watched until the other man settled into the scrub.
Then a staffer tracking the GPS signals attached to each player's back called out.
"One more approaching the summit. Number Twenty-Nine."
Player Seven — Ryu Yeon-woo — had arrived first. Player Two had come second. Number Twenty-Nine was climbing the southeastern face, the opposite side from where the other two were sharing their uneasy cohabitation in cover.
"Put up Twenty-Nine's body cam."
"Yes, sir."
At the PD's order, a staffer threw the body cam on Twenty-Nine's chest onto the main monitor. Seeing the summit come into view, Twenty-Nine did not rush it. He silenced his footsteps and began a slow circuit of the area, working his way around.
Rustle—
Player Two, hidden in the scrub, made noise checking his smartwatch. Twenty-Nine stopped dead, hunting for the source of the sound. The control room held its breath and stared at the monitors.
"Twenty-Nine's head cam."
At PD Yoon's word, the feed switched instantly to the camera on Twenty-Nine's helmet. Sharing his field of view, the people in the control room became an audience, locked into the survival game.
Whoa. This is way more tense than I expected. This show's going to be a hit…
Director Jeong of Feel Entertainment nodded as he watched the sweat-inducing footage. Sharing the players' perspectives on combat unfolding in real time was far more immersive — and far more entertaining — than he had anticipated.
On screen, Twenty-Nine finally locked onto the scrub where Number Two was hiding. The combat boot of the prone man was poking slightly through the undergrowth.
Bang. Ba-bang—!
Unlike Yeon-woo moments earlier, Player Twenty-Nine did not hesitate. The instant he found his target, he pulled the trigger.
"—Ghk!"
On the feed, Player Two took a plastic round in the thigh, swallowed a scream, and threw himself behind a large tree. He returned fire immediately, landing two shots on Twenty-Nine's torso.
"Number Two took one hit — Twenty-Nine took two!"
A staffer monitoring the real-time data from the protective gear shouted the update.
And then —
There was a player they had almost forgotten while the other two clashed. The first to score a kill. The first to reach the summit.
Ryu Yeon-woo shifted his muzzle.
He had been watching the entire exchange in silence from cover. From his position, both men — one behind a tree, one behind a rock — were fully exposed.
Realizing it, PD Yoon clapped his hands and shouted.
"Seven's head cam!"