The Arctic Fox Doesn't Cry
“...You! What the hell are you thinking?!”
Kim Seonil shouted.
Krrrrk—!
The fight over the steering wheel was vicious. The distance left to Special Task Force 808 headquarters was not, in truth, very far at all—but it did not feel that way to Kim Seonil now. Either they reached the destination like this, or the car flipped before they ever arrived. This had gone past safety. Lives were hanging on it, and so it was only natural that neither of them yielded an inch.
Kim Seonil and Lee Sua struggled without mercy, and the cameras caught every instant. To the people watching, it was quite a spectacle. It looked like a game of go: black and white, warring over territory.
“Damn it—are you insane...?!”
Kim Seonil yelled as he barely hauled the wheel back into his grip. Now and then he shot a glance at Sua’s face, as if to ask whether she was in her right mind, but her expression never changed. What she meant to do was perfectly clear. Eyes that did not waver by a fraction, and in them, obsession and desire fixed on something.
It could only be a single-minded resolve to flip the car. At least the Lee Sua of this moment was sincere.
He could not begin to guess a reason. Why?
Did she have some grudge against him?
But then—
“...!”
Kim Seonil was struck, all at once, by an enormous shock.
It was not her eyes, and it was not her face. He had caught her true intent in a place he had never thought to look.
Lee Sua. You... don’t tell me.
Her hands.
It was in Sua’s long, pale hands. The grip coiling around the steering wheel like a snake was menacing—and yet it only set the car swaying. It never overturned it. The precision of it, as if she were carefully metering her strength, made that especially plain.
To the naked eye, of course, it would look like nothing but a threat. The same would be true through a camera, and only then did Kim Seonil understand. This, too, was an ad-lib. And he had walked straight into it.
He found himself retracing the situation of the scene. It was truly nothing of a scene. The sort of stretch where a viewer thinks, I should go to the bathroom during this. All it amounted to was Lee Kang-cheol and Kim Yu-han trading a few lines in a contest of nerves on their way back to headquarters.
Sua’s actions had changed everything.
In this moment, every line of dialogue was useless. Action over words. This single struggle for control laid it all bare—that Lee Kang-cheol and Kim Yu-han were complete opposites, and that neither would concede the other so much as an inch. All of it.
Lurch—! Lurch—!
Inside a vehicle that rocked hard and yet never flipped, Kim Seonil very nearly let a look of admiration show.
You... I can’t predict a single thing about you. Not one, from start to finish.
He kept reminding himself that he had to remain Lee Kang-cheol, and so his expression held—but inside, he was already in awe.
You and I read the same script. We read the same scene. So how can the interpretations be this different? How long did you sit with one short scene like this and tear it apart?
An ordinary person might simply have thought Lee Sua had read the scene well and moved on. Kim Seonil, who poured everything he had into acting, had no choice but to feel it with a clarity that stung.
She was nothing like a part that only carried out what it was given.
Lee Sua was an actress who possessed the possibility of creation.
Looking back, the mock shoot had been the same. Interpretations that were nowhere in the script, and yet fit the theme even better—Kim Seonil knew. An ability like that was not something even he possessed.
And yet.
I am Lee Kang-cheol. I do not tolerate Kim Yu-han. Not ever.
Kim Seonil steeled himself further. The confrontation between Lee Kang-cheol and Kim Yu-han was also a contest between Kim Seonil and Lee Sua, and for the sake of the work’s early stretch, Lee Kang-cheol could not be the one pushed back. Now it was his turn to prove it.
Lee Kang-cheol, in the early episodes. Focus on that role and nothing else.
His mind pulled taut, and soon he found the answer. What would Lee Kang-cheol do in a situation like this? Strangely enough, the answer came with unusual speed.
“Kim Yu-han, that’s enough!”
Even as he shouted, Kim Seonil threw a punch at Sua.
Whoosh—!
The motion was huge, but it was not a true blow. In reality it was closer to a fist grazing past the vicinity of her face.
Astonishingly, Sua took the ad-lib at once. She snapped her neck as if she had been struck and slammed her head into the window.
Thunk!
“...”
Even Kim Seonil himself wondered, for a moment, whether he had actually hit her hard—so through the camera, the moment would brim with life. They would only need to lay in the impact sound in post.
All they’d have to add is the hit.
As Lee Kang-cheol, Kim Seonil delivered the line with a cold calm.
“Unit 808’s job is to identify a criminal and arrest them within twenty-four hours. We work as parts. Parts that exist to raise the arrest rate. That is all.”
Inside the car, now gone quiet, Kim Yu-han no longer tried to wrench the wheel. Lee Kang-cheol, sweat beading on his forehead, spoke as he forced his agitation down.
“This is not a job you do for your own satisfaction. Understood?”
Kim Yu-han’s face still could not be seen. The bangs thrown into disarray by Lee Kang-cheol’s blow hung low enough to cover the nose, and the head still rested quietly against the glass. For a long while, nothing happened at all. Whether the shock of being hit was that great, or whether it had become clear that wrenching the wheel by hand was impossible—there was hardly a movement. Then, as the vehicle ran on in silence once more, there came a moment.
“Heh.”
The only thing still visible, the corner of the mouth, curled upward.
“It hurts.”
A plain reaction.
“See? When you actually do it, Senior, it works just fine.”
And a follow-up that was anything but plain. It looked a little like an owner training a pet, a little like a teacher instructing a student, and a little like a much older senior indulging a child.
“Keep doing it that way. Strongly. Through action.”
At the same time, something unbelievable happened. A trickle of blood ran from the left corner of Sua’s mouth. It was strange. Kim Seonil’s fist had only grazed her. There was no way she could have been hurt.
...Don’t tell me she bit the inside of her own cheek in that instant?
Just as he swallowed the shock, Sua extended her left hand like a snake once more. This time she was not aiming for the wheel. The movement was not violent either. She only laid it over Kim Seonil’s shoulder.
“We each learned one thing from the other today.”
And then, in a whisper-soft, impudent little voice—
“I will keep to the rules as much as I can. And you will break them as much as you can.”
A slight shake of the head revealed the upper face the bangs had hidden, and the corners of the eyes were already curved like crescent moons. A presence whose gender even Lee Kang-cheol would have found difficult to guess.
“But I won today’s match. That’s how you settle the order of things, isn’t it? The one who laughs last is the one who wins.”
Lee Kang-cheol—Kim Seonil—understood at last that this entire situation had been Lee Sua’s design. It had been nothing more than a board laid out to take the measure of an opponent’s patience, temperament, and limits. In the moment a fine shiver of goosebumps rose across his skin—
“...Right?”
The match was given its period.
Lee Kang-cheol could not smile. Kim Yu-han did.
“...”
And right on cue, the vehicle pulled into the 808 headquarters. PD Choi Heewon’s shout came crackling through the radio.
“Cut! That’s a cut! Cut! That was incredible!”
Even after that, the inside of the vehicle was nothing but silence. Lee Sua only kept staring out the window, lost in whatever she was thinking, while Kim Seonil sat with both hands on the wheel and far too much on his mind.
“That scene just now was so good!”
“We got all of it on camera! That was insane!”
Led by PD Choi Heewon, a crowd of staff closed in around the vehicle, every one of them wearing an excited face. Sua thought they looked like a zombie horde out of some apocalypse.
The most excited of them all was PD Choi Heewon.
“And when did you find the time to prepare something like this? The finest surprise gift! I nearly called NG without even realizing it had been agreed on! To give us this from the very first scene—I’m moved!”
His usual boulder of a presence was nowhere to be found. Unlike himself, he was thoroughly worked up, which meant principal photography mattered that much, and that the scene just now had satisfied him that much.
“Ah, this is what makes the work worth doing! This is why I became a PD!”
The staff nearby were no less fired up.
“Whoa. I never thought this scene would feel like a thriller.”
“The two of them locked against each other is insane.”
“Buddy shows... they might actually come back for real, don’t you think...?”
Directing, sound, camera—there was not a department that was not busy spilling its impressions. The kind of scene that, out of sheer gladness, left people with too much to say. The moment Sua and Kim Seonil had made was exactly that.
“When Sua’s bangs lifted, did you see how the corners of her eyes were curved? I got actual chills. The viewers are going to feel so complicated about it. Whether they should fall for that, or be scared of it...”
“Seonil’s emotion was dead-on, too. Pressing it down, pressing it down, then letting it blow—that’s exactly Lee Kang-cheol. These two are honestly too good.”
Their admiration could not help but run deeper than most. Unlike other dramas, Special Task Force 808 had gone so far as to stage a mock shoot, which meant production had been several times harder than on other projects. The staff had truly been ground down. And they had just now felt that the hardship was worth it.
“...It was really worth suffering for. It really was.”
“Right? This is going to land with the viewers, no question.”
It was only natural that the other actors were busy praising Sua and Kim Seonil’s acting, and Kim Iseo of Mystic was tense.
...Sua, I don’t know how high you’re going to climb.
The actress Mystic had taken in was certain to reach the top someday, and so she had no choice but to stay drawn tight. She must not become a CEO who seized her talent by the ankle.
Park Dohui and Hwang Myung-pil were scratching their heads in just the same way.
“Sua’s acting well again today, I’ll say that.”
“She is.”
“Dohui, you’ve got a shoot with Sua today, don’t you?”
“...I do.”
And so, as the aftershock washed over the entire set, Kim Seonil belatedly opened his mouth.
“PD, please have someone look at Lee Sua.”
“Yes? What condition? Ah—don’t tell me...?”
Only then did the faces around Choi Heewon turn startled. They had realized that what had trickled from the corner of Sua’s mouth was not makeup. PD Choi Heewon asked, eyes flung wide.
“That’s real blood, isn’t it? Sua, why would you do that? Calling NG once is nothing at all. We could have prepared blood capsules and shot it again, and that would have been plenty!”
Sua slowly shook her head.
“If it hadn’t been this take, it wouldn’t have been captured like this.”
“Even so... no. Then let me ask just one more thing.”
Bewilderment lay thick in PD Choi Heewon’s voice.
“Why did you even think to attempt something like that in the first place? You’re an actress. An injury, whether small or large, is a serious risk for you. We could all have looked for another way together...”
“I’m not Lee Sua.”
Sua cut him off midway.
“Because I am Kim Yu-han.”
And what followed was a calm voice.
“Kim Yu-han would have done it that way. We didn’t shoot this scene because it hurt. We didn’t shoot this scene because it was dangerous. ...I can’t say that sort of thing to the viewers.”
“...”
“I’m going to keep acting this way from now on.”
At that, a peculiar look began to come over every face.
“And don’t misunderstand.”
“...Misunderstand?”
“Yes. Those eyes—watching an actress who swallows every kind of pain and films through sheer hardship—please put them away. The reality is different. It isn’t that at all.”
Sua said,
Smiling, soft and bright. A smile without an inch of a lie in it.
Filming went on after that.
“Let’s go again!”
Seo Yeon-ju’s scene.
“Go as cruel as you can! Throw your humanity away!”
And the scenes of those cast as the criminals.
Thanks to Sua, the set gathered heat by the moment, but Kim Seonil was alone. Chin resting in his hand, he retraced what had happened with as much cold clarity as he could manage.
I lost.
His assessment was plain. Lee Sua’s ad-lib—he had answered it with an ad-lib of his own, but even that had been her design from the start. She had answered him right back, as if to show him, and seized the victory anyway. Three exchanges, and in the end, a loss.
And yet it was strange. For a man who carried such fierce pride in his acting, he could not feel so much as a trace of wounded pride.
There were probably several reasons. First, PD Choi Heewon’s words came back to him.
—I nearly called NG without even knowing it had been agreed on!
It was not only Choi Heewon. Everyone had taken the scene for something settled in advance. That was how complete it had been. On that alone, Kim Seonil could feel pleased.
More than anything—
—When I act with Sua, my acting comes out different, strangely. I’m telling you!
Words Seo Yeon-ju had said. He had finally felt them for himself. That must have been why.
Lee Kang-cheol, the man of principle. In truth, the role resembled Kim Seonil, and at the same time it was his limit. He performed the scripts he was given brilliantly, but variations like an ad-lib had been entirely beyond him.
Just now had been different.
He had, unmistakably, acted on the spur of the moment.
“...”
Kim Seonil quietly looked down at his own hand, and at the same time retraced what Sua had said.
—If it hadn’t been this take, it wouldn’t have been captured like this.
She was right. Shoot it again, and the flavor would never come alive. He would be filming already knowing every one of Lee Sua’s intentions. The conclusion was clear.
Lee Sua had intended it, and it had been possible because of Lee Sua.
“Ha.”
Once his thoughts reached that far, a breath of admiration escaped him before he knew it, and he immediately began turning over other possibilities. The last thing that surfaced was a single remark from his younger sister.
—You always look unhappy.
Maybe this time would be different.
Maybe he could become someone other than who he had been.
Could he break the shell that had closed so firmly around him it seemed it would never shatter, and at last step into a new spectrum?
“Maybe...”
It was a possibility he was holding for the first time in a very long while.
Meanwhile, Sua was surrounded by the medical team. Just now the staff were each offering a word, all of them visibly relieved—because her condition was as fine as it could possibly be.
“Thank goodness. It looked so violent I was worried you’d actually been hit, but it was only a bite.”
“Right. There’s no chance of a scar, of course. Just keep the ointment on it. Still, Sua, be careful when you eat for a while. Given where it’s swollen, it’s easy to bite it again.”
Sua nodded.
Sua Nods
It was only natural, really. Kim Seonil’s fist had cut empty air from the start, and Sua had only pretended to be hit. Set beside the pain of actually being struck, this was nothing.
When the medical team withdrew, CEO Kim Iseo came over in their place.
“Sua, do you have any idea how worried I was?”
“No.”
She had said it without much thought, but Kim Iseo’s eyebrow twitched. Sua decided she probably should not answer like that from now on.
“...Anyway, I’m glad. More importantly, do you have any sense of what’s going on out there? Everyone’s working like mad. Like their feet are on fire.”
“Ah. Nice metaphor.”
“The metaphor doesn’t matter. What matters is that it’s because of you.”
“Hm?”
Sua tilted her head, and Kim Iseo went on.
“You showed them acting that doesn’t spare your own body, so the people who thought you were talented but too arrogant have disappeared. And when things are running this smoothly, if you become the one who drags everyone down, you stand out terribly. They have no choice but to be desperate.”
“Hm...”
Sua considered it for a moment.
“...Acknowledged.”
“So how’s your body? Will you be able to shoot?”
“No problem.”
Had she been worried today’s filming would be thrown off? Sua had answered without much thought. But Kim Iseo waved a hand—and with a faint smile, at that.
“Don’t misunderstand. I didn’t ask because I value the schedule more than you. It’s just that there’s a big fish on set today. A big fish that’s started taking an interest in you.”
“...A big fish?”
“Ah, what you need to do is simple. Just keep doing exactly what you’re doing.”
“That, I can do.”
Inwardly, Sua addressed the Special Privilege. Right, Privilege? And the Special Privilege, in the shape of an arctic fox, seemed to nod.
...And why had she gone and dressed the Special Privilege up as an arctic fox on a whim?
That was up to Sua.
Mighty Technique: Sua’s Heart
In any case, Kim Iseo seemed satisfied with the answer.
“Good. In that case... we’re really going to land a big fish today.”
She even clenched that tiny fist to show it. By then, though, a growing urgency had started up in Sua, and she opened her mouth at once.
“Then, CEO, I’m going to take a moment alone and settle into the feeling.”
“Ah, sorry. I’ll clear out right away.”
Kim Iseo vanished quickly.
“...”
Only then did Sua’s expression go soft and melt.
“Uuugh... ow ow... it huuuurts...”
Of course, what she had declared in front of everyone had been sincere. She fully intended to work even harder from here on. ...But back then, Kim Yu-han’s feelings had been mixed in, and even the pain had felt like play. The Sua of right now, naturally, hurt.
Mindset and actually being in pain were two different things! Two different things!
I went and pretended it didn’t hurt, and now look at me... I’m gonna cry...
Tears welled fat at the corners of her eyes, but she refused to let a single one fall. Right, right—crying was ridiculous!
An arctic fox wouldn’t cry over something like this!
That’s right. A technique like Sua Sniffles did not exist. Not in this lifetime.
The real filming was only just beginning.
“Sua, standby for the next scene!”
The set burned hotter than before, but among it all, a few things stood out.
First, Park Dohui steeled her resolve.
“I am absolutely not fainting today... I can do this...”
After a fierce debate, the production team had decided that the scene salvaged from the mock shoot—Park Dohui biting down on an arm and fainting—would be used exactly as it was. From here on, Park Dohui, Kim Seonil, and Lee Sua would be filming a different scene together. Park Dohui let out one rallying cry after another.
And one thing more.
“...”
The big fish Kim Iseo had spoken of.
The commercial team for the product Extreme. And Director Go Taemin.
Both camps had begun to fix their eyes on Sua.