String of Memory (2)
"Wow, look at those eyes!"
The photographer fluttered around, firing off shutter clicks one after another. Yoon Jay was shooting a character photospread for String of Memory.
Even if it was billed as simple drama promotion, these were photos that would introduce the characters before the show ever aired. So Yoon Jay never let go of the acting, even mid-shoot.
Oh Beom-jun was an elite through and through. His buttons were always fastened up to the collar, his clothes immaculate, without a single crease.
Back when the twins' names didn't yet exist, Yoon Jay had portrayed Beom-jun with the eyes of a bird of prey. But now he shaped the gaze to match the name — the eyes of a tiger.
"Seriously, wow…"
"The eyes are amazing."
Judging by his tidy appearance and ramrod-straight posture, he didn't look all that threatening. But one glance at his eyes and your knees went weak on their own. He didn't use direct violence — more the kind of man who would quietly destroy you some other way entirely.
"A shame photos can't capture all of it."
At the murmurs of the staff nearby, Han Jin-woo squared his shoulders with pride. That's my man for you. He really is something.
"I think we've got Beom-jun. What do you say?"
"Perfect! Jay, please change costumes."
With the Beom-jun shoot wrapped, Yoon Jay pulled his shirt off without ceremony in the makeshift changing tent.
He was covered in scars, but his physique was rumored to be spectacular, and a few people were sneaking glances while pretending not to look.
"Put this on before your shirt."
"It's a tattoo?"
"Yes."
"These transfer sheets have gotten really good lately."
"Still, you can kind of tell, honestly."
He slipped into something like a flesh-colored stocking. In the mirror it looked a bit crude, but a tattoo seemed inked across his chest.
Once filming began, a professional makeup artist would paint everything in by hand, of course. For now it was only a photo shoot — the photographer could retouch whatever needed it.
"Should Sa-jun lean a little decadent?"
As Oh Sa-jun, he wore a faint smoky shadow deliberately smudged around his eyes. The hair he'd slicked back for Beom-jun was now tousled every which way so that it fell over his brows, and a hairpiece at the back gave it a slightly longer look.
"There we go."
"Oh… wow, seeing you with long hair again, it reminds me of Yoo Tae-hyuk?"
That's not supposed to happen… Yoon Jay pulled on a shirt with a loud, flamboyant pattern. A few buttons at the chest were left undone to show the tattoo, and the sleeves were rolled up.
Snakes are cunning.
His eyes changed in an instant. Just like the name Oh Sa-jun. Yoon Jay thought of him.
"Whoa…"
Truthfully, a face as strikingly handsome as his could be a liability in acting — it drew the eye too much. But with the subtlest difference in his gaze, you could feel on your skin that these were the same man, and yet somehow not.
Oh Beom-jun was businesslike, yet generous with affection for anyone who entered his domain.
Oh Sa-jun, by contrast, was sly. He played it light on purpose, luring his opponent into carelessness, and the moment a gap showed, he went for the throat.
Yoon Jay stretched his mouth into an exaggerated, sneering grin; then, wearing the same blank expression as Beom-jun, he let his eyes curve into faint half-moons — the look of a man mocking someone behind that still face.
"Beautiful!"
He was thinking of snakes, shaping his eyes into a serpent's gaze, and for a moment he could almost hear one hissing somewhere close.
Then his concentration shattered. Yoon Jay stood motionless, staring at empty air. Through the lens of his camera, the photographer saw it — saw his eyes change.
"Jay?"
The photographer called several times, but he didn't so much as twitch. The staff stirred at the small commotion.
What's going on?
Choi Tae-yang, watching from the back, dropped his crossed arms and pushed through the crowd of staff.
Signs of this strange behavior had appeared ever since Yoon Jay received the String of Memory scripts. He would suddenly drift off, and then his eyes would turn strange — and both Choi Tae-yang and Jung Seung-woo, sensing the danger on instinct, had snapped him out of it.
Both of them felt that this resembled that incident — the one where Yoon Jay had nearly threatened Yoon Do-jun. And if he slipped into that state right here, right now, it would be a disaster. But before Choi Tae-yang could even step in, Yoon Jay's eyes came back.
"Ah — yes."
"One more take."
He had found his focus again. He raised a hand toward Choi Tae-yang, who had been moving toward him, signaling that he was fine.
Adding one more role on top of his usual masks had never been a problem before. But String of Memory was a set of twins — two personalities added at once — and that was the problem.
"Great! Where on earth did you model?"
"Huh? You don't know, artist-nim? Jay here launched a fashion brand in Gangnam recently — he was their original model. It was all over the news."
"Iris Studio? I shoot there sometimes too."
Yoon Jay simply smiled. A friend he'd grown close to while working as a model in New York had become a famous designer, now opening flagship stores across the world.
Thinking of that old connection, he felt his racing heart slowly settle.
"Let me throw together a rough composite so we can see the feel of it."
A few clicks from the photographer, and there they were: against a wide, stretched horizontal backdrop, Oh Beom-jun and Oh Sa-jun, seated in chairs, facing each other.
Even the way they sat declared their personalities.
Beom-jun, spine straight against the backrest, legs crossed, both hands folded neatly atop his knee. Sa-jun, slouched carelessly into the seat, one arm draped over the chair's armrest, chin propped in his hand.
From their wrists stretched a long, painted-red chain of handcuffs.
"For the full-body shot, something like this — what do you think?"
"The visuals are insane? I have to show the writer this one."
"Now let's do a close-up on the faces."
Buzzing off the staff's praise, the photographer composited a different mood this time.
He layered the profiles of the Beom-jun version and the Sa-jun version side by side, their postures perfectly identical.
Their hands came together as if in prayer — chins resting on both thumbs, index fingers touching the bridge of the nose.
Their eyes stared straight ahead. But once composited, they became two men gazing at each other.
"Double the handsome."
"God, that's incredible."
The people gathered around the monitor let out a collective sigh of admiration.
Yoon Jay felt the same. When he'd shot those profiles, he'd deliberately filled his mind with tangled thoughts and let them bleed into his eyes — so that the complicated feelings each twin held toward the other would show through. It seemed to have come out well.
"What do you think, Jay?"
"They look good. That's the photographer's skill, though."
"It's the model who's good!"
The photo shoot wrapped up on a warm note.
"I can't wait to release these… when does the drama air?"
"No complicated CG work needed, I'd guess, so probably sometime this year?"
Late at night, a man came to an apartment construction site. Along the barricades stretched banners of citizens protesting unfair land compensation, and placards condemning the city.
The man unlocked the loose padlock and slipped inside the site, then ran here and there, searching for someone.
It was around here…
According to the memories that had been passed to him, right about here — when a strange chill crawled over him and he lifted his head, a figure was falling from above.
No!
He sprinted, but it was too late. Right before his eyes, with a sound that turned his blood cold, the man hit the ground. He checked for a pulse. Already dead.
And the fall hadn't killed him. His upper body was soaked in blood — he'd been carved up by a blade long before he dropped. The man looked down at the fallen figure.
The face… was his own.
"Hahk—!"
Torn from the dream, Oh Sa-jun jerked upright in bed. The camera held him from a distance, and even from far away his chest heaved violently.
At length he rose from the bed. The snake tattoo winding long across his chest and shoulder, the scars scattered over his body like brushstrokes on a canvas — one look told you this was no ordinary man.
He sat in a chair, pressed his hands together as if in prayer, rested his chin on his thumbs, and took several deep, shuddering breaths.
"Hey."
Then he spoke to the empty air. His fingers trembled faintly, and for an instant it looked almost like desperation.
"…Answer me."
It isn't you, is it? This was just a dream — right?
But his words never reached anyone. They were only a man talking to himself.
Sensing the humid air, Oh Sa-jun cracked the curtain open a sliver. The drops that had been falling one or two at a time were thickening into a downpour.
Rain. Just like that day.
"Cut!"
At director Kang Pil-hyun's signal, Yoon Jay took the shirt Han Jin-woo handed him and draped it over his shoulders.
"Man, the mood in this is fantastic."
The director studied the monitor and nodded in satisfaction, then turned to the actor and staff standing behind him, as if seeking their agreement. They were nodding too.
"By the way, Jay — you're not feeling unwell, are you?"
"Ah, my condition… does it look off?"
It was actually raining on set. Yoon Jay had always been sensitive to rainy weather. His wearied look must have caught on camera.
"Not at all. If anything, it works."
The director flashed a grin that said, this is exactly what I wanted. Well — a good thing was a good thing, presumably. Yoon Jay drank some water, his throat dry for no good reason.
Then morning came. Son Tae-rin, arriving at the office, laid out her gambit under pressure from the new station chief.
Find a body double to stand in for the missing Oh Beom-jun.
"A stand-in… you're serious?"
"Then what, we just close the whole case as-is?"
Son Tae-rin sighed. All around them were the traces of how hard the team had fought to bring this case home. The mountains of paperwork — God knows how much blood and sweat those had cost. And their team existed because of Oh Beom-jun in the first place. Without him, it was all dead weight.
Worse, the man who had championed this whole project had suddenly had his neck cut — and a new station chief had come in. It stank of danger. If they didn't move fast, they'd be the ones cut down next.
"Haaah… but where are we supposed to find the twin brother? Even I heard from the team leader that no one's been able to reach him."
"That's what we're about to find out. Just trust me."
Son Tae-rin spoke with total confidence.
"How do you claim to be someone's brother and not have a single way to contact him?"
But having come up empty, she grumbled.
The reason for the missing contact was simple. Befitting the drama's title, Oh Beom-jun and Oh Sa-jun had communicated through memory. Press their hands together as if in prayer, take a few deep breaths, and their minds would link.
That was how they'd traded secret intelligence, each achieving his own results.
Clutching at straws, Son Tae-rin typed Oh Sa-jun's name into a search portal.
"Huh?"
She leaned in close to the monitor.
Staring out from the article's photo was a face identical to Oh Beom-jun's. She confirmed the location of Ilwol Holdings headquarters, grabbed her coat, and headed out.
And at the headquarters of Ilwol Holdings, Oh Sa-jun was receiving a surprise visitor: Im Chae-myung, president of Unra Construction, who had barged unannounced into the company lobby.
"Well, what do you know. You're alive?"
"Aigoo, Mr. President. What a charming thing to say first thing in the morning."
"Come on, Director Oh, you've got enemies everywhere. I came to see if you were still in one piece."
"Truly, no one looks after me like you do, President Im Chae-myung."
Oh Sa-jun met him with an oily, sardonic drawl.
They looked nothing like friends. Im Chae-myung's eyes kept traveling up and down Sa-jun's entire body — radiating, from every pore, the air of a man who knew something had happened to you. Or who hoped something had.
The two exchanged a meaningless promise to play golf sometime, and after watching Im Chae-myung climb into his car, Oh Sa-jun muttered under his breath.
"If that man shows up again, don't let him in."
"How am I supposed to stop him when he storms straight into the lobby? It's not like he's asking for your office."
Ryu Hae-yeol, Sa-jun's right hand, grumbled. The way he trotted at Sa-jun's heels made the hierarchy look ironclad, but the banter between them was easy and familiar.
"Excuse me! Just a moment!"
Oh Sa-jun, already saddled with one infuriating encounter before the morning was even underway, was heading for his office when Son Tae-rin's voice called desperately after him.
Ryu Hae-yeol leaned in and whispered.
"Who's that? Pretty, sure — but not your type at all."
"Hmm, no idea."
"Excuse me—"
Son Tae-rin, lunging straight for Oh Sa-jun, was blocked by Ryu Hae-yeol. But then Sa-jun, in one of his sudden whims, shoved past — and Hae-yeol was brushed aside. Shoved by the shoulder and swept out of the way, he could be seen floundering behind them. Oh Sa-jun only smiled, wide and bright.
"What can I do for you?"
"Ah…"
Standing before a man who wore the exact face of the one she loved, Son Tae-rin found that for a long moment, she could not speak at all.