Was It Just My Imagination?

Was it just his misalignment of senses?

The new mask he had been given — one that existed simply as "older brother" and "younger brother" to Director Kang Pil-hyun and screenwriter Kang Ye-jin — had taken on the names Oh Beom-jun and Oh Sa-jun.

Yoon Jay read the scripts for episodes one and two that had arrived by courier, then closed his eyes.

Oh Beom-jun had been born blessed. He never let go of first place, excelled at sports, and had a good heart besides.

He graduated at the top of his class from the police academy and solved case after case, rocketing to stardom almost overnight. The police recognized his achievements, fast-tracked his promotion, and pinned a medal on his chest.

There were plenty of people who envied and resented Beom-jun for holding such a high rank so young, but just as many looked up to him and followed him.

Oh Sa-jun — the younger brother born twelve minutes after Beom-jun — in other words, "I" — was a different breed from his brilliant older brother. They were identical twins, so the packaging was every bit as handsome as Beom-jun's, but the contents were another story.

"Hey, Beom-jun."

"Call me hyung. Where are your manners...?"

A father running a mid-sized company and a mother who kept the home took one look at their two sons and understood in an instant that their temperaments were polar opposites.

One was quiet, possessed of intelligence so exceptional he was called a prodigy; the other was steeped in violence.

The parents decided that was simply the boy's nature, and doted on Beom-jun alone. They taught Sa-jun to submit to his older twin, who had entered the world a mere twelve minutes ahead of him.

"Man, hyung. Must be nice being you."

"What is?"

His parents never lost hope at first — they dragged Sa-jun to counseling, held on tight. But in the end, they only gave up.

Because they had a perfect child in Beom-jun. And so Sa-jun was simply left to drift.

So I thought: if my parents hate me for no reason, then I'll give them a reason.

"Hey! Oh Sa-jun!"

"Nice of you to finally show up."

"What is the meaning of this? What? School violence?!"

Sa-jun grinned lazily at his parents, who had come sprinting in a panic. He'd learned early on that causing trouble made his parents pay attention to him, so he'd been racking up incidents since he was small.

Most of them amounted to breaking or dropping things — but this time, it was bigger.

"They threw the first punch."

"You keep out of this!"

He had stepped in to help a kid being tormented by the class bullies and beaten the whole pack of them to a pulp — but none of that mattered to his parents.

All that mattered was that their son had been tangled up in school violence and dragged their good name through the mud.

"You should settle this matter quietly."

"Those bastards touched Ryu Hae-yeol or whoever first — "

"Shut your mouth!"

Why did they give a tiger's name to him and a snake's name to me? Probably because they already knew — that one would fall into a glittering elite career, and I would sink into a street thug's.

"So you've been living well for yourself?"

After the school violence scandal, Sa-jun walked out of the house and lived by his fists. By the time he came to his senses, he had clawed his way from a massive crime syndicate up to an executive post at one of its corporate fronts.

And then, out of nowhere, Oh Beom-jun appeared.

"What do you want?"

"You worried me sick when you left home. Let's at least keep in touch now."

Honestly, at first he'd been suspicious.

Why would his brother — a police officer who showed up on the news regularly — come looking for him, an executive at a company whose roots were buried in organized crime?

But after they'd met a few times, the suspicion melted away. Was it because they were twins? Somehow, he found himself certain his brother would never betray him.

It was their parents who had played favorites; Beom-jun had always been the one trying to mediate in the middle.

"That company you're planning to deal with is getting raided soon."

"Hyung, the hideout of the Sakwol Syndicate boss you're hunting is in Yongin."

The two brothers traded information in secret. In truth, it was a tacit arrangement — Sa-jun could use his brother to sweep away the rival organizations that had gotten underfoot, and Beom-jun could rack up ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠results for his record.

And then, at last, Oh Sa-jun achieved his goal.

"You — you son of a bitch...!"

"Mr. Chairman, you've had plenty. Time to rest now."

"You ungrateful snake — after everything I did raising you...!"

"Raising me? I raised myself, sir."

Perhaps because he was still a beast's little brother, he gathered the information his brother had fed him along with people he could trust, and swallowed the company whole.

He was now a director of Ilwol Holdings — the corporation born of that crime syndicate — and its de facto ruler.

He had just decided it was time to enjoy everything life had to offer, when —

"Hyung."

"Hey, hyung."

"Oh Beom-jun."

His brother. Oh Beom-jun's calls stopped coming.

What Yoon Jay was imagining was this: reconstructing the character's past, inferring it from the pages of the script.

Choi Tae-yang, who had been tiptoeing around so as not to disturb that concentration, suddenly felt a crawl up his spine and whipped his head around.

What the hell is this atmosphere...

Yoon Jay was leaning his head against the back of the sofa with his eyes closed. Looking at him like that, there was no killing intent to sense at all — and yet, somehow, the air around him felt bleak and wintry.

Yoon Jay's eyes slid open with a slow whisper, and only his gaze rolled toward Choi Tae-yang. Tae-yang, for reasons he couldn't name, flinched and hunched his shoulders.

"Did I interrupt you?"

"No."

It wasn't his fault... his concentration had broken somewhere deep inside.

Was it just my imagination?

Something felt off. Narrowing his eyes slightly, Yoon Jay opened the script again.

While Yoon Jay was making the rounds of Permafrost's promotional schedule, the film itself was crossing the ten-million-admissions mark, and he was dropping his bombshell speech at the Golden Dragon Film Awards, String of Memory was quietly, steadily moving through pre-production.

"The lead is Yoon Jay? Then that means..."

The production company courted investors on the strength of Yoon Jay's casting and began filling out the rest of the cast. When Nflix poured in a mountain of capital, the production timeline kicked into high gear.

"Man, cast one actor and everything runs like clockwork."

"He's remarkable."

The reason Nflix had paid a fortune for String of Memory came down to a single name: Yoon Jay in the lead.

An actor barely three years into his debut wielding this much influence... the press had taken to calling him the superstar of the acting world who had appeared out of nowhere, building him up at every turn.

One trait that screenwriter Kang Ye-jin was frequently criticized for was turning every actor other than her leads into scenery. Perhaps because of that, well-known actors declined to appear.

In their place came actors whose performances were quietly whispered about as excellent, but who had yet to see their moment in the light.

In the course of all this, the production company behind String of Memory also learned the name Yoon Jay had once carried.

"Wow. Yoon Jae-hee, of all people..."

"Thank goodness we signed him early, I guess."

Since the Golden Dragon ceremony, the press and the forums had been retracing everything Yoon Jae-hee had ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠achieved — and the trajectory of the reborn Yoon Jay.

Even if the fever had cooled somewhat from before, Yoon Jae-hee remained, to this day, the idol of the film industry. The filmmakers and investors he had drawn in with The Child had since settled into every corner of the field, and they wielded real influence there.

Directors and production companies hungry to work with him began dialing the numbers of Astra and Director Kwak.

"Ha, his appearance fee's going to leap through the roof from his next project."

"I wouldn't count on it."

"Why not?"

The CEO of String of Memory's production company, a personal friend of Astra's CEO Lee Seo-won, hung a serene little smile on his lips.

"He's close with Kwon Min-jae. What do you ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠think that means?"

"Oh... you don't mean Yoon Jay's freezing his fee too?"

"That's what I hear. Apparently he brought it up himself — said he'd willingly shave his fee for a good project."

Having taken the call from Lee Seo-won, he'd been forced to endure the man boasting at length about how thoughtful and upright his own actor was — but there was no denying it was a good turn of events.

"Huh... isn't this exactly the moment to row while the tide's coming in? Weird guy."

"Birds of a feather, I suppose. Honestly, I wish everyone in this industry were like that."

Yoon Jay had never been particularly interested in money. He kept back just enough to live on comfortably and gave the rest away in donations or gifts for his family.

Per-episode fees, advertising revenue — he left all of it entirely in his agency's hands. Astra secured excellent terms on his behalf and settled every account with complete transparency.

"CEO-nim."

"Yes! Jay!"

What was more, ever since learning that Yoon Jay was Yoon Jae-hee, Lee Seo-won had been desperate to do something — anything — for him.

"About my appearance fee..."

His decision to get involved in the matter of his own fee dated back to a conversation he'd had with Kwon Min-jae at the afterparty following the Golden Dragon Film Awards.

"Still, thanks to you I managed to sort things out peacefully with my parents. Without you, it really would've been suffocating."

"So the trip with your grandmother happened after that?"

"Yeah. It was wonderful, honestly... though I gained a historic amount of weight."

"Grandmas are all like that."

Word had spread that every famous name in the country would be at the Golden Dragon afterparty, which was why so many actors showed up despite the late hour. Plenty of them had come through other people's introductions, even without any personal connection to Yoon Jay.

Yoon Jay noticed one actor he recognized frowning at the sight of Kwon Min-jae.

He'd seen that face somewhere. Not quite at the level of Kwon Min-jae, Park Da-yul, or Choi Wooju — but hadn't he been one of the actors who'd led the Hallyu wave?

"That guy doesn't seem to like you."

"Who? ...Ah."

Kwon Min-jae glanced at the man and gave a dry little laugh.

"It's about appearance fees."

"Fees?"

"I've had mine frozen for years."

Yoon Jay had heard something about that. Kwon Min-jae was famous for being paid remarkably little relative to his fame, his popularity, and his career.

"Why'd you freeze it?"

"It's... nothing, really."

Kwon Min-jae smiled a bitter smile.

He had decided to lower his fee after reading a news article about a bottom-rung staff member from one of his own productions who had taken his own life under the weight of living expenses.

Back then, Kwon Min-jae had been earning three hundred million won per episode. Meanwhile, the staff on that production couldn't even collect their base pay — their settlements were months in arrears, and the man had been reduced to scraping by on what little he had until he gave up on living altogether.

"So I decided to start by cutting my own fee."

"......"

"Anyway. There are plenty of people who hold that against me."

Kwon Min-jae set the standard for what a male actor in his thirties could demand.

With a man like him drawing such a stubbornly low fee year after year, other actors who wanted to raise their own rates found themselves watching their step. They couldn't escape the accusation: Kwon Min-jae gets by on that — who do you think you are, demanding three to five hundred million per episode?

It was said his former agency, too, had clashed with him over this repeatedly — even after learning he was being hounded by a stalker and doing nothing about it.

Now that he'd moved to Astra, his demands were all being met — but only because Lee Seo-won didn't particularly need the money, and simply harbored a collector's itch to gather great actors into his net.

"That's cool as hell."

"What is?"

"Seriously."

Yoon Jay's admiration was entirely sincere.

The fact that a special act had been drafted simply because he himself had vanished — lifting countless child actors out of the mire — had never quite landed with him. But Kwon Min-jae had survived to the end, and was holding true to his convictions.

"Me? Please. You're being generous."

"I mean it."

Kwon Min-jae looked awkward instead, and held out his glass. Yoon Jay clinked his own against it.

Kwon Min-jae was, truly, a friend with much to learn from.