So Many Visitors Today
There sure were a lot of people looking for him today.
Luke O'Brien, who ran a real estate business in California, had been preparing for a major sale and had no idea that a shooting was unfolding at the high school just down the road.
"Boss!"
"What is it?"
"You need to see this—right now!"
At his secretary's frantic voice, he turned to the screen, and the color drained from his face almost instantly.
The live-streamed video had already shot up into the trending ranks. And the person on screen, begging over and over to be saved, was his own daughter.
He abandoned the most important deal of his quarter and ran to his daughter's school.
"Step back, please."
"Step back? You want ME to step back? My daughter is in there!"
The grounds in front of the school were already packed shoulder to shoulder with families who had heard the news. The police had drawn a cordon and barred anyone from entering; within minutes, the whole scene would descend into chaos.
The SWAT team breached the building, and then—bang! bang!—the crack of gunfire rolled out, so chilling that every family flinched and shuddered, yet none of them could tear themselves away from that spot.
"They're coming out!"
A few minutes later, the doors burst open with a slam, and a firefighter emerged carrying a blood-soaked student on his back. When a handful more students filed out behind him, the families surged forward in a frenzy, trying to break through the cordon.
"Ah! Ahh!"
From that distance, no one could tell which child was theirs. All Luke could do was pray that the blood-drenched student receiving CPR was not his own.
Then he saw the long-haired girl running out of the school, and he knew at once. It was his daughter.
"Ellie! Elina!"
"Dad!"
"Oh my god! Thank God—thank you, God!"
Luke O'Brien vaulted the police line and sprinted to his daughter. Only when he had her wrapped in his arms did the knot in his chest finally loosen. He held her at the shoulders and swept his eyes over her from head to toe. Her clothes were soaked through with blood.
"Are you hurt?!"
"No, this is... it's Benjamin's..."
"Ben? Benjamin?"
He knew the boy well. He was his daughter's friend; the two families had long been close.
Another firefighter finally grabbed hold of the man who had been performing chest compressions without a second's rest, as if he would never tire. He could be seen saying something to him. From the man's expressionless face, Luke could guess how the story ended.
"Oh no... what do we do..."
"Shh... it's okay. Dad's here."
Even as he cradled his daughter, Luke couldn't look away. The man, drained of all strength, sat staring blankly into nothing. Then he gently closed Benjamin's eyes for him and struggled to his feet.
A white sheet was draped over the boy's body. A radio crackled with word that the shooter had been shot dead, and the man went back inside the school to search for more survivors. The image of his retreating back burned itself into Luke's memory and never left.
For several months after that day, the family attended counseling to treat the trauma. And once their hearts had steadied a little, they visited the fire station whose crew had saved his daughter.
"This is late in coming, but thank you for saving our daughter."
"No, sir. I only did what anyone in that position had to do."
"There was... that Asian firefighter. The one called JJ..."
Luke asked carefully, and the man sighed, his face clouding with complicated feeling.
"JJ? He quit."
"I'm sorry?"
"He hasn't come in to work since."
"Oh no..."
Under his breath, barely audible, Luke caught the man muttering, damn it, he could've at least stayed for his own farewell party—before walking away with a look of disappointment written across his face.
And now, years later, he found himself filing into a screening room for Intermission alongside two towering figures of world cinema: Giuseppe Argento and Bill Clement.
Never in my life did I imagine it would be him.
He had dropped by Sundance with some film-loving friends, never expecting to find his savior staring back at him from a poster.
So he was Korean. A quick search turned up a résumé that glowed with prestige. And this was a man returning to acting, of all things—beyond simple gratitude for what he'd done for Elina, something else stirred in Luke: the private curiosity of a true cinephile.
Oh...
For as long as the film was playing, the Yoon Jay on screen was not the prodigious child genius the two master directors had come expecting. He was not the actor with the bizarre career history laid out line by line on his wiki page. He was not even the firefighter who had saved his daughter.
He was simply a man who could never be satisfied with his own achievements—a young man who carried the glory and the tragedy of his past in his arms, unable to forget either. He was a rival who had finally realized that the person he'd envied had been carrying the very same wounds all along, and who had overcome that realization to stand back up on his own two feet.
"I'd say this one takes the foreign film award this year."
As the credits rolled and the audience broke into applause, the friend seated beside Luke murmured the words. He, too, worked in film production.
"The emotional arc flows so smoothly, and it just pulls you in."
"I've known jealousy like that myself, once."
"The music was incredible. Did they actually perform it live?"
"Luke—is that long-haired lead really the man who saved your daughter?"
"And what did the directors think?"
Giuseppe Argento and Bill Clement said nothing. They only wore soft, faint smiles—but they looked deeply moved.
"Hmm... to be honest, I know what kind of film The Child is, but I've never actually seen it."
"It's been so long since I watched it myself... Care to see it together at my lodgings?"
"Why not?"
And so, after screening The Child together, the whole group found themselves far more invested in this lead actor with the stranger-than-fiction résumé.
The story of the man himself was magnetic too: a genius boy who had shot to fame without ever going astray, acquired citizenship in a foreign land, been hailed as a hero, and then quietly begun acting again in his home country.
"I so wanted to thank him in person..."
"There'll be other chances. His acting is superb, and that face of his—if Hollywood doesn't come calling soon, I'll eat my hat."
"Don't assume every foreign actor dreams of breaking into Hollywood."
Luke O'Brien shook his head. Truthfully, tracking Yoon Jay down would have been no trouble at all.
But he didn't want to force a meeting and burden the man. The encounter mattered deeply to him—yet if it was to happen, he wanted it to happen naturally, so he could simply express his thanks.
"Miles Wilson?"
"The producer from Palace Film Company? Oh—yes, that's him."
"Luke! The man you've been looking for—he's right over there!"
And that was when they spotted Yoon Jay deep in conversation with the famous Hollywood producer at a café. Luke O'Brien excused himself from his group and made his way over slowly.
"Mr. Jay, what do you make of it?"
Managing Director Kwak Dohyun clicked his tongue as he paged through the thick contract Miles Wilson had told them to at least read once.
Back home, we'd scribble down a rough agreement first, then have the executives sit through dozens of meetings hammering out the details and patching in additions in a mad scramble—while these people draft everything meticulously from the very start. That's worth learning from.
Yoon Jay stood with his arms crossed, lost in thought.
The state itself seemed to be throwing its weight behind this. The film adaptation project would almost certainly involve his former superior—now a sitting member of the National Assembly. All in service of the next election.
The film, in all likelihood, would not unfold the way Miles Wilson wanted—a pure documentary. It had to succeed at the box office to elevate the state, and everyone with a stake in it.
He had already expected as much. Confirming the producer's sincerity had been enough. That sincerity was exactly what he needed.
"I'm honestly not sure I'd be any good at it."
"I'm sorry?"
"Never mind."
After all, 'Ten' only appeared in the later stretch of The Fall of Evil. That book told the story of Jayden and his comrades waging their hard-fought campaign to hunt down the leader of the terrorist organization—a leader who had gone deep underground after the Lion's death.
If he took the role, he would probably appear only briefly in the film's opening act, in the scene explaining how the Lion had died.
"Would you be able to adjust your schedule? I'd like to try it..."
"Of course. From the look of it, the shoot won't drag on too long anyway."
As a way of unspooling the knots of his past through acting, it was the ideal environment. There was no reason to refuse. He would simply have to be careful that the mask never cracked.
"Excuse me..."
"Yes?"
Assuming it was another reporter, Yoon Jay was about to decline politely when he noticed the man's face—strangely, achingly familiar.
The man introduced himself as Luke O'Brien and asked, with great care, whether he had been the firefighter at the 115 Disaster.
"I was..."
"Then I found exactly who I was looking for."
There really are a lot of people looking for Mr. Jay today.
Kwak Dohyun withdrew to a respectful distance so the two could talk. And while he pretended not to listen, his eyes made a lightning-quick scan of Luke O'Brien's appearance.
Hmm...
By his clothes alone, the man looked unassuming. But the watch on the wrist he'd extended for the handshake told a different story.
Classic design, decidedly non-classic price tag. So why would a man like that come looking for our Mr. Jay?
Catching fragments of the conversation, he gathered the answer: he was family to someone Yoon Jay had saved back in his firefighter days.
Ah, right. That happened, didn't it.
Yoon Jay's past was so densely layered that even the agency staff had begun joking about "worldview collisions" among themselves. The fashion going around the office these days was Yoon Jae-hee.
"The girl from the livestream? Her name was... Elina, wasn't it?"
"You remember her!"
"How is she doing these days?"
Yoon Jay asked warmly, his face lighting up. Thanks to the quick thinking of that livestream, several trapped students had made it out alive.
He had carried the weight of the one child he couldn't save for a long time, but filming Daldongne had finally let him set it down.
"She's doing very well. She just graduated from college, actually."
"Is that right? I'm glad to hear it."
Yoon Jay's expression was bright. Wasn't it the greatest reward there was, knowing that someone you'd saved had gone on to live a good life?
"Though she did abruptly throw over her major and announce she was becoming a firefighter."
"Oh... last I heard, she wanted to be an astronaut."
"Who knows who influenced her, but between the stars and a planet where people drive over to save you—I'd say Earth wins, don't you?"
The people who had come to rescue her that day had left an impression powerful enough to change the entire course of her life. Yoon Jay understood exactly what Luke meant. Well—at that age, career ambitions did change in the blink of an eye.
"I was stunned to hear you'd returned to acting, but I truly loved Intermission. It looked to me like you'd found your true calling?"
"Thank you for the kind words."
"I noticed you were speaking with Miles Miller earlier... If you do come to Hollywood, please reach out. Whether you need a place to stay for a while, an agency, whatever it may be—my network is, I'll admit, rather worth bragging about."
He produced a business card from his breast pocket, but Yoon Jay raised his open palm and declined.
"Thank you for saving my daughter."
"Please, there's no need. That day, I only did what I had to do."
"Then let me do this, at least—let my heart rest easy."
There was not the slightest sign that Luke O'Brien intended to back down. At that moment, Managing Director Kwak Dohyun, who had been biding his time nearby, suddenly poked his head in.
"Then give the card to me, sir. I'm Mr. Jay's manager."
"Oh! Here you are. Please do be in touch again."
With that, Luke took his leave. As Yoon Jay's eyes met the group waiting for the man, he gave them a light nod, then turned to Kwak Dohyun.
"Managing Director."
"All of this is just proof of how earnestly you've lived, Mr. Jay. Men like him won't walk away until they've repaid you to their own satisfaction."
And with The Fall of Evil now headed for a live-action adaptation, he'd be flying back and forth to the States anyway. Might as well make the trips comfortable. Yoon Jay shook his head, as if at a lost cause.
"I'm feeling a bit peckish. Shall we get lunch?"
"Why not?"
But the two men never got to eat that lunch.
"JJ!"
Old friends from the past had spotted Yoon Jay and were calling out his name as they came over. Our Mr. Jay really is popular everywhere he goes. Kwak Dohyun rose from his seat.
"Well then... I'll go join Director Shin's party."
Yoon Jay finished his schedule in the States and returned to Korea. The time he'd spent there had been deeply rewarding. He had met the master director who had once judged him, and even run into fond faces from his past.
Julia, once the barista at his old regular café, and Caleb, whom she had introduced him to for work all those years ago, were now married with a child of their own.
He had to sit through their scolding—how could you vanish like that, out of nowhere?—but in the end they exchanged contact information and promised to keep in touch.
A photo of Yoon Jay talking with Miles Wilson at the café had been snapped and spread like wildfire across social media, until the story made its way into the Korean press as well.
"Hey, your package came."
"Thanks."
Choi Tae-yang, who had long since appointed himself Yoon Jay's personal mail receiver, set the script down in front of him.
String of Memory
Yoon Jay opened it slowly, letting his eyes travel across the pages. What kind of story, he wondered, did the person he was about to become have to tell?