The Lone Editor Behind the Contest Video
After my trip to the bathroom, we finished lunch in perfectly ordinary fashion.
But maybe that was only because I’d just purged the lecherous demons that had been piling up inside me.
Up until a moment ago, I’d been convinced that Han Sia and Yu Somi were tempting me at the same time...
Yet after going to the bathroom and coming back, I couldn’t feel even a trace of that anymore.
Han Sia had already finished eating and was stretched out on a sunbed, taking her time in luxurious comfort, and Yu Somi was behaving herself too, quietly eating her cup ramen.
I no longer felt that their gazes contained some hidden intent, or that they were deliberately emphasizing certain parts of their bodies the way they had earlier.
Of course, there had been a few little happenings at the pool today, but once the lecherous demons inside me had been driven out, the world looked like this in the end.
Maybe the saying about being different when you enter and leave the bathroom really does mean something like this.
If I’d gone and imagined things on my own, crossing lines where I shouldn’t have, I would’ve been in serious trouble.
With friends this beautiful, I’d better stay on my toes if I don’t want to ruin the friendship.
.
.
.
“Then we’re going to go have some fun, so keep an eye on the parasol for us!”
“And if some random woman talks to you, don’t go with her. I won’t even get mad if you tell her you have a girlfriend.”
“Right. You two have fun and don’t get hurt. I’m not going anywhere else, so I’ll stay right here.”
Since we’d come to the pool, we’d been taking turns guarding the luggage.
And this time, it was my turn to stay under the parasol and watch our things.
...
Calling it guarding the luggage was generous, really. There was nothing to do except lie here on the sunbed.
If the parasol had been near the pool, I might at least have been able to watch the others play.
In the end, I just lay there beneath the parasol, killing time in a daze.
Still, Today had been packed with all sorts of exciting things, so if I closed my eyes and stayed still, the events of the day came back to me vividly.
Seeing my friends in bikinis for the first time, and then immediately getting a confession from Han Sia.
Learning how to kick from Yu Somi while she was wearing a bikini.
Helping Han Sia with swimming and suffering when her swimsuit came off.
Watching Yu Somi wipe away tteokbokki sauce while we were eating lunch just now...
Everything reduced to me looking at my friends with a shamelessly sly gaze.
Of course, if you asked whether those experiences had been enjoyable, I’d answer yes without hesitation.
Even if they were full of sleazy stimulation, they were still precious memories I’d made with my friends.
No matter where you travel, no matter what you do there, isn’t the important thing ultimately who you spend that time with?
Then... even if the experiences had been a little filthy, couldn’t I remember them as good memories, as long as I’d shared them with those two?
If I tried to pretend every lewd little thing had never happened, the entire day would vanish.
What I’m trying to say is,
...
that maybe, if I just calmed the desire surging up in me by remembering what happened today, I wouldn’t be struck down by heaven’s wrath...
“Ian, we’re back!!”
“Uwaaa, I’m sorry...!?!? Huh? What the— You’re back really fast?”
I’d been lying on the sunbed, indulging in my own filthy thoughts, when Sia and Somi returned earlier than I’d expected.
There should still have been plenty of time left before the outdoor pool’s break... so why were they back so soon?
When I asked them why, they shook their heads with regret.
“The pool’s gotten way too crowded. At this point, it doesn’t seem like we can even swim properly in the main pool anymore...”
“It was a disaster. I was trying to teach Sia backstroke, and I almost got kicked by some passerby’s foot.”
“Exactly. And with just the two of us girls, all those men who keep coming up to talk to us were such a pain, too...”
“I think this is mostly Ian’s fault for refusing to go play at the beach. So next time, let’s go somewhere we won’t have to be apart from each other! Like a resort.”
Hmm... was that how it worked?
If I remembered correctly, I’d definitely also been against coming to the outdoor pool at the Han River.
Listening to Yu Somi, I felt a little wronged.
But I felt the same disappointment about not being able to have fun together as a trio, so I decided not to object.
Besides, places with resort accommodations were too expensive for us to go to anyway.
More importantly, if the pool had gotten this crowded, we really had no choice but to pack up and leave.
Waiting indefinitely for the pool to empty out would be stupid, and getting back into water that had already been full of all those bodies—setting hygiene aside—was just gross.
Apparently I wasn’t the only one thinking that way, because Han Sia and Yu Somi both agreed with me right away.
So we decided to head home.
.
.
.
When Han Sia called the driver, the large sedan that had been waiting nearby came to pick us up.
And since the sun was still high overhead and everyone still had plenty of energy left in their bodies, we were able to chat in the car instead of falling asleep.
Little incidents from while we’d been guarding the luggage, or what the two of them had done after going out to the pool... nothing particularly special, but it was strangely entertaining to hear what they’d been up to while I wasn’t watching.
“Still, it’s been a while since the three of us got to meet up like this, so it’s a little disappointing to part so early. It would’ve been nice if we could’ve stopped by a café for a bit before saying goodbye.”
Han Sia already seemed reluctant to part.
Since today really amounted to us meeting and splitting up again in the span of half a day, that was only natural.
But I had my own circumstances too.
“I’ve still got to go home and finish editing the video. Chatting over coffee sounds nice too, but if possible, I’d rather get the finished product wrapped up as soon as I can. It’d put my mind at ease.”
Once I got home, UCC video editing would be waiting for me.
I didn’t think it would take all that long, but if I considered the revisions I’d probably have to make after showing it to them, it was better to start as early as possible.
And so, after a while of talking back and forth, the ride home passed in an instant.
***
Four hours had passed since I got home and threw myself into editing the video.
At last, I’d finished producing the UCC contest submission video.
My editing skills were pretty crude, so it had taken a long time, but I’d already finished editing the footage from the previous shoot in advance, which at least helped shorten things a little.
If I’d delayed editing until today, I probably would’ve had to focus on nothing but video editing for the next three days.
I still had revision work to do after sending the video to my friends, but I’d stayed almost entirely on track with my original production plan, so there shouldn’t be much to fix.
Before sending the video to my friends, I played the UCC from the beginning and did one last check.
The background music flowing out the moment the video started was California Gurls—a song I’d heard so many times by now that it practically had calluses on my ears.
From the opening through the early section before the chorus, I’d mostly used footage from quiet, uncrowded filming locations like Bukchon Hanok Village and the riverside park along the Han River.
Seeing Bukchon Hanok Village, our first filming location, appear in the video made the image of Han Sia struggling to dance on those sloped roads rise vividly in my mind.
Back then, she still hadn’t been thoroughly taught a lesson on the streets of Hongdae, so there was still a faint awkwardness lingering in her dance moves.
Come to think of it, I also remember that we spent more time taking photos in front of other people’s gates than we did filming there.
But I couldn’t really recall much about the Han River park shoot.
That was because I’d split off from my friends to run around and catch the pervert who’d been secretly filming people.
Still, that had been the first time I’d ever beaten someone half to death on the street, so that memory alone remained vivid in my head even now.
The video kept moving forward, and the background music marched toward the chorus.
Then, in step with the swelling sound, the footage shifted to the energetic Cheonggyecheon fountain and the streets in front of Hongdae.
Cheonggyecheon... at least at the time of filming, it had been fun.
I’d set up a meticulous plan to avoid the hidden camera creep, moved quickly, finished filming in a short burst, and then escaped immediately.
It felt like I’d become the protagonist of a spy movie, which made it a lot of fun.
After that, we’d eaten lunch in Jongno and even gone to a karaoke room.
Of course, the hidden camera incident later that night ruined the mood completely.
As for the streets in front of Hongdae, the memory that stuck with me most vividly was how I’d been drenched in sweat trying to control the crowd of onlookers rushing in around us.
Maybe that was why, when I checked the raw footage for editing, Han Sia’s and Yu Somi’s expressions while they were dancing showed so much panic that... I had to throw out a lot of it.
Still, cutting out the usable parts into short pieces and stitching them together at least got it to a point where it was usable, so that was some consolation.
And then there was the long-awaited climax: the pool scene, naturally the brightest and most eye-catching part of all.
...
But after spending the whole day looking at bikinis, seeing them now in one-piece swimsuits with coverups thrown on top made them look completely different.
In the video, my friends were dancing while wrapped up tightly.
Meanwhile, the versions of them that remained in my head were the bold bikini-clad ones, and the gap between the two created a strange feeling.
The friends in one-piece swimsuits and coverups looked pretty and demure, and when I thought that only I knew their other side... I felt a somewhat sleazy sense of superiority.
Of course, I couldn’t show only the pool scene throughout the entire chorus, so I mixed in footage from other locations here and there.
Even the Namsan footage that hadn’t otherwise had a chance to appear.
Though the footage we filmed at Namsan...
Maybe because Soha, who had helped with filming that day, wasn’t very skilled with the camera, it had been hard to find anything truly usable...
When the video ended, I fell into thought for a moment.
Come to think of it, this summer vacation had been devoted entirely to preparing for the UCC contest.
The reason I’d entered the UCC contest in the first place had clearly just been a makeshift plan to placate Yu Somi, who kept begging to go to the beach, and Han Sia, who went along with her.
But now that I was looking at the finished video, I realized I’d become genuinely serious about making this contest submission.
The completed video was a summary of the summer vacation we’d spent together.
Even though not a single frame showed me at all, simply watching Han Sia and Yu Somi dance with such excitement was enough to bring every event of that day back to me in vivid detail.
Going to tourist spots with my friends, having fun eating and taking pictures, worrying and struggling and fighting to get good results, receiving confessions...
As I recalled each memory one by one, I was overwhelmed by a feeling I couldn’t quite put into words.
...And for good reason.
This was, in every sense, nothing more or less than a picture drawn of the word youth—the very word I had always hated.
Even though I’d spent a summer vacation that was intensely, unmistakably youthful, I didn’t actually find myself hating it.
I felt a little strange, which left me with a complicated mood.
...But I still didn’t like the word youth.
To me, youth meant pretending to be friends with people you weren’t even close to just to show off to others, working for exploitative pay, and wasting money on meaningless things.
So I forced myself to come up with an excuse.
We hadn’t really been posting photos on social media to show off, and
we were a tightly knit trio who didn’t have friends to speak of beyond each other.
Besides, we were planning to place in the contest and recoup every penny of our investment, so we hadn’t been working for exploitative pay or wasting money either.
Therefore, couldn’t this summer vacation we’d spent clearly be something different from youth?
Thinking that way made the complicated feeling inside me ease up a little.
We had definitely done something vaguely similar to youth this summer vacation, but it wasn’t youth.
Still, since I didn’t know what else to call it and the name felt awkward no matter what I chose,
I decided to describe this summer vacation as having been spent “densely.”
Come to think of it, I should probably express my gratitude to Han Sia and Yu Somi, too, for all the trouble they’d gone through appearing in the video.
After all, the only reason I’d been able to spend this summer vacation so densely was entirely thanks to my friends.
So I moved the UCC file for the contest submission to one side for the moment and got started on making a new video.
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