The Plum Blossoms Bloom for Ten Thousand Miles
My current position in the industry was, frankly, an awkward one.
I'd played a major supporting role in a drama that posted record-breaking ratings, but since I hadn't appeared under my own face, my name recognition was still that of a complete rookie. Most viewers remembered only Elder Yoon's face, not Baek Si-woo's.
Industry insiders were gradually coming to recognize my worth, but even that was still at the stage where it needed proving. Which was exactly why this next project mattered so much — I had to choose carefully before committing.
"Ideally, something that's a commercial slam dunk. With a role that leaves an impact. Easier said than done."
Even with five years of foreknowledge, I had no intention of signing onto only projects whose success was guaranteed. That seemed far too boring and pointless.
I was confident enough in my acting to succeed on talent alone, so my goal in this life was to finally do the work I actually wanted — the performances I'd find genuinely fun. Wandering the Central Plains with the Heavenly Demon, I'd played every kind of role imaginable, but I'd rarely gotten to do anything for myself.
If I was going to live at all, why not live an interesting one? Even a man like me was allowed to dream that much.
This time, however, the situation demanded a little pragmatism. To build up my name value, this debut project — the first to put my actual face out there — had to be a commercial success. Without a certain level of recognition, getting into the projects I wanted wouldn't be easy either. I needed to reach the point where people said, "Cheon Yua might be a stretch, but Baek Si-woo? Him you can trust." Only then would my options open up and I'd stop missing out on the roles I really wanted.
"Men live for the one big swing."
Of course, the industry standard was to grind out respectable roles, slowly accumulate recognition, and then level up by landing a magnum opus. But I didn't have the energy to churn through that many projects. A deep-pocketed company willing to invest + my acting + a decent dose of future knowledge meant a one-shot upgrade without all the grinding wasn't impossible. I fully intended to aim for it.
"Which is to say, this quarter's a bust."
Given how picky I was being, nothing this quarter had genuinely appealed to me. It wasn't that there were no commercially successful projects — it was that the roles were so flavorless I couldn't imagine leaving any real impression with them.
The only genuinely good one was the male lead, and that production had been built around locking in its lead from day one. Yoon Joo-won was one of the most promising young actors in the business, a full tier above even Jo Yooshin of Genius Copywriter, Yoon Seo-eun — there was no way he'd be replaced unless the entire board got flipped. Two major supporting spots were technically still open, but as I'd said, the foundation was so bland that the better I acted, the more pathetically the role would be remembered. For a rookie with no established image, it was a poisoned chalice. I wasn't exactly desperate. Why bother?
"Guess I should count myself lucky I have the luxury of waiting."
I could afford to be picky because my circumstances were comfortable. Any recognition from Yoon Seo-eun had long since evaporated, so I'd have to win any role through auditions no matter when I jumped in — no reason to rush. I'd paid off the family's loans with my contract money, so there were no household worries either. And since I was effectively living at the company, living expenses weren't a concern. Hence the leisure.
So when is my brilliant son finally going to be on a drama?
"Ah, it might take a while."
That's fine, don't rush it. Call me the second anything's confirmed.
"I will."
The only real pressure came from my father, who told me not to hurry and then called me practically every day. His son had become an actor, but never shown his face on screen, and that had quietly gnawed at him — he was still counting down the days to my drama debut.
Wait, are you going to debut after my showcase? Doesn't that make ME the senior in the industry?
"Oh, shut up. I already debuted, thanks."
Pfft, you can't debut without a face. Nobody even knows who Baek Si-woo is.
"Ugh, you little pest."
Which brought me to the other source of pressure: my dear little sister, that gremlin, who was rocketing through her debut process faster than expected. True to her major label's size, everything was moving briskly — it looked like she'd be dropping a debut album and throwing a lavish debut showcase within a few months.
And now she kept shoving it in my face with the supremely Heavenly Demon-esque (read: shameless) logic that whoever showed their face first was the senior. It stirred up the tiniest flicker of impatience in me.
"Mom's little gremlin really is a force of nature. Hard to outlast her."
But now was the time for patience. Drawing on years of hard-earned endurance trained against that girl's nonsense, I held my ground and focused on scouring scripts.
"How about you, Senior Yua?"
"Ah, projects? Me too, I suppose. Maybe I should rest a little longer."
"It's not like there's nothing decent out there."
"There's passable stuff, but nothing that clicks."
Apparently Cheon Yua was in much the same boat. Nothing had caught her eye. Well, she had her own struggles — no matter how many scripts piled up like mountains, what she disliked, she disliked. Looked like both Cheon Yua and I would be closing up shop for the quarter.
Personally, I pride myself on handling sudden crises well. Sure, I was scared half to death when I got flung into Murim without warning, but that hardly qualified as a "sudden situation" — that was an apocalypse-class event, a tragedy of a different order entirely.
When Murim Alliance patrol guards ambushed me out of nowhere. When some Tang Clan thug hurled Scatter-Poison at me. When Murim officials stowed away aboard the very ship carrying the Heavenly Demon and me, and the orthodox sect goons came swarming. Even then, I hadn't panicked.
"...What the hell is this."
But even I found this situation a little disorienting. Because at the convenience store I'd ducked into, thinking nothing of it, just to grab a can of beer, three men in strange bags were threatening the part-timer with knives.
So that would be... a robbery?
"Seriously? Robbery, in this day and age?"
It had long since been settled that robbery was a crime with no payoff relative to its risk. Nobody carried cash anymore — everyone paid by card, so there was hardly anything to take. Heavy penalties, meager haul: even criminals had been trending away from it. Bank robbery was the only meaningful exception, and that was a whole different category of catastrophe, well beyond ordinary strong-arm crime.
In fact, robbery statistics in this country had been in free fall for ages. It was the kind of crime you only saw in old reports now — and here I was, witnessing one firsthand. I genuinely could not fathom what I was looking at.
"Oh, those little punks..."
I sized them up on instinct. Shorter than I'd expected. And what they were after wasn't money — it was goods. Looking at what they'd gathered up to take, it was mostly bizarre items like cigarettes and booze. Add in the sheer foolishness of not understanding basic criminal economics, and the conclusion was obvious.
"Underage brats."
You heard about these juvenile delinquents committing violent crimes now and then. In the orthodox sects, crimes like these would've earned a severed wrist. Here, it worked differently — which was exactly why even the police supposedly dreaded dealing with them. Not out of fear, but because they were filthy to handle. Still, I couldn't deny the world was going to hell.
"Damn it. Stepped in dog mess."
Juvenile delinquents scared me too. Touch them the wrong way, and I'm the one who takes the fall. And if anything went even slightly sideways, our proud pack of press vultures would unfurl their crimson wings and soar in as fabricated phoenixes of outrage. How could I not be afraid?
"...Too late."
I considered quietly extracting myself, but even that had become impossible. A beat of silence — the brats had spotted me. And the CCTV, installed at a frankly artistic angle, had already captured my face.
I'd come out without even a hat, traveling light, so my face was fully exposed. The moment this incident went public, I'd be painted with the most absurd flame imaginable: the actor who abandoned a twenty-something female clerk and fled like a coward. Damn it, these brats and their stubborn refusal to fear surveillance cameras. That bastard-worthy defiance made me so absurdly proud I wanted to beat the hell out of them.
If this incident stayed quietly buried, no problem. But could I really count on that kind of luck? I was, after all, the man cursed with the strange destiny of having thrown away Cheon Yua's business card only to end up eating from the same company pot anyway.
"...Baek Si-woo?"
Worse, the part-timer who'd spotted me actually knew my name. I'd appeared in public exactly three times, and she knew my name. Was she a fan?
Leaving had just become even more impossible.
"Screw it!"
The moment the worked-up brats charged at me with their knives, I had no choice but to decide. If staying was idiotic and leaving was idiotic, then I might as well be the idiot who won. And my conclusion: only a spectacularly cool idiot could survive the aftermath.
The Twenty-Four Plum Blossom Sword Arts of Mount Hua — its most dazzling form, unleashed.
Scanning the shelves in that instant, one item leapt out at me: a long-handled umbrella. A long umbrella. In a convenience store?
What a windfall. I snatched it up and unleashed Maehyang Manri — Plum Fragrance for Ten Thousand Miles — of the Volcano Sect's Twenty-Four Plum Blossom Sword Arts, the most flamboyant swordwork I knew. The cramped space was a flaw, but a master doesn't fuss over his tools. A few broken items on the shelves? Easy to ignore.
The brat swinging a knife at the front took a strike to the wrist; the one following him in took one to the head. The last brat got an umbrella-tip — not a sword-tip — driven into his ribs. Once all three were down, I followed up with a artfully subtle beating until our insolent little punks stayed unconscious. I taught them the bitter taste of the world, staying carefully within the bounds of what wouldn't leave a mark.
"Oh..."
"Don't just stand there staring — call the police."
"Ah, y-yes... right away."
Then I prodded the still-dazed part-timer into reporting it herself. While she made the call, I swiftly rang my manager, Cheol-nam hyung.
"Also, I'd like to take the CCTV footage from here, if I could."
"Ah, that's up to the owner, so..."
"I'm in a rather delicate situation. Any way you could manage it?"
"...Yes. One moment. I'll get it open somehow."
More than anything, the CCTV footage was the key. Who knew what nonsense might surface once the police arrived? Better to secure it in advance. Fortunately, this part-timer had enough experience under her belt that she poked around at the system and eventually managed to hand over the files.
"I'll testify for you later, too. Just trust me."
Some conscience in there after all — she even offered to be my witness, which was its own small mercy.
"...What is all this?"
"Good question. What is it?"
"...I'm calling the company."
And with my manager hyung arriving at the scene before the police did, I could officially say I'd done everything within my power. Now — which direction would this whole mess flow? Honestly, whether here or there, the world felt like it was suffocating me from every side.