From the Beginning
It took only an instant to understand how extraordinary the person before her truly was.
Son Jia's mind had gone perfectly blank, and yet even through that blankness instinct spoke. The being standing opposite her was, without question, Wi Ji-hye — the greatest under heaven.
"What..."
The word slipped out before she could stop it. It was the sort of reaction Yu Heon-a might have given in the scene, so no one called an NG — but the dazed awe just now had not belonged to Yu Heon-a. Son Jia had blurted out a feeling of her own. This can't be real. Life's reversals always arrived without warning, but this one ran on an entirely different track. The shock of it was enormous.
How? She was supposed to be a nobody, wasn't she? Had she been hiding her skill on purpose? Had there been a design lurking behind that vacant, half-witted free acting? Or had word somehow gotten out that Son Jia was a plant from CT Entertainment?
And at last she understood the attitude of Seo Yeon-ju and Kim Seonil. Acting of this caliber — of course they would be captivated enough to trail after her. The investment money made sense as well. But the more she granted Lee Sua's greatness, the more questions rose in its place. It was bizarre that no rumors had ever circulated about a person this extraordinary. Unless she had dropped out of nowhere like a meteor, there was no way CT Entertainment, with its superior intelligence, would have missed her.
In the end, what had become most urgent for Son Jia was this. The plan has completely fallen apart. What do I do now? Her heart grew heavy.
The reason she had given everything she had was simple. She, a mere bit player, would display acting superior even to the lead, Wi Ji-hye, and then watch the air on set turn to ice. That had been the intent. But the situation had changed. Wouldn't this simply remain as a scene in which both of them had burned with passion? However rattled she was, she knew at least this much: she could not leave things as they stood. This scene must never receive an okay. A truly remarkable take was certain to be born of it.
I have to collect every last bit of the money CT Entertainment promised me. Her plan could not fail. It absolutely could not.
Wi Ji-hye, meanwhile, was still only staring at Son Jia, wrapped in a steadiness that could answer any move. A gaze that froze the heart merely by meeting it. The cameras ringing the meadow in a circle were still rolling.
Son Jia's mind raced, and she soon reached a conclusion. Do nothing. Just like this. That'll do it. The plan had formed the moment she acknowledged Lee Sua's acting: she would perform no acting at all. No matter how fiercely the other threw herself into the role, it would be useless. If she, playing Yu Heon-a, stood there like a scarecrow, it would have to end in an NG. Excuses? She had more than enough of those. She forgot her lines. She forgot her blocking. Whatever she claimed, none of it would seem strange.
But reality refused to follow her expectations. However long she waited, no shout of NG ever came. All around her was only stillness. The cameras were still drinking in her image, and across from her Wi Ji-hye stood planted on the earth, steeping the whole field in a resolute air. What? This shouldn't be possible.
Yu Heon-a. A woman who, defeated by Wi Ji-hye, begs for her life, then tries to stab her in the back the moment mercy is offered, fails even at that, and dies more wretchedly than anyone. And yet here Son Jia was, simply standing still. Even so, not a single person called the take.
The reason was simple. Director Park Joon, the crew, the actors — every one of them, in this moment, was looking only at Lee Sua.
She looks at Yu Heon-a with emotionless eyes, but there's exactly one drop of something else soaked in. Her mood has soured.
She drew her sword, and all she got for it was a shabby little contest. That irks her. A way of thinking utterly worthy of the greatest under heaven. To render that so vividly...
Sua, of course, had a question mark floating in her own mind. The opponent who had been coming at her with everything had suddenly stopped acting. It was like this in the mock shoot too, and this person's the same. Why do they keep doing things that aren't in the script? Is this more common than I thought?
In any case, no one was calling NG, and an actor's job was clear. She had to go on. Compared to the mock shoot, when her arm had been bitten, conditions now were far kinder. And so Sua, quietly, let the image seep deeper, dyeing her mind an ever fuller shade of Wi Ji-hye.
There was the sensation of her brain sinking wholly into something, and choices — how would Wi Ji-hye act, in a moment like this — burst up wildly through her head. The feelings took even less than an instant to soak through. A speed that could not even be compared to when she had first unlocked the Special Privilege. Sua's proficiency was advancing even in this very moment, and Wi Ji-hye's emotions ran very deep. It was exactly as she herself had said before they began. Once I start this, I can't stop. Not until I see the end. Before she knew it, she had overlapped into a single body with Wi Ji-hye, the greatest under heaven.
The sword tip rose, slowly. The camera that had held only Wi Ji-hye's face drew back along the rail, and the whole wide landscape filled the monitor of its own accord. Because of it, the sight of Wi Ji-hye laying the blade across Son Jia's shoulder, and the composition of the two in their standoff, came through all the more clearly. There was no particular sound. And so the tension pulled taut.
Seo Yeon-ju held her breath as she watched the monitor. Watching Sua act, she felt admiration and inspiration at the same time. She could kill her whenever she pleased. Hearing what the other intends comes before taking her life, so she doesn't bother to kill quickly. There's a fundamental surplus of composure. Just like Wi Ji-hye.
Then Wi Ji-hye slowly tilted her head to one side, and at last there was a light in her eyes, as if she had found something in Son Jia. The moment those lips parted, Director Park Joon knew it by instinct. Is she about to land a line? It's already wildly off the script, but I can't bring myself to cut. Let's shoot it through to the end.
Son Jia, for her part, found the situation absurd. Lee Sua, what do you think you're doing? If I just stand here doing nothing, what can you even manage? No ordinary ad-lib is going to save this. Whatever you try, it has to be an NG — thoughts of that sort.
But then Wi Ji-hye let fall a voice unusually cold.
"Pathetic."
Son Jia had thought those eyes emotionless. They were not. In the pupils fixed on her, a clear contempt was mixed.
"To give one's all. It is hardly so difficult a thing."
An action absent from the script. A line absent from the script. She knew what an ad-lib was, of course. And yet, even so, a dissonance came over Son Jia all at once.
"To let oneself be driven about by a mere, paltry reality."
The lines Wi Ji-hye cast at Yu Heon-a did not feel like only that. Was it an illusion that they sounded as if Lee Sua were speaking to Son Jia herself?
"A sword is no different from a brush."
Strange.
"Once it has been drawn, it is only right to swing it to the end."
The sword Lee Sua spoke of — why did it seem to be speaking of Son Jia's acting?
"Even if one falls short. Even if one oneself foresees failure..."
She was certain of it.
"One must still, in the end, strike one's own mark."
Lee Sua was speaking to Son Jia through Wi Ji-hye's mouth.
"Even if no answer comes into view. Even if a great temptation draws near..."
Wi Ji-hye went on, unhurried.
"...You, of all people, ought to have trusted your sword."
Son Jia's body trembled, faintly. Herself, who had felt wronged by acting that never saw the light, sick to death of it, and so was spending her strength on backroom schemes in exchange for CT Entertainment's money — she faced the person before her with all of it laid bare. Wi Ji-hye remained perfectly composed.
"Your sword can cut nothing."
Son Jia clenched the hand around her sword. She still stood stock-still, but she felt a certain thought lift its head inside her. Her beginner's heart. The time when she had first started acting, before reality had soiled it — the wish to return to the self of those days and devote herself to nothing but the work.
"Unable to cut, you cannot protect."
Son Jia no longer needed to act. Somewhere along the way, she had begun to listen to Wi Ji-hye in earnest.
"Your beginner's heart. The conviction you once held. Neither can be defended."
Wi Ji-hye drew back the sword she had rested on Son Jia's shoulder. She only tossed it, with a dull thud, at Son Jia's feet.
The camera pushed in on Son Jia's face, and she was shaken, sweat streaming down it. This, too, was because Son Jia herself had been genuinely, deeply startled. There was that much force in Wi Ji-hye's voice, that much persuasion. It truly felt as if she had no choice but to take her own life. Another thought came with it. Her acting life, already so thoroughly soiled — was it too late to turn back? Was that why it had to be suicide? A declaration to quit acting altogether. That, she thought, was the meaning.
But the death Wi Ji-hye commanded was not what she had imagined.
"Sever that weak self, and let us meet again someday."
Discard only the weak self, and someday meet again, actor to actor. Show her what it looked like to give everything. At least to Son Jia, in this moment, that was how it sounded. She had lost her words.
Son Jia had done nothing, and Wi Ji-hye had done something nowhere in the script. And yet there was no flaw. Not one. Every step of it, in a progression that never once stalled, had been seared into the camera. The other person wasn't acting? Then she simply brought the scene to a close herself. That was the realm she had reached. And then, at last, Wi Ji-hye turned her back.
"H-hey — wait, wait!"
Son Jia cried out, thrusting out a hand. She was still reeling at Lee Sua's ability to handle the moment, but one other thing nagged at her. Too precise to be coincidence. And so she had to know. Had what Lee Sua unfolded been merely acting? Or had she truly seen through everything about Son Jia, and offered this as advice?
"...You knew all of it? When — since when, exactly?"
There was not a hair's breadth of delay before the answer.
Near the monitors, there was not a sound. Only stillness. It could not have been otherwise.
Drawing on her grasp of Wi Ji-hye, she had altered the scene, and yet she had conducted the confrontation as a discourse of the sword, so that the artistry of Sword would stand in relief, true to its theme. She had shown restraint, refusing to lean on technique. She had demonstrated, superbly, how thoroughly she had learned it — and still no one could easily give voice to a thought. To perform what was not written in the script and fit it, piece by piece, into the right answer was already, in itself, an artistry no one else stood in any position to judge.
The bit-part actors looked especially lost for words. The same newcomers. The same unknowns. And a different dimension entirely. Not one of them could feel certain that another few decades of acting would ever let them reach that far.
The first to break the silence was Seo Yeon-ju. She spoke without taking her eyes from the monitor.
"We had the hotel booked for a week, didn't we?"
"Cancel it. Three days and we'll have the whole thing shot."
"Where did a monster like that even come from..."
Amid all the talk, Park Joon said only a single sentence.
"...This can win an award. I'm certain it's possible."
Meanwhile, in writer Lee Geumsuk's studio, PD Choi Heewon and the assistant writers had gathered in the living room as usual. Production on Special Task Force 808 was flying along as if it had grown wings, and at the moment they were deep in a serious meeting.
After the mock shoot, any actor judged unsuitable will be excluded.
A condition radical enough to have no precedent. It was not there merely to frighten the actors. They truly meant to do it. The reason was simple. Special Task Force 808 was a work treated as that precious.
On a huge wall-mounted television they went on reviewing the footage from the mock shoot, and they watched for a long while before PD Choi Heewon spoke, arms folded.
"Watching it over again, it strikes me afresh. Perhaps because Sua's ad-lib was so intense, that day was a festival of ad-libs. I don't think there's a single scene without one. A few of the actors went rather too far."
Writer Lee Geumsuk nodded.
"I know. Wanting to try is a good thing in itself, but too much is a bit much, that's for sure. But you know what? I didn't even need to contact the actors first."
"Why is that?"
"They contact me first. One after another. Look at this."
She held out her phone.
And it was not only Park Dohui. The luxury supporting actor Hwang Myung-pil, and many of the others besides — every one of them had sent a message.
"Strange, isn't it? This never used to happen."
"Yes. It is remarkable."
PD Choi Heewon nodded.
"It feels less like they're anxious their contracts might be cut, and closer to them purely steeling their resolve. And besides..."
"Every last one of them mentions Sua. Every single one."
"Yes. They all seem quite conscious of her. Not in a bad direction, though. In a very good one."
So saying, the two of them opened a door that had been shut. What lay beyond was something like a private screening. The stylists sat in a row, watching one person's acting over and over. Kim Yu-han. Lee Sua. It was excellent. That even PD Choi Heewon and writer Lee Geumsuk, who had already played it through several times, were drawn under all over again was proof enough.
The stylists chattered among themselves.
"I notice it every time I watch. When she plays Kim Yu-han, Sua's voice changes, just subtly. She deliberately puts on an androgynous voice, and in the middle of that not a single syllable of her diction slips."
"Right? Thanks to that, the sound team said their job got a little easier."
It was then that one of the stylists looked over at Lee Geumsuk.
"I'm losing my mind. I'm seriously losing my mind."
"Why?"
"Losing it because I'm happy. In all my years as a stylist, I have never seen a clothes hanger as covetable as Sua."
She didn't seem to be exaggerating. She went on, smiling.
"Usually the clothes for a fixed character are already decided, right? So it gets dull. But Sua's Kim Yu-han is different. It's like — anything's fine, just put it on me."
And so the stylists had Sua's face, captured in advance, up on their tablet screens, layering all sorts of clothing photos and wigs over it. With thoroughly delighted expressions.
"What if we do the hair like this?"
"No. The forehead should be covered, no question. We need contrast with Lee Kang-cheol, and a hint of something decadent would be good."
"...She looks good in all of it. What am I supposed to pick?"
Writer Lee Geumsuk and PD Choi Heewon met each other's eyes, then smiled, content, and closed the door for them. The stylists were so wholly absorbed they didn't even seem to notice.
"This — Sua's the heart of this project. The heart."
"Yes. She's got everyone working hard."
There are many kinds of people, but rarely, there is this kind: a person who becomes someone else's motivation simply by diligently doing their own work. To PD Choi Heewon and writer Lee Geumsuk, Sua was exactly that. The actors were sending messages swearing they would try harder, and the stylists, who on any other day would have picked outfits with a shrug, were now as excited as high school girls decorating their diaries.
"Think about it. Isn't this honestly ridiculous? A rookie, serving as the heart of a project? Sua really is a monster. A monster."
"Yes. I've never seen a set feel like this."
"Fighting every other day, taking offense, do this for me, do that for me... Every time I had to mediate, my head would split."
And Lee Geumsuk and Choi Heewon were no exception to the motivation flowing from Sua.
"The truth is, I've got quite a few genres already written, you know? I want to hand every one of them to Sua. What if she can carry all of them?"
"A similar greed is stirring in me as well. Directing her genre by genre."
Action, melodrama, erotic, comedy. How wide, exactly, was Lee Sua's spectrum? They were gauging it in their heads when the door burst open.
"Writer! PD!"
The stylists came charging out.
"This look! What if we style Sua like this?"
Before either of them could react, a tablet was thrust in front of their eyes. They understood at once what it was. A look from the latter half of the story — the moment Kim Yu-han reveals that she is a woman, and her identity comes to light.
"This..."
"This is..."
PD Choi and Writer Lee looked at each other. They didn't need to finish the thought to know what it meant. This would land. No question.
An awl in a pocket. However one tries to hide it, a person who shines cannot help but be seen. In the entertainment world, though, the saying carried one trait more: the moment people there discovered a shining awl, they wore their mouths thin spreading the word. Naturally, Sua could be no exception.
At a hair salon—
"Hey, what's with you? You've got that look like your mouth is itching."
"Obviously. I went to the mock shoot this time. I saw more than one or two things, and it's killing me to hold it in."
"You must've seen Seo Yeon-ju too, huh? I'm dying of envy."
"Seo Yeon-ju isn't the issue right now. I can't say yet because of the contract, but I'm telling you, there's one insane rookie. Gorgeous face, too. Oh — didn't you say the salon needed a model?"
"How pretty are we talking? You have to show me later."
In a commercial's conference room—
"I can't tell you who it is, but she's burned right into my brain, I'm telling you. Colder than this ice cream. I'm serious."
"...Do you actually mean that?"
"For real! Ha — you just sit her down and it's perfect!"
And at a film production company—
"Director! Director!"
"What."
"I went to the Special Task Force 808 mock shoot! I saw a truly incredible rookie! Director, you have to see her in person!"
"Then show me."
"Ah? Now that I think about it, I can't yet, the confidentiality clause..."
"Are you messing with me right now?"
"No! No, sir! Anyway, I guarantee you there's a monstrous rookie out there! What's the role you're hunting for right now, Director?"
"The conglomerate family's youngest daughter."
"Yes! She's perfect for it! She's got the face of someone who'd beat a person to death with stacks of cash! She fits from the looks alone, and her acting has completely lost its mind!"
"You're hurting my ears. Quit the fuss."
The man clicked his tongue, as if he weren't particularly interested. But he was no ordinary man. He was a director whose name carried enormous weight — one who could claim, to this day, that he had never once failed.
"If she's that impressive, bring her to me in person sometime."
The flutter of Sua's wings had long since become a typhoon.