Homecoming
Sophia shook her head as she watched Lily suddenly break into a sprint.
Lily's at it again.
Lately, she and her friends had been getting these sudden, inexplicable impulses that just punched straight up through their chests. She knew perfectly well it was because they were teenage girls. These days, almost nobody her age bothered denying they were in puberty — that would just make you look uncool. What else was there to do?
So Sophia and the others took off after Lily without a second thought.
"Lily! Why'd you start running all of a sudden?"
"Yeah! Wait for us!"
Whether her friends were following or not, Lily reached the front door first and yanked it open. Sophia fretted that she ought to greet Lily's mother, Mrs. Monroe, properly — and that she might mess it up if she was still gasping for air.
Haa… I really need to start working out. A few dozen meters and I'm already winded to the gills.
She pressed a hand to her rising and falling chest and tried to catch her breath. But all that effort proved pointless the moment she and Lily — and every other friend behind them — stepped inside and sucked in a sharp, empty gasp.
"Ah…?"
The second they opened the front door and crossed the threshold, Sophia's mind simply stopped. There, past the inner door, seated on the living room sofa, was a guest whose face she knew all too well.
"…Why on earth…?"
Not awe. Pure bewilderment came out first. The surreal sight in front of her filled her head with question marks, the way you might gape at a dove pulled from a magician's hat.
She had first gotten into him through White Blood, then Sketch, then Master Plan, and most recently the barely subtitled film Moon. And the lead of every single one of those — Ryu Yeon-woo — was sitting right there in front of her.
"Lily, long time no see. You brought your friends too."
The Yeon-woo before them smiled with perfect calm and waved as naturally as if he were some cousin who dropped by all the time.
"Aah! H-he's real!"
Lily's shock set off a chain reaction; the friends behind her startled one after another and edged half a step back. Was it only a handful of girls riding the K-pop wave who cared about Korean actors? Not even close. Even the school boys who normally talked about nothing but football and baseball had watched Survival Island and spent every lunch period at every table buzzing about "Ryu Yeon-woo."
And for girls who would only just turn fourteen when the year turned, having that person sitting in front of them was an overwhelming jolt.
If it had just been Lily and her friends alone, they might well have started screaming at the sheer absurdity of the situation. Instead they spent hours with a star they had only ever seen on screens — sharing a meal in Lily's house, trading small talk about this and that. Kids adapted fast, though. Before long, conversation with the celebrity sitting right in front of them felt almost ordinary.
Now Yeon-woo was perched on the edge of Lily's bed while the girls bustled around the walk-in closet, changing outfits and emerging one after another like a fashion show, waiting for his verdict on each dress-and-shoe combination.
Hmm…
He had seen women in dresses more times than he could count — at society gatherings and banquets he had infiltrated on operations in his past life, and at award ceremonies in this one.
Still. First time I've ever been asked to judge kids' dresses.
They weren't really dresses, if he was honest. Fourteen-year-olds dressing up for a school dance party mostly just meant slightly more formal one-pieces. Yeon-woo scratched his cheek and checked the time on his phone.
Seven in the evening here… so eleven in the morning in Korea. Perfect.
He glanced toward the little closet door, where the girls were still deep in serious debate among themselves, then placed a video call.
This kind of thing really needs a professional. Me giving opinions doesn't mean much.
The ringtone chirped, and the call connected.
"Huh? Yeon-woo? What's with the sudden video call?"
On the other end of the screen sat Lee Ye-eun in what looked like a café. Being on opposite sides of the planet meant a slight delay and the occasional stutter, but the call was clear enough.
"Are you busy? What were you doing?"
"Me? I've got a meeting with the Armand people about the look for the Korean Arts Awards, so I'm at a café near headquarters."
"The Korean Arts Awards? That's still months away."
The ceremony usually fell in spring, so there were a good four months left. Yeon-woo tilted his head, and Ye-eun answered at once.
"Four months is actually pretty tight, you know? Armand has to lock the concept now and build every stitch to fit you."
"Hmm. So you're busy right now, then?"
On the screen, Ye-eun shook her head.
"Nope. My morning was free, so I got here an hour early. Just killing time at the café. Why?"
By then Lily and her friends had finished changing, but Yeon-woo had been talking to someone on his phone for a while, so they hovered in the closet, unsure whether to come out. He had been speaking entirely in Korean the whole time, so they couldn't even guess what the conversation was about. Then Yeon-woo called to them.
"You all changed?"
"Huh? Yes!"
"Great. Come on out."
The little closet door opened, and Lily and her friends stepped out in full glam. Watching kids play at being grown-ups almost made him smile, but Yeon-woo kept his face under control and turned the phone so Ye-eun could see them.
"Oh…? What is this? Where are you and what are you even doing?"
Suddenly being shown a fashion show of foreign girls in what looked like a private home left Ye-eun's voice thick with confusion.
"Music Director Chrissy Monroe's daughter and her friends. Apparently their school graduation dance is the day after tomorrow."
"A dance? Wow, like something out of an American teen drama."
"They're graduating middle school, so technically it's more middle-teen. Anyway, Noona, could you take a look?"
The ongoing Korean conversation left Lily and her friends tilting their heads. Yeon-woo pointed at the phone and explained.
"She's my stylist. World-class. She'll put together a much better look than anything I could come up with."
Of course, it would all go through Yeon-woo's interpretation over the line — but still.
"W-wow! Really?"
For a neighborhood middle-school dance, this was more than world-class enough. Leaving the girls behind him, Yeon-woo switched back to Korean for Ye-eun.
"Noona. Armand sells women's wear too, right?"
"Huh? Of course. The menswear just gets more press — it's always been a total fashion house."
"Then if what they're wearing right now isn't quite right, pick something from Armand's line and put together outfits and shoes for them. There are plenty of Armand stores here, so check stock and I'll leave them as a surprise gift tomorrow."
Ye-eun lit up at once.
"Oh, this is going to be fun — like dressing the leads of a teen movie."
"They're only fourteen, so middle-teen, like I said. Just keep it cute."
On the screen, Ye-eun shook her head.
"By Korean age that's sixteen. Girls that age want to look mature — I can't just do cute."
Having read her clients' needs from half a world away, Ye-eun poured her full passion into the job.
The next day, as Yeon-woo boarded his flight for Incheon and reached to switch his phone to airplane mode, a message arrived.
Ah. So Ye-eun noona's order must have arrived.
In truth the age gap was closer to an older brother than an uncle — but the moment he sent it, a reply came back.
Using airplane mode as an excuse to cut off Chrissy Monroe's endless stream of thanks, Yeon-woo took off for Korea.
After the long flight, Yeon-woo got home, stretched thoroughly, and set straight to work on his judging duties.
"Did you look into what I asked?"
Wearing a headset, Yeon-woo opened the comm channel and put the question to Han Hae-un. The answer came at once.
"Ah, yes. Their security was so sloppy I barely had to dig — found it right away."
Yeon-woo had asked Hae-un to pull the data from the Screenplay Contest Association's database: the list of contestants who had been quietly eliminated behind Yeon-woo's back, along with their personal information.
"Security was bad, and so was their work — names and phone numbers were missing even from their own files. My guess is they stripped personal info for the blind judging process and accidentally wiped it from their internal records too."
"Hmm. They were planning to reject them anyway, so they probably didn't treat it as important. What's left, then?"
Hae-un checked something briefly before answering.
"Gender, age, address, and email are still there."
"Got it. That's enough. If there's a good screenplay in the pile, I can reach out directly."
Yeon-woo nodded and began reviewing the personal data on the list Hae-un had passed over. Hae-un continued.
"By the way, things have been so quiet lately that I got bored and took a light look into those association guys' backgrounds."
"Hm?"
Yeon-woo reacted at once.
"Don't tell me they're connected to Baeksol too?"
"Ah, no — I mean that category Team Leader's been hot on lately."
The category I've been hot on…?
Yeon-woo tilted his head, then understood and nodded.
"Ah. Tax evasion?"
"Yes. Their gall is something else."
"Hmm. Is that so?"
Yeon-woo rubbed his chin and checked the calendar. No point detonating this mid-contest and getting dragged into the same scandal.
"Once the contest wraps, we should hand Oh Young-jin and Yoo Do-hyun a little performance credit."
He nodded, thinking of the two National Tax Service men who had been out pounding the pavement from early morning last time.
"Okay. If anything else comes up, contact me right away."
"The agents and I have been keeping quiet, so nothing much. You must be tired from the States — get some rest."
"Understood."
Yeon-woo nodded, closed the channel, and pulled off the headset. Of course he had no intention of resting. He walked out to the living room and picked up the thick stack of documents on the table.
"So these are the screenplays nobody even read before rejecting them."
Somewhere in this pile of paper, a screenplay capable of drawing ten million viewers might be buried.
Reality, however, was not so kind.
Hmm. Honestly, I can almost understand — just a little — why the association filtered these out…
Nearly every script in the towering stack failed even the basics. Most were nothing more than collections of printed characters that made no sense whatsoever. That still didn't justify the association's behavior. They had taken entry fees; treating people this way was simply wrong.
"Still, having to keep reading this stuff is pure torture."
A few of the screenplays were so chaotic they might as well have been a schizophrenic patient's view of the world transcribed onto paper. Some mixed first and third person within a single sentence. Dialogue alone sounded like two completely different stories randomly scrambled by an AI. A proper piece of writing should play like a film in the mind's eye. Everything he had read so far felt like walking through a murky fog.
Ugh…
Yeon-woo mechanically picked up the next screenplay. Expecting nothing different from the rest, he wore the dull, bleary face of an office worker reviewing documents at two in the afternoon on a Monday. He read on — and gradually, his expression began to change.
"Oh…? Well now. Look at this."