Happiness Is Not a Clean Thing (2)
Director Park Joon's studio. From a van black as pitch, Kim Iseo and Sua stepped down side by side, easy in each other's company.
They had come for the test screening of the short film Sword, and their clothes made a study in contrast. Set beside Kim Iseo, turned out in full and careful formality, Sua had grabbed whatever lay nearest and called it dressed.
She dresses up even to come to a place like this? The CEO really is something else....
Did Sua intend that decadent air on purpose? She's got an eye.
Their thoughts ran in perfect opposition. Well. Anyway.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
Sua's heart was beating rather hard.
The reason? There was only one.
Agh, I'm shaking. I'm actually shaking. I'm about to see myself up there.
Watching a finished work that held her, every last detail — for Sua, that was as thrilling as it was terrifying.
On a sudden impulse she laid a palm over her chest.
Hey, heart. Don't get cocky. An Arctic Fox doesn't act cheap.
Thump-thump—! Thump-thump—!
"...?"
Sua hastily revised the plan.
Right, fine. Even an Arctic Fox, living a life, has a moment of nerves. That's allowed....
While she was settling on that, Kim Iseo opened the door.
Every head waiting inside whipped toward the two of them at once. These were the actors who had filled out the cast of Sword.
"Looks like Sua's here!"
"Sua, this is the first time we've seen you since the wrap party, isn't it?"
"Come on in. Huh? W-wait...?"
But the welcome did not last.
"Whaaat?"
Surprise stamped it flat almost at once.
They froze as if time itself had stopped, and studied Sua's face one by one, eyes bulging as though they might pop free and go rolling across the floor.
Kim Iseo nodded.
"Well, those of you who shot Sword are seeing Sua like this for the first time, aren't you? Of course you're surprised."
Mouths hanging open, each of them put in a word.
"S-Sua! What is this look!"
"When did you do this?"
"This is insane. How did you even think of it?"
Sua considered for a moment, and then quietly lifted her chin.
Sua Arrogance. Everyone watching her with sparkling eyes — it wasn't such a bad situation, was it?
"It just sort of ended up this way. They say it suits me."
"It does! It suits you!"
"Acknowledged."
What followed was a banquet of Sua Acknowledges.
"Sua, you're really lovely. Lovely, so lovely...."
"Acknowledged."
Sua let her eyes fall gently shut and bobbed her head along.
"Like a wolf! Your character reads so clearly now. I love it!"
"...Who are you?"
While that warm air still held, Kim Iseo caught a faint note of dissonance. Call it the inborn sense that belonged to her alone.
Could it be.
A feeling like a bulb flickering on inside her head.
Sua doesn't much care for being called a wolf?
Turning the past over, it held. The last time, at the hotel, she had seen Sua's fox pajamas and ventured that Sua resembled a wolf, and the air around them had gone cold at a frightening speed.
Kim Iseo arrived, inevitably, at a tremendous hypothesis.
...She wanted to be an Arctic Fox herself?
Inwardly, she swallowed the pity.
Just as a hero set down among ordinary people can never become ordinary; just as a swan among chickens cannot hide what it is; just as a jewel tumbled into a heap of dirt cannot lose its light however it tries — Sua's nature was....
While Kim Iseo shook her head, Director Park Joon arrived.
"Aigoo, I'm a little late! I'm sorry. Just in case, I checked the edit one more time. It's all finished now."
After that he greeted everyone warmly, though the courtesy he turned on Sua and Kim Iseo was of an entirely different formality.
An attitude truly close to the way one receives a benefactor.
"CEO! Sua! You've come!"
His waist folded nearly to a right angle.
"We've come this far thanks to CEO Kim Iseo and Sua! To think we'd even see the day of a test screening! Thank you!"
"There's no need to build us up like that."
"Build you up? Every word of it is true!"
Sua thought it was only right that they should be grateful.
The script buried in a heap of trash was one she had dug out herself, and the production cost had, in effect, been borne entirely by Kim Iseo. Of course they were thankful.
Park Joon then introduced the editing staff.
"These are the friends who stayed up through the night, suffering right alongside me."
Applause broke out of its own accord. The editing team's haggard faces alone had reached a state that explained, without a word, just how hard they had worked.
"And, Sua."
This time Park Joon came over to her.
"Is the Special Task Force 808 shoot going well? It can't be anything but hard, and yet your face looks even better. I was going to tell you to look after your health, but I suppose there's no need."
...Well. She was managing her image as if her life depended on it.
Still, being called pretty felt secretly good. Sua Hehe.
"I'm fine. You're the one who ought to get some real rest, Director."
"No need to worry about my mug. I'm the sort of person who only needs the edit carved right, even if my face is completely ruined. Anyway — please watch, from here. The time has finally come to show it to you, Sua."
Park Joon killed every light, and the whole company sat down in chairs set at even intervals.
A moment later, in the darkened room, the screen alone gave off light.
Sua quietly swallowed against a dry throat.
...What will it be like? Me?
Whooooo—
The sound of a bleak wind passing, branches swaying this way and that — and with those images, Sword began.
At once Sua seized both knees hard in her hands.
Wi Ji-hye's face had appeared on the screen. Sunk in meditation, she seemed to reach some decision, and pushed her eyelids up. It was the moment those jade-cut eyes showed themselves to the world.
Aaaah, that's me! I'm prettier than I thought? No — more than that, this is cringe. Embarrassing, too. What even is this feeling!
If she had to name it, the urge to smack the shoulder of the friend sitting beside her? The shyness of not quite being able to face it? Sua felt her face go hot and, at the same time, a kind of wonder.
And out of that storm of feeling—
With Wi Ji-hye's first line, the test screening began.
Exactly thirty minutes later.
"Sua, how was it...?"
Park Joon's voice trembled. Sua could not answer at once.
It wasn't that she disliked it. No — Sword had settled snug against her heart. There were simply so many things she was feeling that choosing words out of them was hard.
When Sua experienced a script, the roles had no faces.
Not in the sense that there was nothing there at all, like a mannequin. The roles inside the world of the Special Privilege simply went about with whatever face suited the moment fitted onto them — the way, in her very first experience, the role that had tried to kill her had worn a cook's face.
So when she had experienced the script, Wi Ji-hye's face had been only Wi Ji-hye's face. It had never been Sua's. But the face she had just seen on the screen—
My face. Nobody else's. Mine.
That she had painted a role in her own face. That a work existed which held her, entire. And that the people tied to it had gathered in order to see it.
That, to Sua, was rather moving.
"...It's good."
Even in so few words, she set down what she meant.
And in the same moment, the little Arctic Fox took a dream into her arms.
For now she was only in a cramped studio. For now only the people involved had gathered. And she herself was nothing but a rookie....
Someday.
She wanted to show herself before a crowd risen like a tide.
Meanwhile.
As Special Task Force 808 tore madly toward completion, it was not the set alone that was busy.
The internet was burning just as hard.
Only this time, the reason it burned was a little different.
Unlike the old days, when the mere fact that Special Task Force 808 had entered production was enough to set everything alight, the articles pouring out now fixed on one word: competition.
tvS, KBM, MBQ, SBT.
A full four-way war. Worthy, one might say, of an age of chaos.
Not one of the four networks showed the slightest care in handling its publicity. Which meant, simply, that they were full of confidence.
Who, in the end, would seize the win.
That primitive and perfectly provocative question was more than enough to have the public stewing, and there was a sense, too, that the reporters were tossing firewood on with intent. Thanks to that, the community's firepower climbed by the day.
...Well. Anyway, it was chaos.
Afternoon. The set of Special Task Force 808.
"Everyone, ready! We roll in three hours!"
Chaos in every direction today, too.
Staff tore about like mad things, and the actors strained, each of them, to sink into a role. Even in that uproar, nobody's path crossed anybody else's. They were professionals.
And Sua.
What was Sua doing?
"Mm-hmm."
She was sitting at her ease, not even in Kim Yu-han's makeup. Her air was that of a fisherman angling for time itself.
Hm? And why so idle?
I don't have a shoot today!
They had crammed Kim Yu-han's scenes so relentlessly that things had finally loosened a little. So today she had simply come to watch.
She was only perched on a cheap folding chair, and yet she drummed the armrest with the arrogance of someone installed in the Grand Historian's seat, gazing down all the while upon the poor young foxes.
Go on. Roll around all you like. Hehehe....
Poor little fox kits. Sua Pity. Sua Smug.
"...?"
Then, all at once, she brushed the goosebumps off her arm.
...What am I saying? I'm just a rookie. What am I thinking?
While she was thinking it, Kim Iseo came over.
"Sua. So this is where you were. That way of sitting suits you rather well."
"Acknowledged."
"I'm sorry if you were resting. There's one piece of good news and one piece of bad. Which shall I give you first?"
"That's a really good figure of speech."
"Pardon?"
Sua had swung a technique without thinking, and caught herself.
"Ah. The good news first."
"Last time, I mentioned a big fish. Do you remember?"
"Yes."
"That big fish seems to have been moved by you. They're showing a response. The proof is that they came to the set again today."
"Aha."
Sua nodded along, and then changed the angle of her head.
She started to tilt it. Something was off.
"CEO."
"Yes, Sua."
"Why did you come today? I don't have a shoot."
At that, Kim Iseo gave a small nod.
"It seems you do have a shoot today. Let's go get you into makeup."
"...What?"
Sua's eyebrow twitched before she knew it.
What was this sense of betrayal? Deep down, the wildness of the Arctic Fox stirred awake. She spoke as if she were about to bare her claws.
"CEO.... Today I was just going to look around the set a little...."
...A timid little voice.
It couldn't be helped. Sua was still a fox kit.
An Arctic fox drops its own young from a cliff. A kit is reborn as a true Arctic fox only after it has overcome every hardship and every trial, and Sua had not yet suffered many trials. So if she was timid now, then someday—
A thought with no basis whatsoever, that didn't make sense to begin with, that would have earned her a smack on the head the moment it left her mouth; a thought that was, in every possible way, more Sua than anything else. And in the middle of it, Kim Iseo spoke.
"Bear with it. The scene we're shooting today is the climax."
Kim Iseo, saying so, was in fact watching Sua's mood very carefully. It was only natural. From Sua's side of it the voice was timid, but to the one hearing it, it was savage enough to cut flesh.
"...Then isn't that all the more reason you should have told me ahead of time?"
"Sua is to be told only at the last moment. That's the writer's wish. Only this way, she says, will a true climax come through."
With that, Kim Iseo held out a paper envelope.
Inside, of course, was a thin script.
Haa.
Sua let out a long sigh, inwardly.
I wanted to look around. Especially the sound team.
These days Sua was cultivating the Musician trait.
Taking an interest in the sound team was only the natural next step. That was why she had come all the way to the set. She had meant to look the place over today.
Mm. This won't be easy.
The script she could simply experience through the Special Privilege, but the problem was the time makeup took. Two hours at the least.
A little. Just a very little. Might that be possible?
If her luck held, maybe thirty minutes. An hour, at the outside.
"Sua, shall we? Makeup first."
"Nyehh."
Sua secretly pushed her lips out.
It was a fox's muzzle if ever there was one. Sua Pout.
Two hours later.
One hour remained before the climax shoot began.
In a corner of the set, a desk thrown up for the occasion was overrun with computers, cables, and the like. This space, fit for terrorists to settle into, was at present the sound team's workroom.
And just now, some five of them were locked in a verbal war.
"This background music — isn't it too stale? It suddenly feels like an old horror movie. Just cut it."
"You can't handle the synth like that."
"I don't get it. We're sound to begin with. I'm saying we shouldn't get greedy, aren't I? The music's presence is too big."
There was a gaunt director watching all of this with care.
None other than Director Go Taemin.
He had asked leave beforehand, and was observing the sound team's work. He was conceiving a film built around music, and their labor, too, might become a kind of inspiration.
Whether it did or not, the sound team kept arguing.
"Pick one of the three. Listen to the samples."
"All three are trash."
"Hey, if you're going to say that, at least tell us what to fix."
That was when it happened.
"The tempo feels off from the start. It's too fast."
A somewhat unfamiliar voice cut in.
But the sound team could not turn their heads.
"The situation is urgent, yes, but the background music doesn't have to be fast just because of that. It's enough to lay a pulse under it, like a calm heartbeat. This isn't even a passage where you're chasing some thrill for the ear."
The unfamiliar voice went on explaining, smooth as running water. So they moved the mouse before they turned their heads.
"Ah, so we slow this down instead...?"
"Yes. And the sound right now is too cluttered. That section you've grabbed with the mouse — delete it without a second thought. Yes, yes. Right there."
A moment later.
♩♪♬
When they played the sample built to those instructions—
"Oh...."
The whole sound team let out a breath of admiration. This was really good.
"...?"
And then, a long moment later, they tilted their heads at a sense that something was off.
"...!"
They shot to their feet all at once and looked behind them.
Come to think of it, they had not spared a single thought for who had given the advice. Only now did they grow curious about the stranger.
There was, at least, no one on the sound team with a voice like that.
Director Go Taemin turned his head as well. And—
"..."
Every one of them lost whatever they might have said.
Because the one who had advised them was Kim Yu-han.
More precisely, Lee Sua. Her.
♩♪♬
Sua was simply listening to the sample. Fingertips set just beneath her ear, her head ticking, ever so slightly, she listened for a long while.
Then she confirmed the gazes fixed on her.
"..."
And lifted her chin, just a little.