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Two days later.
Sua had been diligently on the move since morning.
♩♪♬
It began with a call from Deer—Ko Eunbi—in the group chat. Sua drew her brows together, unable to see why the girl kept calling.
Oh. Right.
The reason clicked a second later, and she lifted the ban at once.
After that, Sua waited out front of the doll department store for the van. She hadn't been the one to set the meeting place here, of course.
Was it because the van had come here during the mock shoot?
Back then, Seo Yeon-ju and the rest of Mystic had come all the way out to this spot to collect her. Maybe that had left its mark. It felt as if the place had quietly been designated Sua's official waiting spot.
From where she stood, it wasn't an unwelcome thing. She liked that she could look at dolls while she waited. Even now, her eyes were buried in the display.
Whoa. That one, I'm buying. No question. Later, for sure...
The rabbit dolls that had occupied the shelves last time were gone, and nothing but new stock sat in their place. On the outside she held a blank expression; on the inside her eyes were blazing and she was practically drooling.
"Who's that girl?"
"...She's pretty."
"A celebrity?"
Passersby kept stealing glances and murmuring among themselves, but the person in question noticed none of it. She was busy looking at the display.
That was when it happened.
A little kid, clutching her mother's hand on the way out of the shop, spotted Sua and stopped dead, staring straight up at her—index finger extended, pointing.
"Mom. That. I want that one too."
"Hm? You don't call a person that. You mustn't."
The mother gave the child's back a light pat as she scolded her, but Sua wasn't entirely displeased. She'd been treated like a doll, hadn't she? Secretly pleased, she lifted a hand and waved.
"You look like a wolf. A wolf doll."
"...?"
Sua's hand froze in midair.
Her expression hardened before she even knew it, and the child, thoroughly spooked, buried herself in her mother's arms and scurried off.
Sua felt wronged. She was an Arctic Fox. An Arctic Fox. Wolves were about as far from her as anything could be...
That was when a van came to a stop in front of her.
"Sua."
The door opened, and there sat Kim Iseo, smaller than the seat itself.
She looked no different from any other day. The two oversized hairpins fastened into her bangs were the same, and so were the long, quiet clothes layered over her frame.
The CEO waved a tiny hand.
"Were you waiting long? Let's head out."
The moment Sua climbed in, the van pulled smoothly away, and Kim Iseo found herself studying her face.
Is it because the real shoot is getting close? She seems much more serious than before. Well. It is about time she started managing her mindset.
In truth, Sua was only reeling from having been called a wolf.
These days she was completely sunk in arctic foxes. After hearing what writer Lee Geumsuk had said, she'd looked them up, and something unbearably cute had appeared. She'd been delighted—going around with a reaction along the lines of This is me?
Kim Iseo, knowing none of those thoughts, was simply reflecting that things were about to get even busier. She was a CEO who now had to look after Lee Sua on top of Kim Seonil and Seo Yeon-ju.
Kim Iseo broke the silence first.
"I noticed earlier. Quite a few people were sneaking glances at you. You haven't even debuted, and already it's like that. Once the drama airs, we'll have to change your waiting spot for certain."
"Arctic fox."
"Hm?"
"Do you think they thought I looked like an arctic fox?"
The question came out of nowhere, and it caught Kim Iseo a little off guard, but she could at least read the intent carried in Sua's voice.
"Of course. Because you do."
But the creature Kim Iseo pictured, inwardly, was a wolf.
Not a cute fox that splashed in eyes-first to scoop its prey free—a wolf that bit down on the nape of whoever it wanted. A fierce wolf that saw a goal through to the end, no matter what...
"Anyway, you're clear that the real shoot starts in five days, yes? Writer Lee Geumsuk, the entire production team—on the whole, they're all looking forward to your acting."
"I know the real shoot starts in five days."
"Everyone's in a frenzy, they're so busy. Oh, and the shooting order changed a little. They're filming your scenes first."
"My scenes first? Do they have to?"
"They decided that would work best. Something about the actors watching you getting a proper wake-up call and working that much harder."
"Mmm."
Sua's heart thumped.
What kind of reason is that? That's an insanely burdensome reason.
What lay in front of her now was an actual shoot. Every piece of acting she showed there would be laid bare, exactly as it was, before the public.
The tasks set before her were many. Image management was mandatory for the whole of filming, and on top of that she had to act well.
Kim Iseo gave a quiet nod.
"Still, with someone like you, I can rest easy. Take good care of your condition, and show us a fine side of yourself on the real shoot too. If you happen to need anything, contact me right away."
"I'll think about it."
Sua had been about to say I'm fine, then hastily swapped it for I'll think about it. She'd gotten a little cunning lately. No—smarter. Like a fox. Sua, thoroughly pleased with herself.
"The schedule you have to get through today is exactly one thing."
What kind of schedule? Sua's ears pricked.
"A profile shoot. We're going to make your profile."
"A profile?"
She wasn't asking because she didn't know the word. It was that thing where you shot something like a pictorial and hung up a single photo, wasn't it? Still, she had no experience of the sort at all, and she was fairly nervous.
How many photos have there even been in my life?
Pictures taken with family, or with friends? None. The only ones she had were a graduation photo and the picture on her ID...
"Profile shoots are really hard. Choosing the single photo that represents you is a difficult thing. Seonil took a full day, and Yeon-ju... was it about two?"
"Mmm."
"You have to shoot two. Are you confident?"
"Two photos?"
Sua tilted her head, just slightly.
"While you're playing Kim Yu-han, we're planning to pass you off entirely as a male actor. It's a gamble of a marketing play, but if it lands, it's a smash, plain and simple. We'll be launching a rocket into the sky."
She understood what that meant at once.
Well, she'd never done a profile shoot before...
Even so, Sua steeled herself and said it.
"...I'm confident."
If it was something she had to do, then she only had to do it.
A few hours later, at the profile shoot studio.
What they put on Sua at the set was closer to makeup than to styling. It was the work of laying a man's body—the body called Kim Yu-han—over the vessel that was Sua.
Boring.
Sitting in a chair for a long time. It was duller than she had imagined.
Her backside hurt, and her shoulders were stiff. She couldn't even look at her phone, so she had no choice but to fall back on her imagination.
Most of it was the rabbit-related daydreaming she did all the time. Sua, cutting a figure through rabbit worlds of every genre...
She passed the time that way for a long while.
"Ta-da!"
One of the stylists made a sound, met Sua's eyes through the mirror, and smiled brightly along with it.
"We're done—want to check the feel? Do you have any idea how much Writer Lee and PD Choi drilled it into us? They said there was no job more important than this, so we really poured our souls into it."
Now that she thought about it, it had been that same talk the entire time they were making her up. The Special Task Force 808 production team had bet everything on Sua's Kim Yu-han makeup, or something to that effect. At any rate, Sua pulled herself out of her thoughts.
And looked in the mirror.
"...!"
A shock hit her so hard the back of her skull went numb.
...What is this? This is me?
Because the mirror truly held Kim Yu-han.
A white bowl-cut wig, and a nose bridge made all the sharper by shading worked into the skin tone—and it was then that the stylist hid the curves of Sua's body behind a drape like a curtain.
Once the lines particular to a woman's body were concealed, she looked even more like Kim Yu-han.
The stylist smiled, thoroughly pleased.
"Writer Lee and PD Choi won't have any choice but to be satisfied when they see this, right? Pretty and handsome. A makeup job that caught both rabbits."
"Two rabbits. That's nice."
"Sorry?"
♩♪♬
That was when the phone rang.
The caller was none other than Seo Yeon-ju.
In fact, Seo Yeon-ju had been showing her interest by text for a while already. Word that Sua was shooting a profile seemed to have stirred her curiosity in all sorts of ways. What came through now, though, was a video call outright.
...If I really had an older sister, would it feel like this?
Sua hesitated a moment, then held the phone to her ear and answered.
"Oh my, look at you. Sua, you have to show me your face."
Right—this was a video call. The moment she showed her face—
"I heard you were shooting a profile and I couldn't stand the curiosi— ...huh?"
Seo Yeon-ju couldn't get the rest out.
"..."
After that, silence. No reaction, as if the screen had frozen.
Sua gave a small wave of her hand. It made no difference.
"..."
Not a word.
The Seo Yeon-ju who lived in Sua's head was nothing but chatter, so quiet carried this far left her a little uneasy.
Maybe, through Seo Yeon-ju's eyes, it looked awful.
"...Is it weird?"
But.
"Yeah. I'm the weird one."
That was Seo Yeon-ju's answer.
She even covered the corners of her eyes with one hand.
"Hey, Sua. Don't look at me in that makeup."
"What?"
"Because I think I might actually fall for you."
·····
A few hours later. Dawn.
A shoot that had seemed as if it would go on smoothly without end. After that, Sua had to come face to face with a problem she had never anticipated.
She glanced, suddenly, at herself inside the mirror.
"Mmmmm."
Now she had to shoot her profile not as Kim Yu-han, but as the woman, Lee Sua. And so Sua had been put through every kind of adornment there was.
An awful lot of things were rolling around on the floor. Hangers, tools, empty cosmetic containers, to name the chief of them. How many times had they revised the styling and changed the clothes?
She'd lost count of the number, and the hour, before she knew it, was dawn.
Little by little, Sua's backside and her neck and her shoulders and the rest had started to ache.
"Which styling do you like best, Sua?"
"Mm."
Sua hummed, because she honestly couldn't tell.
A ponytail, twin tails, a half-up, an updo... They'd tried all sorts of things, but choosing only one was extremely difficult. Telling which outranked which was genuinely hard.
Sua's impression of it all amounted to little more than this is fun.
She kept finding, in herself, versions she had never even imagined. The process was strange and new. She really had no thought beyond that.
The stylists, as it happened, were having just as much trouble ranking them, and every one of them looked miserable enough to split their own head open.
The head of the profile shoot scratched at the back of her head and thought.
...Is this what they mean by a thousand faces? I've never had a case like this.
She called the staff together for a moment, then asked quietly.
"Which one looks best to you?"
"I honestly can't choose."
"...Right? Usually with actors, the look that suits them best is perfectly clear, but this is a first. Everything suits her, so picking out a single photo is just too hard."
That was when—
"Excuse me."
"Ah, yes, yes. Sua."
At Sua's call, the team lead went straight over.
"This is just one photo we're keeping, right?"
"Yes. A profile can only hang a single photo, which is why it matters."
The team lead went on, serious.
"When the public comes to know your name, this profile is the front door that greets them first. It handles the first impression, and in this industry there's nothing more important than a first impression."
Even Sua was reaching the point of understanding that blasted importance.
"Let's try the next styling first. If there's a look you especially like, tell me. Let's see... this time, how about we try an idol-makeup feel."
The stylists closed in around Sua at once.
"Sua, we're not doing this just because we got paid."
"Right. If it were only the money, we'd have shot something quick and sloppy."
"Really?"
"Your face makes me greedy. No matter what we do, it has a grain of its own, so I want to get my hands all over it, looking for the best."
And so several more hours passed.
How many different stylings had they tried?
Every kind of brush tapped at Sua's face again and again; she changed outfits time after time; and every time they repeated the process, the makeup had to be wiped clean away.
It got to the point that they even set aside a separate stretch, midway through, for a sheet mask, just to let her skin rest. Truly grueling.
The truth was, Sua hadn't thought much of the profile shoot.
She'd figured that if a photo captured her looking pretty, any of them would be fine to use as a profile. As long as a decent image was hanging up, it seemed as if it would work in her favor.
But.
"..."
Now it was different.
Strangely, Sua found herself thinking harder and harder.
"Sua, how about a feel like this?"
"Mmm..."
She was coming to realize she had sides like this as well, and every one of them suited her. But if someone asked whether she truly loved any of them, she couldn't give a firm answer. Something kept catching.
The act of expressing myself in a single photo.
What version of herself would it be right to hang up?
Was it really fine, so long as she was pretty?
Would she really not regret it?
Then the shoot's team lead spoke in a worn-out voice.
"We've pretty much tried everything worth trying, and pushing any further from here looks like too much. It's difficult, but I think we have to choose now. How was option three from earlier? I think that one's pretty good."
"Option three..."
"If you're a little torn, trusting my instinct wouldn't be a bad idea either. I've been doing only this work for over ten years."
Sua didn't answer.
Instead, she looked back over herself.
Thinking it through, her life had changed from the roots up after she gained the Special Privilege. She had carried out all kinds of acting, and at the same time, socially, she had turned this expression and that attitude to her advantage.
She would probably keep doing so.
She had her sights set on a greater success, and she would go on without rest. But that was exactly why the something caught in her heart could only stand out all the more.
And now, she thought she knew the name of that snag.
It was a very small wish.
One photo.
Just one.
What if she left her real self behind. A wish that small.
"Excuse me."
The hesitation didn't last long.
With the real shoot for Special Task Force 808 not far off, Sua decided to take courage for the first time in her life as an actor.
"My look—would it be all right if I styled it myself?"
"What? Yourself?"
"Yes."
"Mm...?"
Bewilderment rose over the team lead's face.
"Yourself...?"
She had been through every kind of power trip, but she had never once received a demand of this sort. It was impossible to understand. Other actors threw fits begging to be dolled up even a little more.
The team lead tried, gently, to talk her down.
"Sua, as I said, a profile is a first impression. And in the entertainment world, nothing matters more than a first impression. But if you style yourself, it's bound to come out quite rough, don't you think?"
The stylists around them wore similar expressions.
But.
That was exactly why Sua's resolve only grew firmer.
"That's why."
"What?"
Sua said it, unyielding.
"...!"
Since she had started acting, she had given her all to playing her roles, and in her life among people she had played a rookie who was difficult to approach. In other words, she had never once left behind a trace of herself as Lee Sua.
So this was what she wanted.
Because she—if not now—might, perhaps, forever, have to live for a long while with the face called Lee Sua kept hidden.
It would be good to leave one photo behind.
So that whenever she needed to, she could remember that she was Lee Sua.
And so that she could look back on her own beginning.
The team lead looked ready to cry.
"Sua, I'm only saying it because it's a shame. Such a shame..."
"Please."
Sua was trembling, and still she did not regret the choice, and in the end the team lead nodded. Wanting to dress Sua up to the very limit was their own greed, after all. If the person herself had a direction she wanted to go, what were they supposed to do about it?
"Sua, you're really shooting it like this?"
"Yes."
A bare face with the makeup wiped away, and hair left to fall, pure white. Sua stood before the camera showing exactly those things.
Unkempt. Unarranged.
An expression with no particular force put into it.
...Is this really all right?
The head of the profile shoot thought it, anxious.
Lee Sua was a jewel, beyond any doubt. So cutting her sharp and shooting her that way seemed right a hundred times over—but this felt like photographing her just as she had been tossed onto the dirt.
The team lead spoke to the woman beside her, the one holding the camera.
"This really won't do, will it? Should I talk her out of it again?"
"No, no, wait. Team lead, don't stop her."
What happened next was something no one had expected.
The staff gathered in front of the camera were shaking their heads.
As team lead, she found it a little strange. What on earth was showing on the camera screen, to get a reaction like that? These were the same people who usually started howling the moment something unflattering got caught.
Meanwhile, the staffer on the camera was focused.
The subject was one person alone: Lee Sua.
"...This has a strange pull to it."
Photography was the act of catching an instant inside a square frame.
And the present that Sua was drawing forth held the unfinished.
Her hair hadn't been tidied, and her face hadn't been painted over with anything, and yet that was precisely why it pulled. A moment later, the staffer understood the reason. Anyone who saw a piece of work this unfinished would want to put their hands on it. You couldn't help but harbor the desire to complete it. It gave you the certainty that, once completed, it would without fail be perfect. And so everyone was drawn in. By force.
"Team lead! This is good! This is really good!"
Click—!
At last the camera let out its first shutter sound.
"..."
The profile shoot team looked at one another without a word.
They nodded at the same time, and the meaning was clear.
A single photo.
Not perfect, but special.
Close enough that it seemed you could hold it, and just far enough away.
A single photo that would, without fail, bewitch them all.