Chapter 57: I Wonder If She Might Have a Talent for ■■, Too
A lull, just before the cameras rolled.
Park Dohui was the one who stepped forward first, of her own accord.
"Sua! It's our turn now."
"Right."
The scene they were shooting today was an entirely new one. After a long debate, the production team had decided to keep, just as it was, the take in which Park Dohui bit Sua's arm and passed out — so today they would be filming the scene that followed, further along. Kim Seonil, Lee Sua, and Park Dohui. A scene the three of them would carry together.
"Hoo..."
Park Dohui drew a long breath. In Sua's eyes she looked as if she had braced every nerve — a soldier about to charge onto a battlefield. She clenched her fist and spoke.
"I practiced like mad for today's real shoot. More than anything, I still feel awful about biting your arm back then, no matter how many times I think about it."
"You don't have to worry about it."
She meant it. That scene had worked out in Sua's favor to begin with, and Park Dohui's apologies had been steady. They weren't even empty words. There was always some kind of money attached.
"I absolutely won't be a burden to you today. I'm going to pull it off on nothing but my own ability. I'm really counting on you!"
"Sounds good."
Sua nodded. Sua Nod.
So she wasn't getting bitten today. That was all Sua took from it. That Park Dohui, who would be building the scene beside her, meant to give it everything she had — that was obviously good news.
But Park Dohui wasn't finished. She fixed Sua with a resolute stare.
"I want you to go all out today, too."
"Hm?"
"Acting with you helps me a lot. It motivates me. So don't hold back. Please."
"Uh... okay."
Sua Nod. Sua Nod.
If you thought about it, Sua was a mere rookie, and Park Dohui a senior with plenty of experience. The conversation they were having was, by any reasonable measure, strange. And yet Sua seemed to be the only one who felt the dissonance.
Somewhere along the way, Park Dohui had come to acknowledge her in earnest.
Well. If it was her best, she had meant to give it anyway. Kim Iseo had said there was a big fish circling the set. Even Sua knew that much — that letting a catch like that slip away would be a waste. If a better opportunity would come in proportion to what she pulled off, there was no reason to turn it down. She meant to seize it.
Aha. This scene.
Sua lowered her eyelids and gathered herself. She equipped Kim Yu-han at full power. Park Dohui had asked her to, after all. Truly, at full power.
· · · · ·
The shoot for S#61 began.
Inside a dim warehouse, a faint leak of light fell across Kim Yu-han and Lee Garam — Park Dohui. Even at a glance, Lee Garam was far from fine. Her face, thoroughly beaten, made that especially clear.
Kim Yu-han lifted the corner of his mouth.
"I told you to resist with everything you had, and you ran? Cute. Should I give that backside a little pat?"
The two of them had been locked in a brutal brawl until moments ago, but the winner was no longer in question. Park Dohui's arms were wrenched behind her and held fast, and Sua had a knife at her throat.
"But what am I supposed to do about this? You've gone and gotten yourself caught again."
Kim Yu-han nipped lightly at Dohui's ear as he whispered.
"And from here on, I'm not even planning to go easy."
Park Dohui went into a fit at once.
"N-no...! No...! Don't do this...!"
Even as she begged, Kim Yu-han rolled his eyes in that quick, habitual sweep, reading the room. The habit of taking in his surroundings hadn't left him. Ordinarily he would have used this knife to torture her, slowly, but...
"Hmm..."
The situation now was a little different. Park Dohui had escaped once in the middle of it, and this time she had been caught not as Kim Yu-han, but as a detective. Which meant he could not pass private judgment here. His partner, Lee Kang-cheol, was already on his way.
"Sp-spare me... spare... please spare me..."
"Shh. Let me think."
Kim Yu-han gagged her with a cloth. Even as he did, the right hand gripping the knife kept twitching. To Kim Yu-han, a criminal was revolting. Kill her, spare her, torment her, cut her to pieces. Violent feelings stormed through him. He wanted, right this moment, to snap Lee Garam's fingers off joint by joint.
Kim Yu-han swallowed, dry. Lee Garam — a criminal who had committed every filthy act there was. If she herself met that same end, what face would she make? The urge to see it with his own eyes was hard to hold down.
Just as his hand had begun, slowly, to move—
"Kim Yu-han!"
Lee Kang-cheol had finally reached the inside of the warehouse.
"Kim Yu-han...! You...!"
He sensed at once that the air was wrong, and once he had read Kim Yu-han's expression, his eyes went wide. He had caught, to some degree, the emotion on his partner's face.
Kim Yu-han was the first to lift the corner of his mouth in greeting.
"You're late, Senior. Mind if I just kill her?"
"...Drop the knife."
A voice more resolute than at any moment before. But sweat had begun to soak Lee Kang-cheol's face as well. The tension in the air drew taut.
"Why? Ah — you're worried I'll kill her too cleanly?"
"She's surrendered. That's enough."
Lee Kang-cheol looked at him with a face that offered no compromise, and Park Dohui, tears streaming, nodded frantically. But Kim Yu-han was no more willing to give ground.
Press—
He set the edge of the blade lightly against Park Dohui's trembling throat. Only enough force for the smallest bead of blood to well. But what it meant carried, with perfect clarity, to everyone there.
"You must have confirmed it by now too, Senior. Miss Garam has done far too many things a sergeant should never do."
She was no ordinary criminal, and the nature of her crimes was vile. She had used her place in Special Task Force 808 to work as an informant.
"So I'd like you to consider this self-defense."
"...No. It isn't self-defense. It doesn't meet the elements."
"Elements? You're still worrying about things like that?"
Kim Yu-han shrugged, as if he genuinely could not understand Lee Kang-cheol's attitude — or found it faintly pitiful.
"This warehouse is dark, and there were never any security cameras to begin with. The only witnesses are you, Senior, me, and one revolting criminal."
Around then he pulled away the cloth gagging her mouth, as if granting her a last word if she had one to leave.
"Hhh—! Hhk—!"
Park Dohui's voice had already gone badly hoarse. Shaking all over, she screamed.
"Please spare me! Please, please spare me!"
Kim Yu-han shook his head.
"No. If something like you stays alive, the world gets worse."
At the same time he drew her slowly into his arms from behind — very slowly, wickedly, as if steeped in lust. It was the same moment he whispered, brief, at her ear.
"Goodbye. It'll hurt, but it'll be over soon."
"...!"
For an instant, Park Dohui's eyes flew wide.
The truth was, by this point she had started to get confused again. She could not tell whether this was just acting, or whether he really meant to kill her. One thing, though, was certain. The knife in Sua's hand was real.
Park Dohui soothed herself. It's acting. The rehearsal was pretty similar, wasn't it?
But with Sua clutching her tight and running hands over her body, she grew confused all over again. Her own senses had begun to whisper. This was absolutely not acting. Thinking about it, there were plenty of strange points. Right before they entered the scene, why had Sua suddenly demanded a real knife?
A bead of blood sat on her throat even now. It had been agreed upon in advance, yes — but Park Dohui was growing anxious. Knowing how to draw a bead of blood meant she could also drive the blade in deeper.
That was when Lee Kang-cheol shouted.
"Stop! Kim Yu-han! Stop right now!"
"I told you last time we settled the hierarchy, didn't I? One action beats barking a hundred times. Have you forgotten already?"
At the same time, Kim Yu-han drove his arm with all his strength.
"I said stop!"
Lee Kang-cheol shouted and kicked off the ground. Park Dohui's eyes rolled back. Now, when a single second seemed stretched into years—
"Ta-da."
One utterly out-of-place word. The voice belonged to Kim Yu-han. Light and bright, with no business in the moment at all, it filled the warehouse.
"Hahaha!"
Kim Yu-han was, at some point, laughing wide open. Lee Kang-cheol tracked the knife a beat too late; it had already been swung. But Park Dohui's throat had not been pierced. The rope binding her had simply been cut.
Lee Kang-cheol looked at him as if to ask what in the world this was. Kim Yu-han quietly stroked Lee Garam's head.
"What. Did you really think I'd killed her?"
He shook his head.
"Forget it. I hate a hassle. And if I kill this one, thaaat detective over there — the one staring with those scary eyes — is going to nag me all day."
And then it happened.
Shudder—
Park Dohui's body gave one great tremor. The problem was how real it was. To Sua, the vibration that had just run through her was quite different from before. What had just happened was... a convulsion? A tremor? An instinctive movement that acting simply could not produce? Something like that.
Sua checked on her as a matter of course — and was promptly shocked.
First, Park Dohui's face, the soul gone clean out of it. That much was fine. A vivid look on camera was all to the good. The problem was what came next. A liquid was soaking the toes of Sua's shoes. The moment she registered the yellow, a faintly sour smell pricked the tip of her nose.
Urine.
No question about it. This was real urine.
At this point Sua was thoroughly thrown. What is this? A prop she prepared in advance? But it was far too vivid to be a prop. Could this be the secret weapon Park Dohui said she'd prepared?
She waited, in case someone called the take no good, but no matter how long she drew it out, no such direction came. Which meant they were to keep going. So she did — slipping Kim Yu-han back on, fast.
Sua grinned, still stroking Park Dohui's head.
"She can't even hold her pee. What am I supposed to do with her? I should've house-trained her."
But in truth, Kim Seonil across from her was every bit as thrown. There hadn't been any incontinence in the script, had there? Kim Seonil, however, was no dabbler. He was seasoned. It wasn't a blown take, so he found at once what he had to do and focused.
"...Step aside."
Lee Kang-cheol swiftly confiscated the knife and cuffed Park Dohui's wrists, reciting, as he did, the words a detective was obliged to say.
"Current time, 8:00 a.m. Obstruction of official duty, assault, property damage, and so on—"
A moment later, the camera pushed in on Park Dohui's face.
Trickle.
A single tear slid down her cheek.
"Okay! Good! Beautiful!"
The set erupted.
A "variable," as a rule, is a word used in a bad sense. Of course it is. When something unexpected happens, you have to respond, and cleaning up after it consumes a fair amount of time and resources. But today's variables were different.
"Did I pile up good deeds in a past life? What kind of blessing is this?"
"You're telling me. The best. The absolute best."
Writer Lee Geumsuk and PD Choi Heewon said it all. Today's set was packed with variables, but every one of them worked in the production's favor — the kind you didn't need a countermeasure for, the kind you simply accepted. So of course the mood could only be good.
And during the break now underway, one subject had become the talk of the set. Naturally...
"Seonil and Sua's acting was really something, wasn't it? But Dohui was incredible too. To pull an ad-lib like that, of all things..."
"I know. She's been practicing so hard lately."
"Whoa. Regulating a bodily function through acting."
...it was Park Dohui wetting herself.
Park Dohui found herself in a strangely complicated mood. How to put it? The urge to fling herself off somewhere high?
Not fainting was good. Not fainting was good, but... Right. Up to there, it had been fine. But at the end, maybe because the tension had snapped all at once, she had wet herself without meaning to.
"Thanks to the accident, it comes through so much better that she was terrified."
"Right? Incredible."
"Sua's psychopath turn was excellent, and Dohui brought that flavor out even further with her reaction. When you have a character trembling with fear this fully, in the round, it's so much easier for viewers to get pulled in."
Park Dohui listened to the praise(?) in a daze. Acting, her foot. She had genuinely thought she was going to die, and when she lived, the tension broke and she just pissed herself. That was all. But then again, maybe it was better than being known as someone who had pissed herself from fear...
...Her feelings were simply impossible to name.
That was when it happened.
"Dohui."
Sua came looking for her then. The set was already nothing but talk of Sua and Dohui, and the two of them meeting was more than enough to draw every eye. Under all those gazes, Sua went on.
"I've been curious this whole time. What was that secret weapon you said you'd prepared? I kept thinking about it."
Park Dohui's face went a little pale. Hey, hey, hey — what are you about to say?
But Sua showed no sign of stopping.
"I did worry you might bite me again, but privately I'd decided to accept it. We have to make a good scene, after all. But to think you'd prepared something like this."
"A move that doesn't hurt your partner, and doesn't hurt you either. I'm learning from this. I'll be counting on you from here on, too."
Sua was genuinely impressed. Unlike the last time, when Dohui had bitten her arm, she hadn't caused anyone else harm — and unlike Sua, who had bitten her own cheek to draw blood, she hadn't hurt herself either. In every respect, it was an exquisite move. Sua had lived through the script hundreds of times and had never once seen this outcome. A possibility that blew past every prediction. That was how it felt.
Park Dohui, of course, had nothing in particular to say. She had simply wet herself because she was scared. That was really the end of it.
But the set had turned into a heartwarming(?) atmosphere of senior and junior elevating each other through their acting, and the staff who had been watching quietly began tossing in comments one after another.
"That's right. Thanks to Dohui's accident, the mood really came alive."
"Dohui, you got acknowledged by Sua."
Acknowledged for what? Pee?
"Dohui! The pee acting is insane!"
"Dohui, that pee was perfect!"
Park Dohui became, in all sincerity, afraid of Sua.
Where something has a beginning, an ending is sure to follow.
Seo Yeon-ju and Kim Seonil. The last scene of the day.
"Well? How was it, going around with Kim Yu-han?"
Ha Yunjin — Seo Yeon-ju — asked from her seat at the office desk. She was the superior who managed both Lee Kang-cheol and Kim Yu-han, and Lee Kang-cheol was in the middle of reporting the circumstances of the arrest.
"Kim Yu-han is..."
The answer was not difficult. He only had to say what he had felt.
"He's not just a mad dog. He's a mad dog done properly. He's not in his right mind, so I have to teach him everything over again, from the first thing to the last."
Seo Yeon-ju nodded, as if she had expected as much.
"See? I knew it. If you don't want him, I'll switch him out."
A brief silence.
"I'm saying I'll give you the choice. Want to go back to your old department?"
Lee Kang-cheol turned a few things over. Kim Yu-han was certainly not in his right mind. But he had an excellent instinct, and his sense of mission — the determination to arrest the culprit no matter what — felt sincere. Of course, his attitude toward criminals was truly a mess, but...
...Today. That moment he had not killed Sergeant Lee Garam. At least then, Lee Kang-cheol had felt it clearly. Kim Yu-han had truly meant to kill her, and he had yielded once, for Lee Kang-cheol's sake. And so he had changed his mind. Therefore—
"...No."
He found himself saying something even he thought unexpected.
"A hold. Please leave it as a hold, for now."
"Okay! Perfect! That's a wrap for today!"
At the same time the PD boomed an okay through the megaphone, and the crew, not one of them excepted, raised a cheer in a line. It wasn't a cheer let out merely from the joy of the day being over. A shoot as full as today's was a first for them, too.
Meanwhile.
There was a man observing all of this, down to the finest thread.
So that person really was an actor?
The owner of a gaunt frame, a director preparing a new music film — and, at the same time, head of the society called Bareungil, the Right Path. Go Taemin.
A coincidence like this?
Director Go Taemin had, in fact, been watching Sua from the very start. Her snow-white hair caught the siren lights and dyed itself, turn by turn, red and then blue — and each time, she seemed to become an entirely different person. That was what had seized his gaze. So he had hoped she was an actor. He had wanted to know what kind of performance a presence that three-dimensional might deliver. And it seemed his wish had come true. She did, it appeared, seem to be an actor.
But right after that, something unexpected happened.
It wasn't a simple extra role? This scene is Lee Kang-cheol and Kim Yu-han. Why is she getting ready to shoot?
It was difficult to understand. The face, under makeup, was handsome — but the body itself was sensual past all measure. A body inscribed with every curve, the kind that would have men trailing after her in a line. So of course he had assumed an extra, or a bit part at most. He had never imagined they would use that appearance for Kim Yu-han.
And one thing more. To Go Taemin, a master director, Sua was a complete stranger's face. A rookie had taken the lead in Special Task Force 808, a project spoken of everywhere as highly anticipated? That was even harder to believe.
Did I miss something? This is difficult to understand.
But.
Afterward, when the scene of Kim Seonil and Sua fighting for control had ended, Director Go Taemin's thinking changed completely.
Kim Seonil was nearly pushed back. What on earth?
Thinking about it now, the word rookie felt deeply out of place. Wasn't it Kim Seonil — the one they called Classy Trash, riding high on his popularity — who was breaking into a cold sweat and thrashing to keep up?
Judging by the reactions around me, she seems to have performed something that wasn't even in the script. No — even watching with no prior knowledge, the acting is superb. That's a rookie? What has she been doing until she showed up?
Director Go Taemin went straight to Writer Lee Geumsuk.
"Excuse me, Writer Lee. A moment."
"Ah, Director Go Taemin. What is it?"
"That white-haired one over there. What's the name?"
At that, Writer Lee Geumsuk smiled, bright and knowing — as if she had been waiting for him to ask exactly that.
"Lee Sua. The lead of our Special Task Force 808."
"Lee Sua?"
"Yes. Lee Sua."
"Lee Sua? I feel like I've heard that somewhere. Lee Sua..."
It was strange. She was certainly a rookie, and yet the name was one Director Go Taemin had already heard. Searching the internet, though, brought up no profile for an actor called Lee Sua.
What is this? Where did I hear it?
And then, in a certain moment, something flashed across his mind. The talk that had gone around at the recent Bareungil gathering.
"Ah, Park Joon! The actor who saved Director Park Joon...!"
The rookie who had hauled Park Joon, director of the short film Sword, up out of the pit of despair — and who had, in the same stroke, torn down the work of Kim Jungi, now fallen to the status of a criminal. Go Taemin finally remembered all of it.
"I see. Lee Sua. So that one was Lee Sua..."
A gaunt frame. Those deeply sunken eyes began to shine.