Get Lost
Time after that ran on like water. For Sua, to whom all of it was a first, it passed all the more strangely. And now she stood before a draft of her own profile.
Kim Iseo held a tablet out to her. On the screen, already pulled up in preview, was the information panel that would appear if anyone searched the name Lee Sua on a web portal.
"Have a look. As of the day Special Task Force 808 premieres, a search for Sua should come up something like this."
Sua swallowed against a dry throat and looked.
"Using Lee Sua as it is doesn't quite work for a man's name, does it? So I changed it for now. If your identity leaked ahead of time, we'd have a problem, so we're hiding the Mystic affiliation for a little while as well."
"Okay."
Nearly every field was blank. Fill them in this very day and there would still be nothing but a name, a photograph, and an agency. Even so, something tickled in Sua's chest.
The feeling rising in her had a name. It was, beyond any doubt, the deep bright shock of being moved.
To Sua, that still-empty profile felt like a display shelf. A place where the things she had done could be written down and kept. It made her so happy, so moved, she hardly knew what to do with it.
Until now, her life had not contained a single achievement worth recording with pride. But she had a public shelf at last. A shelf she could show to anyone, at any time.
For the moment, that precious feeling was enough.
Filmography. Someday she would fill every line of it. Of that, she was certain.
Meanwhile, in the stretch of time Sua was too busy to check, the group chat had been lively. Extremely lively.
And so a community was born.
In any case, it was the birth of the Lee Sua Gallery.
Meanwhile, Mouse—Kim Seona—was buried in work with no room for anything else.
An uncountable flood of articles poured out every day, but some of them always managed to catch fire. Staff killing a few minutes over coffee were talking.
"Articles on Special Task Force 808 are pouring out like crazy."
"Even a sloppy write-up pulls decent views. It's a honey pot right now."
"And once it actually airs, how much bigger is it going to blow?"
"That's only if the drama's any good. Let it flop. Watch. Interest dies just like that."
Special Task Force 808 Is Playing It Too Cool. Will That Be All Right?
Kim Yu-han, Hidden Too Completely—and the Worried Reactions Keep Piling Up....
Is Kim Yu-han Actually Nothing but Elaborate Bluff?
In the middle of all that, Kim Seona walked up to her team leader, the article clutched tight against her chest. The piece she had written. The one that said Kim Yu-han's true identity was Lee Su-an.
"Team Leader, I want to run this."
"This? The thing you mentioned before? Who even is Lee Su-an? You're saying this guy is Kim Yu-han? I searched. Nothing comes up."
"I still want to post it. Otherwise I'm quitting."
"Fine. Do whatever you want..."
The team leader agreed without a second thought. The only idea in his head was that Kim Seona was quitting too.
Reporters on their way out, leaving prank articles behind on the internet like graffiti? In this industry, that was exceedingly common. The views wouldn't come anyway. Write it or don't.
Kim Seona herself did not feel so very different. She decided to think of it as handing in a rather unusual letter of resignation.
I was quitting anyway. If it happens to hit, all the better.
Honestly, she didn't expect much. Sua had pulled far too many pranks for that. Once, she had even said something outrageous about starring in Special Task Force 808 herself.
Lee Sua was Kim Yu-han from Special Task Force 808?
Or this person Sua had told her about, someone named Lee Su-an—he was Kim Yu-han?
Kim Seona turned both possibilities over, and then went still.
She hoped, at the very least, that the first one was nothing but a joke.
Like the drama's actually going to flop...
Six directors had gathered at a bar.
Across the table, bottles of ruinously expensive liquor stood at even intervals, and fruit of beautiful color—sweetness promised in every cut—had been carved open in all its variety, the flesh laid bare. It was a lavish affair. No guest but them had been allowed through the door.
A seat that difficult to earn was, for that very reason, an important one. Every man there was a director whose name carried weight.
Scratch— scratch—
But what filled the room was not the clink of glasses. It was the busy scratch of something being written. Far from holding a drinking party, they were in the middle of a vote.
"Been a long time since we held one of these votes."
"Hasn't it? Must be nearly five years."
A gathering of six directors: Bareungil, the Right Path.
Bareungil had one special rule. Anyone who failed to serve as an example would be driven out by vote.
It was a provision so radical that other gatherings could not even imagine it, yet within Bareungil it was treated as ordinary. From the very beginning, this had never been an ordinary club.
"Come to think of it, this group's been around a long while."
"It has. We've had it since we were unknowns."
"There were a lot more of us then. Almost twenty, wasn't it?"
Because Bareungil was not a social circle thrown together by men who had already succeeded. Unknown directors had made it to keep one another going, and only those who succeeded had remained.
The first to set his pen down was Director Kim Jungi.
Park Joon, that thorn in my side. Finally getting rid of him.
Kim Jungi was the one who had called for the vote, and his plan was to expel Park Joon, the director of Sword. Factional arithmetic inside Bareungil had everything to do with it. Kim Jungi's side numbered three. Go Taemin's side numbered three. They could not oust the head, Go Taemin, so casting out the lowest man, Park Joon, would do.
Park Joon had been walking nothing but a downward road of late, so the pretext was clean and the profit handsome. Go Taemin's faction would lose a member, and Kim Jungi's would hold the numbers.
"Director Kim Jungi."
Another director spoke carefully, as if he had read the intent underneath.
"It is true that Director Park Joon has been on a downward path of late."
"Hm?"
"But surely what matters is the sight of a man making an effort? Director Park, at the very least, gives his all every time. That alone can serve as an example to someone else."
"Well. I suppose that's true enough."
Kim Jungi set his pen down with deliberate loudness, then swept his gaze across the directors gathered there.
"However."
He put a great deal of force into his voice.
"If giving your all produces a record that miserable, isn't that an even bigger problem?"
Every mouth in the room clamped shut.
"The attitude of trying is fine in itself. But if you give your all and still fail, over and over, that only means your ability is at that pathetic level and no higher. At that point you cannot be anyone's example. If anything, you're good at planting the idea that effort doesn't matter."
Kim Jungi fixed Park Joon with a terrifying stare. He made no effort to hide where his eyes had gone, as if he did not care who knew whose name he had written.
"Don't use I did my best as an excuse. Doesn't it just mean you knew full well it would go bust, and still made only what you wanted to make? That isn't effort. Call it obstinacy. Call it refusing to let go."
A hush settled over the room.
Then Director Go Taemin spoke for the first time.
"It sounds as if you're saying nothing matters more than results."
"What, am I wrong?"
"No. You aren't. Results are an important factor too."
Go Taemin nodded, his expression unreadable.
"But."
"But?"
"We can't ignore the possibility that Director Park Joon might produce good results later. I only wonder if we truly had to open a vote."
"Ha!"
Kim Jungi snorted.
"This is a gathering of directors who have proven themselves, not a club that coddles aspiring directors and tucks them in. You want me to believe in a man who's been tumbling down a slope the whole time? Buy a lottery ticket."
Go Taemin, who had been turning something over, smiled.
"Director Kim Jungi, the truth is I wasn't inclined."
"Hm?"
"I had a great many doubts about whether we really needed to hold this vote."
"What?"
At that endlessly stifling way of talking, Kim Jungi's face twisted into something vicious. The words that followed, however, smoothed it right back to what it had been.
"But I understand now. The sight of someone trying doesn't matter. Room for redemption isn't worth considering. This gathering's work is to cut them out, decisively. That's what you're saying."
"That's right! That's exactly it!"
Only then did pleasure color Kim Jungi's face.
"There's a limit to shielding someone. No matter how hard you try to embrace them, once they start making trouble for the people around them, the damage turns severe. So you have to cut them out, decisively. Even if..."
He said it with a wicked smile.
"...even if it's someone you've watched over for a long time."
Go Taemin nodded as if he understood.
"All right. I'll take part in the vote."
"Now we're finally speaking the same language. I was about to get frustrated."
Kim Jungi looked at Go Taemin with a face gone easy and smug. So Go Taemin had given up on Park Joon after all. Well, even he had to admit it: the justification for driving Park Joon out was perfect.
And so the vote of the gathering called Bareungil began.
A short while later, every director had finished voting.
Kim Jungi looked toward the two directors he had arranged things with beforehand, and felt something subtly off. Both of them were quietly avoiding his gaze.
But he understood soon enough.
Well, nothing good comes of advertising your faction. I like this kind of thoroughness.
With everything proceeding smoothly, Go Taemin opened his mouth.
"As expected. Aside from one person, everyone wrote the same name."
"Hahaha! Hahaha—!"
The laugh tore out of Kim Jungi before he could stop it.
"Whoever it is, shameless to the very end!"
He even clapped, delighted. Who that single exception was could not have been more obvious. Cornered, Park Joon wouldn't have been able to bring himself to write his own name. He would have written anyone's.
He was drinking in the sight of Park Joon's face, triumphant, when the words came.
Director Go Taemin had said it just like that.
For a long moment, silence settled over the entire room.
Only much later did Kim Jungi's face go blank and stupid. He could not believe what he had just heard.
"...What? Wh-what did you say?"
It was a result that defied common sense. He himself had written Park Joon, and the two he had secured in advance should have written Park Joon as well. That was already three votes. No matter how the rest fell, Park Joon was the one who ought to have been expelled.
So why? How?
Did Park Joon pull something? Did he slip people money in the meantime? Or did Go Taemin fake the count?
Every possibility began to unfold in his head. Go Taemin spoke again.
"Kim Jungi, what you said made a great deal of sense, in more ways than one. And as we listened, all we did was think of you. That is all."
"What...! What the hell kind of bullshit is this...!"
Unable to swallow his rage, Kim Jungi kicked back from his seat. In the same instant, the neatly ranked bottles went over with a shattering crash.
"You sons of bitches. You all got together and decided to screw me? You're going to protect a piece of shit like Park Joon and throw out a capable man like me? Fine. Just wait. We'll see what happens to every last one of you."
"The truth is, I considered giving you a chance."
But Go Taemin's voice was perfectly calm.
"We might not have continued together as directors, but I wondered if I should leave the feeling of friendship in place. But you were right. It's hard to trust a man tumbling down a slope. The public will feel the same."
"Are you drunk? Why the hell are you dragging the public into this? You fucking idiot!"
That was when it happened.
Park Joon, silent the entire time, held out his phone. Some current-affairs program was playing on the screen. Unable to tell what it was, he quietly pressed the side of the phone and turned the volume all the way up.
Struck by a sudden ominous feeling, Director Kim Jungi strained to listen. Then a name that should never have reached him slammed into his eardrums.
"Wh-what.... What is this.... Right now...."
Without thinking, Kim Jungi snatched the phone and clamped down as if he meant to burst it in his fist. His mind went white.
Go Taemin opened his mouth.
"Kim Jungi."
"Whatever effort you make from here, whatever possibility you hold, we will not care. This is advice from a man I once thought of as a friend. A man you know very well."
He said the last of it in a voice colder than it had ever been.