Suddenly, the Genre Changed

The world of reporters never rests, not for a single moment, and it is a relentlessly noisy one.

The Star Catch building, where the entertainment reporters worked crammed in on top of one another, was no exception. Newspapers and scraps of memo paper were plastered over every surface of the office, and phone calls crashed into each other from every corner.

Every last one of them wore the same exhausted face, shadows sunk deep beneath the eyes. It was a degree of fatigue that explained, all by itself, that the work was anything but easy.

And the person hammering those messages out at that very moment—the one who went by Saengji—was Kim Seona, the youngest reporter at Star Catch.

"I'm gonna shake myself to death..."

A straight nose under wavy hair, and perched above it a pair of large, round glasses. Exhaustion marked her face as thoroughly as anyone else's, and yet her expression, unexpectedly, was bright. Today was an enormously important day for her.

A solo interview. She had finally landed one.

She had actually done it. From here on, she was a proper reporter!

So what if the other side is some no-name girl group?

For Seona, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠the baby of the desk, the mere experience of a solo interview was precious—and the girl group that had set her heart racing had just arrived at the building.

"Hello! We're Tralit!"

"O-oh, welcome! Right this way!"

They went straight into the interview room and launched into the questions.

"All right then, rookie girl group! Starting the Tralit interview right now!"

And then.

Bang!

The door flew open with violent force, and a man strode in without so much as a greeting. A senior who made a particular habit of working Kim Seona to the bone.

Did he leave something behind? The thought crossed Seona's mind, but only for a second.

"Kim Seona. You finish that article you were writing yesterday?"

The question was not the one she had expected.

"Y-yes? Oh—if you mean that, I'm almost done. I'll get right back on it the second this interview ends. I should still be able to close it out today."

"Not the second it ends. Go write it now."

"I... I have an interview to do?"

"I'll take that. You go finish what you were writing."

"Th-this? This is the interview I landed."

"Hey, Kim Seona! A reporter lives by the second, and you want me to say the same thing twice? I'll take this—so go, now!"

In the end, all Seona could do was get shoved aside. Her mind went white. The face she wore was the face of someone whose soul had stepped out of the room.

The first interview she had ever landed in her life, taken from her right before her eyes.

After she clocked out.

"Haah..."

Kim Seona let out a long, heavy sigh. It was infuriating. It was so infuriating she could hardly stand it. She had to be the most wronged person alive just then, and she still couldn't take it to the police. This chat was the only place she had to spill it.

And then—

A moment later, Seona's phone went off. Not the group chat this time. A private message.

Even in the middle of all this, Saengji felt pathetic—the way the single word scoop snapped her whole body rigid.

Aigoo. What a miserable occupational disease.

"..."

But a moment later, every movement Kim Seona had in her came to a dead stop.

"...!"

Shock spread through her eyes. The message that followed was that shocking.

Kim Seona swallowed, her throat dry.

This was different. No matter that the person on the other end was Lee Sua. No matter that she had already hardened her resolve to quit being a reporter.

"..."

It was the kind of message that left a person no choice but to freeze.

The next day.

Sua arrived in Wanju, North Jeolla.

It arrived together with a single new trait.

"...What is it even saying?"

That, for the record, was Sua's reaction.

How about encouraging my acting? I'm about to die of nerves over here.

She had made up her mind to fill out her portfolio in earnest, and now it was her turn to actually shoulder her own schedule.

Today there was a shoot for Sword, out in a dense forest of hinoki cypress.

Ugh. This one's straight into the real thing, so I'm a little scared.

Special Task Force 808 had run mock shoots even when it cost a fortune, but Sword was not sitting on that kind of room. The reality was that they had to walk straight into the actual filming.

The shoot would run one week, just as he had said—a week of filming while they stayed at a hotel in Wanju.

Exciting, and frightening, and nerve-racking, all at once.

It's my own heart, and I still have no idea what it wants me to do with it.

Times like this called for Sua's Third Technique.

Empty out everything in her head.

"..."

And then.

"Ooo..."

The moment she set every last bit of her intelligence down, the tension loosened a little.

Later.

Three hours on, in the hinoki forest: a hut, built by human hands.

"Huh? They actually put up something like this?"

Someone reacted as if it weren't what they had expected. Expectations for Sword had been that low. They had assumed, of course, that they would be filming in a place with no sets and no structures of any kind.

Soon the actors began to gather, one and two at a time.

"This forest is seriously creepy. Feels like a ghost could walk out of it."

There were not even ten of them. They still had not confirmed who the lead even was, and every one of them was meeting the others for the first time.

The funding problem had been solved, but the deadline for the short-film festival had been ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠viciously tight. The whole thing had been thrown together in such a rush that not ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠a single detail had been properly explained.

And so they stood there, all of them, awkwardly taking one another's measure—gathered without the faintest idea of how any of it worked.

Then, at a certain moment.

"Oh?"

"Ah!"

A few of the extras recognized one another.

"We've met before, haven't we? I was an extra that time, too."

"Oh, right! You're the one from back then!"

"You do fusion historicals as well? That's quite a range."

"Well, I've been acting straight through since I was little. And I've got my years in as an extra, you know. I just do it."

"Though on the last one, you got edited out completely..."

"...I'm sorry? I appear briefly around the forty-eight-second mark."

Even a casual listen made the greenhorn in them impossible to miss.

There was someone who found the whole display utterly ridiculous.

Son Jia. An actress planted in this project to play the spy, sent in by Yang Ha-rin's agency—CT Entertainment.

Son Jia scratched her head, openly incredulous.

...What, they only rounded up greenhorns? Is this for real?

She had built her skill in a theater company and then debuted, but she still lacked the name. Which was precisely why she had been able to slip in here.

One point. Every single person here is a flat one out of ten.

Scoring actors was a habit as natural to her as breathing. A quick read of combat power, you might call it.

You needed it if you meant to survive in this industry. Stick with the high scores if you want anything out of it—obviously. The low scores were trash. She didn't even feel like treating them as people.

Meanwhile, the extras had already gotten a conversation going.

"You're the one who takes a sword and dies, right? Want to try it once?"

"Sure. Give me a swinging motion from your side."

"Whoosh!"

"Gyaaaaaah!"

"Oh? You're actually pretty good."

Son Jia shook her head.

I don't even need to look any further. This thing is already dead.

Maybe the prep had simply been too rushed. There wasn't a single person giving off the air of a real veteran. All she could see were sloppy extras.

Then.

"Do we really have to try that hard?"

Another bit player cut in, the tone cynical.

"You all saw the articles, right? This project's in bad shape anyway. And we're extras. Slack off a little and I doubt anyone's even going to say anything."

"...Yeah. That's fair."

"You think the way I do. I just showed up treating it like a short-term gig."

The others looked more or less in agreement.

Even now, sharp hit pieces were pouring down on Director Park Joon and his film, and because of that, almost no one had joined Sword out of any real affection for it. They had come at it like a well-paid part-time job, or they had been hooked by a rumor that a famous actor would be on set.

"I came because I heard Seo Yeon-ju was coming..."

"But is she actually coming? There isn't a single article about her joining."

"If it was a lie, we just go home."

"I did see her in person at the on-site audition. Her real face was insane."

Son Jia, who had been watching all of it, thought exactly what she expected to think. Yeah. Figures.

Look at this. There's no saving it. The mood is already a wreck.

A film is the sum of everyone's effort. Work one or two people to the bone and you still never get a good film out of it. If anything, all that blood and sweat only becomes a device that makes everyone else's laziness show more clearly.

And these people?

The acting is already miles short, and they don't even have the passion. The kind who'd be perfectly satisfied just looking at Seo Yeon-ju's face.

Skill was one thing. They had no fire. Most of them would get their fill of Seo Yeon-ju in the flesh and go home. How were you supposed to shoot anything worth watching with people who hadn't even come intending to try?

The one and only way this film came back to life?

There wasn't one.

If she forced it. Really, truly forced it. If she absolutely had to name a single possibility?

The lead grabs everybody by the collar and drags the whole thing. If it isn't that, it's nothing.

Dragging them didn't simply mean skill. It meant becoming a deranged engine that could lift every person around her and blow the fire back into passion that had already gone out.

But the lead was Lee Sua. A rookie. No credits.

Impossible. Die and come back to life and it's still impossible.

To Son Jia's mind, it was nothing but an impossible hypothetical.

What did Seo Yeon-ju and Kim Seonil even see in this, to jump in? No—how did a film this hopeless get its budget in the first place?

Thoughts were ricocheting through her head when someone muttered, now that the group had loosened up enough to talk.

"But what about Wi Ji-hye?"

"I heard Yang Ha-rin was originally cast as Wi Ji-hye. Why did that get canceled? What even happened?"

"Right? Was there someone better?"

"From what I heard, it's just some rookie. Even the staff didn't seem to really know."

"Huh? They turned down CT Entertainment's investment money over a rookie?"

Son Jia pricked up an ear, just in case. If talk of Lee Sua came up, she meant to hear it.

But in the end, not one of them knew the details. If anything, Son Jia—who had been there for the audition—knew more than anyone present.

Then.

"All right! We roll in one hour! Everybody, get ready!"

Director Park Joon appeared, voice booming, and Son Jia immediately started tapping the phone in her hand.

A text to the CEO of CT Entertainment.

The extras who had been waiting called out.

"Director! What about the person playing Wi Ji-hye?"

The director nodded, as if it were the question he had been waiting for.

"Brought her, of course. Our Wi Ji-hye! Come on out!"

The actors' eyes went wide. All any of them could do was wait for the person in question to appear.

And at last.

Step— step—

"Hi."

When she showed her face—

Nothing.

That overwhelming appearance dropped a silence over all of them.

The silence held for a long time.

In the moment when that shocking impression seemed to freeze even time itself, only Son Jia's fingers moved.