Is That Lee Sua?
Busan.
At last, the short film festival let it be known that it had truly begun. It was no red-letter holiday anyone would mark on a calendar, and yet within the film world it was treated as a matter of exactly that weight. The articles spilling out without a pause were proof enough.
And now.
"...Building's huge. Name's... the Cinema Center?"
Wonsung-ing mumbled it, dazed.
Contrary to what the nickname suggested, she was a plain-looking woman. Her hair was dyed orange, freckles lay across her cheeks, and yet her features sat in such harmony that neither read as a flaw. If anything, they looked like one more part of the styling.
She was not the only one who had set foot here. Saengji had come, and Heukgom with her—which was to say that every member of the Sua group chat, save Deer and Sua herself, had arrived at the short film festival. Nine o'clock, at the Busan Cinema Center.
Heukgom spoke with his buzz cut bared to the open air.
"Been a long time since I watched a movie."
Heard from nearby, the voice had a taciturn weight to it. A frame that large made the nickname Heukgom—black bear—fit him unusually well.
A moment later Wonsung-ing scratched at her head.
"First time in Busan."
Pickled in community life as she was, even the voice she actually used out loud came out in a cadence close to chat.
"Same. Think I can smell the ocean from here."
Saengji, who had been watching the two of them, burst out laughing.
"So what are we doing after the movie?"
"Mm. Haeundae Beach, once, at least. And raw fish. Deer said some pizza's famous, too?"
They passed the time conferring over what to do once the screening was finished, until, all at once, Wonsung-ing yanked the subject elsewhere. The look on her face said something had just struck her.
"When's Deer getting here?"
"Said she'd come when work's done. Evening, probably?"
"Sua said she'd be around then, too."
"Sua..."
That was the start of it. The subject swung hard, all the way over to Sua.
"She's really getting ready to be an actress?"
At Heukgom's question, Saengji nodded, slow.
"Well. That's what she says, anyway."
"...Actress? Hopping part-time jobs, sure, she's always done that. An actress, out of nowhere? Somebody plant that?"
The blow seemed to have landed hard. Wonsung-ing's lost gaze swung toward Saengji—toward Kim Seona.
"Unnie. You covered entertainment. How was it."
"How was what?"
"Becoming an actress. Easy?"
"Yeah. It's easy."
Kim Seona nodded more readily than anyone had expected, but she was not finished. There was more coming.
"Becoming an actress, the thing itself, is nothing. What's hard is becoming an actress that even an ordinary person like you would recognize."
"Huh?"
"People pour in piles of money and time and still give up. Tons of them. Skill, connections—every single piece has to lock into place. Only the actors who get all of that survive."
"Mm... feels even riskier than I thought..."
Heukgom, who had been listening in silence, gave a slow nod.
"Thinking about it, yeah. Quit a part-time job and the second you walk away, it's like it never happened. An actor leaves the trace of all that effort on camera. Somebody could look it up later."
"Right. That's why it's a cruel industry. The proof that you tried with everything you had can turn around and become a stain on your life. Imagine people laughing at you for it."
"Think Sua can survive a game like that?"
No one could answer him.
For a while, it was simply still.
A long moment later, Wonsung-ing broke the silence.
"She gets scammed, that's bad. Shows up on the news, y'know. They say they'll make you a celebrity, haul you off, do something awful."
"I know. Sua worries me in all sorts of ways. She's at the age where she ought to be settling into one field, and acting is just..."
A small child left untended at the water's edge. That was the kind of friend Sua was to them. However much they liked her, the liking had never once come with any expectation that she might actually accomplish something, in any field at all. All that rose was the worry. What if something happened to her.
Then, of one mind, all of them spoke at once.
"Sua really is a worry. She's a good kid, but..."
Meanwhile, Sua arrived at the Busan Cinema Center as well.
South Pole of the Republic of Korea—this arctic fox had come!
She had, of course, hidden the outside of herself under a hat, a mask, and sunglasses besides. The reason was simple. She did not want her friends to catch her.
This is safe enough. They don't even know I dyed my hair white.
She indulged a few daydreams after that. Most of them were of friends she had not seen in ages praising her for looking like an arctic fox. The daydreams did not last.
"Huh?"
A far greater shock arrived first.
...There are this many people?
It was nine in the morning. Even so, a crowd vast enough to make a mockery of the words early morning filled her eyes. There was an idiom for a thing like this. A four-character one. What was it again. It came to her sounding an awful lot like I'm not pregnant.
—Child. The phrase is a sea of humanity. A mountain of people. A sea of people.
—What are you even—
The voice that followed belonged to Wi Ji-hye, and it was thick with despair.
Ah. Right. A sea of people. Even so, the consonants had matched. She would stand by that.
Anyway, there really were a great many people. Enough that a small child might lose the way without even trying.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
And so Sua's heart began to beat.
This is insane. Are the other venues like this too?
It went without saying that the short film festival was not held at the Cinema Center alone. Something like four additional sites had been booked, all of them running at the same time.
Agh, this is no time to just stand here marveling.
Sua looked over the screening schedule. Her own Sword began at nine-thirty. At ten, Yang Ha-rin's Wind.
...What a strange coincidence.
Looking back, Yang Ha-rin was nearly the only person with whom she had piled up bad blood since setting foot in this industry. She wondered how it had turned out for her. Of course she was curious about Sword, the film she had appeared in, and curious too about the other works that would be competing against it. One look with her own eyes would settle the matter, so Sua bought a ticket at once.
Let's see... the theater's the one farthest in...
She entered the screening hall. Her eyes went wide.
It's huge!
The layout was the movie theater she knew, but the scale belonged to another dimension entirely. And there was still something left to be shocked by.
And it's full!
The seats were already nearly taken. Every sort of person was mixed together in them, and not one paid Sua the slightest mind, busy with phones or with chatter.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
Sua, meanwhile, could not stop paying mind to them. Her heart pounded. At the thought that they were about to watch her short film.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
And at the thought that she would be able to watch how they reacted. Live.
There are this many people, and my face is going to show up on that enormous screen? It's unreal. I can't believe it. No—worse than that, I'm shaking. Shaking, shaking, shaking... I'm shaking...
The reaction had better be decent.
But then. That was the moment.
"I said it ten times, we switch to onion popcorn. Not once. Ten times, I stressed it. Seriously..."
"Just eat it."
"Guys, quiet, quiet... don't be a nuisance..."
Voices of unusual clarity tickled at her ears.
"...?"
Sua tipped her head, just slightly. It was not that their voices were loud enough to carry. They were so familiar that her ears had seized on them by instinct. A moment later, she understood why.
Huh?
They were people she knew. In order: Wonsung-ing, Heukgom, Saengji. By some miserable coincidence, they were in the row directly in front of her. The row she could tap with her foot. The row whose chatter reached her ears. And the row in which the buzz cut of Heukgom—who still had the army waiting for him—was all too easy to see.
Wonsung-ing grumbled.
"Ugh, plain popcorn tastes like actual nothing. Caramel, at least..."
"...Then don't eat it."
"Why, though. Gimme."
Yes. Exactly the people Sua knew. It felt like hearing, out loud, the talk that lived every day in the group chat. And then, out of nowhere, the talk turned to her.
"Actors who show up at a short film fest. What's their standing."
"Most of them are rookies, sure. But after a festival like this, the odds they shoot up as rising stars are high. It's like getting your face stamped once, in front of this many people."
Saengji laid it out kindly, point by point.
"...Ah. Hear that, and I can picture it even less."
"Picture what?"
"Sua, up on a screen like this someday. Can't even imagine it. Should I call her now? Tell her to look into something else."
"...Leave it. She says she wants to do it."
"No, I'm saying it 'cause I'm actually worried."
They were chattering away with the person herself seated in the row behind them. And then—
Click. Click. Click.
The lights across the vast room began to go out, row by row, and at once people stopped talking and killed their phones. The hour had finally come to meet the films of the main competition.
After that, a sharp hand of lettering hung itself across the wide screen.
With the title, Sword began.
Shaaaaaa.
A forest thrashed under a bleak wind until the shot was nothing but trees, and Sua, the friends from the chat, and every person in the audience held their breath and watched.
Shaaaaaa.
They had no choice. The sound was savage all on its own, precarious in itself, drawn tight as a string on the verge of whatever was about to happen.
And then, for the first time, a person was caught in the frame. Wi Ji-hye slowly pushed her eyelids up.
"How mischievous."
The eyes that appeared at last were like cut jade, and the voice was cold enough to sting, piercingly clear. While the whole forest steeped itself in tension, Wi Ji-hye held, unruffled, the center of gravity of everything around her. Alone.
She rose, slowly, from where she had been.
"The forest is a sensitive child. Truly, it is so."
She drew the sword. The instant the blade traced a fluid arc—
"...?"
"...?"
"...?"
Saengji, Wonsung-ing, and Heukgom were struck all at once. Wonsung-ing could no longer get the popcorn as far as her mouth. Saengji covered her own mouth with both hands. Heukgom's pupils shook wildly, as if he had seen a ghost he was never meant to meet.
There was only one reason.
Lee Sua.
Obviously. Lee Sua.
"...?"
Lee Sua had taken the name Wi Ji-hye, clothed herself in the station of the greatest under heaven, and drawn a sword.
"...?"
"??????"
"?!?!?!"
Three minds went pure white. The space inside them had turned to blank paper, and everything being written there now was a question.
What? What is that?
Look at it any way you like, that's Lee Sua. Why is she up there?
It started with Wonsung-ing grabbing for Saengji's wrist in a scramble. Saengji was hardly any different. Heukgom and Wonsung-ing both reached out, and their hands struck once—against each other. Like fools.
Too late, they traded looks. In that instant, each of them became the other's mirror. The friend in view wore the most foolish expression in the world, and they themselves were surely wearing the same. It felt like a hammer had come down on the whole of the skull.
After that. Slowly. Very slowly. Six eyes turned back toward the screen.
"I ask thee."
As if on cue, Wi Ji-hye lifted the corner of her mouth.
"Dost thou know me."
Wi Ji-hye was, sure enough, the greatest under heaven. A single line, and three people had fallen straight into qi deviation.
Lee Sua! That's Lee Sua! Fuck!
...A deepfake crime? Is that what this is?
Sua? What? What the hell are you doing right now?
It was the moment Lee Sua officially debuted.