The Local Lunatic Is Nam Hyunho
After a series of twists and turns, we managed to get through today's entire schedule.
Nam Hyunho, who had arrived at work first, left first, and about an hour later, Cheon Yoo-ah and I wrapped up as well.
Checking my phone in the changing room, I found a message from an unknown number. It contained nothing but a single address, and it was almost certainly from Nam Hyunho.
"I'll be stepping out for a bit."
"Where to?"
"Well... to see a friend?"
Since I arrived and left work at exactly the same times as Cheon Yoo-ah, slipping out without notice wasn't an option.
When I said I'd pop out somewhere and come right back, she demanded to know where. So, without thinking much of it, I said I was going to meet a friend — and her reaction was quite something.
"A friend? You actually have friends, Si-woo?"
"...Excuse me for having at least one."
"No, it's just that you're always cooped up in your dorm..."
"I don't particularly enjoy going out, but I do have friends, you know."
"Really? How unexpected."
Who was it that spent every single day locked up in the company building, and who was it calling whom friendless here?
Granted, it was factually true that I had no friends, but even I didn't appreciate being bludgeoned with facts.
"I'm not sure what's so surprising about that. Should I ask the same of you, senior Yoo-ah? You have friends? You're at the office every day."
"I do have them."
"Where?"
"...Just go see your friend quietly and come back nice and docile. It's a bit surprising that the friend in question is Nam Hyunho, but I'll assume men simply have things they understand about each other."
"...You knew?"
"Where else do you imagine Nam Hyunho got your number from, Si-woo?"
"Ah..."
So I fired back that she didn't have friends either, but I couldn't even recover my initial investment in the exchange.
That idiot Nam Hyunho had apparently called the company to ask for my number.
Why on earth would he contact the company when Yoo Myung-woo PD exists? It was nothing short of an injustice.
"Cheolnam-ie hyung, this way, please."
"Yes, departing now."
I gave the address Nam Hyunho had sent to my manager, Cheolnam-ie hyung, and told him to head there immediately.
Even though I — the man who never left his dorm — was suddenly asking to go somewhere else entirely, Cheolnam-ie hyung raised not a single objection. Judging by his expression, he'd already been briefed.
"So this is the flaw of company dormitories, huh. Zero privacy..."
Anyway, since this outing had already been reported up to Cheon Yoo-ah, I'd better hurry, meet Nam Hyunho, and have a sincere(?) heart-to-heart with him.
It was far better to settle things cleanly before starting over than to keep waging this pointless war of attrition.
And talking at length with an idiot who asks the company for your number while claiming he wants to meet quietly, away from prying eyes, would only cost me more than it gained.
"Then again, this man really is consistent."
Namgung Hyunho of the Snowplow Sword was counted among Murim's most notorious soft touches.
He looked cold and composed on the surface, but once you got close to him, he turned out to be surprisingly mushy inside.
The problems were that he had an absolutely disastrous eye for reading people and that he was far too simple-minded.
For someone in a position like Namgung Hyunho's, being unable to judge character was a genuinely fatal flaw — and in the end, it cost him his life at a rather young age.
A wandering ruffian he'd grown close to came to him, begging for help to avenge himself on the Horse Bandit. The two of them, fired up by shared purpose, ambushed the man together — only for the target to prove so formidable that Namgung Hyunho was cut down in a single stroke.
In truth, the man the ruffian had passed off as the Horse Bandit was no bandit at all, but a master swordsman of Murim conducting a secret tryst. And the moment Namgung Hyunho fell, that ruffian bolted from the scene without a backward glance.
He had been using Namgung Hyunho from the very start, his eye fixed on the fat purse the master carried.
The ruffian must have been shocked himself, come to think of it.
No matter how much the world derided Namgung Hyunho as a reckless blade, who could have imagined the rightful heir of the Namgung Clan would lose his head in one stroke to some nobody caught in a secret affair?
"A tragedy for everyone involved."
The affair ultimately ended with every party concerned dead.
The victim, Namgung Hyunho, died on the spot.
The perpetrator, the ruffian, was hunted down by the master swordsman and killed as well.
And the master — a victim in his own right — was in turn chased down by the Namgung Clan and slain too.
Vendettas in Murim never bothered themselves with questions of right and wrong, so even the wholly innocent swordsman could not hope to escape the Namgung Clan's blade.
Even now, it remains a bitter ending to remember.
"So he got duped by a ruffian in Murim, and duped by Jo Yooshin here? Honestly, the poor guy has a knack for getting screwed."
The more I thought about it, the more convinced I was that this man was fated to be deceived into ruin by others, time and time again.
In that case, it might not be a bad idea to use this opportunity to straighten his head out once and for all.
Frankly, a man of Nam Hyunho's standing could torment me in a hundred different ways if he put his mind to it.
He could leverage his backing as heir to the Changcheon Group, or pull strings through his connections behind my back.
But this guy had done none of that, throwing himself at me with nothing but his own two fists.
If he'd played any underhanded games, there would have been zero room for leniency. But since he'd come at me as square as he possibly could, my judgment was that I owed him a certain measure of good faith in return.
"We've arrived."
"Ah, here? But if this is the third floor..."
"It's a gym. A boxing gym."
"Oh... a boxing gym?"
That's Nam Hyunho for you.
Calling me to a boxing gym at a time when the drama shoot was mere days away.
If we went at it with boxing gloves and, God forbid, my nose cartilage ended up somewhere it shouldn't be, it would be nothing short of a catastrophe.
And yet he'd summoned me here anyway — I had to admire Nam Hyunho's madness and his resolve.
The certified lunatic of this neighborhood was indeed Nam Hyunho.
So I would honor that lunacy and face him as seriously as I possibly could.
"You're here to meet Nam Hyunho, aren't you?"
"That's right."
"I hear Nam Hyunho trained in boxing for three years back in his school days."
"Oh, you even know that?"
"It was in the special notes forwarded from the company."
"Impressive as ever, Flame..."
Apparently Nam Hyunho had studied boxing for a good stretch of his childhood.
In other words, he had an ace he believed in.
Even better.
The First Heavenly Demon once said: so long as you can take a hit, anything is possible.
I have no idea whether the First Heavenly Demon ever actually uttered those words, but the Demonic Cult did take corporal punishment as pedagogy extremely seriously.
And for what it's worth, I too believe there is no training discipline superior to a beating.
Since things had come to this, rather than trying to talk Nam Hyunho around, it seemed wiser to deliver the lesson through the very field he prided himself on: boxing.
The lesson being: charge ahead on hearsay alone, and life has a way of breaking your nose for it.
"All of this is a desperate measure for your own good, senior. Grit your teeth and endure it."
Having resolved to guide Nam Hyunho back onto the righteous path, I stepped into the boxing gym he'd told me about.
He must have booked the entire place, because the gym was utterly empty — Nam Hyunho, gloves already on, stood waiting with a single manager at his side.
The manager shook his head at us with a look of grave concern, apparently no happier about this situation than anyone else would be.
"Oh..."
Nam Hyunho, warming up alone in the ring, waved his gloves at me the moment I entered, urging me up onto the canvas.
Truly, Nam Hyunho had steeled himself to settle this today.
"...Actor-nim, this really isn't something to laugh about..."
"Ah, am I laughing right now? Hardly. How could I possibly laugh at a moment this serious?"
As I nodded along, admiring Nam Hyunho's fighting spirit(?), Cheolnam-ie hyung cut in from beside me.
That was pure slander.
I'm no lunatic — who in their right mind would burst out laughing at a situation this grave?
But Cheolnam-ie hyung was entirely sincere, and he looked determined to stop me by any means necessary.
"If a conflict breaks out between you and Nam Hyunho, I will have no choice but to report it to the company."
"...I see. Well, that is your job, hyung."
He had his own position to think of, so I couldn't exactly blame him.
I sympathized completely.
"But if you're a man, there are things you simply cannot run from."
"...This doesn't strike me as one of them."
"Don't worry. Nobody's getting hurt."
"The one I'm worried about isn't you, Actor-nim..."
"Yes, yes, rest assured."
And with that, I brushed aside Cheolnam-ie hyung's protests and climbed straight into the ring.
"...Goddammit. Actor-nim, at least put on the gloves!"
(Nam Hyunho)
What the hell is this?
Something about this has gone badly wrong.
Yooshin told me all about Baek Si-woo. How, for a rookie, the guy was astonishingly skilled at office politics — how in the end Yooshin himself, the former lead actor, had been frozen out on set.
Fine. Kids like that do exist.
Tough-talking schemers who whisper behind your back are precisely the type I despise most.
Deciding that a line needed to be drawn early, I moved to set him straight — and instead, I was the one who got hit.
In the middle of action rehearsal, he suddenly rushed at me and drove an elbow into my ribs.
Truth be told, that was the moment things started feeling off.
He didn't fit the profile of a backstabber at all. He was just far too unhinged for that.
Unsure either way, I called him to the gym.
It was a bluff, of sorts.
Anyone who saw me with my gloves already laced up would naturally lose their nerve, and once I'd knocked the wind out of him, I figured I'd hear his side of the story.
And then this bastard took one look at me, grinned, and climbed right into the ring.
His manager came scrambling after him and shoved the gloves into his hands, and the man put them on with a gloating little smile.
Honestly, even then I only half believed it.
We were days away from shooting — nobody in their right mind would show up swinging gloves at a time like this.
Fine. So this was a game of chicken.
I knew as well as he did that this was the most careful stretch of the production. Which meant a real brawl in the ring was, realistically, impossible.
So the answer was simple: whoever backed down first, lost.
In this industry, lose the initiative once and you'd be playing catch-up forever.
"Hoo... here I come, sunbae."
"...What? Y-you insane—!"
Gloves on, the bastard rolled his head from side to side, shook himself loose, and came straight at me.
What an absolute madman.
Shooting was practically upon us, and this is what he chooses to pull?
Stunned by the sheer audacity of the lunatic, I squared up against him anyway.
From the action rehearsals, his movement had looked light on its feet, but at best he was an amateur.
I had formally trained in boxing. I was a professional.
The gym master had even urged me to go pro once — you could call me semi-pro level at the very least.
And yet, this son of a bitch—
"Khh..."
He's. So. Goddamn. Strong.
Pro, semi-pro, none of it meant a damn thing.
Every punch I threw, he slipped with ease, then slid inside and hammered my midsection.
No matter how I worked my footwork, I couldn't escape the man's fists — he stuck to me like a magnet.
Where the hell did they grow this guy?
The most infuriating part? Through all of it, he never once touched my face — the one place where damage shows instantly.
Nothing but the body.
So I clenched my teeth and threw up an iron wall around my midsection, but the man rained down blows with such cunning angles that I couldn't block a thing.
"...You absolute lunatic."
Yooshin, what the hell is this?
You told me the guy plays politics behind everyone's back, didn't you?
What kind of politician bludgeons his senior senseless like this with zero restraint?
This bastard... he's the real deal.
Nam Hyunho crumples, struck squarely by Baek Si-woo's Demonic Cult Punch.
One thing, and one thing only, became crystal clear to me.
Office politics only works between people who operate within the bounds of common sense.
A madman this far gone would never, ever scheme from the shadows.
Jo Yooshin — the man I had always believed was honest with me — had lied straight to my face.