Forgot ■■
In the vote of Bareungil, the directors' circle known as the Right Path, Kim Jungi himself was the only one who did not vote to cast Kim Jungi out. The man just expelled stood even now with Park Joon's phone clenched in his fist, staring at it blankly, the hand that held it trembling.
The current-affairs program did not let up on its naked, unsparing talk.
Kim Jungi's legs and arms were shaking, and now even his vision had gone dull—a sensation much like the one that had come over him in the grip of a high fever.
"This... this is... what in the world..."
Being driven out of Bareungil was an unpleasant business, and that was all. Being taken up by a current-affairs program was a trouble of an entirely different order. It meant not a handful of colleagues but the entire nation turning against him. It meant the living he made was about to vanish.
And sure enough, the crimes Kim Jungi had been carrying in his heart—and the acts that, even if not strictly illegal, were certain to draw condemnation—were being hauled under the lights and laid bare, one by one.
Then came the victims, mosaicked, taking their turn in the interviews. Faces and voices were hidden completely, and still Kim Jungi knew who every one of them was. Everything they spoke was the truth. The evidence was solid. There was no hole anywhere for him to crawl out through.
It was then that Park Joon took his phone back. At the same time, the other directors finally began to fill their glasses.
"You said it yourself, didn't you? That one must never be a burden on others."
Go Taemin spoke to Kim Jungi, who had lost the use of words.
"This goes well past being a burden. Trade so much as a greeting with you, and a man would drop into the same pit. I knew you were running some dirty scheme. I never imagined it ran this deep. You'll take your due, and you'll take it gladly."
Director Kim Jungi only listened, dazed.
"Shall I tell you the one decisive reason it came to this? You were never a man who made the film itself his aim. For you, a film was nothing but a means. A means of luring women in and exploiting them."
Go Taemin held out the mouth of the bottle as if offering one last drink to mark the farewell, but Kim Jungi only trudged away, wearing the face of a man whose soul had already left.
He walked the corridor like that for a long while.
"..."
He was blank. His head felt emptied out. He went into the restroom, looked in the mirror, and found himself wearing a truly ridiculous expression. Then it struck him, all at once, that he had a phone of his own, and he hurriedly opened Mutube—because he was still clinging to the hope that somehow, even now, he might smooth this over.
But.
"Fuck... seriously, fuck..."
That hope was shattered without mercy. Set even above the recommendation algorithm, one enormous live broadcast sat planted at the very top of the video list. And that broadcast, too, was about Kim Jungi.
It was a channel Kim Jungi knew well. Trash Lab—a channel that, whenever a chance appeared to tear into a public figure, planted itself at the very front of the pack and sent them straight to the bottom. The subscribers who had acquired a taste for that particular dopamine numbered a full 1.1 million. Somewhere around ninety thousand were watching the broadcast in real time. And the one being torn apart at this moment was no one else but himself.
"Fucking hell... these bastards dare..."
The feeling still occupying the largest place in Kim Jungi's heart was panic, and rage. Or else a sting of regret—if only he had been a little more thorough back then, perhaps it would not have blown open like this. Which was to say, there was not a scrap of remorse in him. He denied reality with everything he had and refreshed the video list like a madman.
In that short span, the videos about him had swollen. Cyber wreckers that had been hunting for prey had thrown the clips together at speed. Run the audio through a text-to-speech filter, fill the screen with a few simple photos and subtitles—that was all the preparation a video required, so of course they came out fast. They were spreading as if they had grown wings.
"Fuck...!"
In the instant Director Kim Jungi moved to hurl his phone—
A mention of his name had come through. He opened it and found that some group chat had been thrown together. Nearly three hundred people. Every acquaintance of every acquaintance of Kim Jungi's had been invited in.
Director Kim Jungi confirmed that even his own family numbered among the invited, and he froze completely.
From every direction at once, people began calling his name.
It was a death sentence.
How much time had passed? He had been sitting collapsed on the restroom floor for a long while when someone came up beside him. It was Park Joon, the man directing the short film Sword.
"So this is where you were."
As he spoke, Park Joon looked at Kim Jungi's phone, flung off to one side. It had been set to silent, but calls were coming in without a pause. Industry people, no doubt.
"Haa. How did it come to this."
Park Joon sat down beside the slumped Kim Jungi. Kim Jungi himself only stared at the floor with a vacant face, and did not even seem to know who was beside him. Into that silence, Park Joon spoke.
"Director Kim Jungi, do you remember? This was before Bareungil even existed. Back when I was learning under you. That high-ranking actress, Cha Jin-hee, was abusing an extra. You remember."
"..."
"Back then you tore into Cha Jin-hee. You told her that the moment someone joins your production, they are all the same kind of actor—there are no ranks—so she was not to delude herself and throw her weight around."
Kim Jungi gave no reaction at all. It was impossible to tell whether he was even listening, but Park Joon's words went on.
"Truth be told, who looks after the bit players? It was the sort of thing that could have been let slide. But in the end Cha Jin-hee apologized, and the staff, myself included, all became your fans. And as a result the bit players gave everything they had, and the film became a proper hit."
And then.
Kim Jungi, who had shown no reaction through all of it, finally opened his mouth.
"...It was youth. I was young, back then."
"No. It wasn't that you were young."
Park Joon slowly shook his head.
"It was passion. Back then, Director, you were overflowing with passion more than anyone."
"..."
A very simple fact. But the change was enormous. Kim Jungi's face, which had looked as if the soul had gone out of it, flooded with shock, as if someone had struck him hard across the back of the head.
"Passion. Passion, is it..."
Yes. The distant past. It seemed that he, too, had once had such a thing. Only then did regret begin to stain Kim Jungi's face. A man who until now had been seized by nothing but rage was at last beginning to feel remorse. At the same time, it was already too late. Park Joon was about to leave him there, every emotion tangled together, when—
"Director Park."
Kim Jungi, his voice already gone hoarse, called him to a stop.
"...Let me ask you one thing."
"What is it."
"I thought there wasn't a director alive who had lost his passion as completely as you. But now our positions are entirely reversed. What in the world happened? How did you get your passion back?"
It was something Kim Jungi simply could not understand. Park Joon had seized one hit, then rolled down a tremendous decline and shown the signs of depression. So much so that among the directors, talk had circulated more than once—the worry that Park Joon might soon take his own life. But the Park Joon of the present did not look depressed in the slightest. He gave off the sense of something boiling up in him more fiercely than in anyone, the way Kim Jungi himself had in his younger days. It made no sense. How had a Park Joon paved over with nothing but failure managed to rise again? From what had he drawn that driving force?
Park Joon thought for a moment.
"I simply received a little help from one newcomer."
"...A newcomer?"
"Yes. Lee Sua. There's a person like an ember that refuses to go out."
"Lee Sua?"
Kim Jungi asked it with the face of a man who thought he might know the name.
"Lee Sua? Did you say Lee Sua? Don't tell me—the one from Mystic...?"
When Park Joon nodded, Kim Jungi let out a breathless heh and broke into laughter. It did not stay a scoff for long. It spread into wild, cracking laughter.
Park Joon left the restroom with Kim Jungi behind him. Watching a man who had once been his teacher fall so completely was not a pleasant thing. His feelings were a tangle, and as he walked the corridor his steps suddenly stopped.
Someone was leaning their back against the wall. None other than Director Go Taemin.
"...Did you hear all of that?"
"Don't misunderstand. I wasn't trying to listen. I simply needed the restroom, urgently, and it didn't seem like a conversation I ought to step into, so I waited my turn in quiet."
"Yes, well. In any case, Mr. Kim Jungi was my teacher."
Somewhere along the way, the title of director had been dropped from the name.
"Do you still regret it?"
At that, Park Joon shook his head.
"Not in the slightest. If anything, anger is what's called for. But the whole nation will take him to task anyway, so I left him be. Mr. Kim Jungi has done what cannot be forgiven, and now he has to pay the price that is due."
"Yes. That's as it should be. It's his own karma. Only..."
Go Taemin said.
"...As I listened, exactly one thing began to nag at me."
"Something you're curious about? What is it?"
"You said the reason Director Park got his passion back was some newcomer or other? I heard that much, but I didn't catch the name. May I ask?"
"Ah. It's Lee Sua."
"Lee Sua. Lee Sua..."
Go Taemin quietly rubbed his chin. A person who had slipped cleanly past Kim Jungi, fouled as far as a man could be fouled, and brought back to life a Park Joon who had looked ready to die by his own hand at any moment. Setting acting ability aside, interest was unavoidable.
"I'll have to remember that."
Lee Sua.
Go Taemin, head of Bareungil, committed the name to memory, for now.
Meanwhile.
The entire production team had gathered at the film studio complex in Jeonju, their luggage already set down at a hotel nearby. The camera rehearsal was behind them as well, and the actors who had grown familiar in the meantime began to talk with an easy naturalness.
"Today we're shooting the teaser and the interviews... that sort of thing, right?"
"That's right. A drama's convenient this way. With a film, if you're doing premieres you have to run yourself ragged, but we shoot it once and that's the end."
Film is, at its root, a medium screened in theaters, and holding even one audience premiere is no ordinary ordeal—the lead actors have to make the rounds of the theaters in person. A drama, set beside that, can fairly be called comfortable. Produce the advance interview footage, air that alone, and you are done. Audiences cannot actually meet the actors, granted, but it goes out to the whole country, and so it carries an effect not unlike a premiere.
"Unni, that uniform really suits you. You were born for it."
"Your makeup took well today, too. Properly."
The actors who had been chattering soon fell quiet. Someone newly arrived had taken their attention entire—Sua, finished with her makeup as Kim Yu-han. A snow-white bowl cut, and a finish of makeup that would have suited a male idol. The clothes were loose, but the day was hot, and where the fabric clung it laid her outline bare without mercy.
A presence that could not help but seize every eye. Minds went busy. For most of them, what filled those minds was awe.
That's the person they mistook for a parking attendant? I mean, sure, even then I figured she was pretty, but... this is a completely different person.
At first they only stole careful glances. Later they simply stared. It seemed they could not bear to look away.
No sense of wrongness at all. Not even that uncanny valley you get when a disguise has failed.
Feels like this could catch men and women both.
...Isn't that way too big? Is there CG in this?
It was then that Sua quietly folded her arms, and because of it the actors were flooded with tension in an instant. Only natural. The image of Sua stamped into their heads amounted to a rookie who's good at acting, the loyal sort who turned down even a master director's project to choose this—roughly that, and nothing more. They felt the pressure, perhaps, that they themselves would have to be nothing short of excellent.
And in fact Sua's expression at this moment was gravely serious. Arms crossed, eyes opened twice as sharp as usual: the distinct feeling that if you spoke to her carelessly, she would bite. Sua, of course, had a reason she could not help it.
What do I do.
A cold sweat slid down her spine.
What am I supposed to do about this. Seriously, what do I do.
She swallowed, dry. The reason was simple.
...I didn't put on a bra. What do I do about this.
She had not put on a bra. That was the conclusion of it. It was her first time disguising herself as a man, and perhaps she had sunk too deep into Kim Yu-han. Kim Yu-han did not wear a bra, and so Sua, without a second thought, had not worn one either. Realizing it only now was a disaster. The day was hot, besides, and she had worn white.
She was sunk, in any case. What was she supposed to do. At first she had pinched the sweat-stuck cloth between her fingers and peeled it away from her skin, but even that met its limit soon enough. The shape showing through the thin fabric was bad enough. The color was worse. Even to Sua's own eyes, a faint pink was bleeding through.
In the end there was one method. She had to cover it. Sua crossed her arms with every ounce of strength she had.
Sua's conviction that she must not, under any circumstances, let her guard down—and the actors' conviction that today, of all days, there must be no mistakes. Just as those thoughts were tangling together into a mess—
"All right—has everyone assembled!"
PD Choi Heewon made his appearance with a phone pressed to his ear, tossing instructions this way and that across the set even as he came toward the actors. At last he ended the call and dropped the phone into a pocket.
"Tomorrow we go straight into principal photography! So we finish these pre-interviews at the greatest possible speed, and today we rest as deeply as we can manage! All of you—keep your strength up!"
But it was then.
Tak-tak-tak-tak—!
A clamor, and the sound of feet. Three or so people were sprinting this way in a hurry, and to PD Choi's eye they were familiar. The CG team.
"PD! PD Choi!"
Choi Heewon was startled on the inside as well. The bewilderment risen onto the CG team's faces was enormous even at a glance. He waited until they reached him, then asked.
"What is it?"
"This—this, sir. You need to see this."
One of the CG staff held a phone out to Choi Heewon. It was a current-affairs program, and even at a glance it was running enormously hot; the chat climbing like mad in the space of a blink was proof enough. And when at last he took in the title—
"...!"
PD Choi Heewon's eyes flew wide, and his gaze went to Sua. The staff's did the same. The actors, who did not yet know what any of it was, whipped their heads toward Sua regardless. Every eye in the place had come to rest on her alone.
...!
Startled to her core, Sua locked her arms together harder than ever.