Quest
Yeon-woo stared blankly at the messages he'd exchanged with Han Hae-un, then slipped his smartphone into his suitcase and stood up.
For now, dismantling Baeksol's secret workshop would require watching for at least a few more days.
They've only just started the operation, so they'll be gathering up the contraband they've smuggled into the country through various routes.
They'd have to wait until the fish were nice and fat before reeling them in — that was when the hit would land hardest.
Having finished his thoughts, Yeon-woo opened the door and stepped out, only to find Jin Yu-han's frying show in full swing in the courtyard.
"Woooah—"
"Whoa—"
Jin Yu-han, gloved hand gripping a rockfish by the tail alone, repeatedly dipped it into the boiling oil and pulled it back out. Each time he did, gasps of admiration erupted from the staff and cast. Yeon-woo nodded with a satisfied expression.
Mm, excellent. Cooking is cooking, but this is a broadcast — performance matters too.
The more he watched, the more certain he became that this was the talent who could take charge of Saebyeol Tube for the time being.
Of course, the reason for repeatedly dipping the rockfish in oil wasn't just for show. The rockfish, evenly coated in batter, would enter the boiling oil, come back out, meet the cool air, and instantly firm up as it cooled. It was a process of setting the shape of the fry so the flesh would be easy to pick off later, while simultaneously building a crispy texture over the tender fish meat.
True to Jin Yu-han's bold claim that cooking was his hobby and they should leave it to him, his skill was on full display. Son Jin-uk had reinforced the fire pit he'd built earlier and lit an additional fire, and Jin Yu-han was cooking using both burners at once.
"That's insanely cool."
Han So-hyun and the rest of the staff clapped and cheered, and the corners of Jin Yu-han's otherwise expressionless mouth twitched upward ever so slightly.
"These two taste best when you eat them together before they cool."
Jin Yu-han replied as if it were nothing and went right back to focusing on his cooking. To Yeon-woo, who'd seen plenty of Jin Yu-han off-camera during their theater days, it was obvious that Jin Yu-han was in an extremely good mood right now.
Oh? Looks like he likes cooking about as much as he likes acting.
As Yeon-woo watched with interest and headed into the courtyard to see if he could help with anything, Jin Yu-han seemed to have finished cooking — sweet-and-sour rockfish and stir-fried webfoot octopus were already plated.
Jin Yu-han's cooking was even better than expected.
He'd heated a cast-iron pot, rendered scallion oil, then mixed soy sauce and oyster sauce into a savory soy-based glaze. After frying the scored rockfish until it was golden and crisp, he laid it over the sauce. When Yeon-woo tore off a generous chunk of the tender flesh with his chopsticks and put it in his mouth — the sauce coating and seeping into the meat — he finally understood why it wasn't just called fried rockfish, but sweet-and-sour rockfish.
"…This is like hotel food!"
Han So-hyun said with a blissful expression, and Son Jin-uk nodded.
"It is hotel food. You won't find this at your average Chinese restaurant. It's the kind of dish you only occasionally see at high-end hotel Chinese restaurants."
"Everyone try the stir-fried webfoot octopus too. It's spicy and chewy and so good. Yu-han's cooking skills are insane."
An Jun-ho gave a thumbs-up.
Ah, right — they haven't had enough contact yet, so they haven't even had a chance to drop the formal speech.
Come to think of it, Jin Yu-han had arrived on the island and gone straight to unpacking his knives from his bag without even setting foot in his room.
That was when PD Joo spoke up. Joo Hyun-seok had honestly been worried the cast might go hungry given how little they'd provided — but here they were, cooking and eating surprisingly well, and high-end food at that. Wanting more variety in the footage, he quickly arranged to hire a boat and send them out for sea fishing.
"Ah, everyone. This afternoon, two of you will head out to sea for boat fishing. Who among you would like to go?"
At that, everyone naturally looked toward Yeon-woo.
"If it's fishing or hunting of any kind, it's gotta be Yeon-woo…"
Yeon-woo himself seemed to think the same, and nodded.
"I should go."
He couldn't claim to be a great fisherman, but he had done it before.
Not counting the times I used naval gunfire or dynamite for food procurement — I did do actual fishing…
In his previous life, when he'd infiltrated Okinawa, his cover identity had been a documentary director covering marine pollution, so during the day he always had to go out to sea on a boat borrowed from an old man named Kirihata. With nothing else to do out on the water, he'd set a fishing rod and kill time — and when it came to the skill side of things, hauling in a fish that had taken the hook or playing tug-of-war with it, he was decent enough.
The problem was that my fishing luck was absolutely abysmal.
Even when he cast his float at spots where everyone else was landing fish, Yeon-woo's rod alone would stay eerily still. It was as if the fish could sense his bait and deliberately swam around it.
Hearing Yeon-woo's answer, PD Joo nodded and spoke again.
"We need one more person besides Actor Ryu. Two of you are the fishing team, and the remaining three will work on repairing the house."
"Then So-hyun unnie should go, right?"
"Me? I've never gone fishing in my life."
Han So-hyun tilted her head, and An Jun-ho continued.
"They say fishing has beginner's luck. Never having done it might actually be an advantage."
"Is that so?"
He was probably trying to deliberately spare Han So-hyun from the house repairs, which would involve heavy labor.
"Alright then — I'll go catch some fish with Yeon-woo!"
An Jun-ho had been right.
Unlike Yeon-woo's completely unresponsive rod, the fishing rod in Han So-hyun's hands bent like a bow. Maybe beginner's luck really was a thing.
"Aaaah! Yeon-woooo!"
Han So-hyun's panicked voice rang out. Yeon-woo, who had been on the opposite side of the boat, turned around to find Han So-hyun locked in a desperate struggle with a rod bent so hard it looked ready to snap. He immediately set his own rod in the holder and ran over to her.
"It's huge!"
"Give it here. I'll pull it in!"
Han So-hyun was more delicate and frail than the average woman, with little strength to speak of — if they weren't careful, it wouldn't be the fish getting reeled in, but Han So-hyun herself. He hurriedly took over the rod.
"This is insane! It's so strong — it must be massive!"
Han So-hyun, having handed over the rod, was buzzing with excitement. Yeon-woo, gripping the rod he'd just taken, could clearly feel it too — the creature that had taken the bait was powerful.
First, he started a war of attrition to wear it down. When the fish pulled hard, he held on carefully so the line wouldn't snap; when he felt its strength flag, he yanked hard to keep it from going where it wanted — a pure tug-of-war. After a long while, he could feel the exhausted creature being drawn in.
"Oh! It's coming up! What is it? What did we catch?"
Han So-hyun asked the boat's captain beside her. The captain looked at the fish slowly revealing itself above the water's surface and answered.
"Oho, you've caught a Spanish mackerel."
"Spanish mackerel? That's a Spanish mackerel? Wow, it's huge."
"Eh, the big ones can go over a meter and a half."
Hearing the captain, Yeon-woo nodded.
Once early November passes and the water temperature drops, the bigger fish start getting caught. I wonder if Yu-han knows how to cook Spanish mackerel too.
The force through the line had been strong enough that he'd expected something sizable, and the fish that broke the surface looked to be at least eighty centimeters. Beside him, Han So-hyun was practically glowing as she stared at the Spanish mackerel rising from the water.
"I think I'm getting hooked on fishing! That hand-feel when it first bites — I can't forget it! This is crazy!"
As the Spanish mackerel was drawn alongside the boat, the waiting captain brought over a landing net and scooped it up. The Spanish mackerel that came aboard was even bigger than they'd imagined, and Han So-hyun's eyes went wide.
"I'm losing it, I'm losing it! We caught this? Whoa…"
The captain had said it wasn't that big, but Han So-hyun felt like she'd become Santiago from Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea. Yeon-woo, too, had only ever fished in Okinawa's warm waters, so landing a fish this large was a first for him. To both of them, the Spanish mackerel felt like the giant marlin Santiago had battled for three days.
"Everyone's going to freak out when we bring this back, right? PD-nim, don't tip off the crew back at the house!"
Han So-hyun said to the junior PD who'd come along on the boat, and the junior PD nodded.
The Spanish mackerel was so large it had to be crammed into a big ice chest, but it didn't feel heavy at all. Their steps were as light as a student's walking home with a perfect score on a test.
Passing through the bleak front gate into the house, they found that the other three actors had clearly been hard at work while they were fishing — the vines that had blanketed the courtyard were considerably cleared away.
Spotting the two of them returning with the massive ice chest, Son Jin-uk sprang up from where he'd been sitting on the wooden platform and came out to meet them.
"What? What the hell are you carrying that looks so huge?"
"Heheh. Jin-uk hyung. Guess what we caught?"
"The ice chest is huge, but you're not about to open it and show me a couple of clams, are you?"
"Open it and you'll be very surprised."
Han So-hyun's confident air seemed to raise expectations, and Jin Yu-han and An Jun-ho came over as well. The staff approached too, cameras ready to capture the moment the ice chest opened. Joo Hyun-seok looked at the junior PD who'd been on the boat with them.
"What? What did you catch?"
"See for yourself."
"Why all the suspense?"
In the meantime, Son Jin-uk opened the lid of the ice chest set down on the wooden platform. Seeing the enormous fish packed so tightly into the ice chest that it was hard to imagine how it had even fit, everyone's mouths fell open.
"Wh-what? Did you take the boat to a fish market or something?"
"So-hyun unnie caught it. They say it's a Spanish mackerel. Looks like beginner's luck is actually a real thing."
"Whoa… that's insane."
When the staff gathered in the courtyard grew curious about what was inside, Son Jin-uk tilted the ice chest to show them the massive Spanish mackerel. Gasps erupted among the crew as well.
"What the — that's a monster fish."
"Think Actor Jin can cook a fish that big?"
The actors overheard the whispered remark and all turned their eyes to Jin Yu-han at once.
"Ah, well, fish are fish — big or small, you just cut off the head, split the belly, scrape out the guts, rinse it, and remove any parasites you might find. Same process either way…"
Hearing Jin Yu-han deliver such a blood-chilling description in a completely deadpan tone, everyone shuddered.
Meanwhile, Yeon-woo picked up on a strange current among the staff. He could read the writers' faces — somehow restless and uneasy.
Hmm, what is it? Is there a problem with the shoot?
Unlike before, he was now running a company, so even the staff's smallest expressions had become something he paid attention to.
"Is something going on with the crew?"
When Yeon-woo suddenly approached and asked, the startled writer shot back a question of her own.
"Huh? Going on?"
"No, earlier it looked like the writers' expressions were a bit off."
"Ahh, it's nothing major — our junior writer just went to the bathroom and got a huge scare…"
The junior writer sitting beside her spoke up.
"I swear, at first I thought it was a ghost."
"A ghost…?"
"So, I went to the bathroom early this morning…"
According to the junior writer's story, while using the facilities at the staff lodging in the early hours, she'd felt a gaze on her. Looking up, she'd found something like a giant eagle staring down at her through the small bathroom window — before it flapped its wings and flew off.
"An eagle…?"
As Yeon-woo tilted his head after listening for a while, the voice of the elderly neighbor woman who'd been watching the shoot from next door drifted over.
"That weren't no eagle — that was a chicken, a chicken."
"Pardon? A chicken?"
"There used to be chickens kept by the old lady who lived in the house down below. After she passed on first, they let 'em loose, and the birds started hatchin' chicks on their own — now there's quite a few wild chickens on this island. These days they're a real nuisance. Come down into the vegetable patches, eat everything, fly all over the place."
One of the staff tilted their head and asked the old woman.
"Then couldn't you just catch all the chickens?"
"Aigoo, this island's nothin' but old grandmas and grandpas — who's gonna catch 'em? Those things are tough and quick as anything."
After thinking for a moment, the old woman spoke again.
"Come to think of it, with all you young fellas from Seoul around, it'd be nice if you caught a few chickens for us."
Hearing the old woman's words, Joo Hyun-seok and Yeon-woo both nodded firmly at the same time. Catching seafood with fishing rods and traps and cooking it had been fun enough and fit the show's concept well — but if the same footage kept repeating, viewers were bound to get bored. This was perfect timing for a new kind of segment to secure more broadcast material.
The same thought had struck both Yeon-woo and Joo Hyun-seok at once.
A quest, huh…!